Brain Food – No. 565 – February 25, 2024
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Timeless ideas and insights for life. (Read the archives).
FS
“Amateurs have a goal. Professionals have a system.”
Insights
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Tiny Thoughts
1.
“So much advantage in life comes from being willing to look like a failure in the short term.”
2.
“A lack of patience changes the outcome.”
3.
“Consistent progress compounds.
Inconsistent progress is a lie.
Make a little progress today on your most important objective. Repeat tomorrow.”
(Share Tiny Thought 1, 2, or 3, on X).
Success and Failure
The world’s best performance psychologist, Dr. Gio Valiante, on how your mindset matters more than you think:
“People think of success and failure as opposite things—that the more I succeed, the less I fail. But that’s really sort of a modern conception of success and failure. The fact of the matter is [that] failure is woven into the fabric of success. It’s not “How do you avoid failure?” That’s the wrong question. The right question is, “How do I fail, or how should I fail in ways that lead to the type of skill development and belief system that allow me to succeed long term?” It’s “How do we fail?”
[…]
Two individuals, everything else being equal—same education, same ability, same training, same everything. One of them goes at their craft or at their domain or at their career from a place of “I love to learn. I love to problem-solve. I go into depth with these things and … I’m not engaged in image management.” The second individual goes in, competing against other people, over-caring about what people think. Success is only defined by that which is palpable or tangible, like they’re playing for trophies. Then you fail—because if you’re … trying to get at the tail end of the curve, you’re going to fail—and you react with embarrassment. When we talk about the toxic emotions, embarrassment is—depends on the person—but it’s one of the two most painful psychological experiences a person can have.”
The entire conversation is worth a listen (Apple Podcasts | Spotify) or listen to the start of the excerpt above.
Thanks for reading,
— Shane
P.S. How my mom wanted me to make my bed.
P.P.S. I appreciate your patience while I play around with the design a bit. I’ve noticed many people taking screenshots, posting them on Instagram, and tagging my account, so I wanted to clean it up a bit while retaining the clean text-based approach.