Learn from my mistakes until it’s too late.
My grandfather told me once, “life is like an elevator. It takes you up but also can take you down. So be careful with which button you push. It is not the same to be on the first floor and press the button for the second floor as it is to be on the seventh floor and press the button for the fifth floor. In the first case, you go up. In the second case, you go down.”
The buttons we push are the decisions we make.
The bad part of my grandfather’s analogy is that the higher you go, the fewer buttons you can push to keep going up. But paradoxically, the worst is the best because as there are fewer buttons, you have fewer to choose from. And that makes things much more evident.
But you have to be careful because just as fewer decisions take you up, the more you go up, the more decisions take you down. And that fills your path with bear traps.
I share with you three of those traps I would have liked to avoid much earlier in life so that you don’t waste the only resource you can’t get back: time.
Short-term decision making
You only need to take one step after the other when you are in the hole and keep moving. Not overthink, not overplaying, just living one day at a time.
That’s the key when you start from scratch when you want to go from the parking lot to the first floor.
But if you got momentum and are moving up the right to the top, to the penthouse, it would help if you had a different mindset.
Why?
Becouse is more efficient to take twenty steps in one direction than one step in twenty different ways.
And for doing that, you have to need a PLAN.
Avoid the trap of living-the-present 24/7. You need structure. It would help if you had measurable goals. It would help if you had checkpoints. You need a long-term vision.
Example
Imagine you are in the middle of the ocean on a kayak. The first is to start rowing, but then you need a direction, a route to follow, or you will never reach port. And you’ll keep rowing in circles until you run out of steam or a storm sinks your little boat.
Not wanting to go back.
When you start making any progress, you want to keep going. But staying this way of thinking is terrible when you achieve momentum.
Avoid the trap of going straight forward to the wall. Sometimes you have to stop, think and go back.
Napoleon said, “a retreat in time is a victory,” and it is true because a soldier who retreats in time is a soldier who can fight in the next battle.
The main life lesson is learning to lose because the higher you climb, the more complex the fall.
Example
You meet someone in your twenties and move in with that person. But little by little, the relationship becomes toxic, and you start to patch the relationship. You feed yourself with self-deception and end up 50 years old, with two children, a mortgage, and divorced. All because you don’t want to go back to live at your parent’s house.
(Spoiler: You will not avoid returning to your parent’s house. You’ll delay it until your fifties 🙂
Obsessing about quantity
Stop falling in love with the quote “better be prolific than perfect.”
In the beginning, when you want to go upstairs from the basement is ok to work hard. But as you move up in what you do, you have to moderate yourself. And start using the mantra “less is more.”
Why?
Because if you overtrain, you get more injured.
Because if you work too hard, you end up burned out.
Because if you don’t rest, inspiration won’t come to you, and everything you do will be more of the same.
Example
I used to make every week seven articles, 21 tweets, and 3 TikTok videos. Now I do five articles, seven tweets, and 1 video. And have more views because I curated more of the things I publish.
You have to make some noise when you don’t have an audience. But you have to offer only the best of yourself when you have one.
That applies to everything in life. It would help if you curated your work. And offer only the best of you. So when you are a pro, in whatever you do, you have to be up to the task.
Final words
You are the only one who knows how high the elevator of your life stands.
That’s why I want you to remember that what got you up there will probably not help you continue.
I know it’s hard to accept because we get comfortable with what works for us, but it is what it is.
Maybe it’s time to take new risks.
See you in the penthouse 😉
A virtual hug
AG
Leave a Reply