7 Rules to Live a Better life
#2 It is easier to be disciplined than it is to be lazy.
Photo by Bruno Adam on Unsplash
1. It is easier to move towards something than to run away from something.
Act based on love, not fear.
Too often you make decisions because you are scared of an outcome. This is normal, you have evolved to avoid pain. You would rather avoid losing $100 than making $100.
You leave a job because you hate it. You move to another place because you are scared of being stuck or you pre-emptively leave relationships because you fear being rejected first.
Acting on fear means you are trying to avoid pain rather than trying to fulfill any desires that you really want to achieve. The difference is important. You are acting from a place of scarcity rather than abundance. Desperation rather than joy.
But good decisions are never based on fear.
Move jobs to follow your passion. Change location because it will give you an opportunity to learn more about yourself. Leave relationships because you deserve better.
The quality of your decisions depends largely on the quality of thoughts in your mind. Acting on fear produces negative externalities. Acting on love produces positive externalities.
2. It is easier to be disciplined than it is to be lazy.
Discipline is the antidote to chaos. Discipline gives you freedom in the long-term while laziness only gives you freedom in the short-term.
Spending every paycheck on extravagance can feel great while you are doing it but you’ll soon find yourself in cycles of financial insecurity and possibly debt.
People tend to think that discipline restricts freedom. I disagree. Discipline is what gives you freedom. Think about it. Any freedom you enjoy today is because you were disciplined yesterday.
This applies to all domains of life:
Financial discipline yesterday creates financial freedom today.
Healthy choices today create freedom from health problems tomorrow.
Time discipline now creates time freedom later.
Making hard choices now makes life easier later. Making easy choices now makes life harder later.
There is an optimal amount of discipline you should have.
Too little discipline and you are constantly at the whim of your every impulse. You are living a life that is out of your control and directed by other people. And guess what other people have planned for you? Not much.
Too much discipline and you are an ascetic. You are living a life not connected to the real world or people. You are fragile to any disturbances or changes in life that often happen.
Either option is not great. The trick is finding the right balance for you.
3. It is easier to improve your life by subtraction rather than addition.
Have you ever conducted a life audit?
Chances are that 80% of the problems you are facing in life are caused by only 20% of people, situations or work in your life.
Once you have identified the 20% you have three choices:
Change it.
Leave it.
Accept it.
Most of the happiness that I’ve enjoyed in my life has been from either changing or leaving situations I didn’t like. Very rarely will I accept a situation that doesn’t align with my values.
Look at the list of things that came up in your life. I bet there are things you could easily cut away that would make your life 80% better for the long-term.
4. It is easier to suffer than to avoid suffering.
“Avoidance of suffering is a form of suffering. The avoidance of struggle is a struggle. The avoidance of failure is a failure.” — Mark Manson
There is beauty in doing hard things.
Doing hard things reveals who you are, proves your values and validates your inner-character. If you are never tested, you will never know what you are truly capable of.
Our immune systems are strengthened when exposed to foreign pathogens. They are made stronger by being challenged, stretched and forced to adapt.
The same is true of the quality of our lives.
The people living the most satisfying lives are often the ones who have gone through the most adversity and overcome them. Our life resume is really just a cataloging of all our suffering.
Avoidance of suffering is the avoidance of growth.
I am sure you know people in your life who never change. They do the same thing every day, never really conscious about what they want from life.
They avoid any sort of growth opportunity because they don’t want the pain, struggle or hardship that comes along with it.
But it is so illogical. Anything worth pursuing in life is painful. All of life’s greatest lessons are forged during periods of suffering.
I look back on the hardest periods of my life and they precipitated the biggest growth periods I’ve ever experienced. Don’t get me wrong, it was hard. And I definitely didn’t enjoy every moment of it.
But that painful breakup of a 6-year relationship made me realize who I really was and what I wanted from life. It caused me to re-examine my values and prioritize my own self-development and growth.
I rediscovered my passion for books, my love for writing and achieved quite a bit of success in my career on the back of that growth.
5. It is easier to change yourself than it is to change the world.
You can start to change the world by starting with yourself. Be the change you want to see in the world. Not just philosophically but through action.
Being a role model for the change you want to see is far more effective than screaming or shouting at someone that what they are doing is evil or wrong.
I don’t know anyone who has changed their mind after being yelled at.
Do you?
6. It is easier to attribute mistakes to incompetence rather than to malice.
“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity” — Hanlon’s Razor
Most people are stupid, not malicious.
I would know. I make stupid decisions all the time. Sometimes my stupidity hurts people. Other times it costs other people time or money.
I’ve never set out with the intention of wanting to hurt someone. That would be cruel. Most people are the same but I almost never apply that same compassion to others.
Whenever someone cuts me off in traffic, I immediately think: ‘what a f***king dickhead.’ I am not perfect. But I am trying to get better.
Whenever that happens or again I try to default from a place of compassion rather than judgment. I don’t just do it because it's nicer to the other person. I do it because it is also nicer to me and better for my mental health and well-being.
Anger or resentment is like a poison you drink hoping that the other person dies — Saint Augustine.
7. It is easier to be less wrong than it is to be always right.
You are going to be wrong most of the time. And that’s okay. You shouldn’t aim to always be right in every decision. That’s perfection. And perfection in the face of uncertainty and incomplete information is a myth.
“You can be wrong half the time and still make a fortune,” writes Morgan Housel in his book The Psychology of Money.
In fact, the majority of good outcomes come from a small minority of good decisions. You only need to be less wrong more often to have a great life.
Venture Capital firms in Silicon Valley invest in 100 companies fully expecting that 90% of those investments won’t make any money. But if they happen to fund the next Facebook, Uber or AirBnb, the returns from a small minority of companies can pay off 10x their losses.
You can apply this same model to your life. What are some high-leverage activities that could have a disproportionate impact on your life?
For me, that’s reading, writing and podcasting. I see these activities as an investment in my long-term growth and development.
Will every book I read change my life?
Probably not. But the more I read the more I will create the chance for my life to be changed. All it takes is 3–4 great books to alter the path your life takes.
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