#2 You decide to tell yourself a different story

1. You Take Responsibility For Your Problems

“By casting away their responsibility they may feel comfortable with themselves, but they have ceased to solve the problems of living, have ceased to grow spiritually, and have become dead weight for society” — Scott Peck

I know people where nothing is ever their fault. No matter how small it is. They can never admit they were in the wrong. Things always happen to them or the world is out to get them. They are constantly playing the victim role.

It is nice and safe to be the victim. You never have to take responsibility. There is always someone else to blame for your circumstances or why you’re not as successful as you should be.

But the amount of success you enjoy in life depends on the amount of responsibility you take. By avoiding the problems in your life you are also avoiding the growth that problems demand of you.

As Scott Peck writes:

This tendency to avoid problems and the emotional suffering in them is the primary basis of all human mental illness.

Taking responsibility is painful and inconvenient.

No problem can be solved until an individual assumes responsibility for solving it. Taking responsibility for your actions is acknowledging the role you play in the situations in your life. Both the good and the bad.

If you are not part of the solution, then you are part of the problem — Elridge Cleaver

You’ll have to confront challenging questions about yourself and your behavior. But that’s good. The answers will help you improve your life and how you interact with people and interface with the world.

When you have ownership over your life, you are in the driver’s seat to direct where you want your future to be.

If you never take any responsibility, you’ll never have any accountability over your life. Stepping up and becoming the author of your life is one of the hardest things you’ll ever do. But also one of the best.

If you constantly encounter the same problems, you might be the problem.

2. You Decide To Tell Yourself A Different Story

The stories we tell ourselves are the stories we live by.

We all have trauma to deal with. We all have mental struggles to overcome. No one is immune. Not even those born in privilege.

I listened to a great podcast the other day with Michael Pollan on the Joe Rogan Experience. He likens the stories we tell ourselves to the metaphor of going down a snowy mountain on a slide.

The first attempt produces a path. After repeated attempts, the path turns into a road. After enough attempts, the path is eventually carved into the very surface of the mountain itself.

Any variation from the path is difficult because of how ingrained it is in the mountain. The same is true of your thoughts. The quality of your mind determines the quality of your life.

Emotional maturity comes at the point of recognizing that the old stories you tell yourself don’t serve you anymore and you need to create a new one.

If you don’t try to travel on a different road, you’ll never get to a different destination. If you’ve created a new story once before, you can do it again. Life is about unlearning as much as it is about learning.

If you want a better life, tell yourself a better metaphor.

3. You Choose To Surround Yourself With Positive People

Your environment shapes your behavior. The sights smell and sounds influence you more than you think it does. Remember that song you just couldn’t get out of your head? Well, that’s the power of your environment.

Your social environment is an even greater influence on you. We’ve all heard that you are the product of the 5 closest people to you. So pick wisely. You have too much demand for limited spots.

You always have a choice with the people you let into your life. Even your family. Setting healthy boundaries is being kind to you and those you love.

I don’t take this lightly and you shouldn’t either. Who you let into your life might be the single greatest factor in influencing what your life becomes.

The standard that you let into your environment is the standard that you accept for your life.

4. You Decide When You Act On Your Emotions

We all feel anger, sadness, and jealousy.

You wouldn’t be human if you didn’t.

But feeling your emotions is a lot different from acting on your emotions.

Let’s start with the premise that no emotion is bad. Every emotion you feel is a place on a map. A natural response to your environment. They are a signal from the noise that can tell you what’s wrong and what to change.

However, reacting to every emotion you feel is what can lead you into trouble.

Emotional maturity is creating a conscious awareness of your emotional reactions. How do you react when you’re angry? What do you do when you’re made to feel worthless? What happens when someone cuts you off in traffic?

Do you even know what you would do in these situations?

You don’t get to decide whether you have emotions or don’t have emotions. But you do get to decide how you act on them.

The practice of mindfulness is building awareness during that gap between emotional stimulus and emotional response. The most mindful people know how to control that gap.

Every time you feel an emotion and take time to think through it before you act is equivalent to a bicep curl for your mind. Like physical adaptation, the more mental bicep curls you take, the stronger your emotional maturity.

If you’re not working on your emotional reactions then you are being worked by your emotional reactions.

5. You Choose The Long-Term Over The Short-Term

You won’t get far by constantly fucking other people over. You won’t get far by hanging around people who are toxic, selfish and not self-aware.

You could almost plot on a map how emotionally mature someone is and how long-term they tend to think.

Emotionally mature people understand that all the greatest rewards in life accrue from compound interest. Whether that’s relationships, career or personal finances. Rome wasn’t built in a day and your life won’t be either.

No one formed meaningful relationships instantly, enjoyed a successful career overnight or became a millionaire in a day. What usually looks like instant success is built off the back of a decade of hard work and patience.

You are seeing the tip of a deep iceberg.

Just remember that:

$81.5 billion of Warren Buffett’s $84.5 billion net worth came after his 65th birthday. More than 90% of his wealth was built when most people start to think of retirement — Morgan Housel

You should always seek to play long-term games with long-term people.

Summary:

Everything in this list has two things in common: self-awareness and agency. Being emotionally mature is recognizing what situation you’re in and being able to take steps to change it.

Emotional maturity is taking the hard choices when there are easier ones available. Hard choices now create an easier life later whilst easy choices now only create a harder life later on.

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