Excuses
Your head probably formulated many excuses and counter arguments, as you read this course. All sorts of reasons why the rules don’t apply to you. And it’s just your bad luck that you cannot be productive!
This is also completely human and natural.
As I said, people aren’t as amazing as we think. We’re just animals with a slight brain upgrade. Our first instinct, when we hear something, is to first form an opinion, and then come up with bad reasons why we are right. We do this to protect ourselves. To stay in our comfort zone and feel secure.
Some of the excuses are valid. Most of them are not.
I’ll talk a bit about the most common ones.
“I don’t have the time / energy”
I touched on this slightly, saying that this is mostly not true. You spend a lot of time each day doing useless things. Or doing something in a very inefficient way. Or waiting on something or someone else.
If you look critically, you can always find extra time to put into your goal. If you eat, exercise and sleep well, your energy levels will go up.
Of course, this isn’t true for everyone. I had moments in my life when this excuse was true. I was stuck at university from morning to evening. Any spare time I had, was spent taking care of my health, doing even more exercises, trying to maintain a social life. I literally did not have time to brush my teeth often enough for half a year. (With the expected consequences …)
So the most important skill is to think critically and logically. Whenever you come up with an excuse, think critically. Is it actually true? Or not?
If true, then you’re simply in a bad situation, as I was. Unlucky, unfortunate, the world isn’t fair. But hold on and your situation will change.
If not true—well then, you actually do have the time to be productive!
It’s also a matter of priorities. Yes, working on that goal of yours might cut into time spend with your friends, for example. Then it’s up to you to decide: what do I value more? It’s rare that people have their life schedule set in stone with no spare time at all. If you really want to achieve something, move stuff around, reprioritize, make it happen.
“I don’t have the talent”
Talent doesn’t (really) exist.
We are people, which means we at least have the genes to do the things we’re meant to do: eat, exercise, problem solve, etcetera. Everything has the ability to form habits, to think, to work on their health and to change their environment.
Besides that, talent is an excuse. Yes, some people have a slight advantage or disadvantage for a certain skill. But all studies done on this topic, have shown that hard work and the right habits / process is what matters. A significant effect or definition for “talent” has never been found.
Often, people point to “easy learners” in school. Those who can get A grades without issue, while others have to study for hours on end to barely scrape by. This isn’t a talent or intelligence issue.
Again, studies have shown that this is merely an issue of doing the wrong thing. The way the educational systems work, is just one way to do things. (And a very very bad one at that.) Different people learn in different ways. They need different habits, or explanations, or time frames, to learn something.
Even better, different people are interested in different things. If you have a passion for mathematics, well, then school is very happy with you. If you have a passion for dancing, good luck finding motivation for the required subjects at school.
I don’t like vegetables. I envy those with taste buds that like vegetables. As I said, I like sweets, sugar, fruit, most things that are unhealthy. But that doesn’t mean I can’t eat healthy. That vegetables somehow fly away when I try to eat them.
Instead, I’ve learned to make dishes where I combine vegetables with something I do like. I love eating a pasta with vegetables and vegan meat, with tomato sauce through it all. That’s how I manage to eat tons of vegetables, without actually liking their taste at all.
“I’m just lazy”
Somehow, it’s become trendy to say things like this about yourself.
- “Oh, I’m just lazy.”
- “Nah, my brain just doesn’t do motivation.”
- “I’m a procrastinator, so this is what happens.”
When did this become a cool thing to say? It’s not cool.
Everyone is lazy. Nobody’s brain does motivation. Everybody is a procrastinator. That is human nature and completely normal.
If these were valid excuses, nobody would even get out of bed! Nothing would ever be done! We’d still be stuck in the stone age.
The difference between you and somebody who achieves things, is not that they are somehow immune to laziness. It’s not that they have infinite pools of “motivation”. They are not “built different” or “lucky”.
They simply understand that our psychology is a reality, but not an excuse.
If you want to do something, you have to be strong enough to go and get it. If you hide behind excuses like this, you apparently do not care enough about that goal.
If you say something like this, you’ve clearly chosen the second option: I care more about my impulses than achieving any goal in life.
“But this is hard!”
Yes! It’s supposed to be! Life isn’t an easy ride. It shouldn’t be.
Life … isn’t anything at all, really. It’s what you make of it. It’s what happens to come your way.
Most things that come your way, though, will be obstacles and challenges. That’s how the world works: anything is designed to fall apart and die, unless you work hard to fight that.
Man, this guide is turning into “a collection of sad facts and reality checks, by Pandaqi”. Sorry about that. Hopefully you understand why I mention these things.
So don’t view life like it should be easy. Like things should come your way, and otherwise it’s unfair and you just give up.
View life like a challenge. A game. It’s difficult. You will make mistakes. It will take effort, every single day.
The reward is a life well-lived. A fulfilled feeling and accomplishment of your goals.
It’s the same with learning. People expect learning to be easy. Otherwise they feel dumb, or call their textbooks bad, or think their school has a low quality.
No, learning is supposed to be difficult. Some studies have called this “desirable difficulty”. That gap—between comfortable and easy, and the uncomfortable thing you don’t understand—is at the core of learning. Your brain tries to close that gap, and that’s how you learn anything.
If the gap doesn’t exist, or it’s too small, no learning will ever happen.
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