#1852 Precautions Before Beginning

In our last couple +1s (here and here), we’ve been hanging out with Arnold Bennett and enjoying some wisdom from his great little book(let) How to Live on 24 Hours a Day.

Let’s continue our exploration of some of my favorite Ideas.

Today we’re going to talk about some wisdom from a chapter called “Precautions Before Beginning.”

Let’s get straight to work.

Bennett tells us: “The most important preliminary to the task of arranging one’s life so that one may live fully and comfortably within one’s daily budget of twenty-four hours is the calm realization of the extreme difficulty of the task, of the sacrifices and the endless effort which it demands. I cannot too strongly insist on this.”

He continues by saying: “If you imagine that you will be able to achieve your ideal by ingeniously planning out a timetable with a pen on a piece of paper, you had better give up hope at once. If you are not prepared for discouragements and disillusions; if you will not be content with a small result for a big effort, then do not begin. Lie down again and resume the uneasy doze which you call your existence.”

Note…

If you’re not ready to roll up your sleeves and do the hard (!) work of optimizing your days, then, and I quote: “Lie down again and resume the uneasy doze which you call your existence.”

Hah. 😆

So…

Step 1: We need to know that there’s no magic secret formula that’ll make it super easy for us to start rocking it immediately. (Sorry to break the news.)

We need to, as always, embrace reality.

Which reminds me of Ray Dalio and Tal Ben-Shahar.

We’ll start with Ray Dalio—one of the most influential and wealthy human beings on the planet.

He wrote a great book called Principles. (Check out the Notes.)

What’s Principle #1?

“Embrace Reality and Deal with It.”

Sub-principle 1.1 “Be a hyperrealist.”

Here’s how he puts it: “Learning how reality works, visualizing the things I want to create, and then building them out is incredibly exciting for me. Stretching for big goals puts me in the position of failing and needing to learn and come up with new inventions in order to move forward. I find it exhilarating being caught up in the feedback loop of rapid learning—just as a surfer loves riding a wave, even though sometimes it leads to crashes.”

He continues by saying: “Don’t get me wrong, I’m still scared of the crashes and I still find them painful. But I keep that pain in perspective, knowing that I will get through these setbacks, and that most of my learning will come from reflecting on them. Just as long-distance runners push through pain to experience the pleasure of ‘runner’s high,’ I have largely gotten past the pain of my mistake making and instead enjoy the pleasure that comes with learning from it. I believe that with practice you can change your habits and experience the same ‘mistake learner’s high.’”

That’s one way to approach embracing reality, eh?

Jump so fully into the “feedback loop of rapid learning” that our failures create a “mistake learner’s high.”

Then we have Tal Ben-Shahar.

As we’ve discussed many times, Tal taught one of the largest classes in Harvard’s history.

In The Pursuit of Perfect, he tells us how much he struggled as a perfectionist who ignored the constraints of reality.

Here’s how he puts it: “The first step was to accept the reality that I could not have it all. While it seems obvious that you cannot work fourteen hours a day and remain fit and healthy and be a devoted father and husband, in my perfectionist fantasy world, nothing was impossible.”

Yep.

I repeat…

Accepting reality is a wise idea.

And…

That’s Today’s +1.

Let’s quit expecting things to be easy and then giving up the first time we hit an obstacle.

And…

Let’s quit expecting to be able to do EVERYTHING (!) we think we “should” be able to do in a given day as we embrace the constraints of our reality.

Then…

Let’s go joyfully do the hard work to give the world all we’ve got.

TODAY.

P.S. Check out Conquering Perfectionism 101 for more of Tal’s wisdom on embracing the constraints of reality and using them to activate our Heroic potential without falling into the trap of unhealthy perfectionism!