Reality: Because They Show Up

Read on tedwild.cc  | 2023.6.27 | #16

Happy Reality Day! Here is your weekly dose of reality to help you live 1% happier.

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❤ 1 Insight From Me

A few days ago, I was about to go swimming as planned, but suddenly it started to rain heavily. Under the idea of ​​”life is just an experiment”, I hopped on my bike and went anyway in the rain.

The result was beyond my imagination.

The temperature of the swimming pool is not lower than usual as I thought, and there are very few people. I can occupy the entire swimming lane by myself and swim in whatever way I wanted. By the way, the swimming pool is usually full of people. Yes!

But that’s not the biggest discovery.

What struck me most is that, although there were very few people who come to swim, the overall level of these people’s swimming is obviously higher than that of the swimmers on normal days. Most of them can already swim freestyle (the general order of learning swimming is breaststroke→freestyle→butterfly/backstroke). It was also obvious that they all came with practice plans and were practicing higher skills.

One word immediately came to my mind: “Show Up“.

Professionals don’t wait to “want” to do something before doing it, they just “show up” on time regardless of how they feel.

And this is a key difference between professionals and amateurs.

This sounds stressful from one angle.

But from another point of view, this is a kind of blessing. Because all you need to do is show up, you don’t have to accomplish a lot every time you show up. Even if there is no progress, it doesn’t matter, because:

Just showing up is a kind of victory.

No matter who you are, there will be times when you are unmotivated. For example, when James Clear was a baseball player, he played hundreds of games a year, with an average of one game every 3 days. It’s impossible to be motivated every time.

For a closer example, during the 1,300+ days of meditation without skipping a single day, it is impossible to be motivated for meditating every day.

Just show up on time, that’s all.

And an interesting reality is that often after you show up on time, motivation finds you.

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❤ 1 Insight From Others

“The professional does not wait for inspiration, he acts in anticipation of it.”

― Steven Pressfield

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❤ 1 Small Step To Take

“1 Minute Habit”:

Make the thing you want to get better at a routine, like exercising for 10 minutes a day.

Each day when you feel unmotivated and don’t want to do it, just tell yourself “I will only do it for 1 minute today“.

The reality is, as long as you start, you will often continue until you finish.

The mechanism behind this is that motivation is just an emotion, and as I said in the anxiety post, emotions are short-lived and can be changed. This “1-minute habit” is using physical actions to tell your brain that you can do this thing today, thereby changing your emotional state.

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Do you find this issue of Reality helpful? Leave a reply to this email, I check every reply in my inbox.

Until next week,

Ted Wild

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PS: Article：Anxiety: A Practical Guide

PPS: Is it possible that they are actually cooking?

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