Does it ever happen to you, that you decide to change your life, so you go to youtube and watch a video about productivity, or investing money, or meditation, or boosting your creativity, or building muscle, or anything else like that, and you maybe even take notes, maybe even write down the titles of those “7 books that will change your life”, or you maybe even order the books, and make a little pile on your desk, and you maybe even start reading one of them and decide that you’re gonna have to wake up early in the morning to be ahead of everyone and seize those quiet morning hours to work on realising your dreams, but then you feel very tired, so you go to sleep? And when you wake up the next day, you have now turned 30, so you know that you have to speed up, or else you will never become a writer. So you order more books. When they arrive, you’ve now turned 35, and you’re still very sleepy, but you manage to watch another youtube video recommending you “Think and grow rich” by Napoleon Hill, so you promise yourself that you’ll read it, but at this point you already kind of know that it doesn’t matter, and you will not grow rich from reading it, I mean, come on. But you still have the urge to do it – does that ever happen to you?
Well, it happened to me, I feel that way very often. I refuse to accept that the life I have now is the best I can have, I have a dream of a much better, more fulfilling life, and a desire to make it a reality, but when it comes to acting – I just fake it. I fake action and delude myself. I watch youtube videos, read self-help books, listen to podcasts, I do all of it, but never take action. I never implement what they tell me to do. The watching, and the reading, and the listening – is as far as I ever go. Of course it doesn’t change anything, it’s just another form of procrastination – one which gives you an illusion of progress. After all – you could have been playing video games, but instead you’ve invested time in “self-development”.
Dr Carol Dweck in her book “Mindset” (a book from my pile!) helped me understand why I am like this. Apparently it’s quite common, so maybe you will recognise yourself in this description, too: kind of clever as a kid, receiving praise for being talented, then suddenly started to struggle in your teenage years, so you stopped trying. You loved being good at things, so when you stopped being good, you stopped participating. Dr Dweck describes it as “fear of trying and failing”, and I feel that it describes me perfectly. According to her, I have what she calls a “fixed mindset”: I don’t want to do challenging things, because I’m afraid that when I fail, I will be exposed as an idiot, whereas if I don’t try, I won’t be judged at all, and only I will know that I’m an idiot!
We always tend to gravitate towards things that give us pleasure, we often get addicted to them. I learned as a kid that it feels good when you get praised for your successes. And at the time those successes came to me without effort. So already as a kid I convinced myself, that I have a natural talent – I’m so bright that things come to me effortlessly, and everybody praises me for it, which feels great. Effort was for less talented kids. When in high school things got more difficult, I panicked and gave up. I stopped working and tried to hide behind a shitty attitude. I acted like I didn’t care, but in reality I just didn’t feel smart anymore. And that’s the “fixed mindset” – believing that your intelligence and skills are fixed, and that’s just the way you are. And I still have this mindset to this day.
I wanted to be a writer or a journalist, but that was difficult, so instead I packed my stuff, moved to another country, and got a job in a restaurant. That seemed a lot easier than actually sitting down and writing. That’s because sitting in front of your computer and staring at a blank page can really give you a headache. Washing dishes in a restaurant – you’ll get sweaty and tired, but no headaches! I felt comfortable again. So comfortable, that I got stuck for 15 years.
But I still have that urge to write. My restaurant job pays my bills, but doesn’t give me satisfaction. I never wanted to do it, never felt passionate about it. That’s just where I ended up. Dr Dweck says that you can change your mindset. Leave the shitty “fixed mindset” I had since childhood, and adapt the “growth mindset” – identify my weaknesses and focus on getting better! I now realise that I always thought about writing as of a way to prove how smart I am. And I failed, because I wasn’t that smart, and I couldn’t write. I should have thought about writing as a way to become better at writing!
So here I am. I don’t feel comfortable doing this, but I’m willing to try. “In the growth mindset it’s almost inconceivable to want something badly, to think you have a chance to achieve it, and then do nothing about it.” Yup, that sounds stupid, doesn’t it? So this is me with my new “growth mindset”. I will write a blog. I will be bad at this. No doubt. But I will keep writing. I’ll sit in front of my computer everyday, I’ll sit through the headache, I’ll have that shitty feeling of having a rock in my stomach (do you also have it? don’t google it, it will say you have gastric cancer, but you’re probably just anxious), but I will keep doing it. I will be tired after all day in the kitchen, but I will keep doing it. Sometimes it will be a pile of garbage, but I accept that. I’ll keep doing it, so that maybe a year from now I will be a little better than I am now. I will fail and learn from my failure, and then I’ll try again. Maybe someday someone will read it and think: “he stinks, I can do that too”! and be inspired?
You can call me Dave.