Being disciplined is NOTHING compared to this! The hardest challenge to face if you want to create a MEANINGFUL life.
How can something be 50 times harder than being disciplined? Well, let me show you.
I am confident that in my life,
There have been only a handful of moments as tough as this one.
One day, you wake up feeling extremely confident in your skills and capabilities.
While the next day you feel like everything is crumbling down; doubts and preoccupation seem to be taking control over your mind,
And what you used to do without any struggle, now seems impossible.
I’m sure that, to some degree, you’ve experienced this too.
Tuesday morning, I woke up and opened my laptop to start writing,
I took a look at my X feed,
And saw all of the amazing success some of my buddies were having on X.
Other than be extremely happy and proud of them,
For a second, I had the feeling that all of the work I did in the last nine months was worthless.
Absolutely worthless.
How crazy is that?
9000 posts on X, 80+ newsletter articles, 980 followers,
All are completely worthless.
How could I even think of something like this?
The results I got by waking up at 4 a.m. for over 9 months made me feel like I never even accomplished them.
Why?
It took me so long to even find something that might have caused that, but after tens of hours trying to figure something out, I came to one simple conclusion.
What I want to tell you is that if you are experiencing something similar, or if you are going to in the future,
It’s all going to be caused by one simple attitude.
One simple habit we all have deep in our nature as humans.
Something that’s almost, and I mean almost, impossible to get rid of.
What I’m talking about is comparing yourself to others.
The doom of the modern era.
Modern life, social media, and much more, like our beloved platform X, are making us compare ourselves to what every single person is doing.
Imagine this:
You are a web designer, and you really want to grow your personal brand on X in order to sell your service to people.
You have your own unique idea of how things should be done, and you are confident in it.
For some reasons, though, you can’t get clients.
There might THOUSANDS of different reasons for that, but you can’t figure out which one is holding you back.
So, you are naturally going to start questioning your beliefs, thinking that maybe you never had it right,
Thinking that what you are doing can’t work,
And that all of the work you’ve done in the past few months was just a waste of time.
As soon as this thought comes to your mind, what you are naturally going to do,
Is to look at what the top guy in your niche is doing; you then freeze by seeing all of the results he is getting by doing things in a different way from the one you thought as the best.
A different idea for his brand, a different content strategy … and so on.
This will cause a vicious cycle of questions, doubts, and preoccupations that, in the end, in 95% of cases, are going to make you quit, by forcing you think that you are simply not good enough.
This cycle is exactly what I entered in the last couple of months and I’m only now, 3 months later, starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
So if there is advice I can give you from the bottom of my heart,
Stop listening to people on social media.
Stop listening to what the gurus are telling you,
Stop listening to all of the things other creators think you are doing wrong.
Do just what you think is best for you at the moment, and if it doesn’t work, change it; simple trial and error.
What social media and what X in particular can do for creators is amazing as well as disruptive.
Everyone is giving different advices and trying to prove others wrong to gain a share of the market.
Don’t let them enter in your mind.
Don’t give them permission to make you think that all you have done is worthless just because they are making $10,000 a month and you aren’t yet.
This is what the hard part of entrepreneurship really is:
It’s not about doing the work.
It’s not about being disciplined.
It’s not about learning a good business model.
It’s all about fighting the doubts and preoccupations your mind is randomly presenting you.
Is to keep your focus on the goal, no matter what other people are telling you.
Be extremely stubborn on this, because others can’t see what you are seeing and can’t think what you are thinking.
I truly think this is the hardest character trait to develop in order to create a truly meaningful life.
But it’s also the most important.
Discipline is just bullshit compared to it.
And the only way to develop it is to simply fight and suffer through it.
Put your blinders on and make your vision a reality.
Final words.
Congratulations, my friend; you’ve made it all the way to the end again!
You now know what’s the hardest challenge your mind will ever face while you are on you path to create a truly meaningful life.
Which is to let doubts, preoccupations, and negative thoughts out of your mind.
You also know that the only way to do it is to suffer and fight through it, until one day, you’ll show them that you were able to pull it off anyways.
Keep doing your best and walking on The Only Path To Improvement.
If you have some time, I’d love to do some networking and have a chat with you.
Here is my calendly, and my X DM’s are always open for you.
Filippo.