cbarney.45 | The Caleb Barney Collection

Making an honest attempt

If I try, I have a chance. If I don’t try, I have no chance. There is no harm in trying and failing. At least you’re still setting yourself up to possibly succeed. But if you don’t try for fear of failing, you guarantee that you will not achieve your goal.

Be ok with taking chances and always strive to do your best. You should give your greatest effort in everything you do. If you are taking the time to do something, you might as well do it properly. Not only that, but how you do anything is how you do everything. Don’t fall into the habit of going through the motions and not giving it your all, otherwise that will become your new norm.

If you take chances and give 100% of your effort, you can rest easy at night. You can go to bed knowing that you gave it your all and not have any regrets. Again, the only you can control is your effort. If things don’t work out as planned, let it be because of forces outside of your control, not because you didn’t do something.

Decision-making

Try to make decisions based on logic and common sense, not emotions. Create systems and have processes in place to protect you from yourself.

Figuring out what you should and shouldn’t do

Tease out the similarities of what “everyone else does” in specific situations and see what “common truth” everyone accepts that is incorrect. Will doing the opposite produce better results?

Then, try to look at what the uncommonly successful people do. What habits or routines do they perform that have helped them get to where they are now. Are there commonalities amongst the highest achievers across different fields of study that separate them from what you’re currently doing or what most people are currently doing?

After you figure out these two things (what to do and what NOT to do), get intentional and plan out how you will change your actions to set yourself up for future success. Put your plan into action and focus on being deliberate with your practice every single day. Over time, you will eventually master the subject and achieve the results you have been dreaming of.

Simplifying vs optimizing

There is a difference between simplifying and optimizing. Sometimes, when trying to optimize, you search for perfection. When you can’t find perfection, you procrastinate. Focus on improving your life, making the biggest impact possible with small/easy-to-implement changes, and start doing it today.

Action and inaction

Stop reading (and watching/listening) so much and go think on your own. You need silence for creativity and for clarity. Ironically, you shouldn’t fill up every moment with doing something in order to be the most productive.

By the same token, stop reading and start doing. You can always accumulate more knowledge. Don’t use learning more about a subject as an excuse to procrastinate doing whatever it is you’re learning about. If you wait until you know everything to get started then you’ll never actually get started. Start doing it and continue to learn along the way.