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“Our deeds determine us as much as we determine our deeds.” – George Eliot

We have the power of choice – to choose what we do (or don’t do) every day. The decisions we make are what makes us who we are. In the end, you may say a lot of things or have a lot of interesting ideas, but if you don’t follow through with them, it doesn’t matter. They are empty words.

“If you wish to improve, be content to appear clueless or stupid in extraneous matters.” – Epictetus 

Don’t be a “know-it-all.” It’s only your ego that is standing in the way if you don’t allow yourself to tell someone that you don’t know the answer to a question.

Most of the time, you’re not fooling anyone if you act like you understand something, but really don’t. That will lose you points with whomever you’re talking to. But to say that you don’t know and to be genuinely curious/ask good questions? Then that person will be more likely to want to help you and teach you. 

The key here is to ask good questions though. Don’t ask easy questions that can be easily looked up on Google. You should do research on the subject if you don’t know about it, learn the basics, and then ask questions to “the expert.” If you are asking basic questions for basic ideas, you are wasting their time. And if they’re truly an expert, they will get annoyed that you’re asking questions that should not require their attention. 

The Kaizen Method…continuous improvement (even if it means getting 1% better every day).

Sometimes you feel like you need to do something big, something drastic, to make your life better. But big changes can be scary. They can be risky. Only you can weigh the risks to the rewards to see if it is truly worth it.

But there is another way to change your life. If you improve one thing per day, or get 1% better at something per day, and you continue to do this for years and years, your future life will be dramatically different than your current position.

It’s like an airplane changing direction just 1-2 degrees…the trajectory from your course correction changing ever so slightly can take that plane to a different location thousands of miles away from its original destination. 

If you are like that plane, and can fractionally change the direction of your life each day, you too can change your destination/future.

Tim Ferriss’s 5 Lessons from Cato…

1. “Actions are far easier to ‘hear’ than words.”
2. “Don’t compromise – ever.”
3. “Fear can only enter the mind with our consent.”
4. “Pain and difficulty can build endurance and self-control.”
5. “Everything we value—our wealth, our health, our success, our reputations, essentially everything not between our two ears—is ultimately beyond our control.”

Let’s break these down one by one…

For the first lesson from Cato, we need to learn that saying something doesn’t make it true or give you credibility. You earn credibility and respect by doing. You need to follow through and “walk the walk,” not just “talk the talk.”

For lesson two, we need to set high standards for ourselves and for others, and to call people out if they are not living up to those standards. This is not meant to be used for every aspect in life (although Cato was pretty unrelenting). Instead, choose what is really important to you and enforce those standards. Do not tolerate negativity, questionable ethics, etc. Whatever is truly important to you, do not compromise on it.

For lesson three, we must realize that everyone can and does experience fear. But oftentimes, whatever we fear is overblown in our minds. A good exercise to combat this is to do the following…

1. Think about what it is that you fear (usually this is anxiety about a potential future event…one that hasn’t come and may never actually happen)?
2. What is the worst case scenario if this happens? Most of the time, this is something small. Ask yourself, if “X” does happen, will you even remember it a year from now? How about ten years from now? Or on your deathbed? In the grand scheme of things, does this really matter? And, if the worst case scenario is something terrible (like death), first, try to avoid it at all costs. But if it is unavoidable, you need to come to terms that everyone is dying. Everyone will die. This is part of life. If you can’t change the outcome, you can change your mindset so that you try to leave everyone around you in a better place. Be their support system.

Two more helpful things to think about if you are fearful?

1. “The hero and the coward both feel the same thing, but the hero uses his fear, projects it onto his opponent, while the coward runs. It’s the same thing, fear, but it’s what you do with it that matters.” – Cus D’Amato
2. “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
   Courage to change the things I can,
   And wisdom to know the difference.” – The Serenity Prayer

The fourth lesson teaches us to be comfortable being uncomfortable. You need to challenge yourself daily. If you willingly challenge yourself, doing hard things on a regular basis, it will build up your fortitude when life doesn’t go your way.

Lastly, lesson five goes back to The Serenity Prayer. We can only control so much in life (what we think)…there is so much going on outside our sphere influence that we need to realize that we cannot change what anyone else does. We can try to, but ultimately they need to make that decision. The only thing we can ask for is that we try our best – that is what we control.

Listen to opposing ideas and develop your own ideas, methods, and thought-processes. If you’re conservative, listen to liberal ideas (or vice versa). Don’t just hear the “opposing side” talk; listen to the message they are trying to convey. Be open-minded and really try to understand where they are coming from. 

Why are they proposing that idea/solution? Find at least one positive in every idea that you hear. Then, ask yourself, is this the best way of achieving a solution to that problem?