Principle 1: Don’t fool yourself.
Do you remember the reading list you had in high school for English Literature? A list of books deep down you never really gave a chance because:
You had to read them, against your will;
You had to write an essay that was 80% similar to SparkNotes;
It was marked, you would always believe, rather harshly;
It would count towards your grade; and
You would never read that book EVER again.
Yep, those types of books?
Well believe it or not, one of those books primed me for a life lesson. In this case, it was not a book, but a play called A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams. It paints the vivid downfall of “Southern Belle” Blanche Dubois, who loses complete touch with reality. She believes she is young (she is 60), that she is rich (she is broke) and that she is ultimately desirable by men (she simultaneously is and isn’t). Her life is an illusion that she believes is her reality. But it’s a prison. One that she can’t see out of, but everyone looking in can. This is a cautionary tale.
We all create stories. Stories of the past, present and the future. Stories that help us navigate the world, its hard truths and realities that - whether we like it or not - have no care for our feelings, wants or needs.
“Humans think in stories and we try to make sense of the world by telling those stories.”
But they are still just that - stories. For, if you create a fantasy land and that becomes your reality, everything you think, feel and do takes place in reference to that fake reality. The worst part? Your progress bar is empty. Unfortunately, it has taken place in that illusory world, not the real world. It only counts in your head. I learned this the hard way. Lessons, commence.
Lesson 1
After a conflict with someone - normally a person close to me - I would make up a story in my head that I “won”. What exactly I won I still don’t know, but the story always amplified when I left the conversation not saying something I really wanted to. Almost like I was forced to holster a gun, without having shot it. Upon reflection, whatever I wanted to say was designed to hurt. The words didn’t add value to myself nor the other person. They were an ill-conceived weapon.
These stories were misguided attempts at dealing with emotions of resentment and shame. I thought I had lost. Little did I realise most of living a good life is building and maintaining deep relationships. And those relationships are best developed as non-zero sum games (win-win) as opposed to zero sum games (win-loss).
Lesson 2
I used to get 5 hours of sleep a night. I wore it like a badge of honour. I would - I kid you not - gloat to anyone with a pulse that I didn’t need sleep. I was rare and built differently. This narrative was born from my desire to be revered by other people. To impress them and show that I had superhuman-like qualities. It was only when I saw two pictures of myself side by side - one with adequate sleep and one without - that I could see the reality. *Spoiler alert* It wasn’t pretty.
Lesson 3
During the founding years of my previous startup I would say I worked “at least 100 hours a week”. Only when I started to track my time did I realise that I was doing at most 70 (still not the healthiest trend, but 30% less than I said). The story I fooled myself with was born from a combination of feeling lonely, undervalued and underappreciated.
Peeling back the emotional layers I discovered a crippling fear that my best might not be good enough. That failure was an actual possibility, and I would be the main character in that very failure. So, I felt the need to make my best seem otherworldly. That way if it did fail, it wasn’t because of me. In my head, I would be excused of blame and the reasons for failure had nothing to do with me, but external factors outside of my control.
Even if it hurts, even if it doesn’t favour you, even if it’s so painful to stare at, you must no we must view reality as it is, not as we wish or want it to be. Only then, through this…let’s call it courageous acceptance, shall we have the opportunity to accept who we were, be present in who we are, and be optimistic in who we want to become.
“You must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.”
Here are some of the deliberate practices I do to increase the chances that I don’t fool myself, as Richard Feynman surmises.
Deliberate Practice 1
I track my life metrics in a spreadsheet. Yes I’m a weirdo, loud and proud. These are objective markers that are important to me like:
Time spent teaching;
Time spent on my phone;
Number of pages read;
Distance ran;
Number of times I slept after 12 am; and
Number of one-to-one conversations with my partner.
This list isn’t exhaustive. But I’d love you to pay particular attention to one fact - they are a mixture of lead (process) and lag (outcome) indicators. That way, when I feel an internal monologue creeping from my temporal lobe - a story born out of disappointment, frustration or comparison - I simply benchmark my internal narrative against the data. It’s hilarious how often there is a disconnect between what you feel is true, and what is actually true.
This practice realigns me, so I’m being truthfully true.
Deliberate Practice 2
Every 6 months, I send out an anonymous poll to my close circle of family and friends. I want to know what their experience is interacting with me:
What am I doing well, that I might not praise myself for?
What do they notice, that I am blind to?
What bad habits have I adopted, that they think and feel I should change?
They make suggestions about what gaps there are in my life, that if I closed, would get me closer to who I want to become. Let me level with you - I don’t go through individual comments and try to change everything. That’s a sure path to overwhelm and ice-cold resentment. I simply look for patterns, try to understand the root cause of them and if I believe it makes me better, then I’ll put together an action plan.
A final note - this was and continues to be superrrrr tough to implement. It’s never the best feeling to find out where you’re falling short in your life and your relationships. But on the other side of this discomfort is a better, more evolved version of you.
Deliberate Practice 3
My partner and I do a relationship meeting each month. We get a glass (or bottle) of wine, play some tunes and chat.
It has a simple format:
What events did we enjoy from the month?
What did we do well and want to keep doing?
What gaps opened up that we want to close? Why?
What actions can we take individually and collectively to close the gaps?
The aim is to align how we think and feel the relationship is going, with how it’s actually going. Where there is dissonance, we seek to align. And focusing on alignment is vital to us, so that we repel entropy and the trap of a relationship that is going “just fine”.
