1. Choose Your Battle
Naval says: don’t have too many desires. What is a desire? A desire is a contract you sign to be unhappy until it is fulfilled.
It’s okay to have desires, but not too many. Choose the one you want most, and let the rest go.
But don’t have too many. Don’t pick them up unconsciously. Don’t pick them up randomly. Don’t have thousands of them. My coffee’s too cold, doesn’t taste quite right. I’m not sitting perfectly. Oh, I wish it was warmer. You know. My dog, you know, pooped in the lawn, I don’t like that. Whatever it is. Pick your one overwhelming desire. It’s okay to suffer over that one, but on all the others, do you want to let them go so you can be calm and peaceful and relaxed? And then you’ll perform a better job.
From now on, my primary battlefield will shift away from my current job to two new arenas: strengthening my body and mind, and creating valuable products.
2. Failure and Loss of Control
At 39, my physical and mental condition has been in bad shape: anxiety has wrapped around me, and my gut, scalp, skin, glute muscles, and eyes have all been struggling.
After I sent Gemini a summary of my past two years and asked for analysis, it gave me this conclusion:
Your only enemy is the brain that has grown used to being ‘excellent,’ used to a ‘fast pace,’ and used to ‘climbing upward.’
In other words, most of my physical problems come from the performance trap created by an overly smooth first half of life, and the chronic anxiety that came with it.
So, the second half of my life starts today: I will learn to get used to failure, and get used to loss of control.
I often talk about failure, and I know that only people who have failed are truly doing original, risky work. But these years of experience have made me deeply afraid of failure, unable to tolerate it. At work and in life, I could barely accept even the smallest “unreasonable” failure.
It’s time to change. I will get used to failure and accept it from the bottom of my heart — both in my old battlefield and the new one. Otherwise, how could I ever take risks? And without risk, how could there be innovation?
I also need to accept loss of control. Trying to control everything, in both work and life, is impossible — and it inevitably leads to anxiety.
3. Body and Emotions
In the second half of life, starting this year, my body and emotions are my main battlefield.
No matter whether I achieve something, whether I succeed or fail, I cannot allow my body and emotions to stay trapped in a vicious cycle any longer. This is a hard battle, but I will not give up.
In fact, only a healthy body, joyful emotions, and a calm mind can produce truly valuable work. That is the greatest success, bar none. If I want success, this is success.
4. Do the Work
The biggest truth I learned in the past year is this: for anything in life, only through doing can you gain real knowledge. Any knowledge gained by other means is fake.
And constantly doing things, across different directions, is also a powerful remedy for anxiety. Thinking all day long brings nothing but endless anxiety and trouble.
naval:
Life is lived in the arena. You only learn by doing. And if you’re not doing, then all the learning you’re picking up is too general and too abstract. Then it truly is Hallmark aphorisms. You don’t know what applies where and when. It’s not 10,000 hours, it’s 10,000 iterations.