“Question everything. Learn something. Answer nothing.” 

– Engineer’s Motto

Life is a never-ending journey of trial and error. From the moment you open your pudgy eyes as an infant, you make mistakes and sure as heck learn from them. You teeter along, you take that first step, and fall. And fall. And fall again.You get on that bike with no training wheels and you fail, miserably. 

But you know what separates the seven-year old you from the current you? You didn’t care. You didn’t care if you fell ten times, you would just try and try again until you got it right.

You didn’t have the cognitive abilities to realize it was a mistake, nor the social pressures about it. You just did what felt right to you, you adjusted your body a little to the left, added a little more weight to your feet, whatever worked. 

That same tenacious spirit lives inside you, you just gotta harness it deliberately now. 

Why are you taking this journey?

Is it to prove something to yourself, to others? Is it simply because you want to try?

It takes that same process of trial and error to achieve what you want, so you need a winning motivation to get you through it. 

If you are in the select few of us who stumble upon your advancement, that’s great! You don’t really need a reason, you just have it in you to go the distance which takes an unnatural amount of staying power. 

But for the rest of us, committing to a life change, all the frustrations, the sacrifice(s), the physical and mental strain, requires a specific, calculated motivation to push us everyday. 

Do some self-therapy. Think back to your feelings. 

Do you get a little fire in your belly just thinking about your dream career? 

What about the sweet lifestyle that goes with it? You know, waking up at 6am to meditate on your sunlit veranda, making yourself a cup of piping hot coffee, going about your day freely, by 9am spending some time in your office which so happens to be inside your house and freakin’ awesome, catching up on a good book in the cafe, going to the gym to and winding down the day with your friends in some amazing villa in a seaside village? Not a big deal, right? Some Youtubers make it look effortless, and that’s because if you apply these principles faithfully, your life will hopefully be just that. Effortless. Which, personal differences aside, is how everyone should experience life - not just go through the motions.  

(Disclaimer: Hopefully life will be easier, if not easy. There’s a fascinating 2010 Princeton study that shows how happiness and money are related, with a 10% positive correlation between annual income and personal satisfaction to a certain point, $72k annual. Check the annotations at the end).

HW: Tonight, do a little homework assignment. Reflect on your joie de vivre: the goals you have and why they’re so necessary and important. 

What’s the point? 

Take time to really hone in and extrapolate your feelings. 

Write this down, and we’ll talk more when you come back tomorrow. 

Next day:

So you've found your reason, the vision of life which gives you goosebumps and an extra spring in your step. 

Now, for the process to work, you need to remind yourself of this. Daily, preferably. 

Some people like visual boards. Write on your mirror. Tack sticky notes.

Awesome! You’ve increased your chances of success by about 42% (check out the conclusive study(2) of why it’s vital to physically write down your goals, in the end).