You've known for a while now.

This week, I wrote about why we keep avoiding it, and what it costs us when we do.

Here is what has been on my mind this week:

1. Most valuable currency

2. Don’t listen to that voice

3. Motivated, or not

4. Be prepared to sacrifice

5. The conversation you keep replaying

6. You know what to do…

7. You know the answer

1. Most valuable currency

You need to trust yourself first.

Don’t expect others to trust you before you trust yourself.

Self-trust is earned by life experiences.

You are earning that trust by doing what you said you are going to do.

If you said to yourself you are going to do 100 push-ups a day and then you hit day 3 and you skip it, you can’t trust yourself.

If you said you are going to eat healthier and you hit the second week and you went full on pizza again, you can’t trust yourself.

It’s hard, and our mind is often telling us that it’s fine to not do it, it’s fine to skip it, it’s fine.

But it’s not.

You need to do the hard things you said you are going to do because if you can’t trust your own words why the hell would anyone else trust you.

When we are young, we don’t really pay that much attention to this because things tend to pass quite easily.

But what happens if you decide to start a business or a project?

What then?

You can’t build a business, your body, or your mind without trusting yourself and your words first.

Self-trust is the most valuable currency you can own because it’s very hard to earn and very easy to lose if you are not careful with how you make decisions and navigate life.

Is there something you said you are going to do but drifted off?

2. Don’t listen to that voice

There are days in our lives when we made plans but forgot to do some important things and we realize literally before going to bed that it needs to be done.

There are going to be questions on those days, questions and an inner voice telling you things like:

Do I really need to do it today?

What if I just skip today and catch up tomorrow?

It’s okay today, I will do it another time.

I’m tired, it’s late.

Don’t listen to that voice.

You know very well that if you push and finish today it will be easier tomorrow and there are going to be no regrets.

You do the opposite, it will probably haunt you somewhere in the back of your mind.

Because you knew that you could have done better and you had the opportunity to do so.

So do what’s necessary to achieve the things you set yourself up to do.

Is your mind trying to convince you “that it is okay” as well?

3. Motivated, or not

Are you motivated to go after your goals today?

Because motivation comes and goes.

It can come from inside or outside.

Sometimes it lasts for a long time, sometimes for one hour.

When a person puts the whole strategy on achieving something into the hands of motivation it is almost predetermined that it will not lead to any success.

Why?

Because without the discipline you are not going to do a shit.

Discipline doesn’t care if you are motivated or not. Discipline is about doing what is necessary to achieve the desired outcome, every day.

Not only on days or moments when you feel motivated or feel like doing it.

Discipline is not forgiving, does not promise you anything, it will test you, your hard work, and your power of mind without a clear promise at the end of the journey.

But if you sustain that discipline, if you endure the moments of sickness, tiredness, unmotivation, and unwillingness to do anything, you will be rewarded.

By all means, this is not about the hustle culture. It is not about burning yourself to the point from which there is no way back.

The perfect example is working out.

If you never went to the gym and suddenly today you want to lift 100kg on a deadlift you are going to hurt yourself big time because your body, and neither your mind, is prepared to endure that.

But if you go to the gym 4 or 5 times a week, start eating continuously better food, and work on yourself to build muscles and your mind.

Sooner or later you are going to hit that 100kg on a deadlift without any problem.

It might take a couple of tries and errors before actually landing it properly but you will hit that.

The same goes in life.

If you discipline yourself to work on something without excuses you’ll build yourself up to the point where the goal you were aiming for is much closer.

With some tries and errors you will eventually hit that goal you are aiming for.

The truth is that you can be motivated as much as you want but without the actual work and discipline you wouldn’t land far.

How do you approach your goals?

4. Be prepared to sacrifice

Doing hard things in life is necessary.

Most of what you want to achieve lies on the other side of hard things you are avoiding to do.

Maybe it’s the hard conversation, maybe it’s quitting your job, maybe it’s getting in shape, or maybe it’s reconnecting with your family.

I believe that we are often, especially in today’s world, drawn to the easy things, the shiny objects.

It’s easier than ever to see everyone succeeding on social media which causes us to think that if they have it we can too.

But what we often forget is that social media is only a showcase of someone’s life, not necessarily the complete truth.

We then get attached to the outcome of others.

We think that they just got where they are overnight so we can too.

We over-romanticize the journey and final destination while underestimating the effort it takes to get there.

That, my friend, is the recipe for burnout and disappointment in your life.

Sooner or later you would hit roadblocks you never thought about, things start getting hard, and you are suddenly doubting your choice because the outcome doesn’t seem to be that sweet anymore when the journey is so hard.

Choose your own journey based on yourself.

Be prepared to sacrifice in order to achieve something greater because nothing in life comes blindly after you all alone without any effort.

Yes, there are cases and occasions when some achievements happen easier than others but betting your life on getting lucky like your high school friend is a match you lost before it even started.

What is the hard thing you were avoiding lately?

5. The conversation you keep replaying

You know that thing you keep going back to in your head.

That conversation you haven’t had yet but you’ve already rehearsed a hundred times.

You play it out in your mind. You imagine what they will say. You imagine how it could go wrong. You imagine the silence after.

And then you don’t do it.

So it stays there. Sitting in your chest. Coming back every night right before you fall asleep.

You might be asking yourself, why is it so hard?

Why can’t I just say what I have on my mind and on my heart?

Am I going to hurt this person, or even worse, am I going to lose this person?

What if that really happens?

What will my life be like afterwards?

Where are my next steps going to go?

Am I just being too picky, or is this really bothering me?

How do I find out what is behind these thoughts?

Am I going to wish that I haven’t done it, or am I going to be happy that it is finally off my shoulders?

There are countless questions like these wandering through our minds daily, sometimes even hourly.

They can’t let us sleep or think about something else, yet we still don’t do anything about them.

We believe that if we endure long enough this is going to go away on its own.

That somehow we are going to get it off our minds, that we forget somehow, that we put it under the carpet and continue to live happily.

These thoughts and feelings you are holding inside of you and trying to avoid, they are going to keep creeping on you.

I get it, sometimes it is really hard to tell something very deep to someone you love.

You know inside of you that you are going to hurt someone you don’t want to hurt.

But at the same time you also know that keeping this to brew inside of you is hurting you in the end, and you don’t want to hurt yourself either.

You know how it feels, you remember that bitter feeling from last time, how hard it was, and you are trying to avoid this now at all costs.

But by avoiding this you are actually causing yourself even greater harm.

So do yourself a favor.

Give yourself a final deadline, take a deep breath, and go do it.

Life is not fair, nor always nice, but one thing is certain.

Hard times create easier times in the future.

These hard lessons need to be learned because without them, how do we know who we really are and what we really want?

6. You know what to do…

What is fear?

Fear can have many faces.

There are universal fears that are scary for almost all of us except some special or trained individuals.

Most of us fear death.

It is the unknown about which we have only questions. We ask ourselves what is after we die and no one really knows the answer.

There are religions which are talking about places like heaven or hell where we are supposed to end up once this life is over.

But there is no certainty that it is like that.

So we are left in this life to choose our beliefs.

Most of us follow some kind of religion because it provides hope and certainty to their people.

On the other hand, some of us don’t have a strict religion.

We believe in different things, like cosmos, energy, higher consciousness, and other things that make sense to people.

In the essence, we are all believing in something.

It doesn’t matter what, even if it’s not believing anything, that is belief in its core too.

What does it have to do with fear?

As for death, there are many other situations that scare us.

They are different from one person to another.

Some of us fear heights, some of us fear tight places, some of us fear the dark, and some of us fear being home alone.

There can be countless amounts of fears a person can have, some irrational, some rational.

But one thing which all of them have in common is the hope that the person has deep inside that it’s going to be okay.

It is also an understanding of reality.

We don’t live in fear every second of our lives because our lives became easy, predictable, and safe for most people around the world.

When we encounter fear in our daily life we hope that it’s going to be alright again.

We don’t hope for the fear or the situation causing it to stay there forever.

Hope is something that is telling us that doing more in our life is going to bring us something good.

We hope that we can be successful at our job, we hope that we meet our future spouse, we hope that we made good decisions, we hope.

But just hope is not enough, the same as motivation is not enough.

It takes the courage and discipline to keep going to achieve what we dreamed of and hope for.

Do yourself the favor and go outside your comfort zone.

We are all going to die one day so why not use the time in between to do epic shit.

You know what to do…

7. You know the answer

Don’t be afraid to look deep inside of you and learn more about yourself.

There are plenty of people in this world who go through life without properly knowing themselves.

I believe it’s one of the biggest misfortunes of life to not have a proper understanding of who we really are deep down.

It is often a painful path at first to understand all of this and be willing to go even deeper.

But the question I have for you is: what is more painful?

To go deep inside of you and face your traumas and fears but come out more at peace and with a clearer direction for your life.

Or go blindly through life ignoring ourselves from inside to end up on the death bed realizing we never knew and understood who we really are.

You already know what the answer to this question is and I’ll leave you to sit with it.

Leave a comment

I aim to deliver the most personal stories, insights, and lessons from real-world experiences I have lived through over the past decade. As I continue building my life and trying to be a better version of myself, I am documenting this journey and the lessons from my life for people who might need to hear them.

- Lukáš

This week, I wrote about the difference, and about what happens when you stop carrying things that were never yours to hold.

Here is what has been on my mind this week:

1. The choice is yours

2. Within your control

3. Winning, or losing, support your friends

4. Negative visualization

5. Excitement of a new project

6. Feeling proud

7. The Jersey lesson

1. The choice is yours

How do you distinguish between “pain” (inevitable) and “suffering” (optional)?

We are ultimately choosing our own suffering.

The fact that every person on this planet has experienced pain is obvious. The pain is inevitable.

We all have experienced all sorts of pain from childhood to adulthood.

Either physical or emotional pain, both of them are parts of life. They are not nice but they are not going to disappear.

But what about suffering? How do we distinguish between these two?

Let’s look at the breakup.

When you break up with your boyfriend or girlfriend you feel heartbroken.

If you really loved this person and cared for them you are going to feel strong emotional pain. Some people say they feel even physical pain after such an experience.

This is pain. It’s inevitable. We all feel some kind of it.

But what happens after the breakup?

We have two routes a person can take.

The first is the path of learning from this experience and taking the good with you forward.

Sooner or later you are going to understand that there is more than one relationship you are going to have in your life.

It’s painful, sometimes for weeks or months, but eventually you understand the lesson and you are more than happy to move on.

The second path is the path of suffering.

This is the unnatural part which is chosen by you to follow.

It is never-ending trying to get the person back.

Listening to sad songs to feel even more sad.

Harming yourself.

Feeding yourself the dreams that you two are going to be back together.

You are dragging yourself behind willingly without any reason.

If the person would like to be with you then you would either never break up in the first place or would come back immediately.

The lesson from this is usually even stronger because it’s much more heavy.

Eventually, and hopefully, you move on. You learn the lesson that self-imposed suffering is not leading anywhere, in this case.

I think there is a special place for pain and suffering in the mindset of people who use these two as fuel to achieve something extraordinary.

Especially those who use it to fuel physical performance.

It’s almost alien how a person can turn something so strong and painful into power.

But this path is not for everyone.

The choice is yours.

2. Within your control

What does it mean to focus only on what is “within your control” when everything feels chaotic?

Things in life tend to get chaotic from time to time.

Sometimes it’s just one week, other times it’s months.

When everything feels chaotic, it is hard to focus on things which are in our control because nothing feels like it would be in control or even close to it.

This period of life is often very overwhelming. You can feel like there is no way out.

I often describe this feeling like drowning.

During this time, it feels like even breathing takes more effort than ever before.

What do you do when something like this happens?

Try to slow down. Find time to step back and reflect on past days, weeks, or months.

What is the thing that has been stealing energy from you?

Sit down with your own thoughts, write a journal, or meditate. The only way out is in.

Things might feel like they are only external and that the world is suddenly against you, but this is rarely the root of the problem.

Yes, sometimes life is not fair, and it happens that many external things occur at once. But it is the self-representation of these things which gives them the power.

If you carefully examine what is happening inside of you, you might discover the underlying cause of your chaotic life period.

Maybe it is the relationship which is making everything look harder.

Maybe your boss is sitting on you for no reason and it’s subconsciously making your life miserable.

Or maybe it’s your habits which you said to yourself 6 months ago you were going to change, and nothing happened, so it feels like you are going against yourself every day and can’t escape.

Once you take these steps to see what’s happening inside of you, you will find what is within your control.

This realization and finding of the root cause will allow you to decrease the amount of chaos that is happening in your life right now, at least to the most controllable level.

Outside things are always going to be there. It might just be a chaotic year in your job or family because of a lot of changes.

You can keep at least a way more down-to-earth perspective once you discover the inner catalyst or problem which is multiplying everything from the outside so much.

How do you feel lately? Are things within your control, or are they chaotic?

3. Winning, or losing, support your friends

How do you support a friend who is winning when you feel like you are losing?

I believe that it is important to support friends under any circumstances.

It doesn’t matter if I’m losing right now, this person is still my friend and deserves the support.

Would it mean that just because my friend is winning and I’m losing right now, it is my friend’s fault? I don’t think so.

During our life all of us go through periods of ups and downs.

It just doesn’t make sense to support others only when I’m winning.

I want my friends to succeed all the time, and I believe that they want the same for me.

There are many ways to support your friend.

Small talk, pep talk, deep talk, short voice message, long text, FaceTime call, or even a greeting card with your words.

These are all the spoken and written ways to support a friend, and all of them count.

You can support a friend by showing up for them at their football match, or being there at their public presentation, or by standing in the crowd and shouting for them when they pass you while they run their first marathon.

There are countless ways to support a friend.

Do what you can at the moment. There is no right or wrong.

Friendships are not about a scoreboard of who supported the other more or less.

Friendships are about being true to yourself and showing up in your best possible way for your friends.

Friendships are for the long run, so choose your company wisely.

What is your way to support your friends?

4. Negative visualization

What is the value of “negative visualization” in a world that is obsessed with toxic positivity?

Negative visualization sounds to many people like something really negative.

The phrase itself carries this feeling like it would be something bad.

When we look aside from how it sounds, we come to the fact that it’s a beneficial and realistic practice to do.

It’s not about not trusting yourself, or diminishing your dreams even before you started working on them.

No. It is understanding of how life works sometimes.

We can make all the plans but the next day everything can be turned around because of something unexpected which we didn’t count on before.

We aim to achieve big things, and we should, because human potential and capabilities are tremendously huge.

But at the same time, using negative visualization helps us be prepared for the worst.

It’s like calculated risk. I’m not going to jump off the cliff to the sea without checking the landing area, rocks, and depth of the water, or without other people’s tips on whether I’m going to kill myself with this jump.

In business you do business plans, competition analyses, and the rest.

You don’t go into a business which might be oversaturated in your region unless you have some competitive advantage.

It’s thinking about the worst which allows us to see the best possible outcome too.

There is no only black or only white.

There is black and white and other hundreds of colours, and life has them all prepared for you.

Have you ever tried to use negative visualization to prepare yourself for something good?

5. Excitement of a new project

How do you keep going when the initial excitement of a new project fades away?

I will remind myself why I started with it in the first place.

For me it’s especially hard to resist new “shiny objects.” They call it the shiny object syndrome.

Obviously I just gave myself this diagnosis on my own, but in recent years I noticed that I get extremely excited about new projects and opportunities.

What I want to do at that moment is to put everything else on the side and pour my entire being into this new thing.

I’m talking sitting on it for entire days, going to bed late because it’s almost impossible to stop myself from not doing it or working on it.

I’m basically obsessed the moment something excites me.

On one hand it is advantageous in many ways because it gives you this unlimited energy to pour there.

On the other hand it’s a devil’s loop.

It happened so many times that I didn’t finish what I started.

Sometimes because of work and other responsibilities.

Other times I actually had no time for it and didn’t even start at the end. Just invested money, prepared everything, but didn’t manage to start.

I’m trying to get much better at this, making more conscious decisions, and thinking more strategically before jumping into new projects. But at the same time I’m definitely still not the best.

That brings me to the question.

How do you keep going when the initial excitement of a new project fades away?

There are two options in my opinion.

First, you don’t. You pass the project to someone else, or you abandon it completely and move on to do something else.

This path is not always bad because there are most certainly projects which are not serving us and not bringing us anywhere.

But be careful to not just jump from one to another ending up not finishing anything.

Second, you remind yourself why you started in the first place.

Like me with this project of writing 100 words for 1000 days, hoping to build the writing habit that will lead to me being the author of a book one day.

There are going to be days when you want to quit, when you feel lazy, when everything else seems to be more important, when you travel, when you are tired, when you are sick.

Before I started this project I tried to remind myself of this fact many times.

I was trying to prepare myself that not every day is going to be filled with endless motivation of sitting behind a computer and pouring my heart into this keyboard.

But I know why I’m doing this and that single thought is the one which keeps me going.

Remind yourself why you started.

What was the fire inside of you that felt so exciting that you couldn’t stop thinking about this project and then finally started? What is the achievement at the end of this quest?

This is your gasoline which you pour into your tank when you think you are running on empty.

Keep going. You got this.

How do you feel with those moments when the excitement fades away?

6. Feeling proud

What was the time you felt proud of yourself for a reason no one else saw?

Let me answer first here.

I felt proud of myself many times.

It is definitely an important skill and technique to practice.

Times when I felt proud of myself for reasons no one else saw are the minor ones.

After a tough day, being proud of myself that I managed to get through.

After a hard workout when I wasn’t sure if I would make it, and I did it.

After tough conversations which I was nervous about but managed to do it.

I believe that there are more moments to be proud of ourselves than we think.

It’s not only about the big milestones. It is about the small every day wins which keep us going forward.

I’m especially guilty of being one of those overachievers who, when achieving something, basically just move on to another thing without proper acknowledgement.

It’s like saying: Well cool, I achieved it, what was the next thing on the list?

I’m trying to get better at noticing the smaller things more often and giving myself credit for achieving something.

Because as I said, it’s not always about the big milestones. It’s about the small every day wins that keep us going.

And don’t forget to be proud of yourself during the journey, not only at the end of it.

I would love to hear about a recent moment when you felt really proud of yourself.

7. The Jersey lesson

What is one failure you experienced that actually set you up for later success?

Let me tell you one vulnerable story of mine.

Early in my 20s, right after graduating high school, I had an experience that influenced me greatly.

Back then, my dream was to become the best bartender in the world.

Not a small dream for a 20-year-old guy that just finished high school.

Me and my friend with the same dream found a job in the UK.

All we could think of was London and the epic cocktail culture there. It was a dream to land there one day and make my way to the top.

But back then we were not staying in London. We were heading south, to the small island called Jersey.

They have famous cows there, but that’s pretty much it.

We found a job in a bar where we wanted to get better at speaking English and kickstart our bartender careers.

I had this huge vision for me, this master plan of how my life is going to go in the next 5 years. Step by step, everything was set.

Not that fast forward, it took less than a week to fly back home from there.

The job was nothing like promised over the interview. The apartment was kind of shit. And the owner tried to steal our passports and offer us work at his painting company to earn some money.

In one word, a terrible experience back then for young men trying to enter the world of adults.

Looking back on this experience, it ended up being a really great one because I learned a lot from it and very early on.

My dreams were not completely crushed, but reality hit hard.

My master plan had suddenly dissolved in the clouds of Jersey as the plane took off.

I found myself back at my parents’ house, questioning my life and what I’m supposed to do right now.

This experience taught me that life will almost never go as we planned.

There are always going to be some bumps on the road, missed turns, blind streets, and other things making the ride through life not as smooth as you thought.

But that’s the beauty of the journey. If it wouldn’t be like this, you wouldn’t have stories to tell, you wouldn’t have experiences to learn from.

This experience was one of those that set me up for later success.

Not only in bartending but in life in general.

I didn’t become the best bartender in the world, nor the best bartender in my country, but I managed to compete against some of the best ones and ended up being in the top 5 during one of the World Class competitions in Slovakia.

It was and still is a big achievement for that part of me and my younger self which wanted to be the best at that craft.

To learn such a valuable lesson early on was life-changing for the rest of my 20s.

I learned how the real world out there really is sometimes. It is cruel and unforgiving, but at the same time it is beautiful and full of things and places to experience, and lessons to be learned so you can become the better version of yourself.

What is your failure that set you up for later success?

Leave a comment

I aim to deliver the most personal stories, insights, and lessons from real-world experiences I have lived through over the past decade. As I continue building my life and trying to be a better version of myself, I am documenting this journey and the lessons from my life for people who might need to hear them.

- Lukáš

They are afraid of what needs to be said inside them.

This week, I wrote about the conversations we keep avoiding, with others and with ourselves.

Here is what has been on my mind this week:

1. The enemy of being respected.

2. How do you handle criticism?

3. Old standards that are no longer enough.

4. Boundaries.

5. The 5%.

6. If your 20s had a question.

7. What is the best way to apologize?

1. The enemy of being respected.

Why is being “agreeable” often the enemy of being “respected”?

You can’t be agreeable all the time. It is unrealistic to expect you to agree with everything, all the time.

You can ask yourself whether you would really be okay agreeing with everything. Probably not. And it is not going to appear only on special occasions; it is probably a daily scenario in which you don’t agree with everything that is happening around you.

Now imagine how it would feel if someone you know, let’s say a friend, agrees with everything you say.

At the beginning, it might be cool because you feel connected to this person and you understand each other very well.

But if it’s like that all the time, you are going to be losing respect for this friend or partner, because this person has no voice, no opinion, no self-worth, and no boundaries.

With that said, if you want to be respected, you need to have your own opinion, your own stand on social topics, your take on issues, your boundaries, and you need to know your own worth in this world.

If you haven’t grown up with this mindset being taught to you by your parents, as I did, you will need to find your own way to develop these skills.

It is sometimes uncomfortable and difficult, but it is necessary for building your own integrity and confidence in this world.

Remember this: you are not alone.

If you feel stuck or need help, just reach out to someone you trust. They will have your back in this.

You got this.

2. How do you handle criticism?

How do you handle criticism from someone who has never built anything themselves?

It always depends on what kind of criticism you receive. Just because someone hasn’t built anything themselves doesn’t mean that their criticism must be bad.

We can always learn from failure and bad experiences.

This person may be pointing out good areas for improvement in what we are building. It might be a matter of taste where this person has developed a particularly high-end taste, and therefore, the criticism is more like indirect advice.

But that was a good scenario.

We obviously have many people around us who don’t want any good for us. Their criticism is pure envy, hate, and insecurity about themselves.

So what do we do with this type of criticism?

We definitely do not take it personally.

Over the last couple of years, I've learned that there will always be people who dislike you, your work, or both. They are going to have lots of opinions on everything, and many of them won't always be positive.

What helped me handle this with peace of mind was shifting my mindset to see it as just their opinion.

It is just their bad day, bad mood, personal insecurity, fear, whatever. It has nothing to do with you, your work, or your worth as a human.

Ask yourself why you should even listen to this person.

What do they really know about the life vision you created for yourself? Nothing.

Don’t let strangers, colleagues, friends, or even family put you down. You know why you are doing what you are doing. Keep working towards those goals and dreams you have set for yourself.

If you feel lost, then go find your WHY first, and listen to yourself.

Don’t go and fulfill others' dreams. Spend time with your inner self to find where your next steps should lead and go after them.

No criticism should stop you from doing that, so trust the process and be better for yourself.

How do you handle criticism yourself?

3. Old standards that are no longer enough.

What is one standard you held for yourself at 21 that is no longer enough for the person you are becoming today?

Let me go first here.

One of the standards I thought would take me far was the idea that if everyone liked me, it would take me places.

It is not only not enough, but it is also an absolutely wrong standard to even have in the first place.

There is no reality in which everyone around us will like us.

Thinking this is setting yourself up against an unbeatable monster. You will never win this fight. I would recommend, based on my own experience, that it is not worth starting the fight in the first place.

Another standard I held when I was 21 was accepting drinking as part of society and culture.

I thought drinking just belongs to our culture, that it is perfectly acceptable when people drink on weekdays, on Sundays, during the day, whenever there is an opportunity.

I was working behind the bar back then.

I had access to all sorts of alcohol you can imagine, and I could try any of it. We were drinking on every shift. When I wasn't working, I would drink again because everything was more fun and less boring after a beer and a shot of bourbon.

This changed drastically over time.

I don’t judge others when they drink. You can do with your life whatever you want to do, but I decided to stop drinking completely.

It was, in fact, my first 1000-day challenge. And it is still ongoing while I write this.

Looking back on my 20s, it was one of, if not the single best decision I could have made in my life.

If I were still holding to these standards today, I probably wouldn’t be writing this now.

I hope that you were able to identify and change your old standards too, and move closer towards the life you want without the useless baggage.

I would love to hear what standards you changed in the last couple of years and how they transformed your journey.

4. Boundaries

How do you set a boundary with a person you love without closing your heart to them?

There is only one proper way to set your boundary with a person you love without closing your heart to them.

Have an open conversation about everything.

There is no indirect approach that would end up being more effective than actually speaking to this person directly and openly about everything. What is happening to you, what you feel, what behaviour of this person is crossing the line and so on.

Trying to do it without conversation is the opposite of productive.

We often think that if we keep doing this, or we keep showing that, the other person will understand it and change something on their own.

It will bring you only more frustration and stress.

It is the recipe for disaster, it’s like putting something in a pressure cooker and expecting it not to boil.

Do yourself, and the other person, a favor. Talk to each other about everything that is going on. Without expectations, just go into the conversation with a clean shield and open arms.

Remember, you are not going to fight this person, you just want to talk about what is going on inside of you. And if you meet with misunderstanding and misinterpretation from the other side, despite the fact that you did the best you could, it is not your fault.

They are just not ready for real conversations.

Did you need to set any boundaries lately with your partner? If yes, let me know how it went.

5. The 5%.

What is a current “stressor” in your life?

If you strip away everything you cannot control, what is the 5% that remains entirely in your power?

Let me be honest with you here and share part of my current story.

The current stressors in my life are mainly money and a career grey zone.

All of this is within my control. That is something that you should understand as well. If you take actual ownership of your life, the perspective changes drastically.

I can control what I do to earn more money, or what career path I go further with.

It is not about stripping away stuff, it is about deciding what to do next with each of the stressors.

I believe that we are often creating stressors in our life by ourselves.

There are plenty of things we can be stressed about in today’s world, and it takes a huge amount of energy and mindfulness to stay distanced from it.

The social pressure of achieving success was never higher than it is today. Social media is feeding us with the allure of overnight success and the idea that everyone can be successful at anything at any point.

Daily, we are hit in our feed by success stories of people from all around the world.

This startup was acquired for millions, this single entrepreneur sold his business for millions, this woman selling her online courses is making millions.

It’s millions everywhere.

When this type of content is flowing in heaps on us every day, how can we not feel behind in our 20s?

That is a question each of us should ask ourselves.

I believe that the only way to stay sane is to actively plan time without phones and social media. I feel it in myself that I need more time off screens, more time to be bored again, and to become more creative and more mindful about my life.

I believe that the 5% that remains in my power to reduce the stressors of daily life is a more simple, minimalistic, and analog style of life.

This approach is much more sustainable long-term for one’s happiness than being drawn into the world of social media and high dopamine driven short form content.

It is hard, and it is going to be only harder going forward.

I’m not against technology or innovations, they are part of our life and they will be. I believe that it is important to stay up to date with today’s AI and everything else which is appearing at the speed of light these days.

We are living in a beautiful age of endless opportunities.

There was never a better time to be alive in human history than it is now. We have advanced healthcare systems that are increasing the lifespan of people and we went from horses to autonomous electric cars in a little over 100 years.

It’s all fascinating and I’m a really big fan of progress in society on all levels, not only technological.

But at the same time we face an attention span and dopamine crisis that is sucking energy out of us daily and creating artificial stress on our bodies and brains.

I would close this by saying be more mindful of how you spend your time.

Is there any stressor in your life right now that feels out of control?

6. If your 20s had a question.

If your 20s had a question, what was it?

If I had a question in my 20s, it wouldn’t be one but two questions.

These two questions were fundamental for me during the past years. I have been asking them very often, through a lot of the decisions I was making. Sometimes consciously, sometimes not.

One would say that it might sound like an existential crisis. Previously, I would agree.

Today, I believe that it is not a crisis, but a conscious way to navigate life.

I used to believe many things when I was younger.

I used to believe, especially, that life is more or less linear.

You choose your school, you graduate, you find a job, you find a partner, you find a house, you start a family, maybe you travel somewhere sometimes but you don’t leave your stable place and routine.

And that’s it. You have basically completed the checklist for life.

Now, you just keep going to work, take care of your family, and wait until retirement, just to find out that the pension for which you were working your whole life sucks and is often not enough to even cover basic needs.

What do you do next?

You complain about the system, the government, you start questioning everything you did in life and end up kind of confused about what to do with the rest of your days.

This seemed to be life, the life that everyone was kind of going for.

It looks like stability, and it is a very much accepted way to live your life in society, you feel like you are part of it.

I’m not saying there is something wrong with this, if it is what you want. But I don’t believe this anymore.

I believe that I can create the life that I really want. I can build a career or business that will bring me the freedom I seek, not constraints in life. I want to live up to my highest potential.

I understand today that there is no limit in this world. We can do anything we want, with important caveats, but not everything.

Life is about the choices we make today that lead our life to better, or worse, in the future.

So if I would have a new question for the last 1000 days of my 20s, it would be: How can I stay true to myself, not burn out, and build a life that is going to last for decades and bring me everything I want?

I’m trying really hard to get out of perfectionism and not get distracted by shiny objects, because these two are my biggest enemies, causing me to get stuck on things where there is no real return on investment.

It is a process of accepting, and healthy self-development.

It is about doing more of what matters, not just more for the sake of doing more and thinking that will bring more results.

What is your question?

7. What is the best way to apologize?

What is the best way to apologize when you have actually messed up?

I think that for young people it can be hard sometimes to accept their own failure, or mistakes. It takes courage to face the fact that we have messed something up.

We tend to think that we are always doing the right things. It might even feel like that, but sometimes only to us alone.

When you have messed up, you should accept that, and you should apologize for it. It’s not a weakness, it is the opposite. It’s a sign of growing maturity in you. It is the responsibility of an adult to own our mistakes.

Is there a best way to apologize to someone?

Probably not. There are thousands of different situations and billions of different people, and each one of them can react differently to each situation. So, read the room a bit.

Your apology in the heat will not land well. Let some time pass so the other person can cool down a bit as well. Then approach it with a sincere touch. Don’t fake it, don’t try to make yourself the victim, don’t blame everything else, say the truth.

Accept your mistake first, and then apologize for it.

There is one important thing to keep in mind here. Don’t expect the other person to accept your apology straight away.

You might have hurt someone very deeply and this person might never forgive you for that. All of us are a bit different, with different values.

For some, the apology is all they want to move on and be friends with you again. For others, even revenge might not be enough to cure their bitter taste towards you.

Don’t focus on the response from the other person. Focus on your part, apologizing for your mistakes, so you can move on in your life first.

You are also not responsible for other people’s feelings. You can do your best, but the way a person is going to react and feel is out of your control.

Don’t try to force anyone into any feeling because that’s not your job to do, and frankly, it’s also not really possible.

How does it make you feel when you need to apologize to someone?

Leave a comment

I aim to deliver the most personal stories, insights, and lessons from real-world experiences I have lived through over the past decade. As I continue building my life and trying to be a better version of myself, I am documenting this journey and the lessons from my life for people who might need to hear them.

- Lukáš

What success looks like. What confidence really is. What passion is supposed to feel like. Who deserves a place in your life.

This week, I am questioning all of it.

What has been on my mind this week:

1. Confidence vs. Ego

2. What is left of you that is valuable?

3. What is the lie about “passion”?

4. The gap between your taste and your current skill

5. What is the role of boredom?

6. Quitting

7. What is the most underrated trait to look for in a friend?

1. Confidence vs. Ego

How can a young person spot the difference in themselves?

There is a thin line between confidence and ego.

Sometimes it is hard to distinguish which is which.

From my perspective, confidence is like a feedback loop. After we have done something enough times and gathered some data from it, we become confident in that particular thing because we proved to ourselves that we are capable of doing it over and over. We can also have confidence in ourselves without that feedback loop, but this is the point where things might get blurry and hard to differentiate between confidence and ego sometimes.

A person can believe in themselves, and therefore be confident even before starting the task. In this case it is more like hope in one’s own capabilities, either gained from a previous experience, or just naturally believing that if the last task was managed, why would this one be any different.

It is often necessary to have confidence, or hope, before starting something, because otherwise we wouldn’t try anything new.

If I had to define confidence, I would define it as self-belief and hope for things to go the right way and in our favor. This creates positive thoughts which help overcome the challenge, support us during hard times, and push us through to make it to the end.

Ego, on the other hand, is often labeled as something negative. Especially when thinking about egotistical people who can’t behave in society, are rude, disrespectful, and the worst combination of all is when these people happen to be rich and famous as well.

I’m not surprised that we give ego such a negative label. But ego in its nature is neither good nor bad, and we all have it.

Everyone, to some extent, is comparing themselves to someone else, bragging about something, proclaiming things, and thinking they are better than others. Especially in Western society, it is a big part of culture to do so.

So what is the difference between confidence and ego?

I would describe it this way.

Confidence is built and gained over time from our own experience. Ego is empty, self-promoting, and often misleading behavior that is not always backed by real results or experiences from one’s own life.

2. What is left of you that is valuable?

If you stripped away your job title and your hobbies, what is left of you that is valuable?

Job title, hobbies, friend groups, or family members don’t define whether I’m valuable. Every person on this planet has value from the moment they are born. Philosophers and scientists say that the chance of even being born as a human is extraordinary, roughly 1 in 4 trillion. The very fact that we are all here today is a miracle. Yet, we often tie our value to something external that we don’t control.

Take the job title. We identify with our job titles so deeply that when we lose our jobs, some of us become paralyzed, depressed, or even lose touch with ourselves.

The same counts for hobbies. We might get injured and lose the ability to engage in our favorite activities. We feel we have lost our value because we can no longer do what always defined us.

I want you to remember this. You are valuable by nature. You are enough as you are, without any change to the inside or the outside.

We often get dragged down by the opinions of others, by someone else having a bad day and telling us something that hurts, or putting expectations on us which are not ours but theirs.

We are meant to learn, grow, build, and aim for higher things, but that doesn’t mean your value is out there to be achieved.

You are valuable every minute of your life.

So don’t forget that. Be better for yourself and know your worth.

3. What is the lie about “passion”?

What is the lie about “passion” that young professionals need to stop believing?

Passion doesn’t come first.

We were told that we should follow our passion and find work that resonates with that. But how can we know that something is our passion without spending enough time doing it, examining it, trying different angles of it, and last but not least, asking ourselves if this is something that has passion potential?

I believed this myth for a very long time myself. I wanted to follow my passion and do work that was seamlessly intertwined with it. Well, I found out that the work I thought was going to be my passion wasn’t it. It didn’t happen just once but multiple times, and the lesson was kind of the same.

What I learned from my past experiences is that we need to go and try things to see if we like them so much that we can see ourselves there long-term, if it feels like a game instead of work, if we are looking forward to going there every day or only on Fridays because of the Swedish tables for lunch.

It is necessary for young professionals, including myself, to learn from this and stop believing the myth that passion is going to appear just like that in our heads with the first choice of work.

The same principle goes for hobbies as well. How can you know if you love boxing if you have never trained? How can you know if you love mountain biking if you have never gone on a ride and don’t even own such a bike?

You said your passion is art. What does it mean? Do you go to galleries every week, do you study art on your own, do you paint at home every spare moment you can find, or does it just sound cool and sophisticated to look at old paintings while you have no idea what you are supposed to do there with your time and your own thoughts?

On the other hand, to be transparent, passion doesn’t have a universal formula or explanation.

My passion for basketball can be that I just love to shoot a ball in the backyard. Your passion for basketball can be that you watch every match of the NBA season, know the performance of all the players of your favorite team, and have an NBA jersey framed on the wall of your living room.

We can both say we are passionate about basketball, but our definition of passion is fundamentally different.

Or is it passion at all, in the end?

4. The gap between your taste and your current skill

How should a young person handle the gap between their taste (what they like) and their current skill (what they can create)?

This is a question I would like to find an answer to myself. I feel that my taste is up to date, that I have a feel for design, but my skills are not yet good enough for me to create such things myself.

Let’s deconstruct this together.

Despite the fact that I don’t know the answer, my hypothesis is simple and rooted in logic.

Keep working on those skills and you will bridge the gap. Having taste is one thing, but having actual skills that take whatever is in the mind and bring it to life is another. No one magically went from being a beginner to being a pro in one evening session of watching YouTube tutorials.

To master anything, it takes a heap of time.

You need to be willing to invest that time to develop those skills so you can bridge the gap between taste and actual delivery. Or, if you have money and that particular skill is something you don’t need personally in the long-term, you can always just pay someone skilled in that industry to bring your ideas to life.

But speaking of actual skill you want to have in the future, I believe that the only way to master it is to spend time learning, trying, failing, and going beyond that.

Find a mentor, ask your favorite creator, test things yourself.

All of this, the whole journey from where you are now to where you want to be, is just patience, time, and actual work invested in what you want.

Where is your current gap?

5. What is the role of boredom?

What is the role of boredom in a high-performance life, and why should we stop running from it?

Boredom is our gateway drug that we forgot we have access to.

Stoics in Greece, Romans, and many others from a couple of thousand years ago saw boredom as something beneficial for humans. The fact is that they didn’t even know that what they were experiencing was boredom. They were deep thinkers, and boredom was a time when they would think about life, think about the next steps, think about philosophy, think about strategy, think about creative acts.

Some of the most unique human creations were born from boredom.

In today’s world, it is increasingly hard to be bored because of all the media and devices surrounding us constantly at every moment of our daily lives. Today’s role of boredom is like a gateway drug, with the small note that it should be used more often and by everyone.

Boredom brings clarity to our minds without outside stimulation. Boredom gives us time to look inside ourselves for answers to our questions.

In a high-performance life, it is the key to staying at the same level and moving to the next one. We should stop running from it because it is the only way to stay connected to ourselves. Not only when we are making big decisions, but often enough for our own sanity of mind.

Boredom also doesn’t need to be boring.

Use the time to go for a walk in nature, without music, without your phone. Just you, your own thoughts, and the nature around you. It is increasingly important to find moments like these in our everyday lives, because otherwise we will be slowly but certainly eaten alive by the amount of media coming our way if we don’t learn how to regulate it and how to regulate ourselves.

So, go and be bored.

6. Quitting

When is “quitting” a sign of intelligence rather than a sign of weakness?

Quitting is a sign of intelligence when you leave behind something that isn’t serving you anymore in any way. A job that only stresses you, doesn’t pay you enough for your value, and whose colleagues suck, is a job that is asking to be quit.

People often fear quitting. They feel insecure about their life and next steps. Despite the fact that their job is bad and they hate it, they stay there and convince themselves that it is not so bad, just so they don’t have to quit. Rather, they stay and keep suffering and wasting time on something absolutely not worth their time and effort.

Quitting not only a job, but also relationships, deals, collaborations, even family, is completely fine when we understand the circumstances and nature of these situations and relationships.

Every one of us can be happy and deserves to be happy, but you are the one behind the steering wheel, not anyone else.

On the other hand, there are many weak people who quit way too fast and for the wrong reasons. If you haven’t invested any effort to solve things first and you’re heading straight to quitting, then it is weakness driving that decision, not intelligence.

If you give up too quickly and without reason on people just because of small things and without a proper try first, that is weakness too.

Don’t mix quitting with weakness. It can be the best thing you can do for your life. In the right situation and at the right time, it is intelligent to do so and you should go after it.

7. What is the most underrated trait to look for in a friend?

What is the most underrated trait to look for in a friend or business partner?

We all know the story.

When we are growing up and during our school years, most of us have a lot of friends. There is almost always someone to go out with, go for a coffee, or just hang out and play video games or something. We don’t really look intellectually at this friend and examine them in a way that considers all of their potential flaws, bad habits, and in the worst case, bad influence on us.

We have something in common. We can hang out with them, so we just do it. We are also at an early age where we haven’t yet experienced much of the bad side of the world.

Everything changes once we finish school and leave home to go live the adult life we had been waiting for so long.

As we get our first jobs, meet new colleagues who aren’t all our age, and have neighbours, things start to feel different. People hurt us, they are mean to us, they betray us. Suddenly, we feel we can’t trust anyone just like that anymore. Life connections become transactional and strategic. We choose more carefully with whom we spend our time, the topics we discuss, and how deep we let others see into us during these conversations.

We are connecting, in a certain way, to our hunter-gatherer instincts. We are looking for the right people to build our tribe with.

The trait to look for in a friend is, first and foremost, loyalty and truth-telling.

We want to spend time and build relationships with someone who is willing to invest their time into us the same way as we are willing to invest our time into them. We don’t want to be building tribes or friendships with someone who is always late, or always has excuses for why they can’t show up, or with someone who is using us only for their own gain, or someone who is always lying to us about all sorts of things, or someone who is always talking about others behind their back.

Long-lasting friendships are built on the ability to open up to each other about our deepest thoughts, fears, and joys.

It is about traits that allow us to build stronger bonds with others, and allow us to be who we really are without masks or barriers.

A similar principle applies to business partners.

We want to be able to fully trust this person, know who this person is, what to expect in hard times, and share the same long-term vision for the future.

Without this, the business will break. The adrenaline from the beginning, where everything was about this beautiful vision, eventually turns into stress and problems. And if those aren’t solved efficiently and with calmness, the business will go down, and the relationship with this person most probably too.

What trait in friendships is the most underrated for you?

Leave a comment

I aim to deliver the most personal stories, insights, and lessons from real-world experiences I have lived through over more than a decade. As I continue building my life and trying to be a better version of myself, I am documenting this journey and the lessons from my life for people who might need to hear them.

- Lukáš

Are you living your life, or are you living the life you think you’re supposed to live?

Because there’s a massive difference.

This week I’m sharing five lessons from my 20s that changed how I see success, relationships, and what it actually means to “make it.” Some of them hurt to write. All of them needed to be said.

If you’ve ever felt like you’re following someone else’s rulebook for your own life, keep reading.

This week's lessons:

1. Are we really adults?

2. Re-defining success in life.

3. The limiting belief I once held.

4. Are we fitting in or belonging there?

5. The single most dangerous distraction for a young person.

1. Are we really adults?

Let me ask you this: If you could give your younger self one rule to filter every major decision through, what would it be and why?

Over the past couple of years, I realized something in retrospect.

When making major decisions like where I want to move, who I choose to love and be in a relationship with, what career path I want to pursue, or even what friends I want to keep in my life, all of these decisions were not made in the same way.

They were also not made in the same moment, but over a lifetime, and in different situations and parts of my life in my 20s.

My rule here is: trust your instincts, shaped by past experiences, learned lessons, and your gut feeling.

It’s easier said than done.

In our 20s, we just think we are adults because of the number on our age, and because society tells us we are so after we reach this or that age.

The opposite is true.

You don’t just happen to become an adult overnight by turning 21.

You need to live to get more experience under your belt.

You need to go through those hard, unexpected life situations that our teachers never taught us in school, and learn from them on your own to avoid getting hurt or disappointed next time.

I once heard it on a podcast: our 20s are the toughest decade of our lives, and it struck me because it just makes sense.

We live for the very first time on our own, we can do whatever we want, we make all the major decisions but also need to carry the uncertainty and pressure of learning how to actually live a life and not be dependent on anyone else except us.

What is the rule you would give your younger self?

2. Re-defining success in life.

How do we define “success” without using the words money, fame, or status in our 20s?

I believe that success is determined by our minds.

Each individual defines their own success metric.

Today’s society, and a world full of social media, is serving us that success is defined by money, fame, or status. To a certain point, it is true, but it’s not the only metric to use.

Money gives us freedom to choose what we want to do, when we want to do it, with whom we want to do it, and on what conditions we want to do it. It is indeed a powerful feeling to be able to decide on almost everything thanks to money.

Fame is a false feeling of power. It can disappear the same way it appeared. Fast. If one builds their identity around fame, they’re set to fail sooner or later.

Status is the old-world metric for success. Everything was based on status in society, in small towns, or in tribes.

Without status, there was no success. Status could get people everywhere, simply because of the connections it brought.

It is still powerful today, of course, but status doesn’t play that big of a role anymore.

I think that people are slowly discovering the real truth behind success.

Success comes from within us and from our own mental models.

For some people, success can mean having a stable job, being able to pay bills, feed the family, and occasionally go on vacation.

For others, it’s a private jet and a yacht.

And for a few others, it’s making a change in the world.

Success is not universal; everyone defines it differently.

For me, the definition of success means three things.

First, I want to have a happy family and people around me that I can share a life with. There is nothing more beautiful in this world than having a community around you and friendships with the right people.

Second is freedom. I want to be able to do many things in my life without constraints, lack of time, or lack of money. I don’t chase fame or status. I want respect, yes, but I don’t need to be recognized on the streets.

Third, I want to help people become a better version of themselves, and that is how I would define success.

I would love to hear from you how you define success in your life.

3. The limiting belief I once held.

We all possess some limiting beliefs.

Each one of us has some, but the question is: how can you even spot the limit of belief, and who and what defines it as limiting and not true, and everyone else is wrong on this one?

It is hard because we take on all sorts of beliefs from our parents as we grow up, and then it is friends, who bring their beliefs, injected into them by their parents.

I struggle to find a limiting belief that I already identified and changed.

But one of them is to believe something that has been said to you, and you have identified with it.

It’s almost like the old saying that just because you weren’t good at math in school, you’re not good at math in general.

This dysfunctional belief stayed with me for a very long time, even though I was good at math in primary school. Everything changed once I hit high school.

Was it the teacher? Was it the subject? Who knows.

The important part is that you aren’t bad at math or any other subject; it is purely your own self-talk that is convincing you of that.

Maybe the teacher, classmates, or even parents told you that you are not good at it, and because you heard it repeatedly over and over, you adopted this belief as your reality.

The fact is, if you would really like to be good at math, you can just study more, practice more, and eventually you are going to be more than able to solve the equations that now seem to be alien to you.

The same rule applies to almost everything.

Just because you were not picked first at sport class doesn’t mean you are the worst.

I was picked last in school repeatedly, and it stuck with me for a while that I might suck at it. Until I practiced more and more in my free time.

Suddenly, I wasn’t picked last.

I was given the trust that I’m better now, and it didn’t happen overnight. It didn’t happen just because my friend was picking the team; it happened because of my practice.

Practice makes you better at whatever you do in your life repeatedly; it becomes muscle memory, and you will start noticing you are getting better and better.

What is the limiting belief you still hold?

How hard was it for you to identify this belief?

4. Are we fitting in or belonging there?

What is the difference between “fitting in” and “belonging”? Why does chasing one often cost you the other?

I see two fundamental differences between fitting in and belonging somewhere.

You can move abroad, change friend groups, school, or job.

When you fit in, some of your qualities and parts of your personality align with your surroundings. You can more easily blend in.

You will probably make some friends, you will find some common topics to talk about with people around you, and you might also meet some opinions with which you will also agree.

But all of this doesn’t mean you belong there.

Fitting in is a temporary state that is tied to a special outcome, situation, place, or group of people.

Like friend groups, for example.

You are fitting in because you all like basketball and hip-hop music. You share interests and opinions, but you are not really into alcohol, parties, and drugs.

You fit in because you can talk about the same topics, but you don’t belong there because once you start doing things that you fundamentally don’t want to do, but you do it because of the friend group; it’s not your friend group anymore, and you should find new friends.

Belonging somewhere, on the other side, is a completely different story.

You have a deeper feeling inside of you. You feel like everything would be aligned with these people, with this place, or work.

It’s not only about the activities or conversations; it is about the fact that you feel yourself where you are and with who you are there.

The feeling of belonging somewhere brings calm, confidence, trust, and energy to grow further in your life.

Those moments of belonging are very unique because we can’t simulate them. When it happens, you will know.

When was the last time you felt that you really belonged somewhere?

5. The single most dangerous distraction for a young person.

What is the single most dangerous distraction for a young person trying to build something meaningful?

There is no single distraction that can be crowned the most dangerous.

I believe many common distractions can be overwhelming for young people trying to build something.

Especially in the 20s, there are so many things around us that are trying to distract us.

For a young person in their 20s, it is also quite difficult to notice this because it is, indeed, the first decade of a young person’s life that you live fully. But that also means there is so much new stuff to try and experience, which can be distracting.

I think that person actually should try different things out because, without that, it is hard to learn what is good and what is bad.

I used to drink alcohol, do some crazy stuff, and go to parties.

All of these are dangerous distractions that I would name straight away, holding young people back from achieving more and building something meaningful.

But if I didn’t live through it, I don’t know if I would have the experience and knowledge to be able to focus on other things.

At the same time, I’m not trying to advertise that young people should try alcohol and drugs to learn that it is not the perfect way to spend life, because there are many young people who already know that they are not missing out by leaving all of these things off the table.

Yet many still believe the opposite.

The thing is, I believe that it’s not so important to focus on the distractions, but to focus on what’s actually moving the needle in the direction we want to go.

Young people, and not only they, should spend a significant amount of time during their 20s trying different things out to find a way to understand themselves better and find what they want to do with the rest of their lives.

The 20s are basically the launchpad for the rest of our lives. It’s like life on a discount.

We have time to try, fail, learn, and go again without paying too steep a price for our mistakes or bad experiences.

When we invest this time in truly learning about ourselves, we gain a significant advantage in the future: the ability to be true to ourselves and do what we truly desire over the long term.

What do you think is the most dangerous distraction for a young person?

Leave a comment

I aim to deliver the most personal stories, insights, and lessons from real-world experiences I have lived through over more than a decade. As I continue building my life and trying to be a better version of myself, I am documenting this journey and the lessons from my life for people who might need to hear them.

- Lukáš

I’ve been asking myself this question for the past couple of months.

It feels like being constantly on the crossroads between wanting to achieve more and not wanting to burn myself to the point where I can’t do anything anymore.

And, I don’t have an answer to this question yet. I’m still trying to figure it out on my own, too.

But here is my hypothesis about how I think it can be achieved.

It always starts with WHY. If you don’t know why you are doing what you are doing or why you want to achieve what you want to achieve, it’s extremely hard to move even one step forward at a time.

Once we have our why, we can focus on representing our WHAT.

What is the outcome we want to achieve? What is the destination where we want to arrive?

This makes our achievement more tangible, something our mind can more easily grasp.

The next step is the PLAN. We tend to create our plans chronologically from today’s standpoint.

In this case, we want to reverse engineer it.

Here is where your imagination comes into play, connecting your WHY and your WHAT into something that exists in 10 years’ time.

From there, we will break it down into 5 years, 3 years, 1 year, 6 months, 3 months, 4 weeks, this week, and today.

Now we are facing the last question.

What can I do today to get myself closer to where I want to be in 10 years’ time?

Think small, think 1% better every day. Put the bar of expectations lower than you originally wanted.

Why? Because you are starting from zero.

Don’t compare yourself to others on the internet, in your work, or in your town.

Your journey is unique to you because only you know your WHY, WHAT, and your PLAN.

Don’t try to compete with the world or impress anyone.

Compete only with yesterday’s version of yourself.

Be better for yourself.

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