You Already Know
Day 27 - 33 / 1000
You already know what you need to do.
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:
Most valuable currency
Don’t listen to that voice
Motivated, or not
Be prepared to sacrifice
The conversation you keep replaying
You know what to do…
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.
It’s not going to happen.
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.
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