108. Stop Listening to Yourself

It’s unfortunate that us humans are such brilliantly designed beings. Why is it unfortunate? Because we can easily convince ourselves to do the darnedest things.

We can rationalize anything, and often it doesn’t serve us.

Be weary of your good ideas.

Interesting saying coming from a guy like me who usually prods you to go for it eh? It’s not always that simple. What you’ve convinced yourself is a good idea might not actually be the best thing for you. That being the case, it’s worth considering the stories we’re telling ourselves.

What story do you tell yourself about why you’re not as fit as you wish you were? I bet it makes sense. I bet it’s reasonable and everything about it is factual. What about the stories about why you hate your job and love who everyone says is the wrong person for you? Again, I bet there’s a rational thinking process that makes total sense inside your brilliant brain.

You’re making all the right moves, yet, things still haven’t quite worked out the way you think they should. Should you really keep listening to yourself?

I’m an advocate for introspection, but part of evaluating your own life is evaluating what’s around you. If what you see is not what you wish was there, is it not unreasonable to expect differences tomorrow if no changes are made? You would think so, but we’re too smart and believe that this time will be different. That might be the case for everyone else, but not for me, because I’ve thought it through.

Have you though?

Really, I’m sure you have, but with a desired outcome, our pathway of thinking will always be a bit skewed. Surely, the Las Vegas Raiders thought Geno Smith would be the quarterback to lead them back to the playoffs when they signed him to a 75 million dollar contract last offseason. Surely, they didn’t think they’d be the laughing stock of the league 2 thirds of the way through Geno’s first season and surely they didn’t think their new quarterback would be leading the league in interceptions thrown.

They thought it was a good idea.

Hey, sports is a tough business and sometimes all you can do is hope things turn out, but at what point do you look in the mirror and admit that that signing was probably a mistake?

Have you ever been to that point? When everything around you is seemingly in shambles and all the moves you thought were the right ones so far have turned out to be wrong?

I have, and it wasn’t until I stopped pointing fingers at anything but myself that things started to turn around. I was so good at rationalizing why things weren’t the way I wanted them to be. I still am, but I’m getting better at looking in the mirror, and it’s serving me well so far.

If what I’ve done and thought so far has led me to where I am now, and where I am now is not where I want to be, then I should do and think differently to achieve a different result.

Perhaps all those stories and great ideas that I came up with weren’t actually that great.

So what then?

Well, as Jim Rohn would say: be a student.

Seek new information, ask more questions, be more open to input. Look to those you admire and consider what they might think of your brilliant ideas. If you can, ask them directly. If you can’t, read the autobiographies, listen to the interviews, uncover the voices that you can use for yourself rather than just your own.

With what you find, consider what your life looks like from outside of it. Take a hard look at things from a thousand feet up before you conclude that your decisions must have been good ones.

Only then should you go for it.

If, after you’ve collected the information and done the consulting, it still seems like a good idea, then go for it with all you have. And don’t get me wrong, I’m not telling you to live conservatively. Even analytics show it’s a better idea to go for it on 4th down more often than not.

In life, at least as far as I can tell, there’s always room for error, but this does not mean we should take it easy. When every stone has been turned and there’s nothing left you can do to thoughtfully prepare for your next move, here’s what I think you should do:

Pray as if it’s up to god and work as if it’s up to you.

I first heard that phrase on Kevin Miller’s podcast and I think it’s about as perfect a balance between self help and faith as there can be. It means to do everything you possibly can to achieve all your biggest, hairiest, most audacious goals, then completely let go of the outcome.

When you can face the mirror and know you’ve done your part, you can start listening to yourself again.

However, the flip side to all this is that you might convince yourself you didn’t do your best, even when you did. You’ll convince yourself of that too, so here’s what I do. I use the phrase “at the time”.

When I get into a self deprecating pattern, rather than beating myself up more and feeling sorry for myself, I’ll say “at the time, that was what I thought was best.” Luckily, I’m stronger, wiser and better now. Tomorrow will reflect as much.

So yes, we are brilliant. But even chess grand masters can only get so far by playing against themselves. They might rationally conclude that they’ve previewed every possible game scenario, then still lose to a new opponent.

What I’m saying is nobody has it all figured out, but we’re good at thinking we do. Perhaps I should have led with that.

— Cody

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See you next Thursday.

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