87. Don’t Negotiate With Yourself

In issue #76 of Coffee With Cody, I told you that I was partaking in a challenge called 75 Hard. Well, the 75 days have now come and gone, and my experience in the short time between now and the conclusion of the challenge is what I need to tell you about today.

If you want to hear about the challenge itself, send me a text.

It was the day after the challenge had ended when we found ourselves at a brewery with some friends. As you may recall, one of the tasks for the 75 days was to abstain from alcohol. I was successful, and it wasn’t hard to be, but I need to talk about that next day.

Now that the 75 days were over, my definition of success was anything but clear, and this is the crippling dilemma I see people faced with all too often. Now that I could do anything I wanted with my life, I was utterly torn as to whether or not I should enjoy a couple of cold, craft beers.

I enjoy beer, and traditionally I wouldn’t have thought twice about having some. However, I know I’m not at my best when I drink. Not in the moment or the ones that follow can I be at my peak with alcohol in my system.

Sometimes it doesn’t matter, but now I had to decide if it did or didn’t matter this time. The negotiation then began.

This is what we do. We negotiate with ourselves, and this is why we fail. I don’t mean to say that failure is bad. It’s how we grow, but making the same failure over and over again doesn’t get us anywhere.

The problem was that I showed up without a guideline. There was no plan, so every move I made was based on my current feeling.

If there’s one thing I know, it’s that always acting in accordance with how you feel is not a good idea. Therefore, we have to know what we’re going to do on any given day before the day arrives.

I’m not saying you need to invest in a crystal ball, but I am saying that you need to gain some clarity on your future. If you don’t know what future you’re moving towards, how will you know what decisions you’ll need to make in the moments you don’t feel like it?

Tony Robbins gives us a great example of this when he talks about cold plunges. It’s how he starts every day. He says there is never a negotiation about it. He says the moment a negotiation starts, he’s doomed, because there’s never a time you’ll wake up feeling like jumping straight from bed into freezing cold water.

It’s predetermined. It’s non-negotiable. It’s not just what he does, it’s part of who he is.

I’ve talked before about making the same choice every day for indefinite periods, and all we’re doing here is batching an indefinite number of future decisions together into one.

For example, I decided that for 75 days, I would not drink alcohol. Like I said, that was easy. I didn’t go out for dinner debating whether or not I would order a drink. I went out freely, knowing there was one less decision to take up space in my mind.

This is an advantage of using time as a tool, as Dr. Benjamin Hardy likes to say. It’s reasonable to look 75 days into the future and conclude who we’re going to be each day. It’s when we remove time from the equation that we get in trouble.

How many people do you know who have said that from now on or never again regarding a specific behaviour, only to fail at their new resolution within a week? I know lots.

Using words like “forever” or “never” is a recipe for disappointment. The alternative is to say something like for 75 days, or like Ed Mylett advises, tell yourself “do it one more day”.

If you can wake up in the morning and say you’ll jump in the cold plunge one more time, that day you are successful. All you have to do is say one more time, every time. It’s a strategy, but an exhausting one.

Maybe that’s where you need to start. At least for today, you will be who your desired future requires of you. Tomorrow, perhaps you can do it again.

Or, you can define your standards now and remove the daily negotiations.

I’m too weak to decide if I feel like going to the gym today. However, going to the gym is part of who I am and it’s not something I consider doing. There is no consideration. There is no negotiation. Deciding to go to the gym is more exhausting than going to the gym.

So remove your decisions. Stop negotiating with yourself. Decide who you are and set the ground rules.

Imagine the scenarios you might be faced with on your journey to success and predetermine what you’ll do. Sure, we can become good negotiators like Chris Voss, but we’re bound to lose sometimes if we leave it to chance.

Luck doesn’t breed consistency, and only consistency will lead you to where you want to go.

Go ahead and commit to something for a while. Batch some decisions together. Maybe start with 75 days, or if that seems daunting, try starting with the power of one more day.

With fewer decisions to make, you’ll be more free to pursue what lights you and the people around you up. It’s amazing what you might think of if you don’t need to worry about whether or not you’re ordering dessert tonight.

— Cody

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See you next Thursday.

Interested in chatting in person over a couple steaming cups? Send me a text!