Eliminate the Word “Trying” from Your Vocabulary
Then watch how effortless it becomes to attain your goals
Do you know why companies give massive ESOPs and encourage employees to identify with their job?
It’s thanks to the principal-agent problem — the conflict of interest between the owner of an entity and a worker.
As an agent (employee), you’d care about your compensation, work-life balance, and perks. For the principal (employer), how much you improve the balance sheet reigns king.
But when your company makes you a shareholder and you default to saying, “I am a Software Engineer at Google” instead of “I work as a Software Engineer at Google”?
With a fat dollop of principal’s white poured in, the black of being an agent turns a shade of grey.
Life’s a principle-agent problem as well. While your current self and life are the principal, your dream life is the agent.
Become the Principal
When you say, “I’m trying to quit smoking”, you’re an agent. But with “I don’t smoke”, you’re the principal.
With the latter, there’s an identity and ego investment.
When you’re not someone who smokes, touching a cigarette feels like a betrayal — and your “self” opposes it.
The variance in wording might be subtle, but to your subconscious mind, it makes a world of difference.
I struggled to stick to NoFap for months — after every willpower-fueled long streak, I’d descend into a binge of grisly relapses.
Internet blockers, streak trackers, motivational videos, or accountability partners.
None of the tricks in the book worked.
But the simple mental dialogue shift from “I’m trying to quit porn” to “I don’t watch porn” did.
The ego is the central driver of everything we do. Wield it to your advantage by “principalizing” the goals you want to achieve.
You Are What You Believe. Period
The answer to the age-old tongue-tier “Who are you?” is actually simple.
Grab a sheet of paper, cut off the world for 30 minutes, and list out all your beliefs. Segregate them into negative (limiting) beliefs and positive (enabling) ones.
Their sum is what you are.
10 limiting beliefs + 5 enabling ones = A self-image score of -5. But 10 enabling beliefs + 5 limiting ones? A positive score of 5.
“A human being always acts and feels and performs in accordance with what he imagines to be true about himself and his environment. For imagination sets the goal ‘picture’ which our automatic mechanism works on. We act, or fail to act, not because of ‘will,’ as is so commonly believed, but because of imagination.”
Your self-image determines your thoughts.
Your thoughts trigger your actions.
Your actions mold your life.
Decimate Every Limiting Belief
Even an accurate limiting belief is a problem. The reason is a one-two punch:
- Because of our negativity bias, our negative beliefs depress us much more than the positive ones uplift us.
- The human body is a servo-mechanism that “blindly” acts on the brain’s beliefs. Just holding a negative belief can boost the likelihood of it coming true — a self-fulfilling prophecy.
If you believe you suck with women, you’ll falter in conversations and avoid the female race like the plague. This lack of female interaction will further cement the negative belief.
And so goes a vicious loop.
But if you believe the opposite, you’ll act more charismatic. To some, it might come off as pretentious. But thanks to your positive lens, you’ll only focus on the positive encounters.
Even if you actually sucked, thanks to sheer practice, you’ll get better. This reinforces your belief and your confidence will climb a few notches.
Again, a loop.
But of the good kind.
A Simple (But Powerful) Exercise I Want You to Try
In the list you jotted down, turn to the negative beliefs column. Pick every belief and try to get to its root.
- When did you first entertain that belief?
- What made you internalize it?
- Why did you stick on to it since then?
- Is or was the belief ever accurate and relevant?
99% of the time, you’ll find the belief was inaccurate — be it thanks to a toxic relationship that left you in shambles or a cruel bully that murdered your self-esteem.
Then reject it.
Say it out loud, “I’m not weak. I never was weak.” Think of the incidents that invalidate that one bad incident or memory.
Imprint them in your memory.
You won’t find overwhelming counter-evidence against every belief, but for the ones you do — wield the evidence to destroy the limiting belief and replace it with an enabling one.
Only a handful of belief changes and you’ll feel reborn. Life will be awash with color and possibilities.
After all, as Descartes said, “I think therefore I am”, we are literally our minds.
Change your mind and your life will change.
One belief at a time.