Keep Sweeping: The Lie That’s Stunting Your Growth Is All About Work-Life Balance
When it comes to the things you want, in terms of days:
How many days of effort are enough for you?
What’s your limit?
What’s your threshold for feeling accomplished?
How many days are enough to make you proud?
When it comes to who you want to be:
Do you make some effort to change every day?
Every week?
Every month?
Maybe it’s multiple times in a day?
More specifically,
How often do you make a conscious decision to step away from who you were and towards who you want to be?
Genuinely answer:
How much do you think is enough?
In days.
- / 7 ?
Well, whatever number you’re thinking of, if it isn’t every day — you’re not doing enough.
Yep.
Every single day.
Whether it’s an identity you’re working towards,
a goal or purpose you want to realise,
or a standard you want to implement.
Whatever it is you want to achieve,
You need to afford effort towards it in some meaningful capacity every single day.
And here’s why:
In his book, ‘Ego is The Enemy’ Ryan Holiday shares some advice Daniele Bolelli gave him:
“My friend the philosopher and martial artist Daniele Bolelli once gave me a helpful metaphor. He explained that training was like sweeping the floor. Just because we’ve done it once, doesn’t mean the floor is clean forever. Every day the dust comes back. Every day we must sweep.”
What a metaphor.
Let’s assume that training is synonymous with effort toward something purposeful.
- Training = purposeful effort.
Training is not doing for doing’s sake, it’s doing to make some meaningful steps forward.
And Daniele Bolelli argues that we should do this every single day, lest dust appear.
But why?
What is so significant about dust?
Answer me this:
What’s the purpose of sweeping?
To get rid of dirt, correct?
But if you delve deeper, there are undoubtedly better and more in-depth explanations as to why—so why are we satisfied with knowing just a portion of the facts?
To take it one step further, why do we bother making effort without knowing the real reasons behind their benefits?
And so confidently at that?
Surely the reason should be important to us?
Yet we don’t seem to care.
The reality is, even if you don’t know why, you understand that the absence of dirt/dust is beneficial, and because of this, the action of sweeping is meaningful.
But why?
Why do we understand this?
What more is there?
It’s a change of state.
Sweeping facilitates a change of state—a transition even—from dusty and cluttered to dustless/clean.
That’s the reason why meaningful effort is beneficial; even if we cannot quantify the specific benefits, we can appreciate a change of state born from meaningful effort as it influences our identity.
Here’s a great example of this in real life:
Beginners.
Irrespective of the discipline, someone starting out is the best illustration.
Why?
Because they always have little or comparatively little information in comparison to someone experienced.
They don’t know.
Yet, they still appreciate the fruit of meaningful effort, even if they don’t know what the benefit actually is.
Imagine a learner driver in their first few lessons:
For the sake of simplicity, let’s assume they’ve never driven before.
When they start out, they’ll feel as if they’re in the deep-end.
Being led completely by their instructor.
They might not know the specific benefit of the tips, guidance, and effort they’re being instructed on or recommended.
But they do have a general understanding that their effort is beneficial because they’re stepping away from who they were and getting closer to who they want to be.
It’s a shift in identity.
Even without all the facts, we innately understand that meaningful effort, or sweeping, is irreplaceably beneficial.
Why?
Simply because we’ve taken a step away from who we used to be and towards who we want to be.
That alone is enough.
Take the connotations you’d associate with yourself following the creation of a ‘swept’ state.
You’d feel:
Clean.
In control.
In order.
Well-managed.
That’s the identity you take one step towards just by sweeping.
And that’s one step away from the opposite.
Dirty.
Out of control.
Unruly.
Unmanageable.
That’s who you felt like before you swept.
And training is no different.
The reason you train or make meaningful effort is because it’s a transition in state.
Away from the you who back-stepped or was stagnant and towards the you who makes meaningful steps forward.
It’s a shift in identity.
Well, partially.
That’s the reason why the effort must be made every single day:
Imagine this:
You’re participating in Ninja Warrior.
The final wall from Ninja Warrior is before you.
You have to build enough momentum in order to scale it.
If not, you will backslide.
Initially, it’ll be slow, but the higher you fall, the quicker the descent will be.
And changing an identity is no different.
Until you’ve scaled that wall, it’s a constant uphill battle for momentum.
A run-up of one or two steps just won’t cut it.
You need a flurry of steps to build up the necessary momentum.
It’s not enough to give it 50%.
You cannot let up, or you will slide back down.
Right where you started.
Still them.
The you that’s weak.
The you that’s lacking in self-control.
The you that’s a shadow of who you could be.
The you that you don’t want to be anymore.
That’s why you have to commit to it every day, meaningfully.
Every single day you put in meaningful effort is another step added to your run-up.
So keep sweeping.
Never let the dust settle.
Forget the results and outcomes; committing to sweeping every single day is much more than that.
It’s about transcending yourself.
From the old to the new.
And guess how it starts:
Sweeping.
Again and again and again.
Every single day.
Keep adding steps to your run-up.
Until you can scale the wall,
Keep Sweeping.
LM
Thank you for reading!
American psychologist Alok Konojia, or ‘HealthyGamerGG’, says:
“The absence of reflection is the reason you’re stuck.”
To solidify our growth, let’s reflect:
Petrichor’s 1-Minute Reflection:
- How did you feel before reading?
- How did you feel whilst reading?
- Do you feel any different now that you’ve finished?
- What is your one takeaway from reading this?
