The 12 Small Ideas That Reshaped My Life (That Might Reshape Yours)

What a year it’s been

I’ve made more financial and mental progress in the last 12 months than in any other period in my life. It’s rather overwhelming.

Yesterday I took some time to reflect on everything I now believe to be truth that has helped me transform my life in the last 12 months.

Here is everything I came up with. Hopefully, it will help you.

1. Optimize for you

All you can ever do is have good intentions, learn, be willing to change your mind, and center yourself around the world you want to live in.

Sure the people you love in your life might have other plans for you or not believe in what you’re doing and that’s okay.

You can respect them and live for you. You can trust that you made the best decision today with the information you’ve got.

2. Do something worth reading

If you want to be seen, do something worth watching.

Being a good storyteller is part of the equation, the other part is doing something worth listening to. That doesn’t have to be big. It can be small. But it just needs to matter.

3. Don’t wait for anybody

Time spent waiting is time spent wasting.

If you’re unsure, seek evidence. Go out there and do, you’ll have experience and insight that is worth a thousand hours of thinking.

4. It’s not all or nothing

It’s not 5 am or nothing. You can work hard and take breaks. You can dial it up when you need to. It’s pace and self-awareness.

Discipline is good of course. You have to be able to show up. That’s a given. But don’t have to wake up at the crack of dawn from now until forever to be successful.

You can win and press snooze once in a while. Don’t raise the bar so high you force yourself out of the game.

5. Pick yourself

I’ve never regretted betting on myself. I have regretted not.

We’re so used to looking at other people with awe. Idolize them. This year I stopped that and spent that energy on myself, on bettering myself. It’s done wonders.

6. Play and work

I’ll spend hours writing.

I’ll walk for hours and think about ways to phrase things, and new ideas, and play with concepts. I’m doing the work whilst I’m physically somewhere else. I’d do that all day every day for free.

I did for a while.

This year I found a way to monetize the thing you love. Find a way to monetize your obsession.

7. Reshape the way you see work

It’s not that you never work a day if you do something you love. It’s that you reshape the traditional view of work and live a more fulfilling life.

8. Learn to work with your emotions

You can co-exist with fear. You can feel it and work anyway. It’s a conscious decision to do it anyway.

I didn’t realize that for a long while. The day I showed up scared, was the day things changed.

9. Question everything

Your single greatest gift is the ability to question.

• Question yourself.
• Question the world.
• Question your work.
• Question those you admire.

A good life is one full of great questions. An unexplored life may be lived but never understood and the pursuit of understanding is where all the fun happens.

10. Space between ego and ideas

People who can separate ego from ideas are a rare breed. Find people who get energy from being challenged, those people will lift you.

11. Remember, they’re no better than you

Admiration is good. Idolisation is not.

The space between who you are and want to be is achievable. Putting people on a pedestal makes the challenge seem insurmountable.

12. Time not ambition

There’s no reason you can’t have everything you want. It’s just a question of how long you’re willing to wait.

The game is waiting. But the trick isn’t having patience. It’s to find pleasure in the path. Focus on squeezing everything out of today.

Conclusion

Everything for me changed this year.

How much of my day actually changed? Less than 1%. The thing that changed is how I saw the world, where I saw myself in it and how I approached the day.

It was my mind that changed and that’s what changed everything.

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