4-Snippet Sunday

Hello!

It took me 10 minutes to come up with something to write here in the introduction.

Also, I am unsure of the format of this newsletter, and the clarity of my writing.

And I don’t even know if even 1 person will read my newsletter.

Why am I saying this?

Because there is a bro-philosophy takeaway here:

Even in uncertainty, you just gotta keep showing up, and put the reps in. This is only my 2nd letter. Why should I expect to have certainty, readers, or to be able to come up with good ideas in an instant?

I didn’t put enough reps in to deserve them.

To be good at something, you have to get insane amounts of reps in and work without reward for extended periods.

Now, after the bro-philosophy pep talk, let’s get into this week’s snippets…

The 4-Snippets Of The Week

• How to Build Confidence

• Incentive & Punishment

• 2 Reasons Why We Don’t Stick To Goals

• Thoughts On Hard Work

Feel free to jump around! Read only what stands out to your curiosity!

1. How to Build Confidence

Stop focusing on confidence because it’s bullsh*t.

People who lack confidence think that it is a problem. They think that they can solve their confidence ‘issue’, by a pep talk or positive affirmations.

In reality, they are not confident because they don’t have experience. Without experience, how can you expect to be confident? You don’t have evidence to base your confidence on. And, if you would be confident while not having any prior experience, you would just be delusional.

So, to get confident, first get experience. To get experience you need to do the thing you are not confident in for a long time.

Taking action while not being confident, leads to failure, extreme anxiety, and rejection…. But that’s okay. It’s okay because that’s the price you have to pay for your confidence & competence.

So, if something scary, but potentially rewarding comes into your head (like asking the girl out) do it. Even if the worst thing happens (slap on the face?), you are 1 rep closer to becoming confident in that thing.

Disregard confidence, focus on action. Instead of waiting for ‘confidence’ to arrive, simply do.

This post was synthesized by Alex Hormozi and James Smith’s opinions on confidence.

2. Incentive & Punishment

Discipline & Willpower is not enough to achieve your goals (except if you’re David Goggins).

These traits are fragile. They depend on our correct judgment and proper behavior.

By nature, we have bigger forces that are pulling us in the wrong direction. We are all shortsighted, pleasure-seeking animals, guided by our emotions.

No matter how disciplined we are (again, except you are Goggins), long term, our discipline is going to crack.

But, if discipline and willpower are not enough to achieve our goals, then what is?

We need ever-lasting intrinsic motivators, that are separate from our judgment.

These intrinsic motivators are Incentive and Punishment.

• Big Incentive: You need a big reason why you want to achieve your goal. A simple ‘I want this’ is not enough.

You need to be honest with yourself and write out what motivates you to complete the goal. A great exercise to do is to write down your goal (I want x) and then ask yourself 2 whys.

Example: ‘I want to be at 10% body fat’. Why? ‘To look better’ Why? Because I want to attract a hotter partner. When you want to eat a donut, the incentive of attracting a partner will be far more motivating, than you simply wanting to be 10% body fat.

We went from a weak incentive to a strong one, without changing the goal. The only thing that changed is our perspective.

• Big Punishment: You need to have a big consequence for not completing your tasks. These consequences should be extremely unpleasant and should motivate you to take action.

  Some ways to implement a BIG punishment:

  • Money loss - Every time you don’t do the thing, you give your friend x amounts of money

  • Tattoo - If you don’t do the thing, you get a tattoo you don’t want to have.

  • Public shame - Every time you don’t do something, you announce it to social media or in real life to your friends.

  Example: If your goal is 10% body fat, then if you don't stay within your calorie target, you give your friend 50 dollars.

I want to close with George Mack’s Thought experiment:

If the reward for completing New Year’s resolutions was a billion dollars, and the consequence for failing was the death penalty -- what % completion would New Year’s resolutions have?

This post was inspired by George Mack’s Twitter post:

https://x.com/george__mack/status/1743998250217009348?s=20

3. 2 Reasons Why We Don’t Stick To Goals

You can’t stick to your goals? There are 2 limiting factors (that you are not aware of) that are pushing you backward.

1st: Focusing on outcomes, rather than the daily tasks. Our goals always revolve around certain outcomes (making x money, losing x amount of kg), and it’s normal. But, if you focus on the outcome too much:

a) You won’t focus on the daily tasks that will drive the outcome

b) You will be discouraged after a week because you can’t see your progress (yet).

What is the solution?

The set-and-forget approach:

• Write down your outcome-based goals

• Write down the daily tasks you need to do to achieve the goals.

• Then forget about the outcomes, and only focus on the daily tasks.

2nd: Not believing that your daily actions will produce the outcomes you want.

Certain actions produce certain outcomes. You need to trust your judgment and do the actions that you think will help you achieve your goals.

Stick to the action long-term. If you don’t trust that your work will contribute to your progress, you will give up*.

Keep showing up, and do the daily boring work.

*Caveat: The action you do can be wrong. Test the small outcomes, and adjust when needed.

4. Thoughts On Hard Work

My motivation behind doing hard work was that someday, it would produce a certain outcome.

In my mind, the hard work was only worth it, if in the future, will produce an outcome that other people will admire.

This is a bad frame of mind.

Why? Because I created much more anxiety, and uncertainty, by only placing my focus on outcomes.

‘What if I don’t produce the outcomes I wanted? I would have wasted so much time…’ I thought constantly. This thought only hindered my performance and my focus.

My perspective changed when I heard this from Alex Hormozi:

‘I prefer hard work, because of what the hard work does to me.’

When work hard, and suffer willingly, we are working towards a goal. But more importantly, we are working towards building a strong character.

We are building resiliency, willpower, and discipline.

If you do hard work every day, and think it might be useless, remember:

We prefer hard work, because of what hard work does to us.

This post was inspired by Alex Hormozi on the Modern Wisdom Podcast: https://youtu.be/Gk8EGWoGnEQ?si=ZT6Wg8aeuYDLeYle

Bonus Lifehack For Better Mental Health

You heard this advice a lot I am sure, but hear me out…

Start a gratitude journal. Write 5 things you are grateful for every day.

It slowly transforms your perspective, and you will be more grateful, and that gratitude will allow you to take pleasure in almost everything.

I am grateful for you being here,

Beni