Latest / The iAlign Podcast with Flint Mitchell / iAlign #71 - You Will Choose Wrong. Start Anyway.

Transcript

iAlign #71 - You Will Choose Wrong. Start Anyway. · The iAlign Podcast with Flint Mitchell

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: You're listening to the IAline podcast with Flint Mitchell, where I provide stories, resources, and tools for ambitious builders who are ready to gain control over procrastination, overthinking, and distraction.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: Large goals are accomplished by small, decisive, uncomfortable actions.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: Lots of them.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: A while ago now, I left a job as an engineer and a research scientist in a lab that was developing novel genetic sequencing technologies with a bunch of really smart people.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: It was super cool.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: I had my own personal legend though, my own personal mission to pursue, and it wasn't what I was doing.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: The work was cool, however, the situation I was in, right, was uncomfortable.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: And now, fast forward a year from this, and I had traveled around multiple continents and several countries searching for serve, as I am doing right now.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: Found it, by the way.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: And hiking with a more flexible job, and the first manuscript of my first book drafted.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: Fast forward another couple years, and I lived in remarkable beach towns like all over.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: I had built the original version, albeit a pretty shitty version, of the software that eventually became the business I run now while still doing cool research close to my heart in the world of data science, right?
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: And like this isn't where my journey ends.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: I have some massive aspirations that I'm actively building right now, but it's a cool checkpoint.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: And it required a lot of really uncomfortable decisions that made me question my own worth, my own direction, my safety, my competency, my resilience.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: And truthfully, it makes me still question those things.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: This journey still makes me question those things.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: I just have a better set of tools to leverage those thoughts and use them as inspiration instead of things that might tear me down or eliminate me.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: Now, by doing so, my greatest weaknesses became my greatest strengths, but that is a subject for another video.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: One of the first steps I took on this entire pivot of a journey was buying an$18,000 2018 Ram Pro Master City van that I would eventually build into a small home and live in the back of to while I explored for six months or 12 months.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: In this moment, I was in a relationship with a red person.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: I was in a cool place, I was in a cool job, all that.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: And buying that car was clearly a decisive action for a very different lifestyle than the one I was currently living in that moment.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: And every moment in that several month period of my life required me to make decisive action.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: These moments may seem trivial to you, but they were things like where is the dealership?
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: How much can I afford?
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: Will I build it out myself or will I hire someone else to do it?
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: If I do it, how do I build a small bed in the back?
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: You have to fit a lot of small, random corners.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: What electricity will I include?
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: Rest of the construction questions.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: Where will I go?
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: How will I tell my boss?
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: How will I bring this up to my now girlfriend?
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I could go on.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: There are literally a thousand questions I could think of, from very high level to very specific and granular.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: And therefore a thousand actions that I need them to take, regardless of how big or small.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: Many of those actions were uncomfortable because they questioned who I was in that moment, what I was doing.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: If I wavered on each action for a couple days, I would still be in that moment from years ago today.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I know this analogy may not resonate for a lot of people who haven't or don't have the desire for a similar adventure.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: Like I'm not here to push that on anyone.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: But it holds true for any large goal that you have in life, which is that you probably have, I know, a dream you've been thinking about for a while now.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: Might be a new job, it might be your own business, it might be a new hobby, a new venture, whatever it is.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: It may feel, probably feels, if you're doing it right, massive.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: Which is where you get hit by this quote from your subconscious, which is, but I don't know where to begin.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: Completely valid.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not here to gaslight you and say you're just not trying hard enough or that it's easy, right?
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: It may feel insurmountable.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's just the truth.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: But the reality is that any large goal or dream is really just the consequence of thousands of small actions.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: And many of those actions are probably at least a little uncomfortable.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: Many of them are also probably a little boring, if not a lot boring.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: But they are all ones that you can handle.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: The only real danger you have is not starting.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: And the pushback that I usually receive here is, what if I prioritize wrong and take the wrong action?
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: My response to this is always, you will.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: That's good.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: How can you like how could you expect to choose exactly the right thing and do it perfectly the first time?
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: That would just be luck.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: The point is not to choose correctly.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: The point is to begin.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: That's it.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: That doesn't mean enter and lock yourself into a four-year program, by the way, or spend tons of money that you don't have.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: It means take the first series of actions that would give you the evidence to determine what the next steps are.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: This has been my philosophy of life for a long time.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: I call it evidence-based living.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: You take small actions, then you use the result of those small actions to determine what the next one should be.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: You don't use thoughts, you use actions and the results of them.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: And when you have accumulated enough evidence to make a larger decision, then you make it.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: But not before you have taken the smaller ones and have results.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: What this does is it eliminates the seeking for large, meaningful actions.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: We don't even search for them, right?
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: We don't validate big life-altering decisions.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: We already know that they're going to come because we validate ourselves solely for accomplishing lots of small tasks that move us forward each day.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: Knowing that by taking these small actions and giving ourselves validation for them, we will move closer to that goal that we're dreaming of.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: And likely we're going to pursue it faster than if we were just focusing on it in the first place.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: Because large goals are accomplished with many small, decisive, uncomfortable actions.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: I hope you enjoyed that episode.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if you've been told your entire life that you're smart and you have potential, but you continue to see yourself not do what you said you would do again and again, and it's made you stop trusting in yourself or that you will ever achieve that potential, I want to help you.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: Together, you and I will implement a core value-based system that will help you become decisive and focused.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to feel the relief from the weight on your shoulders because of the decreased noise in your head.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: Strength each morning because you trust yourself to turn lost avoidant hours of your life into forward progress.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: Peace, when you no longer have to hide how you actually spend your time, and finally pride in yourself when you close your eyes every night before you go to sleep.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: If that's of interest to you, click the first link in the show notes, fill out the 30-second application, and grab a time on my calendar.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: Spots are obviously limited because of my time and availability, but if they fill up and you're a good fit, I'll make sure you get on the wait list.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: I look forward to speaking with you.