How to Get Unstuck In Life (and start building momentum)

And important though success is an often ambiguous elusive word that can sometimes do more harm than good It should hold a personal definition that you yourself develop for yourself This is obvious. But we forget that and this definition is likely to evolve and change throughout your life I'm not here to sell you a definition of success. That's something only you can figure out for yourself By the way, I have a special announcement at the end of this video. So stick around for that. All right onto the video Why do some people achieve the things that they set out to accomplish while others don't or more simply? And directly put how do I become successful in the things that I pursue? I think we all ask ourselves these questions in some form or another consciously or unconsciously Throughout our lives unless you have absolutely no attachment to the material world You've thought about this and it's true that we live in a very competitive world And there's something about hyper productivity and getting ahead of others in life. That makes me uncomfortable. That's not what this is about What interests me is realizing my potential? However cliche that might sound And creating a life that I feel is colorful and dynamic there are things that I want to accomplish before my time on this earth is up and I reincarnate as like a goat or a tree or whatever so i'm going to do my best to answer this question and more than anything this is a topic that interests me, and I just want to share my Reflections on this subject as I try and piece things together It's such a massive topic that i'm going to do this in two parts Let me explain why i'm even talking about this last year I stumbled on this idea that really struck me and that I haven't really been able to stop thinking about since what i'm realizing is that there are a lot of invisible forces that Shape our lives and one of them is what I like to call the law of momentum And that's what I want to break down in this video It's the idea that ordinary people can achieve extraordinary results Through the compounding effect of little decisions and little actions and it's actually a lot more than that But that's a good starting point. Now again, there's a lot that goes into this This can be an extremely constructive or destructive force in our lives depending on a variety of actors understanding This idea has helped me get unstuck it has Shifted my focus from short-term results to building momentum And so because this is kind of an abstract concept i'm going to use an analogy that I think most of us are at least somewhat familiar with there's a well-known concept in the investment world that is known as compound interest and it's exciting when you first Discover it and understand its power as a new investor. Like I said, you might have heard of this already So i'll keep this brief essentially compound interest is the addition of interest to the principal sum of a loan or deposit or in other words interest on interest Your money starts making more money and it has a kind of snowball effect And if you can get the snowball rolling early enough you can end up with an avalanche for the record I am not the only person interested in this idea albert einstein understood the power of compound interest He famously said compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands. It earns it he who doesn't pays it It is believed that he also said that it is the most powerful force in the universe I'm not kidding. That's not a joke kind of a bold claim though, right? So why am I talking about compound interest? This is not a channel on personal finance Well, I believe this is an idea that can be applied to other aspects of our lives as well In fact, I find this to be an incredibly powerful idea on how to build build yourself your wealth your projects your career Whatever it may be we're all kind of building our own little empires 2020 the age of the personal brand jim collins for example took this idea and applied it to The building of exceptional businesses in his book good to great where he coined the term the flywheel effect Darren hardy just straight up called it the compound effect in his book of the same name where he applied this idea to career and well-being and he talked about how the compound effect can be enormously destructive in our lives as well through Consistent poor decisions and james claire brilliantly illustrated how many of these same ideas apply in the world of breaking? Bad habits and building good ones in his book atomic habits, what i'm saying is that this idea isn't just about money It's about life. It's about construction And destruction and whether you realize it or not, it's working in your life right now how it works Looking at things in life through the lens of momentum is really quite fascinating It dictates So much of our lives much of your life has been shaped by the momentum of where you come from who you grew up with And how you were raised that's undeniable, but then all of our actions and decisions act like interest Either you're adding little by little or chipping away bit by bit from whatever direction you're trying to work towards And I don't want to paint out like a doomsday sort of scenario we all have negative and positive momentum in our lives and it's It's the exciting part of this is that I believe it's something that you can manipulate It's something that you can do something about now your actions and decisions on any given day lead to very tiny immediate results for the most part they don't usually lead to Life-altering changes but multiply day by day week by week. Well into the future the impact begins to become so much more visible In fact jim collins explains with his theory of the flywheel that with enough sustained effort. Eventually you hit a breakthrough point where the momentum Itself begins to self-perpetuate we're talking about compound interest on life and following this analogy. The investment isn't money. It's learned behavior It's patterns. It's mindsets the things that begin to take root and either build you up or destroy you. Okay? So here's the thing It's kind of an abstract concept, but it's pretty simple in general to understand the reason this is hard for so many of us to Actually incorporate in our lives is because it's invisible you do not see the immediate results Of your actions and decisions when working towards long-term goals to further out your project the more of a gap A lag that exists between the energy and time investment that you're making and the results that you're seeing things. Do not operate linearly That's why it sometimes takes a long time for things to catch up but if you can stick with things long enough the magic comes later, however I think a lot of us get discouraged Along the way and then fall into the destructive side of the law of momentum where we're caught up in little distractions little setbacks that chip away at our potential now the reason why I believe so many of us struggle to Actually make this happen and be successful in the things that we're trying to achieve is complicated there's no simple answer here, but a large part of it comes down to what I believe are myths that Exist in society that lead us down the wrong path we need to unlearn limiting beliefs and to break this down i'm going to explore several myths that exist in society that lead us to Invest our time and energy into things that do not lead to results one The myth of talent and natural ability tell exists. Okay. I'm not going to deny that It plays a role in our lives. Some of us do have genes that are predisposed for certain pursuits I was never going to be a professional basketball player. I'm just way too short for that however I would like to make the argument that there are many walks of life where the perceived role of talent or natural ability is massively overblown and there's a subtle destructive implication that goes along with that starting early in life and through to this day I have Often heard people say wow. They're so talented when referring to somebody doing something successfully again I'm not going to say that talent didn't play a role in the successful career of any given professional the implication there Is that the ability to get good at something or to make progress at all with any given skill? Comes down to talent which is something that you're either born with or not put another way whether we realize it or not. There's oftentimes Very little attention or value placed on the effort that one Invests in developing a skill in that way talent is a dangerous word experts are digging into what really goes into mastery of a skill and Consistently there is no shortcut Even what we consider to be child prodigies have already invested thousands of hours of concerted practice and effort To get to where they're at. There may not actually be any shortcut instead There might actually be a better way to evaluate ability and how to develop it over The last few decades researchers have been placing a new focus on persistence and how this single trait can help predict the future success of any given individual instead of focusing on talent versus non-talent researchers have been approaching things in terms of Persisters versus non-persisters which are attitudes that start to become visible in childhood psychologist Carol dweck has done a lot of very interesting experiments with children In this field of psychology and she writes acquired beliefs play a critical role in how well people function Some people have a fixed or entity theory believing that their qualities such as their intelligence are simply fixed traits Others have a malleable or incremental theory believing that their most basic qualities can be developed through their efforts and education Research shows that people with a malleable Theory are more open to learning willing to confront challenges able to stick to difficult tasks and capable of bouncing back from failures So while i'm not saying to completely ignore the fact that Some of us are probably at some level predisposed for certain things i'm saying that in all likelihood The playing field isn't level when we all start out but there's not a whole lot you can do about that specific fact, the stoics would say What can you do about this in terms of your own attitude? I think they would say this is not about the ability that you're born with This is about the effort and energy that you're willing to invest in finding solutions and solving problems and in that framework Your potential is only really dictated by the amount of effort that you're willing to put in what i'm saying here Is that effort and strategy seem to count for more than we think it does? And that's an idea i'm gonna come back to a little bit later on here two the myth of good fortune This can almost be considered a part two to the previous myth another thing I remember kids saying all the time to each other whenever anyone did anything well was oh you're so lucky almost as like a synonym for Congratulations an idea that I explored in a recent newsletter is that we are obsessed with luck And without the bigger picture which none of us have it's impossible to know what really is and isn't good luck I then linked to a zen proverb that brilliantly illustrates my point It's commonly known as maybe so maybe not and the proverb does a great job of challenging our ideas around good fortune So here we go. I'll give you just a very brief recap A farmer and his son have a horse a stallion that helped them make a living and one day This stallion runs away and the neighbors go Oh what poor luck and the farmer just drugs and says maybe so maybe not We'll see a few days later. The stein returns with a few wild mares with it So several horses come back and the neighbors see this and go. Oh what incredible fortune and the farmer Looks at them and shrugs and goes maybe so maybe not. We'll see a little while later The sun is trying to break one of the mares and he falls off and breaks his leg And the villagers who are just observing everything that's happening with this farmer in the sun. See this And they go. Oh what poor fortune and the farmer just looks at them and shrugs and goes Maybe so maybe not We'll see the next day the army comes and they're looking for able-bodied men and because the sun was with his broken leg he was Not able to join and by now I would imagine you can guess what happens next the villagers. See this they go Oh what good fortune your son has been spared and the farmer just looks at them and shrugs and goes Maybe so maybe not. We'll see the point is we never know in life. It's really just a question of perspective And so it's undeniable that luck that which is outside of our control does play a major role in our lives however I always end back up with the stoics and what they had to say on all this the only thing that you can control Is your attitude and how you feel and react about the things that happen to you in your life? And therefore that is where we should place all of our attention and energy. There's a psychologist by the name of angela Lee duckworth who did a wonderful ted talk that's related to this She's done a ton of research on why certain people become successful and so when referring to all the different people that she studied She said in all those very different contexts one characteristic emerged as a significant predictor of success It wasn't social intelligence good looks physical health and it wasn't iq It was grit Grit is passion and perseverance for very long-term goals Grit is having stamina Grit is sticking with your future day in day out Not just for the week Not just for the month But for years grit is living life like it's a marathon Not a sprint I know I include a lot of quotes on this channel But there's something about crystallizing that idea in that quote is just phenomenal like yes She's totally right by her description grit seems to be about sustained effort like if this were an equation effort plus time equals grit now the tricky thing about this is that even duckworth herself has stated There's so much we still don't understand about grit like where does it come from? She did say though that grit is usually unrelated or inversely related to measures of talent She does speak about the link between grit and what is known as wealth mindset Which is related to the persister non-persister idea that I spoke about earlier if you believe that you can get better You will make a greater effort a growth mindset is believing that failure is not a permanent condition So what i'm proposing here is to instead of focusing uniquely on talent and natural ability want good luck On things that are out of our control that were decided when we were born to focus instead on effort Persistence and grit that's actual. There's something that you can actually do about that What i'm saying is that it's actually worth it to try. I truly believe you will surprise yourself with what you're capable of accomplishing with Sustained effort. This is about belief more than anything So as I said before this is an enormous topic and i'm still only just scratching the surface But i'm going to leave things there before the video gets too dense There are more myths that i'd like to explore and debunk but i'm going to save that for part two, and these are not clear-cut fixed ideas So i'd love to hear your input if you agree with me or if you don't why? That's the thing. Our idea is about success and what it takes and The elements that have to come together for it to happen are evolving Our understanding of this is evolving and it's interesting to see how as we develop a better understanding of the human condition These ideas change I'm super excited to announce that my first ever online class ever is available now on skillshare who are also sponsoring this video. I worked Really hard on this and i'm really happy with how it came out it's on the topic of how to discover hone in on and share your voice online, which is Something that I get asked about all the time. These are things that I wish I knew when I was starting out. It's an unclear often frustrating process when you're throwing yourself out there, especially because It feels like there's so much stuff already out there And so these are things that I once again wish that I knew when I was starting out Skillshare have been sponsoring this channel since last year Really grateful to have their support skillshare for those of you that don't know is a website where you can go And develop new skills or explore your creativity in general. There's all kinds of cool classes on there I really like their material on street photography They have a lot of cool classes on how to get yourself organized So if you're interested in trying it out for yourself there's a link in the description below to get a two-month free trial of skillshare premium a year-long membership by the way comes out to 10 bucks a month, so rather affordable in my opinion and that gives you access to everything they have on there and you can Try out my class. If you're interested. If you do, please let me know. I'd love to hear what you think Thank you so much for watching and i'll see you soon

Channel: Nathaniel Drew

Views: 417,018

Keywords: momentum, acceleration, success, how to, motivation, how, to, focus, productivity, how to boost productivity, boost, boost focus, mental, clarity, mental clarity, momentum in life, law of momentum, compound, compounding, compound effect, stuck, unstuck, how to get unstuck, how to get unstuck in life, in life, nathaniel drw, nathaniel, nathanield rew, nathaniel drew, little habits, good habits, bad habits, these tags feel like a waste of time honestly

Id: JNa5MR9voCQ

Length: 15min 40sec (940 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 25 2020