Notes from my annual review
The majority of the stress in my life comes from not taking action over something that I have some control over. To say it another way, my stress is mostly from ignoring things that I should not be ignoring.
Saying “No” is one of the most important life skill. Not “No, because…” or “No, but…” Just “No.”
There are times I don’t want to go for a run, there are moments I’ve been on a run and wished it was over, but I have never regretted going on a run.
It doesn’t make sense to continue wanting something if you’re not willing to do what it takes to get it.
It’s much easier to mind your own business when your business is worth minding.
Bring a jacket, it might get chilly later.
If you’re thirsty, drink. If you’re tired, sleep. If you’re hungry, eat. If you’re stressed, go for a walk outside.
I often over estimate what I can achieve in 3 months, and under estimate what I can achieve in 3 years. This was especially true during my 20s.
Spending deep time with a child in the first year of their life, is a master class in being present.They give 100% of your attention to what ever they are seeing, touching, experiencing. Bringing that level of focus to life, makes everything better.
Discipline and consistency are actually the secrets to success. You can gently brute force almost anything into existence with enough discipline.
No one gets points for ideas, only execution.
Being prepared and practiced when a moment of opportunity opens for a few hours/days/weeks in your life, is often what determines the outcome of the whole game.
Life, like investing, follows power laws— most of the returns/impacts in your life come from a small set of decisions and relationships. Some of those decisions you know are important while you are making them. Many times it’s only in hind sight.
Our lives benefit from, or are dragged down by the inexorable power of compound interest. Strength follows strength. Weakness follows weakness.
You are the average of the five adults you spend the most time with. Choose wisely. Reevaluate annually.
If you’re going to do something, do it well. The half assed, late work ends up taking 300% of the mental capacity as the well done, on time contributions.
Eating dinner at the bar is the best seat in most restaurants. This is especially true at high end restaurants.
I’ve had interactions with people that last two minutes, that stay with me for days, weeks, months. There are some interactions I had a decade ago, that I still think about. Bringing this asymmetry awareness to my interaction with others in general makes me more present, direct, and kind.
You make fortunes by taking a lot of risk with a little bit of money. You maintain fortunes by taking small amounts of risk with lots of money. This principle also applies to all areas of life and happiness.
Failure is necessary to growing, learning, and building anything of worth. There is no success, learning, or deep satisfaction, without failure. Building practice in how to fail faster, in a framework on learning, dramatically accelerates how quickly and successfully you can grow into new areas.
Your plans/ideas never survive first contact with the enemy. Get your concepts out in the world so you can find out how wrong they are as quickly as possible.
Failing while still be able to stay on the field is the true unlock. You need to fail in a way where you’re able to learn from your mistakes and apply them to the next step in the journey. The stakes have to really matter, but if you die trying, then you can’t apply the learning to the next iteration.
Discomfort is actually a feature, not a bug, of existence. One might even go as far as defining comfort, in the modern world, as often being a state of crisis. Becomes comfort underwrites much of the apathy in life.
When choosing what you want to work on in the world, it’s important to think about what you want to suffer at doing. Because doing anything of worth, take a degree of pain and struggle.
When we imagine what’s possible in our life, we generally imagine the outcomes, the good things, the destination. We visualize the end result, not the process that it took to get there. But the process is the whole shebang. And a fair amount of the time, the process is fucking hard.
Everything sucks, some of the time
How you show up on the hard days usually ends up mattering more than how you show up on the good days.
Those who find a sense of fulfillment in the challenge of the process they have chosen for themselves, are the ones who are the highest performers.
When in doubt, take some slow, deep breaths, and listen to your body.
Sean Ritchey 