The Scarlet Pimp
Supreme Member
- Apr 2, 2008
- 1,297
- 4,273
not getting what you want out of life? here's an excerpt that explains why a great many people never achieve the success they crave.
#3. Pretending You'll Magically Become Someone Else
Most people have an unspoken belief that, in the long term, they'll be a completely different person than they were today.
The guy with a dead-end customer service job says one day he'd "like to work in IT" but didn't spend even one minute today learning about computers, or yesterday, or the day before.
He hasn't signed up for a course or made plans to. He just has a vague notion that in 10 years he'll be at a desk with a well-paying computer job, with the unspoken assumption that at some point during the nebulous haze of the intervening decade, he'll have evolved into the type of person who devotes a lot of energy to learning computer things.
That guy I'm describing is me, of course, circa 1998.
But every obese person imagines themselves a decade from now having become thin, every coward imagines they'll be brave, you get the idea.
There's never a defined plan for how to get from Point A to Point Z, and never an acknowledgment of the unbearable truth, which is that who you're going to be 10 years from now is just who you are today times 3,652.
If you spent a good part of today playing iPhone games, then 10 years from now you'll be a person who's super good at iPhone games.
That's not a judgment; there are worse things to be (have you played The Room and its sequel? They're both great). But the point is, if you're kind of a laid-back, low-energy type today, you're not going to suddenly turn into a human dynamo next year or the year after, unless you start doing meth or something. If you have anger issues today, you'll have them 10 years from now. If you don't know kung fu today, you won't know it in 2035.
But if you're learning kung fu today, well, then we've got something.
"But I do want to learn kung fu! I just don't have the time!" Nope. Stop. Don't make be backtrack. If you had the gun to your head, you'd goddamned well find the time. If you can't make yourself start in the next 24 hours, you wouldn't do it even if you had 24 lifetimes.
http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-ways-youre-sabotaging-your-own-life-without-knowing-it/
#3. Pretending You'll Magically Become Someone Else
Most people have an unspoken belief that, in the long term, they'll be a completely different person than they were today.
The guy with a dead-end customer service job says one day he'd "like to work in IT" but didn't spend even one minute today learning about computers, or yesterday, or the day before.
He hasn't signed up for a course or made plans to. He just has a vague notion that in 10 years he'll be at a desk with a well-paying computer job, with the unspoken assumption that at some point during the nebulous haze of the intervening decade, he'll have evolved into the type of person who devotes a lot of energy to learning computer things.
That guy I'm describing is me, of course, circa 1998.
But every obese person imagines themselves a decade from now having become thin, every coward imagines they'll be brave, you get the idea.
There's never a defined plan for how to get from Point A to Point Z, and never an acknowledgment of the unbearable truth, which is that who you're going to be 10 years from now is just who you are today times 3,652.
If you spent a good part of today playing iPhone games, then 10 years from now you'll be a person who's super good at iPhone games.
That's not a judgment; there are worse things to be (have you played The Room and its sequel? They're both great). But the point is, if you're kind of a laid-back, low-energy type today, you're not going to suddenly turn into a human dynamo next year or the year after, unless you start doing meth or something. If you have anger issues today, you'll have them 10 years from now. If you don't know kung fu today, you won't know it in 2035.
But if you're learning kung fu today, well, then we've got something.
"But I do want to learn kung fu! I just don't have the time!" Nope. Stop. Don't make be backtrack. If you had the gun to your head, you'd goddamned well find the time. If you can't make yourself start in the next 24 hours, you wouldn't do it even if you had 24 lifetimes.
http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-ways-youre-sabotaging-your-own-life-without-knowing-it/