Monday 21 May 2018

Five to one

Every day I make the intention to spend my time after dinner doing some useful things like reading a book or at least one or two chapters of a book; like looking at a TED talk that can help me understand something or help me forward in life.

But so many of the evenings after my dinner, I start either on google news, looking at all the negativity of the day; either on Youtube, watching how some would-be comedians make fun of the politicians or celebrities or some failed talent show auditions; either spending time on Facebook or Twitter or even on Google finance, looking for a much too long a time how some of the very few stocks, I own, are doing and never seem to make me rich.

Today however I managed to pick a TED talk and I think I was lucky enough to encounter a good one. It was Mel Robbins talking for about 20 minutes. I think the 20 minutes is what makes TED talks so interesting. The speakers are forced to bring their message in a concise and interesting way. Mel Robbins did so. She managed to convince the audience and me that the odds of being born are very small. Come to think about it if just one of your millions of ancestors had died in a war or from a disease before the next of your extremely long row of ancestors was conceived, you would have not been here. The odds of being born as me or you as you, are smaller than 1 in 400 trillion. So the fact of being born makes us already something very special.

And sure enough, each of us has so many special ideas, we know what we should do. But to make our ideas happen is the really difficult part. We have to FORCE ourselves to do things that we feel not so comfortable with. We plan to do things that we really want to do inside of us, like getting up early the next day or losing some weight but when the time comes of doing, we find some excuses to remain in bed or start our exercise or diet tomorrow or the day after. She advocated if we plan to do something, if the time comes to get out of our comfort zone, just to count from 5 backwards to 1 and start doing it on the count of 1. How many times I intended to talk to the passenger next to me on the plane or train but always find just enough excuses not to start a conversation. The few times I did, were almost always so rewarding, but so many other times, I just found some cheap excuses not to have to come out of my comfort zone to start talking to a stranger.

Forcing ourselves within 5 seconds to actually do the kind of difficult things that can help us what we really want in life, may make a big difference.

Let us try and it. Tomorrow after dinner, I will avoid the news, twitter or any other distraction. I will read a chapter in one of the books I wanted to read for a long time but have just been on my shelf, I will look at another TED talk and I will do some exercise before going to bed. Wow, I hope I succeed. What do you plan? Let us really try the count from 5 to 1 to get us to come out of our comfort zone and do things that matter to our life to our growth.

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