Master the Art of Showing Up

“Don't be daunted. Just do your job. Continue to show up for your piece of it, whatever that might be.”_Elizabeth Gilbert

The secret of self-confidence lies in showing up consistently to do what needs to be done in key areas of life.

And as it turns out, the most effective people among us are those who have mastered the art of showing up; they are the ones who show up every day. 

Based on the foregoing, I think we can agree that it is good thing to always strive to make ourselves show up better in important areas of our lives.

The author of the international best-selling book, ‘Atomic Habits,’ James Clear has an insight for us in this direction. 

In order to master the art of showing up, James Clear says we should only aim to be one percent better, every day. 

Yes, you read that right. We don’t need to try and be hundred percent better on any single day, but we need to try and be at least, one percent better, every single day.

Be wary of pushing yourself to the very limit of your capacity on any one day, which can, and almost invariably will lead to burnout, and failure to show up the very next day. 

It is far better to improve by a tiny percentage everyday than to make sporadic moves in progress every now and then.

To avoid the insidious danger of showing up only whenever we are motivated, we should learn to show up every time by making consistency the hallmark of our process.  

This means we need to make every session incredibly easy to do. 

So if for example there is a book you’ve been putting aside for months due to its volume, now change your mindset from wanting to read the whole book to just showing up to read at least a page per day. 

Do this today, tomorrow, and then the next day.

If you do this for 300 days in a row, not only will you end up finishing the book, you will have established the character-identity of someone who can show up every day for a non-urgent, important thing.

Though there is nothing quite remarkable about this slow progress, but what is remarkable about it is that it helps put a good behavior on autopilot in our lives. 

This strategy can help turn us into the type of person who not only shows up every day but also the type of person who shows up no matter what, especially when it is easier not to.

You see, optimization comes easy after standardization is already in place. Improvement in any area is easy for someone who already has the habit of showing up every day in that area.

Showing up is essential to anything worthwhile in life; showing up unremittingly is powerful indeed because when we truly master the art of showing up, we can get good at almost anything else. No wonder an American writer, Woody Allen believes that, “showing up is 80 percent of life.”

Set Up Your Environment to Make Good Actions Easy

“Good habits are worth being fanatical about.”_John Irving

Today, I want to share a strategy on how we can make good habits easier to install and bad habits a little difficult to indulge. 

This simple strategy involves the use of friction as a means to an end.  By its use, we eliminate existing friction to give good behaviours a clear smooth passage but we create additional friction to hinder the growth of weakening bad habits. 

On the importance of habits and the reason for diligence about the subject, an American psychologist, Williams James once wrote as follows: 

“We must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can and guard against the growing into ways that are likely to be disadvantageous to us, as we should guard against the plague.

The more of the details of our daily life we can hand over to the effortless custody of automatism, the more our higher powers of mind will be set free for their own proper work.”

So if we want to make good habits easy, all we need to start with is: reduce the friction on the path of purpose by removing anything that can get in the way of our best intentions. 

By the same token, if we want to stop doing something less desirable, all we need to start with is: increase the friction on the path of purpose by enabling our resistance to self-destructive behaviours.

All mortals need dependable supports in their moments of weakness. That is why a carefully designed environment is necessary, even for the strongest amongst us. 

In this direction, James Clear, the author of 'Atomic Habits' writes: 

“The people who exhibit the most self-control are not actually those who have superhuman willpower; they’re the people who are tempted the least.” 

For such people, if they don’t want to watch much television, they don’t rely on raw willpower to prevent the formation of a low-value habit; instead they proactively unplug the TV and keep its cabinet locked.

The silent but essential insight here is this: as imperative as doing the right thing now is, doing the right thing, the next time is far more important.

This is because habit is basically defined as repeated performance. What we do once or once in a while doesn’t count for much in the context of habits. Habits are about what we do every single time. 

Repetition is the essence of habits, and for many people, frictions determine the fate of not just the present action but that of the next series of actions.

When we set up our environment for a meaningful purpose, we are priming it to make desirable behaviours the default behaviours. In other words, by removing obstructive frictions, we are making good actions, the easy actions to do.

For example:  If we want to make reading a habit, instead of putting TV set in multiple rooms in our house, we should put stacks of books in multiple rooms in our house.

This kind of setup gives regular study a clear smooth passage.

It is so because—too often—what we are surrounded by, can make a difference in the kind of behaviour we actually engage in, as the Stanford professor BJ Fogg writes:

 “If you pick the right (small) behaviour and sequence it right, then you won’t have to motivate yourself to have it grow. It will just happen naturally, like a good seed planted in a good spot.”

Now, whatever it is that we may want to achieve, we just need to proactively design an environment where the undesirable actions become the ones that are difficult to take on, while the necessary actions are proactively made easy to do.

Understand that when we harness the discipline to design an environment that enables a specific, meaningful aim, then our preferred habits will happen almost effortlessly. 

Therefore, set up your environment to make good actions easy, going forward.

Turn Your Self-Delusion into Self-Discipline

“The worst of all deceptions is self-deception.”_Plato

When we fail to act in line with our principles, values and goals, we are not being true to ourselves. And to be incongruent is to live in disharmony.

We create internal conflict every time our actions don’t match with our professed intentions as the author of ‘Unshakable Character,’ Jim Rohn says: “Affirmation without discipline is the beginning of delusion.”

For most of us, this usually takes the form of giving in to distractions by doing what feels good at the moment, instead of doing the right things that we know deep down we really ought to do. 

Though we often want to justify our behaviors and convince ourselves we're still on track, but a deeper reflection would reveal the truth of our situation; we’re in romance with self-delusion.

Without question, our behaviors directly translate into our results. Even with best of intentions, to get ahead, we need to commit ourselves fully to self-discipline. Every true success is a product of responsibility, ownership and accountability. 

To believe in something, and refuse to act with purpose to ensure its realization is the sure path to cognitive dissonance; the direct consequence of self-delusion.

 

A Day Is a Slice of Life

A day is not just a tangible slice of our lives; it is also a miniature eternity.

If we goof away our time in one day and still think it doesn’t matter at all, then we are in a state of delusion. 

This is so for the simple reason that our entire lives are made up of a fixed number of days. Once a day slips away, the downward slope has been ignited.

Think about this: If we repeat our sub-optimal days, for the next five years, it is pretty easy to predict the direction of our lives; isn’t it?

Now, we need to be honest with ourselves and face the truth of our personal situations. We need to admit that we procrastinate a lot. 

We need to admit that we engage in low value activities at the expense of high value ones. And we need to admit that we rarely make the most of our days. 

It is only by being accountable enough to recognize our flaws can we begin to correct them. In the words of Roman Emperor, Marcus Aurelius, “I seek the truth...it is only persistence in self-delusion and ignorance that does harm.” 

In order words, we should decide to turn self-deception into self-discipline by forcing ourselves to do the things we need to do, when we need to do them, whether we feel like it or not.

At the end of the day, the only person who can hold us accountable for anything is ourselves. And to turn out well in life, we must develop the mental honesty to take full responsibility for our results by thinking right and equally acting in accordance with our positive thoughts.

In conclusion:  we have to stop lying to ourselves by turning every suboptimal element of self-delusion into a building block of self-discipline, going forward.

Adhere to the Fundamentals

"The minute you get away from fundamentals, the bottom can fall out of your game, your schoolwork, your job, whatever (it is) you’re doing."_Michael Jordan

Fundamentals are the key.

In religion, the best devotees are the most fundamentally sound. In business, the best companies are the most fundamentally sound. In academics, the best students are the most fundamentally sound.

And of course, in sports, the best athletes are the most fundamentally sound. 

Here is what we need to grasp: laser focus on the fundamentals is the quality-trait of true masters in all walks of life; without a shred of doubt, lasting success of any kind requires an excellent command of the fundamentals. 

True achievements are the outcomes of consistency around the fundamentals!

The great ones may have some unique advantages than the average performers, but, perhaps, more than anything else, they must get a superb mastery of the fundamentals of their crafts as an Olympic gold medalist, Jesse Owens states in the following words: 

“In the end, it's extra effort that separates a winner from second place. But winning takes a lot more than that, too; it starts with complete command of the fundamentals.”

Of course, the specific practices and actions will be different for dervishes, executives, scholars, and athletes. However, all exceptional performers (without exception) have a firm grasp on the fundamentals in their lives.

So, in whatever game you are playing, if you really want to dependably perform at your very best, you need to establish strong fundamentals from now onwards. 

Once you figure out what your fundamentals are, get better at them, and see the trajectory of your game take a nimble turn in the positive direction. 

Finally, digest the key point of this article which is succinctly expressed in another insight from the basketball superstar, Michael Jordan as: “Get the fundamentals down (right) and the level of everything you do will rise.”

Revision is the Cornerstone of Excellence

“It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer.”_Albert Einstein 

In matters of excellence and creativity, the difference-maker has little to do with natural endowment but a lot to do with doing the work. And doing the work is not an event; it is a process: a process of toil and conscientious revision.

Excellence is not about what we do once in a while, it is about what we do, again and again, for a long period of time. This is what the theory of 10,000-Hour Rule unmistakably describes.  

That is, to become a master in any field, we need to keep at it for a minimum of 10,000 hours of deliberate practice. In order words, every expert has spent about ten years of labour to improve and progress on the fundamentals of their craft.

Revision is the cornerstone of true excellence; it is the ultimate difference between average and extra-ordinary performance in all fields of endeavours. 

To use writing as an example here: know that amateur writers are the ones who manage to write their manuscripts once or twice, but literary masters are the ones who painstakingly re-write chapters, over and over on a granular level. 

An author of the satirical novel, ‘The Corrections,’ Jonathan Franzen boldly highlighted this point when he said: “The (elite) writer’s life is a life of revisions.”

Furthermore, let’s read what three notable modern writers have to say with regards to the concept of revision:

1} A Writer-in-Residence at the Harvard Divinity School, Terry Tempest Williams says: 

“Through revision, I enter the realm of the unspeakable and find the words that have eluded me.”

2} A Russian novelist and poet, Vladimir Nabokov says: 

“I have rewritten — often several times — every word I have ever published. My pencils outlast their erasers.”

3} An American journalist and short-story writer, Ernest Hemingway says about one of his best works: 

“I rewrote the ending of 'Farewell to Arms' 39 times before I was satisfied.”

If we can cultivate the grit to stay longer with creative challenges, we will give ourselves enough time to think and rethink until we can come up with something truly remarkable. 

It’s through sheer determination that the greats overcome the hurdles of discovery. And like them, if we are willing to patiently revise and refine our approach for as long as it takes, we will be surprised by the unlimited capacity of our minds. 

In the words of the British business magnate, Richard Branson: “Every success story is a tale of constant adaption, revision and change.” 

You see, in the end, patient revision is the simple secret behind true mastery and enduring excellence.