In a similar vein, businesses sometimes will lose a return client by providing bad or blatantly overpriced service. They win in the short term, but lose severely in the long term, not only from sending away a customer, but sending her away with motivation for bad mouthing among her peers. The ripple effect is real.

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Doctors and patients, teachers and students, instructional videos and viewer. These are all relationships that could grow stronger if the why was introduced.

Patients would be more compliant if they knew why they are taking that specific medication over another, or why they need to get into good health habits. Students would pay more attention in class if the teacher would take just a moment from the lesson to explain the point of it all and how the lesson applies to the real world. Homeowners would mess their projects less if the presenter explained why they need a specific tool or work on a project in a specific order.

By introducing the constraints of time and money, we are sacrificing the why and jumping straight to the facts. “Take this pill.” “Study for the exam.” “Do it this way.” Why? and if you can’t identify the why, is it necessary? is it the right approach?

Life is not a list of facts. It is a list of problems that could be solved if we knew those facts. But you have to start with identifying the problem. Let the problem be clear and the facts will flow through, carrying it to the solution. Explain it even if the question hasn’t been asked.

Where else have you seen the power of why? Leave a comment!

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Some use this as an excuse not even to bother trying; others see it as the end to their goals. They become either their crutch or the finish line ribbon they must break to feel satisfied with their existence.

The truth is, there is no magic sauce. No one is better than you at every single thing. The thing that they appear to be better than you at, they just cultivated through hours upon hours of obsessive behavior and impeccable work ethic. Most people who seem to have this “magic sauce” become great at one thing, or at least one thing at a time. The phrase “you can do anything, but not everything” holds, but you should rephrase it as: “You can do everything, just not all at the same time.”

For example, if becoming a great reader of many books was a new year’s resolution, then you have two options: do you want to finish as many books as you possibly can, or do you want to have the complete comprehension of all the books that you read? One involves moving quickly, the other moving intelligently. Reading as many books as possible becomes a simple task then when all you want is to make a list of the books you have read and know that no one will question you about them. But instead, your goal should probably be to grow your intelligence and comprehension about the topics you are reading.

One or two books a month, and writing down a summary of what you read that day in a piece of paper( to reinforce comprehension) is probably a much better use of your time than turning pages with no goal other than getting to “The End.” Focus is the secret ingredient that makes people the best at one thing. They take their time, obsess over this single goal and maintain a laser-like focus on it.

Take online courses. I have been a proponent of online classes from the moment I found out that they existed. Other people close to me prefer the environment of a traditional classroom where people can ask questions, and live discussions are allowed to brew. This classroom environment had the opposite effect on me, though, an introverted person who merely survived this environment by sitting in the back, hiding behind someone, and praying that the teacher never put me in the spot.

Taking online courses, though, I could not only absorb the material at my own pace, but I could do so without the constant stress of being the center of attention. That can be a double-edged sword, of course, because some people will play the course videos on the background and skip the optional quizzes and projects. To get the most out of it, you have to treat online courses as traditional courses. You have to turn everything off but the video of the lesson you are watching. You have to put in the hours and do the work.

Doing the work

Doing the work is where most of us fall short of the task. Most of us aim, get distracted by something else, then lower our bow and never take the shot. We don’t want to do the work. We satisfy our brain pathways by merely talking about how “how great life would be if…” and then we abandon a project before even starting it.

Take at least a month and do the work. Reassess your project when the end of the month comes to decide if: You need another month, you will take a break from it, or you will abandon it forever. Not everything we think we want to do is as it seems from the outside. Maybe you have always wanted to be a commercial airline pilot. Still, when you enroll in small airplane courses, and you get to fly one for the first time, you realize how stressful and fearful you feel and get to experience first hand what it is, versus what you perceived it to be. That’s ok. You tried it, and now you can move on to the next thing.

The greats in any field make things look a lot simpler than they are. That is what seduces us. Take a rockstar, for example. Most of us wanted to be a rockstar at some point in our lives. I know I did. They make it look so simple and execute it with so much confidence. What they never talk about is the grueling schedule they need to have to make it to all the gigs to which they have committed. Traveling from one place to another and playing full sets with almost no real rest. That, without also considering the emotional pain of playing or singing the same songs that you wrote probably on your darkest hours of your life. To relive those emotions has to have a toll on you.

They are having to play full shows while sick or having to interact with interviewers, fans, and any human being that crosses their path in a kind and mild manner, even when you don’t feel like it. Who is perfectly calm, collected, and kind, with an ethical, moral compass 100% of the time? Why do we expect this, then, of artists? Public and press criticism adds another level of complexity.

Take also inventors, founders, CEOs, and the “evil” wealthy businessmen of any country. People criticize them for earning too much money for the little work they do. They compare their salary to their employees. Nobody talks about their 2 hour sleep days, never-ending meetings to keep the company afloat so that hundreds, maybe thousands of employees do not lose their jobs. No one discusses coming up with new ideas so that the company stays relevant, and the fact that their workday usually doesn’t begin at 9 am or end at 6 pm. It is typically never-ending, especially at the beginning. While their friends are binge-watching or binge-drinking, they are binge-packaging their product and mailing it themselves.

These people are approaching business owners randomly to talk about their services, and they are trying to get investors to lift them off the ground when they have already poured and risked all their cash and time investment they possibly can. They are learning website design while trying to keep up with the arbitrary IRS rules because they have no money to pay anyone else to do it for them. They could be homeless at any moment, and you call them up to invite them to a local bar, and then hang up on them mad that they keep saying: “No.”

Next time you criticize an entertainer, businessman, artist, or anyone who you deem is earning “way too much,” please consider all this.

Make a choice

Eventually, you have to make a choice. When you are 50-60-100 years old, will you be happy “As Is,” or would you wish you could return the product and get a refund? Will you complain, or will you try to understand? Will you talk about your plans and then fire up the grill or the gaming system, or will you write down simple, actionable steps to go through with your project?

You don’t have to do anything. That is the best thing about being an adult. It is all on you. But once you make a choice, you have to own it. You have to live with it forever. If you leave the Success Hotel, do not linger around in the Lobby, criticizing everyone that comes out of the room to walk around the city. Remember, you chose your life. Or at least, how you reacted to what you were given. A lot of successful people had impossible upbringings and illnesses or afflictions that would stop many on their tracks. You could have what they have if you put in the work.

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Follow your pain as if it were a candle in the night, leading you to a place of decision. – Caroline Myss

I couldn’t swallow. No, this is not a sexual thing, but glad to know where your mind went. I had developed dysphagia, which is a condition where for one reason or another your swallowing mechanism is affected.

It all started with sandwiches. Eating a simple sandwich was taking me longer than everyone else at the table. People came in and left, satisfied, and I was still only halfway through. I was drinking so much liquid to get it down quickly, that I soon felt completely full with just a few bites. Weight started falling off, and with it came depression.

People talking to me when I was eating became my ultimate fear, as I needed full concentration to consciously initiate a successful swallow. Food stopped tasting of anything. It became a way to get enough nutrients inside my body so I wouldn’t die.

Backing up, the first few symptoms were indigestion and a strange taste in my throat. Doctors attributed it to acid reflux without doing any studies to ascertain this. I took the medications they put in my hands without researching them. I trusted science.

I blindly took these pills on days I felt the weird taste on my mouth. The more I took these, the better I felt, but the worse I felt when I stopped. So I continued taking them, on and off for a few months. Then, after one sleepless night of reflux, nausea and other sensations I decided to put the name of the pills on trusty ‘ol Google. The search results were shocking, from personal blogs to medical journals. Everything and everyone was against them. So why even prescribe them? A future blog post will further explore that question.

I stopped taking them overnight. This was the first of a few futile attempts that spanned almost two years, combined with many doctor visits, three endoscopies, three ER visits, one manometry, changes in medications, miracle potions and homeopathic solutions. It led me to psychologists, meditation, yoga and everything under the sun and moon. It convinced me that no one knows anything about anything when it comes to being healthy. You get thrown everything at you until something sticks, but there is no one definitive cure to definitive ailments.

After a year of this, I didn’t feel sick anymore because it became my routine. My “normal”. My square one. Pulling up my pants to keep them from falling down was casual. Carrying bags of groceries to a second-floor apartment was a lot more interesting. I went to medical studies and doctor visits like I was taking out the trash, or getting the mail. Another thing to do. Doctors didn’t seem to care, so I stopped, too. “Anxiety”: the lazy doctor’s solution to everything. I took pills for that, too.

When you go to a doctor, you expect someone like Dr. House. Someone who will stay with you until they find out what’s wrong with you and provide a cure. Either doctors are not as brilliant, or just not as interested as Mr. Gregory in solving a puzzle. Getting to the next patient, to comply with some quota, seems like a better deal. When they can’t figure something out quickly, they just stick “Anxiety” on your forehead and move on. It’s easy, and after taking the pills you get docile, sleepy and forget the whole thing. Try getting off of them after a while, though.

My parents came to my city to visit, and I took them to tourist spots. Whenever we stopped at a restaurant I wouldn’t eat anything. I would bring my own shakes and smoothies and drank them in the car. My family felt as if saying things like: “If you don’t eat then we won’t eat either,” would help. It was harder to accept for them than it was for me.

I had stopped fighting and just learned to survive. I stopped comparing myself to when eating a meal took 5 minutes, and I started comparing myself to the time when I couldn’t even drink a smoothie without it feeling strange. That’s when I realized that we, as human beings, just get used to things. We learn to survive. We adapt.

Our life is malleable. It is ever-changing and we change with it, like a surfer finding his perfect wave. Our first reaction is to pull back, throw tantrums, be angry with the world and think the darkest thoughts about life. I saw firsthand that if we just stick with it long enough, our bodies and mind will create the antidote, the answer. A new path will be forged. We become alchemists.

Months after living like this, I began eating at restaurants. Soups and easy stuff, at first. Continuing with the things I felt worked for me such as meditation, not eating or drinking anything hours before bed and giving myself an 8-hour sleep opportunity (as explained on Why We Sleep). I trained myself how to be a social person again.

You get used to your situation, but that doesn’t mean you can’t or shouldn’t evolve in some way. Adapting is merely to create a ground zero from where you can rise again. It is a defense mechanism to stop you from falling further. Think about the thrusters on a rocket. Eventually, you have to propel yourself upwards. Adapt, survive, but eventually live.

This post is to remind you, and myself, to not be shell shocked when something bad happens. Instead, let it sink in, float on it for a while. Don’t ignore your pain. Follow it. Allow your mind to build a new path in front of you.

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How often do you wake up, and purposelessly stumble out of bed and brush your useless teeth while the eyes are still closed? How many times have you wondered what it’s all about? “If I could…”, “If I would have …”, “I’m too old to…”. The internal chatter starts. One day closer to death. You get bombarded by your own internal army of enemies. You then swiftly look up the names of the people in history who made something of themselves at the age of 60+. Feeling confident that something, someday will eventually happen you get into your car and drive to work. “I got this.”

The truth is, as you might have inferred if you do not take any actionable steps to be where you want to be in five years, guess where you’ll be? That’s right, exactly where you are now. Granted, there are strokes of luck, usually bad, of things we cannot control that happen along the way. What is obvious is that no type of electronic device and its controller will take you there.

We often spend hours upon hours attempting to learn how to operate a device that is going to be used for pure entertainment and look away from our goals and dreams. Opening a bag of chips is easier than doing a few pushups, or even making your bed in the morning. We want to win without really trying to win. We want our problems to solve themselves and then become surprised when life lived itself out, and we didn’t even notice.

There is no going around it. If you want to build something, you have to get your hands dirty. The proof is in the pudding. Stick around. I’ll tell you everything.

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