80 The #1 false belief affecting every part of your life

No. 80 – 16 Jun 2024

Welcome to the 80th edition of the True Progress Newsletter, a weekly newsletter on mastering fear and anxiety for optimal performance.

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Happy Father's Day to all the fathers out there.

INSIGHTS TO REFLECT ON

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Fear of failure keeps you in your comfort zone. Your comfort zone makes you risk-averse. Risk aversion limits your possibilities. Limited possibilities leave you with limited beliefs about yourself.

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You must constantly remind yourself that failure is information and feedback to reflect on, not confirmation that you're not good enough.

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"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So sail away from the safe harbour. Explore, dream, discover."

— Mark Twain

EMOTION TO MEET

Neuroscience and brain-imaging research shows that properly naming an emotion is critical to managing and taming it.

Here's 1 to explore:

Shame

Definition | A painful feeling of humiliation or distress caused by the consciousness of wrong or foolish behavior.

Example | He felt shame for letting his team down during the work project.

Origin | Old English sc(e)amu (noun), sc(e)amian ‘feel shame’, of Germanic origin; related to Dutch schamen(verb) and German Scham (noun), schämen (verb).​

CHALLENGE TO GROW

When was the last time you perceived something as a failure? What was it? Were there people around? How did it feel?

Now, consider the following:

"Failure is information and data to analyze so I can improve when I try again, it's not confirmation of my potential because I understand that getting good at anything requires effort and feedback."

⌾ Reply to this email and let us know how it went.

BOOK JUST READ

We've read plenty of books on accelerated learning, but this one breaks it down into four simple principles. The book uses cooking to illustrate them, but they can be applied to just about any skill.

The acronym is DiSSS:

• Deconstruct: Find the LEGO blocks of the thing you're learning, what are the minimal learnable units you should be starting with?

• Select: Which 20% of the blocks should you focus on for 80% or more of the outcomes you want (Pareto principle)?

• Sequence: In what order should you learn the blocks?

• Stakes: How do you set up stakes to create real consequences and guarantee you follow through with the learning program?

Apply this to anything new you have to learn and would like to get good at fast.

Till next week,
— Carlos & Stef