đź“š A&B #147

The origin story of Alex & Books, "Maybe You Should Give Up", and more.

June 25, 2023

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đź‘‹ Hey everyone,

Here are a few popular posts you may have missed:

đź“š Book Summary:

This week's book is “Maybe You Should Give Up” by Byron Morrison.

If you ever felt like you were getting in your own way or sabotaging your success, this book is for you. The author talks about the 7 mental barriers that keep us stuck and how to overcome them.

Here are 3 key lessons from the book:

đź“–

1) Give Up Being Reactive

The first lesson in the book is to quit being reactive and instead be responsive.

Reactions are impulsive whereas responses are controlled. When we’re reactive, we make emotional decisions we often regret. When we’re responsive, we take a moment to analyze the situation to make a logical decision.

For example, let’s say you’re stuck in traffic.

A common reaction would be to get frustrated at the situation, but doing so wouldn’t change anything and you’d still be stuck in traffic regardless of how angry you felt.

Instead, a better response would be to recognize that it would be pointless to get stressed over a situation that you couldn’t change and instead use the extra time to listen to music or a podcast.

Another helpful tip is the “15-Minute Rule.”

The next time you face a major setback or difficult situation, give yourself 15 minutes to go for a walk, meditate, listen to music, do a brief workout, or journal.

This will give you the time needed to process the event, bring your emotions back to baseline, and make a more calm and clear-headed decision.

đź“–

2) Give Up Comparing Yourself To Others

One of the reasons why so many people are never truly happy is because they’re constantly comparing themselves to others.

When you compare yourself to others, no matter what you achieve, you will never feel like it’s enough. That’s because there will always be some aspect of your life that you’ll see as a never-ending chase to get what someone else has.

Byron shares an example of a client that had a successful career but still felt like a failure. When Byron asked his client who he was comparing himself with, he blurted out “Tim Ferriss.”

Now of course even if you’re a millionaire with an amazing life, you’ll feel like a failure when you compare yourself to a multi-millionaire who’s written 4x bestsellers and has #1 ranked podcast. However, comparing his level of success to Tim’s was ludicrous–especially since Tim is a one-in-a-billion success story.

Reading this story might seem silly, but how many of us compare our lives to the most successful people in our industry?

If you ever do find yourself comparing your life to someone else, chances are something triggered that emotional response and you’re being reactive (see lesson #1).

One helpful tip is to eliminate or reduce your exposure to the trigger that caused you to compare yourself to others. For instance, if scrolling through LinkedIn causes you to feel like you aren’t successful enough, block it from your computer or put a time limit on it.

đź“–

3) Give Up On Being So Hard On Yourself

One of my favorite lessons from the book is something we all know but need to constantly remind ourselves of: Give up being so hard on yourself.

It’s great to hold yourself to a high standard and strive to be the best, but being unnecessarily hard on yourself will almost always hurt you.

If you constantly fixate on your mistakes, shortcomings, and failures, you can easily spiral into a state that reinforces your low self-esteem, where no matter what you do, it will never feel like you are doing enough.

Now you do need an element of self-criticism/internal drive to keep yourself pushing to improve, but you have to balance that drive with compassion.

For example, if you do make a big mistake, like dropping the ball at work on a major customer’s account, no amount of beating yourself up is going to undo the situation. If anything, dwelling on it will only waste time and make you feel worse.

A better response would be to take a moment to observe why the mistake was made, fix it, and then make sure it doesn’t happen again in the future.

âś… Actionable Advice:

1) Give being reactive and be responsive:

  • The next time you feel negative emotions rising, take a few deep breaths and a moment to analyze the situation before taking any action.

  • If it’s a major situation, take 15 minutes to go for a walk, workout, or journal to give yourself time to process what’s going on and what to do next.

2) Give up comparing yourself to others:

  • Take a moment to realize how silly it is to compare your life to a person who is in the top 0.0001% of a field.

  • Identify the triggers that are causing you to compare your life to other people and then work on reducing or eliminating them.

3) Give up being so hard on yourself:

  • The next time you make a mistake, don’t be reactive and get mad at yourself.

  • Instead, be kind to yourself, reflect on what went wrong, how you can fix it, and how to prevent the same mistake from happening in the future.

đź“– Reading Lesson:

đź’Ž Weekly Gem:

Update: I’ll use this section to share the best piece of content I’ve found each week. It could be a video, podcast, thread, quote, or something else. Enjoy!

If you’re into biohacking or productivity, you’ll love this podcast. Tim dives into how he identifies biohacking trends, how to build a network, his personal writing routine, and much more.

Thank you for your support, I'll see you next Sunday!

Read on,

Alex W.5

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