Building Strength pt.8

Practicing Our New Skills

Without basketball, I couldn’t motivate myself to do the hard things I used to. I couldn’t motivate myself to wake up early or to workout everyday. Until I had a realization. 

Actions Build Character

I don’t need to be motivated. I just need to do it. There’s no difference between doing the thing because I’m motivated or doing it because I made myself. So I started waking up early. My alarm would go off and I would go straight to the library. I wasn’t motivated to do it, I just did it. I’ve been a morning person ever since. My habits became my character.

“Strengths of character result from habit” - Aristotle

This is an important idea we get wrong in most areas except sports. In sports we praise the value of working hard when we don’t feel like it. We know our actions determine our character. Everywhere else in life, we expect our character to determine our actions.  

We give ourselves a label and then we match our actions to the label. We think if we stop being an introvert, we’ll speak more in oublic. But in reality, if we speak more in public, we’ll stop being an introvert. Our actions change our character.

Yesterday, we spoke about building your personal board of directors with exemplars for each aspect of your life. We discussed the value of finding exemplary people to emulate their character traits. Now, let’s talk about putting it into practice.

Exercise 1 - Creating Space

Just like dealing with our defaults, we need to first create space between action and reaction. For example, when someone says something unexpected to us, we need to find space to reason internally before we react. What are we doing in that space we make? We’re asking…

“What would X do in this situation?” 

You ask your personal board of directors what they would do. It’s up to you to pick which member of the board you ask, but with practice it gets easier to default to the right person. 

For me, when I have a business decision to make, I ask “What would Hormozi do?”. When I start getting emotional, I ask “What would Naval do?” I’ve been doing this long enough now that it’s usually second nature.

A helpful tool to put myself in the minds of my exemplars is journaling. I either write about a decision I made already or a decision I have time to make. I assume the persona of relevant board members and write out by hand what I believe they would do in my place. 

*Secret board member - yourself in the future. Oftentimes, we know what to do but we can’t see it through the fogginess of life. Alex Hormozi taught me this and it’s been surprisingly helpful. I write out what 80-year-old Noah would want me to do. He’s great because he knows me really well, he’s much wiser and somehow, against all odds, is even handsomer. 

Exercise 2 - Playing in the Sandbox

Kids play in sandboxes, where they can try new things with low risk. They can drop things, fall over, and build castles with more independence because the risk if they mess up is low. They can’t make a mess or hurt themselves too badly. 

We can use the same idea by creating sandboxes in our own life. Low-stakes environments to test out our new decision-making tools.

You don’t want the first time you call on your board of directors to be when you’re deciding whether or not to quit your job. The stakes are too high.

Be aware of less consequential decisions you need to make in your life. If you catch yourself in time, you can practice emulating your board of directors in a reversible situation. Once you do that enough, you’ll be able to use your newfound high-character, high-skill decision-making powers to make big positive changes in your life.

Brains Gains

What’s a decision you’re making now that you think someone else could solve better than you? What would that person do? (maybe you should also do that)

Now go have a wonderful Saturday. After this, you only have two more before the end of the year. I don’t know why that matters. But if it’s an excuse to have a good day, then use it. 

Your Biggest Fan,

Noah “BigNerd” Sochaczevski

PS. Here’s a video of someone who took making sandboxes way too far