Edition #11

Hi All!

Here is your weekly serving of practical guidance and inspiration to ensure you live your life with purpose. Feel free to forward this along to friends and family. Enjoy!

I wanted to give a quick shout to the 6 amazing individuals who have joined us since last week. Thanks for being here and welcome to the Never Idle team!

Read Time: 6 Minutes

Master Your Mindset

Overcome Limiting Beliefs

As far back as I can remember, I always struggled to be creative.

I wasn’t good at drawing, painting, graphic design, music, or really anything that involved creating something from scratch. I had a hard time coming up with ideas and even when I did, I couldn’t act on them because my skills weren’t up to standards.

I was more of the analytical type, good with numbers, planning ahead, and making data-driven decisions.

I went on like this for decades - “I’m not creative, I’m just an analytical thinker.”

But all of this was simply in my head. I was bucketing myself as a certain type of person. This or that. I was limiting my potential due solely to a belief I held about myself.

6 months ago, I scrapped this limiting belief and started creating in the form of writing. I started a blog and wrote 3 articles. While it got me started, I didn’t feel like it was the right direction. So I moved to Twitter — short-form content — writing about habits and mindset.

This form of content was fun to create.

I later supplemented this with the very newsletter you are reading, and I have been writing this for about 3 months now.

The point of all this?

I put myself in a box for so long and didn’t try things simply because I held a limiting belief about myself, “I’m not creative.”

We all have certain natural gifts and natural weaknesses. There is no denying this.

But there are way more times that we hold ourselves back from:

• Trying new things

• Improving ourselves

• Developing a new skill

• Changing the trajectory of our lives

All because we think we can’t do something.

Well for you, that ends today. Today you stop these limiting beliefs dead in their tracks with these 3 techniques so you can start breaking out of the imaginary box you’ve kept yourself in for so long.

Hone Your Habits

The Power of Small Wins

We all want that huge win. That feeling of massive achievement. Where we stop and absolutely relish in our glory for all that we have achieved.

But those moments come around maybe 1-4 times ever in your life.

The truth is, achievement usually doesn’t come about in a single moment of glory. It comes from consistently eking out small wins over a long period of time that compound into massive results.

Habits can produce those consistent small wins for you and while it will take more time for certain habits to show results than others, if you continue to stack those Ws you will eventually be amazed by the results.

Where does their power come from? These 2 reasons.

Overcoming Resistance

Starting a new habit that gets you on the path to achieving a long-term goal can be daunting. This high-level view can scare you away from ever getting started.

So how can you overcome this resistance?

You break it down into a smaller more achievable action to stack your first win.

Let’s say you want to build an exercise habit but you haven’t worked out in a year.

It wouldn’t make sense for you to start out with Arnold Schwarzenegger’s chest routine. That would be scary as fu*…heck.

Instead, just simply overcome the resistance.

Put your athletic shoes on and just step outside. Literally, you don’t even have to go for a walk. Just stand outside with your athletic shoes on. If you go back in after a few minutes, those few minutes off the couch was your first small win.

Tomorrow, do the same thing.

And the next day.

Eventually, you will be like, “Well, I’m already out here. Let me go for a short walk.”

Then your short walk becomes a bit longer.

Then you jog half of it. And so on.

In a couple of months, you have a closet full of small wins and an exercise habit that will progress over time, moving closer and closer toward your long-term goal.

All from, putting your shoes on and simply stepping outside.

Building Momentum

From the example above, this part might now seem obvious. But to really drill it home, understand that small wins are building blocks.

You set a realistic goal or target for that day and begin to create a pattern of consistent achievement.

You are no longer reaching for that big carrot, always out of arms reach.

You are just stepping from one block to the next. Slow and steady.

Each small step reinforces your belief in your own abilities giving you confidence and building momentum in your favor.

Until one day you look back and that big carrot you could never reach is actually well in your rear-view because you have compounded your small wins into a far more momentous achievement than you previously thought possible.

What is your big carrot? Your big goal that currently feels out of reach.

What’s a small win you can earn today to move you even a micro-step closer to it?

Go earn that small win today and use it as your first of many building blocks in your progression toward your definition of success.

Words of Wisdom

You can complement this weekly newsletter with short reminders, ideas, and thoughts about personal development by following me on Twitter.

Thanks for reading! And always remember…

Slow and steady. Never Idle.

Until next week,

Austin Sargent