Edition #22

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 3 amazing individuals who have joined us since last week. Thanks for being here and welcome to the Never Idle team!

Read Time: 5 Minutes

Master Your Mindset

Your Answer to Life: Play the Fool

Back when I was in school, I participated in a mock trial.

I was on the jury, set to determine the innocence of a teenage girl who harbored a Nazi soldier during the war.

Remember, I said mock trial. Fake. Pretend. You with me? Cool.

The prosecution and defense made their points and the other jury members and I were sent off to deliberate. Unlike an actual trial, we had a time limit.

1 hour.

We took an initial vote.

10 innocent. 2 guilty.

I was 1 of the 2.

We argued our points back and forth for about 40mins.

Time was getting tight.

The numbers were against me.

So what did I do?

I caved.

Even though I still strongly believed she was guilty of the crime, I switched my vote to innocent.

Why?

I hated being judged.

I hated the feeling of being outnumbered.

I wanted these feelings to go away. I just wanted to fit in.

The desire for external validation crowded out my moral compass.

Rather than look foolish, I preferred to be accepted. It was safer. More comfortable.

But now — looking back — I regret it. I wish I would have stuck to my guns. Accepted the feeling of foolishness to advocate for something I believed in.

Look, the stakes were low. It was just a mock trial in school. But the feeling — the craving — for validation is very real.

This need for validation can come from opinions we share in social settings, like the one I described above — but it can also come from things we create and our desire for them to be well received.

Take this newsletter for example. Right now, I am probably putting way too much energy into hoping you are reading and enjoying these very words.

See, I’m not talking down to you.

I have this issue just like I’m sure many of you do too.

It’s human nature.

Too often we seek validation from others and in doing so, we scare ourselves out of taking the risks necessary to grow.

I haven’t solved this problem.

I think I even used to be addicted to this feeling of validation without realizing it.

I still struggle with it today.

But I’m here telling you this because now I am being more thoughtful when this feeling comes up.

Here lies the lesson — the mindset shift — I want you to take away today.

Realize this:

When you express something, whether it’s through sharing your opinion or sharing something you have created, you can’t control what others think about it.

When you create something, it is ALL yours while you work on it.

But once you release it, it’s the world’s to have and to react to.

Realizing this was profound for me.

Create things you want to create — But then delegate the responsibility to others.

Let your creation become the world’s possession.

I call this Create then Delegate.

This relieves you of the burden of worrying about what others think of your creations (or thoughts or opinions) and allows you to put full focus into the next one.

Their opinions about what you have to say or share, say far more about them than it says about you.

So let people have their opinions.

By allowing yourself to be the fool, you grant yourself the freedom to not take yourself too seriously.

Overthinking about external validation only stunts you from putting things out into the world that others might desperately need.

Hopefully, this message is one of those things. But if it’s not — if you scoff at these words — I have already transitioned to creating something new. Embracing my inner fool.

When YOU embrace being the fool, you will stop allowing this desire for external validation to impede your progress.

This will allow you to freely explore the journey of life you are meant to go on.

Life is a fool’s journey.

You must embrace life this way to truly actualize your potential.

To you my friend — To being fools together.

Hone Your Habits

Habit Proportioning: Finding the Balance

Our habits and behaviors can steer us in many directions.

Even when we are on a good path it is often easy to feel overwhelmed by all the ‘good habits’ we have to perform daily just to maintain our trajectory.

If you have ever felt this pain, here is a solution that may help:

Proportion your habits based on what you need to give more focus to at this stage in your life.

Let me explain.

Say you really need to get your health in order. Your proportions may look like this:

• 60% Health

• 30% Business

• 10% Relationships

Of course, there can be more buckets and many more sub-bullets but this is just a simple example of major areas we all have to manage.

The key to proportioning your habits is that you don’t give any of your positive habits up entirely, you simply shift your focus and time dedication accordingly.

So say you were making good progress on a business venture but in turn, you had been neglecting your health so you opt for the proportion above to get your life back into balance.

You don’t just throw your progress on the business end to the side, you just ratchet it down a few notches and ratchet up your focus on your diet, exercise, and recovery.

This maintains the good business habits you have developed by keeping them in the fold while allowing you to enhance another area of your life.

Maybe you follow these proportions for 3 months and are happy with the progress you made on your health.

The next quarter you may flip them.

Now 60% of your time is going toward your relationships because you could only dedicate minimal time to them when your health was the priority. You need that social interaction to keep you going so you re-prioritize.

These are just examples.

Where you set your focus is up to you.

But the principle of proportioning your habits and your focus is a method you can use to ensure priorities are met while maintaining habits — just at different levels (ex: 1hr workouts become 30min workouts) — to keep you on the right track and find balance in your life.

You can’t go full blast in every area of your life all the time.

You will burn out and you won’t sustain over the long term.

Use habit proportioning to build your life into seasons or phases to ensure you are consistently making the progress you are looking for, whatever that may be for you at the time.

Words of Wisdom

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

Thanks for reading! And always remember…

Slow and steady. Never Idle.

Until next week,

Austin Sargent