Edition #20

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!

WOW 20 Editions! I want to thank you all for being here and reading. I genuinely hope this newsletter brings you value and provides you with actionable advice you can apply to your life.

If you have any comments or suggestions about what you would like to see more or less of, don’t be afraid to reply. I read every single one.

Read Time: 5 Minutes

Master Your Mindset

Short-Term Thinking, Short-Term Results

“10, 9, 8, 7…” The crowd roars!

Times Square is packed with people.

They have been there all day and now into the night just waiting for this moment.

“6, 5, 4…”

The anticipation is boiling over.

It is nearly here.

“3, 2, 1…HAPPY NEW YEAR!!”

They have all made it.

Bringing in the new year together…And with it New Year’s Resolutions.

Goals of eating healthier, exercising more, and quitting drinking.

They all head home motivated.

Two weeks later, they are munching down chips, sitting on the couch, and drinking beers.

It took just two weeks for their resolutions to become afterthoughts.

Why?

Because they were only focused on the short-term. Using short-term motivation to try and achieve a short-term result with no planning:

A recipe for disaster.

This goes way beyond just New Year’s Resolutions.

You see my friends, nothing worth achieving in life is done in the short-term.

Short-term thinking usually ends in 1 of 2 ways:

Brief success, then regression:

Say your goal is to do ‘dry January.’ No alcohol for the whole month.

Say you succeed. Great, you reached your goal so now you feel accomplished and go super hard in February, drinking more than you normally would because ‘you’ve earned it,’ right?

This is a common problem with any short-term goal you succeed in. You don’t have a long-term focus so once you reach your goal you fall into a state of “Cool, now what?” and you fall back into your old ways.

Complete Failure:

Say your goal is to lose 15lbs in a month.

You start eating better and exercising. But by the end of the month, you have only lost 6lbs.

A common problem with short-term thinking is you tend to overestimate what you can do in these short horizons, leading to ‘failures’ such as the one described above.

This thinking leads to disappointment and ultimately self-deprecation, even though losing 6lbs in a month is a significant achievement and should have been viewed as great progress toward a longer-term weight loss plan.

Your short-term mindset stopped this from happening.

Mindset Shift

The flip side of this is we tend to underestimate what we are capable of in the long-term.

This is not an easy thing to overcome because the human mind doesn’t perceive the long-term future very well.

But there is a way around this.

When it comes to goals or self-imposed challenges, ALWAYS think long-term.

By doing this for every major goal you set, you leave no ambiguity.

You are always thinking long, treating everything as a game of consistency and sustainability.

These are the things — the results, the outcomes, the identity shifts — in life that will yield meaningful results.

You stop aiming short → It’s not 15lbs in a month. It’s I am a fit and healthy person.

This leads to 6lbs lost, then 5lbs, then 4lbs, then 2lbs and so on until you reach a happy maintenance and a new long-term fitness goal emerges.

That version of you didn’t reach that arbitrary deadline in one month. But that doesn’t matter. Because that version achieved something much greater: a life-changing result and mindset shift.

Whatever your goals are in life let go of the idea of quick hacks or immediate results.

Drill it into your psyche that the way to achieve is by consistently taking action and letting time prove your dedication was worth it.

Keep showing up and your long-term future is immensely bright!

Hone Your Habits

Mind Sculpting Habits: Elevate Your Creativity

Your mind is a muscle. You can train it just like you can any other muscle. The type of training is just different.

Instead of physical training you need mental training.

Develop one or multiple habits in each of these 3 areas to get your mind working at full force:

Area #1 - Fill Your Mind

We are receiving inputs all day long.

How you choose to fill your mind will ultimately determine the way you think.

Build a habit that fills your mind with useful information. Think:

• Education

• Ideas

• Novel Resources

These things create intrinsic motivation, meaning they motivate you through the fun, the challenge, or the satisfaction of the activity.

Choose inputs that interest you and improve your thinking. Make this a regular habit.

Example: Watch 20-30mins of YouTube per day on a topic you want to learn more about.

Area #2 - Empty Your Mind

Once you have all these inputs you can’t just let them bottle up.

Doing so will leave you trapped in a chaotic headspace, which will stunt any progress you could have made with the information you took in.

Try habits such as:

• Journaling

• Planning or Scheduling

• Practicing Mindfulness (Doesn’t have to be meditation. Can be as simple as a 15min daily walk)

Thinking through these inputs that filled your mind allows you to make sense of them and clear mental space to learn new things or learn deeper concepts within those same ideas.

Area #3 - Use Your Mind

Now it’s time to apply what you have taken in and reflected on.

You need to actually use your mind. You need some sort of vessel to focus your efforts on.

Use the ideas you have been learning and the clarity you have gained to start building things of your own.

Try habits such as:

• Writing (Newsletter, sales pages, book, etc)

• Web design (Building pages, practicing on a new platform)

• Recording videos (Creating Youtube videos, short-form content, etc)

Anything that takes the knowledge and reflection you gained in Areas #1 and #2 and applies it to the real world.

Training yourself in habits that fill your mind, then empty your mind, and then use your mind will create a powerful cycle.

This cycle, when done consistently, will create a powerful future for you.

Words of Wisdom

You can complement this weekly newsletter with short reminders, ideas, and thoughts about personal development by following me on Twitter (or X. I can’t get used to that).

Thanks for reading! And always remember…

Slow and steady. Never Idle.

Until next week,

Austin Sargent