Tag: Storytelling
How does this story end?
I’d had enough.
It was 2003, and I was a medical student who’d spent the last three years being harassed, bullied and left being thoroughly disillusioned with the career I’d once been so enamoured with.
So one evening after lectures, I climbed the creaky stairs to the attic that I was renting, gently closed the door, walked under the skylight window to the desk in the corner, sat down, took out a sheet of foolscap and a blue Bic biro…and started to write.
I wrote for what seemed like over an hour.
And when I pressed the final full stop in the page, and read through what I’d written, I wasn’t happy.
You see, what I’d written was a detailed, thought through description of what my life would look like over the next 40 years if I continued on the path that I was currently on.
I wrote out what would happen after third year, fourth year, fifth year, graduation, internship, hours I’d be working, time and energy costs, social circles I’d be moving in, the type of person I’d be likely to marry given my circumstances, family expectations of continuing my family’s medical legacy…all the way up to retirement from the career path I was plodding along.
And what I read didn’t excite me, fill me with joy, or inspire me with hope for the future.
Instead it underscored for me a truth that I knew before I started writing:
Something has got to change.
I need to figure out how to escape from the gravity of this world that I’m currently stuck on.
I can’t keep going like this.
Within 6 months of writing those pages, I was suddenly kicked out of Medical School and launched on a 14-year Journey that led to me starting Bizarro School of Medicine, and helping Medics from around the world to find and achieve their personal Escape Velocity.
And it all started from deciding to figure out what would happen if I stayed on the path I was on without changing anything…and also deciding whether what I saw was acceptable to me or not.
It wasn’t. And the moment I declared that to myself, things changed.
If the story you’re living out doesn’t have an ending that you are willing to accept, the good news is that you can change it.
You don’t need to know how. Instead, you just need to decide that your story needs a better ending…and then the details of how will make themselves known.
This is a taster from Escape Velocity: a personalised email course that guides medics step-by-step in how to successfully make the transition from being stuck in medical school…to living a life of happiness, freedom and fulfilment. Admission is by invitation-only. Click here to apply for your FREE invite.
10,000 times better?
If you take any activity and intentionally do it 10,000 times in a row…you will be much better at it than when you started.
That’s the simple idea behind this post.
Pick something, do it 10,000 times and you will get better at it.
Now whilst this might seem silly and obvious, it’s the perfect antidote for those who who are allowing the pursuit of perfection to rob them of the pleasure of progress.
They’re paralysed by trying to figure out how to get better, rather than focusing on just showing up to do the work that will make them better, the more they do it.
Ira Glass calls this “closing the gap”:
https://player.vimeo.com/video/24715531
The problem with this idea is one word: time.
It’s one thing to do something for an hour, a weekend, or even a year.
But 10,000 times in a row…seems like a daunting, insurmountable challenge that isn’t even worth starting.
And when you’re feeling frustrated and backed into a corner by unpaid debts, peer pressure, and the weight of your responsibilities…probably the last thing you want to hear is anyone talking about “10,000 steps” to success.
You needed success and breakthrough before yesterday.
If that resonates with you, then the good news is that you’re not alone.
Each person who quietly toiled away for 10 years, ten thousand hours, or ten thousand repetitions …before becoming a resounding “overnight success… did so whilst managing the exact same feelings and frustrations that you’re using as reasons for not starting this 10,000 step journey.
What set them apart is that they kept showing up to do the work despite how they felt.
They kept shipping projects, writing articles, painting a picture a day, recording a new song each week…consistently publishing messes in their pursuit of creating masterpieces.
That’s how they did it, and that’s how you’ll do it too.
Besides, the time is going to pass anyway, whether or not you decide to use it to walk a 10,000 step journey.
But if you do decide to walk this journey, you can do so with the surety that when you’ve completed it…you will be much better than you are right now.
So given that you know the path to walk (do it 10,000 times in a row), and you know that it’s going on take some time…here’s the critical first step you must take:
Pick something worth being better at.
What would you like to be GREAT at over the next 5 to 10 years?
You know the answer to this.
It’s the answer that others have often silenced because of how “impractically fragile” it seemed when you uttered it.
But this answer holds the key to your sense of satisfaction and fulfilment. It’s the reason for you being alive on this planet.
And 70 years from now, you will be so grateful that you dared to invest 5 to 10 years of your time to become better — even GREAT — at something you reaped the benefits of for the next 60+ years of your life.
It’s the equivalent of putting a single $10 bill into a machine…and being given six authentic $10 bills in return.
Again — as Ramit Sethi often says — the time is going to pass anyway. In fact, it’s been passing as you’ve read this article.
All you have to do is commit to intentionally doing 10,000 reps of that thing you’re passionate about…and you will win.
Don’t look at the time you’ve lost already, or even at the where you wish you already were.
Instead, look at where you’re going. Picture yourself being better…being GREAT…at that Thing you’re passionate about.
Fix your eyes on that picture, and then take a step. And another one. And another one. And just keep stepping towards it for no matter what.
Keep that up for 10,000 times in a row…and you’ll win.