Lessons from 2021 That Will Help You Dominate 2022

I remember walking into my first fight with nerves and fears and doubt. In a fight, that’s the worst way to think.

You end up playing defence, not offence.

You focus more on protecting yourself than doing damage on your opponent, and boxing is all about inflicting damage.

The result, oddly enough, by focusing solely on defence, you end up getting hit more, and hit harder.

It took me until the third round of that fight to realize what was going on, and in the third round I dominated.

That lesson has to be carried over to every other area of life.

A good defence is a good offence. Aggression is the antidote to fear. 

Doubt and fear have no value, there’s no point of either of them except your destruction.

When you allow doubt and fear to take space in your mind, you get defensive, you play small, you tentatively go in the direction you ought to go, which never leads to anything good.

As another year comes to an end I’m reviewing, reflecting, dissecting, and figuring out how to get where I ought to be in the das, months, and years to come.

There were lesson and realizations I came to this past year that will help me live better and perform better in the years to come. 

It’s said that intelligence is learning from your own mistakes, but wisdom is learning from the mistakes of others. I’ve made mistakes, had victories, and learned lessons this year from others and from my own experiences. Hopefully this article will help you learn some of these lessons without having to endure the mistakes that come with them.

Some of the conclusions I’ve come to…

1. Your biggest dreams, your ideal of who you can be or dream of becoming, are who you are. The man you’re living as right now is the lie. Live as if your ideal already is, and the results will unfold over time.
2. Always think, what would my potential do? And do that thing until that’s all you do. You know what the right choice is, the right action is, you just let your actions get swayed by past mediocrity or the mediocrity of your environment.
3. Open yourself up to serendipitous encounters by going to parties. That is, meet people you would never ordinarily meet. It may lead to a wife, an idea, a business, you never know. Solitude is where greatness is made, but you also need those serendipitous encounters, those lucky situations. Go to parties.
4. Comparison is the thief of joy, and productivity. You’re on your own path, maximize what you’ve been given.
5. Aggression is the antidote to fear. Remove doubt and fear from your mind by being aggressive. Go big, or don’t go at all.
6. Opportunities are rare. When you get one, go all in. Apply this to work, investing, and relationships.
7. Never dabble. Be in or out.
8. Life isn’t short. It’s the right amount of time. But it seems incredibly short because we don’t actually live. We exist. We fall into patterns are routines that make each day seem the same. Break things up. Have fun. Do random things. Get off your ass and live.
9. If you choose to play a game, win the game. Games don’t mean sports games, but life games. There’s the wealth game, the career game, the marriage game, and so on. You get to choose what games you play. The only way to be free of them is to win them, once you’ve chosen to play them. So figure out how to win them.
10. Life is a series of sprints. It isn’t a marathon. Work really hard, then rest, recover, embark on adventures, and then work really hard again. When momentum builds, sprint, and keep sprinting because you don’t know how long it will last or if it will come back.
11. If you’d only NOT do the things that will get you what you don’t want, you’ll likely get what you do want. Use inversion or via negative to figure out how to get what you don’t want, and then don’t do those things. For example, if you don’t want to be poor, figure out how to be poor, and then don’t do those things that will bring poverty.
12. The desires we have will not bring more happiness. Knowing this while still pursuing them allows you to create happiness now, without having to attach it to a desire.
13. Big dreams and ambitions are God’s insights into who you can be, or ought to be. Don’t brush them off as mere wishes. They’re your soul telling you what you’re here for, who you’re here to become.
14. Cheap dopamine is the modern devil. We can fulfill so many desires so quickly today, but should we?
15. Should men be happy, or great? Is happiness even something we ought to be concerned about or should we be consumed by becoming the best we can become (a question I don’t have the answer to)?
16. Take time to reflect on and celebrate your victories. Don’t let them melt into time without acknowledging them.
17. Silence and solitude can be a great gift, but most waste it wishing they didn’t have silence and solitude. It’s where greatness is won, where lessons are learned.
18. If you don’t take time to reflect on why things are - for good or bad, or both - you won’t figure out how to make them (or yourself) great. People rarely set aside true reflection time.
19. Hard work doesn’t make you rich. But you can work your way to a position where a few decisions can have that effect.
20. Everything in life is the result of compound interest. Good decisions over time lead to wildly grand outcomes, but so do bad decisions. Getting fat and out of shape as you age seems to be a common negative outcome that degrades one’s life as a whole.
21. Too many people commit their lives to battles that are not worth fighting.
22. Much of my own beliefs have happened accidentally, as a result of influence or age or environment. Be careful about what you believe, really dissect it to see if it’s true or if it was just placed in your brain without purpose.
23. Discipline is doing what you don’t like to do but doing it like you love it. If you can trick yourself into liking the uphill battles in life, you’re setting yourself up for success.
24. The truest expression of your existence isn't small, it isn't mediocre, it's great, grand, and epic. It's living out your dreams. It's excellence. This is who you're here to be, those dreams, goals, and desires are the truth, the doubt, the fear, those are the lies that keep you from living as you ought to.

What lessons have you learned this year that you'll apply to the next to have the best year of your life?