Many of us are seeking to change and improve our lives in some kind of meaningful way. Many of us may also feel discouraged because no matter how much we grind and push ourselves, we seem to always come up short or eventually revert back to our old ways.
If we find ourselves in this position, working harder on our current strategy is counterintuitively not the answer. We aren’t stuck and failing to make progress in our lives because we aren’t working hard enough. Rather, we are failing to reap lasting results from our efforts because we are pursuing the wrong strategy. What is needed, then, is a fundamental change to our current strategy.
This can be a curiously hard pill to swallow.
Many of us would rather put in double the effort on what we have tried, what we know, and what we believe in rather than open our minds to new approaches that often run completely counter to our current worldviews and convictions. We may think of ourselves as tolerant, but the real test of our open-mindedness is our ability to challenge our own perspectives and our willingness to integrate practices into our lives that may conflict with what we believe to be the truth.
This in no way means that we abandon our morals or principles. Nor does it suggest that we do the opposite just for the sake of it. Rather, it is about tapping into our intellectual curiosity and being willing to explore what has worked for others who have successfully accomplished what we would like to accomplish. It is about our willing to adopt their strategy even if it feels unfamiliar and uncomfortable.
In order to win better “prizes” we must play better “games.”
Before I work harder, I make sure that I am working on the right thing and in the right way.
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