Greatness – One step at a time

“No amount of guilt can solve the past, and no amount of anxiety can change the future.” – Omar ibn al-Khattâb

An over-abundance of self-demand will crush you under your own expectations. Setting high standard for yourself is necessary. But it won’t be enough if you are too relentless with yourself – no one is supposed to be great at all times.

An over-abundance of self-indulgence, on the other hand, will lead you.. nowhere. And perhaps you’re okay with that today. But I bet at some point in your life, you won’t. You’ll come to question how and why you got where you are – and possibly, how the hell do you get out of there now ?

Greatness is all about finding that difficult balance of self-demand and self-indulgence.

Your own vision of greatness

Greatness takes a different shape for each of us. It’s up to you to define your vision and what it means for you.

If that vision is unclear yet, know this: all of the answers are already inside you. Here is my methodology to determine my vision of greatness:

• • Step 1 : What are my objectives in order to be happy in a year ? What about 5y ? 15y ?

Image: objectives by dimension using a Miro board

Be as specific as you can and fill it with as many objectives as you want. Usually I go for 3-6 objectives per category.

One rule: be honest with yourself. There’s no gain in not being upfront with yourself. Write it down as it comes to you – be as ambitious as you want.

• • Step 2 : that’s it, there’s no step 2. Defining your vision of greatness is all about that board. Even though it may look fluffy to you, you’ll be surprised how clear the answers come to you once you fill it – it’s all already up there, in your mind. If completing the board really is too challenging today, then conducting an introspection might be of some help. There are tons of accessible ressources that will help you with it.

How to get there – building the mindset

You just did the easy part : setting the objectives. Now you have to commit towards them.

Your brain will try to trick you into forgetting about these objectives. So that you can keep on procrastinating and pretending you’re ok with your current path. That it’s ok to be just good and not reach out for greatness.

But forget about doing “ok”.
Fuck doing “ok”.

Erase this possibility from your mind.

We only get this one life on this planet. With a few techniques and a good dose of courage, anyone can get the most out of it. Why not you ?

• • Take small steps

Everything is achieved by taking small steps. Forget about leaps and jumps and breakthroughs. Embrace minimalist progress but do it every single week. It is fine not to be productive and not to work towards your goals for a day. Perhaps even a few days when you really feel down. But past a week of not moving forward, something is going wrong. That’s why the week is the appropriate metric to measure progress – it offers enough time to indulge your lack of progress for short periods but it is also a safeguard against procrastination.

Efforts compound. If you put 1% more effort every day, by the end of the week, you’ll be 7% further than with your previous effort rate ((1.01)^7 = 1.07). With the same rationale, a year from now you’ll be 37x further than your point of origin.

1% more effort than before – every day. That’s all it takes.

• • Be your own cheerleader

When you’re not doing enough over a week and you realize it on Sunday evening, say it out loud. Then say out loud “I’ve got to do better, and I will. I will do it, I will manage. Next week will be better, I’ll be proud of myself.” You have to do this because no one will do it for you. Even with the most loving parents and the loveliest significant other, that is simply your cross to bear. Everything comes from within : you have to give yourself appreciation and applause.

I’ve always dreamed of having a big brother. I guess I have decided to become my own – checkmate, family tree.

• • Adopt a growth mindset

You’ve certainly heard about this one : it is basically to believe you can learn and improve rather than having a fixed set of skills. This mindset will help you face uncomfortable situation and release stress.

When I started dancing (previous article), I sucked. And I sucked hard. I was lost in the rhythm, couldn’t keep up with the steps and was a poor leader (my followers could not feel what I intended to do). It felt very intimidating at that time. But I kept going, thinking “I’ll learn. If they did, I will too”. And of course after a few class, it felt much better. This kind of experience will boost your confidence as the belief that you can achieve anything becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

• • Get comfy with failing

Following the example of dance class, the first time you get to the gym, you can’t lift much. Everybody seems jacked and you’re just there discovering a quite intimidating world.
Keep on. Come back tomorrow – actually not tomorrow cause you’ll have the worst muscle soreness of your life. But come back again and push yourself. It’ll work.

Same goes for ideas. You need to try a lot of stuff to find something that does work. It’s part of the process to try things that will independently look stupid in the future but did in fact lead you to success.

“If you want to have good ideas, you must have many ideas.” – Linus Pauling

• • Look for the spark

I wish you have experienced this at some point already. These moments when you feel clever and creative and motivated and you just can’t stop – you know you’re doing it right. That’s when you’ve got the spark – you found something that makes your heart beat and your mind work.

The thing is – even on matters that resonate this much with you – some days, you won’t have it. You’ll feel lost and discouraged and sad. Fight your way back. Keep moving forward. Chances are, a few days later, you’ll be listening Phil Collins’ drum solo at 1am, working at 100% capacity and feeling you’re the most energetic person in the world – yup, true story

Once you found that spark, get addicted to it – it’s the only drug you’ll ever need.

• • Fight your worst self – burn the ships

For the longest time, I was a video game addict. I spent easily 10-14h a day playing video games and to be honest, I sometimes miss that time (but that will be another article on its own). I know that’s my weakness, my Kryptonite. Not alcohol nor drugs nor gambling nor social media. Video games.
And that’s my battle to fight. Nobody cares if I spend my next week just playing video games. But I would. I would be disappointed with myself and what I could’ve done with that time. It took me a while to realize that.

When Cortès landed in Mexico in 1519, he ordered to burn his entire fleet. This sent a strong message to his men: there would be no retreat. The only way to live was to move forward and win.

Image : Hernan Cortès burning the Spanish ships on the coasts of Mexico

This echoes a key lesson from Sun Tzu’s The Art of War : an enemy is much stronger when they have no way out. They’ll fight like lions with “the courage of despair“, knowing nothing but death awaits them.

Deep down inside, you know your demons. Now is the time to face them. When I was at the most critical point in my studies, I went out and buried my computer. Physically buried it. I needed a strong symbol – I would not play any more video games until I successfully passed my concours.

If you feel like you are currently failing at your objectives, now is the time to jump. Try and put yourself in the same situation. Burn the ships.

Final words

“Dire fait rire, faire fait taire” – André Dacier

Your everyday victories will be silent, your success will be loud. Nobody notices the small steps, you have to grow confortable with that. Greatness is the light at the very end of the tunnel. You can stay where you are but the tunnel is not there to move – you are. Climb your way up, into the light