The only 2021 resolution you need.
At the beginning of this year, I caught myself by the tail.
But before I explain what that means, we need to understand something important.
Most of the time, there’s no such thing as ‘the process of making a decision.’ Most of the time, the decision has been made. You know what you need to do. Even if you don’t, your body does. Everything else is just hesitation.
Similarly, when we spend endless hours contemplating what our ‘calling’ is, what we’re most likely doing is indulging in our own self-pity.
We know what we need to do. Everything else is just procrastination. This brings me to…
The tail.
I found myself in a weird place at the end of 2020.
I’ve been writing for quite some time on Medium (14 months, to be exact). And I’ve been writing every single day. Then, in a span of three months, a few things happened: I broke up with my girlfriend, quit my job, and went to live back to my home city for a while. In case you were wondering, I don’t recommend anyone doing all those things at once.
Which is to say, I stopped writing. Not at all — but I did stop publishing. Shipping. And as Seth Godin says in his new book, ‘if you don’t ship, it doesn’t count.’
Then I moved on and over my breakup, got back to London, celebrated Christmas, yet still wasn’t writing.
I told myself stories that I was lost. That I was still looking for myself. And while a part of that was true, a big part of it is simple procrastination.
The truth is, I know exactly what I want to do. I want to teach, lead, tell stories, and write. I have a direction — which, in many cases, is more important than having a path.
But a part of me loves the image of a ‘lost 20-something boy, making his way through the darkness of the world…’
There is nothing wrong with coasting for a while. I’ve been coasting for about six months now. It’s just a choice.
And a question.
‘What do you actually want?’
Because if you know what you want, every second spent doing something else (including nothing) is stealing a second from you, building towards that.
The problem is, once again, Resistance. The older I get and the more experienced as a writer, the more I see: it takes real guts to sit down and do creative work each day. To fight that Resistance. To focus on the practice, not the outcomes. To trust the soup.
And for the big part of my journey so far, I thought that all we needed is a grain of willpower. I told myself that all we need to do was to push ourselves to sit down in front of the typewriter (or whatever instrument you use for creative work) and do the work.
There is a lot of truth to that. However, as anyone who tried pushing themselves too much knows, discipline is toxic. It burns through your fuel fairly quickly. And it leaves you feeling as if you cheated on yourself.
Willpower is overrated. So is discipline.
But you know what’s underrated? Courage. That’s what John Gardner meant when he noticed that, ‘The world loves talent but pays off on character.’
I used to think that character was in the ability to push yourself. Self-control. Self-discipline. Jocko Willink. David Goggins.
But in the real world, not on the running track or in combat, almost nothing valuable is done with willpower. Almost everything is done with courage. No matter how hard you try to break the house wall with your forehead, it’s still a better option to knock on the door.
When I look back at the decisions that have shaped my life, those weren’t decisions of willpower. They were decisions of courage. Still, some of them involved both.
When I was 14 and overweight, I was bullied by my classmates. Heck, I was bullied by my family too. The decision to stop eating crap and take better care of myself was brave, especially for a 14-year-old who lives with his parents. It also involved a truckload of willpower.
But when I was 19 and decided to drop out of college, there was no willpower—only terror. And the antidote: courage. To this day, it was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.
As someone smart put it, ‘Your life shrinks or expands in proportion to your courage.’
You can’t fake it. You can’t be courageous but also not be. If you have a plan B, that’s not courage. That’s a performance. Courage and 100% vulnerability requires you to be open to anything life throws at you. It requires you to take a step into the unknown. Feel that terror. Sit with it. But go forward anyway.
I wrote before that there are two basic types of motivation: fear or love. You can work at a job because you’re afraid you won’t have any money to pay the rent. Or you can work there because you love what you do and want to make an impact—the same job and yet, drastically different experiences.
Fear can also be helpful. It can guide you towards courage. If you use fear as a compass, always following the scary path, the road less traveled by, you’ll inevitably end up being courageous. So perhaps we should not be seeking ways to be braver but seek scary paths instead.
Like, publishing an article. Getting in shape. Finally, going all-in on ourselves and our dreams. After all, it’s January 2021. The perfect time for a change.
Courage is also something we’ll have to exercise daily if we want a life of meaning. When I look back at what happened to me over the past six months, I see: I stopped being brave. I gave in to the fear. And I don’t blame myself — sometimes to keep just hanging on is hard enough. Life throws circumstances our way, and we have to learn to dodge them.
Now, speaking of change. Remember last year? We made all sorts of plans for 2020, and look where that got us. I propose that this year, we don’t make too many resolutions. Except one.
Be brave.
Be brave by doing what only you can do. Be brave by betting on yourself. Be brave by shipping your creative work. Be brave by showing up each day. And if it doesn't work out, be brave enough not to blame yourself. You’ll try again tomorrow.
David Goggins once said, ‘do one thing that sucks every day.’ That seems to work for him.
I propose, ‘do one thing you’re afraid of every day.’
And see where that will get you.
Happy 2021.
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