Defeating My Biggest Enemy: Me, Complete with Hairy Kardashians and Video Games.

“I noticed earlier the hyperdrive motivator has been damaged.   It’s impossible to go to lightspeed!” – The Empire Strikes Back™

Nah, I got an A.  Got a perfect score on the final, plus I got to watch C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate during winter break.

Ever think you could accomplish more?  You can.  Read on.  It’s okay, I’m a trained professional.

When I was in college I took a course called Probability and Statistics, or as we referred to it at the time, Sadistics.  During one lecture the instructor told the class a story about how a graduate student working on his Ph.D. was late to a class – so late that he’d missed the start of the lecture.  The student saw two math problems on the blackboard.  Thinking they were homework problems, he copied them down, and spent the weekend working on them.  They were a little harder than usual, but he managed to finish them.

On Monday he returned to class, and showed the instructor his results. Turns out that the problems weren’t homework:  these were two unproven theorems in statistics; unproven theorems that George Dantzig (the student) finished because he had no idea that they were too hard for him to do.

In Dantzig’s own words:

“A year later, when I began to worry about a thesis topic, [his teacher] just shrugged and told me to wrap the two problems up in a binder and he would accept them as my thesis.”

At least he didn’t have to shag the professor, baby.

That’s a pretty good story, especially because it’s true and a great example of how much you can achieve when you’re too stupid to know that what you’re doing is impossible.  It’s also a very good story to tell the boss the next time you’re late for a meeting at work, because his reaction will likely allow you time for independent exploration of all the employment opportunities this great nation has to offer.

So how do people sabotage themselves so they don’t achieve all that they could?  How do they turn themselves into their own worst enemy?  Today I’ll present three reasons.  There are more, but what do I look like, a budget Tony Robbins?

I was wondering why that seminar only cost $14.98.

• I think the worst is negative inner dialogue.

Ever make a mistake?  Ever beat yourself up about it?  Yeah, me too.  But what I noticed is that when I beat myself up, I used to say things to myself that were meaner than any person had ever said to me in real life.  Notice I said “used to” – I simply don’t put up with it any more.  When I sense that inner beat down coming, I just shut it down.

If your best friend who has your best interests at heart wouldn’t say it to you, why would you say it to yourself?

Recently I read about a research study that indicated that you had more impact when motivating yourself if you encouraged yourself in the third person.  Saying to yourself, “You’ve got this, John,” is much more powerful than, “I can do this.”  Why?  I have my guesses – it’s probably that you don’t want to fail when you’ve got some other person involved, so you dig that much deeper.

If that’s the case, how much more damaging is beating yourself up verbally in the third person?  “I’m stupid,” versus “you’re stupid.”  Think about it – and I advise you not to put up with your nonsense.  Shut it down.

Yes, this happened.

Negative inner dialogue doesn’t help me, especially since whatever mistake I made was generally not even noticed by others.  I hate to break this to you, but outside of your family, you’re less important than you think.  People don’t notice the things you do all that much, and if they do?  They don’t remember.

That may seem like a downer, but it’s really the opposite.  It’s freedom, and another reason not to beat yourself up.

• Next on the list? Belief that your goal is impossible.

Well, it isn’t possible, until you actually do it.  Nobody had solved Dantzig’s theorems until he solved them.  Heck, the Kardashians are too dumb to know they shouldn’t have hundreds of millions of dollars despite an utter lack anything resembling talent or a redeeming feature.  Oh, unless you count their copious amounts of body hair.  And I wouldn’t advise that you count their body hair, since that would take far too long.  Plus?  You’d get Kardashian grease all over you.

This is right before the hair covers them entirely in a protective cocoon so they can become giant genderless moth people.

I’ll note that nearly every time I was given an assignment that seemed impossible at work, I managed to crack the problem.  What was off was my definition of impossible.  I eventually ended up working for a boss that pushed me even farther.  Nine times out of ten, he gambled and won.  The tenth time?  They fired him.  Don’t feel bad for him – his severance package was about $2 million.

• Finally, there’s not giving it all you’ve got.

This one is insidious.  Here’s my example:  in my career (the one that pays the bills, not this one) I’ve accomplished most things that I’ve ever wanted to do and have a whole batch of odd stories that I’ll maybe get around to telling someday.  Does this mean that I aimed too low, that I didn’t push hard enough?  Nah, I don’t think so.  I’ve seen what some of the people at the top had to do to get there, and I like sleeping well.

It’s tough at the top.  Everything is a tradeoff.

But here I can push myself, and sleep well.  So, I write.  I give that all that I’ve got, especially once I understood that I’d never get better unless I really pushed myself.  And I can see results.  I had a post that related to one I’d written back in 2017 that I was thinking of linking to.  I pulled up the old post.  I read it.

What made me happiest about the old post is:  I’m better now than I was in 2017 – a lot better.  How much better will I be if I keep pushing it, keep focusing on it for 20 hours a week for another decade?  I have no idea.  But we’ll see.

But I had my own George Dantzig moment before I ever heard his story:

I was in high school and a friend came over to my place.  He and I sat down to play some video games, since we didn’t have a car.  He went first.  Normally on my first guy I’d score 10,000 or so.  But my friend scored 50,000.  I was amazed – I had no idea it was possible.  So, my first guy up?  50,000 points.  This was my best score ever.

I know – it looks exactly like a scene from The Empire Strikes Back©.  But, trust me, this is really a video game.

What had been missing was belief.  Seeing my friend play with no higher a skill level than I had do five times better than my best ever score flipped a switch.  I believed.  I could perform better than I ever thought possible.

But right now, it’s time:

Time to believe in yourself.  Time to believe that your goal is possible.  Time to work harder.

Go on, you’ve got this.