Step 28 - Lao-Tzu's and John Wooden's Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day

This lesson teaches just one simple thing: Prepare for the difficult, when it is easy.

Like it or not, the rainy day will come.

If live long enough, there is a day coming for us, where our car will crash down, we will get a tremendous hospital bill or we will just have a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day, where we will need money. And when it is easy to save money? When you have plenty. When is it the most hard to save money? When you need it most.

Prepare for the rainy day today and you will go through it like a breeze.

Preparation proceeds good luck. We have choices. We can either make the choice to wait for things to happen to us, which is what 99.9999% of people are doing. Or we can prepare for tomorrow today.

Before you go to bed. Write just three things you want to do the next day on a piece of paper, and this little habit helps tremendously.

How do we prepare?

While brushing your teeth, map out what you are going to do tomorrow. What you should do tomorrow. Avoid cognitive biases, go first things first. What is the most important thing that is going to have the biggest impact on my health, wealth, love and happiness.

Get the mentality that within certain parameters you control your own destiny.

When you want to procrastinate, remember Lao Tzu, do the difficult when it is easy.

The pain, discomfort, punishment, death of dreams. Let them drive and motivate you. You could do this tomorrow. But you could do this today.

The Amish say: "When you don't know what to do and you have something hard to do, just jump right in, and the next thing you know, it is half way done."

The reason that most of us, are not doing the things we know we should, is because we perceive pain in doing it now. If we just jump into it, our brain understands, that the thing we perceived as so hard, is not that hard. The source of our procrastination comes from a false understanding of how much pain it will be.

If you give yourself too much time to contemplate, you are building things up. Just jump right in.

Do the most difficult thing in the morning. The procrastination keeps us at a place, where we are forgetting that the harsh, rainy, bad day will come. But if we prepare for it, we will breeze right through it. Imagine never dealing with those struggles of the bad days.

The lesson is simple: Do what is difficult, when it is easy. You can't buy health insurance, when you are in the hospital. Do what is difficult, when it is easy.

Questions

1. What is something difficult that you put off and it came back to bite you?

   College. Procrastinated too much. Bit me painfully.

2. What is a bad habit that you have?

   Inefficiently working in flurries of activities. Contemplating too much about the color of this, design of that, structure of this. Instead of accepting and embracing imperfection. Perfection is the killer of production.

3. What is a resolution that you can make to change just one thing?

   I'll plan out the next day, when I brush my teeth and write three things I should do for the next day.