Keep turning up.
This principle is poignant if you want to make any change,
Any lasting change in your life.
You need to keep turning up,
You need to keep going,
You need to keep taking action.
Because most of the time,
For most things,
The only thing that will stop you is you.
Over time you will learn,
Over time you will get better,
Over time eventually things will happen that resolve themselves into a life of thriving,
As long as you keep turning up.
Whatever you are working on,
Your body,
Your business,
Your relationship,
Your hobby,
Your studies,
Whatever it is,
If you keep turning up,
Those iterative approaches will get you better.
You will learn,
You will adapt,
You will change.
But if you quit,
Well,
Then you truly fail.
It's important to realise that failure is not permanent.
Failure is not permanent,
Even though it might feel like that.
You might think or feel in response to a failure.
You've tried something and it just blows up in your face.
Oh,
This is the rest of my life.
Because in that moment,
It is the rest of your life.
In that moment of failure,
All of your hard work has led to nothing,
Actually less than nothing.
You've paid all of this resources,
This cost,
This time,
This money,
This relationship capital,
And it didn't work.
You lost,
The business venture failed.
You asked someone out and they said no,
Whatever it is.
But that failure is not permanent.
If you keep turning up,
If you try again,
If you learn from the mistakes,
If you iterate,
If you practice,
If you go again.
But it is permanent if you stop.
I've said it elsewhere,
But it's worth repeating.
If you are on a diet and you fail your diet once a week,
You've still eaten healthy for more than 300 days in a year.
Or if you're looking to get fit and you're like,
I'm going to exercise every day,
And you don't exercise one day a week,
You've still exercised 300 plus days that year,
Right?
Keep turning up.
You're trying to quit a bad habit.
You fall off the wagon and you fall back into those old habits.
The moment you realize it,
The moment that you keep turning up,
The moment you throw it away or make that change,
Well,
It's the moment you've quit again,
Right?
Quitting those bad habits.
This is a correlate to looking at success over the long term.
You trend up by instilling positive habits.
You might have motivation to exercise,
To read,
To build something,
But the best thing you can do is to instill positive habits.
Meditate daily a little bit,
Exercise daily a little bit,
And over the course of the year,
You will see improvements.
What would happen if you did just one minute a day of push-ups or squats or sit-ups?
One minute,
As many as you could every day.
How fit would you be by the end of the year?
Well,
The answer is infinitely fitter than if you did nothing.
Keep turning up.
Trend up by instilling positive habits and recognize that there is a lag between actions and results.
If you exercise or diet today,
It might take a week or a month or three months or a year to see the results.
There's a lag between your actions,
What you're doing,
And the results that you are desiring,
But they will come.
You need to have a little bit of a faith or a trust in the method.
Same thing with meditation,
Same thing with building a business,
Same thing with everything in life.
It will come over time.
There's a saying that I like,
Which is progress and process beats perfect.
Progress beats perfect.
Process beats perfect.
We're not aiming for the perfect diet.
We're not aiming for the perfect exercise regime.
We're not aiming for the perfect business venture,
The perfect connection,
The perfect relationship,
The perfect anything.
Progress beats perfect.
I'm a writer.
I've written 17 plus books,
Millions of words,
Countless blogs.
I just,
I just write a lot,
But I could have been rewriting that first page of my first book again and again and again.
And if I had have been,
That first page would be incredible,
But I wouldn't have written the millions plus words that I've now done.
I wouldn't have written the thousands of poems,
And my writing ability would be subsequently lacking because although that first page would be incredible,
I would never have done all of the other work to get better in the other ways.
Progress beats perfect.
And if I really wanted to,
I could go back now with my current skillset,
Having gone through all of those moments,
To rewrite it now,
If I wanted to.
But now I would be able to do so with the benefit of a million words behind me more.
Process beats perfect.
This means instilling the habits daily to get you there.
One minute of exercise a day is not much,
But it is better than nothing.
And if you can't instill the perfect habit of exercise into your day and therefore do nothing,
Then you are better off doing something.
The process beats perfect.
Progress beats perfect.
Keep turning up.
The reason I'm harping on this one is that it is on you.
It is all on you,
Right?
And it's on you to know and accept yourself and to fight for yourself,
To keep turning up,
To instill the habits that work for you.
There are many multiple ways,
And I've talked about it in many places,
And there is many resources everywhere on this,
But it's about finding what works for you and instilling that.
Keep turning up.
Keep heading towards your goals.
Keep trying.
Recognize that if you fail,
And you will,
That it's not permanent.
But over time you can trend up by instilling positive habits.
If you realize and recognize that you won't see instant results,
There's a lag between actions and results,
And that's fine,
And that's acceptable,
And that's good because eventually you'll see it.
And finally,
To accept that process and progress beats perfect,
Something is better than nothing.
What can you do today and every day that will get you there?
Do it.
This track is taken from my course,
From Surviving to Thriving.
10 Principles to Turn Your Life Around.
It's out now and available on my InsightTimer profile.
I invite you to check it out.
