The Danger of Self Believing

I am quite a proponent of believeing in your own self, thinking that anyone can do whatever they want, if they put enough effor into it. Practice vs talent. Despite the title of this post, I still believe so.

The problem I think is that when you believe you can do everything, you start to do everything. You want to do this and that, and before long, you have a long list of projects. You either burn yourself out, or you drop the project(s), or you do a shitty job in what you’re supposed to do, or you do all three. So instead of being ‘successful’, things begin to fall apart, or you become stressful.

I feel this way when recently I discovered you can publish books on Kindle, and make money out of it. I watched a few videos and became interested in people who manage to make lotsa money doing it. If they can do it, why can’t I? Right? The problem is, they spent a lot of time doing it. If I start dropping everything I am doing right now, for that next project, I’ll never excel in what I am currently doing. I think the mentality or urge to keep finding or doing new things, came from the fact that there is so much resources nowaday, that you are often tempted to try new things.

And this resources are not from your friends or neighbours, but rather from world class professionals sometime. You can watch a documentary about a Michelin chef, and the next day you start to make a whole batch of meringue or some other kind of dessert. He can do it, why can’t I? Well he spent the last 20 years, 12 hours daily, cooking. Of course he can do it.

The fact that these resources skipped the hard parts, make it even more alluring. Just look at the cooking videos; you throw some onions onto the cutting board, and they are diced in a blink of an eye. That discounts all the eye-watering effort needed to get those results. Of course it seems easy.

So anyway I realize that I’ve been distracted much and will trim down my list of projects. Here’s to a more productive and more focused me. Hope this post jogs you in the right direction too.

Thank you for reading.