How We Sabotage Our Lives (Part 2)

Here's part two of this article read along, that features what are probably the two most important ways in which we sabotage ourselves. Thinking of the WHOLE instead of the next part, and also lying to ourselves with what it is we actually want. This article has really helped me to reevaluate things in my life and I hope it does the same for you.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey, what's up? What's going on? Welcome to another episode of English with Dane, a podcast designed to make you enjoy the process of improving your English. As always, I'm your host Dane, and you can find me on Instagram and TikTok at English with Dane. On today's episode, we have part two of last week's article about how we're sabotaging our lives and we don't know it. I wanted to say that this article actually hit me like a ton of bricks. It started as a fun read, but it's actually helped me to reevaluate things. I'll save the reflection portion of the episode for the end, but I just wanted to let you know that right off the bat. So let's finish it up and then we'll discuss. Let's do it. You are listening to episode 35 of season two of English with Dane. Hit it. Okay, we have two ways left, two ways that we're sabotaging our lives. Let's get right into it. And that brings us to two focusing on the whole instead of the next step. Hole con uvole, as in the entirety of something. You go to the doctor and he tells you that you have a bacterial infection that will never ever go away. It will literally eat away a crucial part of your digestive system unless you do a chemical treatment twice a day, every day, and do painful semi-annual follow-up treatments with your doctor for the rest of your fucking life. Sure, it's not a death sentence, but the sheer weight of it kind of makes you want to give up. You can just see this burden stretching out in front of you forever. Ojo esa palabra, by the way, sheer, s-h-r. Sheer means pure or complete, the sheer weight of something. In Spanish, I guess we'd say absoluto, like el peso absoluto. Let's read that sentence again now that we know, and also for momentum. Sure, it's not a death sentence, but the sheer weight of it kind of makes you want to give up. You can just see this burden stretching out in front of you forever. But of course, I've just described brushing your teeth. You don't regard dental care as a crushing burden, una carga aplastante, a crushing burden because you don't sit around every day contemplating the unfathomable mountain, la montaña inabargable, the unfathomable mountain of teeth brushing you must scale before you die. You only think of it as that thing you do in the morning because you have to, because you don't want your teeth to fall out. You manage the long-term goal, having teeth, by thinking only of the very manageable daily goal. Well, guess what? If you can apply that technique to other things, you can conquer the motherfucking world. Seriously, someone took that technique and used it to invent machines to make brushing even easier. Any great long-term project that seems impossible to most people, from building a house to writing a book to become an actual ninja, is possible to the people who do them only because they don't just focus on the end goal. There's only what they have to do today. Don't misunderstand me. It's not that they ignore the goal, it's that they don't regard what they do today and what they have to do 10 years from now as separate things. The future isn't a fanciful wish, un deseo fantasioso, a fanciful wish. It's just the logical end of a long chain of today's. What they do today and what they want to be long term are the same thing. I hate to use myself as an example because I've led kind of a boring life aside from the time I went on a trip to Europe and got mixed up in that diamond heist. But I have done something that a lot of my aspiring writer friends find amazing. I finished not one but two books that are 300,000 words combined. If that sounds easy, just try writing the same word, say fart, 300,000 times and you'll see how quickly you tire of it. Fun fact, the aforementioned books contain 435 instances of the word fart. Friends and family love to ask how it's done, usually phrased as how do you think of that shit? Because they know I have no substantial education on the subject. Well, I learned how to do it by fixing up a meth lab. Or at least it looked like one. It was 10 years ago and I was an apartment dweller whose only tools were a set of bright plastic ones that I found out later were intended for a small child. We bought a dilapidated or deteriorated rental property with a back door that was still smashed from where somebody, presumably the police, had kicked it in. Yes, just like in Fight Club. We decided to pour our life savings and an enormous amount of borrowed money into renovating it because it was 2003 and we knew that the housing market would only go up and up forever. When I looked at the place and saw 10,000 things that needed fixing, I had a month-long panic attack. It was this mountain of work looming overhead, making me wonder if I should instead just hunt down some chemistry equipment and break bad. But on the first day of the job site, my father-in-law says, Okay, we have to take up this old carpet because it's full of animal urine and or meth residue. And then I realized, no, we didn't have to fix up an entire old meth lab. All we had to do was tear up this old carpet. One single task. Then when that was done, there'd be another single task. String enough of these together and you can build the goddamn Death Star. And this is what happens when you get lazy and skip install vent cover on your task list. That experience is the reason sitting down to write a novel doesn't scare me. I now know that I don't have to write a whole novel. I just have to do this one little part I've decided to do today. Tomorrow it'll be some other part. And the days will march forward and this shit will get done. It's not magic, it's just adding work on the novel to the to-do list for that day. And if instead your goal is to become a guitarist in the death metal band, it's no different. You just have to add practice guitar to today's list and practice some guitar. Slow, boring, like brushing your teeth. It's not like I invented this idea. Addiction programs have been living by this creed, esta creencia, this creed for as long as they've been around. You don't have to quit drinking forever, they'll say. You just have to not drink today. Number one, lying to yourself about what you actually want. Off the top of your head, say something you've always wanted to do. Then follow it up with why you've never done it. So maybe you said something like, I've always wanted to start a little business selling cupcakes, but I wouldn't even know how to get started. And 90% of you just lied. I know you did because if you actually wanted to do the thing, then the second part, the obstacle, wouldn't exist. For example, if that person up there actually wanted to start their cupcake business, they wouldn't be confused about how to get started. They'd be a freaking walking encyclopedia of information about how to get started because they'd have spent every single day reading up on it and calling other cupcake shop owners for advice. They don't do that because they don't actually want it. They don't have the invisible gun to their head. The cupcake is a lie. This right here is at the heart, al centro de, at the heart of every unfulfilled ambition in your life. We use the same word, want, to mean two completely different things. And the constant confusion between those definitions is why so many people are disappointed in how their lives turned out. Depending on the context, want can be a a statement of intended action, I want to mow the lawn before it rains. B. A state of general preference. I want everyone to live a long and happy life. It sounds simple enough, but the confusion of these two uses of the word is everything. We switch between the two definitions sometimes in the same sentence. This morning I was driving to Five Guys to get a burger and an entire grocery bag full of French fries to go with it, that is, the small. I passed a guy who was jogging, shirtless, who had a torso like Matthew McConaughey, and I said to myself, I want a body like that. And if I'd pulled over and asked the guy why he runs and works out, he'd have said the same thing, almost word for word. It's because I want a body like this. Same phrasing meaning two completely different things. I used want in the same way I say I want world peace. A wistful statement about something I actually have no control over. If it's the same effort either way, sure, I'll take the rock hard abs, give me an ab pill, and I'll swallow it. Otherwise, no, it ain't happening. The jogging guy, on the other hand, used want as a statement of intended action. He wants to run five miles every day because he wants to be fit. Now look around you. Look at all the minimum wage people who want to be rich andor famous with some vague notion of, I don't know, being on a reality show someday or getting discovered for some talent they didn't know they had. Now look at all the MBAs working 100 hour weeks on the trading floor because they want to be rich. The difference in the two is night and day, but in many cases, the former group doesn't realize it. They just stay poor while the other group starts shopping for vacation homes. And I'm starting to think that the world really is divided between those who have a clear idea of what it means to want something, including the total cost and sacrifices it will take to get it, and those who are just content to leave it as an airy, wouldn't it be nice fantasy? The former group hones in on what they want and goes zooming after it like a shark. The latter looks at them, shakes their head, and says, How do they do it? as if they have a cheat code or a secret technique. What? You're saying we should all be douchebag stockbrokers working hundred-hour weeks? No. I'm saying that while some of you are sitting around the coffee shop talking about how you want the system to change, that douchebag is accumulating money so he can actually run for Congress. Because when he wants something, he doesn't sing a song about it. He prices that shit and makes a down payment. And when that relentless BMW driving douche has kids, he'll teach them, too, what it really means to want something, to be single-minded and voracious, and to pursue it to the ends of the earth. Instilling that lesson goes just as far toward preserving wealth and power in a group as the actual inheritance they'll leave behind. Are you scared of those people? Are you imagining them as cold-blooded stockbrokers and lobbyists and swindlers, estafadores, and swindlers, the Wolf of Wall Street types who are eating away at the world like a cancer? Well, they scare you because it's a glimpse, un vistazo, it's a glimpse at what accomplishing great things actually costs. You know Steve Jobs was a fucking psychopath, right? So the next time somebody asks you if you want to be rich, really stop and think about it. Think about what it will take. Think about what kind of person you'll need to become. And that's the point of all of this. I found as time goes on that everybody gets what they want. Not what they say they want in order to make themselves look good to others or what they tell themselves they want to feel good about the current state of their life. No, I'm talking about what they really want. And to find out what they really want, you don't need to ask them. You just need to look at what they did today. You want to change, start there. Okay. This article is fun and irreverent and all, but it honestly hit me like a truck. I feel like I do this a lot in my life. I tell myself what I want, and it stays in this dreamlike state where just thinking about it feels good, and then that dopamine boost tricks me and it holds me over or gives me just enough of something that then doing the actual thing becomes almost irrelevant. I'm sure a lot of you would like to do a million things. You want to learn to play the piano, you want to paint, you want to get into photography, start a clothing brand, whatever it is, and you, just like me, daydream about it from time to time and live in this fun little make-believe world that has us all trapped. Reason number two, or way number two, hit me particularly hard. It was focusing on the whole instead of the next step. I feel like that applies to this, to what we're doing now. You listen to this podcast because it helps you feel more comfortable with the English language, and you learn a thing or two every time you listen. I hope. And I want to take a second to commend you or to congratulate you because by listening to this show every week or every other week, or with whatever frequency you listen to it, you're actually doing the thing, and you should feel proud of that. And I'm not telling you this because it's my podcast and I want you to listen, which is also true. I'm telling you this because it's important to take a second and assess that you've probably made a lot of progress throughout this time and you should feel really good about that. I think what I've learned from this slap in the face of an article is that I need to keep myself in check or I need to police myself a bit more efficiently when it comes to what I actually want, and I need to also be honest with how much I'm willing to sacrifice in order to get it. I hope that as this new year rolls around or approaches and passes, as this new year rolls around, you also take that into account when writing your resolutions. Be realistic and be honest with yourself. Some of you will sign up to the gym and convince yourselves that this new year will bring a new you, but as this article so lovingly reminded us, we don't really change all that much. I'm a firm believer that small tweaks over time or small changes over time are what actually get us to where we want to be. So I'd like to encourage you to stay patient, stay curious about the language, and just try to take those small steps when you can. Start your vocabulary list this week, start reading a book that you've been putting off, or procrastinating that you've been putting off, and I think that when 2027 rolls around, you'll find that you'll be proud of yourself. Okay, I just wanted to say that, and I think when I say these things to you, I'm actually talking to myself. As always, I hope you enjoyed this episode. I hope that it helped, and I hope that you got something from it. You know the drill, share it with people, and let's keep this thing going. And let's help more people feel good about their English, but more importantly, about themselves. All right, talk soon. Later.