Why Everyone You Know is Stuck

This is one of my favorite views, ideas, opinions, and I think it's going to change your life. Many situations in our lives, they're similar to going on a hike. The view changes, but it only changes once you start walking. What does this mean? It means that you don't need all the answers right now. All the new answers, the new paths, the new directions, the things that you don't know, they reveal themselves, but you have to have the courage to get started. Now, this is what I've learned after watching hundreds of people, if not thousands of people, stay stuck for years. Your brain is designed to keep you safe, not make you happy, and that's creating a massive problem in how you approach life. It's stopping you from starting the hike. Now, what does this actually look like? It looks like over planning. And listen, I also used to think planning was smart. I spent three years planning to write a book, three years. I had outlines, I had research timelines, I had marketing strategies, I had everything except actual pages written. And then I realized something that changed everything. My brain was not my friend. My brain was using planning as a way to avoid the scary part, actually writing something that people might not like. See, planning feels productive, it feels like progress, but it's just this sophisticated form of avoidance that your brain uses to keep you safe from rejection and failure. And all these other fears that are either conscious or subconscious. See, your brain sees uncertainty as danger. So when you want to do something new, it floods you with every possible problem. It shows you all the ways you could fail, all the reasons that you're not ready, all the information that you're missing. But this isn't wisdom. This is your survival mechanism freaking out because you're trying to do something that doesn't guarantee success. And your brain would rather keep you safe and miserable than let you risk being unsafe and potentially happy. Because the problem is the system was designed for physical survival in a dangerous world. It was not designed to help you thrive in a modern world where the biggest risks are emotional, not physical, because your brain can't tell the difference between a lion and the possibility that someone might not like your work. For example, Ray Crock was 52. When he decided to franchise McDonald's, he wasn't following some master plan. He was selling milkshake machines and he noticed something interesting. Now, his brain probably told him he was too old, but he didn't know the restaurant industry, that he didn't have enough capital and he did it anyway. And that irrational decision built one of the world's largest companies. Now, this is something that took me way too long to figure out. More information doesn't make you more likely to start. All that planning doesn't make you more likely to start it actually makes you less likely. And I know this sounds backwards, but think about it. The more you research something, the more complex it becomes. The more you learn about what could go wrong, the more overwhelmed you get. You start seeing competition that you didn't know existed. Problems you hadn't considered. Skills you don't have yet. So instead of gaining confidence, you start to lose it. It's almost like looking at a mountain from far away. So if you're going to climb a mountain, if you look at it from far away, you'd be like, yeah, that looks manageable. But then if you got really close up, like say you're standing at the base of the mountain, it looks intimidating as hell. And the same goes for planning. So each piece of new information, it's like taking another step closer to the mountain and pretty soon. What looked like a pleasant hike from far away, it starts to look like this impossible climb. But the thing is that the mountain hasn't actually gotten any bigger. You just have more detailed information about how challenging it might be. And the problem is that detailed information about challenges feels more real than the general information about the rewards. So your brain weighs potential problems much more heavily than potential benefits. And what this means is that the more you research and the more you spend time planning, the harder it is for you psychologically to actually start. Another example is Julia Child. She was 36 when she took her first cooking class. She didn't spend two years researching French cuisine or reading every cookbook. She just showed up in Paris, scared and clueless and started learning by doing. And if she'd done what most people do, which is research until she felt ready, she probably would have never started. The information would have convinced her that she wasn't qualified. She would have learned about all the famous French chefs, all the techniques she didn't know, all the ways she could embarrass herself in a professional kitchen. Instead of inspiring her, all that information would have just paralyzed her. But because she started with limited information, she was able to focus on just the next step in front of her, rather than getting overwhelmed by everything she didn't know yet. And this connects to another way that your brain sabotages you. When the information trap doesn't work, when you actually do start gathering information, it switches to a different strategy. Perfectionism. Now perfectionism is a whole other problem. Perfectionism is not about having high standards. It's about being scared of judgment. Perfect is a story you tell yourself so that you don't have to put your work into the world where people might not like it. Perfect is a really sophisticated form of procrastination. It's your brain's way of keeping you busy without actually making you vulnerable to criticism or failure. Think about it. If you're still perfecting something, you can't be judged for it yet. If it's not finished, any criticism doesn't really count because it's, you know, quote unquote, not done yet. And perfectionism is like having a permanent excuse for why you're not ready to be evaluated. But the irony is that perfect doesn't exist. There's no finish line where something becomes perfect and you become immune to criticism. So perfectionism is another psychological trap. It's this endless loop where you keep polishing something that will never be polished enough and you protect yourself from feedback that would actually make your work better. A perfect example of somebody pushed back against perfectionism is Maya Lynn. She was 21 when she designed the Vietnam Memorial. 21. She was a college student with zero experience who submitted a design that half the country initially hated. So if she had waited until she was qualified or if she had waited until she could guarantee that everybody would love it, that memorial would never exist. So she had something that most adults lose. She had the willingness to be wrong in public. Now you might be thinking, okay, great, I get it. My brain is sabotaging me with fear. My brain is sabotaging me with perfectionism, but let's be a little practical. There could be some circumstances where it makes sense to wait for the best possible chance of the thing working out. And that's another comfortable lie that we tell ourselves that we should wait and that waiting feels a little bit smart and that waiting for the right time is responsible. But there is no right time. There's only now and later. And because of all the things we just talked about, later has a habit of becoming never. You see, fear and perfectionism are really just your brain saying, well, future you is going to be more confident, more ready. But the thing is that future you is going to have the same brain with the same fears and the same perfectionism and the same or even new reasons to wait. The only difference between future you and current you is that future you is going to have less time to actually do the thing that you keep putting off. And what happens when you wait for the right time because again, your brain just keeps wanting to protect you is that the goal posts keep moving. So first, you're going to say, well, I'm not qualified. And then you're going to say, well, there's no way I'm ever going to make this perfect. And then you're going to say, well, I need more money. And then you're going to say, I need more time. And then you're going to say, I need more skills. And then you're going to say, I need better circumstances. There's always one more thing that needs to be perfect before you can start. Meanwhile, the world's going to keep changing around you. That opportunity that you're waiting to be ready for might not exist anymore by the time that you feel ready. Or someone else who didn't wait for the perfect conditions or someone else who managed their fears might have already seized that opportunity. So it's pretty obvious that your brain is working against you in multiple ways through fear, information overload, perfectionism, the waiting game. But here's where it gets really interesting. When you finally do start walking, when you go on that hike, you start to discover some things that really change everything that you know about how you see obstacles and opportunities. When you finally take the first step, when you start walking instead of planning, you discover three things that are completely invisible from the starting line. The first thing you discover is that most problems don't actually exist. From the starting line, your brain shows every possible problem. If you let it, you're going to spend months solving issues that you never even encounter. A lot of the problems that seem huge before you start, basically the problems that you see from the outside, they're just part of the process from the inside. But you won't know this. You can't see this until you're actually in motion. The second thing you're going to discover is that opportunities are created, not found. And this is huge. The best opportunities don't exist until someone creates something. They're not just sitting out there waiting to be discovered. They emerge from the process of doing something. See, Reed Hoffman, he didn't set out to build the world's largest professional network. LinkedIn started as a simple way to stay connected with former colleagues. And the platform it became emerged from watching how people actually used it. So that billion dollar opportunity wasn't visible from the starting line. It only became visible to someone who started building and paid attention to what people actually wanted. So whatever you start now, whatever first step you take, it's going to show you opportunities that you could not have known existed if you never started to hike. And the third thing you're going to discover is that you become someone different. This is the most important one. The person who starts the journey is never the same person who reaches the destination. The journey is what changes you in ways that you can't predict or plan for. You can't plan to become somebody that you've never been. You have to experience your way into becoming them. And from what I've learned and from what interviewing a lot of successful people has taught me is that movement creates clarity, not the other way around. You don't get clear and then move. You move and then get clear. Every successful person's story is full of pivots, course corrections, discoveries that couldn't have planned for, and the path reveals itself to people who are walking on it. You can't see around the corner from where you're standing. You have to walk the corner first. And this is completely backwards from how we're taught to think. We're told to have the plan. No where we're going. Figure out everything in advance. But think about when you drive across the country. You're going from New York, LA. You know where LA is. But you can't see it. You can only see right in front of you. You can see far enough to take the next step. And then the next step after that, the clarity, the success, and whatever it is you're doing, it comes from the feedback that you get from actually doing something. And that feedback, it's not just helpful information. It is the only information that actually matters. And you can't get it by thinking, by researching, by planning, by delaying. You can only get it by doing. For example, when you actually start something, a new business, the world stops being theoretical and starts being real. It tells you what the market values. People stop telling you what they think they want. And they'll start showing you what they actually will pay for. If you are going to the gym in January, you haven't gone in a long time and you say, well, you know, eventually I'll get in shape. Well, if you go to the gym, you have to stop pretending that you love the idea of working out. And you're going to start working out. And your body's going to start telling you what actually feels sustainable. There's a feedback loop. You're going to learn what exercises you like, which ones you don't like, what kind of gym schedule you can maintain. But this carries over into all aspects of your life. You can't just talk about a successful relationship. You have to get into a relationship and put in the work and figure out what you like and what you don't like about a partner and figure out what you're willing to accept and what you're not willing to accept. That's the only way that you can build a true relationship. One of my favorite examples is Stan Lee. He figured this out at 39. He'd been writing comics for 20 years, mostly just copying what worked for other people, playing it, say following the formula and then his wife, said something that changed everything. Why don't you write what you actually want to write? The worst thing that happens is you get fired from a job that's already making you miserable. So he created Spider-Man, a teenage superhero with real problems, anxiety, self-doubt. Everything that the experts said wouldn't work. And it became one of the most successful comic book characters in history. But the interesting thing about Stan Lee's story is that the breakthrough didn't come from better planning. It came from 20 years of walking, failing, learning, and accumulating the experience that made that moment of clarity possible while simultaneously taking that first step on this new hike. This is just another example of you have to take the first step and then the plan will reveal itself to you. Listen, I spent years watching people stay stuck and talking about and over planning and getting stressed out about taking the first step. I've also spent years watching people take that first step on that hike and break free. The difference between those two people is not intelligence, resources, or luck. It's understanding one very simple thing. Your brain is never going to give you permission to start something that you are uncertain about. And we are uncertain about anything and everything that we haven't done before. So you have to trick it. You have to start so small that your brain doesn't even register it as a threat. If you want to write, don't plan a novel, just write about the weirdest thing that happened to you this week in a journal before breakfast. If you want to start a business on this side, don't create a whole business plan. Just sell something that you already own or that you're already good at, maybe to somebody that you already know. If you want to get healthier, you don't have to join a gym. Just go for a walk twice or three times a week to the end of your street because your brain can't argue with walking to the end of your street. It is too pathetic and small to trigger a fear response. But here's what these tiny actions actually do. They prove to you that you're the kind of person who acts instead of just thinks about acting. And that identity shift is everything. And when you start doing, when you start moving, something incredible happens. Your brain stops treating uncertainty like an emergency. See, your fear response was designed for immediate physical threats. It's great at there's a predator in those bushes, but it's pretty bad at I don't know if people will like my work. So when you start moving and nothing actually kills you, your brain gets new data. See, the fear doesn't disappear. That's not how brains work, but it transforms from paralyzing terror into this useful alertness. You start seeing uncertainty as information instead of data. And this creates a little bit of a flywheel effect where the next action is easier and the action after that is easier. It's a little bit like atomic habits. You take the first step. That's really where you have to start, but then the step after that, it's not so scary. And that's why so many situations in life are similar to going on a hike. The view changes once you start walking. But what's sad is that most people die without ever even leaving the parking lot. They spend their whole lives so paralyzed, so worried about making the wrong choice. But the wrong choice isn't the problem. The problem is that for every day you worry about making the wrong choice. What actually happens is you're becoming an expert at making no choices at all. Every single day you hesitate, you just get better at hesitating and making excuses every day that you choose research over action. You are wiring your brain for inaction. And every day that you wait for more information, you practice being someone who needs permission to exist. Meanwhile, the people who actually do interesting things, they started walking while you were still reading reviews about hiking boots. See, your life isn't some future event that starts when you figure everything out. It's not waiting for you to feel ready or for conditions to improve. Your life is what's happening right now while you're sitting there planning it. Every day you don't start is a day of your actual life that you spent preparing to live instead of living. So your brain's never going to give you permission to do something uncertain. It's not how brains work. Your brain's job is to keep you breathing, not to help you become who you could be. It sees uncertainty as danger, period, full stop. So stop waiting for your brain to get comfortable with discomfort because it's not going to happen. You have to start anyway. You have to take that embarrassingly small step while your brain is freaking out. You have to move towards what actually matters to you, even when you can't see how it ends. See, the view changes everything, but you have to be willing to leave the parking lot to see it. And if you don't start walking soon, you're going to wake up one day and realize you spent your whole life getting really, really good at standing still.