Graham Weaver: preference

Transcript context

…You have another quote along these lines, which is, "Everything you want is on the other side of worse first." Yeah, I mean, I know those are two non-super optimistic quotes perhaps, but I think they're true. The second one, everything you want is on the other side of worst first, and this is something where I almost can't think of many exceptions to this. Pick anything. You want a better body? Okay, you're going to need to go to the gym. When you go to the gym the first few times, it's going to not be that fun. You're going to set your alarm, you're going to get sore. It's not going to be great. You're going to have to probably make some changes to your diet. That's not going to be fun, at least initially. And so that's one example. You want to change careers, you're going to have to learn a new career. You're going to have to leave your career. You're going to have to maybe interview for new jobs, or whatever it is. In each case, the first move is negative. The first move is negative to getting in shape. The first move is negative to get out of a bad relationship, to get into a career you want to be in. The reason I think that's important to say is because if I'm optimizing for tomorrow and I just want to have a great day tomorrow, I'm going to stay exactly where I am, because my life will be better tomorrow if I don't make any changes. I don't have to break up with my girlfriend, have a hard conversation, have the tears, be alone, go on dating apps. I don't have to do that if I just stay in it one more day. So if you realize this and instead ask the question, the version of myself five years from now, what would they wish I was going to do right now? So I can guarantee your five-year version of yourself will say, "Get out of that toxic relationship, no matter how painful it is for the next two months." And if you can make decisions from that, and then on top of that, realize it's going to get worse first, then that's why I say everything you want is on the other side of worse first. But if you don't do that, you just end up plateauing. And so many people I see have this happen where they hit a plateau and they never move past it because they're not willing to have that hard day, month, week, year whatever it is. I am imagining many people hearing this right now are like, "Yeah, I see what I need to do now." That was really powerful advice. It makes me think of parenting advice, some parenting advice I recently saw. Dr. Becky has this advice of your job as a parent isn't to make your kids happy, but it's to make them resilient.…

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