Improve Your Thoughts With This ONE PRACTICE | Tim Ferriss EP 413

0:00Hi, my name is Lewis Howes and welcome to the Daily Motivation Show.

0:10What do you think is the number one skill or asset that everyone should have that will always further them in life? Good communicator and the written word. I don't think it's hard to improve that. I think that a regular practice of writing could be journaling in the morning for five to ten minutes with something like morning pages. having a regular writing practice. And it could be just an assignment that you give yourself once a week and you're going to write three to five pages and then you're going to pay someone to edit it or to review it. And that could be a teacher at a local college who does say creative writing classes, or it could be a friend who's a lawyer or a lawyer.

0:47Lawyers are very good at spotting sloppy language or sloppy thinking. Words that are unnecessary, words that are easily confused. Just that practice of tightening up your writing will tighten up your thinking. So if you want to improve your thinking, the most concrete, tangible way to do that, that is easy to manage, is having a regular writing practice of some type. And the goal isn't to become a better writer. The goal is to become a clearer thinker. No matter what you are doing in life, you are going to have to, especially in a digital world where email is going to remain king for the foreseeable future.

1:21And if not email, it's going to be text. There will be a text component. Then you need to be a compelling communicator. And then I would suggest very closely related to that is getting good at negotiating. So communicating and negotiating, there are two pieces. So written and then verbal communication. Written and verbal. There's a program called Secrets of Power Negotiating. The audio version is exceptional to listen to because you are able to pick up the nuance of the intonation and the delivery. And then you role play that. You have to practice. You can't expect to read a book on negotiating, walk into a huge negotiation that you're nervous about and knock it out of the park.

1:55No. You have to role play it. you have to practice. The one asset would be honing your clarity of thought by some type of regular writing practice. What do you think are some good ways to increase confidence for anyone or what are some ways that you did to increase confidence along the way? And what are some things other people can do? I think positive thinking is necessary, but not sufficient. What I've noticed, and this is very common, for instance, in the meditation world, they're outside of the action, right? So they're at a monastery, they're somewhere with minimal inputs and they're the picture of patience and calm and so on.

2:30But I've seen some of those people, exactly, when you throw them onto the front lines, they lose their shit. I think that you need to make yourself uncomfortable. And that's why in the four hour work week, these comfort challenges are so important. And they seem silly, but there's a very transcendent, important benefit that you get from say, going into a Starbucks and laying down on the floor for 20 seconds and not saying anything to someone and then just getting back up. And that's a comfort challenge. Most people do not want to do it. And they'll do that and they'll get up and be like, wow, I was so nervous about that and nothing bad happened.

3:00Nothing happened. Exactly. And when you expand your sphere of comfortable action by doing things that make you marginally uncomfortable, you get better at asking yourself and answering the question, what's the worst that could happen? And you realize not much. Like really, I've done all these other things I thought were going to be these horrible experiences and I was totally fine. So let me try A, B or C that I am worried about or was previously worried about. So I think that you have to inoculate yourself against fear by exposing yourself to fear. It's the only way you can do it. Your subconscious is really on point and honest in a lot of ways.

3:35And you can't fool yourself into being confident just by repeatedly telling yourself to be confident. You've got this. You have to incrementally do things that make you routinely uncomfortable. What's the one problem you have yet to solve that eats at you the most? I'm good at saying no, I have to get 100 times better. I mean, I say no to 99 out of 100 things that come my way, but I have to get to the point where I'm saying no to 999 out of 1 ,000 things. Yeah, I mean, I saw your email. Backlog is insane. I have to create systems and I also have to, I think, ultimately upset a lot of people. And I'm not used to that.

4:11I'm accustomed to being able to sort of politely decline a lot of things. And some people will take it personally, but it's going to have to get to a point where nobody on my team even acknowledges receipt of 99 % of what we get. and people will get very upset by that. It's an interesting transition for me. It's not okay ping me in two months. It's not maybe, why don't we talk about it next quarter? If it's not like, oh my God, I have to do this right now, it's a no. You end up having to throw out a lot of very cool opportunities, particularly when, let's say, I get a cool opportunity to come to me or even an email introduction from somebody I know, but it's one of 999 other such introductions.

4:46If I even reply, it'll turn into another two or three emails. Very oftentimes. because people have been taught to be persistent. And I will tell you, with busy people, being overly persistent is not a good thing. You have to hear the message. Reaching out to busy people, it's timing, timing, timing. Like, wait until the timing is right. And how is the timing right? For instance, like if I want to reach out to a A-list celebrity to be on my podcast, I am going to try to figure out through back channels or their managers or whatever, when they are going to be doing press junkets to promote something they're doing because that is when they'll be scheduling all of the stuff.

5:21And I will not waste my breath and infuriate the team by trying to be insistent outside of those pockets of time because they are just as busy, if not more busy than I am. There is a point where you have to choose between your own sanity. And pleasing everyone else. And pleasing everyone else. And even if you try to please everyone else, you can't. So if someone tells you you have to do something or should do something, ask them for the evidence. Ask them what evidence suggests that. You have to test assumptions. I have to do this or this. Really, what evidence do you have that suggests that, that I'm limited to those two options?

5:54And if they can't answer you, then you shouldn't take that advice. There's a lot of speculation and just making up of the rules as we go along. And I think that people get trapped in prisons of their own making because they accept limitations that other people place on them or that they place on themselves just as often. If you or someone else says you have to do X or you should do Y, ask what evidence is there to support this?

6:23Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of The Daily Motivation, and I hope you have an amazing rest of your day. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to click the link in the description. That will take you to the full episode of our main podcast on The School of Greatness. And if you are loving The Daily Motivation, please follow us over on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave us a review over on Apple podcast right now. And if you want more exclusive content and ad free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our greatness plus channel on Apple podcast right now. And if you want to get even more inspiration from our world-class guests and learn how to improve your life and take it to the next level, then make sure to sign up for the greatness newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox over at greatness.com slash newsletter.

7:13Again, have an amazing day and I'll see you tomorrow with another episode of the Daily Motivation Show.