There are so many ideas we discover daily, from people, books, internet, and by observing the world. Some of them, we have heard a number of times before. A good example is self-development ideas: you probably heard about the 80-20 Pareto rule, about the importance of Habits, skill of goal setting and Manifestation, reading, self-control, and many others. I used to learn about these things too back when I was 15, reading Brian Tracy’s books. If you are in business, you also could hear about the importance of connecting and looking up to great people, utilizing rules from physics such as momentum, inertia and so on.
But how many of these you have internalized? In other words, how many of them you repeated to yourself and tried so many times it became a subcontious guiding rule?
When it comes to success in anything, it’s not the ideas themselves that create laverage. You can apply momentum occasionally, you can connect with someone periodically or contiously use Pareto principle to prioritize something - but that is not enough to internalise it - and therefore make it a guiding priciple of your life.
Look at highly successful people like Pavel Durov, Steve Jobs, or Elon Musk - most of things they say about what makes one successful you already heard before. There are many ideas but always only a handful of them that they speak about repeatedly - these are the ones they have internalized. For example, Elon would often say about first-principle thinking approach, and Durov will, maybe with different phrasing, convey the importance the discipline and short-term sacrafice for long-term gains.
Here is the thing: there are no secrets. the best ideas are the ones you already know.
To internalize an idea, you should:
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Find an idea, most likely it’s the one you already know. Absorb as much information as you possibly can to get more.
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Choose an idea that you think will benefit you greatly.
From now on,
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Act as a person that fiercely belives in it
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Think of it every day, look at it from different perspectives
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Speak about it