Things That Work. Things That Don’t.

You are an expert of immeasurable ability.

How do I know?

According to my analytics, the average reader of Frankly Friday is 43 years old.

That’s 15,965 days.

At least 258,000 individual thoughts you’ve processed.

And, on average, at least 5,000 individual people you’ve met.

By simply being alive, you have an immense amount of experience of success, failure, and learning from each.

If you could fully apply all of that knowledge, would you agree it would be worth a lot?

As you’ve learned by now, knowing things isn’t the same as doing things. If it were, everyone would be rich, skinny, and happily married.

Two questions;

1. Would you like to get a little more out of life right now?
2. Are you up for a simple exercise?

You’re in? Cool.

Get a piece of paper. Draw a line down the middle to make two columns. Write “Things that work,” atop the left column, and “things that don’t” atop the right column.

Next, set a timer for 90 seconds and write down all of the things you know to be good for you in your past ~43 years on earth. These can be persons, places, things, activities of any kind, or just anything that comes to mind.

The timer is important because it will force the truest things out of you without thinking too much.

Then, reset the clock for another 90 seconds and write down all of the things you know to be not good for you in your past ~43 years on earth.

Here’s the fun part.

For the next month, choose to do one more thing you know works.

And choose to do one less that you know does not. No judgment on what you choose, big or small.

The only two rules are this:

1. You can only choose one thing on each list.
2. Tell someone you trust what you’re up to, and request that they ask you about it.

At the end of 30 days, you can do what any good scientist does, and test your theory.

1. Is your life better than it would have been if you didn’t do the exercise?
2. Can your experiment be proven again with different variables?

At the very least, you can add your findings to your pile of life research, and you’ll be made wiser by what you learn.

I’ll leave you with this:

As my wise friend, Bill often reminds me, “we overestimate what we can do in two months, and underestimate what we can do in two years.”

I’m shooting for the two-year club, and a steady stream of moments where I can look up and say,

“Wow. Look how far I’ve come.”

Are you with me?

Cheers,

BW