Don't Compromise. For Anyone.

Do you know these situations when you're about to make the right choice, and then someone interferes?

Maybe you're about to leave the house for the gym, but your roommate convinces you to play video games with them.

Maybe you're about to order the grilled salmon salad, but your partner thinks you should treat yourself to a mega nacho platter.

Maybe you're planning to go to bed early, but your friends call, and off you go bar-hopping.

From a personal development point of view, this is where the rubber hits the road. It's one thing to read inspiring self-help books and come up with great resolutions for change. It's a very different thing when everyone around you is doing shots, and you are miserably holding on to your glass of water.

Our first instinct is to point the finger. After all, you didn't ask for the other person to interfere. And it’s true — if they hadn't shown up, you would likely have made the right decision.

But that’s only half the truth.

Life happens, and this includes other people. They are a contingency to be dealt with, and wishing differently is just that — wishful thinking.

Also, how many times have you felt secretly relieved for that other person torpedoing your resolutions? In truth, many times. Other people are the perfect excuse to do the wrong thing.

Now, let's look at the outsider's perspective, the one doing the tempting. They're usually not consciously trying to derail you. If they know about your personal development efforts, they might even applaud you.

So why would they still tempt you?

Their internal reasoning — "It's great that you are trying to get fit / go to bed early / start your own business. It's a worthwhile project, and I wish you luck. But I'm here now and want to have fun with you. Just make an exception."

It sounds like a perfectly reasonable argument, one that I have (gladly) fallen for many times in the past. Just one tiny exception. What difference will it make in the long run?

Unfortunately, it makes all the difference.

If you ask any successful person how they got to where they are (and cut out the anecdotes), it boils down to the same thing: "I did the right type of action, every day, for many years."

The aspiring guitar hero practices their scales for hours a day, the athlete spends most of their waking hours at the gym, and the genius programmer codes for hours on end.

If you study the biographies of famous achievers (I recommend Mason Currey's book "Daily Rituals"), you'll find they take this to the extreme. They protect their daily routines with a fervor — practice comes first, everyone else comes second.

Beethoven started composing at dawn, interspersed by long solitary walks with a notebook in hand, and obsessively repeated this process.

Haruki Murakami wakes at 4 am, writes for 5–6 hours, runs 10K or swims 1500 meters, reads, and goes to bed by 9 p.m.

Serena Williams was known for her grueling practicing and conditioning sessions, always prioritizing her training schedule over media and personal events.

It's easy to dismiss this as "extreme" or "crazy." But these "crazy" outliers simply understand how the game is played. They understand that good intentions are just that and that all you have to make things happen is the present moment.

Hence, the person standing in front of you, demanding an exception ("Come on, just this one time"), must be refused. Because life will never stop throwing these demands at you. There will always be someone else requiring your attention.

If you want extraordinary results, you must tell them "no." And it must start here and now, not in some mythical future.

What About Your Children?

This is the toughest call to make — if you have children, do you also refuse them?

There are two ways to look at this. If your children are truly the most important thing in your life, then you will prioritize them anyway — there's no conflict.

But even deprioritizing them (to an extent) might be justified. Your children look to you for clues on how to live their lives. If you always postpone your goals for their immediate wants, they'll end up doing the same thing once they grow up. But if you're someone with strict boundaries regarding your goals, they'll copy you, too.

What's more important — giving in to their every request? Or teaching them — by example — what it takes to succeed? Obviously, the second.

The Hard Truth

Your life is evaporating as you read these words. Tomorrow isn't guaranteed, and yesterday is gone. The only weapon you have against mediocrity is your "no" — the "no" you say right now, in this moment, when your friend is staring at you with puppy dog eyes. That moment of tension, that uncomfortable silence when you refuse to bend your rules — that's when it counts.

You must make your choice: Will you be the person who had good intentions but caved at every social pressure? Or will you be the stubborn outlier who built something extraordinary? What is it going to be?

I had to travel from Thailand to Malaysia this weekend; a border run to renew my visa. It made me think about how the digital nomad lifestyle is both good and bad for productivity. Good, as by changing places, the same old habits suddenly feel fresh and exciting again. Bad, as you always have to figure out anew how things work in the new location. I suspect there is a sweet spot, where you don't switch places too often, but often enough to still enjoy that energy influx. I might have to play around with this idea once I go to LatAm. Anyway.

Until next time,

Niels