# How to suck less Do you know the difference between amateur and professionals in sports? Amateurs lose games, and it's a contest to see who can lose fewer points than the other. Professionals win games, and the match goes to who can win more points. Life is the absolute same way, although it is harder for us to detect this since we're always playing the game in real time. Charlie Munger said, in talking about how he and fellow billionaire Warren Buffett became the most prolific investors of all time, "It is remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent." In this statement from the near 100 year old wrinkly genius, we can learn a lot if we're open to it. Essentially, we're all standing in our own way in some capacity, and usually in more than one. I realize this can be a sensitive topic. It is hard to admit when we're messing up, especially to ourselves. Yet, the short-term ego pain of embracing and fixing the suck will ultimately make us stronger, if we allow it to. As the other billionaire investor Ray Dalio says, "[[Pain + reflection = progress|pain + reflection = progress]]." Let's dig into the pain first. The easiest way to do this, I've found, is to think of your life in terms of the [[7 Core Disciplines|7 core disciplines]]: spiritual, intellectual, physical, financial, industrial, relational, emotional. *Easy way to remember the 7 is the acronym SIPFIRE.* In each discipline, honestly write out or otherwise document the things the best version of you would be doing. For example, in the physical discipline, you may write... - exercise daily - Eat a healthy diet - Don't drink alcohol - Get regular checkups at the doctor, dentist, etc. - Go outside regularly - Limit screen time - Etc Now let's invert and be honest. For each of the things your best you would do, what are you actually doing? Are you eating fast food, drinking too much, not exercising, not going to the doctor, staying inside all day, and glued to your screen? If the gap between where you want to be and where you are is wide, I would suggest you're better off closing that gap first before trying to set big ambitious goals like make a billion dollars. The great Michael Jordan, arguably the best basketball player of all time, said, "The minute you get away from fundamentals – whether its proper technique, work ethic or mental preparation – the bottom can fall out of your game, your schoolwork, your job, whatever you're doing." This applies most of all to life. We get away from the fundamentals and so focused on things that ultimately won't get us where we want to go BECAUSE we went away from the fundamentals. You can't be a champion if you haven't passed step 1. Again, this is easy to read but difficult to put into practice. It means calling yourself out. But I promise, the tough love is worth it. Once you can clean up these basics, life becomes so much more because you open up the space for it to be. Once we have gone through each of the 7 disciplines and written out the ideal versions of ourselves, then inverted to see what we're actually doing, we are ready to make some changes. A lot of people fall into the trap of thinking they need a significant amount of time to change. That is bullshit. If you're eating bad today, you can completely course correct starting right now. If you're scrolling for 6 hours a day on social media today, you can uninstall immediately. If you're not meditating at all today, you can finish reading these words and in 0 seconds sit down on the floor with your legs crossed for 1 minute. Trying to insert time into the equation is just your brain resisting change. It knows what to expect from this routine, and is scared of the unknown. It doesn't know that the greatest days of your life are a few fundamental changes away. If you really seek to be the person you wrote out in step 1 of your ideals, and we're talking just the basics here, start now. Let this be the waving of the flag to start the race. You don't need anything else. You are ready. I can promise you this. Once you eliminate these things holding you back - the winning will take care of itself. You can't help but outcompete other people who will never get out of their own way. Day after day, people are their own worst enemy. Sometimes it is subtle too. Wasting time, complaining, negative self talk, using too much social media, spreading yourself too thin instead of focusing on your big thing, eating poorly, not exercising, tolerating toxic relationships, etc. These little things which we can objectively look at and know "that's not helping me," yet somehow those things creep into our lives like evil leeches sucking away our greatness. The world is mostly a game of amateurs. By definition 50% of people are below average. If we can simply lose fewer points than our opponents, we give ourselves an incredible advantage. Let's get back to basics. Focus on them until they are handled. And then keep focusing on them for the duration. There is no step 2, only getting better at step 1 than everyone else. The winning will take care of itself.