Extremely Honest Q&A

Mar 1, 2021 47m 23s 12 insights
Stephen Bartlett answers listener questions about his life and business, sharing brutally honest advice on topics like handling uncertainty, maximizing earning potential, overcoming imposter syndrome, finding meaning, and managing the challenges of success and ambition.
Actionable Insights

1. Apply Acceptance, Optimism, Action

When faced with unexpected uncertainty or chaos, adopt principles of acceptance (of feelings and unchangeable events), optimism (finding and creating hope), and action (using optimism to drive physical and mental fight-back) to navigate difficult times and avoid a ‘second loss’.

2. Create a Meaningful Life

Actively create and live a meaningful life by pursuing intrinsic passions, hobbies, relationships, and work that feel deeply worthwhile and fulfilling, especially when external sources of meaning are removed, as this is a powerful antidote to feeling lost or depressed.

3. Prioritize Macro Life Goals

Instead of just saving time, prioritize better by allocating time to your long-term macro priorities like friends, relationships, health, and the joy of work, reinvesting saved time into these areas for a more joyful existence.

4. Embrace Imposter Syndrome for Growth

View the feeling of imposter syndrome as a healthy, natural sign that you are pushing yourself and growing; reframe it as an exciting challenge to attack with focus and effort, rather than retreating from uncomfortable situations.

5. Choose Challenge Over Comfort

Approach decisions with skepticism towards what is comfortable and easy, as these are short-term friends but long-term enemies; instead, choose the challenge to foster growth and overcome psychological discomfort, as these are the most valuable moments for progress.

6. Act as Your Future Self

In moments where you want to quit or procrastinate, ask yourself, ‘How would the person I want to become behave right now?’ to guide your decisions and align your actions with your long-term ambitions and values.

7. Maximize Skill’s Market Value

Beyond improving your skills, strategically consider where your existing skills (e.g., social media, marketing) will reap the greatest return by seeking out markets, industries, or roles where they are more in demand, higher valued, or rarer.

8. Cultivate Gratitude for Small Things

Consciously make an effort to be grateful and appreciate the small things in life, as hedonistic adaptation can cause your satisfaction with possessions and experiences to decay over time, requiring more to feel the same joy.

9. Create New Ambitious Goals

After achieving significant life or career goals, make a conscious effort to create new, even bigger goals that match the same level of excitement and challenge you had when starting out, to maintain a sense of fulfillment and purpose.

10. Prioritize Non-Urgent Important Relationships

Actively prioritize non-urgent but long-term important relationships (e.g., family, meaningful friendships) over urgent work priorities, recognizing that their lack of immediate urgency does not diminish their crucial long-term value.

11. Maintain Decency Amidst Busyness

Despite being mentally bombarded with priorities, make a conscious effort to switch your behavioral philosophy between personal and professional contexts, ensuring you remain a gracious, polite, and present human being, rather than compromising on decency to save time.

12. Ignore Ridicule, Pursue Happiness

When facing ridicule or snide comments from friends or peers for pursuing your ambitions, ask yourself ‘Who do I want to be and what makes me happy?’ and pursue that path, understanding that losing people who don’t support your happiness is often necessary.