The Most Useful Trait in Life

127 people had breakthroughs this week. Will the next one be you?

Two things for you to think about

The trick to self-improvement is to make plenty of mistakes… but to never make the same one twice.

The most useful trait you can train within yourself: to stop seeing failure as a bad thing.

Two things for you to ask yourself

Where in your life have you been too afraid of failure? What has that fear prevented you from accomplishing?

One thing for you to try this week

Go fail at something. Spectacularly, preferably. Then let me know how it went.

New This Week

Resistance, Self-Sabotage, and What It Really Takes to Accomplish Dreams (ft. Steven Pressfield) – Steven Pressfield was 52 years old when he published his first hit novel, and 59 when he published The War of Art, his world-famous treatise on the grinding process of creativity. Now in his 80s, Steven looks back on his work and life with a clear-eyed view of what it truly means to make it as a creative professional. In this latest podcast episode, Steven explains why he wrote for decades with little to show for it, how he compensated for his own lack of talent, why creating great art is actually a grueling war fought within the artist’s own mind, and much, much more. Enjoy.

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Applications close September 8th, so don’t dawdle.

Last week’s breakthroughs

In last week’s newsletter, I asked you to reorient your attitude towards a problem in your life and see how much further that gets you.

Our first reader took action after a year of fussing:

My roof was leaking in the laundry room, not really able to get someone in to deal with it ($$$). Not a big problem if I can find the source. I am in construction and quite handy… just not a roofer.

Anyways, I made a fuss about it for a year (far too long to let a leak go), always complaining and not doing. Finally just pulled the bandaid off and ripped out the drywall the other day after work.

The wood was good, just the drywall had to go. Cleaned up the space, fixed the leak, and now this week I’m painting and installing new cabinets. I feel so refreshed having this problem almost solved. For the amount of time it took to fix, I could have saved myself hours of complaining over the past year.

Catarina stopped complaining and asked for help:

I have felt very overwhelmed at work, and I have been consistently complaining about how my boss has been adding on more and more to my load. However, that was never really the problem. The problem was that I never told my boss that I was feeling overwhelmed! I always accepted whatever jobs she had for me, even if I was already exhausted, without a word to her about my difficulties.

Today, I told her that I am having trouble, and suggested she should hire someone else to help with the workload or reduce the amount I have to do. I already feel a huge weight off my shoulders. Whatever my boss chooses to do, at least I tried to change the situation.

Our final reader shared a mantra we might all learn from:

I just started helping coach my daughter’s softball team a few weeks ago. The culture of the team for the last year has been almost toxic. We had some turnover of players and coaches, (enter me).

At our first tournament this weekend, I spent the whole weekend fighting through the complaining and the worrying and the outrage. I’m working so hard to help all these coaches and players see that being constructive and supportive of each other is so much more effective than being critical and tearing them down. My mantra was, ‘If it’s not constructive, it’s not helpful.’

A breakthrough happened after the fourth game, and we absolutely dominated the last game of the weekend, winning 8-3, but more importantly, we were all smiling and playing for each other.

As always, send your breakthroughs by simply replying to this email. Let me know if you’d prefer to remain anonymous.

Until next week,

Mark Manson

#1 New York Times Bestselling Author
My Website — My Books — My YouTube Channel