Do It Yourself
In life, the name of the game is to Do Things Yourself (DIY) when it comes to getting things done right for you or bootstrapping yourself or most importantly, getting yourself free. There are a few things I can bring to your attention that can help accelerate the process of DIY. The reason it's ideal to accelerate this process is because it is painful. Especially in the beginning. The sooner you can get to the stage where DIY becomes a habit and you develop a high pain tolerance for DIY, the sooner you can get to your goals; be free from self-perceived limitations and depend on others less for things you can do yourself. This independence is important because as the saying goes, "no one is coming to save you". We have to save ourselves and everybody must carry their own cross to Israel. Every cup must stand on its own base.
One of the greatest characters for embodying DIY that I have come across is a character that goes by the name "Gon Freecs". This character is a child in the animé "Hunter X Hunter". You don't need to watch the show but you just need to know that Gon Freecs symbolizes everything DIY stands for and can help you tap into your DIY capabilities and grow your pain tolerance for doing things yourself.
I am going to present you with a list of things that stem from DIY which, if you do these things, you will definitely grow your pain tolerance and be on the path to making DIY a habit.
- Embrace Uncertainty Surrounding How to Do Something
- Take Initiative to Find Out How to Do Something
- Accept that Learning is Your Responsibility
- Do Your Homework
- Develop the Ability to Figure Things Out
- Train Your Problem-Solving Ability
- Make Use of All Available Tools
- Be Comfortable Researching Things
- Go Through the Data before Concluding or "Giving Up"
- Trust the Process and Take Breaks
1. Embrace Uncertainty Surrounding How to Do Something
When we are faced with something we are unfamiliar with, no matter how small or big, we have a tendency to panic or respond with a feeling of unease and pain. We refrain from and are repelled by the obstacle in our path and figure the way around the obstacle is to avoid it by procrastinating. We do this in an attempt at wishful thinking hoping that the obstacle will magically go away. We seek a path of least resistance where the work is already done for us. However, in the real-world, if you haven't discovered where the information you need and are seeking is located then there is no magic awaiting at the end of your procrastination path. It's a dead end. The obstacle is the way. Embracing and accepting this is the first step on the path to doing things yourself. As you continue along the path after embracing and accepting it; the way, the obstacle, begins to open up and you start to find new things that lead you closer to your destination. The obstacle is the way.
2. Take Initiative to Find Out How to Do Something
It's important to understand that the responsibility to do things concerning you, relies solely with you and you alone. If you have something to do today and you don't do it, then the next day you revisit that thing it will still be done and no progress will be made on it. Therefore, taking the initiative and having drive becomes vital. Grab the bull by the horns and impose your will on the situation by putting one foot in front of the other and continuing to make progress until you are done.
3. Accept that Learning is Your Responsibility
Your learning journey is in your own hands. We can't expect someone to teach, lecture, explain, communicate or do this learning for us. We must learn on our own if we want to understand and be successful in acquiring the experience of what it is we are learning. Take ownership and appreciate that learning can be a fun process. Enjoy it.
4. Do Your Homework
This step can save you so much money, time, energy and sanity. Doing your homework is essential for evaluating if something is even worth investing the effort into. Always do your homework on things you are setting out to do. More is better but something is better than nothing. It's crucial to be informed and savvy especially in today's world where misinformation, disinformation and the like are rampant and speedy. Save yourself the heartache, headache and dilemma by doing your homework at every opportunity. Know better, do better.
5. Develop the Ability to Figure Things Out
This is easer said than done. Much pain comes from being confronted with this challenge but there is also much to gain. Figuring things out means working with VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity). That is a lethal combination of the four horsemen of confusion. Why should you wreck your head with suffering to try and understand something when you could just do something else? Freedom. Liberation. Agency. Independence. These four things cannot be underestimated and are always boons to an individual. The ability to choose your own destiny and make up your own mind by working with primary information instead of getting your information from a secondary source.
How Do You Figure Things Out?
- Pain: It hurts the most in the beginning, but then you build some pain tolerance and find you are going further than you did before.
- Suffering: Thinking is suffering.
- Perseverance: You will need stamina of physical, metal and spiritual capacity.
- Experience
- Assaulting the Problem
- Positive Mental Attitude: When faced with an obstacle, you try to find a way to overcome it, instead of immediately calling quits and concluding there is no way forward.
- Puzzles
- Practice
- Effort
- Levelling Up
- Starting gradually and building momentum
- "Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist" - Pablo Picasso
- Consistency
- Showing Up
- Education: An enlightening experience To experience something you must go through it. You must try.
6. Train Your Problem-Solving Ability
This involves burning the midnight candle just like every single problem-solver that ever and never lived. There is no-free lunch and the time must be spent for the ability to be gained. You can accelerate the rate at which you gain this ability but you must spend the time all the same. Find your way that works for you. That is the best way. If you don't know yet, find out. Refer to the above.
7. Make Use of All Available Tools
Make use of all available tools. Consider all available options. Be open-minded. Explore. Discover. Be broad, not narrow. Lean into the challenge and leverage and develop your decision-making skills by navigating the options and tools to find the best combination for your challenge. Sometimes that will involve trial-and-error. Other times, that may involve pattern recognition. At time, it will involve intuition and insight. Furthermore, there will be times where it will require a combination of all the above.
8. Be Comfortable Researching Things
We have evolved as a society when it comes to being informed, largely thanks to search engines and web browsers which revolutionized the way and speed with which we seek and obtain information. As of today's date, we really do not have an excuse for not researching something we care to do something about. Generative AI chatbots exist which can summarize large amounts of text for us so we don't have to read huge quantities of information. Just ask your question, describe your problem, converse about your challenge and proceed.
9. Go Through the Data before Concluding or "Giving Up"
Don't make a conclusion or give up until you've exhausted all the data.
10. Trust the Process and Take Breaks
Instead of being self-critical, be self-compassionate. Take breaks and don't be hard on yourself if things don't work out as you expect as soon as you expect. Live to fight another day. Tomorrow is another day to do it right.
Per ardua ad astra.