A Very Clear System to Improve Your Life
Sometimes you just need to have a clear path to move forward, and here it is
Do you remember the phase when ‘Dad Teaches You Things Videos’ were trending? When older men made videos expressly for those who felt that their own parents never properly showed them skills? How to change a tire, how to shave, etc. There was communal acknowledgement of how challenging the world is with no guidance, when there is no example to follow. Humans need caretakers to pass down knowledge, to provide a systematic guide for thinking and action, built on previous experience. Without it, you’re left to figure everything out yourself, and many people clearly felt that they were alone in looking for solutions.
If you feel like life is overwhelming, like no one showed you how to solve problems or be independent, this essay will give you a system with explicit instructions for improving your life. Ones you can follow today. If you feel like things are beyond your control, this system will give you the power of control again. Plus it’s like 5 paragraphs, you weenie, just read and implement it.
Here is the system in a nutshell:
-Get over your fear of failure and embrace change with one mindset shift
-List the things that make your life worse ( your problems). Recognize that those problems are too vague and you need to make them much more specific.
-Drill down on those problems, creating subproblems until you find something 100% in your control.
-Set a quantifiable, binary action that addresses that problem.
-Do those actions and keep yourself accountable as you progress.
That’s it!
This little system can be applied to literally everything in your life that brings you discomfort, again and again, because it brings action into your control, which applies to everything. So many of our problems stick around because we feel like things aren’t up to us, or we don’t even know how to start. So let’s change that. If you want to learn agency and independence, this is how. If you want to never again have your play out according to the decisions of someone else, this is how. If you want to own your shit and decide your own reality, this is how.
As we go, I’m going to walk through examples of when I sat down and went through this system with a family member. These actual answers should be a guide on how to do the same in your own life. It’s a good system and anyone can do it. My family member and I were literally raised by a drug addict, so no examples were ever set, and we did it. You can too.
Your first problem is probably that you don’t have a system at all. There is a reason that textbooks have structure, because you’re going to have a hell of a time ‘Learning Math’ without knowing where to start and how things connect. Instead, you build a foundation and stack higher upon it. It’s too easy to spin in circles if you don’t have direction and don’t see clear boundaries. So here, take mine, I’m calling it GYST (Get Your Sh*t Together), and I also have another one attuned to emotional awareness that I wrote a whole book about, you can find that here.
Onwards to Step One!
First-Prep the Clay
Change is a bastard that promises improvement at the expense of admitting being a failure. To pivot your behavior takes admitting that you were wrong the whole time, up until that point. It can feel really bad, causing you to dig in your heels instead of feeling foolish, refusing to change and hurting yourself rather than just saying you were not making good decisions or well informed. First thing is to soften yourself to the idea of change by distancing it from your ego. Detach failure from yourself.
To do so, we’re going to think of everything you have done up until that point as being ‘You- Version 1.’ That first version of you had limited information, limited skillsets, and was moving in the wrong direction. Every change you make is now a new version and you are no longer the old version. You can forgive the old version for not doing better; it just wasn’t equipped well.
This will also not be your last upgrade. Every improvement you make leads to a new version, and every version does their best until it’s time to upgrade again. When you slip backwards, remind yourself that this new version is better equipped, doesn’t have the same behavior patterns, and has more strength and knowledge to navigate the world. You are no longer Version 1, even though it keeps trying to pop out. You.V2 is the start of something wonderful.
Two- List the Negatives
On to the meat. Get a pencil and paper and list out the major things that negatively impact your life. These are the first major items that come to mind when I ask “What sort of things cause the most negative impact on your life?”. Write those things down and shoot for 4-5 of the biggest ones, the ones that really make your life suck. By starting with the things that have the largest negative impact, you bring the most positive result by changing them.
Examples of big negative things from my own family:
The house is never clean.
My 9 year old won’t listen to me.
Three- Bring it Back to Your Control, and Only Your Control
To have real, full control in your life, you cannot give anyone else power to affect the results. Here, we are going to keep drilling into the core of each large problem, deeper and deeper, until we end up with reasons that contribute more specifically to the main problem but that are explicitly in our own control, where our actions are the only dependencies that decide what occurs. Chances are, these first problems are technically correct, but they are so vague that there’s nothing to point at and nowhere specifically to start. “Oh, your house is dirty? You should clean it.” Vague gotcha’s help nobody and have no real action, so the cleaning never gets resolved. You have to get to the real problem, and one that you can control.
Thus, we are going to create these subproblems, but in ways that relate to ourselves, because subproblems that relate to us are the ones we can change. To do that, keep asking the question “What contributes to this problem and how are the actions of Version 1 related to it?” over and over until you’re at the root of it. If you struggle to come up with reasons, put different imaginary profiles of people you respect in front of you (a doctor, your grandma, your favorite content creator) and imagine what they would say. How would they say that your actions are contributing to the problem? Being honest with yourself will get you to it much faster. After all, it’s Version 1 that is causing the problem. Version 2 has to be able to see Version 1’s mistakes in order to fix them. You are Version 2 and you will not be making the same mistakes.
Example:
The house is never clean.
“What subproblems are contributing to the main problem of the house never being clean?”
1. I don’t have the energy.
2. My toddler makes it very difficult.
3. Cleaning a whole house is overwhelming.
“Go deeper. What subproblems related to Version 1’s actions contribute, which are within your control?”
1. I don’t have the energy because I have not been taking care of my body by eating well, sleeping enough, and my job is very stressful.
2. My toddler is very difficult because I struggle to keep him entertained and he is very dependent on me for attention.
3. Cleaning is overwhelming because I don’t know where to begin, I don’t have enough time, and I have a lot of self-doubt.
My 9 near old won’t listen to me.
“What subproblem is contributing to the main problem of the house never being clean?”
1. I can’t seem to control my annoyance and frustration with her.
2. She doesn’t seem to care.
3. We have a communication barrier.
“Go deeper. What subproblems related to Version 1’s actions contribute, which are within your control?”
1. I can’t control my frustration because my emotions overwhelm everything else.
2. She doesn’t seem to care because I am trying to get her to care about what I care about and she is 9 and does not care about those adult things.
3. We have a communication barrier because I don’t understand how to communicate things in a way that a 9-year-old truly understands, only what an adult understands.
If there is no I in the problem, then you have no control over it. If you have no control over it, then you are leaving the results up to chance. You have to have ownership of the situation, or you will not have the capacity to ensure positive results.
Four- Create Measurable Behavior Changes
Here, you want to take accountability to the full extent and find a way to measure, very clearly, whether Version 2 is doing what Version 1 could not. Look at the subproblems in your list and create new behaviors that fill the gaps. If you don’t have any idea how to create behaviors, just go to ChatGPT and put the whole thing in there, ask it very straightforwardly for help, and keep going until you get good results. By addressing the subproblems in our control, we work towards the main problems with very specfic steps. You have to have an action that says you either Did It or Did Not Do It, no grey areas. Otherwise, it becomes very easy to rationalize behavior and end up where we started. Create a set of changes that you can make that will end up as solutions to your problems.
Example:
The House is Never Clean
1. I don’t have the energy because I have not been taking care of my body by eating well, sleeping enough, or exercising, and my job is very stressful.
a. I am going to throw away all the junk food in the house right now and limit my intake of junk food to only one day a week, which I will buy that day and throw away at the end of the day. I am going to put my phone in another room an hour before bed. I am going to send 10 applications a week for a new job.
2. My toddler is very difficult because I struggle to keep him entertained and he is very dependent on me for attention.
a. I am going to practice letting my toddler entertain himself by waiting 10 minutes before responding his requests for attention at least three times a day.
b. I am going to get a baby gate to keep him in the living room with toys while I work in plain view in the kitchen, so he can see me but not demand my attention, using earplugs if he screams.
c. I am going to battle guilt by saying out loud “I am not a bad parent by giving my child opportunities to learn to be independent. He also needs an example to learn a new thing, like everyone else.”
3. I get overwhelmed because I don’t know where to begin, I don’t have enough time, and I have a lot of self-doubt.
a. I am going to only give myself 5 main categories of things that demand my attention. My life will be smaller, but I will have time to focus on those five things. All things not on that list will not be a part of my time and attention.
b. I will look across books, videos, and articles for a specific strategy to clean a house and follow those instructions to the letter.
c. I will begin each cleaning by saying to myself “I am feeling overwhelmed, but my actions will override my thoughts. Fear is trying to keep me away from failure, but I have a system, and I will not fail, so the fear is not a reliable signal”.
My 9-year Old Won’t Listen to Me
4. I can’t control my frustration because my emotions overwhelm everything else.
a. I will acknowledge that as the parent, I have to be in control of my emotions and be steady against her large, childish emotions. To do that, I will use ChatGPT to find resources for how to manage anger and complete 1 course/book/podcast series within the next 45 days.
b. I will start to pay attention to what I feel in my body when I start to get angry, and use those physical feelings as an indicator of anger building. When I feel them, I will take 5 deep breaths and relax my shoulders and face.
5. She doesn’t seem to care because I am trying to get her to care about what I care about and she is 9 and does not care about my adult things.
a. When I see that she has not done what I asked, I will first write down why I think she should care about doing something like cleaning her room in my Notes app. Then I will ask her what she thinks about her room and if she cares about the things in my list. I will then ask her what might make her want to do things my way and try to put myself in her shoes to understand her motivation and put each answer in my Notes app.
6. We have a communication barrier because I don’t understand how to communicate things in a way that a 9 year old truly understands.
a. I will begin every conflict with questions, trying to understand her perspective, then only operate from her understanding. I will ask questions like “What do you think happens if you continue that behavior” and “Why do you think I would want you to act differently”. From her responses, I will try to remember what it is like to be 9 and better understand her perspective by writing her answers down in my Notes app.
Five- Follow Your Plan
What you have now is a very clear set of instructions of how to change your behavior in meaningful ways that will positively impact your life. Your list is dependent on no one but you, and is drawn from a place of honesty. You have given yourself the system to build on and now just need to execute. If you fail, go to the next Version and try again. You have the answers to the problems now, and you can find new answers to new problems by applying the exact same system when you need it.
You are now in control of your life. Use every resource you can. In the era of YouTube, ChatGPT, and social media, there is no more excuse for not knowing things.
Go out and make Version 1 proud by doing what they could never do.
With love from me to you,
Alec
Note: No AI was used to write, edit, or otherwise modify this article.
Great system! Life very often feels far from our control. It's nice to see some methods to help gain some footing in the world.