In this edition of the Peak Performance Newsletter, we will be discussing:

• Why fun is subjective

• Experiencing temporary pleasure for later regret

• How to have no regrets and live up to your potential

Before we dive into this topic,

Author’s Acknowledgements:

Hello, it has been quite a while since our last post, has it? I hope that you’ve had a great Christmas or Christmas break for the holidays 😎 I do apologize for the lack of posts while I was on this Christmas break. I had family coming over, so things got really busy and hectic pretty fast. I tried to get at least one post during the break, but I’ve managed to fall short since these posts do take a considerable amount of time to finish ☹

Instead, I made the best of my situation and focused more on the marketing aspect of this newsletter, getting more and more people to notice it. The more people that are able to hear about it, the more lives that I am able to change through the education on self-improvement topics that I discuss here on the newsletter. So, if you believe that this newsletter is worth mentioning to a friend or someone who might benefit from it, feel free to do so.

But enough with the excuses, I am now back and ready to drop some more knowledge for you, keeping up the grind. For this post, I’ve decided to make it smaller in length than my usual ones. This is just to help me gain some momentum and get back in the flow state of writing posts like per usual. But nevertheless, this post still has some really valuable information that can benefit your own self-improvement journey. Enjoy!

Why Fun is Subjective:

How would you define something that is fun? What is the first thing that comes into your mind when you hear the word fun? Would you consider playing video games and scrolling on social media more fun than meditating, reading, and exercising?

We’ve all been there, including myself especially. We’ve indulged in countless hours of mindless scrolling, video games, etc. Though unfortunately the reality is that we do come out as better people afterwards when we indulge in these easy pleasures. Very often, you would feel a sense of regret after. These regrets can pile up over a culmination of a lifetime, leading to a life of comfort, feeling directionless, and dissatisfaction.

But, through the use of a dopamine detox and rewiring your brain, we can allow yourself to feel more enjoyment in doing the good habits rather than the bad ones. The reason why I believe that fun is subjective because your feeling of enjoyment can be only relative to your baseline.

Now imagine if we were to remove all of the bad habits and only keep the good ones. Sure, it will be tedious and hard to accomplish at the start but overtime you will start to see the benefits of these changes. Since you are only doing the good habits, what is now considered fun is doing habits like meditation, reading, etc. This is because the baseline of “fun” has now been reset. Your brain needs a reference point in order to determine what habits would be considered fun or not. But since we have completely removed all of the easy pleasures, the brain has no choice but to assign the good habits as the reference point for fun.

You can truly see how powerful this change can be 😎

Experiencing Temporary Pleasure for Later Regret:

The concept that we’ll be talking about is known as instant gratification vs. delayed gratification. Instant gratification refers to the easy pleasures such as video games, social media, processed food, etc. But delayed gratification refers to the hard tasks such as exercising focusing on your purpose, and meditating.

What is the difference between the two of these gratifications?

When you indulge in instant gratification, you feel a sense of satisfaction at the start but you soon to feel a sense of regret afterwards.

When you indulge in delayed gratification, you do the hard and tiring task right now, but you soon feel the positive feelings of satisfication afterwards.

The person who prioritizes doing the delayed gratification habits over the instant gratification habits will always have a better life trajectory than the one who doesn’t.

When we format our life in this way, it can help us make better decisions in the future.

Let’s take some time to visualize and think about your life trajectory if you prioritize instant gratification instead.

Imagine you right now, you start doing the easy pleasures. You go out to party every day, play video games, doom scroll, not sleeping right, not eating right, etc. But you think to yourself “I’m having fun right now, so it’s doesn’t really matter”. So, you keep on doing it.

Days, months, even years go by, and you’ve carried on the same bad habits that you did 10 or 20 years ago.

But things are different now, your old, mentally weakened, you hate your job and no longer have the energy that you had before to start these good habits right now. Instead, you accepted the life you are living and carry on with your usual habits.

It’s not long before you grow too old to do anything anymore, soon you get placed in a hospital bed and start contemplating about the decisions that you’ve have made in your lifetime.

Do you want to know the one thing that people on their deathbed regret the most?

Through the countless research studies and articles that went over this exact question, the one answer that they got was that they wished they have lived a life true to their own desires and not living to their full potential.

You probably don’t want to be the person on their deathbed who dies with regret, with their dreams to die alongside them.

The sad part is that this is how most people are living their lives, bind to the pleasures of the modern world and lives without any purpose.

Now I’m not trying to make this post overly gloomy or dramatic but hopefully this can act as a wakeup call for you to start pursuing your own aspirations more seriously and living your life to its fullest.

In all honesty, it’s not really about the meditation, journaling, and exercise that will drastically change your life but rather the mindset shifts of improving yourself every day that does.

I can’t tell you how to live your own life but hopefully this message resonates with you if want to actually be someone greater. But I would assume that you are given that you are reading this newsletter so far.

So, you might be wondering, how exactly do we do that?

How to have no regrets and live up to your potential:

There are two main things that comes into my mind in order to become more inclined to do the delayed gratification habits and thus live a life of no regrets.

Number 1 would be visualizations and 2 would be prioritizing your future self.

Let’s start with number 1 first.

Visualizations can be a powerful tool to help you sort of predict or forecast what will happen in the future. This type of reinforcement can be especially effective because it trains our brains to become more aware of what the future holds rather than the present. You’ve probably noticed that we’ve did a visualization on your future if you’ve indulged in instant gratification.

After the visualization, did you feel more or less inclined to keep consuming instant gratification? Hopefully your answer would be less.

We can also do this in the opposite way, where we focused on the future that you could have if you prioritized delayed gratification instead. Imagine how proud you would be after having the ultimate brotherhood of likeminded individuals that you’ve always wanted, achieving your dream physique, moving to a beautiful place with your 10/10 based wife after becoming financially free, etc.

After I told you that visualization, I hope that you’ve had some positive thoughts in your head and start smiling about the possible future that lies in front of you if you’ve chosen the path of self-improvement 😊

After feeling more motivated, you can then use that positive energy to further work harder on your goals and aspiration to actually acquire your dream life. Do you now start to see the powerful effects that visualization can have on your mind? Quite the useful tool if you ask me 😎

Now let’s go to number 2, prioritizing your future self.

This technique is similar to number 1 but is applied in a different way.

Think of your future self as another version of yourself that you can think about as a separate person in the future.

In order to live a life of no regrets, we must always prioritize our future self’s benefit above all else. This is because we soon become our future self, in a negative or positive way. We always want to set up our future self for success through the action that we take right now.

Once you start getting into the habit of being more compassionate for our future self, the less likely we are to make the decisions that would harm our future self.

I’ll give you an example of how this can be applied.

Imagine your future self wants to build 10 pounds of muscle by the end of the year, so you try your best to stay on track towards achieving that goal.

Then on a random day, you feel a little bit sluggish, tired, and don’t have the energy to really be active right now.

Before quitting on your ambitions right then and there, ask yourself, “how would my future self-respond to this if I skip the gym today?” “Am I doing the hard work for my future self’s benefit?”

Now just imagine you didn’t go to the gym that day out of tiredness or whatever reason. After that point of opportunity, you then basically become the future self that you’ve depicted in the past. What would think of your past self now that you are your “future self?”

You would probably be pissed off at your future self for not doing the hard work that was needed which set you up now for failure rather than success. Not only would be irritated but also would feel regret because you did not live up to your standards or fullest potential.

This is how we can incorporate the past vs. future self-dynamic for our benefit. By showing selflessness and thinking more about your future self’s benefit rather than own right now, we can program our mind to live life to the fullest.

Author’s Notes:

Well, I hoped you’ve enjoyed this edition of the Peak Performance Newsletter, I do want to apologize again for the lack of posts during the holidays, so I tried to make this post as best as I can to serve it to true justice. If you’ve enjoyed this post, then feel free to share it to someone who could benefit from this type of knowledge. Also, feel free to subscribe to the Peak Performance Newsletter for the latest up-to-date posts sent straight to your inbox. It’s a win-win for both of us.

Until next time, peace 😎✌

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