Look before you leap. He who hesitates is lost.

Hey there,

I remember the first day of freshman psychology class. The professor asked half the class to cover their ears, sharing a study which recently confirmed the phrase "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again." Then she switched and shared a study with the other side which confirmed: "Don't throw good money after bad".

After everyone heard an study, she asked the entire class about a specific scenario and what they should do. And as you might expect, the half who heard "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again." believed they should keep trying, while the second half thought they should quit.

This stuck with me: are the common sense phrases we hear so often really true? Or are they just things we say to justify our actions?

The pattern is everywhere

We see common sense all over the place, and many of them contradict each other:

• Look before you leap / He who hesitates is lost

• Many hands make light work / Too many cooks spoil the broth

• Absence makes the heart grow fonder / Out of sight, out of mind

So which is it? The answer, of course, is that it depends. Most people think what it depends on is the situation. And it does.

But more importantly, it depends upon YOU.

It's an old story

Spoiler alert: it depends on your design. But it depends is a much less satisfying answer than advice which is true for everyone. But it must be true for some people, otherwise it wouldn’t ever be accepted.

I think it started something like this. Someone with a Design with Wait for Clarity started preaching the gospel of "Look before you leap". People who happened to have the same Design heard it, found it worked for them, and made millions of dollars. Others who didn't have that Design found that it didn’t work for them, got frustrated, blamed themselves, and looked for someone else to give their money to.

At the same time someone else, maybe an Initiator, preached the gospel of "He who hesitates is lost", and same story: some people were successful, and some weren't. He started a podcast about the power of manifestation which totally worked for some people and only sucked money out of the other. Again, the people who lost money blamed themselves, because the message being sold is “If I can do it, so can you.”

The one I got wrong

When I was building my coaching practice, the advice I read was Post every day to create an audience. I heard that, saw that these people were successful, and believed that if it worked for them, that’s the way to do it.

I followed the people who I thought had the answer.

And so I sat down with the phone in front of me, ready to drop some wisdom, and then:

Nothing. Total mind blank.

So I started to search out advice about how to create videos. I wrote what I would say down and recorded it: flat and uninspiring. I got a teleprompter app and recorded content like that. That lasted about 2 weeks before I was even the thought of creating this content exhausted me.

This was actually the beginning of diving deep into Human Design, which I had been introduced to 4 years earlier. I realized that my Willpower function, which people like my mentor had, is inconsistent within myself. And so pushing myself to create content on a consistent basis, even if I didn’t want to, was a huge drain, destined to create frustration.

And the advice that really works for me is Quality over quantity.

Fast forward to today. I have setup a system so that I create something really good once a week, and I can wait until I feel good about it. So my design within the structure of a weekly And it's not about having more or less time to do it—I just do it on my own time.

The advice of schedule it in advance (as in, block off a specific time in my calendar) also doesn’t work for me, because often when the scheduled time arrives I wouldn’t have the energy for it, I would just skip the whole thing. And seeing myself as failing to do what I scheduled would drain me and I wouldn’t get back to it.

“Falling off the wagon” of the strict routine used to happen all the time to me.

And it's because the advice that works for me is to follow my gut. The weekly schedule is the structure that has me ask my gut if I want to do it now, and when the answer is YES, then I do it. If not, I do something else—something that my gut DOES have energy for.

And you already know what is the advice that works for you. Need a reminder?

The advice that works for you is to follow your gut.

And for some people, that's enough.

But how do I know the difference?

But for many people, it's not obvious. I received this after my email last week:

Learning to tell the difference between intuition and avoidance is probably one of the hardest parts.

Most of us aren't used to listening to our gut, our intuition, our instincts ... we are taught at a young age to listen to our mind. To make rational decisions.

Making a pros and cons list is a great example. We’re told this is the way to make a rational decision. And it never works, because your gut is the thing that actually knows.

It’s hard at the beginning to distinguish between your “rational” mind (ever notice it’s less rationale and more the voice of all your fears?), and your gut because you’re not used to listening to it. It’s like a muscle that has only rarely been used.

So it can be helpful to know how your mind attempts to convince you to do what it says, rather than what your body knows. Remember:

Nothing that your mind comes up with can be trusted.

As I said last week, it's not that it’s necessarily wrong. It just does its best to keep you safe, and to conserve calories. That's its job, and it's excellent at it. Until you learn its tricks

Tricks of the mind

The mind has lots of ways to convince us that it's right:

Obligation (rationale thought):

• I should ...

• I have to ...

Comparison (if they can do it, so can I):

• Everyone else is ...

• Successful people ...

Urgency (marketers love this):

• This is my last chance to ...

• If I don't act now, I'll miss out...

Reasonableness (it’s just a little thing):

• I can just try to ...

• It's easy for AI to just ...

Thinking I am the problem (often tag teams with comparison)

• I'm being lazy.

• It's good for me to ...

What you can always trust

Begin to recognize the patterns of your mind. What is its favorite flavor of control? I know for me, the “I should…” framing is very small. Whenever I hear that, I know it’s my mind trying to control me.

Once you recognize the signs, check your decision-making strategy: wait to respond before engaging, and then follow your gut.

You can always trust your decision-making strategy. However the mind is strong and you're probably used to listening to it. Ask yourself these questions to help guide you to the correct decision:

1. Are you currently frustrated and ignoring / working through it?
   A lot of advice out there is of the form "pain makes gain" and tells you that if you're in pain, you need to go through it. But there's a big difference between frustration and discomfort: the former is the signpost that says off-track, while the latter is simply doing something that isn't easy but still might be worthwhile. For you, the feeling of frustration is a clue to pause, not to keep going.

2. Are you trying to avoid frustration?
   This is a little more tricky. So if your gut is telling you to do something but you're worried about being frustrated, should you do it? Answer: YES. The signpost is not something to avoid—it's something to recognize when it happens.

3. Is it one of your shadows?
   Way back in the first email I sent you, I told you that your #1 shadow was Overcompensating. Go back to that email and review what I shared with you then. It probably hits true because it’s what your mind tries to convince you is true or what you should do to avoid frustration. But now you know: when your mind pulls out this one, you know to pause, wait to respond before engaging, and then follow your gut.

Choose the Advice which Works for You

The next time anyone gives you any advice, look at it through the lens of your specific Design. It might be helpful for you as it is, or perhaps it’s something that can be modified to make it align with your personal way of being. Or you could simply say thank you for your advice and leave it at that. Because what is a piece of genius advice for other people might only create frustration for you.