Do Something Difficult Every Day | AMA #1 - Ask Me Anything with Lex Fridman
00:00:00.000 | "Mariam" asks, "Hello Lex.
00:00:03.380 | "In your interview with Ariana,
00:00:05.420 | "you have mentioned that suffering is good for the soul.
00:00:08.920 | "Where did that come from?
00:00:10.260 | "What is your belief system for maintaining
00:00:13.560 | "self-discipline and strong character no matter what?"
00:00:16.560 | I think a lot of that is quite personal
00:00:20.480 | in the sense that you have to know yourself.
00:00:23.260 | What's the distribution of energy levels that you have?
00:00:25.960 | Like how, what makes you lazy?
00:00:27.840 | What makes you excited?
00:00:28.720 | What makes you motivated?
00:00:29.720 | I think that's different from person to person.
00:00:32.080 | But there's several things I could say.
00:00:35.160 | I think for me,
00:00:37.460 | I try to do something difficult every day.
00:00:42.020 | Something I don't want to do.
00:00:44.920 | Really, if you open your mind,
00:00:50.860 | your ear to the moments where
00:00:56.200 | you don't really feel like doing it,
00:00:58.960 | do it.
00:01:01.760 | Those kinds of things,
00:01:04.240 | I think train your mind in the right kind of way
00:01:08.240 | to take on the things in your life
00:01:11.380 | that you know you should be doing,
00:01:13.480 | but are hard and so you try to avoid them.
00:01:15.900 | I mean, just training that muscle,
00:01:19.040 | not on real things,
00:01:21.360 | but every day on things as silly as,
00:01:26.760 | like for example, sometimes I'll take a freezing cold shower.
00:01:31.760 | I usually kind of ask myself,
00:01:33.960 | is this something I really don't feel like doing right now?
00:01:37.560 | And I never really feel like doing a cold shower,
00:01:40.460 | but there's some days where I really don't want to,
00:01:43.000 | and that's when I'll do it.
00:01:44.720 | And I'll stand under the water for at least one minute,
00:01:48.660 | just freezing cold.
00:01:52.440 | Sometimes it could be as silly as you're feeling down,
00:01:56.420 | but, and you go to like,
00:01:59.640 | I go to a Starbucks and then you don't feel like smiling
00:02:03.680 | or being friendly, but you do it.
00:02:05.480 | I don't feel like doing it and I do it.
00:02:08.500 | So just practicing that muscle.
00:02:10.600 | Exercise, heck yeah, every single day.
00:02:14.320 | I don't really, especially running.
00:02:15.980 | I don't like running, that's why I do it.
00:02:19.960 | I don't, especially don't like starting to run.
00:02:23.520 | Getting out there, starting to run the first mile,
00:02:25.880 | first two miles is something that I don't want to do
00:02:30.880 | in the moment and I do it.
00:02:33.700 | I think that's those little moments.
00:02:37.920 | You know, it sounds dramatic to call that suffering,
00:02:41.680 | but it really is discomfort,
00:02:47.460 | struggle that trains your mind in the way that
00:02:52.460 | in other things that you are deeply passionate about
00:02:56.100 | that are long-term parts of your life,
00:02:58.540 | allows you to pursue them long-term through the dark parts,
00:03:02.860 | through the struggle,
00:03:04.740 | through the suffering of mental and physical.
00:03:08.620 | So mental is the self-doubt.
00:03:10.580 | You know, there's so many days I wake up full of doubt.
00:03:14.420 | And I think those days, those moments
00:03:19.420 | are not something you can take on without practice.
00:03:24.440 | It's, especially if you do difficult things,
00:03:26.720 | especially if you do things that are not traditional
00:03:30.180 | or so on, but really everybody hits the wall
00:03:35.180 | often enough if you do something big.
00:03:38.180 | I think that's something you have to take seriously
00:03:42.980 | and you have to practice and practice and practice.
00:03:45.260 | And a big part of practice, at least for me, is habits.
00:03:50.220 | So most things I have noticed myself getting good at
00:03:55.220 | and most things I care about that I want to solve
00:04:00.940 | are things I do every day without exception.
00:04:04.900 | To me, to me, it's better to do something
00:04:08.220 | for one minute a day, every day, without exception,
00:04:13.020 | than doing it once a month for an entire day.
00:04:18.020 | I think there's something about that ritual
00:04:23.860 | that multiplies your mind's ability
00:04:26.540 | to really take on the full depths of whatever the task is.
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