Happy Tuesday!

My high school recently reached out to me for an alumni interview.

Not wanting to construct my answers from scratch, I started digging up my notes from previous presentations and interviews. These notes documented my “Goal Digger Era”—3 years of setting and pursuing my goals relentlessly.

Most of the mindsets, principles, and strategies I used back then still apply today. 3 of them, however, were unnecessarily harsh:

• “Do your bestest, because your best is often not enough.”
• “Treat your goals as legally binding contracts so that you make fewer excuses.”
• “Every minute you spend on wallowing and self-pity is a minute you could’ve spent on making a comeback.”

🫣 “Do your bestest, because your best is often not enough.”

Original Context:

Unfortunately, I did not document what the difference between “best” and “bestest” was back then.

Based on my journal entries at that time, “bestest” seemed to involve several gambles on my health and social life.

I did not win all of those gambles.

In 2018, before participating in the national competition, I started developing severe headaches and fatigue.

It disrupted my daily activities. I took yoga and meditation more seriously while trying to eliminate bad habits like staying up late.

What I’d do differently: Constraints VS Obstacles

In university, I learned about the concept of constraints VS obstacles.

Obstacles, like being inexperienced at a skill, can be overcome.

Constraints, like needing sleep, need to be satisfied.

With enough effort and resources, you can eliminate obstacles.

However, you can only mitigate constraints so that they do not get in the way of your success.

If I’d learned this concept earlier, I would clearly define what my constraints were:

• Sleep
• Health
• Nutrition

And define my “bestest” effort as

a full-hearted attempt at satisfying my constraints,
with the information I currently have.

🤔 “Treat your goals as legally binding contracts so that you make fewer excuses.”

Original Context:

Two things inspired this principle:

• Grant Cardone’s quote, “Success is my duty.”
• Brendon Burchard’s book, High Performance Habits, which listed “Raise Necessity” (of achieving your goals) as one of the habits.

However, the contracts I made were tied to outcomes beyond my control:

• Getting a perfect GPA throughout 3 years of high school
• Becoming a national gold medallist in Web Design and Development
• Becoming an international gold medallist in the same category

To some extent, my efforts can influence the achievement of these outcomes.

Other people, however, hold a larger influence over the final outcome.

• The judges at the competitions I participated
• The lecturers that grade my projects, quizzes, and exam papers

Over time, the contracts created a crippling fixation on outcomes.

• My self-doubt came back in tsunami waves whenever I faced a setback.
• I felt lost about what to do with the “broken” contract. Do I continue with it, or draft a new one?

What I’d do differently: Focus on effort

I would continue to draft “goal contracts”, but tie them to:

• how well I show up for my goals
• how consistently I show up for my goals

since these are the only factors I had control over.

🤨 Every minute you spend on wallowing and self-pity is a minute you could’ve spent on making a comeback.

Original Context:

I used to brood like a chicken whenever I faced a setback.

For the competitions I attended, this is a form of self-sabotage.

I had 2 competition tasks each day, separated only by a short lunch break.

If I’m still plagued by my mistakes in the morning task, I won’t be 100% present for the afternoon task.

Likewise, if I’m still brooding over the previous day’s tasks, I won’t be performing at 100% for the current day.

Thus, I created this statement as a mantra—to remind myself to move on quickly from each competition task.

What I’d do differently: Be kinder to myself

While I still agree with this statement, I realized that it does not address the underlying cause: being my own critic.

For many years, I was my worst critic. I believed that:

“If I hold myself to very high standards, others won’t be as harsh on me.”

Frankly? That is B.S.

People usually do whatever they want.

Meanwhile, the inner critic magnifies every tiny mistake, creating wallowing, self-pity, and eventually self-sabotage.

Going forward, I’d try to focus on:

• being self-compassionate about mistakes
• learning as much as possible from those mistakes
• preventing those mistakes from repeating again

With this, wallowing and self-pity are less likely to exist.

The Goal Digger identity mostly worked for me.

• I scored the grades I wanted.
• I got the national gold medal I wanted.
• I placed 5th out of 32 competitors at the international competition—a record for my country thus far.

But it also came with a lot of unnecessary pain—mostly self-inflicted through the harsh mantras I developed.

I’m adopting the Goal Digger identity again for the next 5 years, which is why I decided to write this email.

This is what I’d do differently:

1. Acknowledge and satisfy my constraints as much as possible
2. Show up well and consistently as if it was a legally binding contract
3. Have self-compassion and focus on learning from mistakes