The Path Forward

I was watching a recap of the Rick Roll podcast today and it has inspired me to write. Mostly because I needed a place to put this so that I can use it later. One of the guests was Phil Stutz, who is a psychologist and author of "The Tools."

In the clip, Phil was discussing the state of mental health and the tools that need to be rethought to get us through this increasingly complex world. Phil drew a pyramid as a model for how we should be looking at life and it struck me that this is the model for entrepreneurship. The pyramid was broken into three pieces, with Faith on the bottom, Act in the middle and Confidence on the top.

Faith

Faith is the belief, without evidence, that something is true. This is not necessarily about spiritual or religious faith. This is simply the belief that you can accomplish the goal that you set out to accomplish. If you do not believe in yourself, the idea or the effort; you will not move into the next phase.

Act

Any journey in life begins with the first step. That's an old idiom, but in short what it means is that you need to keep moving. Even when you do not have all of the information. This step always reminds me of my military training. In a combat situation, one of the worst things to do is stay stagnant. Landing on a beach, keep moving forward. Under an ambush...get out of the kill zone. The point being that in order to accomplish anything (like staying alive) you need to move.

This is a truism of life as well. Life does not happen sitting on a couch. You need to act, you need to take the first step to accomplish anything in life.

Confidence

Confidence is then gained by having faith in to act, and then acting. You gain confidence over time by both failure and success. When you fail, you assess and make a new decision to move forward. When you succeed, you take note of what worked and keep on using that to propel yourself forward.

For me, as I go into the new year I want to remember a few key things about what I am about to do:

1. Have faith in myself and what I am doing to build my life.
2. Keep moving forward and do not wait for the right environment or external factors to be "right"
3. Gain confidence through both success and learning from the first two elements.

Happy New Year, everyone. Here is hoping that 2025 is the year that your dreams come true and your goals are constantly challenging you to be better.