Little Vices Kill Big Dreams

So I stumbled on this concept the other day as I was scrolling social media, and it had such a profound effect. It was so implicitly true that I wanted to share it with you guys here today, because I think that often, as we are in our pursuit of our internal greatness, and if you’re listening to this, you. You’re trying to maximize your return on life. You’re trying to become the absolute best version of yourself, recognizing it’s not a game that you’re playing against anybody else. It’s just a game against who you were yesterday. And how can I just level up and be a little bit better than that person? And so you’re on this pursuit of your best self, and as we are on this pursuit, as we are on this journey to try and explore what it is, you know, our full capacities, who we could be. What is so interesting is that the things that often define whether or not we’re going to have success or failure is not determined by the really big, massive events that occur in our lives. It’s actually the result of very small, mundane, practically forgettable things that occur on a day to day basis.

One of my favorite frameworks for making decisions is something I call the plus one framework. I’ve talked about this so much on the podcast. It’s been so profoundly impactful for my life. I hope it brings you some value. So let me share it with you again. If you’ve heard this before, I apologize, but trust me, it’s worth sticking around for. So, Abraham Maslow, famous psychologist, behavioral psychologist. He said some things in his day that he’s most well known for.

He’s most known for his hierarchy of needs. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs says that we need to have our physiological needs and our safety, our shelter, our food, all those things, those basic needs of life and survival. We need to have those met before we can start ascending through the the hierarchy to move towards higher level questions of life, of meaning, of purpose, of love, of self fulfillment or actualization, right? We need to have those base needs met, and then we can ascend that ladder. And that’s probably what most people are familiar when they think of Maslow. But Maslow said something that most people have never heard, which for me, is the most profound thing he ever said, and potentially one of the most profound things I’ve ever heard, period. He said, for man to reach his potential, that which he can be, he must be something really interesting about this idea. That which we can be, we must be. And this is, this is pulled out of a larger passage.

So for a little bit of context, he’s talking about how if we want to avoid discontent and displeasure in life, if we don’t want to feel as though this emptiness inside, as though we’re not tapping into our potential, which I think a lot of us can relate to, then we have to be moving towards that greatness. And what happens when we’re not moving towards our greatness is you internalize that. You know, you realize, you feel it. You wake up in the mornings and you go about your life kind of going through the motions. And you realize I’m not everything that I could be. And that causes discontent, it causes internal turmoil. Right? And so his idea that. That which man can be, he must be.

If you want to live your life of greatness and you is not just enough to go through the motions. You have to be moving towards that potential that you feel you have inside of you. And I feel that we all do have that. That sensation that none of us were born to be average. None of us believe that we were put on this planet just to be forgettable NPC’s right. Non playable characters. We are meant to be the heroes of our story. And so baked into this idea of that which we can be, we must be.

Maslow then shared this other mental model, which I called the plus one framework of decision making. And he said this. Imagine that you’re standing on a road, and in front of you there are signs stretching off into the distance. And these signs are at equal distance, but each one says plus one. It just says, plus one. Plus one. Plus one. Plus one.

Off into the horizon as far as that you can see. And you turn around and you see more signs. And these are also spaced at equal intervals. And they all say, negative one, negative one, negative one, negative one. And so the mental exercise is to imagine that you’re standing there and every decision that you can make in your life is an opportunity to either move forward plus one or back minus one. And that’s a simple framework, but the power of it is to recognize that every decision is important in and of itself. And that, yes, there are certain decisions that will have more impact in our lives, that will have more leverage, more asymmetric returns. And those big decisions about where you’re living, about the partner that you choose to spend your life with, about the opportunities that you pursue.

Some of these decisions, they are more meaningful than other decisions like, what should I eat for lunch? Right. The problem is that we often focus so much on those really big decisions and not enough time on those really little decisions. And the issue that arises is that our ability to make the big decisions is predicated on the strength of our ability to make decisions as a whole. And so if you’re constantly making bad, small decisions, what makes you think that you’re suddenly going to be able to make really good, big decisions? I’ve never seen anybody who can’t be trusted with the small things can suddenly be trusted with the big things. It doesn’t happen. And so, within this framework of the plus one decision making framework is to recognize each decision is equally important. That what you eat this afternoon is just as important as who you spend your life with now. Yes, I know, like, technically one is more important, but it’s about the mental exercise.

And what this does then is it gives you, in every single moment of your life, every opportunity that you have to make a decision. The opportunity to say to myself, is this moving me forward or backwards? Is this moving me towards my greatness or away from my greatness? And because each decision is equalized as a plus one or a negative one, it makes them all equally important. And so, as you sit down to figure out, what should I eat today? Should I work out? Should I go tell my loved one that I love them? Should I pursue this opportunity? Should I make that million dollar investment? Right? All these things, they might have conflicting levels of importance in your life, but if you just look at them through the framework of the plus one, you go, each one is important, and I need to spend the time to make each one as good as I can. In every decision in life is generally moving you forward or it’s moving you back. And if you spend more time asking yourself, is this a decision that’s moving me forward or moving back? And then avoid those ones that are moving backwards, eventually you’re going to be making pretty good progress in life. Now, the thing that I came across on social media that I want to share with you, that kind of ties into this concept of the plus one framework, is something that was. I don’t remember who posted it, actually, but it was just very well said. It said, little vices kill big dreams.

Little vices kill big dreams. And I think it’s so true, because, again, he who can be trusted with the small things can be entrusted with the big things. If I can’t trust you to make those small decisions, to avoid those tiny vices, then I can’t trust you to avoid the big vices to make the big decisions. And those little vices, they have a way of compounding in the same way that those little good decisions, they compound and they become big decisions and they become big results on a long enough time frame. And so I just want to share this with you because it’s so powerful in my own life to come at everything that I do and say, this is important, this matters because how you do anything is how you do everything. And that’s not technically true, but it’s true enough, or at least in the trajectory of truth, to be useful on a day to day framework. So this brings you guys a little bit of food for thought. Just remember, little vices kill big dreams.

Every decision is equally important. So what are those little vices in your life that you’re giving, that you’re partaking in? You’re giving yourself permission to slack a little in these areas. Where can you tighten it up? Because each one of those things, if it’s not moving you forward, it is, by definition, pulling you back. So I hope this helps you on your journey to achieve your own greatness. I believe in you. I have full confidence that you will get there if you just stay on the path. Keep moving forward, don’t turn around, don’t take any steps back, and I will catch you in the next episode. But until then, my beautiful friends, stay hyper focused.