Silence The Booing In Your Head

All right, so I just finished reading the autobiography of Andre Agassi. I did another episode on him pretty recently because I thought this book was so, so amazing. It was incredibly well written. There was just really great insights in there. But there’s one line I wanted to share with you today, a line that helped me tremendously last week, find that extra gear to shift into overdrive and do the work that I knew I needed to do that I’ve been putting off. But sometimes it can be very hard that internal biological you is so resistant to doing the things that would often move us towards our greatness. This quote helped me beat the biological me last week, and I hope it can do the same for you. So here it is.
He says, I’ve been cheered by thousands, booed by thousands. But nothing feels as bad as the booing inside your own head during those ten minutes before you fall asleep. He talks about how he had become later in his life. Very obsessed with those ten minutes. Obsessed with that ten minute period where you’re laying in bed, staring at the ceiling and all the thoughts of the day are running through. You’re reflecting and you’re seeing it all in your mind’s eye. In those ten minutes, you’re either booing yourself or cheering yourself, depending on the actions that you took in the day. And the hardest boos to hear are the ones that come from inside your own head.
As you lay there in the darkness before sleep takes you and you realize you left something on the field. You didn’t go all out. There was something more that you could have done. And for me, I feel this way. When I feel this way. It’s one of the worst feelings I have. And to avoid this, one of the things I often share with students is you need to have a very clearly defined way of measuring whether or not you won the day. That starts in the morning.
It’s not just about putting together your to do list, but it’s by saying, what am I going to do today? What are my non negotiables? What will it look like for me to get to the end of the day and say, if I did these things, if I accomplish these tasks, it will be a victory? I will be able to go to bed and hear the cheering in my head. And I am a big fan of setting that bar low for yourself in the beginning so that you can build the momentum. You can build the habit of excellence, of showing up and doing the things that you tell yourself that you’re going to do. That’s a very hard thing. In and of itself. And so I recommend starting slow. But if you don’t have that definition of what it means to win the day, then you get to the end of the day, regardless of what maybe you accomplished. It can be very easy to lay in bed in those ten minutes before sleep takes you and think, I could have done more.
I could have done more. Because we’re always moving the goalposts on ourself. We’re always doing this. Humans are terrible at taking a moment, stopping and reflecting on the gap between where they are and where they started and recognizing that that is a very large gap and it’s only ever getting bigger. Instead, we’re constantly looking forward at where we’re trying to get. And the thing is, we never get there. Because as soon as you arrive at the place that you told yourself that you wanted to get, you take the goal post, you move it a little bit further back. You have already achieved goals in your life that you told yourself you would be happy once you achieve them.
And yet, if you’re not happy, if you’re not where you want to be, take a second and reflect on why is that? You have done things already. You are at a place in your life that younger. You would probably be thrilled to hear. They would be ecstatic. So why is it that you aren’t happy? Well, I think a lot of it is because you didn’t clearly mark the field and tell yourself, if I do this and this and this, and I mark, and then I measure myself and I don’t move that goal post on myself. At the end of the day, I just say, did I do the thing that I said I was going to do today that leads to a win? Then you can sit there in bed and you can cheer for yourself. I think that’s one of the best feelings you can have, because that cheering carries through into the next morning. When you wake up, you still hear it resonating in your ears, and it’s easier to get out of bed, it’s easier to go into your morning routine, easier to go and do the work and fight the dragons that need to be fought early in the morning.
This quote from Andre is just so powerful because it’s a moment to reflect at any given moment, at any given point in your day and ask yourself, what am I ten minutes gonna look like tonight? If. Like what? Right now? Where are you in your day? If this was the end of your day and you were to go to bed right now, would there be booing or would there be cheering? And I’m not saying whether that’s right or wrong, good or bad. I’m not saying anything like that. You know yourself and what your internal state is gonna be like. So ask yourself, is there gonna be doing or is there gonna be cheering? And if it’s booing, recognize that you still have time right now before you go to bed. The time when it’s too late to stop the booing is when you’re into bed right up until that moment. You have time to turn the tides. And it doesn’t always have to be a massive heroic action.

Sometimes it’s just simply saying, you know what? I didn’t do everything I could today, but in the next five minutes, here’s what I’m going to do to write the tables. And winning that five minute battle can often be enough to silence the critics in your mind. And I share this with you because we all have this struggle. We are all our worst critics, our worst enemies. That voice inside of our head, nobody is harsher to us than ourselves. And so anything that we can do to win that battle against that ego, against that version of ourselves that wants to tear us down, anything that we can do to stack evidence that we are who we say we are, that we can be our greatest versions of ourselves, I think is an activity worth pursuing. So hopefully this helps you on your journey of pursuing and achieving your greatness. I truly hope it does.

And I appreciate you guys being here. I’ll catch you in the next episode. But until then, SAP, focus, my friends.