As we grow older, we stop listening to our natural instincts and instead begin listening to everyone else who, for the most part, is telling us everything we are doing wrong and that we must change. The truth of the matter, however, is that people rarely, but mostly never, change.

We must reconnect with our instincts, and that involves, firstly, understanding what they are and being aware of what it is that we already know, and secondly, stop the thinking and overanalysing and just trust those instincts.

This is what elite performers do. They trust their instincts. They tap into that internal autopilot that already knows what it needs to do. They don’t think about what they need to do, they just feel what they already know they must do and then do it.

People like me have a hard time with this dynamic because we are always looking for more answers, for that next piece of knowledge, for the next shiny idea or method. Whilst this relentless search for knowledge is a positive habit, it can become destructive when it eclipses our instincts. The result is that when we are performing, making decisions, and taking actions, we choose to listen to and attempt to execute all those new ideas we’ve just consumed and in the process, we ignore our instinct that’s sitting in the back.

The way to reconcile these two thought processes is by recognising that our instinct should be the first voice we listen and follow. Given how natural our instincts are (whether they are innate or learned), trusting them is what allows us to tap into the zone, into full concentration and confidence, into flow. When we listen to our instincts, we have a better chance of performing well because we are in alignment with our beliefs (represented by such instincts). It is when we start listening to the shiny new idea or method that we create friction, a cognitive dissonance (even if unconscious of it) in which our beliefs are telling us to perform in a certain way but our conscious mind is driving us in a different direction. This misalignment affects our performance and gets us into trouble.

However, we must also recognise that not all of our instincts will be perfect or optimal. Very often, there are better and superior ways of doing things and elite performers are relentlessly looking for them. This is when learning comes back into the picture. We must have that obsessive pursuit of learning and finding out new and better ways of doing things. The key here is that whenever we find one of those golden nuggets, we must resist the temptation to let it eclipse our instincts, at least in the early stages of being exposed to those new ideas.

This is a difficult urge to overcome since the new shiny technique promises to deliver a superior outcome than the one we are used to getting. More often than not, however, giving in to the temptation will cause more problems than it solves because it will get you thinking, overanalysing and overcomplicating things; it will misalign you. Elite performers don’t think when they are performing, they just execute; and the only way of doing that is by following their instinctual, automatic actions. Doing anything requires thinking about it, that is until it has become instinctual and can then be performed on autopilot.

But resist this urge we must, and instead, we must put these newly learned ideas and techniques through the learning funnel. The learning funnel consists of three levels: the first level is when you acquire the information, the second level is when you understand the information, the third level is when you internalise the information.

It is through practice that the new information must progress through these three levels. Practice is the right time for trying out new things, evaluating whether they actually do deliver a superior outcome and if they do, looking for ways of implementing them into your arsenal through repetition. It is not until the new information reaches level three that it has been internalised and absorbed as an instinctual, mechanical, almost reflexive-like response, that we can begin to trust it as part of our instinct.

Ultimately, it is better to trust a suboptimal instinct with the full confidence and conviction that comes from being aligned with our beliefs than to try a superior method or idea with the shaky confidence and conviction that comes from not being competent enough at it yet. Instincts beat optimisation when that optimisation is not instinctual yet.

The first one I ever did back in 2007 was, to my honest surprise, a resounding success. Part of it was due to the fact that blogs were still relatively new and the Internet was not flooded with an essentially infinite stream of them as it is today. To this day, that blog has been visited over 280,000 times and I still get messages from readers even though I haven’t written a single thing on it since 2013.

My next couple of blogs were not nearly as successful in terms of readership. To be fair, I was not consistent at all with the writing and lost interest in them after a few months of intermittently tinkering with them.

Today, during my downtime, whilst unsure what to do with the rest of my day, I found myself re-reading these blogs and boy, what a journey! I think one of the things that makes it so fascinating — at least to me, to read oneself — is that you get to see how you have changed and evolved over the years. My beliefs, tastes, interests, knowledge, etc, have changed and expanded enormously; yet, this is hard to notice or even appreciate without a previous point of reference.

For example, I just read a post I wrote about a time when a friend and I were at a night club discussing some of the fundamental tenets of Christianity. What the fuck?! It’s a true story by the way and one that I cannot help but giggle at. There I was, defending my faith like a Crusader fighting his way to Jerusalem through the thick of Saladin’s army. I don’t even believe in God today anymore.

I’ve always appreciated the enormous power of the written word and its incredible ability to stand the test of time. Unfortunately, I think a big part of the reason why my latest attempts at content creation (written, video, podcast, etc.) have not “succeeded” is because I’ve been using the wrong metric for success. The size of your audience, so we are told, is the ultimate metric for success. How many likes? How many followers? How many shares? How many comments? How much engagement?

No wonder success under such conditions seems so fleeting, we’re trying to fill a black hole. And a black hole it is, do not fool yourself. Fame, power, money, attention, all black holes; it’s never enough.

As with most millennials, I fell prey to the machinations and seductive power of social media and Internet fame and attention. Thankfully, I was able to unplug myself from that world a few years ago after realising the bottomless pit I was trying to fill and the addiction it had created in me. I haven't posted anything on social media since 2018, I have deleted most of those apps from my phone, and I have installed every possible blocker to hide all the devilish algorithmic recommendation feeds these platforms have so when I have to use them, mostly for work purposes, I don’t get sucked into the rabbit hole.

After a few years of having left that world, all withdrawal symptoms are long gone and I no longer crave any of the attention and positive feedback I was addicted to. My business partner even got annoyed with me the other day when I told him that I refuse to post anything on my Instagram, which I can understand since Instagram is the main lead generator for our business. But ‘no, thank you’, I’m not about to open Pandora’s Box again; no amount of business leads is worth that trouble.

With that said, I’m at a point where I could not care less about how many people read, comment, or share what I write in this blog. I like and enjoy writing and that is reason enough to pursue as an activity with intrinsic value, it is its own reward. As the title says, this is a space for myself, a place for self-reflection and an archive that I can look at in the years to come with the same bittersweetness and nostalgia that I look at my writings from five or ten years ago today.

This blog is for me. There is no schedule as to when I will post; I will do so when I feel like. I will never ask for anyone to follow, like, or share anything. There will be no theme to this blog, I’ll write about whatever I feel like writing. There will be no fancy formatting, affiliate links, or traffic-driving tools and techniques. Do not expect me to reply to any comments or any kind of engagement. The only reason I’ll be making my writings public is in case others find them interesting, inspirational, or useful if they happen to stumble upon them, as I will certainly not be promoting anything I write here.