Are you playing the long game?

In my second blog: Read your obituary every day, I wrote about reminding yourself of mortality and living as though today’s your last day. But I had forgotten about the extreme point which is also very important to be aware of. That is Longevity.

Almost all the legends, all the world-class A-players of life have this one thing in common. That is, they stay in long enough in their fields that eventually, the compound effect of their works brings them the ultimate success they deserve. People like Mark Zuckerberg, who became a billionaire by age 23, are exceptions to this. But those are very rare case scenarios.

Like how the reminder of mortality is important, there’s equivalent importance to ensure your longevity. By just living longer, you get a lot of unfair advantage, as you get a lot of experiences and which in turn makes you a great storyteller and the master of your craft, what else do you need. You’ll be able to see the beauty of the compound effect unfold in your life. The years of dedication and focused work seem to suddenly give an explosion of rewards. But it’s not just living longer that brings you these rewards, of course, it does, but it’s the resilience/grit that’s responsible for this. Simply living longer doesn’t guarantee anything but being resilient towards your work and goals will surely ensure the magic pot of the compound effect.

I mentioned in the last blog (I Quit) itself that for the past month or so, the universe had been trying to tell something to me, and that was resilience, grit. That blog was more of a personal note to myself, and this blog is a gentle, yet strong reminder for you to check your grit meter!

Yes, in other words, ask this question to yourselves: ARE YOU PLAYING THE LONG GAME? Are you making your choices based on the assumption that you’ll reap the benefits of the work you do now reaps results right away, or are you making choices that will bring you an immense bounty of rewards in the future? It’s the same as in a stock market, time in the market wins over timing the market. It applies to your whole life, not only finance. You need not do what’s trendy. Just visualize yourself in the future, maybe 10 years or 20 years from now, how would you want to be living your life? What are the accomplishments do you think should be filled in your past?

And based on that long-term visualization, make choices and act now! And I know by experience, that it is hard to be resilient even when you are not seeing any results in the present, but just keep going! And also, it is statistically proven that the most common losing strategy is by giving up early, very early. People tend to quit or let go very quickly and stop pursuing their dreams and goals. Only a few people have enough grit to sustain no matter the circumstance and that will be the only few people who succeed.

And by having this long-term perspective, you are also converging and hence conserving your energy. Because, when you are deciding to whether take up a new pursuit or not, simply ask this question – How long am I willing to do this? Am I willing to do this till I die? If yes, then amazing! And congratulations, you’ll never lose and hence you win! If not, then you have to move on and try something else that you can do for a lifetime. By doing this, you saved a lot of energy, you didn’t get into something that would eventually fail because you lack grit towards it. It might be anything that you’re creating, a business, art, craft, it might be your YouTube channel.

Ok, let me ask you again – ARE YOU PLAYING THE LONG GAME? ARE YOU WILLING TO WORK ON YOUR CRAFT TILL YOU DIE? If you answered no, stop that task right away and move on! Move on to the task that you’re passionate about enough to be resilient, to do it over and over again till you die! If you answered yes, congratulations! You’ve already won, just keep going!

Thank You,

Yours Loving,

Sanath Kumar Naibhi