5 Superpowers That Will Make You Extraordinary

5 Superpowers That Will Make You Extraordinary

“If you have the guts to keep making mistakes, your wisdom and intelligence leap forward with huge momentum.”

Delaying Gratification

Most people suffer from instant gratification bias. Rather than controlling their impulses, they let their impulses control them. If they want something now, they’ll get it now — usually at the expense of their future self.

I mean, look at these stats:

On average, people spend 3 hours per day watching TV or Netflix
On average, people spend 2.5 hours per day on social media
The average person spends 25% of their waking time on their mobile device
Worldwide, 1.9 billion adults are overweight, according to the WHO
69% of adults (in the USA) have less than $1000 in savings
These alarming statistics show that, instead of thinking long-term, the majority of society is stuck in short-term thinking. They let their impulses run the show, which leads to all kinds of problems for their future self.

Extraordinary people, however, are long-term thinkers. They understand that the choices they make today determine their reality of tomorrow.

If you want to build a successful business, you need to put in a crazy amount of work upfront without possibly seeing any results for months.

If you want to become a top student, you need to put the video games/social media away and study for hours with deep focus.

If you want to improve your fitness, you need to get yourself off the couch, stop watching Netflix and get your ass to the gym.

And if you want to improve your finances, you need to resist the temptation of purchasing another pair of shoes you don’t really need, and put it towards your savings/investments instead.

No matter your field, to achieve better results, you need to learn how to delay gratification. You need to think long-term.

If all you do is stay stuck in a cycle of instant gratification — scrolling through social media, eating junk food, sleeping in, procrastinating — you won’t get anywhere. You’ll stay stuck in mediocrity.
Positive Self-Talk

It’s cliche, I know. Yet, your self-talk is essential. It influences how you feel about yourself. How you feel about yourself influences how you’ll act. How you act influences the results you’ll get in your life.

Therefore, if you want better results, start with better self-talk.

I mean, if you’d have someone right next to you, 24 hours per day, 365 days per year, would you let this person talk you down, make you insecure, and talk you out of doing epic things?

Of course not. You’d kick this person in the face.

Yet, this is what most of us do to ourselves. And it’s making life unnecessarily more difficult.

“If you are insecure, guess what? The rest of the world is, too. Do not overestimate the competition and underestimate yourself. You are better than you think.” — Tim Ferriss
We talk ourselves down instead of lifting ourselves up. We fuel our insecurities instead of fueling our flame. We talk ourselves out of greatness instead of helping us pursue greatness.

Stop it.

The world is already challenging enough. The least you can do is have your own back.

As Muhammad Ali once said, “It’s the repetition of affirmations that leads to belief. And once that belief becomes a deep conviction, things begin to happen.”

The things you repeatedly say to yourself turn into beliefs — and your beliefs turn into your reality. So, if you want a better reality, begin with better self-talk.

Big-Picture Thinking

The most effective people are big-picture thinkers who master the art of prioritization. They tend to follow the 80/20 principle religiously, which states that 80% of results come from just 20% of the input.

As Richard Koch, author of The 80/20 Principle, said, “The 80/20 principle — that 80 percent of result flow from just 20 percent of the causes — is the one true principle of highly effective people.”

Most people get distracted by trivial things that don’t matter much. Instead, they should pay a lot more attention to the ‘vital few’ that matter most.

Common examples of getting distracted by trivial things are:

Obsessing over which brand of supplements to take instead of making sure you exercise often, sleep enough, and eat well
Spending hours researching productivity apps instead of simply putting distractions away and getting started on an important task
Spending weeks thinking about your ‘ideal target market’ versus just getting started and gathering real data
Endlessly tweaking your resume versus actually sending it out to potential employers
Obsessing over your company logo versus improving the quality of your products/service
Most of us know what we need to do to improve our fitness, finances, or businesses. Yet, most people overcomplicate this process by getting distracted with ‘shiny things’ that don’t matter much.

As Warren Buffet said, “There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult.” Stop making things more difficult. Cut through the clutter and stick to the essentials.

Daily Deep Work

Three to four hours of deep work beats eight hours of semi-distracted work any time of the week. With three to four hours of deep work, you can move mountains and be more productive than most people are in two entire days.

Here’s my process for daily deep work:

Pick one high-impact task
Remove all distractions (phone out of sight, notifications turned off)
Get a cup of coffee
Set a timer for 90 minutes and get started
Take a 15-minute break & get another cup of coffee
Start second 90-minute deep work session
Honestly, if you want to get more done, spend more time doing deep work. It’s a game-changer for your productivity.

Using Failure As Stepping Stones To Get Better

School taught us that failure is bad and should be avoided. If you failed a test, you’d get punished for it. If you failed to answer a teacher’s question, you’d be punished for it.

Yet, in real life, failure is essential. Failure is how we grow. Failure is how we get stronger, smarter, and better. Failure is a natural part of life.

“Go ahead and make mistakes. Make all you can. Because that’s where you will find success. On the far side of failure.” — Thomas J. Watson
For example, failure is how we’ve learned to walk. When we were kids, you and I fell many times before learning how to walk (at least I did). Each time we’d fall, we’d learn valuable information about walking. Therefore, it was because of falling that we learned how to walk.

Yet, as teenagers and adults, we’re taught to fear and avoid failure. Thus, if we start a new project and it fails, most people just give up. This is such a shame, because failure is a natural part of learning, growing, and moving forward.

Each failure contains the seed of future success. Each failure teaches an important lesson and provides wisdom. Each failure is a unique opportunity to grow and improve. Each failure gets you closer to success.

Understand this, and you’ll be more comfortable with failure. You’ll use it as a stepping stone to improve instead of letting it discourage you. This can mean the difference between living a life of growth or a life of stagnation.

As Holly Near said, “If you have the guts to keep making mistakes, your wisdom and intelligence leap forward with huge momentum.”

CONTRIBUTED BY Jari Roomer

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