You can overcome anything (even if it seems impossible right now)

“It always seems impossible until it’s done.” — Nelson Mandela

Everything worth figuring out starts with struggle.

Things are always murky when you’re navigating something that you don’t understand.

Learning a sport. Starting a new job. Figuring out how to buy a house. Learning to live without someone. Learning to write music.

Once you’re past the shiny object phase of a new domain, you’re in the confused phase.

You don’t understand it. When an expert shows you how it’s done, you feel overwhelmed by the terms that you don’t understand and the concepts you can’t even conceptualise.

When you’ve just picked up a piano for the first time, hearing about pentatonic scales, B-sharp minor, 7th chords, melodies, countermelodies and bridges just makes you want to cry.

And when something significant changes in your life and you don’t know what to do, you just want to give up.

It’s overwhelming. It feels as though you’ll never make any progress.

And these are the moments we’re most likely to quit.

But the key thing to understand about new domains is that you can’t apply your current feeling to your future.

It’s something like walking in the dark toward a light switch.

On the way, it feels that the darkness will never go away. And as you walk around navigating the room, it doesn’t get any lighter — maybe you gain a bit of information when you bump into things. But once you get to the light and flick it, the room is suddenly illuminated — 0 to 1 — and now it all makes sense.

The key is learning to stay the course.

“First, darkness, then light. First, confusion, and then clarity.” — Mehmet Murat Ildan

To stay the course despite the confusion is to understand two extremely important points:

1. Progress is not linear

2. Confusion is not permanent

Confusion wins when it convinces you that it’s permanent.

You lose when you take the feeling and the progress you make at the beginning and project it at the same rate into the future.

You say, “If I am improving at 0.1% each day, it’ll take years before I’m a master”.

You say, “If I’m not feeling any better than yesterday, I’ll never be happy.”

But these are fundamental flaws in thinking.

Because you don’t find the diamond until you find it.

It’s a bit like proving yourself wrong when you step into a job that’s bigger than you. You don’t know you can do it until all of a sudden, you’re in the water and you’re swimming.

“Patience and perseverance have a magical effect before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish.” — John Quincy Adams

Think about something in your life that is easy to you now but was once impossible.

Walking, talking, writing, mathematics. Your work, your habits, your life as it currently is.

Maybe you lost someone close to you and thought you’d never recover, but now you’re living your life.

Maybe you went through a tough time and thought you’d never feel better, but now you’re alright.

Whether it’s a trivial challenge, like learning an instrument, or a fundamental life adjustment, the same principle applies.

The confusion and lack of progress that you feel at the start will all melt away once you just spend time in the arena and don’t give up.

You try. It works sometimes and doesn’t work at other times. You read to learn about it, you speak to people to gain their perspective, and you synthesise in your own time.

Then, something incredible happens.

Things start to click. Things that you didn’t even know existed. The complexity that scared you off as a beginner is now common to you because you spent time learning and applying those learnings.

The mindset, resilience and skill that seemed impossible are now basic to you.

When everyone succumbs to the confusion and uncertainty, you keep going.

“You must go on, I can’t go on, I’ll go on.” — Samuel Beckett

Sincerely,

eren

A collection of all songs mentioned in this letter over the years.

My ‘must-watch’ list: Eren’s Quintessential Movie List

This week I watched Surrogated (2009). Was it a good movie? Not really. But was it fun to watch and a fascinating depiction of a future reality? Absolutely.