By Irving Vierma
When I started reading The Atomic Habits, back in 2020, in the midst of the pandemic and how overwhelming the uncertainty of the events it had sown in all aspects of human life became, I never suspected how shocking it would be to have discovered the story and experience of the author, James Clear, who was not limited to being a passive writer, rather, he was actively involved in continuing to develop his ideas and teachings through interviews, exhibitions and, my favorite, his 3-2-1 Newsletter which I highly recommend you subscribe to.
In July 2023 I wrote a reminder in my Google notes: James Clear: Mistakes and the quote he makes in his article about mistakes and their importance, quoting the multifaceted doctor and science writer Lewis Thomas from his book The Medusa and the Snail:
"Mistakes are at the very base of human thought, embedded there, feeding the structure like root nodules. If we were not provided with the knack of being wrong, we could never get anything useful done. We think our way along by choosing between right and wrong alternatives, and the wrong choices have to be made as frequently as the right ones.
We get along in life this way. We are built to make mistakes, coded for error. We learn, as we say, by "trial and error." Why do we always say that? Why not "trial and rightness" or "trial and triumph"? The old phrase puts it that way because that is, in real life, the way it is done."
And this is where we enter the controversy about the false promise offered by the prophets of success and the proliferation of their message on social networks with the magic formulas of triumph. Where error has no place or does not appear as a fundamental part of learning and growth, but rather as a stain that we must clean from our nature. Nothing could be more wrong.
When I started writing about "Taking Control of Your Life" I did it that way, wrongly. I took a path that left me without content after a short time and I had to stop and think again. Without changing my goal, I changed the strategy and began to apply the concepts and premises to myself, learning from my mistakes and rectifying. And that's how what I preached began to work, because it wasn't a quantitative career but a qualitative one: writing, publishing, speaking, developing, rectifying, and repeating the whole process over and over again. I put perfectionism aside and started making mistakes to learn, without letting anxiety feed my fears and frustrations:
“Anxiety is thought without control.
Flow is control without thought.” James Clear
Let's remember that anxiety is a feeling of fear, dread, and uneasiness. It's our response to stress. And there's nothing better to stress us out than the crushing weight they put on us, the goals and endless social media posts.
Anxiety had already wreaked havoc on my health because the physiological root, although intimately linked to a thyroid condition, also the self-imposed uncontrolled thinking, fueled by social media and traumatic events of the past, which whipped my thoughts uncontrollably.
I learned to accept mistakes as part of growing up. But it wasn't a voluntary act or a magical lucubration that enlightened me overnight. It happened because there was a cancer diagnosis, followed by several surgeries and treatments, which confronted me with the only certainty: we have an expiration date and we must take control of what we can and is within our reach and, at the same time, let everything that is not flow away.
That's how it was. Mistakes ceased to be sharp swords and became tools that created new realities. Mistakes began to be a fundamental part of personal growth and ceased to be that uncontrollable force of overwhelm and submission. Mistakes were welcomed, understood, rectified, and learned.
Taking control involves having the will, the knowledge, and the conviction that you are doing, acting, executing your function as a human, as a living being, as a member of society. That's what I want to do, to provide people with a map of safety and security through insurance products, blog articles, Instagram or TikTok posts, and live conversations, with everyone who needs a little bit of all of this. Valuable content to help them face the great enemy: the ego. And its consequences: anxiety.
Therefore, I invite you to start taking control with me:
You can register here https://azl.app/s/4vierma
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