You are both the light and the darkness but YOU get to choose the proportions
In other words, look in the mirror and say “hi”. How come you can be in those two roles? Aren't you simply your best friend? Why would you be your own worst enemy too? Let me elaborate.
My claim is that most of the outcomes in such areas of your life as:
- finances
- work
- hobbies
- relationships
- health
are most directly influenced by your own and nobody else's actions. You have far more control over these outcomes than anyone in the world. Other people's actions play a very distant secondary role, especially if you live in a first world country, without wars, slavery and rampant diseases and are a capable adult.
So how can you at the same time also be your own enemy?
It's actually quite easy to be one, even unconsciously, and requires constant vigilance to see the warning signs. There are many traps that await the unwary:
- laziness
- complacency
- short-term thinking
- ignorance
- victim mentality
- and plenty of other human vices
Let's take apart victim mentality.
Some people like to think that lack of or disappointing results in their lives are someone else's fault. They shy away from taking that responsibility on themselves and shift the blame onto others:
- “If only my parents let me do X…",
- “If only I got this sweet job paying a lot of money…",
- “If only I had better teachers at school…”
- …
The list of “if only …” excuses can be quite long and cover a big portion of their under-achievements. Usually each item on the list will imply that some other people were at fault, never the “victim”.
Even at a cursory glance, this view doesn't hold up. How is it possible that other people have so much control over their lives?
I agree that when you're a kid your parents, teachers and others have a lot to say about what you do but this is ultimately a rather short period of your life. As you turn adult, you cannot keep blaming the long-gone past for your current state. At a certain age it simply sounds incredulous.
Imagine a 40-year old blaming his lack of education on his high-school teachers, for example. That person had at least 20 years to get some adult education, if they were not satisfied with the education they got as a kid or teenager. It looks like the only person they can blame is themselves. It's easy to fall into this trap and we're all guilty of it to some extent - the point is to recognize it in yourself and not follow the temptation to wallow in self-pity.
Being ignorant also doesn't do you any favors since then you cannot take care of yourself in the best way possible. The more areas of you're life you're ignorant in, the worse your outcomes in those areas will statistically be. You may get lucky in some areas for a while but in the long run your ignorance is going to cost you.
Let's say you won the gene lottery and your naturally very healthy, you don't have any genetic diseases or other disorders. That doesn't mean you can just willy-nilly neglect your health and expect it to never deteriorate. It's only a matter of time till the results of the neglect catch up with you. If you drink alcohol excessively, use drugs, neglect your oral hygiene, eat too much junk food or abuse your body in other ways, sooner or later you can expect a price to pay, no matter how healthy you started out.
Another example: let's you were born in a rich family and you don't think you need to learn about money, after all they're always there, just like the air your breathe, you don't have to think about it. You choose to stay ignorant on the subject of money. Well, again, similarly to your health, if you just carelessly spend it, there's no guarantee it'll last forever and you may end up running out of it. That is, of course, unless you choose not to stay ignorant and learn about managing and investing it. It's relatively easy to do, I've actually learned enough about personal finances over a 3-4 week period to start investing. A lot of people never choose to do that, even though control of your money is one of the relatively few sources of real power in your life.
Be your best friend and do yourself some good by reducing your ignorance in important areas of life. Obviously, it's essential to focus on actually important areas such as health, finances, relationships, work-related skills, not some obscure or irrelevant topics. Some people are very knowledgeable about topics that have no relevance to real life, such as events in life of celebrities, sports results or current political affairs or other such nonsense, which gives you no value for reality. On the contrary, it removes you from reality as you're now using your limited mental resources on something illusory that cannot improve your course in life.
So pick your blind spots to attack wisely and applicably, which can unfortunately sometimes be hard work (though the end results should be rewarding)
I also am of opinion (though I don't have data to back it up, it's just my personal experience) that the most important determinant of your success is choosing action over inaction. Quick googling reveals that I'm not the only one who thinks that action is essential: http://www.danieldecker.net/action-or-inaction-which-will-you-regret-more/. According to research cited in this article, in long term we tend to regret our inactions much more than our actions. I certainly attribute most of my positive outcomes to the actions and risks I took, such as changing my country of residence multiple times.
Realizing the strength of the causal connection between your current actions and your future outcomes and taking responsibility for it is the first step towards achieving them. If you keep seeking blame outside of your own actions or ceding control of your life to others, you will never achieve all the great things you're capable of.
To reinforce that connection and plant it firmly in the back of my mind so it's always there I frequently think of my future self as the “customer”” of my current self. It can be helpful to ask yourself those questions and answer honestly:
- Will my future self approve of my current action or will I look back and wish I hadn't done it?
- Is what I'm doing now in the best interest of my future self?
- Is what I'm doing now going to harm, injure or otherwise make my future self worse off? If so, I should seriously reconsider this action.
If you think and, more importantly, act along those guidelines you are being your future self's best friend - after all that's what acting in a person's best interest is. The hard part is not to come up with excuses and fool yourself - it will get you nowhere.