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Invert, always invert

We are always asking ourselves how to get what we want. It’s easy and natural, but thinking this way is dangerously incomplete on its own.

Very often the way to get what you want is avoid getting what you don’t want! This way of “thinking backward” is less natural, but much easier, and fills in many voids of only thinking forward.

For example, I can consider how to have a happy wife, and think of some things that would make her happy. Those things are certainly valid thoughts, but if it was natural I’d already be doing them. There is a better way: To have a happy wife, it’s easiest to not have an unhappy wife! When I turn the question on its head, the answers are more clear because she tells me all the time what I do that makes her unhappy.

Another, less facetious example: If I want to run marathon, I could create a training regimen which could ultimately enable me to run a marathon. But it’s important to invert the question and realize that in order to run a marathon I also need to do the which would prevent me from not running a marathon, like missing workouts, getting hurt, eating poorly, etc., and those things are probably more important toward my end goal than the training regimen.

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