Karam Zarkitou

Making choices is exhausting.

No matter what you choose, you will suffer the consequences of the regret of the unexplored path.

Struggling to make a decision is mentally draining, and stretching it is a choice in itself.

We try to make the best decision for the best outcome and reduce regret, still, decisions are painful. When both choices are hard, it is important to minimise the decision time to reduce the stress that comes with procrastination choice.

Stressing about making a decision and fantasising about the possible outcomes is delusion. It makes things worse and clouds the judgment by which you must confront the situation at hand.

I am guilty of this, I am now assessing 3 different outcomes that will impact my life for the next 6 months.

Because I have been postponing, the stress is growing and it feels worse than it seems.

If I had made a choice and stuck to it, it might not have been the best but by now I would have learned how to deal with it. The stress about making the decision (the only stress I’m feeling) would disappear.

Sometimes stressing about a decision is worse than the decision itself.

Asking somebody why they do something is rude. Your friend and you are having coffee, talking about life and he shares with you that he wants to move to Thailand for a while and travel around Asia.

You ask “Why?” The question here implies that you do not understand his stance and he has to give you a valid reason why he's moving away. You will then asses his answer and accept it as valid or not. This is fucked up.

Wanting to do it is the “why”. Because I want to should be the answer. It is fine not to understand the motives of other people’s choices in life. Justifying why you want to do something is beyond the reach of the person asking.

You want to understand their motives and their decisions, but this is overreaching. You make the other person think about creating an answer suitable for you, for you to give them the validation you denied them when they opened up.

Do not ask other people why they do what they do, better ask yourself why you do what you do, it will take you farther.

Karam Zarkitou

I love the self-development space. The constant improvement of oneself never ends. From reading more to reducing cheap dopamine, through time management, and not wasting time, I have been harsher on myself. Judging every move I make, comparing my journey to others, and feeling like an imposter and a failure.

I'm going through the Dip Seth Godin talks about.

The past few weeks have been hard, I haven’t been the best, and going through ups and downs I did not feel like writing, or filming any YouTube videos. I now realise, the less I do, the worse I feel and the cycle repeats itself. It has been at least 4 weeks since my last video and about 2 weeks since my last post.

I don’t know what I am doing, my art doesn’t seem to solve nobody’s problem and nobody seems to read or watch what I do. I ask myself, what’s the point?

The more books I read the more lost I am, information overload is playing me, especially comparing myself. I thought I was getting over it, but I can’t help but notice how much I do it.

I need to get out. Do something new, overcome my phone addiction, and get the job done. I have been turning to recreation and trying to distract myself from the fact that I am not doing what I should. It is now time to stop and reflect from a new angle and see how I can make better content, writing, and filming.

Solve somebody’s problem and apply all the stuff I’ve been learning.

What do I give a fuck about? What do I want from life? What is it that I value the most? These are some questions I still need to come to answer.

So far I want to have a purpose that I haven’t felt for a while, something I care about, a mission. I can do anything but not everything.

Karam Zarkitou

The latest book on the shelf: the subtle art of not giving a fuck by Mark Manson.

I devoured the book in 4 days. It feels like a self-manifesto of his values, learnings, and therapy sessions. And I sure needed that.

As if I was reading some of my thoughts, I felt Mark. His talk on what to give a fuck about, I had come to terms on my own, same with how happiness is not avoiding problems, but solving them.

Choosing the quality of the problems in your life dictates the quality of it.

Taking full responsibility for everything that happens in your life, being your fault or not is what gives you freedom. Not choosing what happens to life (out of control) but how you respond to it (in control) is liberating.

We find meaning in suffering, not in avoiding it, and I have been guilty of it. I felt entitled to feel good, to have a better life as if I'm somehow special and deserved everything I want without actually working for it. Such a joke.

Finding one's values and living life through them, and taking responsibility. To commit to something bigger than ourselves and devote our lives to it is how we find meaning.

I'm scared of committing. To a city, to a woman, to a job, to friends. This fear of commitment has gotten worse with time, and now that I'm 27 I don't have anything. I jump around and do not go in-depth about anything, which makes it difficult to find meaning in anything.

The book has made me realise that I need to address my own issues. Happiness finds its way through hardship and meaning, that happiness is an epiphany. We do not realise is there until is gone. The hard times bring the best memories.

Things pay off with time. The perks of a long relationship come after years of tweaking. The rewards of a craft come years after the hardship of getting started.

Karam Zarkitou

My 3 take aways from the subtle art of not giving a fuck's first part:

• The quality of your problems dictate the quality of your life.

• Choosing what to give a fuck about dictates the quality of your problems.

• What you give a fuck is the metric that matters the most in your life.

BONUS - @MarkManson don't give a fuck means he gives a fuck about the right things.

Let me deep dive in:

1) How do people turn embittered and entitled?

They give a fuck about everything.

Everything annoys them, from dirty streets to rude baristas. Everything that's out of their control, they try to control. That's the perfect recipe for complaining and doing nothing about it.

They give a fuck about the wrong things.

Everything annoys them, from dirty streets to rude baristas. Everything that's out of their control, they try to control. That's the perfect recipe for complaining and doing nothing about it.

2) How do you know what to give a fuck about?

What do a rude barista and expensive cars have in common? You can't control neither of them. No good. Giving a fuck about things you can't control is the quickest way to misery.

Choose things in your control and you'll find strength and quality problems.

3) Why do you want to find better problems?

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. The more you learn about yourself and give a fuck about the right thing, the more focused on problems about your own life. Like a quest, the bigger problems in your life bring the more rewards, making you happier.

Karam Zarkitou

The more confident you are, the less you speak.

The more you want people to like you, the more you speak. The more you speak, the emptier your words. The emptier your words, the less confident you appear.

The more people skills I study the more trends I see every successful communicator has. They listen. I'm not talking about waiting for your turn to speak, forgetting what the other person has said. To figure out what other people mean with their words, what's their true message.

People will tell you everything you know if you listen, problem is most people do not listen, they only hear. Hearing is passive where listening is engaging (not talking) being in the other person's world and help them navigate their own minds.

You want your words to mean something, that's why you say them. But what if I told you that talking is not a game of quantity but quality where less is always more?

Trust me, I've been there. Trying to fill a paper for school to meet the word count going over the same point over and over.

The real world is nothing like school. From conversations, to networking, to curating a CV, to motivating a team, to sell a product. The less you say, the more meaning your words have. That's it.

Get to the core of your idea, with precision and not a single extra word. The more you trim what you want to say, thee purer and more captivating is.

We see quiet people as deeper humans curating what they will say at every moment. When you are looking to impress, say less.

Karam Zarkitou

My jiujitsu coach says: "I give you the different ingredients, pick for yourself and cook your own jiujitsu".

Everybody has different strengths and weaknesses. Different backgrounds will make the most with different techniques. Every one of us will develop a different fighting style.

The same happens in real life: If you try to read what everybody, think like everybody, you will end up a copy of other people's brains. Develop your own brain by the things you interested in, and cook your own knowledge.

That's what will make you, you.

What makes you the best at your field is learning things outside your field.

The best history teachers are not the ones reading the same history books as everyone else and talking as everyone else.

The best teacher has the knowledge and other skills acquired in other fields. In the case of history, storytelling.

My year 11 history teacher Tony was a master at it. He gave us vivid lectures with passion and stories to take with us home. It was enjoyable. He did not rely in the way a classic teacher would. He brought his people skills and his passion for history together and merged it into this fantastic experience. That made him the best.

Good sports commentators default to boring known metaphors. The best one makes his own from what he read about food, demographics of anything he's interested in outside sports to make it unique.

Be knowledgable in your field, but don't forget to learn things outside of it for you to have your unique point of view and merging different topics.

The most remarkable analogies are the ones least related. Anything you do in life will give you unique superpowers in your passions. Use it.

Read what everybody else, think like everybody else, you will be like everybody else. Think different.

Karam Zarkitou

Lead, follow or get out of the way.

If you do not agree with what I propose, don't point out the problems if you're not offering solutions. I can follow your lead.

You either follow my lead, lead your way, or get out of the way.

Do not stay to complain.

You will encounter people that has a strong vision only to point out flaws and avoid risks. They will be worse than the voice in your head. Unless they give you alternatives, avoid them at all costs.

They do not belieeve in you and even less in themselves.

They need to get out their own way, even better, out of your way.

You can spot these people from afar. They've lost hope in themselves and can't accept somebody else taking the risks they could not. They will resent you. They will bring you down to their level and beat you down until you give up in your dreams.

Be stronger than them and stay sharp.

Lead your own way. They can either support your decisions or help you improve. Do not give them the option to talk you out of it.

Negativity is poisonous and it may be fatal.

Karam Zarkitou

Pay attention to your smart friends. Their interests are the key to success.

The key to finding gold is to dig before anyone else. if you are lucky enough to have friends you look up to, pay attention to what they pay attention to.

Their interests today will be your success tomorrow. Sahil Bloom's rule of thumb is 3 unrelated pitches.

When 3 different smart friends tell him about a new company or trend going on, he invests in it.

Since I don't have the money to put where my mind goes, I stick to behaviours and cheaper trends. What are the people I look up to interested in? What health hacks are they adopting? What great books or thinkers read?

As Charlie Munger said, "You can have a glance at someone's life, mistakes, and behaviours for 20$".

Podcasts are one way to absorb deep knowledge such as the Huberman Lab. I am now embracing his hints on creatine and zone 2 training cardio.

Follow the best to be amongst them.

Karam Zarkitou

You need to trust your gut feelings.

We all have intuition inside of us and try to fight it. I am a believer in first times.

The first time you meet someone you get a signal of what they will mean to you. How they will behave with you, and what they're like.

Everything described is packaged in a person to get the "vibe" instant and is unconscious to us.

Meeting somebody and feeling calm and trustful but you don't know how or why? That's it.

You'll often find yourself not wanting to believe it or being oblivious to it. "It moves like a duck, looks like a duck, sounds like a duck, it's a duck".

People reveal their true colours to you, you have to be open to see it.

Karam Zarkitou

Time is like money. You can spend it, invest it or waste it. There are ways in which you can use your time today to get a return tomorrow, that is an investment.

Building relationships both personal and professional, reading books, exercising, and more. You spend your time but in the future, you will reap rewards.

Spending your time is not optional, time passes. As your day goes by, what is something you are doing that gives you no return?

Mindless social media. That is time wasted. Too much of anything is counterproductive. Invest your time and spend it on things that will help you, now and in the future.

Think of your time as you think of money. Do not gamble it because though you can make money back, time is gone forever.

Two prompts to assess whether you want to take on a task or project:

1. Is it a HELL YES! chance? If not, it's a no. If yes, go to question 2.

2. It takes double the amount for half the profit, do you still do it? If yes, go for it!

These prompt blocks shiny object syndrome, and allows you to say no more often. Less is more. More of what matters to you.

Karam Zarkitou

You don't need to find time, you need to make time.

Just like a sculptor removes the excess from the stone, you need to remove the excess distractions to have the time you need.

Left my phone at home and I took my notebook, a book, a pen, and a highlighter before heading to Regent's Park. I absorbed sunlight, watched the buildings, and enjoyed as the day was unfolding before me.

I find myself watching people walking their dogs and thinking about my life, my future, and where I am at. I started writing in my notebook about what I am feeling lately and how my life will be in the next few weeks.

When consuming content, think of the content you would like to see that does not exist yet. What's the video you haven't watched yet on youtube? What is the post you haven't read yet?

Austin Kleeon made it clear to me. Make the content you haven't consumed yet, that is the one missing on the internet. Give it your twist.

It is a great insight from the creative genius.

The best writing it's easy to read. Reading it's a journey through someone's mind. When the writer takes the time and effort to clear the road, it's a pleasure to walk through the mind with ease.

It is not easy to make it look easy. Experts on a craft took time to make it look effortless. Sprezzatura is when experts make a task look easy. Football players and plumbers took their time to learn their craft before it looked effortless.

The paradox of effort and the 4 stages of competence take you from beginner to Sprezzatura.

You start unaware of your incompetence to then know what you need to improve.

When you know what's required for the expertise and you deliver. It takes focus and effort.

Sprezzatura delivers expertise with unconscious effort and focus. This is the beauty of the craft.

Karam Zarkitou

I've started reading a book named "The Bezos Blueprint" about communication.

It talks about how great communicators are not the ones with the complex language and added specifications and difficult words, but the ones that break down the most complex topics and can deliver in the most digestive way, such as Bezos in his shareholders letters.

When I was younger I wanted to sound smart and explain things in the most difficult and technical way so people would think I know what I'm talking about. Little did I know.

When trying to engage people in a conversation the aim is for the listener to understand with the minimal brain energy.

It is impressing listening to an expert explaining a complex theme such as biology like you are a 10 year old. It makes it so easy to engage and understand.

The more you can break down a topic to its first principles and use common language, the more you understand it.

The threads I still have in my brain when trying to explain things I'm learning about the mind and psychology only show the gap in my own knowledge.

When Steve Jobs was being pitched anything, he did not want to see a power point. He wanted to be talked to, and if you knew what you were talking about, you did not need a presentation at all. Brilliant.

I read something similar about Jeff Bezos too.

I am taking this lesson with me too.

Common language + knowledge = impactful communication.

Karam Zarkitou

Book Review.

A few weeks ago I started reading "Solve For Happy" by Mo Gawdat. About a year ago I saw him on Diary Of a CEO and I instantly liked the way he spoke and what we speaks about, so I gave his book a shot.

I am not the biggest fan of the topic of "happiness" for the sake of it, but his formula and how he breaks down the reasons of how to tweak ourselves to be more conscious about topics such as self talk, expectations, time, control, knowledge, etc, is outstanding.

A few of the takeaways from his book are:

• Being conscious of our own self-talk is the first step to be happier. You can't be completely happy if the voice in your head has power over you. How to control and eventually quiet the voice will make life with yourself more bearable.

• Being a slave of time. Feeling rushed and stresses running around the clock is a recipe for disaster. Truth is if you're addicted to time, no amount of it will ever be enough, and you'll always feel behind.

• Letting go of control and expectations, find power in what you can control and do not have expectations. These two together will drop the bar lower and give you strength and the control you need, one's own.

• Emotions are projected onto assuming, predicting, exaggerating and expecting. Being aware of our emotions will allow you to see events for what they are, not what you make them to be, which is what labels them as bad or good. Things just are, plain and simple. This stoic approach again takes off the pressure of wanting to project what we want onto what we can't control. This is why most people complaint.

• Being in the now. Right now, everything is okay. Being anxious or depressed only means you are not anchored to the present. Worrying about the past and the present is what causes stress. Be present and you'll find yourself at peace.

I found the book full of examples that really help you put into perspective our mind and the ways we can help ourselves have a better relationship with ourselves and consequentially with others too.

Solve for Happy - Mo Gawdat

Karam Zarkitou

Choosing your regrets and the price of inaction are correlated.

Paying the price of inaction (or deciding whether to change or not) is usually the highest of regrets from people at the end of their lives.

Everybody talks about the regrets of not doing something rather than regret something they did such as moving cities, countries, relationships.

When the thought of change or decision appears, it makes sense to take it even if it is not ideal, what comes after might be, and you are advancing in life.

Decisions are binary but their consequences are not. Asses the decisions in your life through the eyes of future you. What could you live with, and what would bother you until the end of your days?

Understanding these will set you free. Knowing regrets will always be there, choosing thee lesser evil is thee game, not to avoid them because they are a part of the game.

How will I feel at the end of my life if i never got to do the travel I dreamt of since I was a teenager? Will I regret the money spent or never going to Asia?

It sounds simple, but this mental model and its logic is amazing.

Don't let the price of inaction be an expensive regret in your life.

Karam Zarkitou

Being in control in your life can have different meanings for each one of us. If you are a freak of control like I used to be and sometimes still am, you realise that the more you chase control the more it eludes you.

Giving up control does not mean not to make decisions or give up on life, but rather on focusing on the things that really are in your control.

Differentiate the things that are in our hands from the ones that are not is giving up control while taking the control you can. That feeling is freeing and liberating.

You know exactly what to expect from yourself, and anything outside that does not deserve any thought.

For example, you cannot control if you are getting a job interview, but what is in your control is to have the best cv and write the best application you can. After taking control of what's in your hands, you give up in trying to predict an outcome or have an expectation on something that you can't control.

It is powerful and liberating to know how limited the impact of your actions is, and how much you can impact those will always leave you with a sweet mouth because you know that what was in your control was the best you could do.

Sometimes the best you can do it's not what it's required but you can always strive to improve.

The biggest improvement is to realise that what you can control is the only thing you should care about.

Karam Zarkitou

We are bombarded with misinformation and here's how you can become immune to it:

Imagine a world where everything we read and see we believe. That all the information put out there you would just take for granted.

Years ago before the rise of the internet, the truth was being fought by another narrative. There was the truth and the contra-truth.

Nowadays, the truth is not being fought by one single narrative, but rather by endless lies and different narratives to confuse you into believing anything at all.

It takes more effort to debunk misinformation than to spread it.

There is only one way to say the truth and many ways to tweak it.

Since we are living with all these different stories about the same subjects, we do become stronger in spotting the misinformation spread and just like when being exposed to a virus, start to be more sensitive coming to what is not true.

Then, the cure is not eliminating misinformation and claim everybody to believe but to be aware of it, knowing they are out there to get you and be skeptical when intaking info out there.

"What is the purpose of the writer when talking about this?"

"What emotion are they trying to trigger with these statements?"

The majority of political controversies and media takes are not for their in-groups but to trigger negative emotions out of the out-group:

• Right wing media writes to trigger the left wing emotions with controversial takes and exaggerations.

• Anti-transgender speech is directed to people who want to defend that in-group to press their button.

Next time you reading on the internet, ask yourself: What reaction are they trying to get out of this statement? You'll be seeing it from thee outside and know how not to get into their game.

Karam Zarkitou