When asked about whether he approaches his endurance exploits with a typical “You can do it, you can do it” sort of self-talk, Lazarus Lake had this to say:
For myself, when I’m involved in something like this, there’s not really time to give myself a pep talk. I’m totally absorbed with doing what I’m doing. I actually prefer to approach things with a little bit of doubt. A couple of years ago, I walked across the country. I walked from the East Coast to the West Coast. While I could still smell the ocean, people would say, “You’ve got this.” I would think, “Well, then, why go through all this discomfort if I already know I can?” I believed I could make it to the Pacific Ocean when I topped the last mountain in the Coastal Range, and I could see it.
https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/lazarus-lake/
There is something profound there, about the difference between a naïve optimism about outcomes and a focused optimism about effort and process. Most of the really good stuff we have a chance of doing in life requires sacrifice and hard work. If there was some sort of nonchalant ease to the whole thing, it probably wouldn’t be worth the effort.
Maybe the values and targets you’ve set out for yourself financially could use “a little bit of doubt.” In fact, a particular type of uncertainty might be the very thing which actually drives many of our most worthwhile financial decisions: Generous giving, uncommon saving, healthy vocational risk-taking, transparency. No one has done any of these things ensured of the outcome, and yet they are all worth doing.
So maybe we can keep saying–to ourselves and to others–“You can do it! You can do it!” But maybe the “it” is not an outcome, so much as it is an absorption in doing well something worthwhile, even in the face of uncertainty.
Meaningful Returns 