The Books You Tell People You're Reading

I used to lie to people about the books that I was reading because I didn’t want to tell people that I was wasting my time.

My name is Flint from iAlign.

I’m an engineer who went from stagnation, overthinking, and scrolling to a life of clear, consistent, confident action and freedom

And yes, I used to lie.

I wouldn’t outright just tell people about books that I wasn’t reading, but I would do that common thing where I would start a handful of projects, some of them being books that I wanted to be reading, And then I would overcommit myself, and because I overcommit myself, I didn’t actually have enough time to get almost anything in my life truly done.

And then I would stop all these things, and then I would have these books that I had read 5, 10, 15, 30, maybe 100 pages of sometimes.

And then when people would ask me, “How do you spend your Saturday? What are you doing for fun recently?”

I’d be like, “Oh, I’m reading this book. I’m reading this book. I’m doing this thing.”

But the reality is I didn’t make enough time for any of it,

So I wasn’t actually reading these books.

I had just started them, and inherently that meant that I was lying to these people about the way I actually was spending my time

And there’s this vivid memory.

It was a Saturday afternoon.

It was in September.

It was fall.

The swell was starting to roll in on the west coast of California.

I was sitting in my house, I was looking out over the street, was just this beautiful, crisp fall day.

The air was perfect kinda just needed a, a light hoodie, and the sunlight, you know how it comes through in the late September and October.

At a lower angle on the horizon.

It’s super pretty

At the end of this beautiful day, as the sun was starting to set, my eyes were bloodshot, and I was kinda depressed.

And that was because I had spent that entire day just going back and forth between the TV and some video game that I was playing.

Going back and forth between my TV and, a movie I watched, and then some show I turned on, and then I was scrolling social media at the same time, and then I was acting as if I was gonna get some work done, so I turned on a movie while I did some more administrative things, but I wasn’t actually doing any of that.

And it just accumulated to this full day, and it was like 4:00 or 5:00 PM.

And nothing had gotten done, and I was disappointed in myself.

I was kinda sad about the progress I was making.

And I looked back, actually, further over my entire year, ’cause now it’s September, October at the time of this story.

It’s the year’s starting to come to an end, basically when I’m filming this just many years later.

And that disappointment in my day I ended up realizing it was more about a disappointment of my entire year.

It’s not that I didn’t get anything done.

I’m a pretty proficient person.

I’m a pretty competent person.

I got things done to some extent, but not a lot of it to a standard that I actually wanted to hold, which is a crazy thing for someone who’s competent and can do really remarkable work, and who holds himself to a really high standard, who then doesn’t actually do any of the work to that standard.

It’s this crazy contradiction that was in my head of, knowing of how much potential I had and how much I could do, and how little I was actually doing, And that was all compounded on top of the way I was actually spending my time, which made me quite disappointed in myself.

And unfortunately in that moment, I didn’t see life in the way that I do now.

In fact, I felt trapped by these behaviors.

I felt trapped as if I was never actually going to accomplish these large goals that I had for myself or implement and take action in the way that I truly knew that I could.

I felt trapped and I felt stagnant.

When I wanted to do something, it felt like this voice would take over in my head, and

I’d be watching myself from a third person view, like looking at myself Being like, “No, I don’t want to watch any more TV. No, I don’t want to scroll Instagram.” and yet my hands still clicked on the remote or the, the phone or whatever it was.

It was like I didn’t really have control and I felt trapped by that lack of control.

And that’s what made that year feel stagnant and it felt off track.

Because if I wasn’t taking enough action and I wasn’t doing a good enough job at the action that I was taking, then there was no way that I was going to support myself through my action to the life that I wanted.

And that made me feel behind, it made me feel embarrassed, anxious.

It made me feel nervous.

It made me feel just like disappointed and stagnant.

And I looked at the people around me and I was like, “Wow, even if, especially if I’m gonna make it, take a somewhat non-traditional path, I gotta be on my shit.”

And I just wasn’t

And that’s when I truly integrated the lesson that finishing your year with integrity in your actions decides whether you remember that year as one that felt trapped and stagnant or free with momentum.

And that experience of how you look back on your year gets settled, it gets decided not at the end of the year, but in the fall, right now.

It’s not on January 1 where your year gets determined.

It’s right now in September.

It’s how you decide to close out your year that determines how you view it in your memory.

And it also decides if the next year is going to feel stagnant and still and behind and trapped, or if it’s going to start off a year where you feel free with momentum and clarity and confidence and drive going forward

And that’s really the big one.

It’s to end your years with pride.

Because no matter what happened up until this moment in September for you this year, doesn’t mean that the last couple months can’t be excellent, can’t be something that you can hang your hat on and be stoked about and be proud of and by making the decision to start tackling my non-productive or compulsive behaviors that led me to be distracted in this last piece of the yearthat tends to be so noisy and chaotic as is.

It allowed me to turn into the type of man who when, um, who, you know, as a simple example, when people ask me what I’m reading now, I don’t have to put the puzzle pieces together in my head trying to pick out the words and the thoughts that I’ve had or that I’ve heard about some book and try to continue the charade, the act as if I have read this thing or know what I’m talking about.

Instead, I can just quote or paraphrase these things because I spend legitimate time focusing and engaging and reading the things that I’m fascinated by

And that makes me proud of my year and of myself because my words match my actions, which match the man that I want to be

And that is partly because I identified that the last part of your year is filled with these predictable stressors that you can use to experiment on how you can continue to take the actions that you want to take and to not engage in the distractions while predictable stressors of the holidays show up And that is why right now is the perfect time to make substantial change in your misaligned behaviors, your distractions, your procrastination, your overthinking, your overcommitment

Before the holiday season begins and New Year’s comes around So you can go into the new year with confidence and actual momentum instead of having to feel like on January 1 you need to make some substantial life change on all these different behaviors.

It’s like, “No, I’m already on track. I don’t need to recreate everything. I just need to keep going in the way that I’m going.” anyways, I’m Flint.

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I hope you have a wonderful night.

Peace.