Inner Compass – Shalini Sareen – Life & Executive Coach


The Biggest Barrier to Break About Getting Ahead is:

#1: Starting small enough. Starting small is not about setting low expectations but about building momentum. When you have a big and ambitious goal, think about how you can:
Break it down into a 2-min habit.
Make it as easy as possible to execute.
The 99% have a binary mindset and think in black and white. You do it 100% or not at all. Wrong. This mindset creates procrastination. And procrastination (also called perfection) prevents you from starting.
The 1% of those who are humble enough to start small but ambitious enough to think big need to remember that the journey of 1,000 steps begins with the first step.
A habit needs to be established before it can be improved.

#2: Most People Don’t Control Friction In Their Life.
Friction is the difference between a rock rolling down a hill or staying in the same spot. That’s like your life. The friction you do or don’t have determine if you do or don’t achieve your goals in 2023-2024.
For establishing good habits, reduce friction:
-Find a gym that is walkable to your house.
-Put a book beside your bed.
-Set out your Yoga gear the night before.
For breaking bad habits, increase friction:
Hide your phone until 11:00am and again after 8:00pm.
Donate to a political party you don’t like when you fail to exercise.
Unplug your TV or completely remove it from your room.
You first control friction, and then friction controls your habits.

#3: Control Your Social Environment.
Everyone knows they are the average of the five closest people to them.
Yet they still decide to hang around losers. Surround yourself with three types of people:
Peers you can grow with.
Mentors you can learn from.
Mentees you can teach to.
Every professional athlete has a coach that grows them, competitors that challenge them, and junior training partners they teach. You are no different. You can’t outgrow your environment. Evolve or repeat the pattern, it’s your choice.

#4: Observe, Reflect and Build Success.
Rather than get jealous of someone’s success, question it:
What did they do well?
Why was their introduction so catchy?
How did they keep my attention?
Why did it resonate with me so much?
When you can deconstruct success, you gain access to the first principles that made success happen.
Then you can recreate that success for yourself. Don’t steal. Don’t copy. But mimic. I observe other successful writers’ strategies and tactics and repurpose them for my context. You can do this for everything. Interrogate why a business is successful. Observe charismatic people in a social setting.
W hen you can question things at a deep level, you get access to deeper answers.

#5: Think Like A Bloody Mad Scientist.
Treat your life like a series of experiments.
Ideate on new ideas.
Rapidly build prototypes.
Constantly test whether they work.
Iterate on what went well. Stop what didn’t go well.
I’ve applied this to building my personal brand.
As Naval Ravikant says, “You want 10,000 iterations, not 10,000 hours.”

#6: Understand Failure Is Inevitable, and Learn To Build Resilience.
If you want to achieve what most people can’t, you have to do what most people won’t. This means encountering setbacks, failures and bumps along the journey. The pain of changing and growing hurts. The anxiety of uncertainty can be intense. The constant risk-taking can be overwhelming.
But do you know what hurts more? The pain of staying the same. Choose your pain wisely.



To Sum up, to get ahead in Life, learn to:

Start small
Control Friction
Be careful who’s around you.
Question everything. Even your own deeply held beliefs.
Build a portfolio of experiments.
Learn to bounce back quickly.