What to Expect Today:

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• A few months ago, I had an experience that stopped me in my tracks. It was a reminder that sometimes in life, the things we pray for can become the things we complain about, but only if we let them.
• How many times has the thing your younger self dreamed of become the thing you complain about after you’ve gotten it?
• There are a lot of beauties in life that are easy to miss if you’re moving too fast to appreciate them. Sometimes, you are quite literally living out your prayers. Remember that.

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The Invisible Cage of Life

A couple months ago, I had one of my best months in business ever. But instead of celebration, I found myself doing nothing but feeling frustrated and conflicted. It was at this moment that I realized I had unknowingly been setting myself up for failure with 3 deadly traps.

The truth is I come from a very unconventional combination of degrees and careers. Because of that, entrepreneurship has always felt like something that I’ve secretly been playing catch up on because I started late and I never had any help along the way.

For context, I come from degrees in biochemistry, math, chemical engineering and data science while doing work in software engineering and AI. While many find this impressive, when I look back I see so much time I missed not embracing my own ideas sooner.

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So what, right? Well for me, there have only ever been two things that truly drive me to work so hard I lose track of time and forget about the world around me:

1. Creativity:
   If there was one thing in life that fueled my growth more than anything else in the universe, it was my excitement to create. I’ve always loved the concept of “novelty” for as long as I can remember.
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   I enjoyed creating so much that even when I was a kid I would spend countless hours building circuits with trains, structures with Legos and Lincoln Logs, mini-stop motion movies or even entire stories and plots for made-up movies and games.
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2. Impact:
   ​A sad thought that’s always sat heavy with me is the idea that you could devote your entire life to something, pour everything you have into your work, and still be completely forgotten, or perhaps never even known in the first place.
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   Even so, many of the greats like Vincent van Gogh and Galileo Galilei never had the chance to bask in the glory of their work because they were never truly recognized until after they passed.
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   As I grew with this thought always looming over me, I realized that I wanted to devote my life to making a positive impact for others to see and benefit from.
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3. Competition: ​
   I often ask myself what roles “nature” and “nurture” actually may have played in my life to make me who I am today. Regardless of which led to this, I’ve always had a burning desire to win.
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   When it was in soccer, it made practicing 7 days a week feel like nothing. When it was video games, it made playing for countless hours feel like clockwork. And when it was in school, it made pulling all-nighters to cram for exams like a joke.
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At this point you might be asking yourself “why is he talking about all of this instead of traps?”
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Well the truth is, it took me realizing these traits about myself to understand what the traps I had set in my life even were.

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Trap 1: The Comparison Trap

This is when we constantly measure our success, happiness, or worth against others, especially in the age of social media.

You could share a story about scrolling through social media late at night and feeling inadequate about your achievements or lifestyle compared to others, only to realize later that you were comparing your behind-the-scenes to everyone else’s highlight reel.

For me, no achievement felt great when I could so easily find people doing better than me.

The Real Lesson:

We can’t always compare ourselves with everyone around us. They are on different journeys than us. The only people we should compare ourselves to is who we were yesterday and who we’ll become tomorrow.

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Trap 2: The Perfectionism Trap

This is when we delay action until conditions are "perfect" or refuse to release work until it's flawless. You might share how you delayed launching your first business or newsletter for months because you felt it wasn't perfect, only to realize later that the learning came from actually doing it, not planning it.

Coming from a world of always trying to get straight A’s and never make a mistake on the field or in the game, it constantly felt like there was always more preparation to be done.

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The Real Lesson:

The bulk of our growth actually comes from experience, with many of our greatest lessons learned hiding behind our toughest challenges and our biggest failures. Without action there will never be success.

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Trap 3: The Endless Treadmill

We’re constantly chasing the next thing without appreciating what we have. You could share a story about working relentlessly toward a specific goal (promotion, house, relationship milestone), then immediately feeling empty and focused on the next target once you achieved it.

The final element to my lack of satisfaction: I was so focused on what was next that I forgot to take a step back and even show the slightest appreciation for the accomplishment I was living right now.

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The Real Lesson:

I think the idea has become cliche for a very good reason. And that’s because there is no more valuable time to appreciate than right now.

This concept of mindfulness is what allows us to enjoy the journey.. Both the good and the bad parts of it.
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The Social Network

Want to start your very own audience? In today's world the hardest part about starting your own business and generating more money is not the actual service, but the ability to reach your potential customers. The Social Network has options for everyone to start their very own brand!

Scott Caputo ​ Forward this email? Sign up here​ Follow me on LinkedIn | Twitter | Instagram​

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