What would have the greatest impact on your life?
Read on kevferrell.com
Welcome to REWIRE | REBOOT, a weekly newsletter where I share reflections from my ongoing personal growth journey and provide tested ideas, frameworks, tools and practices to help you create the life you want.
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In this issue:
- Rewire - The Change That Matters Most
- One Action - Choose the First Step
- Reboot - Cellular Reprogramming
- Recommended Listen - Forever Without You
- Recommended Read - Can’t Hurt Me
Rewire - Idea I'm Exploring
The Change That Matters Most
A question I recently asked myself:
What is the one change you could make that would have the most significant impact on your life?
Most of us have no shortage of things we think we “should” change. But if that list is long chances are none of it gets addressed. And not every change carries the same weight.
What would create the greatest positive ripple through several other parts of your life?
Once you’ve identified it, the challenge becomes:
What are you going to do about it?
Your answer may be something you need to start.
It could be getting serious about your physical health, going to bed an hour earlier, changing careers, or beginning the work you keep postponing.
Or your answer may be something you need to stop.
Smoking. Drinking. Staying in an environment that is making you miserable. Continuing a relationship that is doing more damage than good.
It may be a habit you need to make or one you need to break.
It could be saying no.
Or saying the words someone needs to hear.
The answer is not necessarily the change that sounds most impressive.
It is the one that would most meaningfully alter the direction or quality of your life.
The one you keep avoiding
There is a good chance you already know what it is.
It may be the thought that keeps returning. The decision you continually postpone. The promise you keep making to yourself and then breaking.
Sometimes the change we resist most is the one that carries the most weight.
It could be small. It could be big. Chances are, if you're having trouble executing, it feels big. Because meaningful change comes with a cost.
You may have to give up something, disappoint someone, admit that a choice, relationship or approach is no longer working.
You may have to face the possibility that you will try and fail.
Maybe you have been doing something for so long that stopping feels impossible. Or avoiding something for so long that starting feels just as difficult.
Maybe you have tried to change it before. Several times.
If an approach repeatedly fails, the answer is not always to apply more effort to the same strategy. You may need a different environment, routine, system or level of support.
Shrink the starting point
A major life change can feel like one enormous action.
It usually isn’t.
Within that one change are several smaller decisions that must happen over time.
So make the first step smaller.
Changing careers may begin with updating your résumé, calling one person or spending 20 minutes researching another path.
Improving your health may begin with scheduling an appointment, preparing one meal or taking a ten-minute walk.
Repairing a relationship may begin with one honest conversation.
Setting a boundary may begin with deciding exactly what you will no longer accept.
Starting the project may begin with opening the document and writing the first imperfect paragraph.
Shrink the timeline
When the full distance feels overwhelming, shrink the timeline. Set shorter, achievable milestones.
Don’t just focus on what you need to accomplish over the next year.
It could be starting with just what you need to do today.
Thinking in years or months can make the change feel distant and enormous. Thinking in days, hours or even minutes makes the next step visible.
You don’t need to finish today. You just need to begin.
Find the friction point
Most repeated behaviours have a moment when the outcome becomes predictable.
There is a time of day when your intention weakens. A situation that activates the same response. A trigger that leads to the same habit.
A moment when avoidance becomes easier than following through.
Find that moment.
It may be the one daily friction point that is costing you more than you realize.
Then build a routine around it.
Prepare the night before. Remove the distraction. Change your environment. Decide your response in advance. Put the healthier or more productive choice directly in your path.
Willpower asks you to make the right decision repeatedly.
A good system reduces how often that decision needs to be made.
Stop “shoulding” yourself
We all have a list of things we believe we should or shouldn’t do.
We “should” ourselves through life.
I should exercise.
I should stop drinking.
I should leave.
I should begin.
I should say something.
But knowing what you should do is rarely enough to make you do it.
At some point, “should” has to become “want”. There needs to be a true internal desire to change because you want what exists on the other side of it.
You want to feel better, get your health back, find peace, respect the person you see in the mirror.
You want a different future more than you want the comfort of staying where you are.
The reason has to belong to you.
Other people can encourage you, challenge you and support you. But the change has to be for you, not for anyone else.
Find your reason.
I know what mine is. I know what I need to do. And I am starting now.
What about you?
It is never too late. But don’t wait.
One Action
Choose the First Step
Identify the one change that could have the greatest impact on your life.
Consider three questions:
- What is causing the most damage?
- What would create the greatest positive ripple effect?
- What change am I actually willing to sustain?
Then choose one action you can complete today.
Send the message. Schedule the appointment. Take the walk. Ask for help.
Identifying the change is not enough.
The choice is yours.
So is the next step.
Reboot - Health & Longevity
On My Radar - Cellular Reprogramming
Can we make old cells younger?
From a health and longevity perspective, exercise remains one of the highest-leverage changes most of us can make.
But something very different caught my attention this month.
On June 9, Life Biosciences announced that the first participant had been dosed in a Phase 1 trial of ER-100, an experimental gene therapy being studied for two conditions that damage the optic nerve.
Some headlines described it as the first “reverse-ageing drug” administered to a human. That description is directionally interesting, but much broader than what is actually being tested.
The treatment is being studied initially in people with open-angle glaucoma and non-arteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy, or NAION. Both conditions can damage the cells connecting the eye to the brain and cause permanent vision loss.
ER-100 uses controlled expression of three transcription factors, OCT4, SOX2 and KLF4, in an attempt to shift gene-expression patterns in damaged retinal cells toward a more youthful state.
Think of it as attempting to restore some of the original operating instructions to old cells.
That is the theory.
There are no human safety or effectiveness results yet.
This is a small, early-stage trial intended primarily to evaluate safety and tolerability, with visual function included as an additional measure. It is not an experiment in making an entire person biologically younger, and it doesn’t yet tell us whether cellular reprogramming can extend healthy human lifespan.
But it is a meaningful step from interesting animal research into human testing.
We are entering a period in which the speed of biological discovery will increase dramatically. And AI will massively accelarate advances in longevity. Exciting times ahead.
Cellular reprogramming is officially on my radar.
It will be interesting to see where it goes next.
Recommended - What I'm Listening To
“Forever Without You” — Evanescence
I can’t stop listening to “Forever Without You” from Evanescence’s new album, Sanctuary.
Amy Lee’s voice has always been powerful, but the emotion she brings to this song is on another level.
I also find my own meaning in it.
“Forever without you” could refer to a person or relationship. But it can also be a habit, fear, belief, identity or part of your life that you know you need to leave behind.
For me, the song connects to the one change I know I need to make.
Forever without you is good for me. It’s what I need.
Recommended - Read
Can't Hurt Me — David Goggins
A friend introduced me to David Goggins and Can’t Hurt Me several years ago.
His story is extreme. He is an exceptional person who repeatedly pushes himself far beyond what most of us would consider reasonable.
He isn’t the standard we need to imitate. But there is a valuable message underneath the extreme physical challenges.
Goggins reached a point in his life when he decided that enough was enough. He was going to change, and he was going to begin immediately.
His story illustrates how much human potential can remain unused and how many of our limits may be perceptions rather than fixed boundaries.
Goggins calls this his “40% Rule”: the idea that when the mind tells us we are completely finished, we may have used only a fraction of our real capacity.
Reading his story can help turn “I can’t” into “I can’t yet.”
You are capable of more than you currently believe.
Inspirational Quote
“You will never change your life until you change something you do daily.”
— John C. Maxwell
The major change gives you a direction.
What you do today begins moving you toward it.
Readers Corner
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Until next week,
Kevin
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