Managing yourself is a skill.

It's a skill that barely anyone talks about but I'm convinced it's one of the most underrated skills you can develop.

Here's how you can reprogramme your mind and get ahead of 99% of people.

1. See everything set back as an opportunity

Michael Caine has this saying:

"Use the difficulty."

It means when presented with something that at first glance seems to be an obstacle, find a way to use it.

Things that seem like obstacles often become the tools you need to get to where you want to go, they just need to be looked at differently.

The truth of all difficulty is that it's here, in front of you — You can either dwell on it or use it to your advantage.

2. Speed up your reaction time

Emotions can completely consume your mind. Every inch of it.

You get some bad news, someone says something that throws your neck out of joint and you spend the whole day stuck amid the emotional fog.

You can't shake it, you can't see beyond it, there's no way out.

One huge unlock for me this year was realizing that I really could get away from the fog by walking in the other direction.

Sure it takes a strong mind to sit in the middle of the fog and walk away from it but knowing you can is a powerful unlock.

3. Take control of the story you tell yourself

One of the most powerful stories you'll hear is the one you tell yourself.

You tell yourself a story every day. About how the world works, what your day looks like, how things are going, where you are in life.

All of that, your life, is a movie narrated by you.

For a long time I didn't know I was the narrator, I thought I'd tuned into someone else telling me what was going on in my life. Until I started to question that.

Turns out, you get to (at any point) change the script.

You can change the world as you see it, you can change the story you tell yourself at any point if only you choose to.

4. Learn to back yourself

Maybe this is a me thing but every success feels like a fluke and every failure feels like evidence I'm not capable.

It was like that for a long time. Almost like I was stringing myself along, waiting to collect all the evidence I needed to conclude everything I thought was a lie.

That I was not capable.

I think, on reflection, this was a coping mechanism. I wasn't where I wanted to be, I was scared that trying would make me look stupid so I hid in the idea that I wasn't capable.

The truth is, you and I are much more capable than we ever care to think about if we would just have a go.

5. Picture the other side of failure

One trick that has helped me in recent years is envisioning myself on the other side of failure.

I'm sitting staring at the scene, zero sales, zero views, zero whatever.

I'm there, in it.

And I ask myself — how bad is this really?

The answer, it's not bad at all. In fact, it's mild discomfort. Challenging your perception of fear is useful because it helps you unpack exactly what you're scared of.

Turns out that failure isn't so bad.

And when you realize that, you're less scared of it.

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