I lie to myself every morning.
I look in the mirror and tell myself I slept great when I didn’t. That today is going to be one of the best days of my life when I have no reason to believe it.
It sounds delusional…
It’s the most important habit I have.
Every business I’ve started was built on belief before it was built on anything else. Every relationship I’ve kept. Every comeback I’ve made. All of it began in my head, weeks or months before it showed up in my life.
A 2014 study at Colorado College put a number on this.
Researchers took 164 people. Hooked them up to fake EEG machines. Told half they got 28.7% REM sleep, above average. Told the other half 16.2%, below average. The data was made up. The machines weren’t measuring anything.
Then they ran cognitive tests. Attention. Memory. Executive function.
The “above average” group destroyed the other group on every test.
How rested they actually felt that morning predicted nothing.
Their belief about how they slept changed their performance more than how they actually slept.
That’s the whole game.
The story you tell yourself in the morning is the operating system everything else runs through.
And most people are letting their Apple Watch program it. Their Oura ring. Their bank account. Their last text from a difficult person.
You haven’t even gotten out of bed and you’ve already given up the controls.
So when someone asks me how I’m doing, the answer is always the same. World class.
Not because everything is. Because everything is going to be.
The lie always catches up to the truth eventually.
I just make sure I tell myself the right one.
You should too.
-DM