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More often than not in order to actualize where and who you want to be in life, you’ve got to put your back up against the wall and force yourself into a place of discomfort and growth. You must leave yourself no choice but to keep pushing and charge forward.
The more often you’re able do this, the better.
- The better you’ll become at dealing with adversity.
- The better you’ll become at challenging yourself.
- The better you’ll become at cultivating personal growth.
- The better you’ll be able to “own” who you are.
The closer you move to becoming the man, the myth and the legend that’s filled your dreams since you were a young boy.
I want you to pause and take a moment to examine your life.
When was the last time you put your back up against a wall?
When was the last time you took a risk?
When was the last time you did something that genuinely stirred up feelings of nervousness and doubt?
If it’s been weeks or months, it’s high time you make yourself uncomfortable again.
- Money—you can always earn again.
- Relationships are powerful beyond belief. Do not underestimate the strength and power contained in the fibres of your relationships.
- Your bruised pride will heal.
- Your over-inflated ego, could probably use a bit of a beating and deflating.
But the time you spend in a place of stagnation, a place of unbridled mediocrity?
That’s time you cannot get back. You cannot recover the hours, days, months or years spent spinning your wheels in stagnation. With time being your most valuable and under-appreciated asset, stagnation is no way in which to spend your years.
Force yourself into a place of growth
It’s my belief that every single Man has a mission. A calling to continually strive towards becoming the greatest version of our self that we can. To do so though, is not an action that comes naturally. Achieving Kaizen, or incremental daily improvement means that you’ll need to force yourself outside of your comfort zone on a daily basis.
In my experience, there are three incredibly powerful ways of force-feeding this self-growth.
1. Travel
Go explore and thrust yourself into the unknown. Revel in adventure. The exposure to new cultures, surroundings and food will bring out aspects to your personality that you didn’t know to be a part of you.
Hell, you might even meet the girl of your dreams.
2. Relationships
Push the limits of your current relationships and force yourself to interact with new people to add to your relationship flywheel. Everyone is online these days, and it feels great when you have 5930 followers or 3243 Facebook friends. However, your social following does not equate to, nor are they on the same emotional wavelength as the relationships you have with people whom you see face to face.
Keep in mind that there are countless different “types” of relationships. Romantic, committed, lustful, friendly, supportive, interactive. All the different people in your life? You have a different type of relationship with each one. Respect that. Work towards rounding out your relationship flywheel by connecting with people who fulfill a relationship need that you don’t have in place.
3. Self Discovery/Development
While somewhat cliche and often poked fun at, I believe there’s power to be had in focusing on self discovery and development. I mean, how are you supposed to truly unearth who and what you are if you don’t aggressively work towards finding those answers?
Simply put, you don’t.
Read books, ask questions, study a language, immerse yourself in a new philosophy. Take actions that require you to stretch the current boundaries of your imagination and your reality.
Force yourself to earn more
This isn’t a suggestion to go into debt. Placing pressure upon yourself to earn more is about taking a calculated risk which forces you to get your ass in gear. Forcing yourself to earn more, helps combat any inclination to settle. Do this, so that you can maintain and build a lifestyle that brings you joy and fulfillment.
Here’s an example from my own experiences.
At one point along the journey of building my business, I had about $150-200 left over each month after rent, food, biz expenses (courses, books, mastermind), a meal out per week, and some small subscriptions (coffee, gym, email service, subscription sites, etc). Obviously still looking to grow my business, I decided to invest that extra cash into a course that bills me $250/month for 12 months. If you’ve been following along with the math, this means boots to asses, fingers to keys, as I had to find a way to make this work.
3-4 months removed from backing myself into that corner, I may not yet have elevated things to the level I want, but I’m doing better than I was before making that choice.
Sometimes you’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do to light a fire under your ass. More often than not, the chips will fall in your favour. And if they don’t, you’ve learned a valuable lesson or two.
“Fortune favours the brave.”
Force yourself to take risks with marginal downside, and tons of upside
Taking risks and slamming your back up against a wall go hand in hand. But, this is something that needs to be calculated as opposed to simply being executed on a blind whim.
The ability to take effective, calculated risks, whether it’s in your business, job or relationships is a skill that will come in handy time and time again.
Attending events, conferences and masterminds is one such form of calculated risk. Yeah, the event might not deliver on all their promises, but there’s still a ton of upside to be had. The experience of travelling and being in attendance contributes to expanding your consciousness and adds depth of experience to your life. Plus, you’re all but guaranteed to meet people who you can help and vice versa.
The downside (not getting your money’s worth) is very real, but hardly the end of the world. Exposing yourself to new experiences, meeting new people, generating new ideas and expanding your consciousness? That’s all upside, Baby.
Perhaps you’re on the fence on whether to bite the bullet on that ad campaign you’ve been working on. Yeah, it may not bring the return you want and you could end up down a couple hundred dollars. Even here, there’s still an upside. Within the potential failure or “miss” off that campaign, you’ll know what/where to improve next time around so that you DO nail that return you need and want.
A final word on putting your back against a wall.
Regardless of whether you’re trying to:
- Get the girl of your dreams.
- Establish and build the business you’ve wanted to start since you were 12.
- Achieve an incredible physique transformation.
- Write yourself a different life story than the current narrative.
- Figure out who you are, and what you want.
You need to inject an element of risk, and urgency if you want to make any tangible progress.
To close, and quote one of my favorite writers, Mark Manson:
“With the exception of genuinely life-threatening or physically harmful activities, our fight-or-flight response kicks in when we’re confronted with past traumas or actualizing the self we dream of being.”
So if you’re feeling your fight-or-flight response kick in despite not being in any actual danger, take it as a sign that you’re on the right track.
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Photo: GettyImages
Awesome article, about to go revisit some conferences I recently put off due to some of the things discussed one being the real true fear of it being a waste of money and time of not living up to expectations. Great article man.
Burning the ships so to speak is a great strategy for growth, thanks for the reminder??
Hey guys,
I’d love to hear what your biggest takeaway from this article is, and what action(s) you’re going to take moving forward.
Hit me up with a reply.