No matter where you go and what you do, there’s one thing that you can never escape: yourself.
Life will put up roadblocks. Pathways will close. And people will leave you. None of this has to stop you getting closer to a life you want.
In a world seemingly bursting into flames, with wars, polarisation, and frankly bizarre politics, there are plenty of things that are going to be trying to stop you getting to where you want in life.
You can’t fight the universe. It’s an impossible job.
But you know what makes things even harder? If you’ve got to overcome the universe and yourself.
I’ve been there. I’ve been beaten down, bruised, and broken hearted. But what kept me getting back up, and has nudged me closer and closer each day to the life I want, is recognising the points of friction where I, without even realising it, kept getting in my own way.
If you’re anything like me you’ll be subtly undermining your own progress too.
Start with noticing these three fears that are holding you back.
Fear of being disliked
Living in your head is a caveman or cavewoman, a lizard, and a monkey. Or the brains of one anyway.
As humans have evolved, and the world around us has changed, beneficial instincts and predilections have become redundant and, at worst, harmful.
We still bias towards choosing leaders who are taller and talk more, mistaking physical frame and extroversion for leadership competence. We crave salty, fatty, sugary foods because our trigger systems were developed in a time of scarcity. And despite knowing it’s a ridiculous way to live, many of us care about what people think of us.
To your ancestors on the savannah, this was life or death. Literally. Rejection from the tribe meant expulsion and isolation, an almost certain death sentence.
Some people manifest this in obvious ways. They might be a people pleaser, or extroverted socialites. Others are more subtle.
Maybe you don’t speak up at work, despite seeing something you disagree with, for fear of being cast out. Or maybe you don’t express your true opinion about things, for fear of being judged. Maybe you make decisions that you deem to be popular, despite them not matching your values or feelings.
But for your life to count for anything, it needs to mean something. And it can’t mean something if you don’t stand for what you believe in. And sometimes this means you’ll need to do unpopular things.
Don’t let all the psychopaths have all the fun. You don’t need to completely stop caring what people think.
But your values live in your head. You carry them around with you at all times. Avoid undermining them by acting out of alignment with them. Because you’ll never be able to escape yourself. You’ll know you’re not being true to yourself.
Sometimes you need to avoid conflict, set boundaries, and share your feelings, despite the risks. This doesn’t mean your blanket, default approach should be remove the filter and let all your thoughts spill out. Sometimes it is better to keep quiet and move on. Just don’t default to that either.
Letting other people dictate your sense of self is a dangerous path. Any achievements will taste like a mouth of sand. They aren’t the refreshing, nutrient-dense leafy greens of accomplishing things that align with your purpose and nature, but are instead the calorie-dense junk food of acceptance and compliance.
Some things are OK in moderation. Just aim to eat a balanced diet.
Fear of failure
For many, fear is a scary demon that lurks in the shadows of your subconscious whispering ‘you’re not good enough’.
People attach their sense of value to deeds and output. And in the great spreadsheet in the sky, the tally of wins v losses seems a zero sum game. Especially if we’re still at that point in our journey where wins are hard to come by.
The tragedy is how much we miss when we start to let a fear of failure stop us starting in the first place. Or make us hit the brakes. All because we can’t handle a little wobble.
But wobbles are good, nay essential, for your development.
“It is better to have understood why you failed than to be ignorant of why you succeeded.” — Alex Hormozi
Don’t think of failures as final judgements. You’re not a piece of stone. Every failure isn’t a permanent etch in your polished veneer.
They’re research. Data. Gifts from the universe. Pitstops. Lectures. Stepping stones on the path to where you really want to get.
They’re basically whatever you choose to see them as.
I spent years thinking there were some things I just wasn’t naturally good at. I formed these beliefs off of limited experience in those areas. My first basketball try-out was a wash — the other players basically used me as toilet paper. I didn’t play again for years. Not until some friends set up a pick-up game. Older, surer in myself, the stakes were low and I had a blast. I wasn’t suddenly Michael Jordan, but I realised I could play. And I wasn’t bad!
At the time I was hit by a thunderbolt that screamed ‘yeah duh’, followed by the face-palm realisation that this was one of many paths I hadn’t explored because of a story I’d told myself. Why try to be better when you already failed?
On the other side of all those failures is everything you want. You don’t have to magically become great overnight. But just know that another word for failure is experience. And when you see it like that, it’s a lot easier to see it as a necessary part of the process.
Set challenging goals and see where they get you. Do not underestimate the value of striving. Even if you fall short, you learn about yourself, the task, and how you learn.
Just pay attention. And don’t learn the wrong lessons.
Failure is a tax we all have to pay if we want to do things that really matter. Just like how finding love means enduring some heartbreak.
If you can fall in love with the process of doing something, rather than focusing on the end result, you already win. Because while you can’t control outcomes, you can control how you choose to show up each day, and how you choose to respond to setbacks.
Failure isn’t the opposite of being successful. It’s part of it.
Fear of discomfort
Only complete sickos and serial killers enjoy the feeling of discomfort, right?
I used to be a coward when it came to being uncomfortable. Like a little jelly boy, I’d default to the laziest path. By pure dumb luck, my gregarious nature meant I often stumbled blindly into situations that forced spasmodic growth, and so I didn’t really learn that I was a discomfort avoider until later in life. That realisation came the first time I went to the gym.
26 years old, 6-foot tall, and 65kg of bones and right angles, I’d been a novella of a man my entire life. But I’d decided enough was enough. It was time to finally start working out.
Barbell over my chest, trainer screaming at me about my ‘weak genes’ and demanding in harsh tones how badly I ‘wanted to be a man’, I huffed and puffed through some rusty, awkward reps of what I now consider an embarrassing weight. I barely made the target reps in set one. Sets two and three left me even more red-faced.
The trainer did not demonstrate compassion.
But in our next session, I had a point to prove. Chest pushed out, eyes focused, I laid down to bench press and went hard. I blocked out the trainer’s angry barbs and just cranked out the reps. When I hit my target, I went again. And again. And again until my arms gave out.
That was my limit. I’d gone to the end of what I was capable of. What my body could mechanically support. There was no manipulation. No pretty words. Just me, the weight, and the truth. And I’d survived.
Applying this same approach over the next few months, I made progress on a level I never thought possible for me and my ‘bad genetics’. Right angles became rounded yet firm edges.
For years I’d failed to deliberately push myself outside my comfort zone. I knew the benefits from all the areas in my life where I’d by accident or by happenstance drifted beyond my perceived limits. But I hadn’t pieced together how I could do this by design.
What have you been avoiding because it’s uncomfortable? Or where have you stagnated because you refuse to push yourself beyond your zone of comfort?
It’s not always about throwing yourself into completely new, strange environments. Sometimes you can just go a little further, longer, or harder in things you are already capable of.
In the discomfort, growth.
“Go one more” — Nick Bare, hybrid athlete
At the end of the day…
If you turn on the tap, your cup can runneth over with excuses why you aren’t where you want to be in life.
Money. Connections. Circumstance. The tape has worn thin and the floor’s been walked bare. We’re all too familiar with these catch-all deflections that offer us freedom from responsibility. “I’m not where I want to be not because of anything wrong with me, but because of the universe.”
But no matter how bad things get for you (barring insane disasters like war), you have the power to do something to help yourself. And too often we start a lap behind everyone else simply because of not controlling our programming and mindset.
You can’t fix everything. But it’s all or something, not all or nothing. Choose to make the best of things. Work constantly to overcome:
- Your fear of not being liked
- Your fear of failure
- Your fear of discomfort
They all serve a purpose, but have the power to stunt your growth and hold you back from who you could be if you could just turn the volume down a little.
Make a choice. Today.
Let this be the memory future you looks back at and calls ‘the day my life changed for the better’.
Because life is so rich. It’d be a shame to miss out.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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From The Good Men Project on Medium
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Photo credit: Tamara Bellis on Unsplash
