Mental Mastery

November 4, 2023

Remaining within your comfort zone is like locking yourself in a self-imposed prison. 

Keeping personal growth, new experiences, and fulfillment just out of your reach. 

If you continue down this path of comfort, you will miss out on the richness of life beyond your current understanding of it.

Picture a life where you are living just beyond your edge, comfort zones are foreign.

Fear is your friend, and your daily actions are rooted in the unknown.

This is without a doubt a life filled with the promise of excitement, growth, and limitless opportunities.

It’s either progression or regression.

Choose one

I’ve wanted to be a YouTuber since I was 11 years old. I'd argue that I wanted to be an entrepreneur even before that.

Months before I posted my first video, I was constantly battling myself in my head about whether I should do it and what it should be about. 

Being a YouTuber always felt like something reserved for certain people. The “Lucky” ones.

Not for regular kids like me.

But I tried it anyway. And I put my heart into it.

As of the moment I’m writing this, I have over 20,000 subscribers. If I had told my past self this he wouldn’t have believed me. 

This was also a point in time when I had just taken up a new position at my job that I had no clue how to do. It was way beyond my skill level at the time, and even now.

All the higher-ups were praying for my downfall and even I wasn’t completely sure If I could do the job. But I did it anyway. 

I also had made a commitment to myself that I would go to the gym every other day without wavering to build my discipline.

At this time I was way outside of my comfort zone, but since doing it. My life has drastically changed for the better. 

Your Mind is Risk Averse

Our thoughts, beliefs, and lifestyles are usually shaped by the environment we grew up in. 

We are required by law to participate in an education system that has its own doctrine. 

Our parents, teachers, and friends are copycats. They all spit out the same shallow information they were told growing up.

And that information takes the form of the typical life path. 

Go to school for 13 years. Then be expected to know what you want to do for the rest of your life at age 18. Then do that thing til you die. 

Anything that denies that path is doubted, made fun of, or shunned.

They teach us to be afraid to take risks. Because only the “lucky” people can stray away from the default path.

And if you’re not born with wealth or talent, then you weren’t meant to be “lucky”.

This is very dangerous. It teaches us to feel like we aren’t to be held accountable for our own lives and pushes the notion that there is nothing we can do to change our situation.

I believe this is the reason why we fear stepping outside of our comfort zone.

Get Comfortable With Being Uncomfortable

As we grow up, our past experiences and day-to-day life get so solidified, that we base our worldview around it.

At the same time, when our worldview or perspective is challenged, we feel threatened. 

We are unconsciously fighting to keep that worldview because it’s part of who we are.

And when the only way to improve your circumstances is a big change, most people would rather wallow in mediocrity than take a big leap.

When you embrace discomfort, it’s supposed to feel risky. But not too risky. 

It should be something that you are kind of uncomfortable with or are unsure of. But deep in the back of your mind, you know that you can do it. 

You know you have the ability, you just haven’t started. Out of fear of failure. 

“We resist conflict by narrowing our minds on the conflict itself, rather than letting it flow as an interesting, and often necessary, part of existence.” -Dan Koe The Art of Focus

Setbacks and failures are a part of the journey. Resilience is key to bouncing back from these challenges and continuing to move forward. 

If you don’t face any difficulty in your life, how do you expect to become a better person or become successful?

It’s ridiculous to think that everything in life is supposed to be easy. If that were the case nothing would have meaning.

You wouldn’t be reading this and I wouldn’t be writing it.

Difficulty is what makes life interesting.

It’s the rollercoaster of emotions from problems and solutions in our lives.

And it’s the feeling of relief or the mental clarity we get from a solution that feels so good. But we don’t get that if there is no problem.

So why not willingly put yourself into the unknown so you can experience this feeling instead of being complacent?

Your Expectations Play A Big Role

Things happen. Whether we want them to or not. But more often than not we have a choice of how we perceive those things.

If you expect things to be hard because you willingly put yourself in that mess. It’s not going to be as difficult for you as for someone who doesn't want to do that. Even though you are both doing the same thing.

Let's talk about cold exposure. 

If you already do cold showers then you know what i’m talking about. 

Cold showers suck. And I'm not talking about those mediocre cold showers where you have a temperature slightly colder than normal to cool off.

I'm talking about real cold showers. A real cold shower is freezing cold and impossible to enjoy. It's so cold that before you step in you start rethinking life. 

You step in and you immediately get a shock through your entire body. You start shivering in half a second. And you start breathing really fast.  

I often take this cold shower right after waking up. 

I have certain expectations when going in:

--I'm going to go in and fully wake up.

--I'm going to level up my discipline by doing something hard

--I'm going to be more alert and focused when I'm doing my work. 

I'm not perceiving the cold shower as suffering.

My body hates it. But I'm flowing with it. 

If I was intentionally taking a hot shower and it suddenly goes cold I'd hate that.

Because that wasn't part of my expectations.

It’s the same thing. But my intentions are different.

Cold showers are by far the easiest way to put yourself in an uncomfortable situation.

When you willingly do something like that, you start to see yourself, and challenges completely different.

Complacency is Inevitable. But Don't Stay There

When we are making progress towards something, we tend to get complacent. 

We put in the hard work already and sometimes unconsciously we start to pull back. 

When life is going well we shouldn’t stop living at our edge. We should understand that it’s only a rest period before the hard times come. 

When I first left my full-time job, the very first week off, I fell into bad habits. I wasn’t waking up on time, I wasn’t being as productive. I was more down to do less important things than prioritize making the most of all the time that I had gotten. 

When that happened I was so confused. 

I was doing great before this, making more money, finding my purpose, all of these good things, and then suddenly I felt so lost and confused.

I was also fighting a cold for almost 2 weeks straight at the time so that didn’t help. (And it was probably the cause of my stress)

I had so many negative thoughts flooding in and it was overwhelming. 

After doing some journaling, I realized that I was feeling this way because I was getting complacent and I was dealing with the consequences of my actions.

It was a blessing. After that, I regained focus and felt even more motivated to push myself than I did way before.

Even though I had a phase of mediocrity, I think that It was beneficial for me because it forced me to realize how it feels to see a lack of progress. 

When I was feeling lost, it was because I wasn’t making progress toward my goals, or at least not as much as I thought I should be, and that infuriated me to the point where I was even more driven to make progress once I was feeling better.

Live at your edge

Allow yourself to feel stress.

Allow yourself to feel fear.

“Fear needs to become your friend so that you are no longer uncomfortable with it. Rather, primary fear shows you that you are at your edge. Staying with the fear, staying at your edge, allows real transformation to occur. Neither lazy nor aggressive, playing your edge allows you to perceive the moment with the least amount of distortion. You are willing to be with what is, rather than by pushing beyond it into some future goal”-David Deida The Way of The Superior Man

Fear and stress are both a part of life. 

Use those feelings and channel them into growth and become a better version of yourself.

Last thing.

I’m not here to give you motivation, I’m here to bring you clarity.

I know that this was kind of a rant, but I like talking about this stuff and I hope you enjoyed it.

That’s all for now. 

Abraham