Being Stimulant-Free

Posted on 16/05/2020 by Boris Clair

I like being 100% stimulant free – no coffee, caffeinated tea, chocolate, caffeinated soda, etc.

This means no decaf either since decaf still contains some caffeine.

I base this on lots of personal experimentation. I’ve gone some years of my life with no stimulants, and I’ve also gone for long stretches consuming coffee daily. The two modes of living are notably different.

Caffeine tends to make me obsess more over trivialities and lose focus on big picture goals. I see this pattern in other coffee drinkers often – lots of busywork type of thinking on low criticality items. It seems to make some people have a harder time focusing on long-term projects and avoiding short-term distractions.

When I consume coffee daily, I’ll check email more often. I’ll spend more time on social media. I’ll web surf more. I’ll invest in minor tasks that don’t need to be done. I’ll spend more time organizing and reorganizing instead of moving the needle forward on big projects. I’ll open more loops than I close. I’ll feel extra busy but have less to show for it.

Stimulants always drain me eventually, especially after months of daily use. That’s true even for a single espresso shot or a single cup of green tea per day. It always leads to adrenal exhaustion, and then I need to take at least several weeks off. I know I’m at this point when I can’t seem to make good progress on bigger projects, and I can tell that my mind is becoming too chaotic. I might spend 8 hours at my desk and get 90 minutes of important work done.

I love the taste of coffee, and it’s delightful to drink a cup of it, but I’ve learned that I can’t really have an occasional relationship with it if I want to function at my best. It’s way too addictive for me. If I have even a small amount, I risk slipping into the pattern of having it daily for months.

I’ve learned that it’s best to avoid chocolate too (including cacao) because chocolate is a gateway drug back to coffee. Same goes for green tea. So while I have enjoyed those in the past, I feel safer steering clear of them. I like how my brain works better when not under the influence of stimulants.

I’ve also learned not to trust my addicted brain. It has many tricks for luring me back in.

It’s just one piece of chocolate.

What if you just had a decaf or a half-caf?

You could just have a small amount?

You’re traveling, so why not indulge a little?

Hey, it’s free!

Coffee is so nice for socializing.

It’s Costa Rican coffee!

It’s 100% Kona!

The addicted brain can be downright evil sometimes.

When my mind is stimulant-free, it feels more chill. The volume of mental chatter is much quieter. I don’t feel like a rodent in a maze sniffing for the cheese constantly. It’s way easier to relax into bigger projects and stick with them with good discipline. I become much better at closing loops, and I become more discerning and careful about opening new ones.

My stimulant-free brain is more disciplined. It’s easier to get up before dawn. It’s easier to maintain good habits like exercise. And I feel fewer cravings for processed foods that go so well with coffee.

The most reliable brain booster is cardio exercise. I love the effects of that way better than coffee. Exercise rebalances my thinking while coffee tends to unbalance me. This morning I went for a 90-minute hill run, starting at 4:45am. That was a stimulating challenge, but it doesn’t create the crashing like coffee does. I feel a sense of accomplishment from running that I don’t get from finishing a cup of bean juice.

Whenever I detox from coffee, it takes about a week. It’s not too difficult to quit, but it’s way easier to slip back into addiction. I usually have mild headaches and extra fatigue on days 2-4, and then on days 5 and 6, I typically have to deal with feelings of dread and paranoia. The emotional detox is worse than the physical detox. Those feelings always pass though, and then around day 7, I start remembering how nice it feels to be caffeine-free. I remark at how calm and relaxed my mind feels.

If I want something hot to drink, I go with herbal tea. Lately I’ve been enjoying mint tea a lot.

Stimulants can too easily mask a lack of natural stimulation in our work and goals. Coffee can cover up underwhelming goals by making them seem more stimulating than they are. If you drop coffee, you may need to face that your goals and life path are duller than you’d like. Coffee hides that emotional truth from you.

Coffee can also do this in a relationship. If your relationship is underwhelming, you can drink more coffee to avoid dealing with that emotional truth. Having another cup is easier than facing the truth about your feelings.

When I drink coffee, my awareness narrows. Without coffee I feel like a much broader spectrum of my awareness comes back online again. I feel more connected to more parts of the world. I notice nature more. I hear the birds tweeting as the sun rises. And I notice the sunrise itself. Here’s a pic I took while running this morning:

When I’m caffeine-free, I become more aware of just how boring and circular social media is. I see it as more distraction than stimulation, so I spend less time on it. I become more attuned to bigger creative projects and interesting challenges. I seek stimulation through goals and challenges that appeal to me. I get more excited about the path I’m on.

I like having a stimulating life, but I’d rather get it from stimulating goals and projects instead of taking drugs. I like the emotional honesty of that. If my life is under-stimulating, I want to be able to feel that, so I can take corrective action. I don’t want to drown those feelings under espresso shots. I want to feel and experience the true reality of life.

Discipline Ripples

Posted on 15/05/2020 by Boris Clair

A nice side effect of my daily blogging challenge is that it’s helping me become more disciplined in other areas of life. This in turn increases my capacity to get more done because I can trust that I’ll have abundant discipline to flow through more tasks and projects.

I expected that there would be some discipline ripples, but I’m pleased that they’re better than I anticipated.

Staying caffeine free feels easier than ever. I’m also easily avoiding other stimulants like any forms of chocolate, caffeinated tea, etc. It feels like the part of my brain that recognizes and wants to avoid addictive patterns has been strengthened.

Maintaining my early riser habit feels easier than ever, and I’m often getting up earlier than my usual 5am alarm. This morning I got up at 4:30, which is happening more often. I’ve noticed that I feel less inclined to linger in bed even if I could justify that it’s not time to get up yet. When my body feels awake, it wants to get up and move, not stay in bed longer than it needs to.

On average I’m running for about an hour each morning. This morning’s run was 70 minutes. That used to feel like a long run; now it feels like a normal everyday type of run. The minimum I run is 45 minutes since anything less feels like it’s too little.

With the increased running, I’m flowing through many more nonfiction audiobooks, finishing 2-3 per week, so that will add up to 100-150 audiobooks per year at this rate. I just finished League of Denial yesterday, and this morning I started Big Magic. I’ll finish Big Magic tomorrow and start another audiobook on Sunday.

Work projects are flowing very nicely. I’m doing a better job of staying organized and completing projects in an intelligent order. I’m not perfect at this, but I notice that instead of feeling driven to choose the work for each day based on intuition or emotional impulses, I’m more easily flowing into the most rational project to work on next. And when I sit down to work on it, the discipline is there to stick with it for hours.

I’ve already written more blog articles this year than I did in 2019, 2018, and 2017 combined. By the end of June, you’ll be able to add 2016 to that as well. So that will be like doing four years of blogging in six months.

The interesting thing about 365-day challenges is that initially they’re hard, but eventually they become easy. I’d say that happens somewhere around day 45 to 75. After 6-9 weeks into such a challenge, the resistance crumbles, and the training effect begins to take hold. By enduring that long and not missing a single day, you’ve grown stronger. And it’s easier to keep going because now you get to do the rest of the challenge with a stronger, more aligned, less resistant mind.

It’s hard to stretch ourselves to tackle discipline-building challenges, but note that it does get easier as your mind grows stronger.

The mind that whines about getting up early isn’t the same as the mind that’s already gotten up before dawn for many weeks in a row. The new mind thinks the old mind is a wimp for whining about such an easily maintainable and personally beneficial habit.

The mind that whines about giving up chocolate isn’t the same as the mind that’s free of that addiction and recognizes it as an unnecessary weakness.

The mind that would whine about running for an hour each day isn’t the same as the mind that’s been doing it for weeks, thinks it’s normal, and suspects that 75-minute daily runs would probably be no big deal either.

You’ve gotten used to your current level of self-discipline, but you could train yourself to go beyond that and create a new normal for yourself. Your new normal may yield much better results than your old normal. The transition may be difficult, but once you’ve locked in your new normal, it’s really no more difficult than your old normal. Raising your standards is hard. Keeping them raised is much easier.

When you train up your discipline and then apply it to your life, you don’t suffer every day because the rewards of discipline are greater than the temporary pleasures of an undisciplined life. Life without chocolate isn’t a sad life. It’s a more focused and mentally stable life since the body no longer has to deal with the ups and downs of the stimulant effect.

The sad life is that of the stimulant addict who’s in denial about their addiction. The sad life is a life without daily exercise and its many neurological benefits. The sad life is that of the person who has to suffer with the results of undisciplined habits taking their toll year after year.

Training up your discipline is hard – yes. But not training up your discipline is way, way, way harder.

Imagine what more you could experience and enjoy with more discipline – the ability to get yourself to take rational actions that create desirable results again and again. That’s worth some challenging training, so you can access those long-term benefits.

Let’s Just Admit That A Zoom Party Isn’t Really A Party

Posted on 15/05/2020 by Boris Clair

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Herd Stupidity

Posted on 14/05/2020 by Boris Clair

I’m sure you’ve seen plenty of evidence of herd stupidity recently. One recent example is that when Wisconsin’s Supreme Court abruptly overturned their state’s lockdown, people began flocking to bars and snuggling up nice and close to each other with no protection. Such behavior will just make the virus hornier.

Similar behavior has been happening in Vegas too, now that restaurants and most retail businesses are cleared to reopen. While some stores are strict about maintaining decent precautions like requiring all patrons to don masks and limiting store capacity, other places seem to let people do whatever they want. So unfortunately herd stupidity is abundant. If this continues I think we’ll see the infections and deaths ramping up again, as many experts are predicting.

This isn’t a situation where you should look to the masses for guidance. When you see idiotic behavior, don’t let the fact that everyone else seems fine with it persuade you that it’s probably okay. Stupid behavior that’s popular is still stupid. A bar full of idiots taking reassuring cues from each other is still a bar full of idiots.

People are strongly influenced by social cues. Sometimes those cues are good. When I go running in my neighborhood early in the morning, I most often see people practicing good social distancing. When people approach each other on the sidewalk, one will step into the street to avoid getting too close to the other person. People in the neighborhood wave at me as I pass by them. Oddly even with the social distancing practices in place, the neighborhood feels friendlier because of all the waving. So in this case the social cues are working in our favor.

When the most common behaviors are intelligent, we can trust social cues. Those cues nudge us to behave appropriately and steer us away from problematic behaviors.

But when behaviors are unintelligent, we have to resist social cues that could lead us astray. That isn’t easy because we’re social creatures. But taking cues from other people isn’t always rational.

Leaving behind a goofy religion is another example. When your intellect wakes up and realizes that what you’ve been taught is nonsense, it’s still tough to transition out if you’re surrounded by social cues telling you that everything is fine. You have to shun the social cues and think for yourself, which isn’t easy when you’re under social pressure to turn your back on your own intellect.

In the next several months, I caution you to keep your guard up for incidents of herd stupidity. There’s likely to be a lot of it. Be careful not to fall into the trap of over-relying on social cues when they run contrary to your own best judgment. Don’t participate in the irrational herd behavior that will only cause people more pain and suffering.

More broadly, you could see this situation as an invitation to deepen your ability to trust your own rational thinking, regardless of social cues. Where else in your life could you apply this idea? Where else have you felt pressured by herd stupidity?

You’re smarter than the herd. Stand up to it.

Twitter Tells Staff They Can Work From Home Forever, But Would You Want To?

Posted on 13/05/2020 by Boris Clair

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Strengthening Your Future Self

Posted on 09/05/2020 by Boris Clair

I often think about how to create a better life for my future self. What can I do now that will make his life better?

Everything I do today affects my future self in some way. I can make decisions that will cause him stress, or I can make decisions and take action that will make his life better.

For the first four months of this year, I worked very hard, and I expected to do this going into the year because I wanted the results. Working extra hard for those first four months laid the foundation for a strong year, including the creation of a new character sculpting course, the annual opening of Conscious Growth Club, two six-figure launches, daily blogging, and many smaller projects. Work-wise it’s been an incredible year so far.

In a way this was my past self’s gift to my present self. I accepted back in December that if I put in a lot of work during the first four months of 2020, it would be a challenge, but I also saw that it would be a nice gift to my future self. I figured that sometime in May, I’d be able to work at a more modest pace if I wanted to, and I’d have some really nice results to appreciate from those first four months of 2020. I’d also have more space for interesting personal projects and travel afterwards.

It’s the opposite of procrastination. Work harder than usual to achieve some goals that your future self will surely appreciate. Caring about your future self is good motivation for putting in some extra hours. Feeling that connection across time really helps.

When you procrastinate, you do the opposite. You slack off and thereby sentence your future self to play catch up, which could include extra stress. You’re basically being a jerk to your future self. This is hard to do when you tune in to the energy of your future self and consider the impact. It’s easier to be cruel to your future self when you sever the connection.

Consider that you have a relationship with your future selves and your past selves. Consider how your decisions and actions affect those relationships. What will it do to you as a person if you strengthen those relationships by making good decisions and taking aligned actions? What effect will it have if you ignore those relationships or pretend they don’t exist?

When I reflect back on all the effort and experimentation that my past self invested in personal growth, I feel grateful. His decisions gifted me with some fabulous knowledge and skills that I very much appreciate. I feel blessed and lucky to live the life I get to live, but I also know how many times that could have been derailed if I’d made different past decisions.

I feel delighted that my past self worked extra hard this year to put me in a better position today. I appreciate him for doing that. His choice was beneficial for our relationship. He made some modest sacrifices to send me this gift, and I send him lots of appreciation back in time. And I know that he knew that I’d appreciate this gift.

What if the energy you transmit through time actually gets picked up by your other selves somehow? What kind of energy do you send to your past selves? What kind of energy do you imagine your future selves might be sending back to you today? What could you do differently today to make these transmissions feel more aligned and empowering?

Are these energy transmission across time really happening? Who knows? But I find that this is an empowering model to lean into. Considering how my decisions and actions could impact these transmissions (whether imaginary or real) helps me make better decisions today.

Lately I’ve been amping up my exercise routine too, and I feel that it’s creating a better relationship with my other selves across time. I love the energy boost, and feeling more flexible in my body is nice too. Now I’m thinking about pushing myself even more next week to gift my future self with even more energy and flexibility. I know that he’ll appreciate it, and I sense that he already does appreciate it, like I can perceive his gratitude flowing back through time.

What kind of gift do you think your future self would most appreciate?

I think it’s limiting to think about making my future self’s life easier. I don’t necessarily wish for him to have an easier life. When my past self tried to give me an easier life, I didn’t appreciate as much as he thought I would. Some ease is nice, but I wouldn’t want to stay there.

What I do appreciate is when my past self makes me stronger. I like when he trains up and gains new knowledge and skills. I like when he creates interesting memories. What I want from my past self isn’t an easier life – I don’t need that because I like challenges. Instead I want my past self to put me in a position of being able to access more, better, and different types of challenges. I want him to help me gain access to new growth experiences that currently seem out of reach.

How’s your relationship with your past self? Your future self? Do you send appreciation to your past self? Or scorn, regret, or disappointment instead? Are you kind and loving towards your past self?

How’s your relationship with your future self? Do you care enough to make your future self stronger? Do you tune into the flow of appreciation from your future self? Do you commit that when you do something nice for your future self, you will remember to pause and send some genuine appreciation back through time?

How could you improve these relationships? What would it do for you to feel an empowering sense of connection to your other selves across time?

More, Better, Different, Purpose

Posted on 08/05/2020 by Boris Clair

In his book Road to Purpose, Kenneth Behring shared how his life went through four phases.

The first phase was more – more money, more success, more friends, etc.

The second phase was better – a better home, better possessions, better vacations, etc.

The third phase was different – new experiences, new possessions, etc.

And the final phase was purpose – meaning, fulfillment, contribution, and making a difference in other people’s lives.

Behring claimed to have moved through these phases in linear order, but you have more flexible options here. You can shift among these four different types of growth throughout your life. You could be living a very purposeful life and still want to explore more, better, and different, for instance.

If you think about which type of growth most appeals to you now, which of these four would you pick? What feels most important to you? Where do you sense the greatest need or desire?

For me it would depend on when you ask me. This year I’m mainly focused on better. Lately I’ve been investing in creating better habits, developing better systems, and especially making Conscious Growth Club even better. My wife Rachelle has a similar focus. Afterwards we both agree that it would be nice to explore some different, especially when traveling becomes viable again.

When you have a primary desire or focus, do your best to avoid opportunity blindness to the other three modes of growth. Realize that different could lead to better. Purpose could lead to more. And so on.

If you get stuck trying to make progress with your preferred mode of self-development, try broadening your perspective, and consider the other three modes. One of them may hold the key to releasing that stuckness.

Before 7am

Posted on 06/05/2020 by Boris Clair

I love the morning magical time. It’s my favorite time of day – before dawn when most of the city is still snug in bed.

This morning I hopped out of bed at 4:45am, feeling happy to start another adventurous day. By 7am this morning, I had done the following:

Ran 5 miles / 8 kilometers
Did 12,000 steps
Listened to 4 hours of The Art of Possibility audiobook (100 minutes x 2.5 speed)
Did 15 minutes of yoga with a little meditation at the end
Made a green smoothie (1 banana, 6 mandarin oranges, spinach, celery, blueberries, maca, dehydrated barley grass juice, chia seeds, hemp seeds, water)
Mopped the kitchen floor (well… assigned a robot to do it)
Started some steel cut oats cooking (I love the InstantPot!)
Dreamed up an idea for a new course / launch

Afterwards I reviewed my goals, and now I’m sipping the smoothie and writing this blog post while the oatmeal is cooking and the robot is diligently cleaning the kitchen floor.

Caffeine isn’t part of my day by the way, nor is chocolate, caffeinated teas, or other stimulants. That would just slow me down.

When I was 20 years old, this is what my morning would have looked like this (sometimes all the way to noon and beyond):

Zzzzzzzz
Yawn
Zzzzzzzz

Then I’d drag myself out of bed and start my day very sluggishly. It would take me at least an hour or two just to feel awake enough to function much at all. Then the rest of the day would be a blur, with the main decisions being figuring out what to eat. My biggest accomplishment of the day would be going for a long walk. At least I liked to walk.

What made the difference? Really it came down to a decision. I decided I didn’t want to live like that first person anymore. I didn’t want his life or his results – because they sucked! It was a boring, low energy, depressing way to live. And I decided that I could change that.

When I would read about highly productive people and their morning routines, I was envious at first, but their routines also seemed unreachable for me. Still, I felt attracted to having an empowering morning routine and starting my day with high energy. It took a long time to figure out what works best for me. I experimented a lot.

A solid cardio workout is such an essential part of my routine because of the benefits it produces. What many people don’t realize is that cardio exercises the brain, not just the body. It makes your brain and your mind stronger. See the Mental Benefits of Cardio video for more details on that. A good minimum is 45 minutes per day.

Running 5 miles (8K) to start my day is a stretch for me. I’m used to running closer to 3 miles (5K) on a normal basis. But it feels so much better to stretch myself. The feeling isn’t 60-70% better, relative to the mileage increase. It’s more like 3x better. Running farther than usual creates a disproportionate boost in mood and energy above the baseline.

Nailing an empowering morning routine sets you up for a strong day. It’s wonderful to know that you’ve accomplished something meaningful during those first couple of hours.

I’m not in competition with anyone here. I compare my results to where I’ve been. My past self is the baseline, and as I generate new past selves, I develop new baselines. Presently I’m pushing myself to surpass my old baseline from earlier this year.

I especially like the combo of audiobooks and running. It’s nice to go through an audiobook every few days without having to take any extra time. Maybe you won’t retain every idea as well this way, but it still helps.

That app in the lower left of my Apple Watch screen (with the number 3 in the middle of a circle) is Nozbe. If I get a cool idea while running, I can tap that app and record a quick voice message that will go into my capture system as text. So if I do catch a cool idea from an audiobook while running, I send it into my system while on the road, and then I can decide if I want to turn it into something actionable later that day.

What’s the best morning routine you’ve ever had in your life? Are you at least using that as your baseline today? Now what are you doing to surpass it? Just because it’s good doesn’t mean you should settle. How could you make it even more kickass?

My morning routine works well for me. It’s energizing and mood-boosting. But it could be better, so I’ll keep tinkering with it and improving it over time. There is no reason to settle for good enough.

You Can’t Do That

Posted on 05/05/2020 by Boris Clair

This morning while running, I started listening to The Art of Possibility audiobook, which is about stepping outside of our mental boxes.

The first tool in the book is to acknowledge that whatever story you tell yourself is all an invention anyway, so you may as well create your own story. If your old story is keeping you stuck, change it.

Sometimes it’s hard to see what your old story actually is. I’ve found that a good way to see the limitations of my old story is to consider a stretch goal and then pay attention to my objections. Why do I see that goal as being a stretch? Why do I think it would be difficult to achieve?

When I learned that Bruce Lee used to run 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) per day, I thought, Wow… that’s a lot of running. Then I wondered if I could do that too someday and what it would be like to run that much every single day.

I immediately started thinking of the obstacles, like the fact that I live in a very hilly neighborhood, and running 10K of these hills is a lot harder than running on a flat route. I could drive to a flatter area in less than 10 minutes, but then that would add some driving time for every run. Or I could go to a closer but fairly short semi-flat stretch and just run back and forth, which would be pretty boring to do every day.

I’ve done a lot of distance running, mostly in my 20s, including running a marathon. But running 10K per day seems like a lot to maintain as an ongoing habit.

I can easily run 5K of hills every day. That would be in my comfort zone. But 10K feels like it’s across some imaginary boundary line. What makes it a lot though? There are people who wouldn’t consider 10K per day a big deal, but my mindset frames it as being a big deal, which makes it seem harder than it has to be.

I’ve surely crossed into areas that other people would see as being beyond their own imaginary lines. Going 40 days without food might be one example. Being vegan for 23+ years could be another.

For some people making a living without a job would be a big deal to them. To me it’s just normal life. Why would I ever need a job? Making someone the boss of me seems silly and unnecessary. I’d rather choose my own projects.

Our stories define our boundaries. When we make something a big deal, we push it away. By defining 10K per day as a big deal, I push it away.

Could I actually do it though? Physically yes. I ran more than 10K on Sunday, then 7K yesterday and 7K this morning. So I’m in the vicinity. The barrier isn’t physical because I can physically run 10K no problem – all hills too. The barrier to doing it daily is mental. The mind gets in the way.

Is 10K per day a super important goal for me? Not really. But I’d like to keep leaning in that direction for a while and push through that mental barrier to see what it’s like on the other side. I’m used to 5K runs, so bumping to 7K daily runs already feels like a bit of a stretch. Eventually 7K will start to feel normal. I want to reach the point where after running 7K of hills each morning, it doesn’t feel like I did a long run; it just feels like I did a run. Then I can work up to 8K, 9K, and see if I can hold at 10K for a while, like for at least a month.

When my mind says, “You can’t do that. That’s too far, too much, too excessive,” another part of my mind wants to prove it wrong. It wants to push through that limited mindset to make sure it doesn’t define me.

What matters most is the ongoing practice of identifying personal limitations and busting them up, so they can’t hold you back. It’s not that any one limitation is that big of a deal, but what is a big deal is letting those limitations box you in you when you might want something more from life.

What personal limitation would you like to demolish? Is it financial? Physical? Social? Creative?

Realize that it’s all mental. Financially it’s possible. Physically it’s possible. Socially it’s possible. Creatively it’s possible. The invitation is to bust up the mental patterns that make it seem impossible. And to do that you must cross some of those lines that you’re framing as uncrossable.

Pushing Yourself

Posted on 04/05/2020 by Boris Clair

This morning I went for my usual run, starting before dawn. Lately I’ve been going for 45-50 minutes. This time, however, I was listening to the audiobook Can’t Hurt Me by David Goggins. After hearing the part about his 100-mile run and how he had to push himself to get through it, I felt like I should push myself more as well. So I kept running for an hour, then 75 minutes, and finally decided to stop at 93 minutes.

This was hill running since my neighborhood is very hilly, so almost all the running I do nearby is either uphill or downhill.

Normally after a morning run, I feel pretty good. It gives me a sense of accomplishment early in the day and gets me off to a good start. I see a strong link between focus and productivity and cardio exercise. No matter how much I’ve experimented with other types of exercise, nothing takes the place of cardio in terms of the mental and emotional benefits.

This morning instead of feeling a modest sense of accomplishment, it felt way better to run twice as far as I normally would. I’ve done many 90-minute runs before, but not lately and not this year. It felt so nice to stretch beyond what I’m used to. It wasn’t physically difficult, but I had to nudge myself mentally to go beyond what feels normal to me now. Running for 45 minutes feels pretty routine. Running 90 minutes feels different though, somehow beyond normal. It makes the whole day feel special.

There’s something magical about pushing beyond normal, going outside of the usual zone of comfort. The barrier is usually mental or emotional. Even if it’s a physical challenge, the mind wants to stop before the body needs to.

This got me thinking about other areas of life where I’ve had to stretch myself mentally in order to improve my results. I remember when making an extra $1K seemed like a big deal. Then I eventually reached the point where $1K seemed easy, and I projected those earlier limitations onto $10K. Then I stretched that limit to $50K, and eventually $50K felt easy to earn, like in a week or a month. Now $100K feels easy and seems like a modest amount. And $250K is starting to feel like it’s probably not that hard to earn in one chunk. I just need to be a bit more creative. Earning $500K in a week or so is starting to look like it might be even more fun. It seems within the realm of reach, not inaccessible but a bit more of a stretch to get there.

What I like about financial stretching, as I shared in yesterday’s post on overcoming financial pressure, is that it’s very measurable, and the mind has different associations to different amounts of money. The way you feel about $10K won’t be the same as you feel about $100K or $1M. Some amounts will seem small. Others will seem big. But those judgments have nothing to do with the actual sums; they just expose the limitations and blocks of the mind.

The fun part that leads to breakthroughs starts with deciding to do something financially that’s on the other side of a mental block. Take a clear goal like earning $100K in a week. How does your mind classify that? Is it accessible and doable for you? Is it trivially easy for you? Or is it on the other side of a mental barrier that says it’s inaccessible, out of reach, or unrealistic to even think about?

If you don’t push through your mental barriers and challenge them, they become real for you. Your life becomes boxed in because you don’t push beyond the walls of the box.

To keep progressing in any area of life, we have to stretch the mind first. We have to decide to do something that seems like it’s too much, too far, or too out of reach. The mind will initially resist, but the resistance can be overcome.

Many aspects of my life that feel normal used to feel out of reach. Getting up at 5am daily was one of those. I struggled with that habit for a long time, but the main barrier was mindset. Initially I framed it as something hard to do, something barely accessible for me. But when I just decided to absolutely do it no matter what, the resistance crumbled. Now it’s easy. If the decision is made to get up at 5am daily, it’s a done deal. A long time ago, I broke the part of my mind that said I couldn’t become an early riser by proving it wrong till it finally surrendered.

I used a similar approach to figure out how to make a living without getting a job. The key was to decide not to get one and to figure out some other path. One the decision was made, there was no looking back and no second-guessing. Now I’ve gone almost three decades without a job. And the 2006 article 10 Reasons You Should Never Get a Job has inspired countless other people to discover that they too can do just fine without ever having to get a job (unless they really want one).

I feel like I enter a different zone of being when I push myself. Doing what’s expected and satisfying my own expectations feels good, but it’s nowhere near as satisfying as going beyond my comfort zone and stretching.

What limits are holding you back right now? What would you like to experience or achieve, but your mind tells you that’s out of reach? Prove your mind wrong. Go pursue the goal that’s out of reach. Decide that you’ll find a way.

Here’s a personal challenge for you: Do something within the next 24 hours that breaks one of your mental barriers. Find a way to push yourself, and notice how satisfying that feels.

WellnessMaster

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