One of my biggest mindset shifts this year has been embracing the challenge. I believe that anything fulfilling in life requires risk, challenge, and struggle. Without struggle, there is no fulfillment.
What do the following all have in common?
- Eating junk food
- Being a lazy sack of sh*t
- Not getting the work done and achieving your dreams
- Settling
- Avoiding risk, staying in your comfort zone
- Procrastination
- Smoking, drinking excessively, hard drugs
- Masturbating, watching porn
- Video game addiction
- Binge watching crappy TV shows
- Binge consuming junk social media content on Tik-Tok, Instagram, etc.
- Sex addiction, prostitution
They’re easy, maybe feel good in the moment, but then you feel like shit afterwards. Or even worse you feel kind of ok and then waste 10 years of your life before you finally realize that you’re unhappy, unfufilled, and have wasted your potential.
What do the following all have in common?
- Getting hard work done
- Physical exercise / working out
- Climbing Mt. Everest
- Eating healthy
- Cold showers
- Starting a conversation with a stranger you want to talk to
- Nofap / approaching girls/guys you’re interested in in real life
They’re difficult and entail a degree of risk, but lead to greater fulfillment and happiness.
Once you examine things rationally, there is no reason to pursue anything other than the most challenging, difficult pursuits that will bring the greatest reward in the long-term.
Of course in the long-term we’re all dead, so this does not mean one must necessarily forgo happiness in the short-term. Instead one should acknowledge that there is no end-game, and to simply accept and enjoy the struggle.
Another great thing about diving headfirst into and embracing the challenge is that it makes diving into all other challenges easier. Undergoing an intense workout makes it easier to eat healthy and crank out a ton of deep work. Even something as simple as a cold shower makes a difference (cold showers can increase dopamine levels by 2.5x with the effect lasting for hours after).
Every little decision matters. The more you dive into the challenge and experience real fulfillment vs. short-term pleasure, the more your brain rewires to become resilient and pursue challenge. On the other hand the more you give in to degenerate monkey impulses such as by aimlessly scrolling through TikTok or Instagram, reading tabloid nonsense, and porn surfing, the more you reinforce that kind of weak, empty, easy behavior, and the more difficult it becomes to get hard work done and focus.
So embrace the challenge. Without it, life is boring, empty, and meaningless. With it, the world is your oyster.
J. Savage 