I wish there was a rhyme or reason to my life, seriously I do. It would be so nice to neatly assemble a chronological order of when I did what and how it turned out, showing a nice little progression as I slowly become more and more capable and more and more successful.
I listen to a lot of podcasts and read a lot of history, and these peoples lives really do seem to follow a nice trajectory. I look at their story, appearing to me as some kind of issekai progression fantasy and then turn the lens back on my own and I’m like that’s a nice escalation of events you got there mate WHY DOESN’T MINE LOOK LIKE THAT?
I’m well aware of the stupidity of comparison, but you can’t help but ask these questions, can you? Guy starts business, it fails, starts new business, it fails a bit better, starts another business, gets some success, acquires a new business, big success, does this, does that, up and up the totem pole, before you know it he’s on Modern Wisdom. You know what I mean? Beset by failures and setbacks sure, but there’s a nice kind of ascension taking place.
I look at my own life and I’m like, started jiujitsu, got pretty good, quit for a bit, started writing and learning languages. Went hard as fuck, did more work than he ever thought possible. Stopped for a bit, got a boring ass job, took a lot of acid, went back to jiu jitsu, started coaching, built a gym, sold his business, started writing again.
There’s no satisfying timeline. Like, half the parts are disjointed and disconnected from one another! Getting hyper fixated on Valheim and then starting a substack just doesn’t have the same ring to it, y’know?
That said, it’s almost certainly because I know ALL the ins and outs of my story. Every single, unpleasant, revealing detail. I’m there for all of it. The trials, the tribulations, the stubbed toes, the gastro. The entire wavelength of my mortality is on full display, my eyes only.
It’s just, it would be cool to hit the major story beats, y’know? A few more boss fights, a steady escalation of attributes leading to some major gear upgrades, maybe find the medallion key that leads me to the end game area. But nah, it’s just like, backtracking to the starting area, getting lost in a cave, doing a side quest I didn’t find on my first time through the zone.
But then, that’s life, right? You ever visit a place you grew up in and think how much it’s changed, and wonder if you’ve changed as much as the place has? It’s almost certain you have, but for some reason it always just feels like ‘you’ in there, right? It’s always just me.
But within the absurd rise and fall of my life, I’ve come to learn a few things about myself. I would go through phases of turning my nose up at productivity, imagining how truly uninteresting one would be if their entire game was just chasing the bigger prizes, the higher numbers, the world championships, the more expensive contracts. But some part of me realized I think it’s kinda cool. Then those parts of me would draw battle lines and go to war and at any one time one of those parts would be in the driver seat before getting roughed up, booted out the side door and replaced by one of the other warring factions in my head.
I started to realize I needed to harmonize. I needed to let each of them have a say at the table, try and come to a compromise where they each get something while agreeing on what they’re willing to trade off. Without congruence there can be no sustained effort.
So I want to get shit done, but I also like kicking back and staring at the clouds. If one or the other gets ignored, the inevitable collapse is pending.
I started to take stock of my day. What if I could head in a direction that encapsulated the full spectrum of my character, while also pruning back enough that I wasn’t just spinning my wheels trying to go in all directions at once?
Before you know it, you’re looking at your habitual patterns. As a general rule I am VERY low in conscientiousness and industriousness, so absurdly low that it’s amazing that I’ve even made it this far. But I’m also able to work really hard. So what gives? Why can I sometimes do it and then other times I’m utterly convinced it’s a bad idea?
And that kinda leads back to the idea of congruence. Being interested in many things causes you to chase many things, or, at the very least, start to think the new idea is more pretty and charming than the idea you come home to and get into bed with each night. I know you know what I mean.
So, if I know I’m going to find reasons not to do something, what if I make it so easy for myself to do things that it would be possible to still do it DESPITE every fiber of my being telling me that is is no longer a good thing to do and is, in fact, a complete and utter waste of my time?
This is an utterly game changing tactic. If you were to view yourself as an opponent that you must outmanoeuvre, why would you strike where you are strong? Why wouldn’t you, knowing your enemy, fall back when you know he will chase, press forward when you know he will fold, and circle around to where you know he has weak points in his defences?
I am not the kind of guy who can grab myself by the scruff of the neck and force my nose to the grindstone. At least, not all the time. So how can I make sure I do what I gotta do when I don’t want to do it?
I make it easy.
This is not groundbreaking stuff, and yet when you’re truly able to grasp it, you find that you can build god-tier kill streaks on things that you have been putting off for YEARS.
What are some examples? Believe it or not, I love jiujitsu, but I do not want to train every day. I used to force myself in and train when I didn’t want to and this has lead to multiple illnesses, injuries and general feelings of burnout. I wouldn’t wish this on anybody. So, if I don’t want to train, I just walk in through the door. I confine myself to only doing the simplest parts of the activity. Not feeling it today? I’m just going to practice some technique.
But forget jiujitsu. What about running. Not feeling it today? 5 minutes on the treadmill, that’s it. Yup. 5 minutes. No more. Don’t care what you think, don’t care what you say. I do that 5 minutes every day for a week and that’s over an hour of running that would not have been done otherwise.
And the craziest part about it is, you often times end up doing more. But when you first start out, it’s actually quite important that you DON’T do more. You just do the prescribed, ordained set of objectives you laid out for yourself and you stop right there.
Now, do that everyday. Before you know it, your body is starting to get used to the thing you are doing, it has even started identifying with it and, most mysteriously, it is beginning to enjoy it.
Why? Because you are noticing small improvements on the thing. You might not notice the improvements for a week, or a month, 6 weeks maybe. But it doesn’t even matter because you make it so easy for yourself to do that you don’t really feel put out by not having verifiable success. You just go out and get it done and then that’s it. And you start to feel good, and believe it or not, you are making improvements.
People have tried to sell you on the idea that you always need to go that extra mile. There’s a time and place for that, but going the extra mile for me often leads to injury. Going the extra mile for me often leads to a fried CNS. It’s better that you build up slow.
How can powerlifters in the lighter weight classes lift so much weight without putting on a lot of muscle? They’re training their nervous system. Not their muscles. The muscles are such a small part of the equation of lifting big weights. If you want to train your muscles directly, you need to develop a relationship with the muscle throughout the movement, then target it with a set of reps that cause it to break down, and then you eat the necessary macronutrients that can repair it for the next work out.
But I can actually lift MORE weight over time if I do LESS reps and rest MORE in between my sets. Why? Because I’m not trying to go that extra mile. I’m trying to maintain consistency. I’m trying to prolong and sustain my practice without getting hurt, overtrained, or discouraged.
If I don’t want to go the gym, what do I do? I make it easy. I drop the weight by HALF. I do less weight, and just focus on the movements. I’ll drop the sets. Maybe I’ll even shitcan an entire muscle group and just work one thing.
This is how I keep the ball rolling without ever having to beat myself up for not going to the gym. I went to the gym. I didn’t put up all-time numbers. I’m probably not going to remember this session fondly when I am a decrepit old man on the porch, but you best believe that day I went into the gym and I did what I needed to do to keep the streak alive.
We are creatures of momentum. I’ve heard it said that every action you take is a vote for who you are. If I go into the gym, even if I don’t kill every workout, I’m the kind of guy that goes to the gym.
You might say, ‘you’re also the kind of guy that goes into the gym but doesn’t kill every workout.’ But that just depends on your goals. And people have this shit all misconstrued. You’re addicted to montages and influencer content and motivational videos.
This game isn’t about going balls to the wall every moment of every day. This game is about staying in the game. You gotta keep going. You gotta stick with it. I’ve been training BJJ for 15 years now. Do you know how many people I’ve seen come and go? Do you know how many thousands of people have walked through the doors only to never be seen again?
Or what about how many people have proclaimed to me they’re gonna do this, do that, going to win this, win that, go hard for a few weeks to a month and then burn out, get injured and disappear? I’m still here.
The winner is the one who stays alive. It is not sexy, it is not cool, but it is the reality. You’re stacking daily actions over months and years. This is a game of decades. That young undefeated world champion? He has been in the gym since he was 3 years old. You think those work outs his social media team posts are what he does everyday? You don’t see the doubts, the failures, the injuries, the bad sessions, the times he gets tapped by men he is far superior to, the time he trips over, messes up a move.
There was this kid I trained with once or twice, who’s a high level competitor now, and I remember submitting him from back control with a fairly straight forward attack series. He grabbed coach right after the round ended and asked him exactly what to do in that situation. If he hadn’t come in that day, he wouldn’t have made that tiny little adjustment to his game.
This is the risk you run when you don’t show up, even if it’s just to do the bare minimum. You know yourself. Be honest with yourself. If you show up and you think today is the day to maximise your output, then send it. Let it rip and go all the way. But if it’s a day that you’re just not sure if you even want to do this anymore, then just show up.
With this frame of mind, why would you ever quit? You have just made it too damn easy for yourself.
But hey, all of this doesn’t mean a thing if I don’t continually practice what I preach and continue to develop my skillsets around the ideas I present here. But the funny thing is, I didn’t want to write this post today. I just know I have to sit down and open the draft. That’s it. No expectations. Before you know it the words are flowing like champagne.
And that’s what I learned. The trials, the failures, like Frodo and Sam stumbling around the rocks before loudly proclaiming that they’re lost, what I’ve learned is that you just have to make the conditions right for you to do something. For me, that’s making it easy.
I post more on my subtack: https://nathan21.substack.com/
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