Throughout the course of human history, the people we admire most have succeeded not in spite of the challenges they faced, but because of them. As such, the only logical course of action is to confront the present moment with discipline, curiosity and gratitude; anything else is a blatant waste. Therefore, it become impossible to grow smarter, faster, stronger and healthier without fostering the necessary mental fortitude to make the non-negotiable sacrifices that this pursuit of excellence entails.
If you can learn strength from the hard times and gratitude from the good, then every moment of your life is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for growth. To do this, however, necessitates a certain level of discipline and focus. How do we develop this, and—perhaps more importantly—why is weakness so prevalent in society today?
The Gutter-Guards of Modern Existence
Just for a second, imagine that you were living in the stone age. Every day, you’re forced to worry about finding food and water, staying warm, and ascending the hierarchy of your tribe. Night time wouldn’t be much better: every time you fall asleep, you risk being killed by a waiting predator or a cunning enemy.
If our society regressed to the stone age for a single year, I’m confident that most of the world’s population would be wiped out, especially those of us lucky enough to live in developed countries. One nagging question remains, however: how have our lives become so much better over time if we’ve simultaneously become so much weaker?
In the modern world, most common problems can be solved with pure mental horsepower. As the physical condition of the population deteriorates, it’s no surprise that our focus has shifted towards primarily operating in a sedentary manner. Perhaps, as we fall down this vicious feedback loop of ill-health and facilitated inactivity, we’re dooming ourselves to become physically weaker, and our willpower is following suit. If you’re not worried about this, you should be.
All Play and No Work
Okay, so we can use evolutionary logic to justify our own weaknesses, but there’s another answer that’s far more practical:
We’ve all become soft.
More than ever, we are constantly prompted to sacrifice the future in favour of the present. In the short term, technology lets you flood your brain with supraphysiological levels of feel-good chemicals without ever even leaving your bedroom.
We all know this. It’s why people scroll Instagram instead of exercising, or binge-watch mindless YouTube videos instead of spending time with their families. We train our brains to anticipate increasingly frequent stimulus, then wonder why our attention spans are screwed.
The caveman who sits around and does nothing is killed within a matter of days (if not hours or minutes), probably by disease, predators, other humans, or some combination of these three. The modern man who sits around becomes unhealthy, unfit, depressed, lonely, and pathologically dependent on harmful sources of instant gratification. Once the latter occurs for a long enough period, it’s not obvious to me which of these fates it worse. In this analysis, there is only one viable solution: fight back.
A War Against Weakness
We must task ourselves with relearning the beneficial components of the past whilst retaining the benefits of the present. This is a large, highly complicated problem, but I’ve compiled a list of generalised strategies that you should start applying to your life today:
Step 1: Exercise
Without health, you have nothing.
Everyone knows that exercise is good for you, and you already know what I’m going to say: experiment with forms of exercise until you find one that you really enjoy (bonus points if this form of exercise involves social interaction). Schedule this exercise into your life, and do it. It doesn’t have to be complicated.
Don’t take on some “30-day challenge” or define anything with arbitrary timeframes; this a permanent, sustainable change to your lifestyle, and you should treat it as such. Exercise at a frequency and intensity that you can sustain for at least the next decade; once you view this as a long-term change, you’ll be amazed how quickly exercise becomes a natural part of your day.
Step 2: Learn
This advice isn’t complicated either, but most of us seem to have forgotten it. Read books. Ask questions. Read more books based on the answers to your questions, and ask new questions based on the content of the first book. As is the case with exercise, you have to internalise a habitual sense of curiosity. Once you’ve built these positive feedback loops of understanding and questioning into your daily life, you’ll become exponentially more knowledgeable in less time than you think.
Step 3: Fight Back Against Yourself
Oftentimes, you are the cause of many of your problems. At the very least, you are always responsible for your reaction to the bad things that happen to you. Once you realise this, you have an obligation to push back against any weaknesses that you find within yourself. When you find yourself nervous to speak to someone, go up and say hello. When you don’t want to get out of bed, sit up, then stand up, then attack the day. When you’re overwhelmed, break down a big task into smaller steps, and take the first step now.
From now on, I don’t want you to tolerate weakness in your life. It’s not okay. It’s not worth celebrating. Everyone has off days, and everyone falls down, but it’s your responsibility to be one of the few people strong enough to get up over, and over, and over again. Without this unwavering drive, there is no direction. When there is no direction, there is no purpose. And where there is no purpose, there is no life.
Never stop thinking.
- Will