Tag Archives: Courage

Is Complete Peace of Mind Possible?

Quick Answer: I don’t think it is possible, but it’s a worthy goal to strive for.

What gives us peace of mind?

Knowing that we have done our best.

I don’t think we can achieve peace of mind just by relaxing the whole day, meditating, and thinking about nothing.

Life throws challenges our way. It’s almost unavoidable. They need to be addressed. We have our needs and desires. They have to be addressed as well.

Avoiding those challenges, needs, and desires don’t result in peace of mind. Facing them and dealing with them are stressful. It’s strange, but we achieve peace of mind by doing what’s stressful.

Peace of mind comes from doing what’s outside of our comfort zone. Peace of mind comes from dealing with our challenges, doing our best to meet our needs and to fulfill our desires.

Taking our time to relax, to think about nothing, and to meditate has its place in life. They are helpful to charge our batteries.

Having a good night’s sleep and regular breaks contribute to our wellbeing, which in turn contributes to high performance, which in turn contributes to our peace of mind.

Peace of mind can’t be achieved directly. It comes as a byproduct of addressing our challenges and doing our best to meet our needs and desires. Once we have done our best, it’s time to accept the results.

Do your best to address your challenges, needs, and desires, and accept the results, that’s where peace of mind comes from.

You Are Delusional

I was importing my post to Medium yesterday and I saw the statistics next to two tags. Self-Improvement has 103K followers and Self-Discipline only 282. If you think you can improve yourself without self-discipline, you are deluding yourself.

Self-improvement is not going to happen by watching YouTube videos, listening to podcasts, and reading Medium posts. It’s going to happen by taking that knowledge and applying it in real life. What does it take to apply that knowledge in real life?

  • Do you think you’ll be excited about an abs workout after three months?
  • Do you think you’ll inspire your way into giving up your daily dose of social media?
  • Do you think you’ll visualize yourself to say no to your friends who text you during your work day?
  • Do you think you can affirm yourself to take the risks that you know you have to take?

If you say “yes” to the questions above, you are delusional. Even visualization and affirmations take self-discipline after the first few days. Your excitement, inspiration, motivation, or whatever drives you at this moment will fade after two days or a month. Three months maximum. What you’re left with after that is self-discipline.

Your excitement, inspiration, motivation, or whatever drives you at this moment will fade after two days or a month.

If you don’t trust me, look at your own life. How many times have you started a self-improvement program? Which one are you still practicing today? What drove you at the beginning? What was lacking when you stopped them?

In most cases, it is the lack of self-discipline, courage, or both that makes people give up on their goals. If I’m missing something here, please let me know in the comments.

Everybody hates self-discipline and courage. Most people even hate to admit that self-discipline and courage plays a role in success. But that’s the sad truth. There’s no way around self-discipline and courage.

There’s nothing going on in your comfort zone. If it was, you wouldn’t be reading this post now.

Why Is Self-Discipline and Courage So Scary?

It’s natural to think in binary terms. “You either have it or not.” “If you want to have self-discipline and courage, you should attempt extraordinary feats.” Both of these statements are incorrect.

Self-discipline and courage are muscles that you can train.

Just like training your muscles, you train your self-discipline and courage with the challenges that are slightly outside of your comfort zone, day after day. That’s how you build world-class self-discipline and courage.

Yes, you can develop self-discipline and courage and no, you don’t have to kill yourself or others in the process. And the rewards at the end of the road are definitely worth it.

How to Cultivate World Class Courage in a Single Year

You don’t need to attempt extraordinary feats to cultivate world class courage. All you have to do is to get 1% outside of your comfort zone every day. If you improve your courage 1% every day, you will improve your courage 38 times in a single year. That is not 38%, but 3778% in a single year.

Make a List

Make a list of all the actions that you would take if you had all the courage in the world. When making this list, include only the actions that are beneficial for you and others and not harmful for anyone involved. Making a public speech in front of thousand people is beneficial and not harmful, unless you express hate. Driving maximum speed through a city isn’t beneficial and likely disastrous.

Break Down to Pieces

Pick one of the actions and break it down to smaller pieces. If your goal is to develop the courage to speak in public, determine your comfort zone first. Let’s say you’re comfortable speaking in front of ten people. Find a speaking opportunity that involves an audience that is slightly greater than that, for example 12 people. Find and create speaking opportunities that are slightly greater than the previous one, 14, 17, 20, 25, 30 people and so on. Soon, you will be comfortable speaking in front of hundreds of people. The trick is to increase the intensity 1% every time.

Eliminate Your Excuses

Taking an action that is outside of your comfort zone every day might be overwhelming for you. You might come up with all kinds of excuses not to take action every day. The best way to overcome your excuses is the following question.

“Do I have the physical energy to do it now?”

Most of the time, the answer to this question is a yes. The only exceptions are when you have drained yourself completely or when you are deluding yourself. If you are not sure about your answer, you can ask the following follow-up question.

“Would I do it, if someone put a gun to my head?”

The question above eliminates all the excuses completely. It leaves you with the cold hard truth of doing it or not doing it. That’s a choice of yours. The power is with you. It’s not with the conditions outside of your control.

Motivate Yourself

If you eliminate all of your excuses, but still don’t get yourself to act, then it’s time to motivate yourself. The best way to do that is to associate the action with pleasure and rewards and inaction with pain and punishment. You have to associate the inaction with such a great pain that the inaction will elicit far more fear than the action itself. Moreover, promise yourself rewards that will excite you about the action you set to take.

Eliminate Limiting Beliefs

When preparing for a certain action, you might feel hesitancy. If that’s the case, it pays off to take a moment to reflect upon what is holding you back. Come up with a few of the beliefs that hold you back from taking action now. Question each belief for validity. Is this belief based on facts or fiction? If it is not based on facts, if it cannot be proven scientifically, what would be its opposite? What would be a belief that would empower you? Now, it’s up to you to let go of the old limiting belief and adopt the new empowering belief.

Summary

You can cultivate world class courage by getting 1% out of your comfort zone every day. You can do that by making a list of out of the comfort zone activities. Instead of attempting a fully outside of comfort zone activity, attempt a slightly outside of comfort zone version of it. Increase the intensity every day. If you come up with excuses, feel a lack of motivation, or you are held back by limiting beliefs, you can work on them with specific exercises for each. You can find greater details about each exercise in their respective links.