Always Do

No one cares whether or not you show up and do what you say you are going to do. This is the biggest problem people have: they unconsciously outsource themselves to their situation, their excuses, or to other people.

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better. - Samuel Becket

I’ve been thinking that the idea of “fail faster” might be harmful because it tells your brain that it is trying to fail, but I then realized that as cliche as it sounds, there really is not such thing as failure. Only perception of an event or situation.

“One thing we do know: Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. How do you know this is the experience you need? Because this is the experience you are having at this moment.” - Eckhart Tolle

Seriously, this is all you need to do to create habits, make progress, and change your life forever. It's so simple.

By forcing yourself to embrace the stress of cold exposure as a meaningful self-directed challenge (i.e., stressor), you exert what is called ‘top-down control’ over deeper brain centers that regulate reflexive states. This top-down control process involves your prefrontal cortex – an area of your brain involved in planning and suppressing impulsivity. That ‘top-down’ control is the basis of what people refer to when they talk about “resilience and grit.” Importantly, it is a skill that carries over to situations outside of the deliberate cold environment, allowing you to cope better and maintain a calm, clear mind when confronted with real-world stressors. In other words, deliberate cold exposure is great training for the mind.

How are Sprints different from just dividing a goal into phases? Unlike phases, which are not ends in themselves, Sprints are independent, self-contained projects—thus the outcome is, let’s hope, a source of satisfaction, information, and motivation to keep going (or, as happened with my stop-motion animation project, a helpful cue to let this particular goal go).

What do you do when things don’t go the way you planned? When things go sideways?

Sometimes you need to walk away from something you are working on to gain a new perspective.

Age is just a number. But time isn’t.

“Men are born soft and supple;