Intro:

It’s funny how you can go on for weeks or months just grinding, working on improving yourself, going through the daily routine but not really “feeling it”. Nothing exciting happening. Just the usual slow-and-steady progress.

Then one day, whilst mostly unprepared, something just “clicks” and your brain connects 5 things at once, your perspective changes in an instant and quite dramatically so. You suddenly understand something at a level you never knew was even possible and your personal growth takes a huge ramp upwards.

The Struggle:

It all started with this image that I saw earlier this week. Out of all the things I read each day, this one just stuck with me for some reason. That “some reason” was that my brain subconsciously identified it as the anchor that I needed to put everything else I’m busy with into context over the next couple of days.

One day I was just mentally masturbating whilst suffering from a severe case of analysis paralysis by browsing a thousand articles at once and I stumbled upon a gem where the guy talks about your Past, Present and Future selves. In short, the takeaway was, and I’m paraphrasing:

Be thankful for your Past Self because he made choices to your benefit today.

Be good to your Future Self because that guy is your bro. He’s your best friend, so do something good for him today.

The Secret:

I was thinking about all of this while in the gym and struggling to finish a set of bench presses because I was finally hitting the failure point. And in that moment, it struck me: failure is the most amazing thing I could have wished for today!

Up to this point I’ve been strong enough to complete my sets every time without failure. But the weight has been stacking up with every session and now I’ve finally reached the point where I can’t do it anymore. And why is this an amazing point to reach? Because it shows that I’ve been crushing it for so long, week after week after week, that I eventually have the privilege to reach this point. It means that I must have been doing something extremely good to push myself to reach the point of failure.

The Biggest Realization:

I have Past Self to thank for that. That guy is fucking awesome and I am so, so grateful to him today. That he loved and valued me, Present Self, enough to get out of bed and go to gym every single fucking time without missing a single session. That he said no to MacDonald’s even on those evenings that he was really craving for it. That he kept reading TRP articles and attempted to integrate it every chance he got, because he knew how badly I wanted to be happier in love and life. That he kept learning more and more about our career, becoming a little better every day this past year, all stacking up to me being promoted to a senior position.

And every time he pushed me to the edge, that point of failure, we knew that we were onto something. The fact that he failed means that he actually tried! He was smacked down but got back up every single fucking time because he knew we were onto something good. F**ailure is the constant indicators that you are moving in the right direction.**

The crazy part about all of this is that while I was making those simple choices, it was just the usual day-to-day grind. Nothing exciting. Little did I know how big the pay-off woul be eventually.

  • Failure at gym means you’ve come so far that you are finally at this point. There are months of coming to the gym that led to you reaching this point.
  • Failure at approaching a girl means that you’ve come so far as to actually consider doing something 90% of other guys do not have the balls for.
  • Failure at a business venture means you’ve reached the end of your current business knowledge and now you know exactly what points to address the next time you try.

You know exactly where that point for you is and where you now need to keep pushing and expanding from. You already mastered anything before this point so lean into your edge of failure every day. Then you can also look back 6 months from now and sit in awe at where you are.

If you never experience failure in your life, it is the sure sign that you have become stagnant. And no, you’re not “standing still and just taking a break”. There’s no such thing as standing still in life: either you’re moving forwards or you’re slowly sliding backwards. And if that is you, that’ll be your biggest failure of all.

Wrapping It Up:

Back to the gym, I got up, stared the weights down and thought out loud: “Well you know what? If I’m going to fail, I’m not going out without a fight. I’ll fail spectacularly!”. So, I called my friend over to spot me and finished only 4 of my 5 reps, but after catching my breath I got up from the bench with a smile.

"I gave it my all today, Future Self. This one was for you, buddy."