Keeping Promises To Yourself: Doing Hard Things To Make Yourself More Powerful and Your Life Better

For anyone into self improvement space and personal development, you probably have heard of Andrew Huberman and David Goggins. Andrew Huberman is one of the top educators and social media influencers in the biohacking space and David Goggins is a best selling author and motivational speaker who is a former Navy SEAL, war vet and record breaking endurance athlete. How awesome was it that they came together to do a podcast episode together. Its a long one over 2 and half hours but it was really good. The title is “David Goggins: How to Build Immense Inner Strength” and can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDLb8_wgX50

There is a specific section I call attention to and it is potentially life changing. Goggins talks about doing hard things. Goggins says: “What it takes is a discipline that no one can even understand. Everyone has the ability to do it but they just don’t want to. They just want to keep asking questions and keep going to seminars. And the greatness is right in you.

Hard work looks horrible. It’s not motivating. It’s not motivating at all. It ain’t like Rocky round 14 where he gets knocked down and goes like this to Apollo Creed. Looks like a man stuck in a f–king dungeon. And there is no F–king way out. But you have the f–king key. But you refuse to use it.”

Huberman mentions the Anterior Mid-Cingulate Cortex showing neuroscience behind why Goggins and the peak performers in life get. “Most people don’t know this but there is a brain structure called the anterior mid-cingulate cortex. But what’s interesting about this brain area is that there is now a lot of data in humans, not mouse studies, showing that when people do something they don’t want to do like add 3 hours of exercise per day or per week. Or when people who are trying to diet and lose weight resist eating something. When people do anything they don’t want to do, it’s not about adding more work. It’s about adding more work that you don’t want to do. This brain area gets bigger.

Now here’s what’s especially interesting about this brain area to me. The mid-cingulate cortex is smaller in obese people. It gets bigger when they diet. It’s larger in athletes. It’s especially large or grows larger in people that see themselves as challenged and overcome some challenge.

And in people that live a very long time, this area keeps its size. In many ways, scientists are starting to think of the anterior mid-cingulate cortex not just as one of the seats of willpower but perhaps actually the seat of the will to live.

And all the data point to the fact that we can build this area up. But that as quickly as we build it up, if we don’t continue to invest in things that are hard for us, that we don’t want to do, it shrinks, it’s what feels Goggin-esque to me.”

So what is the whole point of this? The insight for me is that pain leads to growth. Challenges, tackling hard problems, doing uncomfortable things. We were kind of forced to do this growing up, going to school, trying to figure out our place in the world. Learning and growing.

But as adults so many of us go into autopilot once we meet some level of comfort. We hang out with the same people, do the same job/work, we never challenge ourselves. We avoid pain and discomfort and we don’t do the things we know that are good for us. If Huberman and Goggins are right, most people in the modern western world are just zombies going through the motions of life. It reminds me of the Benjamin Franklin quote “Some people die at 25 and aren’t buried until 75.”

I’ve kind of embraced this attitude of doing hard things subconsciously through the career path I’ve followed and incorporating travel but I’d argue it’s probably not enough. And perhaps actually useless as I enjoy travel and doing overseas business, so it does not grow my anterior mid-cingulate cortex.

I absolutely need to do more of the harder things like exercising more. I need to spend more time in nature and do hard hikes. I need to train harder in my MMA and Muay Thai and tactical shooting, things that do not come natural to me. I need to deal with my family issues at home, both being more patient and also confronting my teenage kid. I need to put myself more out there and show vulnerability as I am probably a bit too emotionless. So the point: Life is hard, it’s not supposed to be easy. Choose your hard. DO MORE HARD THINGS IN YOUR LIFE!