Be a Badass - Obstacles

If you cannot define the problem, you cannot solve it.

And if your definition requires someone else to change, you have given away your ability to work on the solution.

I want you to consider the obstacles to your success in a way that gives you agency. That can be confronting. It is easy to defend yourself when someone suggests that your own thinking or behavior is getting in the way.

But just consider it. You do not have to use what you discover against yourself. You can use it for yourself.

In the first part of this series, I defined two characteristics of a badass: mental strength and a work ethic that produces results. Now we are going to look at what interferes with developing them.

Your brain wants comfort

I teach the motivational triad as seeking pleasure, avoiding pain, and conserving energy.

Those tendencies can work against the life you want to create.

To become extraordinary, you need to be willing to experience discomfort, move beyond instant gratification, and exert energy in useful ways.

Your brain may suggest doing the opposite. That does not mean anything has gone wrong.

Knowing this gives you something to work with. You can recognize the desire for comfort and consciously choose the challenge anyway.

Small goals can keep you small

Some goals do not require you to develop your mental strength or work ethic.

You set them because you do not want the possibility of failure. They do not push you emotionally or cognitively or require more of your capacity.

I want you to consider a goal big enough to do that.

A big goal can begin defining you before you achieve it. It gives you a reason to learn to work harder and become stronger.

Failure becomes part of what the goal requires. You try, produce a result, learn from it, and try again.

Eventually, you can produce something with ease that once seemed impossible.

The point is not to pick something safe enough that you never have to develop. It is to use the pursuit to become the person who can create it.

Use failure to become stronger

I call this antifragility: using challenges, mistakes, and failures to strengthen yourself.

If you avoid everything that exposes a weakness, you lose opportunities to build strength.

Think about a child learning to walk. The falls are part of developing the ability. Getting up and trying again creates strength. Remaining on the ground does not teach the child to walk.

Look honestly at the explanations you give yourself for not moving forward.

Are you using a challenge to develop capacity, or using it as evidence that you cannot handle your life?

I want you to notice that pattern without attacking yourself. Recognition gives you a choice about what to do next.

Stop making approval your requirement

Seeking approval can lock you between people pleasing and perfection.

You want everyone to like what you create. You start adjusting yourself to applause and trying to prevent anyone from being disappointed or saying something negative.

Sometimes the people whose approval you want are people you do not admire or respect. You would never trade places with them, but you spend your energy trying to win them over.

Sometimes it is a parent, partner, or another family member.

I have played this game for years of my life. I tried to become who I thought other people wanted, and even when I did it well, their approval did not necessarily come.

Their approval comes from their thinking. It is not something I can manufacture by bending over backward.

If you need it before you act, you will keep putting other people's opinions in charge of your life.

Notice where you participate in drama

Drama takes energy away from creating.

Our brains can make a situation much bigger than its facts. We react, engage, and turn it into something that consumes us.

Other people may bring drama. But look at your own participation.

Are you seeking the gossip, wanting the scoop, or spreading it? Are you making the story more intense?

Negativity bonding can feel good. You find people who agree with your complaints, feel connected, and feel righteous together.

That feeling does not make the activity productive.

Ask whether it is constructive, useful, or helping you grow. Notice what it takes away from the mental strength and work you want to develop.

Release the need to be the good one

Righteousness can make you afraid of being human.

If you divide people into all good or all bad, all right or all wrong, you will need to defend yourself against anything that places you on the wrong side.

But human beings make mistakes. We have negative parts as well as admirable parts.

When you are trying to hide everything fallible about yourself, you spend energy protecting an image instead of creating.

Byron Katie's work helped me consider whether there might be a grain of truth in a judgment rather than immediately defending against it.

I can acknowledge the ways I have been strong and weak, smart and foolish, kind and unkind. I do not need to make one of those the complete definition of me.

You can make mistakes and still be a badass. In fact, I do not think you can become one without failing.

Feel the emotion instead of buffering

Big goals invite fear, doubt, embarrassment, and other uncomfortable emotions.

If your response is always to escape them, they will interfere with your behavior.

You may drink, eat, go on social media, or hide in busy work. You call it work, but it does not produce the result. Then you make excuses or blame someone else.

The way to overcome the fear of feeling is to feel.

Invite the emotion in. Process it and experience it. Notice that it passes and that you can handle it.

Then, when it comes again, you know something you did not know before: you have experienced this and kept going.

You can anticipate fear before putting your work into the world and decide that fear will not determine your behavior.

Love yourself without weakening yourself

I distinguish self-love from self-coddling.

If every uncomfortable emotion becomes a reason to stop, you can reinforce the idea that you are not strong enough to handle your life.

A productive work ethic involves handling dread and obeying the commitments you make to yourself.

This is not about overworking or forcing yourself all the time. It is about developing the ability to manage your emotional life.

Thoughts create feelings. When you do not examine the thoughts running in the background, their feelings can drive behaviors that keep you from producing.

Look at where you seek approval, engage in drama, defend your righteousness, or avoid discomfort.

What if you used those moments as weights to lift instead of reasons to retreat?

You can produce a terrible result and use it to strengthen your emotional and mental capacity. Then go again.

That is the opportunity: use what happens to become stronger, develop your work ethic, and keep creating the life you want.