No B.S Friday: Life is relentless. But, truth be told, so are you.
How am I still going?
Someone asked me this the other day.
They had had a powerful 12 months. They’d done amazing work. Got on top of their spending, invested in their education, but together the first building blocks of a nice little portfolio.
They were doing well.
They were also burnt out.
They had gone hard and now they just felt like they needed a nice lie down… for six months or something.
But that’s the thing about life. It doesn’t give you many opportunities for a nice lie down. It’s kind of relentless.
The boss never stops. The children never stop. Your back never stops.
It just goes on and on and on.
And so this bloke is looking at me, 20-odd years into a multi-million dollar business, a small fortune nicely bundled up in real estate now…
“How do I keep going?”
Now, there’s a lot to this, but I reckon one of the keys is tapping the right kind of energy.
If you look at the human there are two things going – two kinds of energy at play.
The first is short-burst energy. Think about doing a bench press at the gym. Or bicep curls. Or running. Your muscles are in a dormant, resting state. Then your body summons the energy it needs, you do the task, but the energy is quickly depleted.
So there’s that.
The second type of energy you have access to is near-infinite energy. The way your heart beats from your first breath to your last. The way your lungs never stop their rhythm. The way the brain is never fully off.
In fact, if you were to list out most of the things your body does, including all the hormonal reactions, and digesting of food and fighting off toxins etc, my guess is that 90% of what you do is driven by near-infinite energy.
(“Near” in the sense that one day you’ll be dead.)
But this is all happening unconsciously.
Now the mistake I think people make is that when they decide to switch up their life, they make a conscious decision, and therefore think that the energy they need will be consciously chosen energy – it will be short burst energy.
But the problem with short-burst energy is that it quickly runs out.
Instead, what you want to do is find a way to access that near-infinite energy.
This has a different quality. It’s slower to get started. It never ramps up to the intensity levels that short-burst energy does.
But it is consistent.
And its consistency that moves mountains.
Now I’m aware I’m making this sound easy, and it’s a subtle distinction that’s going to land differently for everyone.
But my advice to you is to remember that most of what powers you is relentless.
And it’s a relentlessness that matches the relentlessness of life.
Bring yourself into alignment with that.
And you will do amazing things.
JG.