“Every day, bite off a little more than you can chew… And chew it.” - Michael Singer

In 10th grade, my best friend and I moved up to the varsity basketball team a year early.

But we had to fight for it, and it’s a fight I’ll never forget.

Before our first pre-season game, our coach sat us down and told us that if we didn’t perform, we’d be sent straight back down to the JV team.

Good news for me, since we were playing one of the best teams in the city…

…And I’d be matched up against a 1st team all-league shooting guard who was two years older than me.

A few hours before tip off, my buddy and I found an empty locker room and damn near threw up from nerves.

We could barely speak, so we spent the next hour staring at the cold brick wall, every once in a while glancing at each other for emotional support, and then back at the wall again.

In hindsight, we sound like drama queens.

But when you’re a 15 year old basketball player and ball is life, a moment like this feels like life or death.

I’ve never wanted to play a game less than I did in that moment.

My nervous system was screaming at me to just run away, to quit, to go back down to JV where it was safe and cozy and free from 6’7” monsters who all wanted to test the cocky little white kids who thought they could hang with the seniors.

Lucky for us, we couldn’t run away.

There was a team of players and a coaching staff expecting us to show up…

…And, if we didn’t, an entire school who would laugh at us behind our backs for the rest of the season.

So we sacked up, laced up, stepped on the floor, and killed it.

I can’t remember the exact numbers, but we led both teams in scoring that game, and the next, en route to becoming league all stars in our sophomore year.

All because we didn’t have a choice.

When we most wanted to run away, our coaches pushed us out there and demanded we step up to the challenge.

So we did.

But — and here’s the key point:

If we had to make the choice ourselves, I don’t know if we would have followed through and actually done it.

A teacher of mine said something last week that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about:

One of the reasons kids learn and grow so much faster than adults is because they’re simply forced to.

No kid wants to eat their vegetables, learn math, or figure out how to make friends on their first day of school.

But the adults knew it would be good for us, so they simply made us do it.

They tossed us in the water so we’d have no choice but to learn to swim.

Problem is, now we’re the adults.

Nobody is here to force us to do anything truly uncomfortable anymore, so most of us never do.

And I’m not talking about trivial stuff like waking up early or working out when you don’t feel like it.

I’m talking about the stuff that’s actually scary, the stuff that sets your nervous system on fire, and gives you no choice but to expand to meet the task.

• Moving to a foreign country and building a new friend group from scratch
• Launching a business and pushing through the terrifying first 12-18 months
• Starting martial arts
• Taking the leap and doing an intensive meditation or plant medicine retreat
• Having a hard, high pressure conversation that has real emotional stakes

Or anything else you know you should do, but don’t, because nobody is there to push you out the door and make you do it.

The older I get, the more wary I am of the predictable, habitual patterns that shape my comfort zone.

And, the more urgent it feels to force myself outside of them:

To hunt down my weak points and expose them to unfamiliar situations, repeatedly, until they have no choice but to become strengths.

And I know that if I don’t do it now — and, keep doing it…

…I will slowly stop expanding, and slide into a life of wondering who I could have been, if I’d simply given myself no choice.

- T

P.S. AMA call for Path members tomorrow at 10 am. Be there.