As much as the hustle bros love to bang on about making yourself do hard, uncomfortable things…
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I think they’re missing the point.
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Lasting, self-transforming growth — the type that reaches deep into your psyche and pulls a fully upgraded version of you to the surface — doesn’t come from:
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• Cold showers
• Hard workouts
• Daily routines
• Discipline and work ethic
• Drinking AG1

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Or any of the other familiar discomforts that are useful and healthy and even a little challenging, but still sit squarely inside your comfort zone.
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True transformation is only found in unfamiliar discomfort:
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The stuff that pushes you up against the very edge of your comfort zone and then beyond it, and gives you no choice but to expand.
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In other words, it comes from doing something that actually scares you until it doesn't scare you anymore.
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Like walking up to a pretty stranger for the first time and forming a connection.
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Moving to a foreign country by yourself, learning the language, and building a friend group from scratch.
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Walking into an MMA gym and sparring for the first time.
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Recording and posting your first piece of content.
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Pushing through your first meditation or plant medicine retreat.
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Launching your first business and taking your first sales call and getting rejected and then picking up the phone and taking another.
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Or falling in love for the first time, realizing they could truly hurt you, and opening yourself anyway.
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It’s feeling the ground on fire beneath your feet and walking forward regardless, allowing whatever is holding you back to be burned away.
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Don’t get me wrong:
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​Familiar discomfort is important, and it’s good to make some incremental progress every day.
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But if you don’t pair it with the exponential progress that comes from unfamiliar discomfort, you may never find what you’re truly searching for, which was never a colder shower or six pack abs, but a new version of you.
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- T
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P.S. The first episode in our new season of retreat recordings just went live:
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​How to finally figure out what you actually want​
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More bangers incoming.
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