Change isn’t easy.

It always hurts a little at first.

But it doesn’t always have to be that way.

Today I’ll introduce you to 3 trainable skills which, when implemented, can set you up to enact radical change in your life with minimal friction.

Getting Stuck…and Getting Unstuck

Shortly after graduating from college, I discovered a new passion: bouldering.

My first experience going to a climbing gym was a blast. Putting on tiny rubber shoes and trying to pick myself up off the ground — all the way to the top of the wall.

The movements intrigued me, the physical demands challenged me. And the pump. Oh, the lovely forearm pump that you really have to experience to believe. That thrilled me.

Fast forward 5 years:

• Different country

• New friends

• Climbing twice a week

• Progressed to the grade v5 (the fifth difficulty level)

I’m plateaued. I climb regularly, but I just don’t seem to get any better. My fingers feel tired after each session, so I should be getting stronger. Yet I’m not climbing harder month after month.

In this era I found myself fixating on a certain line of thought: I’m not really a ‘natural’ climber. I’m just not very genetically gifted for this sport.

• I might be too heavy to climb hard, at 75kg

• I have rather long fingers, so the leverage isn’t great

• I get injured easily; elbow, shoulder, and finger pain occurs frequently.

What do you notice about these three ideas?

They’re all excuses.

These were all true. They were valid observations which reflected the reality I was living. But they only reflected the present reality. There’s an implicit assumption that they will always be reality. They ignore all possible futures in which they’re different.

I started to reframe the situation:

• What if any of those were no longer true?

• Which of these ‘states’ is immutable, and which could I change through practice and work?

• What if all these were just a little bit less true?

• How could I go about changing any of these?

The results for my climbing could be huge.

This subtle — but profound — cognitive shift was one of the first times I remember consciously adopting a growth mindset.

The Three Foundational Skills of Self Actualization

1. Cultivate a Growth Mindset

2. Commit to Gradual Progress

3. Take Agency Of Your Life

Cultivate a Growth Mindset

Here’s the thing: To take real action towards a desired change, you first must believe you are capable of changing.

We all know someone — a friend or relative — whose life is stagnant.

This person

• complains about life circumstances

• talks about the difficulty of things

• perceives things as difficult

• makes excuses for why things won’t work.

They have desires like everyone else. They say they want to change their job, or their health, but year after year, nothing changes.

Often this is simply due to a fixed mindset. Folks believe whatever they believe, and have no space in their brain for new ideas — especially if those ideas mean changing how they act on more than just a superficial level.

The Spectrum of Appetite for Change

Imagine 3 people who want to improve their diets.

• Person A starts buying premade meals that say ‘heart healthy’, drinking diet soda, and buying snacks labeled ‘low fat’ or ‘high fiber’.

• Person B stops snacking between meals, and starts cooking all of her meals at home — from whole-food ingredients.

• Person C adopts a one-meal-a-day carnivore diet

While all of these are potentially steps in the right direction, Person A has really only made surface-level changes. She still gets to eat different variations of her favorite foods, and her choices will allow her to feel like she’s eating healthy. This is an example of someone who has a narrow view of how much change is possible. She’ll put in a token effort, but only until it gets difficult.

Person B still gets to enjoy some of her favorite meals too, and commits to putting in the work of more diligent shopping, and learning new culinary skills.

Person C just says ‘fuck it, there are no rules’ and dives deep into the most extreme approach she can imagine. Her relationship with hunger, cravings for staple foods, will all need to change as part of this strategy. Nothing is off-limits if it may help her reach her goal.

There’s a spectrum of appetite for change, and of belief that you CAN change.

If you find yourself on the extreme low end of that, then you probably won’t make any big changes, will you?

Cultivating a Growth Mindset

Practice.

All skills are the result of patient practice. A growth mindset is no different.

How do we enact changes?

• Start slowly

• Build momentum over weeks and years

1. Choose one aspect of your life to change

2. Figure out the smallest, bite-sized version of that.

3. Implement it as soon as possible

4. Return to step 2.

What to get fit? Do 2 easy sets of push ups now. Then go jog for 5 minutes. How did that make you feel? Are you proud of what you just did? You easily could have done nothing. Instead you acted.

Relish that feeling. This is power. This is agency over your life.

Rest one day and repeat. Build up habits slowly: only add complexity in proportion to the amount of time you’ve been taking action.

Spend more time running than researching optimal running training plans and which shoes to buy.

A growth mindset must be practiced. You never stop needing to practice it. Step out of your comfort zone into a new domain, you’ll struggle like a beginner again. You’ll still have blind spots. You’ll still need help sometimes.

But you will improve. As you acquire more experience, you will build up a resume of irrefutable proof that you are capable of enacting change on your life. You are in control. You’re in the driver’s seat.

Commit to Gradual Progress

Start small. Stay consistent.

We change habits by making small changes frequently, rather than gigantic changes all at once. The latter often doesn’t stick.

Don’t do 30 days of yoga in January, followed by 0 days of yoga the rest of the year.

Instead do 1 session per week, every week. 52 sessions in a year. More sustainable, and each one will be of higher quality because you’ll be recovered.

Something you do weekly becomes a part of your life, it sits in the fabric of your identity. Something you did last January is just a distant memory. It’s not you.

When a new change seems too daunting: break it down. Make it smaller.

Once you’ve found the smallest step to take, commit wholeheartedly. Dive in. Experience and learn from it. Witness the process of change playing out before your eyes.

Take Agency of Your Life

If a growth mindset is believing that you can change, taking agency is realizing that the change must come from you.

Take responsibility for your life.

Of course things will happen that are out of your control. Do not waste time focusing on those things.

Take advantage of them when possible, work around them when not. Always learn from them. But don’t feel sorry for yourself.

Grieve, confront and feel your emotions, but avoid externalizing the blame for your misfortunes upon others. You chose your job and career. You chose your friends, your home, the city you live in. You can choose to change them all. It may take years. Life is long; don’t spend the rest of yours in a place you don’t want to be.

The universe doesn’t care about you. It will not move you closer to your goals.

Only you can. So you must.

Smashing my Climbing Plateau at Last

I decided I had to change. To change my outcomes, I’d have to change my inputs. I had to take responsibility and put together a plan. No one was going to come and bestow better climbing ability upon me. My friends weren’t going to do the work for me. It was me or no one. Now or never.

• I bought a hangboard & began training my fingers 2x weekly

• I proactively trained by arms and back to be more robust and injury-proof

• I began using my warm-ups at the climbing wall as dedicated technique drilling opportunities.

Within 2 months I sent my first v6 climb. Eight months later I did my first v7. Two years on, I still keep up these weekly habits. Though I now climb in an area that doesn’t use the same grading system, I’m continuing to make progress. I’m climbing harder than before, in a significantly more muscular body at 81kg (turns out ‘too heavy’ was another limiting belief).

The path was actually simple, I just couldn’t see it from my limited perspective. Complacency leads nowhere.

Now what?

Choose a ‘project’ to start developing. This could be a business project. It could be volunteering in your community. It could be building skills through a new hobby. I don’t know what your interests and current skills are.

This video covers 9 high leverage areas that could be a good place to start:

1. Resistance Training

2. Playing Games

3. Nutrition

4. Sleep

5. Aerobic Training

6. Go Outside

7. Practice Breathwork

8. Meditation

9. Reading

Need help getting started? Struggling to figure out the first steps? Can’t choose where to focus your energy?

Send me a DM. We’ll discuss your problems and get you moving in the right direction.

Thanks for reading.

— John