If I go back to the first half of my life, I would say I was very lazy, made a lot of excuses, and rarely did anything hard or stepped out of my comfort zone. And if I hadn’t made any changes, my life would be vastly different from what it is today.
So I decided to figure out, and this is why I became so obsessed with neurology and psychology, whether I can understand the psychology behind how I think and the neurology of how my brain actually works. I can figure out how to take action, do the hard things and grow.
And so that’s what we’re going to dive into today, and we’re going to go over 4 different steps of how to actually trick your brain. Until it can do hard things.
How to Train Your Brain to Do Hard Things
Step 1: Understand the Fear Behind Your Resistance
Step 1: I stopped fighting my resistance and started getting curious about why it existed in the first place. So you might think you’re lazy. I thought I was lazy, but you’re not. You’re actually afraid. You’re afraid of something, and you might not know what it is at this moment, right now. It’s usually subconscious.
But we want to identify what you’re afraid of. So neuroscience teaches us that resistance isn’t laziness. It’s protection. The brain’s number one job is to keep you safe, not to make you successful. And it knows that in this moment, inside of your comfort zone, you’re safe and you’re alive.
And even though you consciously know that if you go and build your business, you’re not going to die and there’s no danger in building your business, your brain- the amygdala, the fear part of the fear centre of your brain is going no, no, no. We don’t know what exists out there.
Don’t get out of your comfort zone. So it’s not to make you successful; it’s to make you safe. So anytime you approach something that is unfamiliar to you, that’s going to require a lot of effort or involve some sort of risk, even though it’s usually not a pain-or-death type of risk, it’s like I have to risk putting myself out there and maybe get rejected or judged.
Anytime you put yourself out there like that, your amygdala lights up, which is one of the oldest parts of your brain, and it’s like a repeated warning signal. Do not do it. And so it might look like you’re just lying on the couch or just scrolling on Instagram, and I’m like, you’re like, Oh my God, I’m so lazy. It’s like, no, no, there is a fear that is preceding all of that.
You can consciously know that there is no physical danger in making a cold call if you’re new in sales. You can know there’s no real physical danger in picking up a piece of plastic, hitting a couple of numbers, and talking to another person on the other end.
But you still feel terrified. Do it as if you know you’re walking into the dark at night in the middle of a forest. Why? Why do you feel terrified? Well, there’s no actual threat; you will not die, but you still feel the same physical fear inside your body, so you don’t do it. You know you can. You can consciously know that there’s no real physical danger from starting a new business, but you still feel terrified of starting that business.
Even though you consciously want to do it, why? Once again, there’s no actual threat. You will not die from starting the business, but you still feel the fear, so you don’t do it. In turn, you do something else. You have some form of procrastination.
I prefer the phrase avoidant behaviour instead of procrastination. Avoidant behaviour means you’re doing something else instead of doing the thing that you need to do. And then you call that doing something else being lazy when, in reality. You’re afraid.
So what do you do? You delay. And once again, you delay not because you’re lazy. You delay because you’re afraid of something. There is some sort of fear. So the first shift I made was this. Instead of judging my fear and my resistance, I got really curious, questioned it and listened to it. So I started thinking, like, OK, I want to grow my business, but I’m not doing it. I’m scrolling on Instagram instead.
So I started getting really curious. Like, I was like asking myself; hey, what are you afraid will happen if you grow this business? Like, what’s your biggest fear? What’s the story that you’re trying to protect yourself from? What are you afraid of? And I started to get really curious. I started to find pieces of myself I never really knew were running the show behind the scenes, unconsciously.
So you need to make the unconscious conscious. And bring it to consciousness. And then you need to write it down with pen and paper and work through it as if it’s a math problem. Ask yourself questions around it.
Try to poke holes in it. I always say, ask yourself as many questions as you can, poke holes in your fears, and poke holes in your beliefs. You know, am I, am I really going to die? If I pick up the phone and call somebody. No. Is it really that big of a deal? Not really. They might say no. They might hang up on me.
Am I blowing this out of proportion? Actually, I am. So for me, what I discovered was really profound. Most of the resistance wasn’t about the task at all. It was about some sort of fear I had about what I thought would happen, and I realised that once I brought it to the surface, the fear was completely ridiculous.
You know, the fear of being judged or failing again or losing control. Once I saw the fear for what it was and named it, the emotional charge behind it loosened. It wasn’t like it just completely went away, but it was like, instead of fighting somebody in the dark, I just flipped the light on, and I was like, oh, there he is.
So I started questioning it and poking holes in it. I found out that all my fears were completely nonsensical. And as I started questioning and poking holes in it, the control over me weakened. So you have to learn to question yourself more often.
And I realised throughout this process, I wasn’t lazy; I was just scared of something. When I brought that fear to the surface, I was able to work through it.
So that’s step number one: I stopped fighting my resistance and got really serious with myself.
Step 2: Rewire Your Identity to Do Hard Things
The second thing is that I rewired my identity around what difficulty meant and what difficulty meant to me.
So the root of sustained behaviour change is an identity shift. Like, the root of everything is that I need to shift my identity, because if I don’t, I won’t. The reason why, you know, 80 to 95% of people who lose 20 lbs gain all of it back within two years. 70% of people who win the lottery go broke within five years because their actions and reality shifted, but their identity didn’t.
And so you don’t consistently do something; you don’t consistently do hard things. Because, you know, you should do them because you believe that’s who you are.
I am somebody who does hard things. Now, believe me, for the longest time, that wasn’t me. I backed away from doing anything hard. And I would just throw excuses at everything as to why I wasn’t having the life that I wanted, you know, and I also thought that I was lazy, and I thought that I wasn’t mentally strong enough to create the life that I wanted to.
So I started looking at myself differently and speaking to myself differently. And no joke, I’m not, I’m not kidding you. Like, as a child, I was obsessed with basketball. Like obsessed with it. I wanted to be in the NBA more than anything else. And even though I wanted it more than anything else, I was the type of person where every time I would shoot, I would think to myself, I hope I don’t miss.
That’s the type of person that I was throughout my entire life, though. I hope to miss. I hope what I miss. And I started saying that to myself as I got older and learned this in my 20s, as I changed the way I spoke to myself, and I stopped saying, “I hope I don’t miss.” And I started saying to myself, it’s going in and I get it, this sounds dumb. It’s not a huge difference, but it actually worked.
And of course I still miss shots. But what happened was, I became more confident when I took shots. In turn, I made more shots and took more shots because I felt more confident, and it helped me get better.
Now I realised that’s just about basketball. That’s a true story about basketball for me. But I’m talking about how my entire life was the same as that analogy I just gave you. You know, when I, when I worked out, the thing that I always thought for years was I can’t wait for this to be over. I can’t wait. Like, can I? Can I just get through this? That’s why I always thought about working out.
Now, you know, when I shifted in my 20s, when I started becoming aware of this and started trying to do harder things. And as I tried to become more mentally resilient, I started telling myself, “I’m strong, and this is easy.” I’m strong, and this is easy. And try this. Please try this if you’re the type of person who, in the middle of a workout, thinks, “I can’t wait for this to be over.” You’re going to notice that you are actually weaker when you do that.
But if you tell yourself you’re strong, you’re actually going to lift more weight. And it’s not some weird woo-woo self-development BS. Try it for yourself and tell me I’m crazy, and what’s weird is I started working out longer. I started lifting heavier. And then I started doing what I needed, like the things that needed to be done in my business and in my life and in my relationships from the viewpoint of the benefit that I’m going to get at the end from doing the hard things. Not the hard thing I need to do, but the benefit I’ll get in the long run from doing it.
And so I decided to start seeking out hard things to do that were harder for me because I wanted to build mental resilience. And so I remember back in 2014, like way before people started doing cold plunges and it became this huge thing people did.
I remember finding Wim Hof, and he was talking about how it changed his mind. And so in 2014, I started doing cold plunges. I wanted to test my mental boundaries. I wanted to make myself mentally stronger. And so this is before, like, you. Go buy a cold plunge; like, they didn’t even exist on the Internet.
So I bought a large children’s pool, filled it with water, put it in my backyard, and kept it out there all winter. Sometimes it froze over; I remember one time it froze solid. So it was cold. And I was like, I’m going to just do this.
Because I want to. I’ve never wanted to do a cold plunge. I’ve done it because of who I’m becoming in the process of doing it. So I rewired my internal statements and narratives from, like, “I avoid doing hard things,” or “I’m lazy, too.” I grow from doing hard things. I will do today what others will not, so that tomorrow I can do what others cannot.
And I did, like, repeat affirmations. I reinforced this identity with micro-actions daily. By choosing to take cold showers, by deciding to walk up the stairs instead of taking the elevator, by seeking discomfort, by finishing a workout. And going two extra reps instead of stopping at 10, forcing myself to follow through on everything that I said I would. And each time I followed through, it wasn’t about the result. This is, this was one of the most important things. It wasn’t about the result. It’s the fact that I showed up; the result was just whatever, but I showed up. I did what I didn’t want to do, and I built my mental resilience regardless of the end result.
That gave me confidence, and I started attaching my worth to the effort, not the end result. I did it, I showed up, I said I was going to do it. The end result’s the end result, but I’m going to pay attention to the effort, and my self-worth is attached to the effort because my brain is always watching.
Your brain is always watching. Waited to be told what kind of person it’s operating for. So I train mine to believe, over and over and over again, through tons. Tons of repetition. That growth is safe, that we seek hard things, that failure is data, that the hard path is the path that I decide to go through.
And so I change my identity. I’m not someone who does hard things. From that, I became someone who does hard things; I don’t back away from the challenge. I’m someone who goes after the hard path. And so that’s the second thing that I did: I really tried to wire into myself the way that I looked at difficulty. Growth comes on the other side of doing something difficult. So that’s number two.
Step 3: Train Your Brain to Find Reward in Challenges
Number three is I started associating pleasure with challenge. And so pleasure is the brain’s motivation chemical, and it spikes not just at rewards, but it also spikes at the anticipation of rewards. And what we often misunderstand is that this reward quote, UN quote, doesn’t have to be external.
So your brain releases feel-good response. You know, when you go and you see an amazing sunset, or when you get off the plane in the country that you wanted to go to, it releases tons of feel-good response when you do those amazing things, but it also releases dopamine. Just when you feel good. And we can make ourselves feel good just by any of our thoughts.
So it doesn’t have to be external, like travelling to a country, falling in love or having an amazing dinner. It can be internal as well. It can be an internal sense of pride.
I’m so proud of myself for showing up and doing what I said I was going to do for, you know, we can releaseFeel-good response by having a sense of meaning and working towards it. We can release dopamine by finding what we’re aligned with and staying in alignment with it. We can release Feel-good response by feeling fulfilled, by thinking about how excited we are for our own growth.
And so I rewired the association. I stopped thinking of hard tasks as chores, as dull things that had to be done. I started thinking about hard things and linking them in my mind to expansion. It was being better. So I rewired how I thought about what I was doing, and every time I chose to do something hard, I didn’t wait until the end. Feel good, I told myself.
This is what evolution feels like. I need this to grow. This is a good thing. Thank you so much for showing up for us. And I spoke to myself like someone else was with me during the workout or the meditation.
I’m so proud of you. I’m so glad that you’re doing this. And as I’m talking to myself. These positive ways are like I’m the biggest hype man ever; I start feeling really good. I’m linking the thing that I’m doing, this challenging thing, with my mind going, hey, this is good. This challenge is good. It’s not something to be afraid of. We actually like doing this, and I’m training my brain.
The same way that you train a dog, you know, you just keep, if he pees inside, you take it outside; if he pees inside, take it outside, and over time he goes, well, I guess I just pee outside. My brain goes, we do hard things, we get dopamine, we do hard things, we get dopamine, we do hard things, we get dopamine. Hey, over time you bring us;
I just want to do some hard things ‘cause it gives me Feel-good response. So I don’t need to back away. I’m not in danger. I’m growing. I am creating a better life for myself first, then for my wife and my children. For the world, I’m creating a better life for everybody that I can. It is the greatest form of self-love because I am doing it from the heart.
I’m choosing to do the hard thing. For me, it doesn’t take any self-discipline to do the easy thing. Doing the hard thing takes a lot of self-discipline. The hard thing is always what makes your life better. And so I’m doing this. For me. I’m doing this. That’s her greatest form of self-love, and my nervous system began to like it, and it’s not an overnight thing. Over years, I began to recognise that challenge was a sign of Feel-good response and becoming happier. And self-trust, not stress.
And so the hard thing kind of like became sacred for me. And so I really rewired that in myself. So that’s number three.
Step 4: Give Pain and Effort a New Meaning
Number 4 is that I rewrote the meaning of pain. And let me explain what I mean by this. For a long time, I thought pain of effort meant I was doing something wrong. Like, if it felt hard, heavy or uncomfortable. Maybe. Maybe it wasn’t aligned, maybe I wasn’t ready, maybe this wasn’t meant for me.
But then I realised something was really crazy. Is that pain is the price of growth. You want to grow a muscle? It hurts a lot. To grow that muscle, you’ve got to tear that thing apart, and it regrows stronger. Yes, changing yourself hurts. Yes, building a new life takes energy.
Yes, showing up every single day when no one’s clapping for you is really exhausting. But the pain of hard work is nothing compared to the pain of regret. And so I rewrote the meaning of pain in my head.
And so you have to understand, like, you either basically work so hard on becoming the better version of yourself, or you stay in the mental prison of your mind wishing for a better life every day until the day you die.
You know, like, for instance, I always hear from people that growing a business is hard. It takes a lot of energy. And guess what? It is? It’s hard; it really takes a lot of energy. You know what’s harder, though? It’s harder in my mind to wake up on Monday morning when the alarm goes off, and I have to get out of bed for a job that I don’t enjoy and then get showered and get dressed and make my breakfast and get out the door before I’m going to be late to get to a job that I don’t enjoy and then drive and get stuck in traffic for some minutes for a job that I don’t enjoy and then spend 8 hours of my life every single day doing a job that I don’t enjoy and then leaving there and getting in traffic again.
I come back from a job I don’t enjoy and know I have, what, 3 hours until bedtime, so I eat some food, watch some Netflix, and scroll on my phone. My head is going, I’ve got to get to bed because I have a job that I don’t enjoy tomorrow, and I have to have what, every single day for the next 30 years, 40 years? If you’re lucky enough to retire, whoa, like that’s way harder than the effort it takes to build. That’s so much harder than the effort that it takes to build a business.
And so I made a choice. Like, pain is inevitable, but I’m going to choose the pain that I want. I’m going to choose the type of pain that leads to somewhere that I want to be. I’m going to choose the type that shapes me into a better person. It creates a better life for me.
So I’m going to choose the pain that will give me the life that I want. And something really unexpected happened. The more I leaned into that effort, the more I actually enjoyed it. The more I trained my mind to expect the challenge, to expect the pain, the more it became a sacred thing for me.
And I felt more joy in doing that. And I felt more confident in myself for showing up because I was doing what I truly felt that I should be doing in this life. Not like, oh man, I wish I could be doing something else. And the pain didn’t go away. It’s just I finally gave my pain meaning. Yes I gave my pain meaning.
Now, when you think of challenges. And I think about challenges, and I look at them, it’s like, yeah, that’s going to be a hill to climb. That’s going to be hard, but it seems like a good thing. They’re going to make me better. And I remember that this is the price I pay for the future that I want. I have to be willing to pay that price. Then the weight might
I’d be willing to pay that price. And the weight might be heavy, but carrying that weight’s going to make me strong. And so you have to understand, there’s pain either way, but it’s way more painful to do something that you’ll love for the rest of your life.
And so I rewrote what pain meant inside of my head. ## Build a Stronger Relationship With the Person You’re Becoming
Ultimately, I want you to understand this: as I did all this, I started to fall in love with who I was becoming. I didn’t just trick my brain through hacks. I partnered with my brain. We did it together, with compassion, curiosity and commitment. And I showed my unconscious, my subconscious, that it was safe to grow.
There was no danger in growth. I wasn’t going to die from growing. And so I reprogrammed my internal narrative from protection to expansion. And then, most importantly, I stopped chasing easy and started getting excited about doing harder things because I started to see how I was evolving.
And so the hard things are still hard. They aren’t less hard, but now I’ve learned to run towards them because I see the benefit that’s on the other side. And really, I like who I’m becoming. And I think that if you just start doing harder things and reprogram yourself to do harder things, you’ll like who you become as well.
