In this edition of the Peak Performance Newsletter, we will be discussing:

• Why comfort is the killer of growth

• Why Sacrifice must be progressively overloaded

• Ways to prioritize your future self

Before we begin,

Author’s Acknowledgement’s:

Before we begin, I have to leave this quick disclaimer. The purpose of this post is not to have a personal attack on someone’s interests or lifestyle, but rather to discuss the concept between choosing the life of comfort in correlation to your future self’s success. On this newsletter, I always value the importance of having free will and leaving my advice to your own interpretation, so by no means should my beliefs or values dictate your life decisions. It is up to you to decide on your own will, though my newsletter acts as a valuable resource to reinforce or complement your journey into self-improvement.

Though considering that you are subscribed to a self-improvement newsletter, I am going to assume that you are serious on this path of self-improvement. This newsletter is dedicated towards young men who strive to have a disciplined lifestyle with the ambition to improve themselves every day in terms of improving their productivity, mental, and physical performance.

With that disclaimer aside, let’s begin!

Why Comfort is the Killer of Growth:

How much comfort would you sacrifice for your future self’s benefit? That is the underlying question for this week’s topic. I’ve touched onto this concept a bit in an earlier post, but I want to dive deeper about how indulging in simple pleasures such as binging on social media, junk food, and video games can really be detrimental to yourself improvement journey.

I would say that it is more likely that your limiting constraint would be the instant gratification (bad habits) that you consume more rather than the delayed gratification (good habits) that you do less of. Besides the consistency, time, and effort that it takes to level up in yourself improvement journey, what could be the other factors that are stopping you from reaching to that point?

Here’s my stance on instant gratification whilst being on self-improvement. Imagine the life that you live currently, you might be (undisciplined but ambitious) in comparison to the life that you probably want (Ambitious but disciplined) The thing about the simple pleasures like video games, junk food, social media etc. is that while it may add some enjoyment, social connection, and of course comfort to your life, think about how many things it subtracts from your life as a result.

There’s quite the common argument online in the self-improvement space on whether you can spend time on instant gratification (bad habits) whilst also being on self-improvement. My answer to that would be is that if you prioritize both the good habits and the bad habits, then you land straight in the middle of the spectrum. You are not bad nor good but just in the middle, you’re neither. By taking this approach, you're getting half of the benefits from both sides and thus just half assed results in both.

Now imagine that life that you would live if you tried to balance both sides, both the good and bad habits.

You must understand that it really isn’t about the issue with time management that is the problem here, but rather the toll that it has on your mental bandwidth. Once you divert your focus onto two separate things that are totally opposite of each other, then you are just playing the losing game at that point.

It would be like trying to swim upstream, while you're trying to make progress in yourself improvement journey, the bad habits that you actively indulge in will just constantly keep pulling you back down until you went back to your original starting position. As a result, you literally make ZERO progress in both pursuits.

On one hand, you are receiving not as much stimulus from the bad habits as you could have gotten and then on the other hand you are making pretty much close to no progress in yourself improvement journey. “The man who chases two rabbits catches neither”.

But there been plenty of people in this space who have actually said that they are able to balance both instant gratification and self-improvement. And with that I would say, “congratulations, you are the outlier in the situation”.

But, if we’re actually truly honest with ourselves here, then most of us would say that we wouldn’t get any fulfillment or growth if we stuck on the path of most people. So why have I been talking about this you might ask?

It revolves around the topic of this week’s discussion, learning how to make sacrifices.

Why Sacrifice Must be Progressively Overloaded:

In this game of self-improvement or in life I might add, you have to be able to prioritize what is most important in order for your future self to succeed, and that takes sacrifices. I can assure you, the deeper you go into self-improvement, the more things that you must be willing to sacrifice or to take away in order to get to this next stage of your life.

I reckon that it is not possible to achieve real results on one thing without needing to sacrifice something else in return. Something always has to go in exchange. Not to be overly cliche, but that is one of the #1 traits that separates the winners from the losers, the ability to go the distance when things get hard. The ability to call the shots in order to get to this next level in yourself improvement journey.

Not to stroke my own ego or anything, but I had to make sacrifices in order to create this newsletter or to even sit down and write this post that you're reading right now. I had to sacrifice comfort for my future self’s success because I know that he has aspirations to scale this newsletter into something that can improve the lives of young men to through the advice that I give on this newsletter.

I’m still quite a beginner when it comes to the newsletter space, but I made a vow for to my future self that I will stay on this path of discipline no matter what setbacks or obstacles that I may have face during this process. It is because I value the life quality of my future self that I am still able to make better decisions that will inevitably lead to his success. The quote or phrase that I want you to leave with today is that “sacrifice must be progressively overloaded”.

It is because of making sacrifices that you’re able to completely transform your life for the better, and that starts by letting go of your vices. Here’s something that I’ll share in my side of the story. This isn’t just for the newsletter portion, but for me to completely align my purpose into self-improvement, I had to give up my 7-year gaming addiction because I knew that it would take up too much time for me to focus onto improving my health and fitness. I didn’t know this at the time, but it was definitely an instinctual thought that acted as the corner stone to take my life to the desired point.

I had to give up my degenerate friend group so that I was able to solely stick on my own ambitions and helped me avoid falling back into the rut of degeneracy, social media addiction, and drugs. Looking back, I was grateful that I made the tough call, even given with the social isolation that I’ve experienced whilst I was trying to figure out my own values and purpose.

And the hardest sacrifice that I had to take was that I needed to become more honest with myself, even if it means that I had to attack my own vices as a result. This helps me create this sense of accountability that will help me stay consistent with my own habits.

Here’s an action step of accountability that I’ll take right now, to be completely honest, this post should be completed 3 days ago, but due to my own lack of time management and social media addiction, my future self which is me now has to deal with my past self being lazy and procrastinating on completing this post which is this section that you’re reading now.

Because of my past self’s own laziness, my future self which is me now has to pay the idiot tax that my past self has caused so that I’m able to upload one post before the end of the week. Currently I am writing this at 11:58 PM by the time that you are seeing this.

Although I do find writing these posts very fulfilling and excuse me for my language, but this shit ain’t easy.

It’s not every time that I find myself being motivated enough to write a post, even though I know that I’ll get it done anyways, it’s just a matter of time when. Being honest with myself helps me face this challenge head on and then think of ways that I’m able to improve upon it. The phrase that I say to myself whenever I’m unable to let go of my vices, I say “If this bad habit was the contributing factor between stopping you and your future self’s success and happiness, would you be able to make the sacrifice”?

Ways to prioritize your future self:

I hope that you are enjoying this post so far, I know that there’s not much actionable steps as far as some of my other posts, but I do find it important that we talk more about the “mindset” side of self-improvement that is just as valuable as learning the habits.

There are really not too many actionable steps that I can give you for this post, but here’s the underlying points that can help you emphasize taking the sacrifices for your future self’s benefit.

• Prioritzing your future self will make you become a better decision maker that will overall lead to your own success. The main key to mastering this framework is to become aware of your own decisions and to second guess yourself before you act or indulge in a bad habit.

• Before acting on a bad habit, always ask yourself, “Will my future self be grateful for this?” If the answer is no, then humbly reflect on the situation and take the appropriate measures so that your future self is grateful for your actions.

• This will take some practice, so you won’t be able to be in this state of awareness for every single opportunity. But, once the opportunity does present itself, then capitalize on that moment and gain experience to in order to level up this framework.

• When handling your vices (bad habits), always be in the framework of progressively overloading sacrifice. Understand that sacrifice is necessary which determines your future self’s success. Be willing to make the tough decision and put these two desires on a scale. “What matters to my future self-more, his aspirations of the future or the vices that will drag him down further away from his goal?'“

Though the number 1 secret tactic that I use to passively become a more rational thinker and make better decisions is… *drumroll* Meditation. We will be discussing this skill in a future post.

But until next time, peace out 😎✌

Did you enjoy the post? Did you hate it? Did it help you out? Tell me in the comment section below. Also, if you haven’t already, feel free to subscribe to the Peak Performance Newsletter to stay up to date with the latest posts on improving your productivity, mental, and physical performance, it’s a win-win for the both of us.

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