The Relentless Pursuit of Excellence

Hey guys. You know what it is! Day 13 - let’s roll. This is today’s kick-off time. This was my wake up time: And the reason I got to bed so late was that I was doing this: Getting my medical license to start sparring , as I want to have a couple of amateur boxing fights. My overall plan for boxing is to have three fights - win them all - and then finish with boxing. Getting bashed in the head long-term definitely won’t be good for me. _____________ I also discovered that my heart rate is 43 beats per minute apparently - which is close to an athlete I’m told.  Equally, right now I’m listening to this: It really gets my adrenaline flowing. I’ve actually got it playing now :p So much for ‘deep focus’ haha. Furthermore: I’m trying to build in even more accountability into my life but committing to five Quora answers per day. You can check my profile here for posterity In fact, the plan right now is to get my Quora to 1,000 answers as fast as I can. Right now I’m on 34: So today I want to talk about the title.

‘The Relentless Pursuit of Excellence’ 

I learnt this from my application to the SAS. That application ultimately changed my life. That alongside Dave Goggins Concept of ‘The Cookie Jar’. I spoke about this for a course interview recently actually. I’ll come back to this in a minute. I want to get into the psychology of the relentless pursuit of excellence. It’s something we can all learn from - and it’s become a core part of how I try to approach the things I get involved in. Ultimately the idea is - no matter what you’re involved in - there is always room for ‘more’, room to ‘get better’ room to ‘keep improving’. And when you couple this with the reality that humans are fight or flight driven creatures - if you can activate this response in a manner to support your forward-moving progress. You begin to create some incredible momentum for yourself. So for me the challenge is to find what my breaking point is, the point at which I feel everything is falling apart. Right now that would be cognitively. [convertful id="197358"] Having spent much of my 20s pursuing physical endurance (marathons, ultramarathons, ironman, the military application) - I got a good sense of what it’s like to be in gut-busting pain. Alongside sustained pain over a long period of time. Especially with the ultramarathons - two of which I did in 2019. This has set me up nicely in being able to draw from experiences of:

• Running for 13 hours non-stop
• Going through all sorts of pain when trying to bike-ride 180km
• Swimming for hours at a time in a swimming pool
• Going through training with other army recruits and being the worst in the camp
• Almost drowning when going through swim-test training in the army
• Sitting through 8 hours of tattoo lasering without any painkillers several times

This is actually my competitive advantage. I have continuously sought out situations that push and stretch my soul. In those times you will discover a whole range of moments where you want to do nothing else but quit. Furthermore - these are just the events themselves. In the build-up to them, there are countless hours of training and suffering. This is my cookie jar - these are the painful moments I can draw upon when I’m:

• Pushing consistent 430am wake up calls
• Committing to writing a blog every day
• Just committing to writing 1,000 Quora answers before I take a break
• An ultimately - accountability stacking

I want to find my limit - which I have at times when I feel burnt out (momentarily) Go through the pain of feeling overwhelmed. Dealing with it - and then pushing forward again to find the next mental milestone. This actually - is how I do it. This is the place I can draw from to actually just get things done. In the sports world, there are 1000s of folk who are so much more mentally stronger than myself. In the entrepreneurial space, the competition thins somewhat. I definitely am not the best SEO, agency owner, blogger, marketer. I’m getting so many things wrong almost all the time. An obvious one is “Deepak why the hell are you writing this blog?’ Who is it for? Who cares?  Is anyone really reading?” A second one is “Deepak WHY did you write an 80,000-word newsletter. Will you even do anything with that either?” You could build a funnel, provide a value-hack type of thing. Sure I can (and I’ll do that too). What I can say though - is it pays to work hard, be consistent, and to keep pushing with the challenges and the tasks. And at that moment you feel overwhelmed - pause. Then push through and keep looking for the next barrier to bust down. And if you have a cookie jar to draw from you can say: “Is this really harder than running non-stop for 13-hours?” “Is this really harder than training to run non-stop for 13 hours?!” No. God no it isn’t. So with this in mind, I encourage my readers to find things that will push you into your stretch zone. e.g my boxing status update got a bunch of likes and comments. Here’s some videos I’ve recorded since I started taking private lessons a couple of months back: I still need to upload perhaps 5-10 more. But having already had one fight - Muay Thai where I committed to it full time mentally and physically - I can now fit boxing into the rhythm of my life without it mentally affecting me like I used to. When I first did it, it felt very different. And when we become cognizant to the reality - that no matter what situation is - you’ll figure it out - it becomes very powerful. This is why I love hard things. As per my conversation with Sam one of my team last night: When you take this philosophy with your work and your life - you can do incredible things and truly set yourself apart. Right, the time is 5.50am: And I’m at my parents - working like this haha: And my dad just left to start his 14-hour shift: (He’s 63 and just finished an hour of exercise before he left to go to work) Everything in life is relative and about reference points. So I want to wrap up today’s rant with these final thoughts:

• Commit to living in your stretch zone
• Find a couple of things you’ve been through in your life that were INCREDIBLY difficult for you and put them in your cookie jar
• Eat from the cookie jar whenever you face upcoming challenges in your life
• And build momentum and routine - there is huge power in both

That’s me out - catch you tomorrow!