The Flinch

You can't make yourself feel positive, but you can choose how to act, and if you choose right, it builds your confidence.

You will never be entirely comfortable. This is the truth behind the champion - he is always fighting something. To do otherwise is to settle.

You don’t know anyone at the party, so you don’t want to go. You don’t like cottage cheese, so you haven’t eaten it in years. This is your choice, of course, but don’t kid yourself: it’s also the flinch. Your personality is not set in stone. You may think a morning coffee is the most enjoyable thing in the world, but it’s really just a habit. Thirty days without it, and you would be fine. You think you have a soul mate, but in fact you could have had any number of spouses. You would have evolved differently, but been just as happy. You can change what you want about yourself at any time. You see yourself as someone who can’t write or play an instrument, who gives in to temptation or makes bad decisions, but that’s really not you. It’s not ingrained. It’s not your personality. Your personality is something else, something deeper than just preferences, and these details on the surface, you can change anytime you like. If it is useful to do so, you must abandon your identity and start again. Sometimes, it’s the only way. Set fire to your old self. It’s not needed here. It’s too busy shopping, gossiping about others, and watching days go by and asking why you haven’t gotten as far as you’d like. This old self will die and be forgotten by all but family, and replaced by someone who makes a difference. Your new self is not like that. Your new self is the Great Chicago Fire—overwhelming, overpowering, and destroying everything that isn’t necessary.

You can change the world again, instead of protecting yourself from it.

Everything you are used to, once done long enough, starts to seem natural, even though it might not be.

What you're missing is that the path itself changes you.

No one has a problem with the first mile of a journey. Even an infant could do fine for a while. But it isn't the start that matters. It's the finish line.

Behind every flinch is a fear or an anxiety - sometimes rational, sometimes not. Without the fear, there is no flinch. But wiping out the fear isn't what's important - facing it is.

The truth is that judgment and fear will never stop, but they don't actually do anything.

So if you see no one like you, no one who agrees, don't worry. There are actually hundreds of people like you, and they're waiting for a leader. That person is you.

Success works as a cycle - growth and contraction, balancing and unbalancing - all while you're encountering hurdles that get higher and higher over time.

Challenge yourself by doing things that hurt, on purpose. Have a willpower practice, such as very hard exercise, meditation, endurance, or cold showers. Choose something that makes your brain scream with how hard it is, and try to tolerate it. The goal isn’t just to get used to it. It’s to understand that pain is something you can survive.

Krishnamurti, a great Indian sage, once said: “You can take a piece of wood that you brought back from your garden, and each day present it with a flower. At the end of a month you will adore it, and the idea of not giving it an offering will be a sin.” In other words, everything that you are used to, once done long enough, starts to seem natural, even though it might not be.

The ability to withstand the flinch comes with the knowledge that the future will be better than the past.

You can't settle for reaching other people's limits. You have to reach yours.

But there’s a problem: as you learn, you’re also falling down and getting scars. The pain repels you. You flinch so much that you start fearing and predicting pain. You combine it with the lessons you learned from other people. Finally, you start to protect yourself from things that haven’t even happened. At the end of this path, you go on the defensive. You give up on hurdles. Your world starts getting smaller, instead of bigger. You don’t adapt to what comes at you. You stop following your curiosity and you start being safe. From the inside, this feels like getting wise, but it isn’t. Avoiding the flinch withers you, like an old tree that breaks instead of bending in a storm. Unfortunately, this is where most adults end up. But there’s an antidote. You can make your world get bigger again. The instinct you have is the seed—you just have to cultivate it. The anxiety of the flinch is almost always worse than the pain itself. You’ve forgotten that. You need to learn it again. You need more scars. You need to live.

Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

Behind the flinch is pain avoidance, and dealing with pain demands strength you may not think you have.

The flinch is your real opponent, and information won’t help you fight it. It’s behind every unhappy marriage, every hidden vice, and every unfulfilled life. Behind the flinch is pain avoidance, and dealing with pain demands strength you may not think you have.

The first step is to stop seeing everything as a threat. You can’t will this to happen—it requires wider exposure. If you’ve been punched in the face, you won’t worry as much about a mugger, for example. If you face the flinch in meditation, you don’t worry about a long line at the bank. Build your base of confidence by having a vaster set of experiences to call upon, and you’ll realize you can handle more than you used to. Doing the uncomfortable is key. It widens your circle of comfort. Second, rework the pattern of threat response. Learn habits that move you out of a fight-or-flight choice and into another pattern that’s more effective.

Here’s the thing: the lessons you learn best are those you get burned by. Without the scar, there’s no evidence or strong memory.

You can’t settle for reaching other people’s limits. You have to reach yours. If

From the outside looking in, everyone looks like a conformist. But really, no one is; they’re just waiting for another person to speak up. The question is, why isn’t it you? Do you feel like you’ll be judged, or ostracized? Do you think you’ll be ignored and humiliated? Do you feel impotent? The truth is likely quite different. Everyone wants progress but very few want to lead. So a whole group waits for the first hand to go up before their hands go up, too. Suddenly, a vote goes from a unanimous NO to a unanimous YES. All it took was one voice of dissent—and suddenly, everything changed. The secret to overcoming the flinch is that everyone wants you to succeed. People are looking for proof that you can be amazing so that they can be amazing, too. The Web is so great because you can see others being truly themselves, and succeeding at it. This diminishes the power of the consensus. The pressure diminishes. You can be who you like. Getting in the ring becomes easier because you have supporters. So if you see no one like you, no one who agrees, don’t worry. There are actually hundreds of people like you, and they’re waiting for a leader. That person is you. Stop flinching. Speak up. Join us.

Welcome to the ring. Enter those who dare, and let them share the spoils. Only they have earned it. Will you win? The ring offers no promises. But one thing’s for sure: unless you get in the ring today, you don’t even stand a damn chance. Decide what really matters, and get in the ring for it—now.

Those who are unwilling to face the flinch are obvious, too. Their eyes are dead. Their voices sound defeated. They have defensive body language. They’re all talk. They see obstacles as assailants instead of adversaries. Their flinch is the elephant in the room, and they don’t want to hear about it. Any fight you want to win, a habit of pushing past the flinch can make it happen. Once you have adjusted to the pressure, once you learn to flinch forward, you have the resolve to pass through the impassible. In fact, it becomes certain that you will—it’s only a matter of time.

Somewhere in the world, a lion wakes up every morning not knowing what it’s going to eat. Every day, it finds food. The lion isn’t worried—it just does what it needs to do. Somewhere else, in a zoo, a caged lion sits around every day and waits for a zookeeper. The lion is comfortable. It gets to relax. It’s not worried much, either. Both of these animals are lions. Only one is a king.

be careful what lessons you avoid and whom you listen to. Decide carefully what’s dangerous.

Most people don’t actually want to face the flinch; they just want to be in a movie about it. They want the glory, not the suffering. They don’t want scars because they like being soft. They don’t want to be humiliated; they want respect—they just don’t want to earn it. They want the keys handed to them. But it doesn’t work that way.