Go To War For Your Goals

As you progress on your journey, doubtful questions and thoughts will visit your mind. Not might. Will. This isn't a possibility you should prepare for — it's a guarantee you need to accept right now before you take another step forward.

These questions and thoughts will be distracting. They'll make you consider deviating from your goals. They'll whisper logical-sounding reasons to quit. And if you're not ready for them, they will pull you off course. Not because you're weak. Because you're human. And humans are wired to avoid pain.

That's the problem. Your goals live on the other side of pain.

The Questions That Will Come For You

Why should I keep going?

What's the point of all of this pain?

What am I doing this for?

Is it even worth it?

Every single person who has ever pursued something meaningful has had these exact questions show up uninvited. They come at 5 AM when the alarm goes off and nobody is watching. They come after a failure that makes you question everything. They come in the quiet moments when the initial excitement has worn off and all that's left is the grind.

These questions aren't random. They're tests. And they show up at the exact moment you're closest to a breakthrough — because that's when the resistance is highest.

The Statements That Will Try To Bury You

None of this work will go anywhere.

Nobody close to me is working like this.

I could be doing x, y, and z.

These are even more dangerous than the questions. Because statements feel like facts. They don't ask you to think — they tell you what to believe. And when you're exhausted and beaten down, your brain will accept them without a fight unless you've trained yourself to reject them on contact.

Let me break these down.

"None of this work will go anywhere." You don't know that. You can't know that. Results don't operate on your timeline. I've put in years of work on things that looked like they were going nowhere — and then one day, they went somewhere. Compound effort works exactly like compound interest. It's invisible until it's undeniable.

"Nobody close to me is working like this." Correct. And that's not a reason to stop. That's confirmation you're on a different path. If everyone around you was doing what you're doing, you wouldn't be building anything worth having. Isolation at certain stages isn't a warning sign. It's a requirement.

"I could be doing x, y, and z." Yes, you could. You could be comfortable. You could be average. You could be doing exactly what everyone else does and getting exactly what everyone else gets. If that's what you want, go do it. Nobody is stopping you. But you're still reading this. Which tells me that's not what you want.

The Reality of the War

Steve Siebold said it better than most: "Champions make 'Do or Die' commitments, and they know they'll have to endure an unknown level of suffering along the road to victory."

Unknown level of suffering. Read that again. Unknown. You don't get a menu of what's coming. You don't get to negotiate the terms. You sign up and you find out along the way. That's the deal.

Pain is inevitable on the journey to accomplishing anything worthwhile. Not optional. Not occasional. Inevitable. At times, you will feel as if you are at war — primarily with yourself. Your limited thoughts. Your outdated views. Your undisciplined feelings. Your comfortable habits. These are the real opponents. Not the economy. Not your circumstances. Not the people who doubted you. You.

Push through. Stay in the ring — even if you get knocked out several times. Getting knocked down doesn't disqualify you. Staying down does. There is no referee counting to ten. The only person who decides when the fight is over is you.

Cultivate a deep endurance. Not the shallow kind that lasts a week after watching a motivational video. Real resilience. The kind that's forged through years of choosing to show up when every part of you wants to quit. The kind that becomes part of who you are, not something you have to summon.

This is war. Treat it like one. Prepare like one. And fight like someone who already decided they're not losing.

---

Discipline yourself.