how to (actually) lock in

The price of becoming serious

00:00Alright, hello and welcome to this training. As you can see from the title, what we're going to be covering today is the price of becoming serious. And as you can see from the overview, what we're going to be talking about more specifically is first the overview itself.

00:14They need to leave the weight of sacrifice, the return to life, the review, your action items for the day are the next few days. And with that said, if you want to work with me one-on-one, make sure to book a call from the link in the description.

00:25If you want this document along with this training, make sure to join the free community from the link in the description. And if you want weekly newslet ters helping you improve every aspect of your life, then make sure to join the free newsletter from the link in the description.

Why you need to leave your normal life

00:40With that said, let's get started and talk about DNEED to leave. So, there are seasons in your life where a normal life will keep you normal, playing it simple, meaning, if you keep doing the same things you've always done, you 'll keep getting the same results and that's just how it goes.

00:57Your normal life has a real poll on you. And if you keep giving it your mornings, your nights, your attention and your little private excuses, you'll keep showing up as the same person you said you were done being. And that poll looks like reaching for your phone before your feet even had the floor in the morning, or they used to going out in the evening when you already know you need to go to the gym the next day in the morning.

01:22Or eating clean until 8 at night and then blowing the whole day in the kitchen. Each one of these is small enough to defend, which is exactly why people keep defending it. But those small things get serious once they repeat. Your body starts expecting comfort before effort and after a while the work feels heavier than it needs to.

01:41You essentially train yourself to be interrupted, suit and answered way too quickly. So you'll feel the cost as irritation with yourself. You 'll say you want a different life and then watch another day prove the same old thing all over again.

01:57It's a rough feeling, but it's a useful one if you sit with it instead of running away from it . And it points you straight to where the lie is.

Simplifying your life around one goal

02:06So here's the thing. You need a season where you leave some things alone for a while, meaning just as many distractions as possible need to be cut off. And nobody's asking you to vanish forever or turn into some cold person who hates their life.

02:22But rather you make your life intentionally simpler for a small stretch of time so that your main goal can finally get enough of you and your attention to actually matter. And you keep the things that make you stable, like sleep, obviously training work and a handful of real relationships that make you more honest and maybe prayer or reflection of that sort of thing.

02:44Everything that keeps you well stays exactly where it is and the cutting starts where this cat are against. So what goes is the extra stuff you already know is costing you late nights cheap pleasure random availability. The need to explain your plan to people who want to live with a consequence if you waste another year.

03:03And the annoying part is that yes, the old life won't always look bad. Some of it will look normal. Some of it will look friendly, even healthy from the outside. And that's exactly where you trick yourself if you're not paying attention. You will tell yourself you're being reasonable and a lot of the time you're really just leaving room for the old patterns to just come back.

When balance becomes an excuse

03:26The time is good in the right season. I'm not knocking balance, but in a building season balance can turn into the word you hide behind when you're scared to go all in. Going out might be fine later, right? And the same goes for dating and the extra social time.

03:41Right now the question's simpler than that. It is is the thing pulling the energy away from the main thing that you need to be doing from the one goal you've said matters most to you right now. And that question gets uncomfortable if you answer it honestly because you'll notice a lot of what you're holding onto is simply expensive for the season you're in.

04:00Once the price is actually visible, the decision to set something down for a while gets much easier to make.

Protecting your mornings and evenings

04:08And so once you see the cost, the choice becomes pretty simple. You decide what gets access to you before the day starts making it's the mass. Your first hour, your last hour in the best part of your mind get chosen in advance and mornings probably got to get boring for a while.

04:25You need to wake up, leave the phone alone sit with the goal and get the first real piece of work done. It's not fancy, but there's less room for the day to run you before you've chosen who you're going to be. And your evening needs to have that same respect because a lot of people lose tomorrow at 11 to 9.

04:45They stay up to late, they scroll to long, they answer things they could have waited, then they surprise when the next morning feels heavier. Once you've made the choice, life gets simpler. Simple still costs effort, but at least the effort finally gets one direction.

05:02You protect the few things that strengthen you and repeat them until the discipline stops feeling like some big event. It's just how you are every day. From the outside it might look

Why real transformation can look boring

05:14like kind of plain, you know, it might look boring to do the up to people outside of your self, right? Fewer plans less explaining and a lot more alone time with work that nobody sees yet. And that's fine. A lot of real becoming looks unimpressive while it's still happening.

05:31And this is where you need the actual material, the body that wants comfort, the page that you keep avoiding, the training session that you don't feel like doing. And underneath all of it, that our work or nothing dramatic happens except you don't leave.

05:47So the first proof won't always show up on the outside is the fact that you kept the day. You said you'd do something and you actually did it without needing some big feeling to carry you there. And the smaller life starts to feel weird at first to, right?

06:01Because it's a lot simpler. It 's a lot more. It's a lot less stimulating. And so less input can feel like emptiness when when you're used to being stim ulated constantly. But after a bit, you'll start seeing what was actually running you. And you'll see that cravings show up and you 'll see what cravings show up and when.

06:22And so certain people will turn out to pull you out of yourself. And that will get very obvious, very quickly. And what you reach for when your work becomes a bit more difficult and when you feel lonely and when nobody's checking will tell you the rest .

06:38So seeing that will hand you back some control. It's not going to be perfect. You're still human and you'll still have off days. But you'll stop pretending the problems some mystery when the same few things have been basically sitting there and playing side for months.

06:52So with that said, let's

The weight of sacrifice

06:54actually cover the weight of sacrifice. So here's the concept underneath everything I just said and it comes straight out of chemistry. There's a thing

Activation energy and the threshold for change

07:03called activation energy and before two elements can actually combine it to something new. There's a specific amount of energy that has to get crossed first, right? And the key word here is crossed, right? You can add small amounts of energy slowly patiently over a long stretch of time and nothing will happen.

07:22The action only cares whether you've hit that threshold, whether you've crossed that line. If you said below that line, all the patient effort dissipates as this bit never happened. And the moment you cross it, the whole thing fires at once.

07:36So you need to think about like think about it like lighting a fire. You can hold a match near a piece of wood for a long amount of time and still get absolutely nothing. Why? Well, the wood isn't gradually getting more ready. The longer you wait because there's a specific temperature it needs to reach before it actually catches.

07:55And until it gets there, nothing's happening no matter how patient you are. So times spent trying was never the variable that mattered. Concentration is what crosses that line a burst of heat focused and sustained aimed right at the thing that needs to change.

08:10So personal change works the exact same way. Most people treat it like a slow accumulation problem. Figuring that a bit more consistency a bit more discipline spread across a few areas will eventually stack up and shoulders also. And sometimes that's true.

08:26Other times nothing changes because the effort spread across too many things to ever concentrate into something that actually crosses the line. So think about how your energy actually moves through a normal

How distractions divide your limited energy

08:37day. The goal gets some of it. So do the late night. So does the phone first thing in the morning and it doesn't other small pleasures. Some of those things pulls from the same limited supply and that supply keeps getting divided up. So no single area ever really builds up enough to matter.

08:53Life stays roughly the same. And you can see clearly you can see this clearly in someone who 's been trying to change for a long time. They've had the realizations. They've read the books. They've said the goals. They've watched the videos.

09:06They've started the routines. In two years in, there's still more or less the same person. Their life is still more or less the same. The total energy pointed at the goal never built up enough to cross the line. And every step forward had something pulling the supply back.

09:21So the leaks are rarely obvious. Honestly, most of the time they're very hidden, which is what makes them easy to ignore. Fifteen small things that drain the supply each with a reasonable excuse each looking harmless on its own. But together, they keep you permanently under the line.

09:39So close enough to feel like progress while the reaction never actually fires while you never actually cross the threshold. So you stay divided. One part of you keeps reaching towards who you want to be while another part still feeds the old version.

09:54So removal is what closes that

Sealing the leaks through removal

09:56gap. You take enough of the table that the energy finally has somewhere to build until something actually changes. And the real question is how you seal the leaks and point enough of the supply at the one thing that actually needs to change.

10:10A new habit or a better morning routine won't get that done on it. So what does it is a season and deliberate contains stretch where you cut back what your energy is pointing towards so that the concentration can finally build. And the reaction can actually

Entering a hermit season

10:25fire. I call it the hermit season. And it's a joke to the degree, but not really. So it's a set period where you gather was been spread across everything that wants a piece of you and pointed at the one thing that needs it most. Just long enough to cross the threshold and let the reaction begin.

10:44And that's really what it comes down to sacrifice. Right. Clean on glamorous repeated removal of the things keeping you under that line. Most people hear the word and picture punishment really. It's a lot simpler than that. It's just the toll that you have to pay to cross the line.

11:00And once you pay it, the energy finally gets to build. And that's what produces the change that consistency alone never really gets you. So the desire doesn't disappear by the

Creating space between urges and actions

11:11way. It will ask for the food, the phone, the night out, the little escape. A serious season just teaches you that the desire can speak without getting obeyed, which is a humongous difference. Most people just obey every desire they have. And that gap between the urge and the action.

11:27That's where a lot of the real work begins. So your body will probably complain when the old comfort gets caught, right? That's fine . It just means it's been answered too fast for too long and now it's adjusting to a different order. The complaining usually lasts a week or two and then it starts to quiet down as the new rhythm settles in.

11:46And your mind will try to barge in too. It will find very reasonable arguments for why this one time doesn't count. Why you deserve a break. Why the rule can bend today. You can hear the argument out that it finished talking and then do the thing anyway.

12:02So every time you do that you get a bit stronger in a very practical way, because the gap between the urge and the action starts to widen and that gap is really where your real choice is. Because you went from getting an urge to immediately satisfying that urge.

12:18Regardless of how short term it is. And now you're actually creating space between the urge and actually you satisfying the urge if you satisfy it all. So you might not see it in the mirror or the bank account right away, but you'll feel certain things that used to own you start to feel optional now.

12:36And so the physical world, world, pace, save a lot later.

Working without immediate results

12:39That's just how it works. You can eat clean, train, work deeply, cut the obvious leagues for weeks. Before you actually see the result you were hoping for and that delay is exactly where most people quit. And still you 're entitled to the work towards a goal.

12:54You're not entitled to the outcome. So at the end of the day you might not even get the outcome in the specific season, but you 're not entitled to the outcome anyway. You're just entitled to the work. And so most people quit in that stretch where you know they are doing all the things that they need to be doing and yet you don't they don't see results still.

13:18And they do the right thing for a bit. They look around. They see nothing dramatic has really changed in their lives and they decide it's not working. However, something is working, right? You're building the ability to hold the standard without needing instant proof.

13:33And basically you're training your mind for delayed gratification. And that's kill is what every later result gets built on. And here's the part that I

Inner change before outer evidence

13:46think most people skip too fast . The inner change happens before the outer change happens , right? Before the outer evidence shows up. You can sacrifice something today and see nothing happened today. No money, no transformation, no sign from the outside that anything changed.

14:03And yet something did, right? What changed is small but real. You kept one promise and broke one loop. A craving rose. You got you watched it and you let it pass without it becoming the next next action. Nobody sees that, right? Only you know about that.

14:18It's private. But if you repeat it enough, your relationship with yourself will genuinely change. You'll start trusting yourself in a way that's hard to fake through affirmations or just mindset content, right? Is the kind of trust that comes from watching yourself do the boring difficult useful thing when there's no reward in the room and nobody's really tracking.

14:39And the first aspect works the same way, meeting the standard when the old comfort was right there available with nobody around to catch the slip, build it in a way that talking about standards want. And so at some point this gets

Making an offering to your future self

14:53almost spiritual. You're giving up something real before the higher thing has fully shown up . The old pattern gets caught while the new one still feels unstable. The way you're making an offering to a future version of you before that version arrives to confirm it was worth it.

15:07And that takes a kind of patient's most people never trained. And the act of kind of patients where you keep doing the work, you keep protecting the day we 're not talking about passive patients. And you're doing the work, you keep protecting the day you keep saying no to the obvious leaks and you let the time handle what effort alone can't.

15:29So the physical results comes eventually. Usually later than you'd like. And once it starts it tends to move very, very quickly. And the proof shows up in pieces, right? You'll sit longer with this comfort than you used to and you'll recover a real cost here as well.

15:47Some things won't get as much of you during this season. You'll miss somethings. You'll feel lonely at times and you'll watch people around you doing the

Loneliness, discomfort, and the cost of change

15:59exact things you're currently saying no to. And the part of you will feel the weight of that gap. And that loneliness doesn't need to turn into a whole story, right? You don't have to make it bigger than it is. And it's mostly just the sound of your life getting quieter and the old distractions are now gone.

16:18The new self hasn't fully shown up yet. And so there's a stretch in between that can feel a bit empty. But that stretch is simply the space the new thing needs to grow into. So you still need to take care of yourself and that 's inside that space though series season isn't as I said earlier.

16:36It's not punishment.

Protecting your health during a serious season

16:38It's not self punishment. You still need sleep. You still need movement. You still need some human connection and enough honest reflection to stay to stay clear. And the table things stay in place, the entire season. What goes is the familiar stuff that was keeping you weaker than you should me.

16:55And so if the cuts are making your brittle anxious or so isolated that you're starting to spiral and somethings off with a plan. The whole point of the season is to make you more capable. So if you're cutting stuff that is er oding basic functioning, then you've drifted away from the purpose of the season.

17:14Just what you're cutting and leave the standard itself, although. So the version of sacrifice that actually works is almost boring. No dramatic announcements, no public declar ations, no performance of seriousness. You just know what has to go.

Quiet sacrifice without public validation

17:27You let it go and you get back to the work. And there's a poem to tell people to announce the season to explain the changes to tell people you're in this mode in this hermit season. To get some recognition and approval and validation for your commitments.

17:41Don't do that . That's the same part of you that wants approval. And if you feed it now, it will eventually be the thing that breaks the season. To whoever genuinely needs to know let the rest show up in the results. Tell whoever genuinely needs to know and let the rest show up in the results.

18:01Now discipline compounds when you keep making the same choice without any fans, right? Wake up, you train, you do the work, you protect the night and you review the week. You point a plain life hard in one direction for long enough and to all surprise you with what it produces.

18:17So that's it. Let's actually cover the return to life. What happens afterwards? So this kind of season isn't necessarily meant to last forever, right? You pull back so you can come back with more to get. And when you return,

Returning to life after the season

18:30you'll be less easily moved. You'll be less hungry for approval from people who are in there while you are doing the work. And more capable of holding on to the thing that you said you goal, it's just based it can turn into a void. So you need to get specific about what the season is actually for.

18:52So what helps with that is having a rough timeline as well

Choosing a clear target and timeline

18:57. So 30 days to clean up the inputs and restore some basic order. 90 days to build real work capacity a year if the goal is big enough to need that kind of runway. The length doesn't really have to be perfect or humongous, but the season needs some kind of a shape.

19:14Or it will fade back into a normal life without you ever noticing. And you can set the dates from this date to this date. And you'll want to track a few things during this phase. It's just enough data that you stop being able to lie to yourself about how it's actually going.

19:32So you need to track sleep. And I think you need to track this first since everything else that grades once your sleep is off. So a simple note of when you went down to sleep, and

What to track during your hermit season

19:42when you got up is enough to catch any drift before it costs you a week. Another thing is whether you showed up to the gym or not, or if you found a reason not to write, the record matters more than the quality of any single showed up to the gym or you found an excuse not to.

20:02It's simple yes or no. Then what you eat should be tracked as well. And what you eat decides how much energy the goal actually gets. So write down the meals that went off plan and what was happening right before them. And then a pattern will show up within a couple of weeks.

20:20Another one is real what our spent on the thing that actually matters. But count only the time where the work that work was genuinely concentrated versus distracted and half-brecent. So I've always said that an hour of focused work will always out perform six hours of distracted work.

20:47If not by quantity of work, then by quality for sure. And so tracking the difference will show you what your real is what you reached for when your work started getting a bit more difficult or boring or hard. Since that will tell you basically where your distractions are.

21:07It will tell you where your mind wanders to note the time of the day and the trigger and then the same two or three culprits will most likely keep showing up. Now once the season's done its work, pleasure gets to come back in and you relate to it differently from a more grounded place.

21:28And you might not even see the same things as pleasure anymore. A meal can just be a meal again , a night out can be just a night out. You'll be the one doing the choosing this time and you'll feel the difference almost immediately. And so the same thing can be fine in one season and genuinely expensive and another going out dating spending loosely.

21:49None of it is evil on its own by itself. It comes down to what season you're in, how often it repeats and whether it's pulling you from the thing you said was your actual priority right now. So you need to bring things back slowly and only the ones that actually serve the life you're trying to build.

22:04Right. Some things were cut for a season and once you've been away from them for a while, you 'll see exactly what they were costing you and you don't want them back anymore. And you won't need to tell anyone you changed. You'll have lived through a stretch where the day matched what you said

Bringing pleasure back intentionally

22:21and that does something that, you know, it does something to your relationship with yourself that you don't necessarily have to express it all you just know . At first it will feel more like evidence than confidence. You know that you can hold a standard for yourself when it's inconvenient and you already have.

22:37And you'll notice more follow through. You'll ask for hold you longer before you find a reason to leave them and more of what you start will actually get finished. So the work won't need to feel good and more before it actually gets your full attention.

22:53And you'll catch the old excuses while they're still forming the distractions will get more visible, faster and you'll need less emotional buildup before you actually do the thing. People will notice and respect that others will feel uncomfortable with it and try to pull you back towards the version of you they actually understood others will not notice anything at all.

23:13You don't need to manage any of

How the season rebuilds self-trust

23:14those directions or reactions, right? Less access is usually enough. Lexus less explaining less willingness to play the old role just to keep things comfortable and to keep the boat from rocking. You don't need to tell anyone anything about it.

23:28You just stop and the relationship finds its new level on its own. After a while you'll also gravitate towards people who make you better and more honest. The ones who actually help you squander your life while calling it fun will stand out sharply once you've got and the ones that help you squander your life while calling it fun will stand out very clearly once you've got some distance from it.

23:54And the space between you and them will grow on its own. So don't over complicate the beginning don't wait for perfect conditions or full plan pick the goal pick the length

Handling other people’s reactions

24:03name the three things you're cutting and three things you're protecting right them down and then just start living is start taking action on that's basically what a hermit season is. Keep it simple enough to actually do one may go three cuts three protected things and one weekly review where you actually look at the week straight and make one or two adjustments that's it you don't need any more structure than that to start.

24:27And make the cuts specifically or or they want you want to actually make them social media as a cut means absolutely nothing so right down no phone in the first hour or the specific social media platforms you're honest all in from your phone.

24:42The same goes for eating better which becomes no food outside of the plant right and going to protect need that seems specificity as sleep when those

The simple hermit season framework

24:56sitting on the calendar a training slot you've already blocked off our work session with the phone in another room you just make each one concrete enough that you can tell clearly whether you kept it or doing this kind of work rebuilding your life from the inside out that's what I do with people so will look at where you are where you want to be what's standing in the way and will build a step by step plan to be there together so if that sounds like something you 're interested in book a call from the link in the description.

25:25Now the first few days will

Making your cuts and protections specific

25:26probably feel off right you're removing things that have been shaping your state for a long time and your mind and your body won't cooperate right away and so you need to let it be uncomfortable you need to keep the day simple enough to repeat and serious enough to matter and just see what happens after two weeks of actually living this.

25:46After that you just keep going you keep the cost you protect the structure you review the week every week and you let the season do with us there to do which is to keep the main thing the main thing to keep you focused in one direction. Now with that said let's cover the review we talked about the overview we covered the need to leave the weight of sacrifice the return to life the review and finally your action items for the day or the next few days first.

26:12Take the length of your season and name the one goal it exists to serve then remove three things that haven't crushing

Getting support with rebuilding your life

26:18your discipline attention or self respect and finally build the day around sleep training focus work and one weekly review. With that said thank you for being here. Thank you for watching if you want to work with me one-on-one make sure to book a call from the link in the description if you want this document make sure to join the free community from the link in the description and if you want weekly news that was helping you improve every aspect of your life.

26:41And make sure to join the free newsletter from the link in the description. Again, thank you for watching and I'll see you in the next one.