Day 7 (Guest Post) On Dreams and Discipline – Why I have set out on the Warrior journey

I am one of the aspirant warriors in the 100-day program. In 93 days from now I am going to experience me at my very best. It’s still a wild guess how that feels, but I’m curious enough to pursue until I find out. The past week I have been trying to explain my friends, and anyone who was curious, why I have set out on this journey towards “spiritual and physical transformation”. I think by now I have figured out the answer to this question, and I would like to share it with you.

Let’s start with the trigger. That was a Facebook message I received from Atalwin in the beginning of December last year, asking me if I would be interested to join his program. We agreed to drink coffee and catch up. I hadn’t seen him in four years but had been virtually following his pursuits from a sneaky distance. In the weeks after that first coffee I made a set of decisions willingly putting me in a position of quitting on my startup and being clueless of what the next chapter of my life will look like. I don’t know exactly what Atalwin did during that first coffee meeting, but it probably was sneaky too… 😉

So here we are, in complete freedom, selling my company and starting all over. When I pulled the trigger to no longer pursue what I had set out to do, I realized that was quite a warrior thing to do: screwing all your courage to make a decision from the heart. What I also realized: this warrior thing feels damn good!

So, what I am telling my friends when I explain them about the warrior program is this.

There is simply no better time for me to work on:

* remembering who I truly am, without all the conditional layers;

* maximizing my physical and mental state;

* using discipline to create a new set of healthy habits;

* exploring new things that awake me (spiritually, intellectually)

* experiencing what it is to walk this path with a group of crazily talented people

And, honestly, I’m just curious too.

There is one more thing, that has to do with discipline. A concept that has always intrigued me. One of my dearest mentors shared his vision on discipline with me this week, saying “discipline is the cornerstone of a happy life”. That may be true, but I have always had a complex relationship to discipline. Yesterday morning that complexity was reconfirmed during the base-level fit test of the warrior program. My trainer Wouter labeled me as “highly competitive’. That’s quite sad if you imagine I didn’t have any competition running on the treadmill … The lesson is: I tend to overshoot my mark when it comes to discipline.

I have always set my limits high, but in the process of giving up on my startup adventure I realized I can set my limits high only if I am 100% sure that I am striving for my own goal and pursuing my own dream. In the past two years I have been braving through rough seas to find the dreamland; only to realize I was heading in the wrong direction. So the conclusion is: I can be competitive, but only if I am setting the right goals; and, I can challenge myself, but only if I am sure I am heading towards that Bounty island. Cocktail in the hand.

So, here we are, I found out what my warrior pilgrimage looks like. I am using these 100 days to let go and set the conditions to allow my deepest self to tell me exactly what I want. I guess it takes courage to examine the truthfulness of dreams. Discipline and the other warriors being my best companions on the way.

There is no room for anxiety, there is no way back, I go!