Best Lessons of 7 Days Trying to Destabilize My Life. How? Disrupting My Routine — I Experimented with What Happens When I Overexposed Myself to Severe Discomfort
This is an experiment about how to be in the most uncomfortable place possible and what you can learn from being there.
After finishing an experiment when I was constantly doing things I hated for 20 days — I published the experiment soon — I decided to take advantage of the inertia and perform a small but challenging lifestyle experiment. It was about finding a way to be in the most uncomfortable place possible, even beyond, managing to restart my routines and nullify my defences and my mental strength. How? Forcing myself to go to bed late and get up very late because I knew that would destabilize me, and by doing so, I would be much more likely to feel disturbed and susceptible to any everyday situation or person I interacted with.
So, I went for seven days to destabilize my holistic high-performance, super-habits routine, and ultra-productivity.
The goal is to be in the most uncomfortable place possible.
A. Waking up
These were the time slots in which I got out of bed each day:
- 11:30 am on Tuesday 02/24.
- 12:30 pm on Wednesday 02/25.
- 12:50 pm on Thursday 02/26.
- 1:10 pm on Friday 02/27.
- 12:50 pm on Saturday, 02/28.
- 1:30 pm on Sunday 02/29.
- 2:10 pm on Monday 03/01.
B. Going to bed
Here are the times to turn off and go to sleep:
- 02:20h on Wednesday 02/25.
- 02:15h on Thursday 02/26.
- 01:50 am on Friday 02/27.
- 02:10 am on Saturday 02/28.
- 02:33h on Sunday 02/29.
- 01:44h on Monday 03/01.
- 02:30h on Tuesday 02/03.
How to handle what you don’t know how to handle — more uncertainty, please
What happened when I changed a significant part of my lifestyle? Well, I felt like I was late, didn’t have time, was already behind, and was losing. It was all constant sabotage, especially at the beginning. However, that was what I expected and wanted to happen. Only if I felt that way could I evolve and overcome a situation that would one day occur by chance.
I needed to clarify things during the first three days. Evenocks like this affected me. I wrote them the night before, so I had to do them the same day I published them, which made me stop publishing between 9 and 9:30 am. My ultraproductivity rate dropped below 20%. I totally lost my focus, had zero mental clarity, was emotionally numb, and had zero motivation.
Getting out of bed seemed like torture; I woke up almost stressed, and there were days when I didn’t even do The Big Morning, mainly because of the pressure of being around 2 or 3 pm; imagine, I even stopped meditating on days two and three. I was where I wanted, deranged, destabilized, dominated by time, by emotions, by my thoughts. He was anything but a stoic, he was an easily manageable puppet. Bad mood, insecurity, stress, frustration, tension, a spectacle.
To win, hit rock bottom
That’s when I decided to continue, increasing the time I went to sleep at the latest and the time I woke up. Either this would end everything that had taken me a lifetime to build, or I would end up mastering it. Fire is fought with more flames.
In fact, I began to become more aware, to accept the time I woke up and what was happening; I began to observe how my mind boycotted me, the story it told me to make me desperate. Nothing affects you when you become the observer because it doesn’t go with you; you are the third person. So, I decided not to look at the clock, to imagine that it was 6 am and not 2:40 pm. I relaxed my to-do list and cut 80% of the external communication I carried out daily.
Retrain your beliefs and give them the fear they seek to escape
The big problem was thinking about the time and feeling that it was “late” (a damn label), and I changed it to “it’s only 4:00 pm” when my work day begins. From there, I retrained myself at every moment to rename those types of categories and (limiting) beliefs that block and knock us out.
- Change “I’m late” to “I’m going at the pace I can.”
- “I can’t handle this” with “it’s come my way, interesting.”
- “It beats me” because “what a good challenge to learn.”
- “I’m not ultra-productive” because “I’m in the middle of something that will propel my method.”
And I started to win the day as if I had gotten up at 5 am and went to bed at 9 pm.
Change history and history will change
What happened? That changing the story you tell yourself changes the narrative you live. It’s that simple. If your story is a fatal story, guess what will happen. What if it is a magical story?
Another advantage was being able to face something I hated doing and repeat it every day, no matter how much I hated it, with the intention of becoming numb to that feeling, and guess what? It did. High overexposure to overwhelming stimuli, carried out with awareness, consistency, perseverance, and self-discipline, becomes an engine of growth and development.
Try to be in the most uncomfortable place possible
Now I have half-mastered getting up late and going to bed late as if I woke up and went to sleep early. There is no difference, and so it is.
I said he was anything but a stoic. Quite the opposite; in reality, I was going through it to be able to live it and then take away all prominence from it.
Experience discomfort, expose yourself to uncertainty, and go through what you have to go through. It is the only way to get through it, cross-country.
Look for that, being in the most uncomfortable place possible.
If you had to do something like this, what would you try?
