When my wife first met me, I was not wearing shoes. For some reason, roaming around the college we were attending barefoot was cool. I am in a ragged pair of shorts, a grateful dead concert shirt, and a few duct-taped flip-flops in my back pocket. This was a party trick and a conversation starter. I remember someone putting a cigarette out on the sole of my foot, which did not impact me at all. I could walk across the glass and put my foot on a hot bed of coals for just a few seconds, appearing to be almost invulnerable to fire. Long walks in the desert at night with no shoes on provide an entirely different experience than those that do this activity with shoes. This was complete stupidity, and I can only point to the fact that I was young and dumb. However, how was it I could do this? The feet are susceptible, after all. This was accomplished because, over some time, I had built up calluses on my feet. You see, the human body was designed to run around on terrain and will naturally build resistance to the environment you are in. Tenderfoots like yourself do not understand this. Of course, you do have much nicer looking feet!
My video on this subject is here.
The point is that you can build resistance resilience over time to forces that might otherwise slow your progress. So, a callus represents a concept that can help us understand our process in the first 90 days of a personal transformation. This concept came to me after watching a video featuring David Goggins, a famous personality in the endurance sports world. The point he makes in this video (link here) is that when you force yourself to head into an uncomfortable space daily, you start to callus the mind. When you face hard times, struggles, and difficulties, you indeed find yourself. What if you could be better? What if you could be something great? Over time, you build confidence and strength, creating mind calluses. You are no longer easy prey to those old thoughts that hold you back, keep you down, and put you in a place of stress and discouragement.
So, I started focusing on the concept of building mind calluses. The imagery of this led me to understand that each time I fight through my negative mindset, I get that much more resistant. Each and every day, I had to overcome some set of obstacles to achieve my commitments. Every day, I would fight through everything thrown at me and push myself to achieve. I started to become hard. I began to be invincible, not in the Superman way, but in the better version of Guy’s way of thinking. I was invincible to the demons holding me back, crushing my soul. Now, I was charging the hill, taking on new and more fierce monsters. The ones in my past now seemed silly, puny even. My mind is set, secure behind a fortress I have built one day at a time. Each time I finish a run, another layer is added. Each time I complete something I set out to do that day, another layer is added. Each time I force myself to go to the gym at 11pm at night because my routine got disrupted that day, another layer is added. Each time I pray and forgive myself and then pick up and start again the following day, another layer is added.
Each time I say, No, I am not going to be that way anymore my mind callus starts to build. Just like the sole of your feet would build a callus if you roamed barefoot, so can your mind become resistant to attacks. You can absolutely become a more excellent version of yourself. You may not think so now. You may feel discouraged, overwhelmed, and depressed. This is because your mind is raw and vulnerable to these thoughts. The only way out is to make a commitment that pushes you out of your comfort zone, and each time you do so, little by little, you will build these mind calluses. There is hope even for the most hopeless soul. You just need to start, and when you do, never quit, no matter what happens.
I have done this 365 commitment a few times now, and each time I revisit this concept of Mind Calluses, it inspires me to keep going. Here are a few for further reading:
