What percent of your potential are you living right now?
What would it take for you to live more of it than you ever have?
These are two of the most fundamental questions we can ask ourselves. The answer to them is what helps us live a life of value rather than a life of busy-ness. The answer is what pushes us to be our best rather than to default to comfort of good enough and conformity of fitting in.
What I've learned is that when we know that we aren't performing up to our own potential, we carry around shame. And that shame is a heavy burden to carry. To the outside world, we are good, but in our heart, we know that we aren't fully taking advantage of our short moment on this planet. So, rather than sitting with the gap between our potential and our lived reality, we often lower our standards. While this makes us feel better, it also has us play a much smaller game than we're capable of.
Conventional wisdom is that one of the best ways to live all out is to go tiny. Make your habits so easy that you consistently do them even if you're tired. Then, improve 1% everyday. In a year, you'll improve 38x.
The odd reality is that this works, but, it's only half the story. And, if you don't have the other half, you are missing out. The other half is super surprising. Oddly, the exact opposite approach also works.
The new wisdom is that by ALSO making your habits bigger and bolder, you tap into latent inner potential you wouldn't otherwise use. We see this in people registering in droves for Spartan races, Marathons, Triathlons, Navy Seal workouts, and Tough Mudders. We see this in people challenging themselves to write a book in a month, learn a new language in three months, learn how to do a difficult dance in public in a year, or do 100 things that scare them in 100 days (more on these challenges below). We want to do difficult things, because we know that pressure is what creates diamonds.
So, the question becomes, how do we create the right conditions so that living life full out becomes the norm?
Here's what I found in my own personal life...
When I was 8 years old, my father died of lung cancer. It had a profound impact on me.
I can remember the realization hitting me at his funeral. Not only had he died, but so could I. For me, the fairytale of childhood ended in that moment. No adult could protect me fully.
This experience gave me an abnormally high death awareness that I carry around with me to this day. I am constantly aware that I could die in any moment randomly and that it is up to me to make the most of my short life. This may sound dark, but it has actually been my major source of inspiration as well.
This desire to live fully has driven me more than anything else.
At the same time, I've learned that desire is not enough. Wanting to live fully and actually living fully (by our own standards) are two different things. As I was growing up, I was also noticing how I was constantly falling short, and I didn't know why.
In my early 20s, I hit bottom. I was deep in debt and living in a roach-infested apartment. By that point, I had been an entrepreneur for six years, and I didn't know why things weren't taking off for me.
The good thing about hitting bottom is that it brings humility and openness to trying new things. This is when I started experimenting with different forms of accountability. Right away, I noticed huge shift in how I acted and the results I got. 15 years later, I've experimented with thousands (yes thousands!) of types of accountability: masterminds, accountability calls, and challenges. These experiments have been essential for me co-founding multimillion dollar social impact enterprises and writing articles that are viewed by tens of millions of people in TIME, Fortune, Harvard Business Review, and other publications. They push me to get out of my comfort zone and do the hard work.
Out of all of the different forms of accountability, I've found that time-bound, public challenges with group support (ie - Do [X] in [Y] days) are one of the best ways to live life full out. Big challenges complement tiny habits.
That's why I've created a challenge for others who want to learn more in a month than they would in a year. It's called the Month To Master Challenge, and here's how it works...
- Identify a skill that would be so valuable to learn, it could change your life
- Set a transformative yet realistic goal for the month based on that skill
- Go all-in And “Burn The Boats” with daily group support and accountability
- Share your journey publicly
If this sounds interesting to you, check out the Month To Master Challenge.
I was inspired to create this challenge after years of experimenting with my own challenges and by the public challenges below...
1. Intuit Employee Learns How To Draw A Freakishly Realistic Portrait In 30 Days
Max Deutsch, a product manager at Intuit, is mastering one new skill every month. His December goal was to draw a photorealistic portrait. He named his personal challenge Month To Master, and it's the namesake for our Challenge. Here’s the before and after:
2. Girl Learns How To Dance Like A Pro In a Year (TIME LAPSE)
Videographer Karen Cheng always wanted to learn how to dance, so she created a challenge for herself: become a great dancer in 365 days while documenting the transformation. The video shows her starting as an awkward dancer, practicing everywhere and everyday, and eventually getting to a place where she can perform publicly. Her day 365 video is truly inspiring!
3. Woman Does One Thing That Completely Scares Her Every Day For 100 Days
Michelle Poler decided to combat her fears head-on by creating ‘100 Days Of Fear.’ Some of her fear-busting experiments included performing at a stand up comedy show, quitting her job, and walking around NYC wearing only a bikini.
4. Guy Plays Table Tennis Every Day for a Year (And Gets A Top 250 Ranking)
Sam Priestley practiced table tennis for a year with the support of a childhood friend / table tennis coach. See how good he got after starting from scratch.
5. Two Friends Travel To Four Countries To Learn Four Languages In One Year… Without Ever Speaking English
The challenge is to live in four countries, learn four languages and attempt to speak zero English for an entire year. Using Spanish in Spain, Portuguese in Brazil, Mandarin in China and Taiwan, and Korean in Korea.
6. This 12 Year Old Girl Mastered Dubstep Dancing By Just Using Youtube
In 7 months, this 12 year old girl mastered dubstep dancing by just using YouTube. She watched, stopped, applied, and rewinded video clips of the best dubstep music dancers in the world until she mastered specific movements. Wow! I guess I don’t have an excuse to learn dancing now 🙂
7. Man Photographs Himself Meeting A New Stranger Every Day For One Year
Steinar Skipsnes made a resolution in 2016 to meet a new person every day that year. He photographed each encounter and shared them with the world, also sharing the stories of the people he met.
8. Young Man Pledges To Get Rejected Everyday For 100 Days
30-Year-Old Jia Jiang had dreams of moving from China to the US to become the next Bill Gates. A few years into his career, he realized that he wasn’t living up to his potential and one of the reasons was because he was afraid. So, he decided to film himself getting rejected for 100 days. Some of my favorite requests: asking to play soccer in a stranger’s backyard, requesting a “burger refill” at a restaurant, and asking to deliver a single pizza for Dominos. He ended the experiences with a transformative set of lessons learned that he has shared on the TED stage and in a book.
9. Personal Finance Guru Puts Her Knowledge To The Test With The ‘One Year No Spending Challenge’
In 2015, Michelle McGagh, a freelance personal finance journalist, pledged to do the impossible: survive a year without spending any money (on anything beyond the bare essentials). Here’s how her year ended up.
10. Procrastinator Commits To Running One Mile Every Day For A Year. What He Learned…
For his 2015 New Year’s Resolution, Derek Salamanca committed to running one mile everyday for the entire year. Derek was sick and tired of putting things off. The experiment proved to himself that he could do something for himself everyday that was a little bit hard, but manageable.
11. A Book Author Writing A Book On Memory Decides To Put What He’s Learning Into Practice. A Year Later, He Became The Memory Champion Of The United States
Journalist Joshua Foer was writing a book on the world’s top memory champions. He decided to take things up a notch and actually experiment with what he was learning to see if anybody could apply the memory hacks. Within a year, he became the memory champion of the United States.
12. How A Semi-Athletic Person Became A Professional Athlete In Only 2 Years
After Michelle Khare moved to Los Angeles during her college to do an internship, she was alone living in a new city. She found a ride group online and started to go there often. Then in two years, she won several races and a collegiate national she got a third place.
13. This Group Of Friends Produced A High-Quality Print Magazine Over One Weekend
“This weekend, a group of San Francisco media friends got together and produced a glossy print magazine, start to finish, in just about 48 hours. The theme was “hustle,” and they got 1,502 submissions from around the world. Their 60-page final product is now for sale online, and you can also preview the magazine’s contents. “Issue Zero” went on sale Monday night for $10, and as of this afternoon, the magazine has sold more than 1,000 copies. Printing costs for each copy are $9, and profits from the $1 markup will be divided in an innovative fashion.” — SFWeekly
14. Once A Year, For The Last 10 Years, This Woman Has Written A Novel In 30 Days
Every year, Kristina participates in NaNoWriMo, an annual writing challenge in which participants attempt to write 50,000 words of a novel in 30 days.
What would you choose to master if you had a month (two hours per day) to master anything?
How would your life be transformed if you got that mastery?
Find out by signing up for the Month to Master Challenge Waitlist.