The Black Belt test was the hardest thing I’d ever done.

I was 15, and at that point I’d literally spent half of my entire life as a martial artist. It feels like another lifetime ago. But even still, I can remember vividly just how physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausting the testing and training was.

It was a Saturday. There were about 12 of us who tested for Black Belt that year. Afterwards everybody went out for pizza to celebrate. Also, we were starving.

The school was closed on Sundays.

Monday I was back at the studio, training and studying for my 1st Dan test that would be in a year.

Getting my Black Belt was a huge milestone in my life. However, though the belt rank was a goal, it wasn’t the goal.

You don’t show up every day, until. You simply show up every day.

It’s a miracle that I was able to grab hold of that concept at such a young age. Even now, almost 20 years later, it’s still so easy for me to forget that life is lived in the day-to-day. There is much more satisfaction in the small daily wins and the joy of consistently choosing doing the things which are meaningful, valuable, and important.

If you’ve got a habit of showing up every day then I guarantee you that along the way you’ll pass milestones and accomplish big goals. You’ll also have massive failures. When you do, celebrate them, learn from them, and then you keep on going.

Don’t let the accomplishment (or failure) of your goals define your success. Nor are they the primary factor upon which your happiness hinges.

“Once I get my black belt, then I’ll finally be a real martial artist.”

“Once I get out of school, then I can finally do something meaningful.”

“Once I get married, then I’ll finally be happy.”

“Once I buy a nice house, then I’ll finally be settled.”

“Once I get my dream car, then I’ll finally be able to have fun.”

”Once my website has 10,000 readers, then I’ll finally feel validated as a writer.”

No you won’t.

Once you get your black belt, you’ll discover just how much of a beginner you truly are. Once you get out of school, you’ll find out that corporate bureaucracy can be demoralizing and you’re still going to have to choose yourself. Once you get married, you’ll find out that sharing a life with someone is a lot of work. Once you buy that nice house, you’ll see that the new mortgage payment is double what your old rent used to be. Once you get that dream car, you’ll discover that it has car trouble, too. Once your website gets traffic and attention, you’ll discover there is a pressure to produce that can choke the creativity right out of you.

Black belts, college degrees, marriage, beautiful homes, awesome cars, and huge audiences are all wonderful things. But these milestones — these goals — don’t define your worth, character, or happiness.

They are milestones. You celebrate them. And then you get back to work.

The reason is this: if you are committed to showing up every day, only until, then you’ve set yourself up for disillusionment.

When you think about someone who is a black belt, you think about someone who has mastered martial arts. But the black belt test was the hardest thing I’d ever done. It was physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausting. I was tired and afraid and nervous. You’d think a “master” could breeze through something at that point.

If you’re doing something that matters, there will always be resistance. Distractions, excuses, and challenges will always be right at your doorstep.

Don’t wait for the fear to go away, because it won’t.

Don’t wait for the risk to disappear, because there will always be risk.

Show up every day when it’s frightful. When it’s risky. When it’s tense. When it hurts. Because it will always be that way — the “finally” moment never comes.

Don’t seek to eliminate the tension. Instead, learn how to thrive in the midst of it.

This is why I created The Focus Course

Thriving in the midst of tension is one of the primary themes behind The Focus Course.

Over the years I have read so many books regarding creativity, productivity, focus, etc. And it made me realize that my own writing on this topic needed to be of a different kind.

While a book (much like a website or an email newsletter), in and of itself, is awesome for communicating ideas and imparting inspiration. But then the action is left to the reader.

There are many topics where ideas and inspiration are exactly what you need. But for topics such as doing our best creative work, overcoming distractions, breaking our inbox and urgency addictions, building our personal integrity, and defining what meaningful productivity is in our lives, it can be far more helpful to learn by doing.

As Peter Drucker said, the greatest wisdom not applied to action and behavior is meaningless data.

* * *

Over the next few weeks I’ll be sharing more about what’s in the Focus Course and what sets it apart from anything else out there. In short, it’s an action-centric, course that will change your life.

Here’s a testimony I recently got from one of our course alumni, Tyler Soenen:

This course forced me to beat the resistance and do the work. The result is that I learned so much more because I actually did the work and tasted the fruit that so many productivity books talk about. And this was huge for me. In all of the reading I’ve done, the The Focus Course had something new and original that was very beneficial to my life.

And here’s the video I just finished that shares the “why” behind the Focus Course: