Can creating tension actually help you reach your goals faster?
In this episode, we unravel the idea that progress doesn't come from getting comfortable with discomfort, but from embracing tension as a catalyst for transformation. Using the metaphor of the bow and arrow, we'll help you harness the energy of positive tension and propel yourself towards your goals.
Discomfort is overrated, what you need is more tension!
ACTION STEP FROM THE EPISODE: Decide on one goal you're going to aim for outside of your current experience/expertise. That's what create the positive tension. Then choose one action you can take today to create positive momentum towards your goal. Use our free habit tracker to build a consistent habit around your new action.
Email hello@habitmasters.com with subject line "Life Flip" and book a free 30 minute consultation call with Jeff to see whether the 4 week life flip coaching program is a good fit for you.
CREATE YOUR BETTER FUTURE WITH OUR 7 DAY HABIT MASTERY COURSE Master the fundamentals of habit building and start living your best life now! >>CHECK OUT THE COURSE<<
KICK YOUR WEEK OFF RIGHT! SUBSCRIBE TO THE FREE MAGIC MONDAY NEWSLETTER Subscribe to the Magic Monday newsletter and Launch your week with this micro-dose of inspiration. Share it with a friend for extra magic.
OUR MISSION We're on a mission to guide 1 million people in taking daily steps toward their biggest dreams through mastering the art of habit building.
P.S. We have a goal to get to 100 reviews on Apple Podcasts—send us an email with a picture of your review to hello@habitmasters.com and we'll send you a free access code for the 7 Day Habit Mastery Course!
Can creating tension actually help you reach your goals faster?
In this episode, we unravel the idea that progress doesn't come from getting comfortable with discomfort, but from embracing tension as a catalyst for transformation. Using the metaphor of the bow and arrow, we'll help you harness the energy of positive tension and propel yourself towards your goals.
Discomfort is overrated, what you need is more tension!
ACTION STEP FROM THE EPISODE: Decide on one goal you're going to aim for outside of your current experience/expertise. That's what create the positive tension. Then choose one action you can take today to create positive momentum towards your goal. Use our free habit tracker to build a consistent habit around your new action.
Email hello@habitmasters.com with subject line "Life Flip" and book a free 30 minute consultation call with Jeff to see whether the 4 week life flip coaching program is a good fit for you.
CREATE YOUR BETTER FUTURE WITH OUR 7 DAY HABIT MASTERY COURSE Master the fundamentals of habit building and start living your best life now! >>CHECK OUT THE COURSE<<
KICK YOUR WEEK OFF RIGHT! SUBSCRIBE TO THE FREE MAGIC MONDAY NEWSLETTER Subscribe to the Magic Monday newsletter and Launch your week with this micro-dose of inspiration. Share it with a friend for extra magic.
OUR MISSION We're on a mission to guide 1 million people in taking daily steps toward their biggest dreams through mastering the art of habit building.
P.S. We have a goal to get to 100 reviews on Apple Podcasts—send us an email with a picture of your review to hello@habitmasters.com and we'll send you a free access code for the 7 Day Habit Mastery Course!
we have a delicious nugget of hope and it's going to be good today. It's based loosely off Jeff's Magic Monday this last Monday. So if you haven't had a chance to go back to our website and you can browse the previous ones, habitmasters. com.
Jeff Corrigan:
But they can't do that yet, but we should make it possible.
Sheldon Mills:
I said that so that we would have to force ourselves to do it before this went live,
Jeff Corrigan:
Jeff. Yes. I like it. Okay. Perfect. I can do that by tomorrow. Done.
Sheldon Mills:
Okay. By the time you listen to this, you can actually go back and read that.
Jeff Corrigan:
Archives. Yes. Archives.
Sheldon Mills:
Okay. Jeff, let's just dig into it. Give us
Jeff Corrigan:
the story. Okay. This actually hit me just this week. I think a lot about goals, obviously. This whole show is really to help you achieve your goals and live your best life. And... I had an epiphany, because a lot of people say that you should get comfortable being uncomfortable you should live in this space where you get more comfortable with discomfort. And I don't think that's necessarily true. And here's why, right? I understand what they're trying to say, and I think the principle behind it is true. The sentiment's good, yes. Yeah, the sentiment is true, right? It's we do need to get comfortable doing things that are outside of our, Comfort zone. Let's say that right, but it doesn't mean we need to be uncomfortable. In fact, I think we should be more excited Even maybe a little apprehensive, we'll still have that doubt , right? But I like the word tension much better because tension leads to growth, right? Discomfort, you can sit on discomfort your whole life, right? There's people that are overweight. There's people that are in debt. So many things that are uncomfortable that we live with in our lives. And I was talking in my email, I said, You can be in a job you hate for 30 years and be uncomfortable, but tension, on the other hand, must be released. It can't stay forever or it snaps, it's just like the other day we had our garage door. We live in our house about nine years and our garage door spring snapped. Because those things are always just tight, ready to go, right? Pull up your garage door and are snapped. And it's not that much different than that. At some point, tension must be released. So, I want to talk about positive tension, the tension that must come for you to be able to grow and progress in your life and reach your goals.
Sheldon Mills:
I love it. let's dive into the metaphor of the bow and arrow and the tension of the strings.
Jeff Corrigan:
Yes. Okay. So the thing that really hit me was this bow and arrow analogy where really. It's just like your goals, right? If you have, if you've never shot a bow, you know how it's done, right? You've seen Robin hood and there has to, in order to fire the arrow, tension must be created. You pull back the bow string and you release the arrow. But first, before you do that, you need a target. And that's not different from our goals. We first need to know where we're headed before we actually go to that place or launch the arrow to that place. And the tension is only created if that goal that we're aiming at Is outside of our current experience or ability. Yeah. So Richie Norton has a quote, Sheldon, you remember it? Yeah.
Sheldon Mills:
Yeah. He said that goals within our experience are just tasks, but goals outside of our experience equals growth, right? Yeah, I was thinking about chores. It's obviously I have a goal to keep a clean house, but it's like I've done it a thousand times. So it's just a task. I'm not growing as it is. Yes. Right. Yeah. But I also have a goal to improve my relationship with my spouse. And I do that by doing things outside of my previous experience in comfort zone. So that's growth for me.
Jeff Corrigan:
Yeah, that's exactly right. Growth really requires that we're expanding ourselves, like a good goal should change us. When we talk about goals a lot of times we're actually just talking about tasks we want to complete. It's a to do list, right, but a goal should be Growing us and even those around us in many ways. Take Elon Musk, for example, right? He's made this massive goal to Colonate Mars colonize Colonate., what's the word? Colonize? Colonize. Colonize. Mars.. There you go guys. They're saying yes, colonate. It made up a new word. So colonize Mars, and in the process it's forced him to. Do all sorts of things, right? create new forms of energy capturing and new forms of energy usage and building new types of rockets and all the things that have happened because he set this crazy goal that no one else in the world has set. Sheldon, where do you want to go with this?
Sheldon Mills:
I was thinking that this gives me a little bit of hope. If I think about times when I feel either uncertainty or doubt or fear that is, I think we should take that as a good sign that whatever your goal is, whatever you're attempting to do is growth. Right. Sometimes it's like we, we beat ourselves up for being afraid. And obviously, I mean, it's like the Disney it's being afraid is fine, but courage is still doing it anyway. Right. It's we should take that as a good sign and we should find, I think we can, if we just literally look at things differently, we can find more excitement. In the uncertainty, right? We can find it energizing rather than anxiety inducing.
Jeff Corrigan:
Right? Yeah. Well, it's like you said, I think that tension gets created and if we don't release it, it has to go somewhere and it ends up causing us physical, mental harm., if we have this desire in our heart of some goal that we want to achieve, and then we're just never taking the shot because we're worried about it failing. Like the biggest part here would be failure, right? So many things in life. We think, oh yeah, well, I'm not ready for that, I don't know how to do that or this could end up worse than I thought, you know, so we put this risk factor in there and there are different forms of risk and the growth happens when there is. It's when it feels risky, but it's actually not risky, right? It's it's something that we're either uniquely designed to do, or we have more than enough capacity to do, and we can make it happen. It's and the tension is only there because we're a little nervous, I've fired quite a bit bows in my life over the time, but the first time you ever fire a bow, it's a little bit nerve wracking. You're like, okay, what do I do? You're a little confused. You have no idea. You know, someone's kind of coaching you, you knock the arrow and you pull back the string and you're feeling kind of nervous and hesitant. You're excited, but that's where I think it comes in. Sheldon is there's also this level of excitement that comes. Even though you're apprehensive or hesitant or nervous, there's also a level of excitement. What if this works? What if I shoot this arrow and it hits the target, right? There's this excitement factor that comes when you have a positive tension in your life. Not as much discomfort as it is just a really exciting tension right before you fire this arrow And you know most the time you fire that arrow the first time it doesn't even make it to the target because you have no Idea how much tension you need, right? And then the best part about that though is this feedback and that's what's so key in all of this is Understanding that every time you try to meet this new goal extend beyond your current experience or abilities, you learn something, it's progress. It's pushing you towards something greater, something better, and you're learning along the way that, oh, it's not as scary as I thought to shoot an arrow. And you shoot more, and you shoot more, and you shoot more, and you get better and better and closer to your target, until one day maybe you... You're like, Hey, I need a new target or, Hey, this is no longer extending beyond my abilities and it doesn't require as much tension. You've grown so strong, right? Essentially, like you grow. To the level of the tension you're creating. I like it. So what should they do next? What's, how did they, how do you actually implement, create tension and practice it in your life? Yeah. Yeah.
Sheldon Mills:
I think the takeaway is this. There's a couple of things in this analogy that bears dissecting a little bit. One is you have to have a goal, right? There's no point in just holding this bow full of tension all the time. So you have to be aiming for something. What do you want? Obviously we all have desires and wants, but the more you can specify this is my goal, the easier it is to aim at it.
Jeff Corrigan:
Right? Well, it's this kind of just popped in my head is tension with no aim is stress. Tension with an aim is progress. That actually is moving you forward. Yeah, it's stress as a bad thing. But in fact, like when you're progressing towards something, stress can be very exciting and it can help you move in that direction. So energizing even. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Well, I think
Sheldon Mills:
it's like the. I think some of the times the anxiousness that we feel is because we're adrift, right? It's you don't have a clear goal of where we want to go. Cause if we did, then all these decisions and this uncertainty of what to do and how to just kind of goes away because it's this is where I'm going. So all these other thousands of choices don't really matter. Right? Yep. Yeah. Have to have goals. We all know that. Right? The clearer the better. The second is so every time you have a goal, it's like learning to shoot a bow and arrow for the first time anew right? It's you don't know how to hit the target. And we get so caught up in not doing it perfectly, Every time we start something new, and you pull that back, you're not even gonna hit the target. Let's be
Jeff Corrigan:
honest. Am I gonna look silly? Is it gonna be hard? I'll just say, yes. Right? The answer's yes.
Sheldon Mills:
Yes, and that is okay, because it's that's the process. Right. Those who are most childlike, and I said in a sense of not afraid to just try and do and jump up and it doesn't matter if they look dumb. Do you know what I mean? It's that's why they learn so quick, right? It's just cause it's Oh, I missed. Bummer. Okay. Let's try again. And a third and a fourth and a hundredth time until they get
Jeff Corrigan:
it. Right? Yeah. Are you willing to miss? Are you willing to look silly? Are you willing to fail? That's such a key part of this.
Sheldon Mills:
Well, and I'm here to say, it's I think a lot of us go no, right? I almost want to change that even paradigm of looking at it and being like, you're not actually failing. It's just part of the process. It's part of the growth. You know what I mean? Like instead of it being stressed, that's just, that can be part of the excitement of doing something new. I think if we just reframe how we see it, all of a sudden, It doesn't feel as stressful. It doesn't feel as tension laden. It doesn't feel like we're making a fool of self. It's just this is part of the process. Everybody does it. And the ironic thing is if you do it well, if you can be, being uncomfortable, the tension, right? People admire you for that. Like we think we're afraid of looking stupid, but the other people see it as courage. Right? Other people see it as ah, they've got the guts to like, go after their dreams to do it to be, and all of a sudden it's we're afraid of looking dumb, or we're afraid of failing, but to other people it's actually inspiring. It's ironic in that sense. Yeah. So just look at it differently. It'll feel different. It'll be
Jeff Corrigan:
different. Yeah, like every arrow that misses is just another opportunity for you to learn something new and try again, right? That's the beautiful part. I think we have this illusion in our mind that there's only so many tries, and I don't think that's true either. It's just keep firing those arrows, you know, and and setting new targets. Cause you know, the target doesn't always have to be the same.
Sheldon Mills:
I guarantee there are things in your life that you feel, okay, pick something where you feel like you've failed at, like you're a failure at this and a relationship and finance and physical, whatever it is. And we feel like a failure, right? Yeah. Yes, you haven't achieved it yet, but the more you aim for that, the more experience you'll get, the more you'll learn the nuance of this and that, you know, it's like they talk about entrepreneurs and on average, they fail, I don't know how, six, seven times before they, I guarantee there's a, there's something in your life, there's an area like you're a failure. And I'm here to say it's, you're really not, you're really just getting stronger. You're getting more perspective. You're learning, you know, different tensions and different ways to do things like keep going.
Jeff Corrigan:
Keep going. Well, and you pointed out something really cool with the entrepreneurs. Cause I think if you were to ask any of those entrepreneurs and I've heard lots of interviews from successful entrepreneurs, all of them say, I couldn't have made it here without those other experiences. It's nobody can make it to the place that they were aiming without going through the other shots. It's and if you do on your first shot, if you do it just by luck, by chance, pull that string back and you hit the bullseye on your first try, that was luck. And you'll have to learn the lesson eventually, right? To repeat that, repeatable success is never a fluke, , consistent success, consistent results are always. Based off of intentional, deliberate practice. And the other cool thing I like about this, and I was telling Sheldon about we've hired a coach to help us with some shooting whether you like guns or not we're doing some shooting, skeet and trap shooting, and one of the things... That he's helped us do is bring awareness to our shooting. So there's something he calls completing the shot, which is like where most people will take aim and fire the gun and then just kind of like their mind goes blank. He's telling us to, hey, no, continue, understand what's happening. Well, how did you get to this place? Why did you take the shot when you did? And start to analyze that whole process. So that you can take a better shot the next time and learn from whether you missed or you made it like, okay, why did that work? And it's the same thing with our goals with the bow and arrow example with shooting a bow is. It's bringing awareness to whatever you're doing. So when you do take him and you shoot having that feedback loop, so we've talked a lot about feedback loops. This really helped me understand it in a better way was to understand that a feedback is only useful if you use it to make an adjustment, right? It's Oh, whether you were successful or not in the goal that you were trying to achieve, you, those feedback loops will be really helpful in understanding like, okay, measuring your progress. Okay. I was here. Now I'm here. What did I do? Right. Consider it all progress. And Sheldon and I talked about this a lot on the show is every action is a win. If you're working towards your goal, if you're shooting that arrow at the target miss or hit, it's a win because you can learn from it , if you're bringing awareness to that shot, you can say to yourself, Oh, I know where I can make an adjustment, what I need to tweak. Or I know what I can try at least, right? Be you become Thomas Edison in that sense where you're just like, yeah, well, all I know is there's 10, 000 ways that didn't work, right? It's I now know 10, 000 ways that didn't work. So, and it's getting really comfortable with that experience. This has been a real good awakening for me of moving quickly, aiming at your goals, attempting things and getting those iterations to where you are improving each and every time.
Sheldon Mills:
You know, I made the analogy breaks down a little bit here, but I might argue that And all of our lives, every day, we're all pulling a bow back. Like we all are creating and living in this tension, right? And if you don't have goals to aim for, the tension will still be there. It will just be stressful and anxiety rather than excitement and progress. You know what I mean? It's just that's part of living your lives. So there's tension in your life, you know what I mean? We could stress and worry about. All the things that might happen or did happen or could happen, and that's tension. It's just not taking you anywhere. It's just not aiming toward a goal. So instead of living in that tension of stress, like the, you stress, like they talk about give it direction, aim it at
Jeff Corrigan:
something. That's a great point. And It relates to our garden metaphor quite a bit with the, if you water with no seeds, you only grow weeds. And that's the same thing. If you aim your bow at nothing, it just creates stress. Like all it does is like stress and anxiety and Yeah. Doubt and fear of everything in life. But when you have a clear aim, that tension becomes excitement. That's really cool. I love that. Right.
Sheldon Mills:
You're alive. So something's going to grow. Yes.
Jeff Corrigan:
There's tension on your bow every day of your life. Every day. Whether you have something to shoot it at. Yeah.
Sheldon Mills:
It's just whether or not you're aiming at something or just holding it. Just whether you're just choosing what seeds to plant and grow, or just watering whatever flies in,
Jeff Corrigan:
Well, and if you ever looked at it, it's kind of like you were talking about the other day, holding up that water, right? It's hold up a glass of water for long enough, like you pull back the bow for long enough, it just starts to hurt. Everything in your life starts to be painful, right? I feel like there's so much that can come from your goals by creating a positive tension in your life by choosing a goal and aiming for it and actually Releasing that bow getting the feedback and learning from that. So should we close this thing up? Thank you so much for listening. If you loved this share with a friend That's the best way to share a podcast is to send it to somebody, you know, we also are super excited about launching a new coaching program, it's one on one coaching with me for at least four weeks. And we know that sometimes can sound really stressful and weird. But I can tell you this, I've never had more progress and success than when I've had a personal coach in my life. So I want to do the same for you. Because a hero's journey is really moving from a life that is defined by others. In other words, what I call survival. to a life of being defined by yourself, which is what I call freedom. And that's the progress that we're going to take you through. And honestly, before you send us any money at all, I just want to have a four 30 minute discovery call with you and figure out where you're at and whether or not this would even be helpful for you in achieving your goals and moving to a life of freedom so thank you again for listening. You guys are amazing. It's time to start living your best life. Amen.