The Invisible Reps
How Baseline Suffering Shapes Your Destiny
If you want to achieve lasting success, you must increase your default threshold for struggle.
I actually enjoyed the suffering.
I looked forward to it.
I looked forward to the beatdowns, chaotic mornings, infinite workouts, 1-1 beatdowns (endless workouts) from the gunnery sergeants …
All that pain built a completely different version of me.
I got a switch programmed in my mind.
That suffering was the greatest gift of my life.
I became nearly immune to the work, uncertainty, and pain at NSTC, Great Lakes.
It was almost like the objective, obstacle, and opportunity were entirely irrelevant.
They could scream in my face, make me do nonstop pushups and planks for 15 minutes straight, sprint in circles, or run until I sh*t my pants (all true stories).
It didn’t matter.
I knew I could work it out.
I knew what I was made of.
The one thing that everyone’s avoiding
There’s a dumb obvious secret that 99% of people have never truly tapped into.
It’s right in front of their eyes.
It’s called suffering.
There’s a tipping point in high performance where work no longer registers on your radar in the same weight.
When you change your internal weights, the external weights shift as well.
Raise your baseline suffering, and the once impossible becomes as simple as breathing air.
And it’s neuroscience.
The ultimate productivity hack is raising your baseline suffering.
WHY?
Because it conditions you for a higher level of performance under pressure, suffering, struggle, and work even if you’re dead broke or too tired to think.
And goals that really matter to you will take proper work.
Like… a lot. more. work... than you think.
and your capability … is a lot greater than you think.
We’ve been sold a bag of LIES online that all you have to do is do 5 actions on your phone every day for an hour “and you’ll be a millionaire in 12 months!” … You’ve heard your own version of it.
And you already know… while there are valuable practices in every industry that set you up for success, none of them matter without the underlying default of aggressive action.
Every goal and endeavor will reach the boring point, the purely hard climb, where there are no hacks or secrets.. it’s just “go.”
That’s how you climb the mountain.
Of course you can build significant momentum, skill, and progress in a matter of months. But that progress comes as a result from playing the long game, not playing the next quick cash grab.
You can transform your life in 2, 3, 6 months — facts.
You can significantly change in a relatively small period of time..
But the sowing and growing of the whole garden takes time and consistency.
The ultimate pillars that maintain growth are your standards.
your standards of action:
your standards of thinking:
your standards of relating and speaking:
Your standards plant everything in your life:
your finances
your work
your heath
your relationships
your whole life journey…
Everything in your life—internal and external—is an end byproduct of your standards: the way you’ve been sowing your life’s garden.
You might blow up online barely trying, you might crush your first 5 sales, but you’ll never be certain of your success until you’re certain of your identity, your character, and your standards.
You do not maintain success without maintaining standards.
Systems will help you maintain and scale the standard.
But those standards are tested, strengthened, and developed in the suffering, struggle, pain.
It always starts with the work:
You vs you.
When the identity is rooted in deep standards, the dream is just a matter of patience.
When the identity is a fake, the dream becomes a passive hope, and eventually a pain to be avoided with more scrolling and diluting of the mind.
That’s the difference that standards make in your life.
The fool puts on a bold face, but the wise is established in his ways.
— Proverbs 21:29
The pillars of self-concept
Think of standards as the pillars of your internal house (self-concept), the roots of your life avatar tree. Whatever metaphor works for you.
Standards are consistently, repeatedly enforced with action over time, and result in a self-concept or identity—the subconscious idea of who you are and how you deal with life—and ultimately, the fruits of your life’s ways.
So we choose ways and standards in every area of our lives, and then we get the fruit of those planted standards over time.
In life, you don’t get your goals, you get your standards.
Ed Mylett
Whether you like it or not, your standards control the outcomes in your life.
When you develop the standards, the success is drawn to you.
Why: the more depth of integrity you have (aka deep roots) — consistently following through on your standards — the more weight your identity has (aka - strong tree): You’ve stacked pile of proof a mile deep, that grows a mile high — and thus you as an agent in the universe have a higher gravitational pull with success, influence, and overcoming obstacles.
“The prayer of a righteous man is powerful.”
— James 5:16
That’s the idea here.
When you’re deeply rooted in truth, your life produces deeper, richer, fuller fruits that last (that you get to share with everyone around you).
When you’re focused on working the standard, time dilates, and meanwhile …
… while everybody else is messing around, chasing cheap thrills, hopping between opportunities, still on the fence, trying the next girl, drug, substance, app, outlet, game, etc. to deal with the void of potential in their life…
You’re putting in the invisible reps,
You’re expanding your container
You’re increasing your gravity, your depth
You’re shining in silence,
Just putting out..
in the dark
alone
nobody watching
just you.
1 v 1
And those are the moments looking back that will define you.
Those are the zero seasons where you reinvented yourself, found more, planted the future.
Instead of jumping on the next thing, you dug deeper.
And although you won’t not see it immediately, the gravity is growing exponentially there. It’s an invisible force you’ve developed. Those invisible reps put you into a new identity, a new class ID, and now you’re able to get into new rooms.
People are going to wonder why, and probably blame it on externalities.
But you know.
The true riches are always a result of internal riches you develop that carry forward into everything you do in life.
Those pillars are what truly impact people: You set the example by embodying the truth.
Appearances can be faked.
Talk is cheap.
But the standards of a man
weigh the truth of his actions.
— ™ Holy Spirit
The truth will aways come out.
The problem with “seen” things
There’s a variable of mental and spiritual disruption though, and it’s totally screwing our long term success.
We’re in an online world that rewards the shallow things in life…
Because everybody’s insecure and clinging to the next thing they can get in order to have some semblance of a self.
We’ve become a culture that wants the secret hack, the next opportunity that’s “guaranteed” to save you all the (inevitable) struggle and learning of achieving anything worthwhile.
But those seen things are only 1% of the reality within a given door of opportunity.
The surface is exactly what it is: the surface — less than 1% of what’s actually going on in real life.
99% want to be seen as hard working, but very few want to be held accountable in real life to the standards of hard work..
Because that’s harder.
We’re slightly scared of the work and we don’t think we’re capable.
Posting feels good.
You can hide anything behind an idealized image of you.
You can remove anything that would hint at a real human with imperfections.
You can highlight all the .0001 second snapshots to create a massive illusion of a 1% life, even if it’s only .0001% of your life.
You can consume an infinite amount of cheap thrills to keep from facing the void.
I’m not saying posting on social media is inherently evil, but it’s design inherently laces your brain with the world’s standards and rewires your brain for judgment and comparison.
And at the end of the day, it’s training you…
to spend the majority of your life…
sacrificing the real moments that actually matter…
chasing appearances of living…
for creating a stagnant idea of that moment…
so the world can say “that’s good” “look at him/her”…
while you’re entirely missing the 99% of your life.
That’s my only issue.
Putting out just hurts, plain and simple.
You’re pulling more from nothing.
Your lower standards are dying,
New potential is being accessed.
That constant conditioning is what creates the true changes that make those 1% performers.
The comfortable cage
It’s easier to write something off than it is to accept the reality:
We failed.
We broke integrity.
We fell off.
We got soft.
We lied, over and over again.
We slowed down.
We quietly let go of discipline.
We lost focus.
We left the path.
We lie to ourselves about why the past thing didn’t work, label it off, and then move onto the next shiny object .. on and on every year jumping on the next shiny opportunity..
.. Because it’s easier to lie than it is to own our actions and face their consequences here and now. Today.
Face it. All opportunities come to the SAME DOOR: work.
All roads have the same thing in common: a distance and a destination.
Most of the time, it’s distance tracked.
The destination is like, less than 1% of the actual process.
(Guess what social media is programming your brain for).
I don’t need to elaborate.
Make your own conclusions.
Everything amazing will come from HARD WORK.
You might not see the payoff in the next 3-6 months, but in 3 years… if you’re building the identity by doing the real work, day in and day out, you become the standard of success.
Success follows you because you embody it within your very breath.
AND I would argue that the “smarter” road isn’t always as good as the HARDER road.
Stop chasing the “smart” road. The “ultimate system.”
Obviously be smart about choosing your opportunity vehicle .. but remember the #1 thing here:
There is no perfect strategy. Life and business are a constantly evolving game.
Everything’s changing.
And at the end of the day, one way or another, the only way to arrive at level n—where n = desired level—is going through level 1, and level 0, or perhaps through level negative 4 if you’re like me and you do dumb things to sabotage your success…
You will have to work all the required levels.
There are no shortcuts to work.
The plates just simply need moving.
You can leverage up and make the car go faster, yes.
But the power that runs those distances in between levels is your standards. Your will. Your identity.
You go faster by running the laps before expecting to drive them.
Kill entitlement.
Take the path less traveled.
Do what nobody else is willing to do.
You will stand out to the point where nobody can ignore you.
The misunderstood way of “harder”
The harder road builds permanent character tracks.
Neural coordinates that just fire differently.
You play every room differently.
The environment that forces you to entirely erase old you and reinvent yourself is the best environment. It’s more demanding. It’s harder. It’s properly terrifying in its own right.
That’s exactly where you need to be.
That’s exactly where you know you belong.
The disciplined path.
The righteous path.
The focused path.
You become a winner, a doer, an operator.
Not just the next guy hoping on the golden opportunity to present itself.
You know that perfect ticket doesn’t exist, besides right here, right now: the work in front of you.
That’s it.
The magic you’re looking for is in the work you’re avoiding.
— Somebody
Focus or die
The focused path is the way.
Because what’s the opposite?
Drifting.
Hoping. Delaying.
Distracting. Disconnecting from reality.
Hopping on and off every shiny object you see… constantly on the fence between opportunities, not realizing (or just avoiding the fact) that all roads will ultimately bring up the same problems within you at one point or another.
You are the constraint of the game until you open up and change.
When you force yourself into chaos, struggle, challenge, the righteous grind, even when it feels boring, mundane, stressful, high pressure, that’s when you know you’re on track.
Choosing the fire burns up the old ways inside of you.
That’s what rips off the governor switch keeping you small and builds a new switch of unrealized potential within.
"The crucible for silver and the furnace for gold, but the LORD tests the heart."
— Proverbs 17:3
It should scare you.
You should feel uncertain.
You should feel a degree of “wtf am I doing right now?”
That’s what taking the next big wave feels like.
You’re never going to “feel” ready.
You’re never going to have all the information.
You’re never going to “feel” confident.
You might feel 51% confident, but even then, you can’t rely on those feelings.
Feelings are just feelings.
You’ll never be “ready” enough
You’ll go out, and then God will ready you as you go.
It’s when Joshua charged.
When Joseph was in prison.
When Moses was called.
Nobody that listened to the calling to do something greater with their life felt prepared.
Nobody felt ready.
Nobody felt “good enough.”
When are you gonna feel “good enough” to do it?
When are you going to “believe in yourself” enough to just launch?
Are you going to wait until you feel worthy enough, pretty enough, smart enough, acceptable enough …
… to just go?
Who’s going to give you permission?
Abraham left everything, and just decided to “go out without knowing where he was going” (Hebrews 11:9).
It’s faith.
Seeing the invisible behind the visible.
It’s conviction.
I’m more convicted about God’s vision for my life than I am about my own abilities and skills.
So I’m fine with going without knowing where I’m going.
Because I’ve seen the goodness, I’ve had glimpses, and I know there’s more where that came from.
I don’t control it, but I am connected to it.
Anyway, back to the pain point…
That calling is going to feel way bigger than you. It’s going to seem slightly insurmountable.
Maybe the neuroscience would tell me to dial it back.
But I’d argue that the neuroscience points to us undermining our own potential by relying on our feelings instead of the truth.
We play on our limitations instead of God’s potential.
We rely on how we feel about our progress more than the actual data.
We rely on how we feel about the relationship more than the real life dynamics at play.
Things could be really good or really bad, and we’re almost never fully aware of what’s going on.
Depth perception and the broken lens
In the same way, your potential could be insanely high, but if you’ve become so conditioned to lowering your standards, expectations, ambitions, actions and identity, then you don’t even look for the opportunity anymore.
Your eyes are just stuck on the ground where you’ve been for the last 3 months.
You don’t even see the golden gateway right in front of you, calling you to reach and take the leap of faith.
Here’s why: That distance feels so much greater in our conditioned, constrained, disorganized, distracted minds, than it is in reality.
Our perception is so hyper-fixated and zoomed in on every minute, granular (99% meaningless) detail of judgment and comparison—how I look, what she thinks, what he said behind your back, what your boss thinks, etc.—that we talk ourselves out of the very calling God has placed on our lives.
Not because we’re not capable.
We’re just fearful of the fake things.
Instead of the REAL THING.
We’re distracted with cheap thrills.
We’re playing the small games, not realizing the vast expanse supporting your every waking moment, every movement, every thought, breath, heartbeat, and pulsation of consciousness.
You are infinite consciousness expressed in the form of a temporary body.
Yet we call impure what God calls pure.
We call disqualified that which He pre-qualified… because our perception is warped from a broken lens trained on the wrong things.
The lens is hyper self-centric to the point where we don’t know ourselves anymore and begin to loathe ourselves.
The universe revolving around you is a very scary thing.
This is why we live in a culture that spends more time on social media than they do talking to their friends in real life and is more depressed, anxious, disassociated, disconnected, discouraged, and suicidal than ever before.
God could aligning all things for good, but if I’m so stuck on the past or present mistake, loss, or hardship, I’m not open to receive the new wave He’s bringing into my life now.
The point is, taking on the “insurmountable” only seems insurmountable because 99% of the time we forget who’s backing us, who’s guiding us, who put us here right now in the first place, who’s fashioning our steps.
“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."
— Jeremiah 29:11
If we only conceived for a split second, everything we’ve been given, the amazing gifts we’ve been blessed with, the powers of our transcendent minds, the circuitry in our brains that say “I WILL AT ANY COST,” “SEND ME,” “HERE I AM,” “LET’S GO.”
If we only could fathom…
the heights and depths that we’ve climbed…
the speeds we’ve achieved
the fires we’ve survived
the depths we’ve navigated
the waves we’ve surfed
the lands we’ve traveled
the bitter cold’s we’ve endured
the Infinite One who’s been guiding us every step of the way.
Perhaps then these feats wouldn’t seem so impossible.
Perhaps we could see the goodness in the suffering.
Perhaps we could find more in the dark.
Maybe if we could realize the power and value of pain, we could see clearly how much God has grown us through every trial and season of life.
and He won’t stop now.
The question is, are you willing to get in the boat and focus?
Are you willing to take on the wave??
Whatever you’re scared of right now, it’s been done before,
under worse conditions
with less support
with less sleep
with less sunlight
with less preparation..
You can do it too..
and you’ll be prepared this time.
Make it real
So…
Baseline suffering — Increasing your overall tolerance for work, stress, uncertainty, rejection, and loss, because that’s part of life.
Baseline Suffering
Concept
The art and discipline of deliberately expanding your innate capacity for navigating the trials and tribulations of life—work, stress, uncertainty, rejection, loss—by willingly stepping into the crucible of discomfort.
It's akin to venturing into the dark, unseen, and seemingly insurmountable challenges, driven by an unwavering commitment to personal growth and transformation.
This practice is rooted in the acceptance that life comes with inevitable struggles, and it's our resilience, forged in the fires of these struggles, that shapes our character, our identity, our standards, and ultimately our success. It's about thriving in the chaos, testing fear, and embracing the grind day in and day out, knowing that each step, each breath, each heartbeat is a testament to the infinite consciousness within us, striving for greatness.
It's not about rejecting the easy road to choose the harder path, the one less traveled, because that's where we find the riches of our internal strength and potential. Baseline suffering is the embodiment of the disciplined, focused, and righteous path towards becoming the standard of success. The deliberate practice of taking on the seemingly insurmountable to discover the true potential God has planted in you
— rgx
You’re just increasing your resilience for life.
This doesn’t have to be forever.
But major push seasons in life, where you go off the cliff you’ve been told you’re not supposed to, can lead to the most profound growth of all time.
You won’t perform unless there’s adequate pressure and discomfort.
Neural circuits don’t change unless there’s sufficient discomfort and agitation in the nervous system, forcing a new adaptation in their firing.
Forget “optimal”
In training at NSTC, Great Lakes, there was more than enough pressure, suffering, uncertainty, resistance and chaos to embrace.
And it was not the scientifically “optimal” amount.
We weren’t sleeping much.
We barely ate enough.
We ate bagged garbage (in terms of nutrient quality).
We didn’t get breaks for NSDR.
We worked long hours.
We stayed up late.
We got up early.
It felt like insanity at first.
But in the end, it was like breathing air.
In the moment, it would’ve been perceived as unnecessary suffering.
But in reality, you must learn to perform without purpose—when there’s no end in sight, no shining star, no beautiful hope, no light in the sky, and it’s just you vs you: in a cold cinder block room and the only privacy of the public shower room, it’s 3 am and you’re putting out because you’re focused on one thing:
I will be better.
I will continue.
I will grow.
I will callous this mind.
Trust me, the vision will not be clear, 3-14 days into any endeavor that’s worthwhile and properly hard, you’ll feel the same pull to quit that everyone else does.
Some see through it—they know it’s only weakness and a sign to dig deeper.
Others will take it as a sign of inadequacy.
“Who are you anyways to do this? What makes you think you’re actually worth it? You’re not built for this.”
On and on, an infinite list of excuses, DQs, and…
lies.
They’re all perfectly positioned to put you on the easy road and leave the discipline behind. Leave the vision in the clouds at the top of the mountain.
It feels great to tell people about all your wild ambitions, and why none of them ever worked out because everyone was against you and the world screwed you over. 99% of people will empathize and help you be softer.
1% will see that and be like… “wake up.”
The haunting thing about convincing yourself out of the harder path is…
You don’t just label off the situation, opportunity, people, etc.
You label off yourself.
You cage yourself in.
It might feel like sweet relief at first, getting out from under the constant struggle…
But when your head hits the pillow at night, your whole subconscious mind and body will know that you lied. You cheated your growth. You stole from your future self. You disrespected the potential God gave you. And you gave into the enemy whispering in your ear to just stop and sit on the sidelines.
And that can loom over people for a long time.
Tough.
I don’t know what else to say about that.
I’ve had my fair share of giving up too early—outing myself, disqualifying myself from my own race, my own journey, my own vision—missing opportunities, failing at businesses, letting people down, there’s an endless list of mistakes… just to realize … I took the wrong lesson.
A mistake is just missing the takeaway intended for you in that setback.
The only thing you can do to “fix” that old situation is unlearn and change now.
You’ll probably have to go “back to the basics,” back to “humble pie,” back to “merry f***ing Christmas,” and it might hurt. It will annihilate your ego or your ego will try to talk you out of it.
Only one ends up on top at the end of that course.
You choose who comes out on top.
Optimal is great for operating in your flow zone. I get that. There are times when you’ve leveled up to the point where you’re just dialed.
But more often than not, real learning doesn’t feel optimal.
The growth doesn’t always “feel good” in the moment, it usually feels like pain.
Deliberate practice doesn’t look optimal, it looks like a furious mess of monomaniacal repetition.
Achieving goals just happens day in, day out, regardless of how you feel.
What winning actually feels like..
It feels like frustration. Irritation. Confusion. Heat. Cold. Fear. Friction.
So when you hit that, just say to yourself “good.”
Because that means you know you’re learning, you’re solving problems, you’re pushing up against resistance and becoming stronger.
Your systems might be optimal, but real life isn’t optimal.
We don’t wait for the perfect conditions to make progress.
And we can’t be waiting and hoping for optimal as if life’s going to hand us the golden platter of growth and success, where everything’s just lined up in an instant, everybody loves us, everything’s cool, everything feels good, we feel confident, strong, ready, happy …
Perfect conditions don’t exist.
You don’t need optimal.
Most of the time, when you’re coming up out of nothing, it’s going to be a lot of
hustling and working in the dark - up early, down late, chaos in between
struggling to just survive, humbled down in life, stripped of identity and individuality (because you’re a newb—you know nothing, you have nothing, you’ve got no reputation, no name, you’re just a unit in the field—and now you’re training up from zero).
breaking old internal and external behavioral patterns and fighting old ways of being, relating, and doing that no longer serve you or the mission
taking out the garbage and baggage on day just to backslide the next, and then pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and get back on the righteous grind.
killing old labels, old names, old stories, old explanations, old motivations, old goals, old expectations, and setting new ones.
reprogramming and recalibrating when everything around you is in ruins.
going to bed after a miserable day of just getting your ass kicked, feeling stupid, looking stupid, being judged, hated, ignored, humiliated, battered … just to get up the next day and play the game again.
That’s the operation.
That mission will take training.
And there’s somebody else out there with less, that wants it more than you, needs it more than you, and is putting out harder than you…
And you will have to confront that opposition.
You will have to confront the darkest places inside of you, head on.
And those demons usually come out when you’re all alone and nobody’s there for you.
Or when the lights come on and you’re just exposed.
Both ways.
That’s when you confront the demons.
That’s when you go to war.
The righteous grind
So what do we do??
We pray.
We meditate.
We study.
We train and prepare—mentally, physically, spiritually.
We trust the process when it hurts and when it feels good.
We hone our mind 24/7 on the mission.
We enter the moment with 1,000 yds of focus. depth. intensity.
We put out during the work hours and callous our minds to the inevitable breakdown/buildup cycle that is growth, progress, life.
We embrace the inevitable and give God the things we cannot control.
We go when we don’t feel like it.
We move out.
We jump.
We run the course.
We practice on the track, day in and day out.
We take the hit and keep going.
We perform under the pressure.
We excel in the daily grind.
That is the way.
We choose the righteous grind because we’d rather grow, serve, lead, and influence for God, than resign our calling to the enemy and live average lives on the sidelines.
Go.
Until next session, stay righteous.
Pursue the path.
—Jamison