THE MISOGI CHALLENGE
The Misogi challenge is a Japanese technique to help you completely change who you are and the foundation of who you are as a person and shake off all of the bullshit that you have accumulated over the years that are not actually you. Miso means water, and sogi means purification.
We will be talking about how to grow your willpower by doing something that is extremely hard. There are multiple studies that show that humans are getting more fat and more lazy every single year and the idea is we become so comfortable being fat and happy that we’ll rather stay in our comfort zone versus doing something that’s hard. The idea behind the misogi challenge is to do the things that’s so hard and so far out of your comfort zone that everything you’ve been seeing is hard for the past two weeks or so doesn’t seem like such a big deal.
You get to the point where you’ll be like “if I did that thing I can definitely do this”. It’s like working out. You go into the gym for the first time ever and you are not able to lift as much but when you constantly keep going, your muscles will naturally grow.
You need to go so far outside your comfort zone that you start to expand and grow who you are to your core. You may realise some people don’t get offended by anything because they went through bigger challenges in the past and are not fazed by little things. This mindset can be used for growth approaching things in manner that signals: “If I was able to overcome this challenge, I can do this one easily”. In this way growth is stimulated. Sometimes the universe will place terrible things in front of you and say that you need to have this terrible thing so that you can grow.
However in the situation where things are easy, the question is how do we bring the hard things to ourselves? How do we push ourselves so far outside our comfort zone that we can grow our will power and the less we care about the little shit?
When you hear from the toughest persons in the world, you realise they are the people who have been through the most shit. Francis Ngannou who became the UFC champion went through a lot of shit back in his home town in Cameroun. He tried to leave Cameroun six times by sea to Europe but was arrested and deported. However he tried the seventh time, got arrested but was later released in France. He later became the UFC champion and now when he talks about it he’s almost like it’s nothing for him compared to what he’s been through.
Take for instance a cold plunge. Nobody likes cold plunges but people do them anyway for the benefits. Say you want to get into the cold plunge but a part of you tells you not to, you resist that and go anyway. You keep doing that continuously everyday until you get used to it. That thing that made you resist is called your will power and the more you experience resisting that protective part of you brain trying to keep you safe, the more you grow your will power and you become unstoppable.
You might have little will power right now but you might decide you need to develop your will power. The Misogi challenge is designed to test your will power and will power is like a muscle. It’s something that can be grown.
How can you find something in your life that’s a mental, physical and spiritual practice that absolutely changes your life. In other words what do you need to do that will make you feel like a changed person. An example could be going for an extremely intense fight, climbing a mountain, going for a run until you can’t run anymore. Basically something that’s extremely beyond our capacity.
Like David Goggins said in the law of 40%: “ When you have found that your body and your brain has reached 100% of your capacity, it’s actually only about 40% in reality and your growth happens outside of that moment”. You grow when you find your limit and then you push past it.
A lot of times we are capable of so much more but we settle for safe. The Misogi challenge can help you change and believe in yourself. If it doesn’t challenge you, it doesn’t change you.
The question to you is what is that thing and how can you develop a cadence in your life to actually get to the point where you think you can’t go any further and then pushing forward past that?
