On 10 days notice, Alexander Volkanovski - the UFC Featherweight Champion at the time - accepted a rematch to fight up a weight class for the UFC Lightweight Belt.

In their first fight, Volkanovski had lost a close decision to Islam Makhachev, who had until that point looked almost invincible on his rise. In the first fight, everyone had counted Volkanovski out - but in the end, he'd performed with tremendous heart and skill.

Unfortunately, the incredible underdog tale was to fall short again - as Makachev knocked out Volkanovski in the first round of their rematch.

A bunch of questions remained for UFC Fans: What if Volkanovski had a full camp? What if he had won the first fight? But most of all, why did Volkanovski accept the fight on such short notice?

In the post-fight press conference, Volkanovski explained the reason hadn't been for the money or because he got pressured into it by the UFC. Instead, he said: "When I'm not fighting or not in camp, I was just doing my head in."

It's not that different to most of us. Without sufficient challenges, we stagnate and we suffer.

One close friend, when asked what he thought my hamartia (fatal flaw) is, said: "You strive for perfection and when you are progressing slowly and not improving, you struggle mentally and implode."

He was right.

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Tim Kennedy explained that elite people cannot be mass produced, and if we want to become one, we need to seek out challenges.

We have a duty to ourselves and the people we care about to become the best we can. We need to wage war against lethargy, apathy, and weakness.

Last September was when I wound up my last attempt at a personal development challenge. I've tried them again and again. I haven't ever achieved what I set out out to do with 100% accuracy - but I've taken something away every time. I've learned things, installed new habits, gotten better in some way - every single attempt has improved me. And perhaps most importantly, it keeps me stable.

When I was younger, someone told me that it was great that I had read all these books but one day I'd have to face something called reality.

Seeking to overhaul my entire life and reach what I believe to be my potential - after failing again and again before - is far from realistic. These people in my life still feel that i'm out of touch with reality. But what these people want me to do is call it quits on my ambitions, on my beliefs, on my goals, on who I think I can become.

Meanwhile, I still believe I can become my vision of my best self and fulfil my ambitions. Either through the success of one of these challenges, or the slow compounding of gains from failed challenges. To quote Hercules, "I know what I am capable of. To deny it would be a betrayal. I would end my days hating myself."

There's the potential that eventually I'll break. The possibility that an accumulation of disappointment, kicks in the teeth, failure, impatience, external influences, and self-doubt will grind me down into accepting the reality of the cynics and critics in my ear. There may come a time when I find decide to hang up the gloves - and settle into accepting the stifling discomfort of mediocrity and the agonisingly slow death that brings.

But not just yet. Not while I still have an ounce of belief and a puncher's chance. Instead, I'll be like Jack Johnson and smile through the strikes that fate and life can send.

So, I won't try to fix my unachievable desire for perfection, or the fact that I implode when I'm not moving forward, I'll channel it.

I'll go Once More Into The Fray...

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And so, I'd like to announce that I'm embarking on a new personal development challenge - to hold myself accountable and hopefully inspire some of you to do the same.

The plan is called 100 EVOLVE (a cooler version of 75 HARD). The point is to face my fears, overcome my perceived limits, and seek out challenges that will force me to grow - all over the next 100 days:

The framework for anyone wanting to seek out their own personal development challenge is simple - and drawn from personal experience and the hundreds of books I’ve read:

Take Ownership: The moment we refuse to take accountability or accept that essentially everything in our life stems from us (and if it doesn’t, it’s still our responsibility) - is the moment we hand our personal power over to disinterested, cruel, and apathetic parties. Take full ownership of every part of your life and understand you can change your life.

See Things Different: Every great person I’ve met or read about had a shared trait - they could always see the positive. It’s the essence of the Obstacle Is The Way. Find the opportunity, use the moment as fuel, learn to laugh it off, there’s hundreds of options - the one option we shouldn’t take is to let something make us weaker and worse. We shouldn’t sit and complain. We should get to work and be like fire, consuming everything in our path to make us stronger and better.

Face Fear Head On: As Ben Howard sang, “we all live our lives in the confines of fear”. The best among us face the fear head on. They follow the Litany Against Fear, forcing themselves to face the fear, beating it, and absorbing the power it once held over them. They use it to sharpen themselves up. They wrestle with it to secure control over their mind. Our potential is limited by only two things: our fears and our weakness. Fight against fear with all that you have.

Test Your Own Limits: When Georges Saint-Pierre had his first title fight, he was matched up against his idol, Matt Hughes. In GSP’s mind, Hughes was a far greater fighter than him, and he lost his nerve.

Before the fight began, GSP couldn’t even make eye contact. He lost by submission in that fight, but learned from it, never again letting himself be trapped by his doubts - instead, seeking to exceed his limits. He redeemed himself a couple years later, knocking Hughes out and becoming the greatest welterweight champion in UFC history. We cannot let our perceived limits become our real limits. We need to fight them too.

Seek Out Challenges: We want to beat fear and conquer our limits, and the best way to do it is to seek out challenges we think are just beyond our reach. Challenges that if we overcome them, our sense of self will shift - even ever so slightly. It could be a workout goal, a project you want to launch, a skill to learn. Only you know what challenges will be meaningful to you.

Discover Your True Capacity: A sentence that makes me cringe is “I wasn’t even trying”. You hear it when people lose a match, fall short in an assignment, any time they face failure. Instead of learning from the failure, so that they won’t come up short in the future, they use their lack of effort as a badge of pride and an escape hatch. We can’t do that anymore. You need to give your all - and then some more. Isn’t it worth seeing what you’re capable of if you really tried? 

Be Comfortable With “Failure”: As I’ve written before, Failure is largely an illusion. The most successful people in history didn’t let failure keep them down. Instead, they made sure to learn and grow from it. That’s the approach you need to have. Gave it your all and still fell short? Good, now you know how to get better. 

The framework summarised into a sentence: Use discipline to do difficult things - helping boost your sense of self and agency.

If you’re anything like me, there’s a chance that not pushing yourself to your limit, torments you. It’s better to beat the resistance. Better to leave it all on the field. You’ll wear out a lot slower than you’ll rust out.

So, if you’d like to do your own 100 EVOLVE, consider doing the following:

1) Take full ownership of your life. Reprimand yourself anytime you try to pass the blame, complain, or make excuses. Understand it’s your life and you’re in control - act like it.

2) Understand, life happens FOR you, and not TO you. Find the positive in every situation, find a way to grow and be made better. Become a Fire, letting everything in your way become fuel to make you stronger. Ask yourself with every problem: what’s the opportunity here? How can this make me better?

3) Write out a list of fears that are most keeping you from having the things you want and becoming the person you want to become. Order them from most intense to least intense. Start at the least intense and find a way to face that fear. Every time you face a fear, it’s a success - it’s a vote for you becoming courageous. Let the successes build on themselves and escape the constraints of fear.

4) Similar to above, write out all the limits you think you have. This is usually kept in your mind as excuses. Find the one that seems the weakest and overcome it. Do research if you need, and come up with a plan. But get to work. Aim to beat the self-perceived limits.

5) Brainstorm on difficult things you’d love to do - and do them. No other advice needed, just put yourself in the Arena and don’t leave until you’ve conquered the challenge. Don’t seek challenges that seem impossible, just ones that you know you can achieve with some discipline and hardwork. Pick a few smaller ones that you can level up with first, and compound the confidence into more difficult ones

6) No more “I wasn’t trying”, no more “I don’t even care that much”, no more “I’ll do that one day” - arrogance is believing we can put off living until tomorrow or some date in future. Give your all, leave everything on the field, no one is getting out of this life alive anyway. Discover who you could be if you did all the things you know you should. Find out who Discipline can make you. Discipline is Destiny, Discipline Equals Freedom, these aren’t just maxims - they’re truths.

7) Give your all and still fall short? Get right back into the fight. Recalibrate, learn from the experience, come up with a new plan, take a breath if you need it - but NEVER leave the Arena. Being someone who tries puts you ahead of 99% of the population, being someone who keeps coming back and shows no quit? That makes you unbeatable.

Do these things for the next 100 days, and witness your own personal evolution. 

If you’re someone who doesn’t wrestle with these things, then this email probably seems a bit dramatic - why would I be in turmoil just because I’m not progressing? And that’s a perfectly reasonable question. 

But if you’re like me, then get on the path, do your own 100 EVOLVE, and go slay some dragons - internal or external.

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The purpose of this email was not to explain the exact framework to 100 EVOLVE but to let people know that we’re all going through something - but the best response to it is to take on the challenge. It was also meta - I was fearful and uncomfortable of sharing these insights into myself, but as part of the 100 EVOLVE, I need to get used to those feelings.

If anyone is interested, I’ll piece together a newsletter with my exact strategies, some goals I’m pursuing, some tactical and strategic advice I’ve found, what I’m doing differently than in the past, and more.

Until next week,