Let's take all of this blood and turn it in to love!

Currently Reading: The Rhythm of Life by Matthew Kelley (Finished Primal Blueprint yesterday)

Finished last day of law school on Monday. One final in 9 days and one paper in 15 days. That's all I have left.

Current project is to do a handstand. As I say this, I have no handstand skills. I can barely hold a tripod. So I broke the thing down in steps. How could I get my body in to a handstand positions? I started by taking one of my thick law textbooks and stacking my yoga block on top of it. On top of that, I put a pillow. With that, I did a tripod with my head on the yoga block. From there I was able to straighten my legs against a wall. I was doing a tripod with straight legs balancing against a wall. I had to do it this way, because there was no way I was strong enough to straighten my arms in to a handstand with my head all the way on the floor.

While the yoga block was helpful, I still had to muster the strength the straighten my arms. This, in and of itself, took a couple days. Once I was able to straighten my arms, I made the process more difficult by moving my head closer to the ground. To to do this, I slowly began reducing the thickness of the yoga block monstrosity. Every time the yoga block got thinner, I needed additional strength on my end to straighten out my arms. I would try and rep out a few of these weak/sudo handstand push ups to try and build more strength.

The next breakthrough was huge.

I removed the yoga block from the mix. Just planting my hands on the floors and kicking myself in to a handstand position with straight arms. At this point, I'm still using the wall. That brings me to today. I still use the wall, but I don't need it as much--my balance is improving. When I get in the handstand position, I keep working on handstand push ups, trying to get deeper and stronger. My head doesn't come close to the ground yet, but it's working it's way down. I'm happy with my progress. In fact, I'm amazed by my progress. In two weeks, I went from thinking I had no chance at doing handstands to kicking myself up against a wall without the yoga block to help.

I've always actually underestimated my ability. For the longest time I could bench 225 with relative ease. (I'm sure some of you are laughing at the fact that I'm proud of benching 225). But I could get one rep at 225 pretty easily. As soon as I added a 2.5lb plate to each side, I couldn't rep it. I just thought there was no way I could do it. I wasn't strong enough; "I'm not one of those big guys." That's what I'd say to myself. Also, I was so happy to bench 225, that I kind of thought "that's it." The mental barrier was excruciating. But I knew I could do more based on how easy I could bench 225. To break through, I focused on my accomplishments. I took a mindset of "you're way better than what's hanging you up. There's no way 230 is impossible when 225 is too easy." After a few months I busted through it.

Similarly with handstands, I thought I was so bad, so weak at them. After all, I was doing tripods with my head on a pillow on a yoga block, and mustering one or two of these crappy handstand push ups. I thought I was a huge way away from kicking myself in to the handstand position. And then one day, when I was dreaming of kicking myself up, and thinking I was doing miserable, I started taking movies of myself doing them. On the video, I saw how close I actually was to kicking myself up. Suddenly, I knew I could do it. The very next time I tried, I kicked myself up on the wall.

Let no one forget how important those mental barriers are. If you're working hard and honestly trying, you are already there. You are so much better and stronger than your self doubt lets you be. One of my recent favorite phrases is, "it's just that easy." Too often people won't try something because they think, if it was this easy, everyone would be doing it. You see something or hear a story of something remarkable, and you think, that's so hard, I could never do that. What if that's what everyone is thinking? What if you just have to be the person to do the easy thing, the thing that everyone thinks is hard? Why not give the "impossible" a shot today?

And after you're done and celebrating, take a second to go to your black rock and marvel at how incredible you and your life are.