How to Stop Life From Knocking You on Your Arse!
Learn how "Fudoshin" can completely transform your life
The world can feel like it’s out to get you.
Just when things are starting to go to plan, life throws you a curveball.
And when it does?
You have every right and every excuse to fall behind and feel a little lost.
But as valid as those excuses are, they’re not going to help you get closer to your goals.
Today, I’m teaching you about an ancient Japanese concept called Fudoshin.
“The Immovable Mind.”
Understanding how to apply this in your life won’t just help you deal with curveballs better.
It’ll help you respond in a way that moves you forward instead of holding you back.
Let’s go...
What Exactly is “Fudoshin”?
For Japanese Samurai Warriors, Fudoshin was the ability to display courage in the face of danger, sickness, and even death without any fear.
For us, the application can be a little less extreme.
The martial art of Kendo refers to Fudoshin as “Shikai”
The Four Sicknesses of the Mind…
Anger
Doubt
Fear
Surprise
Being able to manage and reduce these in your life successfully will give you an immovable mind.
#1 - Anger
Anger is something we all face.
According to psychologist Melody Stanford Martin, there are four types:
Short Anger - The immediate, physical response connected to our fight/flight/freeze system. This anger is part of your body’s ability to protect itself by taking immediate action.
Long Anger - The ongoing sense that the world is not what it should be. Usually experienced with grief or any time you’re forced to accept the unacceptable. Long anger sucks.
Hot Anger - A rush of rage. We’ve all had that situation when we’ve “seen red” and been completely unable to control our responses. Hot anger has explosive, destructive qualities and is not somewhere you want to stay for long.
Cold Anger - Anger that’s been cooled and put to use. Say you’ve had a really stressful day and instead of going home to start an argument with your partner, you head to the gym to put the anger to good use.
Here’s what you need to remember about anger…
“You cannot see your reflection in boiling water. Similarly, you can’t see truths in your life in a state of anger.”
To find your Fudoshin, you need to manage your anger levels better.
Here’s how I do it…
#1 - You can’t control what happens to you, but you can control how you respond to it.
When life deals you a shit hand, pause for a second and think:
“How do I WANT to respond to this?”
rather than “How SHOULD I respond?”
#2 - When you’re in a good place physically, mentally, emotionally, and financially, you give zero fucks what anyone else thinks of you.
Looking after yourself in these areas will ensure your anger levels stay low.
#3 - You get angry when something you thought was going to happen doesn’t.
Traffic. Delayed flights. Losing something valuable.
This goes back to point one…
You can’t control what happens, only how you respond.
Condition yourself to let go of the outcome.
“At the end of the game, the king and the pawn go back in the same box.” - Italian Proverb
#2 - Doubt
It’s said that “doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will.”
If you want to find your Fudoshin, you need to learn how to manage three different types of doubt…
Doubt in Your SELF
This is the biggest dream killer.
When you don’t believe in yourself, others won’t believe in you either.
The whole thing becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I’ve overcome this by truly understanding:
No one is special
Every professional was once an amateur
You can’t fail if you don’t give up
Doubt in OTHERS
This one applies deeply to business and relationships.
If you have doubts about others’ abilities in business, you won’t trust them to do a good job. People learn from mistakes, and when you doubt them, they’re so afraid of making mistakes that everything takes much longer.
Learn to trust and allow others to make mistakes if you want to grow.
Doubts about others in your close relationships usually say more about your own insecurities than your partner’s behaviour.
This becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, too.
When you place doubt in relationships, you lose all trust.
When trust is gone, the relationship is gone.
Others’ Doubt in YOU
I’ve had people doubt my abilities since I was in my 20s.
From my Staff Sergeant in the Army telling me “There’s no jobs out there for people like you” to people on the internet saying “Box jumping Mount Everest is impossible.”
If you let others tell you what you can and can’t do, and allow that self-doubt to creep in, you’re finished.
Instead, turn that doubt into spite and use it as fuel.
My response to doubt has always been this:
“Ahh, you’re new here. Stick around long enough and you might learn something.”
#3 - Fear
When it comes to fear, many things can be debilitating.
Phobias are interesting because a lot of them are excessive and unreasonable.
I’m not a big fan of heights, but every time I get the opportunity to go somewhere up high, I jump at it.
(Jump is probably the wrong word… more like grit my teeth and bear it.)
Here’s why..
The solution to fear is not avoidance.
It’s exposure.
“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.” - Marie Curie
A lot of people have a fear of failure, which causes them to avoid doing the thing they really want to do.
Which then creates failure anyway.
You have two options when facing your fears:
Action or Avoidance.
Only one produces an outcome.
You avoid?
You fail.
You take action?
You might fail. But you might also succeed.
And remember…
You can’t fail if you don’t give up.
#4 - Surprise
Everyone likes positive surprises.
Someone gets you a nice gift.
You find a tenner on the pavement.
What people hate are negative surprises.
Surprise... you must stay at home.
Surprise... your car needs four new tyres and a new exhaust.
People don’t like negative surprises because they weren’t expecting them.
My recommendation?
Embrace Murphy’s Law.
Murphy’s Law states that if anything can go wrong, it will go wrong.
The key to embracing it is not expecting that the worst might happen.
It’s understanding that if it does, you’ll be absolutely fine.
“My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it... but love it.” - Friedrich Nietzsche
When you accept what will be, there are no more surprises.
If it’s positive, it’ll make you smile and be grateful.
If it’s negative, you don’t yet know if it’s bad because you have the rest of your life to find out.
Finding your own Fudoshin is a relentless pursuit of managing your Four Sicknesses of the Mind.
Stop doing this:
Reacting to anger in the moment
Doubting yourself and others
Avoiding your fears
Being blindsided by negative surprises
Start doing this:
Pause and choose your response to anger
Believe in yourself and others - use doubt as fuel
Expose yourself to your fears through action
Accept that if things go wrong, you’ll handle it
Life will keep throwing curveballs.
The question is whether you’re going to let them knock you on your arse or whether you’re going to build an immovable mind that handles whatever comes.