3 Lessons from Taking 100’s of People Through 100-Day Initiations 💯

📍 Coordinates: Buenos Aires, Argentina. 🇦🇷

📖 Reading Time: ~6 minutes.

🧉 Vibecheck: We officially opened the doors to the HERO100 last week! You can see a 60-second overview of our 100-day adventure right here. If you can, please share it with a friend you think would be interested. It helps us give the gift of greatness to more members of our human family. Thank you. 🙏🏻

We’ve run hundreds of participants through our 100-Day initiations this year…

These are 3 meta-lessons I’ve learned in that process.

#1. Discipline & Consistency are Spiritual Practices

I’ve written about what I call the ‘discipline of surrender’ previously. In facilitating this process for others, and witnessing my process, it’s evident that discipline and the Art of Consistency are spiritual endeavors all on their own.

A disciplined commitment creates the conditions for an intense number of latent psychological blocks, tests of fortitude, and moments of surrender to arise.

First, the act of surrendering to your intention.

The intention is set: “I intend to see this challenge through all the way.” While some may call what happens next willpower or discipline, I call it surrender. You surrender yourself to the intention. The byproduct of this is discipline.

The main obstacle to surrendering is resistance. You wake up, you’re tired, and you don’t want to do the thing — if you were fully surrendered you would already be up and doing it. The possibility of choice has been relinquished.

It’s been a busy day and you’d like to take a break – the willpower to do it arises effortlessly because the option not to do it has been surrendered.

Moments of resistance or hesitation are manifestations of the ego. They are habitual patterns of outdated behaviours, justifications, or bargains made with yourself. The commitment to discipline surfaces all of these, to be witnessed and released so that the intention can be honoured.

Second, the act of embodying your values.

“Don’t explain your philosophy, embody it.” — Epictetus

Another way to say this is “Show, don’t tell.” Talk is cheap, particularly when it relates to values. If you value self-mastery, personal integrity, commitment, discipline, strength, willpower, etc. — prove it! You prove it by doing it. Not sometimes, not only when you feel like it, not when it’s opportunistic, not only when you can package it nicely into an Instagram Reel.

Commitments are a sacred, non-judgemental mirror. They reflect your commitment to—and your current embodiment of—your personal value stack.

Third, they facilitate unitive experiences of deep self-awareness and insight into the nature of things.

This is a goal of any spiritual undertaking: greater self-awareness, unitive experience, and insight into the nature of Reality.

The moment before a cold shower, or sitting for meditation, is often fraught with hesitation, nervousness, boredom, or avoidance. But the moment you begin, it’s not that bad. Often it’s profoundly beautiful.

The ability to drop the personal narrative in the cold or on the cushion deeply illustrates to you the fundamental interconnectedness of all things, or highlights the ephemeral nature of all sensations in the arising and passing away field of consciousness.

When we ask for feedback, we are met with the resounding response that the true value lies in making the commitment and following it through. Everything else is a bonus.

Discipline and consistency are spiritual practices.

#2. Support & Community are Non-Negotiable

A second lesson is that direct, ongoing support is non-negotiable.

When undertaking any psycho-spiritual process, having a guide, therapist, facilitator, doctor, shaman, or loving friend with you is essential.

Support provides you with renewed motivation and vital energy to see the process through, with guardrails and boundaries if the process proves difficult. It gives you loving advice when working through deeply rooted behaviours or succumbing to negative spirals.

Support, in the form of direct counselling, accountability groups, and community events, returns you to the most indivisible unit of humanity: a collective.

I have many dead projects or unfinished challenges (I’m looking at you, online yoga teacher training!) that are sitting in permanent limbo because I was trying to do them alone, by myself.

Energy gets drained, momentum is lost, motivation dwindles, and obstacles prove too difficult to overcome – whatever the reason (excuse) is.

On the flip side, the energy, scaffolding, and ongoing support that the community grants you gives you precisely what you need to persevere. To be witnessed in your process, to receive advice, and to celebrate others.

But I get it. Providing this level of support is expensive. It costs money and takes a lot of human energy. In the interest of profit margins, ROI, and logistical ease, support is reduced to emails sent to a maybe-maintained Customer Service address.

We will never do this. We go in the opposite direction. After the positive feedback on our social habits app, weekly tribe calls, collective milestone gatherings, and the ongoing community — we are doubling down. More Q&A’s, more avenues for conversation, more access to the team and the Stewards.

Support is non-negotiable, and we’re acting like it.

#3. Mistakes & Failures are Great Gurus

Guru means “remover of darkness.”

A guru removes the shadows of confusion, uncertainty, hesitation, distortion, and distraction from the disciple, allowing the clear light of Insight to shine.

Anything that helps you ‘remove the darkness’ is your Guru. After witnessing hundreds of transformations, I know that mistakes and failures are the greatest of gurus.

It’s the moments when you make a mistake, where you take the easy road, when you encounter a personal ‘failure’ that the greatest insight is gleaned.

These mistakes, misses, and missteps are the moments where insight is born:

• “Ah, I see clearly how staying out last night made me oversleep, and now I missed 2 of my challenges. It’s my nighttime routine that needs to change!”
• “Ah, it was a perfectionistic tendency all along that was causing me to hesitate and not take action on this.”
• “Oh, I see I have an all-or-nothing frame of reference, as I was considering dropping everything once I missed my first day. Let’s work on that.”

This is where the gold is. Because we have 3+ months together, you have the opportunity to investigate your behaviour, personality, and thought patterns and begin to make adjustments, find corrective behaviours, and embody new and more empowering belief systems.

The catalyst for all of these are the mistakes, failures, and missed opportunities that we so often lament. Instead, in our experiences, they are celebrated with the reverence of a true Guru.

We are embarking on our next initiation, the HERO100, on January 14. You can use ‘SERIOUSPLAY’ when signing up for an exclusive discount. I’ll see you there, on our next adventure into discipline and freedom. 💛 EB.