Warrior Wednesday: Going Too Far

1. “If you’re not willing to go too far, you’ll never go far enough in life” — Chael Sonnen

2. “I’d rather go too far than not far enough” - Sam Sulek

3. “Anything in life worth doing is worth overdoing. Moderation is for cowards” - Shane Patton, Navy Seal

There’s a common theme among high performers about going too far. They’re all willing to go too far. They may even try to go too far. Why is that? It seems like going too far would have consequences you’d want to avoid.

One observation is that you don’t see many people who went just the right distance. This is because most people underestimate how difficult things will be. If you think the finish line is 100m away and aim accordingly, but it’s actually 130m away, you’ll come up short. But the guy who thought it was 150m away will blow past the 130m finish line. He’ll have gone too far, but he made it nonetheless.

I’m not necessarily recommending going too far as a strategy. There’s clear downsides. Sometimes you sacrifice your family, or your relationship, or your health for your pursuit. But empirically it seems valuable if you want to achieve success in a given domain.

The reason I’m still in favor of going too far, is because it’s much easier to go too far and then dial it back, than it is to not go far enough and try to make up the distance at the end. At that point you’ve proven to yourself and others that you can do it. You can take the chip off your shoulders and get back to normal life.

And to balance this all out, here’s the cofounder of Netflix:

Go crush it today.

Much love,

Ben + Tim | The Warrior Philosophy Team

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P.S. When you realize it’s going to be a lot harder than you thought