Welcome to this month’s tea-time Tuesday. As I write this, I’m drinking an aromatic blend of spices (cloves, cardamom, nutmeg) combined with black tea called Adeni chai. It’s actually very similar to the Indian chai if you’ve had that before!

🫖 Backstory

I recently learned about something that blew my mind.

But before I share it, let me share a personal battle I’ve had with goals and achievement:

If you’ve been following along with my journey up until now, you probably know that I have big goals. Truth is though, that’s been a recent development in my life.

Prior to this drive to do better, I was a sad, angry, frustrated individual with dead ends for goals. However, that’s a story for another time.

In recent years, I’ve had a huge drive to become better. To grow in all aspects: health, relationships, finance, career, and more.

But we all know that’s easier said than done.

As I’ve started making small changes to my lifestyle, I’ve failed a lot. To this day, I continue failing. I eat healthy for days at a time only to consecutively crave and consume fast food immediately after. I conform to a regular sleep schedule, only to stay up binging a Netflix show a couple of days later. I say I’ll walk 10,000 steps every day, but end up staying at home and getting 262 steps instead.

🚨 Challenge

Why am I sharing this?

Because from the outside, it may seem like I have no struggles and that I have this whole life thing figured out.

I do not.

In the past few weeks, a few people have scheduled time with me asking questions like “How do you keep yourself motivated?” and “How do you balance time?” — while I do answer those practically later on, I first share that we all struggle and that I often don’t want to do the things I say I do.

So, what allows me to push past the “not wanting” to do those things?

🔑 Solution

It’s simple—I push beyond it. I try to ignore that voice in my head telling me what I want and don’t want.

That push has become a little stronger since I learned about a brain structure called the Anterior Mid-Cingulate Cortex.

It was referenced in this episode of Huberman Lab with David Goggins:

What’s interesting about this brain area is that it activates when people regularly do something they don’t want to do. For example:

• Adding 3 hours of exercise per week

• Resisting a tempting food item

• Doing work that you don’t want to do

This area of the brain is smaller in obese people and bigger when they diet. It’s larger in athletes and larger in those who struggle and overcome challenges. That’s fascinating because it tells us that if things were easy, we wouldn’t activate this part of our brain.

To make things crazier, I was shocked to learn that many scientists see this brain area as not just a seed of willpower, but also as a seed to live.

💡 Significance

Huberman went as far as to say that this might be the most important discovery in neuroscience. He also mentioned that this brain area can expand and contract. Meaning—if you lean into the voice of the ‘want’ and fail to push yourself, this brain area will alternatively get smaller.

So to prevent that from happening, the trick is doing things you really don’t want to do.

The reason I’m sharing this is two-fold:

1) Most people don’t want to do the things that seem easy to them from an outside perspective on social media. It’s normal to have to push yourself, and that’s a great thing.

2) If it’s fully in your power to manifest the seed to live, that is an insane human discovery. You literally have the power to manifest willpower, the willingness to live, and a longer, more fulfilled life in your hands, all by choosing your actions 🤯

📝 Closing Notes

That’s it for today’s Tea-Time!

Sending a friendly reminder to encourage you to push yourself even when you're not feeling up to it.

You got this :)