I Let the Stress Get to Me: Day 90 of Spartan 365

Spartan 365 Challenge Update: Day 90

I just finished making one of the biggest series of mistakes out of the entire challenge.

Click here to see what the Spartan 365 challenge entails.

I made about 8 mistakes total:

9/27/18:

1. Missed my daily meditation
2. Drank obscene amounts of alcohol
3. Smoked cigarettes
4. Failed to do seamen retention

9/28/18:

1. Failed to work for an hour minimum on SO
2. Missed my daily meditation
3. Failed to do seamen retention
4. Over-indulged in media

The total amount of money I owed for this was $200 and I had to do 8 reports total; one for each mistake.

What led up to my gigantic fuck-up?

Life and its challenges were starting to stress me out.

Instead of dealing with the stress, I was starting to let the anxiety and fear get to me. I was starting to look for ways to numb myself from it instead of confronting it.

I chose to react rather than respond to life.

Getting rejected by women like never before

During my second month in Texas, I agreed to do a challenge with my roommate that involved meeting and seducing women. Since we moved here without any real connections, we wanted to have a few girls that we were seeing on the regular to keep morale high and because life is better with good women.

The challenge first entailed approaching one woman per day in order to get her number and schedule a date. The consequence for not doing the approach was $10 and a report. We did this for about 15 days without failure. I met 1-2 girls. It’s worth noting that on many of the days, I did a lot more than 1 approach. Towards the middle of the month, we weren’t happy with our results so we decided to ramp up the approaches to 5 per day.

This proved to be a lot more time-consuming than I initially expected. My days were quite stressful as I still had many other standards to uphold; meditation, gym, day-job, working-out, martial-arts, etc.

The other thing was that these approaches didn’t amount to anything. I was getting rejected almost every single time. I can normally handle rejection quite well but it had never been this bad for me. Almost no women wanted to talk to me and would make up some excuse and walk the other way. This went on for almost 2 weeks and my overall mood began to become highly depressed. I was shocked and wondered why no women responded well to my approach. I had noticed that in Texas, daygame is a lot harder than in NYC for some reason.

Anyways, long-story-short, getting rejected for hours on end every day was emotionally exhausting. This was one of the factors that put pressure on my emotional reserves and made me reactive and negative. I wasn’t as fired up about life. It made like seem kind of grey. When I would come home and have to meditate or go to the gym, I just didn’t feel as motivated. I was too in my head and pissed about all the rejection. My roommate was having the exact same results; literally 100+ approaches, no results. We were both flustered as we never experienced this type of rejection in NYC.

Started doing Kratom and Phenibut which resulted in mental-confusion

A few months ago, I used to do Kratom every day for about a month or so. It’s a plant from Thailand that when consumed increases mood and focus. It doesn’t have too many bad side-effects and is a very mild stimulant.

After a while, I started to feel like I was depending on it too much. It was getting to the point where if I didn’t do it for a while, I wouldn’t feel like myself. I decided to go 30-days with no Kratom or Phenibut (another substance known for its anti-anxiety effects) and I experienced great mental clarity and discipline.

Anyways, the 30-day challenge ended about one week before my gigantic fuck-up. I started doing Kratom again and I experienced amazing effects. Mind-numbing euphoria and happiness. It was great. Then the next day, I decided to not do it but I ended up craving it the whole day. It was bad. I started getting familiar feelings of over-dependence again. I held on and didn’t give in. However, the next day, I gave in and did it.

Anyways, the point I’m getting at is the constant internal back-and-forth about whether I should do kratom was starting to take on a huge amount of my mental-focus. It made me question my daily meditation practice and other mental training. I was split internally. This threw me in a loop where if I did kratom, I felt guilty and if I didn’t do it, I felt like I was missing out. I was stressed out and unhappy. It was time for me to say goodbye to the plant for some time. I threw out my entire supply the morning of my gigantic fuck-up.

The lesson from the above is that I personally don’t like feeling like I’m reliant on any substance. Coffee and tea are as far as I’m willing to go. But my own awareness and daily practice should be enough to keep me happy, joyful, and focused. Anytime, I feel like I’m overly relying on something external, it puts me in a stressed-out state where I intuitively feel like something isn’t right. I firmly believe that God has given us more than enough internally to feel happy now. Plants can be used on occasion but should never be relied on unless in some special situations i.e cannabis for cancer patients or other psychedelics for rare recreational/spiritual use. By overly engaging in psychedelic substances, we miss the opportunity to develop these neuro-pathways on our own.

Uncertainty about my business

During this whole experience, I was offered some interesting opportunities that would kind of take my focus off of Spartan Ownership a bit. They were indirectly related to Spartan Ownership but had some conflicting elements. Over the past few years, I’ve noticed that whenever there is uncertainty about my focus regarding business, it has the capacity to cause A LOT of anxiety and reactivity if I’m not careful. I hate feeling like my focus is split in regards to business. I love feeling like I have one business I’m working on and that’s it. This also threw me into a loop.

All those 3 things I mentioned above were causing me to lose focus on my vision and standards regarding Spartan 365 and who I was. Instead, I was starting to let fear and anxiety enter my awareness. I was starting to look for ways to go unconscious…to escape. 

The subsequent downward spiral AKA fuck-up

In my completely retarded state, I rationalized getting drunk as fuck, smoking cigarettes, eating shitty food, and all the other mistakes mentioned above. I spent quite some time hung-over puking my guts out. During the entire experience, all I could think of was escaping my head. I somehow forgot that getting out of my head is best done through activities such as meditation, getting good sleep, relaxation, or just finding other ways to have fun. I just wanted unconsciousness. After the 3rd day, I woke up and I knew I was gonna have to pay a hefty price for my mistakes. I paid it and now I’m back. Oh well, we make mistakes and we get back on the path.

Was losing consciousness and going crazy worth it?

Hell no. There was barely a time during the entire 2 days that I felt any kind of fulfillment. During the height of my drunken state, all I remember thinking is that I wanted to get more drunk. There was never a time where I felt any kind of deep fulfillment.

On a superficial level, I did feel a bit less tense because of the depressive effects of alcohol and the numb feeling from it all. But ultimately, I felt like complete garbage the next day and my performance in terms of energy and wellbeing has taken a hit that will surely impact my performance for at least a few days.

If anything, this was a good reminder as to why I chose to cut those activities out in the first place. They only offer some superficial effects that render you temporarily unconscious. They don’t solve your problems and they don’t even make you that much happier.

True bliss and deep fulfillment come from living life impeccably. It comes from being disciplined AKA being a disciple to your deepest self. Doing what you know is right. This doesn’t mean always being hard on yourself though. It simply means, living according to your deepest values and standards.

Did I learn anything at all from being drunk as shit?

I will say this and it’s that I sometimes don’t feel like I have enough fun. I mean I’m pretty lax with myself and give myself ample time to rest but I still feel like my life isn’t that much fun at times. Maybe it’s because I just moved to Texas and I still haven’t really established any fun social circles with cool guys. Maybe it’s because my dating life is pretty much non-existent. Maybe it’s because I almost never go out at night and therefore miss much of what the social life around me is all about. I don’t know but this experience has taught me that it’s OK to have some fun sometimes and just because you live a self-disciplined lifestyle, it doesn’t mean you have to be serious all the god-damn time. Learn how to laugh a little. Go do some fun shit.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, mistakes are to be expected and I paid the price fully for each and every single one.  I went 88 days without having any major fuck-ups so that’s not bad in and of itself. You move forward, sometimes you fall, and then you learn. Simple. The Spartan 365 challenge continues.

I’m getting a lot better at managing my response to stress. I believe that at the end of the Spartan 365 challenge, I will be even better. In fact, I know I will be. Self-mastery and developing a powerful mindset is something that is earned. I’m not discouraged. I will keep moving forward.

Best,

Maximillian Giamarco

P.s. Would like to make progress on your journey to self-mastery? Check out the Spartan Ownership shop here for badass tools, gadgets, and training courses that will accelerate your growth. Also, if you would like more personalized help with setting your objectives, book a coaching/strategy session with me here.