The Flinch

The Flinch

The flinch is the moment when every doubt you’ve ever had comes back and hits you, hard. It’s when your whole body feels tense. It’s an instinct that tells you to run. It’s a moment of tension that happens in the body and the brain, and it stops everything cold.

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Whatever form it takes, the flinch is there to support the status quo. It whispers in your ear so you’ll dismiss a good idea that requires a lot of change.

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Facing the flinch is hard internal labor that comes with no up-front promise of reward. But one day, your world will change, maybe drastically, and it will do so without warning. On that day, you won’t be prepared—unless you’ve fought the flinch before.

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Finding the flinch reveals a secret passage, hiding in plain sight. It’s why some people know how to sell, and others can’t—because they see the flinch in others. It’s why you can’t quit your job or be the person you want to be—you can’t see the flinch in yourself. The flinch is why you don’t do the work that matters, and why you won’t make the hard decisions.

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They use trial and error—the basic way you learned to walk, jump, and ride a bike. The process of trial and error is inherent to life. It’s simple, and it works if what you want is to understand your environment. This curiosity is why kids touch burners. They want to know how things work. They’re interested, and they’re not spoiled by the flinch. They just do it. They test their environment, and stop when it hurts. The scars they get are medals they’ve won, not deformities they need to hide.

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Here’s the thing: the lessons you learn best are those you get burned by. Without the scar, there’s no evidence or strong memory. The event didn’t actually happen or imprint itself on your brain—you just trusted those who know better. Adults know what’s safe, so you listen. Over a lifetime, those who listen too much build a habit of trust and conformity. Unfortunately, as time goes on, that habit becomes unbreakable. This is dangerous.

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You can’t settle for reaching other people’s limits. You have to reach yours. If you don’t test yourself, you don’t actually grow to your own limits.

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The anxiety of the flinch is almost always worse than the pain itself. You’ve forgotten that. You need to learn it again. You need more scars. You need to live.

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You imagine that you weren’t meant for this. You think you’re not strong enough. In a sense, you’re right. You’re quitting before the pain even sets in. You’re quitting out of fear of the flinch. What you’re missing is that the path itself changes you. You’re weak because you haven’t stepped on the path. When you do, a process will begin. As you climb the mountain, you’ll get stronger. Your plastic brain will be shaped by the path. You might think this path isn’t for you, but it is—you’ll just change along the way. The path itself will toughen you up for the end. Right now, you just need to start. ileo start

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You need to build a habit of seeing the flinch and going forward, not rationalizing your fear and stepping away. Start doing the opposite of your habits. It builds up your tolerance to the flinch and its power.

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Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where thdivead wheere is no path and leave a trail.”

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Consider this: in your corridor, every flinch is a door you can open with a new scar and lesson behind it, the same way a kid learns by touching the burner.

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Open doors mean expanded options. The flinch will block you, but once the door is open, the threat vanishes. A new path appears. Opening new doors means confronting a possibility of getting lost. Lost feels like failure, something that might leave a scar or be embarrassing. So the flinch starts its work, and pushes you back into the familiar to distract you.

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Behind every moment of courage was a man or woman who faced a difficult internal struggle. When they face it, it becomes an amazing story. They become legends. But if they turn away from the flinch, their stories are unexceptional. They’re like everyone else. They vanish.

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So how do you know when the fear means something, and when it’s just pointless? How do you know when the flinch is protecting you? There’s a process for it. Here it is:

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First, find a safe place to decide from. If you feel threatened by the man next to you on the subway, move away first. From this vantage point, a better decision can safely emerge. So your relationships, health, debt, everything—make sure none of them feel dangerous, because they are easy reasons to flinch. The less these situations provoke you, the more you can focus. Then, once you’re ready, listen to yourself. When you’re facing the flinch, you use words like “stupid,” “safe,” “pointless,” or anything else that is soft, judgmental, and blurry. The flinch thrives on making risks look worse than they are. So look for those words, act anyway, and judge from hindsight instead. You’ll know you’ve opened the right door when you feel a strong, irresistible impulse to do something else, anything else. This usually means that you’re right at the threshold of something important, and you need to pay attention and keep going—nowa

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When you feel the flinch, you can shut it up by talking out loud. Ask a clear, strong question: “What are you afraid of?” Say it whenever you’re avoiding the flinch; then force yourself to answer. Or just call it out: “Flinching.” Verbalize your excuse. It’s often ridiculous, paranoid, or obsessive-compulsive. You sound like a drowning sailor when, in fact, you aren’t even near the water. Calm down and move forward.

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All of life is like this. You’re only as strong as your weakest moments. Learn to reinforce those weak spots before they cut you down.

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“You can take a piece of wood that you brought back from your garden, and each day present it with a flower. At the end of a month you will adore it, and the idea of not giving it an offering will be a sin.” In other words, everything that you are used to, once done long enough, starts to seem natural, even though it might not be.

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The flinch doesn’t want you to change. Its agenda is to keep you in status quo. It believes your identity is what’s kept you alive and stable, and that settling is better than dead. But it’s a trap, because almost none of the risks modern man takes are fatal at all. Every time you give in, you actually make the wrong path easier to follow. But every time you go the right way, you get stronger.

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The training isn’t about fighting at all, but something more important: pattern-breaking. The first step is to stop seeing everything as a threat. You caThireat. Yn’t will this to happen—it requires wider exposure. If you’ve been punched in the face, you won’t worry as much about a mugger, for example. If you face the flinch in meditation, you don’t worry about a long line at the bank. Build your base of confidence by having a vaster set of experiences to call upon, and you’ll realize you can handle more than you used to. Doing the uncomfortable is key. It widens your circle of comfort.

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An acrobat isn’t born walking on his hands. The process for learning is slow, and only later does it become effortless. Flinching forward, like walking on your hands, is a test of your environment. Learning to balance means falling, and when the acrobat does it, he sees what’s dangerous and what isn’t—after the fact. As he gets better, he starts to understand the method. If his environment pushes back by making him fall, he begins to understand his limits.

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Most people look at walking on their hands and think: “I can’t do that,” but they’re wrong. You can use this same process to get anywhere you want to go. Those who learned did it by flinching forward—through the initial reaction&#ourl react8212;once, and then again and again, until it became second nature. You can do this with anything.

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Flinch forward in nature, at home, in your workplace, anywhere. Try whatever you like or find interesting. Climb trees, eat new food, or learn to dance. All are provocations to the status quo that you use as stepping stones to larger explorations.

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Facing the flinch, and being willing to get the scars that come with it, is the only thing that divides your present from your future. Those who fight it are easily identified—you can see the fire in their eyes and the determination that practically courses through them. Their determination is like an aura; it can be felt just by being near them. Those who are unwilling to face the flinch are obvious, too. Their eyes are dead. Their voices sound defeated. They have defensive body language. They’re all talk. They see obstacles as assailants instead of adversaries. Their flinch is the elephant in the room, and they don’t want to hear about it.

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Most people don’t actually want to face the flinch; they just want to be in a movie about it. They want the glory, not the suffering. They don’t want scars because they like being soft. They don’t want to be humiliated; they want respect—they just don’t want to earn it. They want the keys handed to them. But it doesn’t work that way. If you choose the ring, you’re already better than most. Why? Because you chose to fight. You’re a contender, and almost no one can say that about themselves.

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If you aren’t willing to sacrifice your comfort, you don’t have what it takes. Set fire to your old self. It’s not needed here. It’s too busy shopping, gossiping about others, and watching days go by and asking why you haven’t gotten as far as you’d like. This old self will die and be forgotten by all but family, and replaced by someone who makes a difference. Your new self is not like that. Your new self is the Great Chicago Fire—overwhelming, overpowering, and destroying everything that isn’t necessary.

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THE FLINCH, A CHECKLIST

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