Reflections on 100 Days of Heroic Discipline ⚡️
Insights, evolutions, and lessons learned from the Hero100.
📍 Coordinates: Toronto, Canada. 🇨🇦
📖 Reading Time: ~8 minutes.
🧉 Housekeeping: Hello! I’ve missed you. I’m still alive, and we’ll have more writing coming in hot the next few weeks. (1) Dropped a podcast of this article with my brother
, will share the video once it’s live! (2) Announcing the Warrior100, a 100-day holistic warrior training program beginning September 1st. Get 10% off with code ‘SERIOUSPLAY’.“No mud, no lotus.” — Thich Naht Han
Whew. It’s wonderful—and long overdue—to be behind the page again.
There’s a certain energy I get sitting in front of a blank page. Like a sparring session has begun…
…I’m returning to writing after completing my Hero100 last week. 100 days straight of 6 daily disciplines.
It was phenomenal. One of the most electric experiences I’ve had in a while. On the surface, my challenge recap looks like:
94/100 days fully complete (doing all 6 challenges).
100 fasting sessions for over 1503 hours.
99 cold showers.
98 meditation sessions for over 57 hours.
100 journalling sessions.
96 sunrise movement sessions.
150+ items donated/eliminated.
It was a comprehensive evolution. I’m a lot more mature, rooted, and focused now.
It sorted out a lot of bullshit and made space for real accomplishments. It was everything I wanted it to be and much more than I imagined.
The hit list coming out the other side is wild, and I’m proud of it:
Founded my company (Phoenix Culture LLC.)
Made the decision to close another company
Took Spanish seriously by taking 1:1 private classes
Uncovered a nasty martyr archetype in my personality and did hard emotional work on that
Made major financial moves: paying off outstanding debts, new bitcoin investments, and closing legacy accounts
Set up and took my lightning and bitcoin node online and operational
Designed and released 4 educational programs for ketamine therapy to hundreds of thousands of people with the Mindbloom crew
Laid plans for moving and establishing a home in Uvita, Costa Rica next year
Announced and filled 2 weeks of plant medicine retreats
Rebranded my newsletter (this publication!)
Designed and announced the Warrior100 (our upcoming transformational container).
HOOAH. Fuck yeah! 🔥
It was the structure of the challenge—the grounded energy it gave me each day—that helped me get over myself and start doing the things I cared about—big or small.
No more procrastination, no more f*cking around, no more dragging feet. If it’s important, I did it.
There were several major but less tangible things I got out of the Hero100:
An identity of discipline
Deep emotional excavation
Powerful personal value alignment
Daily keystone habit & structure
⚡️ The Identity of Discipline
Identity is made up of character traits that you can evidence. Remember all those moments you acted out of shyness? You’re shy. All the times you did something courageous? You’re brave.
I’ve never really identified with being disciplined. I vilified it at times.
I am consistent. I’m good at going deep quickly, but not at seeing something through to completion or mastery. It’s a shadow side of the ‘jack-of-all-trades’ ethos. I have shadows that resist that kind of hardcore, f*ck-your-feelings disciplinarian attitude.
But now I can own it. I did 94/100 days. 564 unique activities. Longest streak of 45 days straight without missing a beat. That’s a victory to me.
Without beating myself into submission, without the army bootcamp vibes – I built an identity of discipline for myself. I have the evidence now. That’s empowering. It feels like a potent weapon was added to my character loadout.
🚜 Deep Emotional Excavation
For the first few weeks, journalling was looking at basics like frustrations, outstanding tasks, hope/dreams/desires. But after weeks of looking at yourself and your psyche daily… it gets harder.
I was forced to look at deeper personality patterns, addictions, distractions, and relationships. It was rough and tough for many weeks.
I unrooted an all-pervasive martyr archetype dominating my life: always sacrificing myself for others.
It sounds virtuous on the surface, but in reality, it deeply neglects the individual. It was tough and painful to chew through that and admit it has shadows and shortcomings.
There’s never a perfect time to sit down and look at these parts of yourself. It’s uncomfortable, confronting, sad, or aggravating. So most of the time we avoid it.
With the support of this container—the energy of the cold showers, the grounding of the meditation, the spaciousness of item eliminations, and the willpower of fasting—going towards the hurt places was easier.
🌟 Powerful Value Alignment
Part of my martyr archetype is that I got really good at waking up and giving away all of my time to other people.
Immediately jumping into work, doing extra calls for free with people. Day in and day out giving my time to others – sometimes for things I wasn’t even passionate about.
One subtle realization I had during this was how much I liked my new morning routine: sunrise, movement, cold shower, meditation, journal, and coffee.
It felt like I was putting myself first. Because for the first time, I actually was. My mornings were for me, I started my days giving something to myself.
🌅 Daily Keystone Habit & Structure
I’m no stranger to the concept of a keystone habit, the one activity that anchors your day and everything else grows around and out of it. But I’ve never truly done it…
My personal ritual was a sunrise movement session. The requirement of getting up for the sunrise catalyzed an insane amount of beneficial change that wasn’t directly planned for. For example:
Getting up with the sun means you need a better sleep schedule. So a firm bedtime also happened.
To go to sleep earlier than normal, you need a wind-down routine, so one was made.
I still had energy during the wind-down, so excuses against flossing went away. Started flossing regularly.
Wanted to have enough energy to fuel my day, so movement/exercise came first thing. New movement ritual unlocked.
With new energy from movement and cold showers, I took this into my meditation sessions. Made real progress in concentration meditation.
With a calm, clear, awake mental state, I started getting the first most important thing done, each and every day consistently. This created so many of the victories, big and small, that I shared earlier.
All of this blossomed out of the sunrise keystone habit.
The only requirement I had was getting up with the sunrise, but in order to make that happen for 100 days straight—and as a result of doing it—dozens of other behaviours, habits, and routines formed.
It was one of the most productive periods of my life, despite investing ~1.5h each day into these disciplines.
And of course, I had the pleasure of facilitating this experience for others and seeing how their process unfolded, what was coming up, and any shared commonalities.
A few points stood out:
⏳ True Transformation Takes Time
Deep, enduring transformation doesn’t happen in a weekend. It’s not a 3-week vacation or a 30-day challenge.
Catalytic insights may happen, but the timeline for them to integrate and become a part of your instincts, intuitions, reflexes, and identity takes more time.
It’s like excavating a fossil. Gently, carefully, over time you dig up a bone at a time. And piece by piece, the full skeleton is made.
The 100-day length of time, with nowhere to run away to provides this timeline. I watched many go through their own journeys, as did I, sometimes with many weeks spent in the mud. But as one participant reminded me, “no mud, no lotus.”
😩 Profound Change Isn’t Always Glamorous
True transformation isn’t fancy. It’s destabilizing. It’s a death and rebirth process in a very literal manner.
The way you think, the way you act, your default assumptions and perspectives on the world must change. It’s like fixing a bone that never grew correctly, it must be broken and reset before it can heal properly.
There is something frighteningly beautiful about those who willingly set themselves on fire, in faith and trust that the phoenix that emerges from their ashes is worth the pain of self-immolation.
It is sacred work. It is evolution in action. It’s not always glamorous, but it is glorious.
📦 Containers & Intention Are Essential
It’s not hyperbole to say that I wouldn’t have achieved this had it not been for the structured container and clear intention of the challenge.
Many days I woke up tired and unmotivated — but knowing that I was in this process, knowing that I wasn’t going to let the group down was enough to keep me going.
It’s not easy to set up this psychological scaffolding by yourself. Doing it together is empowering, motivating, and deeply supportive.
I am so thankful for this. I am deeply grateful to everyone who took the leap and joined us. I am thankful for those who did exceptionally well—some even hitting 100% completion—and equally for those who dropped out along the way. It was all part of the experience, and it was beautiful.
The Next Evolution: Warrior100.
If you’d like to join us on these incredible initiations — we begin the Warrior100 on September 1st.
This is the next evolution of our work. Taking all of the lessons, mistakes, and insights from the Hero100 and putting them into a holistic warrior training program.
Body: 45 minutes physical training session.
Mind: 45 minutes concentration meditation.
Spirit: 30 minutes studying warrior cultures, virtues, and values.
Heart: 24/7 commitment to telling the truth and acting in integrity.
It’s going to be tough, but the results will be profound. You can learn all the details on the site.
And for reading this far, you can use ‘SERIOUSPLAY’ to get $20 off the ticket price. I’ll put everyone who registers with this code in the same group together so that we can do this challenge together! Let’s do it.
With love and power, EB. 💛