This might be groundbreaking for you… or maybe not. But here’s the truth… everything you believe about yourself, your limits, potential, and abilities is just perception.
And perception? It can be changed!
As Tim Ferriss puts it, “Reality is negotiable. Outside of science and law, all rules can be bent or broken, and it doesn’t require being unethical.”
Listen to your body is one of the biggest lies ever sold to you. Your body is a liar. It will quit long before it needs to. It will trick you into believing you’re done when you still have more to give.
It will tell you to stop long before you need to. It will make you believe you’ve hit your limit before you have, and you will believe you are at a 10/10 when, in reality, you still have more in the tank.
You might not be here, but high performers don’t listen to their bodies. They train them. They understand that their reality, ability, endurance, and strength are things they can shape, not something they are stuck with.
And when you realise that your perceived limits are just negotiable rules, you stop operating like everyone else. You stop looking for the easy way out and start writing your future.
I already know what you’re thinking: ‘But Scott, I’m different!’ or ‘My situation is unique!’ Maybe this is true.
Reality doesn’t care about your situation, pain, or excuses. And if you’re waiting for a break, you’ll be waiting forever. I know this because I’ve been there too. I’m human, just like you. I’ve been injured, I’ve felt pain, and I’ve wanted to quit.
I run a business with a young family; I understand how tempting it is to want to go out for cigarettes sometimes and never return. I’ve had a herniated disc and sciatica, a shoulder injury that stopped me from pressing, hell I’m 37 years old and ache every day after I sleep funny. But I am here to tell you that if I had listened to any of the advice my brain and body gave me, I wouldn’t have written this post right now.
There is a story that quite often rings in my mind to keep me going. In 1911, Two teams set out on a race to the South Pole. One, led by Roald Amundsen, who had a strict plan, ‘march 20 miles every single day, no more, no less. Even when the weather was perfect.’ They could have pushed further, but they stuck to the plan. Even when storms raged, and conditions were brutal, they still marched.
The other team, led by Robert Falcon Scott, took a different approach. When the weather was good, they pushed as hard as possible. When it was bad, they stayed in camp, waiting for better conditions.
Who won?
Amundsen’s team reached the South Pole first and survived. Scott’s team? They never made it back. A tragedy.
Why?
Because Amundsen didn’t listen to his team’s short-term pain, he ignored the groans, fatigue, and the urge to “take it easy today.” He knew discipline and consistency beat motivation, and effort bursts every time.
Now, imagine if he had let his team decide each day. Imagine if, on tough days, they had convinced themselves to rest. They would never have built the resilience to sustain their journey and wouldn’t have survived.
It’s the same with your training. If you listen to the discomfort and let your body dictate your effort, you will never build the endurance, strength, or discipline to push through when it matters.
I think one question worth asking is, ‘How relative is relative?’ How good are you at rating a sense of perceived discomfort? Because here is something worth considering: Your reality isn’t real. It’s just your perception of it.
You think you’re “too tired” to keep going? But that’s just your brain interpreting fatigue as a stop sign. However, someone else with a different mental framework would feel the same sensation and keep going.
Think about this, If you had never been told that something was “hard,” would you even perceive it as hard?
A Navy SEAL under extreme stress doesn’t interpret pain the same way the average person does. A high-level entrepreneur doesn’t see risk like someone stuck in a 9-to-5.
Why?
Because they’ve trained their minds to reframe reality.
And this is where we get to the most critical part… whoever owns the present writes the future.
If you let your present moment be controlled by doubt, fear, or perceived fatigue, then you are handing over control of your future to your weakest self. But if you take ownership of this moment and push through despite what your body tells you, you start rewriting what’s possible.
During my time as a bibliophile (a person addicted to the reading and consumption of books), I have worked tirelessly on building the tools and consuming the content that helps create this kind of resilient thinking to help stop me from perceiving tasks as too big, stopping when things hurt, or avoiding the pain and discomfort of functions that can either help or hinder our progress. I have found during this exploration that all sorts of things can happen when we change the way we think.
Here’s what I’ve learned from the books that reshaped my thinking:
1. The Expectation Effect – You Feel What You Believe
In The Expectation Effect, David Robson explains that your body follows your beliefs. If you expect to fail, struggle, or be exhausted, your body will make that happen. But if you expect to find energy and strength, your body will adapt to that, too.
How do you use this? Reprogram your expectations. When you feel tired, don’t think, “I’m done, I can’t do it anymore.” Instead, think, “This is just the first wave! I’ve got more in me.” Train your mind to expect more, and your body will respond.
2. The Confident Mind – How Elite Performers Think
Dr Nate Zinsser’s The Confident Mind explains that confidence isn’t about what you feel but is about what you choose to believe.
Elite performers don’t let doubt creep in. They tell themselves they are capable, strong, and prepared, even if they don’t feel it in the moment. And over time? Their brain starts believing it.
If you enter a challenging workout already doubting yourself, you’ve lost before you’ve started. But your performance will transform if you teach your mind to default to confidence.
3. How Minds Change – Rewriting the Limits in Your Head
David McRaney’s How Minds Change shows us that deeply ingrained beliefs can be rewritten, including what you think about your own capabilities.
If you believe you’re “not a runner,” “not strong,” or “not an athlete,” that’s just an old story you’ve been telling yourself. Nike’s old tagline used to be, ‘If you have a body, you are an athlete.’ And if you are exercising, you want to become a runner, get strong, and become more capable as a human in our bodies, so this old story is worth rewriting.
4. That Little Voice in Your Head – The Power of Self-Talk
Mo Gawdat’s That Little Voice in Your Head reinforces a simple truth: your thoughts create your reality. If your default response to struggle is I need to stop, that’s what your body will do.
But if you teach yourself to think, “I can handle this. I am built for this,” your body will follow that belief.
So really, the big takeaways I have been able to develop from this are as follows,
- Stop letting your brain seek comfort. See it as an opportunity to strengthen your discipline whenever something gets hard.
- Reframe fatigue. When you hit discomfort, could you not see it as a stop sign? See it as a threshold to push through.
- Own the present. Every decision you make at this moment shapes your future. Who’s writing your story? You or your weakest self?
My final thoughts are this: Everybody is the protagonist in their own story, and every good story has a nemesis. That may come across as self-doubt, weakness, excuses, or the temptation to quit.
But the truth worth remembering is whoever owns the present writes the future.
Your body will always try to take the easy way out, and your brain will always tell you to stop before you need to. But if you stop listening and start training your perception, you will unlock performance you never thought possible.
David Goggins calls it the 40% Rule, ‘When your body says you’re done, you still have 60% left in the tank.‘ Most people never tap into this because they believe their body’s first excuse. But your mind is in charge, not your body.
Science backs this up. If you want to lift heavier, run faster, or build unshakable resilience, you must rewire your thoughts about effort, fatigue, and limits.
So next time you think you’ve hit your limit, push for 10 more reps, run 1 more km, or hold that plank 30 seconds longer. Prove to yourself that your limits are fake.
Or when you are hesitating, procrastinating, or letting doubt creep in, use Mel Robbins’ 5-Second Rule. Count down… 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, GO. No overthinking, no excuses. Just move. Because every time you take action, instead of waiting, you train your brain to stop listening to weakness and start performing at a higher level.
Your body will quit long before it needs to. It will tell you to slow down, take it easy, or stop altogether because that is its job. Your body is built for survival, not for high performance.
The good news is that you don’t have to listen to it. You can train it. You can rewire it. And when you do, your discipline, performance, and life will transform your life.
Change how you think. Reject the limits the world tries to impose on you. And watch how every part of your life levels up.