The Happy Fearless Warrior

I spend a lot of time on Zoom calls with athletes and coaches around the country. When my sons ask me what I'm doing on all those calls, I often reply, "I'm making Happy Fearless Warriors."

A Happy Fearless Warrior is an identity. It is a life posture. It is what it can look like when we're in the arena with the right mental, emotional, and spiritual perspectives.

It's when we're at our best.

The warrior part, they usually have on their own. Most of the athletes and coaches I work with are highly competitive, driven people who have demonstrated a willingness to do difficult things in pursuit of their goals.

The fearless part we work together to define. It doesn't mean they aren't afraid. It means they've learned to direct their attention toward executing the task at hand rather than becoming consumed by what they're afraid might happen. In other words, they fear less.

The part that gets the most pushback with the Happy Fearless Warriors I work with?

Happy.

Somewhere along the way in our achievement-obsessed culture, we have made the pursuit of high performance a pursuit of misery.

Misery has become a badge of honor. I can't tell you how many high performers I talk to who are miserable. The pressure, stress, and all-consuming nature of pursuing achievement with unhelpful mindsets can create a miserable existence, even for people who are experiencing tremendous success.

What's interesting to me is how often that misery is accepted as simply part of the cost of doing business. As though the pursuit of excellence necessarily requires us to surrender our happiness along the way.

I'm not convinced it has to be this way.

Ditch the "Fun-Sucker" Approach

This past weekend, Jess McClain took second at the New York City Marathon, one of the world's major marathons. She became the first American woman to reach the podium since 2018.

Back in 2020, she walked away from professional running because it had become solely about "making podiums and national teams at all costs."

"There was a point earlier in my career where everything became about making podiums and teams. I realized it was not the best approach. It is a fun-sucker when it's all about pace and you're focusing on mile splits every 200 meters," Jess said.

After leaving professional running, she found a full-time job and stayed busy while slowly adding running back into her life.

"I've lived the life of having running be my full-time job day in and day out. Personally, I just can't operate in the sport in a healthy way with that approach. I just need something else to focus on. My job gives me a safety net. I know at the end of the day I could blow up, but I would still have my job."

What I find fascinating about her story is that she didn't lose her desire to compete at the highest level. She didn't abandon the pursuit of excellence or decide that winning no longer mattered.

She simply recognized that the way she was approaching her pursuit wasn't producing the kind of life she wanted to live.

And she decided to do something about it.

The Happy Fearless Warrior Dictates the Terms

So many high performers operate from a position dictated by someone else's scorecard. They feel trapped. They feel like they're stuck in an ecosystem that imposes so much on them, often without recognizing how much of that pressure they've willingly adopted themselves.

One of the things I've noticed most about Happy Fearless Warriors is that they learn to live from their own internal scorecard.

Jess McClain came back to the sport of running on her own terms. Not how everyone said it needed to be. She defined success and built an approach around it that allowed her to flourish.

"I realized, 'Ok, on this giant planet, running is a very small part of it. My friends and family love me because I'm just Jess, not because I'm an elite runner.'"

She continued, "As silly as it sounds, my personal mission with running is to just keep it fun, control what I can control, and enjoy getting to the starting line. I'm having an absolute blast doing just that."

That sounds like a Happy Fearless Warrior.

And with this renewed approach, she's running some of her best times. She went toe to toe with the best runners in the world on Sunday, keeping it fun, loving what she's doing, working really hard, and laying it all out there.

Happiness hasn't eliminated the demands of high performance for Jess. She still has to train, sacrifice, manage disappointment, and endure the physical and mental challenges that come with competing at the highest level.

But she's no longer allowing the pursuit itself to consume her.

I'm convinced the vast majority of people at the top of their craft have mastered one of the great paradoxes of performance. The closer you get to realizing your full potential - the more you have to let go.

When we're just starting out, tightening down routines, showcasing dedication, making sacrifices, and toeing the line of misery can become part of how we demonstrate our commitment. We become so consumed with proving how badly we want something that we can lose sight of why we wanted it in the first place.

As we mature in our pursuit, I think we begin to recognize that much of what we've been carrying around isn't actually helping us perform. The constant need to prove ourselves, the fear of disappointing others, and the tendency to attach our identity and happiness to outcomes can become tremendous burdens.

The more you turn pro, the more you have to surrender the outcome. The higher you get to the summit, the more you have to let go and make joy a central part of the pursuit.

The competitor who is genuinely happy in the arena is far more dangerous than the one who's miserable.

What do you need to let go of in exchange for more joy?

Stay The Course,

JB