Helios Monte

omething funny happened to me today, and it inspired the following message that I’m going to share with you now. Okay: So, I started lifting weights when I was about 15 years old. And I did so in such an obsessive way, where I really studied the hell out of it. I learned how to eat, how to train, how to recover perfectly. And I made such immense progress that by the time I was like 16 and a half, 17 years old, I had very close friends, even family members, suspecting me of steroid use. Okay? Completely changed. And when you have that level of shift, you know, this kind of shift can happen in many areas, but with your physique particularly, it’s quite novel and quite amazing how it changes people’s perception of you. Because they had one idea of you, and then it’s like, “Oh my God, where did all this muscle come from?” Right? But something weird happens, okay? During the first two years of lifting weights, yes, it’s obvious. You’re very conscious of, “Oh my God, look at how I look.” But then after five years of lifting weights, after ten years of lifting weights and beyond, it’s long since stopped being a novelty. And it’s just something that becomes super duper normal for you, to the point that you actually forget how abnormal it is. Okay, now I’m decently jacked, okay? I’m muscular, but I don’t carry that around as a fact of, “Oh yeah, you know, I’m so jacked.” Like, it’s just who I am. That’s just how I look. Okay? So, it’s so normal to you that you forget how weird it is. So, anyway. Today, I was walking through the street, minding my own business, and I was suddenly stopped by a complete stranger. And they asked if they could squeeze my arm. They’re like, “Oh my God, oh wow, can I squeeze it?” And to be honest, I was a little put off, okay? Just due to how bizarre that is. It’s just a complete pattern interrupt. I was not expecting that to happen at all. I obliged their request. I thought it was funny. They were being polite, respectful. I was like, “Sure.” Made their day. And a lot of things are like this. Because when you have high standards, as a lot of you who are listening right now have, right? You wouldn’t be here otherwise. Then what other people consider to be exceptional, you eventually experience as just ordinary and baseline, right? A strong body becomes normal. A certain level of income becomes normal. Travelling frequently, taking a lot of trips becomes normal. Being around intelligent, ambitious, and unusual people becomes normal, right? The human mind is incredibly good at normalising its environment. And this is partly why sometimes achievement and reaching big goals can feel strangely underwhelming, right? Because you spend years wanting a thing. You put so much into it. You sacrifice. You invest so much time, so much energy, so much effort. It consumes so much of your attention. And then you finally get it. Awesome. It’s great. But then what happens? Very quickly, your consciousness updates its definition of what it considers to be normal. Right? Yesterday’s impossible dream just becomes today’s furniture. I’m sure you can take a look around at your living space and remember when you got that desk for the first time, or your nice cushy computer chair, or your lounge, your sofa. Or maybe you have a really nice bed. Do you remember when you first put it in your house, and you were like, “Yeah, wow, so exciting”? You sit on your fancy computer chair, and you’re like, “This is the shit.” And then how quickly does it just become the chair that you sit on, right? It goes from this amazing thing to just normal. You know, there’s something very powerful about this. And it’s because your standards are largely built out of whatever you repeatedly tolerate and what you experience. Okay, so what does that mean on a practical level? It means when you expose yourself to excellence for long enough, suddenly mediocrity begins to feel weird. It begins to feel strange. If you become disciplined enough, then being lazy begins to feel weird and strange. If you become strong and jacked enough, then being weak and out of shape becomes strange to you, right? Your baseline moves. And when your baseline moves, so too does your idea of what is possible, both for you and in life. Okay, but that being said, there’s also a trap here that you need to watch out for. Because it’s that same skill of adaptation that can actually make you blind to your own progress, right? You become so accustomed to your current life that you forget there was once a version of you that only dreamed of the accolades, the environment, the what-have-you that you now have. And sometimes it becomes so normal that you don’t even realise it’s abnormal until you have a pattern interrupt that startles you into that realisation. Maybe it’s a stranger grabbing your bicep. Maybe it’s someone asking you how you built something that you barely think about anymore. Maybe it’s somebody being impressed at a standard you have for yourself that you just regard as basic. And it’s not for ego, okay? That’s not why it’s good to have this startled realisation. It’s for perspective. Okay? Because one of the weirdest things our minds can do is turn almost anything we’re experiencing or observing into something that feels extremely normal. So my message to you is: I want you to be very careful about what you choose to make normal in your life. Okay? Some people make losing normal. I can’t even say that without almost shaking. That feels weird. Some people have mediocrity as normal in their life. Failure. Not trying. Low standards. Right? And I’ll stop the list there. Instead of doing that, why not make strength normal? Why not make discipline normal? Why not make learning every day normal? Why not make being incredibly free, in a personal sense and in life as a whole, normal? Make high standards normal. And then continue to shift the goalposts. Keep moving the line, and progress and evolve day by day, week by week, month by month, year by year. Okay? Be very careful about what you choose to make normal.