Being a Work in Progress

The first key to Being Awesome

Each month, Extremists Being Awesome will have a content theme. These themes are intended to inspire us toward the inner growth and outer integrity we need to become the best damn extremists we can be. September’s theme is How to Be Awesome.

Awesome is a journey.

The thing about being awesome is that it’s not a destination, but a journey. We do not simply make a few tweaks to our present trajectory and suddenly arrive at AWESOME. It is a long—lifelong, at minimum—process of becoming.

We may be born with a certain awesomeness potential, but this does not guarantee that we will embrace and fulfill that potential. The inner core of awesomeness may be surrounded by layers of crud, and as we develop, as we encounter all the hurts and difficulties and disappointments that life offers—more layers of crud are added. The layers must be chiseled away from the inner core in order to put that innate and growing awesomeness to good use. Many live their whole lives without ever uncovering or really experiencing it.

We are awesome when we commit to chiseling away the crud and uncovering the awesomeness so that we can refine it, enhance it, expand upon it. We are awesome when we maintain a lifelong trajectory of improvement in all aspects of our being: physical, emotional, intellectual, relational, professional, etc.

So, being awesome should not be confused with being perfect, having it all figured out, or reaching some pinnacle of self-development. If you believe you are perfect, you are wrong. Awesomeness cannot be attained from a place of believing you have it all figured out. And if you’ve reached the pinnacle of your self-development, congratulations! You have won the game, and there’s no point being here any longer.

I’ve been thinking a lot over the past year about what it takes to be awesome, and I’ve come up with six key requirements. As always when I make a list like this, I will warn that it is probably not exhaustive and it is only my own perspective. You can likely add an item—a universal one, or maybe one that applies just specifically to you—and I hope you will. Nonetheless, I think these six items represent a solid foundation from which to pursue awesomeness as a state of being.

1. Know that you’re a work in process

2. Create your own curriculum in the school of life.

3. Practice radical self-honesty and accountability.

4. Back up principles and values with practices and virtues.

5. Do the inner work.

6. Refine your particular brilliance and give it to the world.

Each week during the month of September, I’ll write about one or more of these keys. For our inaugural Extremists Being Awesome monthly themed content post, let’s delve into the first one.

1. Know that you’re a work in progress.

This is the central requirement to being awesome, the fundamental gear that must be oiled and maintained in top working order so that the rest of the gears can do their jobs. Knowing that you’re a work in progress means that you never utterly fail or ultimately succeed. Life’s disappointments, which may seem like failures in the direness of the moment, are used as lessons and opportunities to launch you further along your path. Successes are merely stepping stones to greater awesomeness.

Because you start from the knowledge that you do not know everything, you know that there is always more to learn, always room for improvement, always new and better ways to express your essential being. This keeps you agile as you proceed along your journey.

Treating yourself as a work in progress necessarily results in greater self-compassion and kindness. You give yourself reasonable objectives and enough time to accomplish them so that you don’t develop a master/slave relationship with yourself. You don’t compare yourself to others, but only to your past self and to where you’d like to be. You don’t punish yourself for errors because you know that errors are made in ignorance. Once you know better, you can do better, but not before. Being kind to yourself is a prerequisite for true kindness to others, so this self-view is good not only for you, but for everyone you interact with on a daily basis.

It also keeps you humble. This is especially important for the extremist. We can tend to think that with our well-formed ideas of morality and our deeper understanding of socio-political realities, we have it all figured out. We do not have it all figured out. At best, we have the intellectual part figured out, and we are still kindergartners when it comes to the real-world demonstration of our convictions. If we had it all figured out, we would already have our free society and we wouldn’t be extremists. We would be that society’s normies.

Thinking that we have it all figured out is a trap that leads to arrogance and stagnation, or implosion. We should always seek to advance and refine our understanding of our own principles as we put them into practice in reality.

Let’s discuss.

I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments. Here are a few questions to get the discussion started.

When you look back at your trajectory as an “extremist”—whether that’s been a year, ten years, or your whole life—what fundamental changes have taken place in you?

Do you feel you’ve grown as an individual in that time?

Did your “extreme” principles inspire your personal growth, or was it the other way around? A bit of both?

What areas of your own work in progress are you currently focused on?

How can you be kind to yourself as you continue in your pursuit of ever-greater awesomeness?

---

Thank you for reading!

If you want to join a guild of anarchists, voluntaryists, and other “extremists” devoted to inner growth and getting shit done, Extremists Being Awesome is accepting new members. Learn more about EBA here.

Now through September 30, if you join on an annual membership, you’ll get 10% off the already discounted price. Ready to be awesome? Join here.

---

Social Links

Follow me on Twitter
Connect with me on MeWe
Follow me on TikTok
Subscribe to my YouTube Channel