Summary:
- Most of my life I obsessed about success–dreaming about those things I wanted most.
- In the desert I realized that what I wanted most was to feel fully alive.
- The problem: I realized the greatest obstacles were my own thoughts and feelings–that I was the major barrier in the way.
- The solution: Shift from self-centered to selfless.
- Selfless is fearless.
Note: Please keep in mind and in your prayers the humanitarian crises around the world, especially Iran and Venezuela, Gaza and Ukraine, Syria and Yemen. We ALL have a part to play in world peace–most importantly confronting my own self-centeredness and the fears and violence that go with it.
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The Dream
I always thought the best possible life—the one of my dreams—was to have really great results and circumstances… to be a superstar and have all the girls want to be with me and all the guys want to be me. It was the dream home on the water, with lots of money and status, traveling the world… and the friends and fun that came with it.
But it all came crashing down.
I got injured and lost my dream of being a superstar athlete. So I had a new dream, of being a superstar Major League Baseball manager. I got a coaching job with the Texas Rangers, but that situation was a box I couldn’t fit in. I quit and felt like a total failure.
The True Dream
So I left for the desert to live a life of relative solitude. In the desert I realized something I had missed my entire life:
What I’ve really wanted wasn’t “success,” but to feel fully alive. I had been chasing the symbols of success rather than real success—what my heart was created for.
In five years of full-time research for Inner Excellence, I discovered this:
If you pursue fullness of life first and foremost, and let everything else be added to you, you can live an extraordinary life, the best possible one.
The Problem
In performance and in life, three great challenges show up again and again:
- Overthinking
- Negative or judgmental thinking
- Self-consciousness—worrying what others think of us.
The good news: All three are things you can control. That’s why Inner Excellence is for all of us.
Humans are wired for love and connection—we long to belong. At the same time, we are fundamentally self-centered.
This basic architecture of the heart creates a constant tension between love and ego. It leads to ongoing self-concern and self-examination:
Am I okay? How do I compare? Am I enough?
This creates an obsession with achievement and status that spirals into overthinking, negative thinking, and turning my attention back to myself again and again.
It’s a huge inner struggle. I naturally see the world from my own point of view and how everything affects me. That self-focus leads to fear—especially the fear of rejection.
Fear is the great barrier, standing at the intersection of every risk that really matters. And most of that fear comes from my thoughts about myself.
In short, I am my biggest obstacle.
When We’re at Our Best
Here’s the paradox:
When you and I are at our best—in any field, any performance—there’s no concern for self at all. We’re not thinking about ourselves. We’re simply present.
The greatest moments in life, where the most beauty is, all happen in selfless moments.
- Standing for the first time in the Sistine Chapel
- Walking across the Ponte Vecchio on a beautiful day
- Getting lost in a great book or conversation
In those moments, there are no thoughts of self. Just awe, joy, and a great sense of wonder.
The Solution: Selflessness
When there’s no concern for self—when the “self” isn’t at the center—there’s a great deal of freedom, even fearlessness.
It’s the same pattern for all of us:
- When we’re at our best, there’s no concern for self.
- When we’re at our worst, thoughts of self dominate.
How I think about Inner Excellence
The starting point for Inner Excellence is simple and humbling:
I am fundamentally self-centered, and that self-centeredness leads to fear.
So I have to be intentional about training the part of me that constantly wants to put myself first. Left alone, it always leads to self-concern, self-protection, and fear.
When that happens, curiosity disappears. And curiosity is paramount.
For me, so much of Inner Excellence is about the pursuit of awe and wonder. It’s crucial to never stop dreaming. I don’t know what my limits are—but I do know this: when I stop dreaming, my limits solidify, like an iron gate.
My constant thoughts of self lock me in.
This is one reason prayer is so important to me. In prayer, I connect with the Creator of the universe—the one with unlimited possibilities.
To see awe and wonder at all, I have to see the world from outside myself. I need to see more beauty, and I can’t do that if I’m trapped inside my own lens, my own fears.
Training the Heart
The heart is the home of the imagination, and imagination is the gateway to awe and wonder. Training the heart means training it to love what’s most life-giving and beautiful, to loosen its grip on fear and self-protection. Practically, here’s a few simple but hard things you can work on:
- Train your attention – Notice when your thoughts circle back to yourself—“What do they think of me?”—and gently shift your focus to loving the person in front of you and being grateful for the task and possibilities before you.
- Train your imagination – Feed it with better and truer stories: stories of courage, service, and kindness, and pictures of the kind of person you want to become.
- Train by fueling it with wisdom – daily read and listen to the words and ideas of great teachers.
- Train through small choices – Choose to listen instead of defend, to serve instead of withdraw, to be honest instead of impressive. Each small choice is one more rep for the heart.
- Train through prayer – Bring your fears, desires, and dreams to God, and slowly let love, not ego, be the center of your life.
Over time, those practices reshape your inner world. Neuroscientists call it plasticity: repeated choices literally rewire the brain. Every time you choose sacrificial love over self-protection, you’re training your heart to live more freely.
The crucial role of embracing tension
Every human life has tension—what you do with that tension is everything.
All of life is training, especially the hard parts. Training brings tension and discomfort. Most of my life, I ran from it. But I learned that every time I ran from tension, I ran from my dreams. I ran from the very steps that could break me free from past limitations.
Training your heart means training it to love most what’s most empowering, not what’s most comfortable. One of the most important parts of the training is learning to get comfortable being uncomfortable.
Here’s the key:
When you feel tension, nerves, fear, anxiety, or any kind of self-protective feeling—if you can embrace it just 1% more than you did before, that’s a win.
Keep doing that, and soon your skills and potential will rise to match whatever opportunity you face.
That’s enough for today.
Let’s agree to face today with a little less self-protection, a little more curiosity, and a heart that is slowly moving from self-centered to selfless—from fearful to free.
I’m going to do that by looking for moments when I’m uncomfortable and embracing the feeling of discomfort (I’ll literally ask myself if I’m willing to have this feeling), and then sit with the feeling knowing that it’s here to teach me and help–expand my world and what I believe is possible.
Thanks for sharing life with me—learning and growing together. I’d love to hear from you all.
Love Jim
PS
- The next Inner Excellence YWAM Homes of Hope retreat is April 9-13 in Ensenada, Mexico. Check out the Inner Excellence Freedom Project website for more information. Likely it will change your life.
If you would like to be part of our research team for the IX workbook (90-Day Challenge) let us know!
PPS
The YWAM/Inner Excellence Retreat is here! Inner Excellence has teamed up with YWAM (Youth With a Mission), a non-profit organization that has a Homes of Hope division where they/we build a house for a family start to finish in two days. Watch a video of last November’s build here!. This is the only chance for the public to do an Inner Excellence retreat (you get both the full Inner Excellence retreat and YWAM house build) until November 2027. The spots fill fast so don’t hesitate (20 people is the cap).
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