You Need to Run Through Walls [Unlocked]

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Put your ego aside for this one, and let it kick you in the shins.

As I was talking with the Founder of a rocketship tech company, he told me something he tells every employee on the way in: “You are expected to run through walls here.” 

There is no “can’t be done.” 
There is no “impossible.” 

These are fireable offenses. 

That might sound harsh, but the result has fueled incredible innovation and creativity. It makes people who work there—from execs to individual contributors—really intentional about how they frame the challenges that arise. Difficult and hard challenges. Building products and figuring out markets that others see as impenetrable. They have a set point of “anything is possible, we just need to figure it out,” and that starting point is a major differentiator.

The truth is, we could all use a set point like this. It might be controversial to say, but people make a lot of excuses as to why things can’t happen in their life, and these things become personal and professional walls. “I’m not smart enough, that’s too complex, I can’t compete, no one will fund me, only X people can succeed in this space.”  If you can put those aside and dig into possibility, then your mindset shifts—and formerly unthinkable outcomes become reality.

If you ask a lot of incredibly successful people if they could have predicted where they’d be, most will say they could never have seen the exact future…but they knew they would figure it out. They might not have known how. They might not have known when. Arguably, they didn’t need to know all of those details—they just needed the willingness to smash through walls instead of stopping for them. The confidence to achieve great success isn’t specific—it is broad. That you can figure it out. It is the cornerstone of everything because that’s exactly what you’ll have to do. 

Can you figure out how to run through your own walls? Some ways to challenge yourself are probably clear to you, but what lies *under* those challenges—that keeps people stuck—that’s where the meat of it is. 

We all think of habits as pertaining to what we physically do, but we rarely consider the habits in how we think…even though these are our most important rituals. 

Read it again: How you think is your most important ritual. 

Like anything else, thoughts as a habit can go either way: 

You can make it a virtuous one → pushing you forward and instilling confidence, or… 
You can make it a destructive one → holding you back or anchoring you to smaller things than you are truly capable of. 

The truth is that most people are rarely one or the other, but a mix of both. 

Start examining the habits in how you think:

• In the small things (tasks of every day) → Notice the areas you avoid, what causes you a bit of tension or resistance, the things that you second guess—these are important. *what are you thinking here?*

• In the larger things (large goals, real wishes) → Notice where you postpone, the things you pull away from, and the things you need to do. *what are you thinking here?*

Dig in, and don’t allow yourself to get away with bad thinking habits anymore. 

Correct them. 

If a Gladiator runs toward the challenge, he is not concerned about a bare arm or areas uncovered—he is locked on to the goal with the power of everything he’s got. What do you trust? Your skill, your training, your knowledge, and your experience…trust yourself, then strike. If you stop for a moment to worry about the skin that shows, you lose focus—you get wounded. It pulls you from everything great and puts you in a weaker position. 

This is also true in life.

If you focus on your weaknesses as walls, you’ll be suppressed by them, held back, and made weaker. If you focus on your strengths and strike, you’ll expand your advantage in the field. 

But that’s not to say that you don’t have weaknesses. Everyone has weaknesses—everyone. You can’t be equally strong in everything. It isn’t a “flaw” or something to be ashamed of…but you can choose what defines you—what you lean into—and whether or not you’re going to allow that weakness to be a fence or just one aspect of who you are.

I usually advise clients to face those weaknesses head-on, bring them up to “average,” and let them go. Move on quickly. I see plenty of novices spending far too much time focusing on weaknesses, but it causes them to churn, focus on the wrong things, and get stuck behind a barrier of their own creation.

What I’ve found about stellar operators is that they are very aware of what they’re good at and not good at—but they sit in their strengths. They know their weaknesses too, sure, but they don’t put themselves there and it doesn’t consume a lot of attention—they’ll often hire or outsource to compensate for it. 

Here’s a hard truth: You will never be as good in that weak spot as someone naturally gifted is if this is their strength…and that’s fine. You don’t want to compete there. 

Compete where you can win. Run—don’t think about the fleshy spots—and move with force.

Right now, you are already above the curve at something. And if you’re already above it, this is where you can lean in…and hit the stratosphere. Don’t ever take your eye off that ball, or you’ll give up your advantage. People do that all the time to try to be better in some area where they will work twice as hard for half the return, don’t do that. Know who you are and *lean in.*

Let’s put this into practice. In the first graph, you’ll see where your strengths and weaknesses are relative to the average. It doesn’t matter what field you’re playing in—weaknesses exist, and that’s okay. 

Now, let’s imagine you spend all of your time focused on your weaknesses—your walls—and filling in the gaps that you know exist. Even if you pour your time, energy, and effort into these things, it’s going to be a struggle to get them above average.

Compare this to leveraging your strengths. This is where you already shine—where you already have talent, skill, or experience—and where, done correctly, you can skyrocket your trajectory far above others. 

Notice how the same amount of effort is put into the last two charts, but where does that effort leave you? Do you really want to be slightly above average? You can see the impact and separation you get from a strength-based approach. Most of your energy should be focused and pulling you in this direction for optimal performance.

Walls come in a lot of forms and they are everywhere, but there is a saying in car racing: “You don’t look at the wall, you look at where you want to go.”

You want to see the paths ahead, not the barriers to progress.

Bethenny Frankel sold SkinnyGirl liquor company to Beam Suntory for a reported $100m. When asked how she created such a profitable product in a notoriously hard market dominated by people who did not look like her, she said, “You have to push through brick walls to get that done. It is utterly competitive.”

Do these walls exist? Absolutely. They can be where you’re born, your income level, demographics, your history, your market—they can be who you are that is not traditional for the space.

Does it make it harder? Yes.
Does it make it impossible? No.  

Stop looking at the walls. Push. 

Over and again, people have disregarded the walls to rise. From Jay-Z building his billion-dollar empire, to the founder above. It’s a common thread. We all have “starting lines” that we can compare to others or we can roll with. You can’t change them—you can only dig into what you’ve got, lean into your strengths, and move forward. 

Comparison is a thief. There will always be someone who had it easier—why focus there? What will it bring you? It will steal your energy, your joy, and your progress. Dig into the things you can do to move to the finish line and consider it the challenge of your life. You have no other choice—you can stay in the same place looking at others, or you can find a way to win. 

Don’t like what I’m saying and you want to change the world? Good.

When you set a dot on the board, your mind starts to find ways to track you there. It’s how humans are built. We are natural solvers. So you need to establish what you want your mind to start hunting.

We can set our mark on the wall—the problems, barriers, and obstacles—or we can set our mark on the target we want. 

One of these things we have no control over, but the other we often do. You can’t control whether or not obstacles exist, but you can control yourself and your own relentless pursuit of your goals. The way you frame these things matters more than most people recognize, and I see it far too often online in conversations like this: 

Person 1: “The only people who succeed in tech are people from rich families.”
Person 2: “I’m going to start building tonight and get a demo working.”

It’s very, very clear who will have the better outcomes here. Both might come from identical backgrounds, have identical skills and talents, and face the same barriers—it’s their beliefs, their mental habits, and their ways of thinking that will set them apart from the competition.

Are you stuck staring at walls? Or are you tracking toward a future you want? Person #2 is clearly “on the hunt” with a specific goal and on their way…are you ready to do the same?

The key to running through walls is that mentally, you don’t allow them to claim any space.

It’s true that we all start at different points—with different advantages and disadvantages—but what are you going to keep in your line of vision? The walls or the possibilities? Where will you focus your thinking? Is it pushing you forward or holding you back? 

The man who would fire someone for saying something was “impossible” initially sounds extreme—but the more you learn, the more intelligent it sounds. You want people running through walls, YOU need to be running through walls, and halting at every obstacle stops progress. 

That is a mental habit that no one can afford to keep around. 

If you want to run through walls, it’s time to get brutally honest with yourself. This work isn’t for the faint of heart, but—if you’re willing to do the work—this is how legends are made. 

Grab a journal or open a note on your phone, and write everything down—you could do this throughout your day, in the evening, or set an alarm to remind you every few hours. The purpose here is to dive deep.

Once you’re done, it’s time to ask yourself: What are the areas you need to drop? What do you need to replace for a stronger position? 

Instead of letting yourself be defined by your weaknesses—the holes in your armor—it’s time to push into your strengths. Where are the places you can be an animal and dig into your strengths? How can you lean into these and leverage them *right now* to help you attain your goals?

Choose 3 areas where you skew above the average, and create a plan to lean more into each one. Actually open a doc and list it out. Don’t just think it—do it.

Now that you’ve addressed your habits—and you’ve identified your strengths—it’s time to start taking action. There might be walls ahead of you, but it’s time to run through them: Where do you want your mind tracking right now, and how does your thinking play a role in this? Get clear with your targets—with where you want to go—and start reminding yourself of those things every single day. It can be hard to stop focusing on walls, especially if you’ve been doing it for years—or if everyone around you is getting caught in that same trap—but intentionality is key.

Realign your focus toward the hunt instead. Write it down. Put it on your wall. Set an alarm to go off on your phone every single morning, and change the text to remind you where you want to go. Do what you have to do to set your mind to hunt, and use it as fuel to start running through walls.

This mindset is contagious, so if you happen to know a brilliant person in your network who has been struggling with focusing on the walls, forward them this email. 

Expect yourself to run through walls, and let’s start moving.

Dr. Gurner here…thanks for reading a special unlocked subscriber-only edition of Ultra Successful. If you enjoy what you’ve been reading, please consider sharing this newsletter with a friend, colleague, or coworker….or gift them a subscription and let’s run through walls together. 💪

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