Do you also have this one friend who told you he learned how to swim by being thrown into deep waters? With no other option but to reach the side of the pool by himself, he swam.

We probably all have one.

I personally learned how to swim very, very slowly.

Because I got some health condition when I was younger, I couldn’t put my head under the water until the age of 6 or 7.

From there, it took me 3 years to finally kind of swim by myself, without panicking.

It was painful, and traumatising.
I used to hate water for years.

But for a lot of other things, I didn’t go step by step, at all.

I jumped into “swim or drown” situations

Those are situations in which your only options are to figure things out and swim… Or drown.

  • This is what happened when I dropped out of Psychology University to focus 100% on my first business ventures, without any savings or help from my parents.
  • This is what happened when I crossed around 20 countries by bicycle, with almost no preparation, no funds, and no experience of how to even fix a flat tire.
  • This is what happened when I was $3,000 in debt, alone in Bali, quitted the only job opportunity I had there, and went all in into e-Commerce until I built a 6 figure business with my partner.

Swim or drown situations are stressful, but they are extremely transformative.

Now you may think: “Ok, you got lucky and ended up alright in all those situation, but what if you had drowned?”

I did indeed drown and ended up in quite a few bad situations.

But when you have no other option but to succeed, when you really have to find a way, you realise that you are way more powerful than what you thought.

In a lot of situations, you create solutions you would have never expected yourself to imagine.

And even when the whole experience turns bad, you always find a way to get your head back above the surface, and survive.

Either way, swim or drown situations teach you a ton more things than when you try to get there walking step by step in the shallow water..

..just to end up giving up because you hesitate, and overthink it.

When you jump into the deep waters, there’s no room for hesitation.

You either swim, or drown.

I keep using this approach today when I want to make a change in my life.

I used it recently when I decided I would wake up at 5:30 every day, no matter what. I didn’t change my waking time incrementally 30min by 30min.

I jumped right in, and today I am completing the 4th week in a row of waking up at 5:30, every single day.

I am currently using it to change my working habit and practise deep work. I don’t just try to get a few more hours of deep work every day.

I lock myself offline from 6AM to 12PM and use this time to get meaningful work done, without being reachable by the rest of the World (even by my girlfriend who is in the same house).

Of course, sometimes it fails.

But I prefer to fail at doing something at 100% of my potential, making it a swim or drown situation, rather than failing from not even trying because I start hesitating once I’m half way into the water.

It might work, or not, for you as well.

And there’s only one way to know:

“Jump into the deep waters and swim, 
or drown.”