What is mastery? That is the question we asked ourselves when we decided it was time to consider the next level of the Whole Life Challenge.
The Original Whole Life Challenge was built on the tenets of a practice of consistency and persistence. For many people, the context for “advanced” involves doing more, training harder, practicing more intensely, or spending more time. And while this can be harder, we believe a more advanced path places an emphasis on being aware of the appropriateness of your choices.
In just about everything, a beginner is served by rules, often a lot of them. For a beginner, rules move you forward.
Think of a martial art. The beginning stages are all rote with little to no spontaneity. Wax on, wax off: You learn and repeat the forms until you can follow the rules and execute them well, without thought.
As you progress, you learn to apply the rules practically, in more real-time situations. This becomes important to your progress In martial arts, this might look like sparring. For the Whole Life Challenge, it’s the time between Challenges. You have to decide how to use what you know to make the right choice.
As you grow in mastery over time, hanging on rigidly to rules will hold you back from discovering what is truly possible. A master knows when to break the rules.
Once true mastery is achieved, you are the rule. Everything you do is the style. There are no questions because there are no absolute answers. Your complete responsibility for mastering your life will not only give you the results you want, but also real freedom: Did you do your best today, and did the way you did it serve you best? A master does what is needed in every situation, wrestling with the right choices for you.
The WLC Advanced Challenge is the next step toward mastery. We were inspired, not to make something that is more fixed, but instead to create something that is looser—something in which your understanding is required to earn full points.
Whereas the original Whole Life Challenge provides a framework for making healthy choices, The Advanced Challenge asks you to make the choices that are right for your health and your life without a defined framework. You may not know exactly what is right for you when you start, but the Advanced Challenge forces you to pay attention, so you will know better by the end.
We designed the WLC Advanced Challenge to apply your understanding of what serves you best in the four areas we believe make the biggest difference to your health and well-being: exercise, nutrition, sleep, and consciousness. In the WLC Advanced Challenge, you’ll get the opportunity to fully choose the actions you take in these areas, and then evaluate their effectiveness or appropriateness.
The WLC Advanced Challenge is EXCLUSIVELY FOR PEOPLE WHO HAVE COMPLETED THE ORIGINAL WHOLE LIFE CHALLENGE. Without having first learned how to make choices inside of a set of rules, addressing it without rules makes little sense. It is an advanced conversation for an advanced mindset. You are free, and encouraged, to create teams with your friends, but you will not be able to invite newcomers to this Challenge.
You can live with someone else’s rules your entire life. That would be fine. You wouldn’t be punished or wrong and you would probably end up getting many of the results you want out of life. The WLC Advanced Challenge is an opportunity to learn how to take a higher level of responsibility.That’s the kind of freedom we’re all looking for.
