Before You Pick Your Battles, Do This:

Everyone knows it. Few do it.

Uncomfortable Battle #1

I love figs. But the problem with figs, is that hornets love them too. Although athletic, I had to jump from 3 meters onto the rocky ground.

Not the best way to start your day.

Having been on the ground with my special sword (broomstick), no hornet would have stood a chance. But in the fig tree, they had the high ground.

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Uncomfortable Battle #2

Who would you choose to fight? I believe there is only one correct answer:

• 1,000 angry chickens

• 1 hungry gorilla

• 3 furious great white sharks

Think about it for a second.

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Did you make up your mind?

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The right answer is simple: Depending on the arena.

Here’s the principle:

Before You Pick Your Battles, Pick Your Arena

“Where do you want to play?”

This is a question you have to ask yourself before any challenge, game, fight. Because it’s all a matter of your arena.

Usually, you are not failing because you suck. You are fighting in the wrong damn pit. Think hornets on the damn fig tree.

Success or failure, triumph or disaster depend on many variables. But the arena you fight matters. A lot. Not just for this result. But also for your feedback loop, which matters the most (life won’t stop in one loss, amigo).

Wrong arena = wrong feedback.

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It’s all relative

I love gamification. It makes sense my whole life; I have been a Math/Physics instructor. A soldier (obligatory military service in Greece). A dog owner (I prefer the Hawaiian Kahu).

So this is the game metaphor: → A level 10 character in a level 1 arena. → A level 1 player in a level 1,000 arena. One loses their time. The other is crushed (maybe beyond repairing). Both are Hells in different ways. You can’t enjoy a game that you can’t play. And you can’t win if you don’t play.

Both are mismatched. But the mismatch defines your experience. Not your worth.

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I hate and love quotes

A knight in shining armor is a man who has never had his metal truly tested.

Doesn’t cut for me. Maybe he just bought the damn thing. Too vague.

If you’re burnt, you don’t need courage quotes. You need calibration.

They should teach the following speech in every high school. Along with the ‘speak softly but carry a huge stick’ mantra, but I digress:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
―The Man In The Arena, Theodore Roosevelt

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Flow: Skills ≈ Challenges

From Flow (1991), Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Skills × Challenges = the map that matters.

Zone 1 - Both low → Wasted time. You don’t play at all.
Zone 2 - High skill, low challenge → Boredom. Raise the bar.
Zone 3 - Low skill, high challenge → Overwhelming. Need training.
Zone 4 - Balanced → Flow. The growth zone. You don’t stay here: you RISE.

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Ask Yourself

The bad news
You don’t know your level until you fight.
Testing your metal is the only way to calibrate.

The good news
Every rep and challenge builds the stack:
Skills + Confidence + Calibration.
Even losses contribute to your “good win” even if they hurt.

Here are some simple questions to audit your arena.
Be honest.
Otherwise, you won’t know if this is for your teeth or you need to git gud first.

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Arena Audit Self Prompts

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Alignment

• Am I fighting my battle or someone else’s?

• What’s the reward here? Mastery, money, meaning, or ego?

• Does this challenge actually matter in my story, or am I proving something useless?

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Calibration

• When I lose, do I learn, or do I just get hurt?

• Do I know what “winning” looks like in this arena?

• What feedback am I getting — truth, noise, or applause?

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Load Check

• Is my energy going into the fight or the friction around it?

• Is the weight of this challenge just heavy enough to make me grow, not break?

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Skill Map

• Which single skill gives me the biggest edge here?

• What am I missing that makes this fight harder than it should be?

• Can I delegate, automate, templetize, or delete one part of this to focus on the skill gap?

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Flow Gauge

• Does time collapse- or drag- when I’m in it?

• Do I feel alert and alive? Or anxious? Numb? Bored?

• Am I in the right arena or just looping through comfort and chaos?

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Armor Test

• If I fail, do I still want to come back tomorrow?

• Does this scare me enough to sharpen me, not paralyze me?

• Can I complete a slice of the challenge today using what I already have?

• Will this fight help me strengthen my claws, teeth, grip, and sinew, or just crack them?

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If you score enough YESes, start.
If not, you’re trying to bite a brick. Train. Git gud.

Lifeward,