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We only write, talk what we have Lived...

  • Writer: Marcus Nikos
    Marcus Nikos
  • 1 hour ago
  • 14 min read

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I live by a Standard I write 75% or better of everything on our sites. I have a high standard for only publishing Truth, meaning if you have not lived it do not write about it,

There are no Wanna Be players here


Darkness is not the enemy most believe

it to be. It is the training ground

where the foundations of greatness are

built. When the spotlight is absent,

when recognition is stripped away, when

applause is silent, you are left with

nothing but the raw reality of yourself.

That is when you discover whether your

ambitions are genuine or just

performance. To build yourself in the

dark is to refuse the need for

witnesses. It is to work when no one is

watching, to grow when no one is

praising, to prepare while others are

sleeping. Darkness forces you inward,

and what you build there cannot be taken

from you. The light may expose you, but

the dark is where you become

unbreakable.

In the dark, you learn the art of

patience. You cannot rush the process

when no one is validating you. The

silence forces you to endure the grind

without immediate reward. Most people

collapse here. They crave recognition

too soon, and when it does not come,

they abandon their work. But if you

stay, if you continue to shape yourself

when there is no echo of applause, you

learn the discipline of delayed

gratification.

You discover the strength to keep moving

even when the world does not care. That

endurance separates those who collapse

from those who conquer. Building

yourself in the dark is a test of

hunger. Do you want the image of success

or do you want success itself? Darkness

strips away vanity. In the absence of

eyes, you cannot perform for approval.

You cannot pretend to be what you are

not. All illusions collapse when the

crowd is gone. That is why the dark

feels uncomfortable. It holds a mirror

too honest to ignore. You see your

weaknesses exposed, your excuses

magnified, your lack of discipline

staring back at you. This confrontation

is brutal, but it is also liberating

because once you face the truth of

yourself without filters, you gain the

power to change.

Building yourself in the dark is not

glamorous. It is raw reconstruction. It

is chiseling away the lies until only

the real remains. The greatest advantage

of the dark is that it belongs to the

unseen. While others chase attention,

you are building silently. They burn

themselves out performing. You conserve

energy for creation. They seek shortcuts

through exposure. You stack real skills

in silence. Then when the light finally

hits, the difference is undeniable. You

are not another loud presence pretending

to matter. You are a force sharpened by

obscurity.

You arrive not needing validation

because you built without it. That is

why the strongest breakthroughs come

from the shadows. The dark produces

giants while the light distracts

performers. Darkness also protects you

from the parasites of doubt. When too

many eyes are on you, their opinions

seep into your mind. Their projections

weaken your vision. Their criticism

bends your resolve. In the dark, there

are no voices but your own. You can

experiment. You can fail without

ridicule. You can rebuild without

interruption. The silence becomes your

shield. And through that shield, you

discover the courage to try what you

would never dare in front of an

audience.

Building in the dark is freedom. It is

the space where failure is transformed

into progress instead of humiliation.

Most people fear the dark because it

feels lonely. They equate loneliness

with weakness. But solitude is not

weakness. It is fuel. When you learn to

stand alone, you stop being dependent on

approval. You stop craving the constant

presence of others to validate your

choices. The dark becomes your

companion. And through it, you discover

self reliance. Solitude builds strength

no crowd can grant you. When you no

longer need others to confirm your path,

you become unstoppable. The dark teaches

you that loneliness is not absence. It

is opportunity. It is the forge where

independence is carved. The silence of

the dark sharpens focus. Distraction

thrives in the light. Opinions noise

constant comparison. All of it pulls at

your mind. But in the shadows, there is

nothing but you in your work. That

simplicity is rare in a world of

constant interruption.

It allows you to go deeper, to perfect

your craft, to build mastery without

interference. The depth you reach here

is what makes you untouchable later.

While others skim the surface,

distracted by attention, you have been

in the depths, building skills with

precision. The dark slows you down just

enough to accelerate you beyond the

reach of the average. Building in the

dark is also about resilience.

There will be nights when doubt screams

louder than conviction. There will be

mornings when silence feels like

failure. But staying through that

discomfort teaches you endurance. You

learn that growth is not always loud or

visible. It is often invisible,

unfolding silently beneath the surface.

When you trust this process, you become

immune to impatience. You no longer

measure progress by applause. You

measure it by who you are becoming. And

when you emerge, you will not just have

results. You will have resilience no one

can imitate.

The irony is that once you build

yourself in the dark, the light will

come anyway. Recognition will find you.

Applause will chase you. People will

wonder how you became so capable

overnight, not realizing those nights

stretched endlessly in obscurity. But by

the time the light arrives, you will not

depend on it. You will not crave it. You

will not fear losing it because you know

the truth. Your foundation was built

where no one could see. And nothing can

erase that. The light is temporary. The

dark is eternal. Death of the old self

is not poetic metaphor. It is reality.

You cannot drag yesterday into tomorrow

and expect transformation. The habits

that chained you, the beliefs that

confined you, the fears that dictated

your choices, they must be destroyed.

Yet destruction is not painless. It is

violent, unsettling, and raw. To shed

the old self feels like ripping away

skin. It is the death of comfort, the

death of identity you once leaned on,

the death of illusions that shielded

you. Most resist this death because it

feels unbearable. So they settle into

the prison of familiarity. They choose

survival of the old self over the birth

of the new. But survival without growth

is slow decay. The only path forward

demands death first. The pain is

necessary because it exposes your

dependency on the patterns that have

defined you. Letting go means standing

in uncertainty. It means stepping into a

void where nothing is guaranteed. That

void terrifies people. They would rather

stay with the known discomfort than leap

into the unknown possibility.

But greatness never emerges from the

known. It requires you to break

yourself, to confront your shadows, to

sit with the screams of your ego as it

fights for survival. The old self will

claw to remain alive, whispering that

change is unnecessary.

But that voice is the chain you must

break. The new self waits beyond the

death of that voice. The process feels

like darkness because there is no

applause for it. No one celebrates when

you cut ties with destructive habits. No

one praises you for sitting in silence

confronting your demons. No one applauds

the lonely nights where you kill excuses

one by one. That is why this death is so

isolating. You are stripped of

recognition, stripped of identity,

stripped of comfort. Yet in that

stripping lies freedom. You cannot step

into the light carrying baggage built

from lies. The dark becomes the furnace

where the old is burned away and the new

is formed. The resistance to this death

is why most remain trapped. They run

from the pain instead of through it.

They numb themselves with distraction,

bury themselves in shallow pleasures or

drown themselves in excuses. They think

they are escaping the death of the old

self, but in truth they are enslaved by

it. Pain avoided becomes pain

multiplied. What you do not kill will

haunt you. What you refuse to face will

dictate every choice, every thought,

every step. You either master the pain

by facing it or it masters you by

becoming the ruler of your life. When

you embrace the painful death of the old

self, you begin to discover resilience

you never knew existed. Pain stops being

something to fear and becomes something

to use. Every tear, every scar, every

moment of breaking becomes evidence of

rebirth. The pain transforms from

punishment into proof that you are no

longer the same. The old self dies

screaming, but its death creates

silence. In that silence, the new self

begins to breathe. That first breath is

fragile. But with every step forward, it

grows stronger. You realize pain was

never the enemy. It was the doorway. The

new self is not built in comfort. It is

built in fire.

That is why the dark matters. The dark

is where you are stripped of illusions,

forced into confrontation with

everything you avoided. It is where you

learn to stop running and start

fighting. The fight is not with the

world. It is with yourself, with the

version of you that refuses to change,

with the version that clings to

mediocrity, with the version that hides

in fear. Killing thatself is the most

important battle you will ever fight.

Victory requires suffering. Victory

requires death. Most will never fight

this battle because they misunderstand

what it means to live. They think life

is about protecting comfort, about

holding on to identity, about

maintaining stability.

But those who cling eventually break

anyway. Not in transformation but in

regret. They die with their old selves

intact, never knowing the freedom of

becoming someone greater. To live fully

is to kill repeatedly. Every season

demands another death, another shedding,

another sacrifice. That is the rhythm of

growth. If you are not dying, you are

not evolving. There is no shortcut to

this process. You cannot bypass the

darkness. You cannot skip the pain. You

cannot negotiate with the old self to

step aside politely. It must be

destroyed. And destruction requires you

to step willingly into discomfort. Every

breakthrough is earned through

breakdown. Every evolution is purchased

with pain. If you accept this truth, you

stop fearing the process. You begin to

welcome it because you understand that

each death carries with it the seed of

your next rebirth. When the new self

finally emerges, you realize why the

pain was essential. The light feels

sharper. The freedom feels real. The

strength feels unshakable. You

understand that without the death of the

old self, you would never appreciate the

new one. Pain was not the obstacle. Pain

was the initiation. What you endured in

the dark gave you the power to stand in

the light without crumbling. And now the

light no longer blinds you. It fuels

you. Beginner hell is the trial by fire

that no one wants but everyone must

endure. The first 3 to 6 months of any

pursuit are not filled with progress.

They are filled with frustration. Your

effort feels wasted. Your results are

invisible. Your doubts grow louder each

day. You question whether it is worth

it, whether you chose the wrong path,

whether you are wasting your time. That

feeling is not a sign of failure. It is

nature's filter. It is the weight placed

at the gate to separate those who want

the outcome from those who crave the

process.

Most turn back here. They cannot stomach

the silence, the lack of recognition,

the endless grind without visible

reward. That is why the few who push

through stand out so violently later.

They endured the desert where most

collapsed.

This beginner hell is not punishment. It

is preparation. If progress came

instantly, everyone would endure and the

pursuit would mean nothing. Value exists

because difficulty exists. Nature

designs the first stretch of every

journey to strip away the pretenders. It

is not enough to want results. You must

be willing to bleed without proof. Those

who survive this stage are forged by it.

The suffering becomes their identity.

They no longer chase shortcuts because

they know shortcuts do not exist. The

first months of emptiness teach them

that persistence itself is the key. It

is the suffering that becomes the

advantage. Without it, no foundation

exists. Progress feels invisible because

the growth is happening beneath the

surface. You cannot see your mind

rewiring, your resilience thickening,

your habits embedding themselves. But it

is happening. Just as seeds planted in

soil appear dormant until they suddenly

break through. The beginner's effort

appears wasted until the roots are

strong enough to support growth. Most

quit before the roots form. They mistake

silence for absence. They do not realize

that the very progress they crave was

already underway. Endurance was the

water. Time was the sunlight. Effort was

the soil. To quit is to abandon the

harvest before it has the chance to

rise. Beginner hell also serves as a

mirror. It reflects back your motives

with brutal honesty. Were you in it for

quick wins? Were you in it for

validation?

Were you in it because you thought it

would be easy? The desert exposes all of

it. If you cannot love the grind without

the glory, you will not survive long

enough to earn the glory. Those who

endure learn to detach from results.

They learn to show up because showing up

is the victory. This shift transforms

them. When results eventually come, they

are no longer desperate for them. They

are grateful but not dependent. That

independence is what sustains momentum

long after others fade. The pain of

beginner hell sharpens patience. In a

world addicted to immediacy, patience

itself becomes a weapon. To train for

months without reward requires a level

of control most will never build.

Patience forged here bleeds into every

part of life. You stop chasing instant

gratification because you know the taste

of long-term victory is greater. You

stop comparing yourself to others

because you understand growth is never

linear. The patience that feels like

suffering in the beginning becomes your

shield against every distraction later.

Beginner hell is where the foundation of

patience is laid. 3 to 6 months of

frustration is the entry fee for

mastery.

Every master has walked this path. They

were not immune to the doubts. They were

not spared from the emptiness. They

simply stayed. That is the entire

difference. They understood that this

stage was not optional. It was

essential. To skip the suffering is to

skip the transformation.

This is why you must embrace it instead

of resist. Beginner hell is not the

delay of progress. It is the process of

becoming someone who can handle progress

when it finally arrives.

Without this, even success would crush

you. What most see as wasted time is

actually the sharpening of identity. In

those months, you stop being someone who

dabbles and start being someone who

commits. You stop defining yourself by

outcomes and start defining yourself by

consistency.

You stop needing to prove anything to

others and start proving it to yourself.

This identity shift is the most valuable

progress of all. By the time you emerge,

you are no longer fragile.

You are no longer at the mercy of

motivation. You have become someone who

endures. That identity alone guarantees

future success regardless of the field.

The silence of beginner hell is also

freedom. without attention, without

recognition, without the noise of

outsiders. You are free to experiment.

You are free to fail without ridicule.

You are free to build without pressure.

This freedom is priceless because once

results come, eyes come too, and with

them judgment. Beginner hell is the last

season of privacy you will ever have in

that pursuit. Treat it as sacred. Use it

to make mistakes you will not be allowed

to make later. Use it to grow roots no

storm can pull. The darkness of this

stage is the shelter where resilience

grows. When the breakthrough finally

comes, it feels explosive. People will

see your sudden rise and call it talent,

luck or advantage.

They will never see the nights of

questioning, the mornings of doubt, the

months of emptiness you endured. That

invisibility is the point. The filter

worked. You remained while others quit.

And that staying power turned you into

something they can never replicate.

The suffering they avoided is the

strength you now carry. Beginner hell

was never in your way. It was building

your way. The most liberating truth a

human can discover is that the mind is

plastic, flexible, and limitless within

the boundaries of nature. Unlike the

body, which has ceilings of size and

strength, the mind expands as far as you

dare push it. Every shortcoming you

carry is not a permanent flaw, but a

lack of training, skill, or exposure.

Most never realize this because they are

raised to believe intelligence is fixed,

that talent is fate, and that failure is

proof of limits. The truth is far

harsher and far more empowering. Your

failures are not signs of incapacity.

They are signals that you have not yet

learned the sequence. Once you

understand that mastery is mechanical

and the mind can be trained, you are

free. You stop hiding behind labels. You

stop fearing inadequacy and you start

building relentlessly because you know

capacity is always expandable. The mind

obeys the same law as any system. Give

it repetition. give it input, give it

feedback, and it evolves. Yet most

people treat it like stone rather than

clay. They accept its current shape as

permanent and resign themselves to

mediocrity. They say, "I am not good at

that, as though it were destiny rather

than a choice." But the brain rewires

itself with every new task you expose it

to. Neuroplasticity is not abstract

theory. It is proof that you can reforge

yourself continuously. Every new

language learned, every new skill

acquired, every new challenge endured

reshapes neural pathways. You are

literally sculpting your brain with each

repetition.

The only barrier is your willingness to

endure the early discomfort of

incompetence until the rewiring

solidifies. It is liberating because

once you understand this, excuses

collapse. You no longer say I cannot.

You begin saying I have not trained for

it yet. That single shift changes

everything. You stop defining yourself

by current ability and start defining

yourself by potential capacity. You see

setbacks not as verdicts but as

feedback. You realize failure is not an

end but part of the programming process.

Just as a muscle tears to grow stronger,

the brain fails to rewired deeper. Your

limits are only temporary settings

waiting to be rewritten. That truth

destroys fear. Once you know the mind is

limitless in adaptation.

You understand that the only permanent

failure is quitting. Most shortcomings

are illusions created by lack of

process. People want results without

sequence. They want mastery without the

steps. But mastery is nothing more than

stacking correct sequences until the

task becomes automatic. A craftsman is

not born knowing. He learns one motion

at a time until thousands of repetitions

erase hesitation. A thinker is not born

brilliant. He refineses his logic step

by step until clarity becomes instinct.

Once you grasp that any skill can be

broken down into its pieces and

practiced, you realize there is no

ceiling. There is only time, patience,

and effort. What others label genius is

often just someone who endured longer

through the sequence without stopping.

Unlike the body, the mind is infinite in

what it can store and adapt to. A muscle

reaches a point where it cannot lift

more. A runner reaches a limit of speed.

But the mind has no such ceiling within

the laws of nature. It can learn

endlessly. It can rewire endlessly. It

can adapt endlessly. That means no path

is closed to you. It may take years. It

may take pain. It may take the sacrifice

of comfort. But the door is always open.

Once you see this, hopelessness

dissolves. You are no longer trapped by

comparison because comparison loses

meaning when growth has no cap. The

danger is that most people never test

this truth. They accept cultural scripts

that say intelligence is innate, that

skills belong only to a chosen few. This

lie keeps them dosile. They never train

their minds past the minimum. They never

endure the discomfort required for

rewiring. So they stay trapped. Not

because of limits but because of

beliefs. Belief in limits creates real

limits. Belief in plasticity creates

transformation. The ones who rise are

not those who were born gifted but those

who refused to accept the lie. They

treated the mind as infinite and the

mind rewarded them with expansion others

thought impossible. Training the mind

requires you to endure boredom,

confusion and failure. These are the

growing pains of rewiring. Most people

stop here, mistaking discomfort for

incapacity.

But discomfort is proof of growth. It is

evidence that the mind is breaking old

pathways and forging new ones. The more

discomfort you endure, the deeper the

transformation.

This is why the early stage of learning

feels brutal. It is not because you

cannot do it. It is because you are

literally reshaping your brain. To stop

here is to rob yourself of the very

process that would free you. To endure

is to unlock the hidden capacity waiting

within. The liberation of this truth is

that you can decide who you become. You

are not bound to the version of yourself

that exists today. You can choose to

cultivate mastery in any direction

provided you are willing to suffer

through the rewiring. The self you

admire in others is not unreachable. It

is simply the product of sequences you

have not yet endured. Once you see

yourself as clay rather than stone, your

entire relationship with growth changes.

You no longer ask whether you can. You

ask how long it will take. And that

question always has an answer. Reality

bends to those who understand this law.

They are never imprisoned by current

results. They are never trapped by past

failures. They move forward relentlessly

because they know adaptation is

inevitable if effort is applied

consistently.

Their confidence is not arrogance. It is

clarity. They do not need to be the best

today because they know they can become

better tomorrow.

This makes them unstoppable. They

outlast, outran and outgrow everyone who

believed in limits. Their edge is not

talent. Their edge is faith in the

plasticity of the mind.

You either Be,lieve or you don't

 
 
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