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


