The Dragon Won’t Get Smaller—But You Can Get Stronger

Growth is hiding behind the one thing you’ve been putting off

For once in your life—don’t run away.
Run toward the thing you fear.
Fight through it and learn the lessons through the struggle.
This is the essence of growth.
To persist through the thing you fear the most—is to grow and set yourself free.

Jordan Peterson often talks about the concept of facing your dragons before they become full-grown. The concept, though metaphorical, is simple: face the thing you fear before it becomes full-grown. A small dragon is easier to face than a full-grown dragon bigger than your house.

The dragon in our lives can be anything that evokes a sense of fear or anxiety. This can be something as simple as starting to thin out all the clutter that has piled up in your garage. Another, slightly more fear-evoking dragon can be the business everyone is telling you you should start—but you're afraid, because you don’t know if it will be accepted outside of your friend group.

These things can seem daunting at first, but once you get started on them, the fear begins to ease. Once they’re accomplished, the fear is replaced by a sense of victory and pride. The project we were avoiding has now become an accomplishment we can stand on—one that builds our self-confidence.

Alex Hormozi has a great line that summarizes this concept:

You don’t become confident by shouting affirmations in the mirror, but by having a stack of undeniable proof that you are who you say you are. Outwork your self-doubt.

Start small. Face the dragon that is easiest to overcome and use it as a stepping stone to face even larger ones.

As time progresses, you’ll look back on life and realize that the small things you were once afraid to face were just that—small. And the things you are about to face would terrify the you from five years ago.

This is how growth works. We face small challenges, and with time, those small challenges get larger—but you don’t notice, because you’ve grown so much.