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Hi friend,

There is a part of your brain most people have never even heard of, but it might be the most important piece when it comes to willpower, resilience, and actually doing the things you keep saying you want to do.

It is called the anterior mid cingulate cortex, or the AMCC.

I think it's so cool because it gives us a physical anchor for something most people only talk about in motivational clichés. It is basically the spot in your brain that lights up when you are in the middle of effort, conflict, or persistence. It is like your brain’s effort thermostat, always asking: “this feels hard, do I keep going, or do I stop?”

And what is wild is that when researchers look at high performers in soldiers, elite athletes, CEOs, their AMCC is more sensitive, more efficient, more activated. It is not that they were born that way; like any skill, they've trained it.

The way I like to think about it is that your AMCC is like a landlord. Every single day, you have to pay rent. The rent is doing the real hard thing. Not the thing that used to be hard for you ten years ago. Not the thing that looks hard from the outside and gets you recognition. The actual hard thing that you have been avoiding.

Ten years ago, for me, going to the gym was hard. Walking in, figuring it out, trying to lift, that was daunting. Every rep was a rent payment into my AMCC. But today, the gym does not really light it up anymore. It is not novel. It is not uncertain. It is just part of who I am now, and so my brain has shifted it to other regions that handle habits and automatic behaviors.

So if I pat myself on the back and say “look how disciplined I am, I am at the gym,” that is a story I am telling myself. It is avoidance disguised as discipline. From the outside it looks hard, but really, it is just another way of dodging the work that actually stretches me, like sitting down to study, or writing, or building the business, or facing the thing I keep ruminating on in the back of my mind.

This is what most of us do. We avoid, but we do it in clever ways. We know scrolling on the phone is avoidance. We know Netflix binges are avoidance. But the sneaky part is when we use “good” habits to dodge the real thing.

The AMCC does not get stronger from what is comfortable for you. It gets stronger when you step into what is actually uncomfortable for you. That is the rent. That is the work.

And here is the piece that matters: fatigue, doubt, resistance, none of these are commands. They are signals.

Tim Noakes has this theory called the central governor theory, which basically says fatigue is mostly generated by your brain to keep you from pushing too far, not because your body is actually at the limit. It is protective. But most people take that signal as the final word: “I am tired, I should stop.”

High performers reframe it. They have trained themselves to see fatigue as information, not as an order. Same with resistance, same with self doubt. They have built the habit of interpreting those signals without obeying them. And each time you do that, you are making another deposit into your AMCC.

You are training your brain to persist.

That is why people at the top do not quit so easily. It is not just raw grit. It is belief, burnout management, and brain wiring working together.

They stack up receipts of hard things they have done before. They surround themselves with people who make the mission feel possible. They master the internal dialogue that says, “this is who I am.”

They protect themselves from burnout by aligning their work with their values so it actually feels meaningful instead of draining. And they have trained the circuitry in their brain, day after day, rep after rep, to keep going even when it sucks.

So, the question for you is not whether you are motivated enough, disciplined enough, or tough enough. The question is: are you paying rent to your AMCC? Are you showing up for the actual hard thing you are avoiding, or are you just dressing up avoidance as discipline?

The hard thing might be opening that book, sending that email, writing that page, making that call. Whatever it is, that is the rent. And if you want to build psychological strength, if you want to keep going when you want to quit, that is where you have to start.

Every deposit makes your AMCC stronger. Every deposit makes it easier to interpret fatigue as a signal, not a stop sign. Every deposit makes you more durable the next time resistance shows up. So stop lying to yourself, find the main thing, and pay the rent.

If you like'd this, you can do a deep dive into my previous articles here.

Until next time,

Much Love,

Calvin

P.S - Just completed the first class of my PhD program. Can report, we made it through alive. Now I get a week until the next semester starts and this week's weather is suppose to be in the 70's and clear skies. Bless.

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