15 Life Learnings of an Enlightened Warrior
Embrace your inner warrior, conquer yourself to serve others
Last weekend, I attended the Enlightened Warrior Training Camp, a four-and-a-half-day boot camp held at Berjaya Hills, Malaysia. This was my final training as part of the Quantum Leap Program by T. Harv Eker, which I signed up for back in 2018.
This was the program that really propelled my discovery of my love and passion for investing, that I wanted to live and continue doing investing for the rest of my life.
I was joined by over 400 individuals from all around the world. We were grouped into eight tribes over four physically and mentally challenging exercises. My tribe was “Courageous Eagles!” AH-HO!
During this training, we were pushed hard physically and mentally. I slept little (being used to it helped) and sweated lots. I also did the toughest hike in my life thus far, carrying the most weight in the most muddy conditions one can imagine in heavy torrential rain.
I tore hard as I was forced to dig out my fears, express them through love, and learn to be much stronger. I made many good friends and got to know many like-minded people who wanted to be better at what they did.
Thank you to the lead trainers, Robert Raymond Rioppel and Hanna Meirelles, and to other trainers like Dr. Robert Lawrence Friedman, Sifu Aaron Huey, Grandmaster Michael Liew, and many others for this life-transforming experience.
My Warrior Name
My Warrior Name is “Focused Eagle.” I chose this warrior name because I know that when I am focused, I do great work that can help me achieve great things. I wanted to be like the majestic eagle that can soar through the winds (“noise”), fly high, and see the world from 10,000 feet, allowing me to explore a vision for the future that breaks the status quo.
When there is a goal, I can be like the eagle and dive at full speed to catch my prey with high precision and focus. Eagles prefer environments free from constraints, where they can do things their way. Eagles embrace challenges where they can show off their prowess and impress others; they move quickly and decisively, point them in the right direction, and these daring and bold individuals are on a mission to succeed.
15 Learnings to be an Enlightened Warrior
Here are my 15 learnings from the Enlighted Warrior Training Camp (EWTC), I hope you enjoy them and hope you find some of them useful to apply in your own life.
1 | You are a warrior, a samurai. You conquer yourself to serve others. You have what it takes; you are the warrior of the light. You already have the warrior in you; you just need to learn how to draw it out and use it at the right time.
2 | If you want something, you must be willing to do whatever it takes, the difficult, not the easy. There is no can’t. You choose, or you choose not to. There is no try; you do, or you do not. When you choose to do, you do everything at 100% the first time and every time. You play big, not small. You are focused and committed.
3 | You act in spite of your fears, doubts, convenience, and mood. You take one step at a time, and you are okay to ask for help. You take unconditional action regardless of your fears.
4 | You are bigger than any obstacles. When you believe, focus, and remove all fears, you will have the strength and unity achieved through teamwork and determination.
“Focus hard enough and you can even bend carbon steel rebars with your throats.”
5 | You just f***ing do it. You don’t overthink. You practice ready fire aim, rather than ready aim fire, and end up keep aiming, but never firing. You fire and keep aiming better and firing better. It is not one bullet. There are many bullets. You take the calculated risk to dream and build, to fail and to succeed.
6 | There will be ups and downs. The greatest victories are from comebacks and challenges. When the going gets tough, you, being the tough, get going. You can live with failures, you never give up, and you are bigger than any obstacle. You can recover back quickly when you fall down. Ordeals are there to strengthen you. Challenges provide the greatest opportunities for you to become better. You are unstoppable. You will succeed in spite of anything. You celebrate every win and failure.
7 | You always focus on your energy, breathing, posture and physiology to make you strong and powerful. You lead from strength, not from weakness. You have confidence, not arrogance. You don’t play the victim, don’t criticize, complain, blame, and justify. You cannot control everything, but you can control how you respond.
8 | You tell the truth always. You keep the word that you give. Your word is law. If you commit but cannot follow through, you can de-commit. You keep a commitment because you say you would.
9 | You have to live your life authentically, as one, as who you are. You do it your own way that is unique to who you are and you own your own values. You are independent, you are an artist, and you love doing what you do. When all else falls apart, you know what sustains you from the inside.
10 | When you are authentically you, you will attract who you are, not what you want to attract. You speak your truth with compassion. You align with your purpose of contributing to others. The right people who like you for who you are and what you do will be attracted to you.
11 | You approve of yourself. You know you are enough. You can be alone with yourself. You do not need to please anyone. You understand how others judge you is about them. You do not take anything personally. You are perfectly imperfect. You don’t chase but instead attract people to like you for who you truly are.
12 | You take the time and effort to truly connect eye to eye and heart to heart, to see who they are deep inside. You can see the beauty in others, and in turn, you, too, through them, can see the beauty in yourself. When you give of yourself to others, they can tell, they will know.
13 | You can be done. You can forgive. You can honor. You can respect. When you come from a place of love, rather than strength and anger, which stems from fear, you will be even more powerful.
14 | You focus on your vision, don’t let your story own you and stop you, and follow your own dreams. Your thoughts are not true or false; they are merely beliefs. Your thoughts are just strong opinions loosely held. You remove all negative self-talk and encourage yourself with positive self-talk. You do not go to the finish line; you always go through the finish line.
15 | Everything, both good and bad, happens in the universe for a reason; there is a right time and right place. When you are committed to keep doing great work, the universe will throw something back at you, providence will come towards you.
Below are the two mantras of an Enlightened Warrior that were shared with us. We repeatedly shouted these at the top of our lungs throughout the four days.
Mantra 1: Attitudes of a Warrior
I am a warrior:
I act in spite of fear
I am willing to do whatever it takes
I do everything at 100%
I am willing to do what’s hard
I act in spite of my mood
I am bigger than any obstacle
I succeed in spite of anything
I never give up
Mantra 2: Ways of the Warrior
I am a warrior:
I create every moment of my life
My choices create my reality
My response creates my outcome
There is no “can’t”, I choose to or choose not to
There is no “try”, I do or do not do
I am true to my own heart
I speak my truth with compassion
I keep my commitments
My word is law.
I approve of myself, now
I don’t have to please everybody
I don’t take anything personally
I understand that how others judge me is about them
I look them in the eye, I tell them who I am, and if they don’t like it, ___ them.
Two Poems
I wanted to end this by sharing two beautiful poems that I highly resonated with:
Poem 1: “THE INVITATION” by Oriah Mountain Dreamer
Makes you think about what is really important in life.
It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.
It doesn't interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.
It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life's betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from the fear of further pain.
I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it.
I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic, to remember the limitations of being human.
It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true.
I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself; if you can hear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul; if you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.
I want to know if you can see beauty even when it is not pretty every day. And if you can source your own life from its presence.
I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand at the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, ‘Yes.’
It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done to feed the children.
It doesn’t interest me who you know or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand in the centre of the fire with me and not shrink back.
It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied.
I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away.
I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.
Poem 2: "MY CREED" by Dean Alfange
I do not choose to be a common man,
It is my right to be uncommon … if I can,
I seek opportunity … not security.
I do not wish to be a kept citizen.
Humbled and dulled by having the State look after me.
I want to take the calculated risk;
To dream and to build.
To fail and to succeed.
I refuse to barter incentive for a dole;
I prefer the challenges of life
To the guaranteed existence;
The thrill of fulfillment
To the stale calm of Utopia.
I will not trade freedom for beneficence
Nor my dignity for a handout
I will never cower before any master
Nor bend to any threat.
It is my heritage to stand erect.
Proud and unafraid;
To think and act for myself,
To enjoy the benefit of my creations
And to face the world boldly and say:
This, with God’s help, I have done
All this is what it means
To be an Entrepreneur
10 October 2024 | Eugene Ng | Vision Capital Fund | eugene.ng@visioncapitalfund.co
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