Day 47: The War Inside Your Head

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

Round 2, Day 7
Saturday, February 21, 2026

There’s a war going on inside your head right now, and you probably don’t even know it.

Seth Godin, in his book Linchpin, calls one side the lizard brain. Steven Pressfield, in The War of Art, calls it the Resistance. It’s the part of your brain that exists for one purpose: to keep you safe. And it’s very, very good at its job.

The other side? The ancient Greeks called it the Daemon. The Romans called it the Genius. It’s the creative force inside you — the part that sees possibilities, generates ideas, and pushes you toward something greater than survival.

And these two are at war with each other every single day.

The Idea You Let Die

Have you ever had a really good idea? Something creative, something that could help people, maybe even a business concept that excited you? And then a voice in your head said, “Nah. That’s too risky. That’ll never work.”

So you let it go.

And then, a year or two later, you saw that exact idea out in the world — built by someone else. And you thought, “That was mine.”

Godin would say that was your Genius, getting strangled by your lizard brain. And it happens all the time. Not because we lack ideas. Not because we lack talent. But because our biology is wired to treat creativity as a threat.

Why We’re Wired This Way

Here’s the part that hit me. Godin points out that the lizard brain loves being told what to do. Following instructions feels safe. If someone hands you a rulebook — sit here, do this, move to the next step — your lizard brain relaxes. Threat neutralized. Everything is fine.

But if you’ve ever been fired from a job without ever having a bad performance review, you know that following instructions doesn’t guarantee safety. You can do everything you’re asked to do — take care of people, excel at your work, check every box — and still get let go. I’m a firm believer that people like this end up finding better jobs, but that’s a post for a different day. The point is: compliance is not security. The only set of instructions I’ve ever found that truly delivers on that promise is God’s Word. But when humans are running the show, the rulebook can change on you overnight.

So why do we cling to it? Because we were trained to.

Think about it. From the time we were children, we were conditioned: sit down, shut up, learn the lesson, do the homework, move to the next grade. Year after year after year. Over a decade of training that rewarded compliance and punished deviation.

Is it any wonder we struggle to engage with our Genius as adults? We’ve spent our entire lives being told that coloring inside the lines is the path to success. And then we hit thirty, forty, fifty years old and wonder why we can’t create anything.

We have years of conditioning to overcome. That’s not an excuse — it’s just the reality of the battlefield.

Give the Lizard Brain a Roadmap

Here’s where it gets practical, and this is where the 7-40 Challenge connects.

The lizard brain needs structure to feel safe. The Genius needs freedom to create. So what if you gave the lizard brain what it wants — a roadmap, a set of daily habits, a predictable rhythm — so that the Genius can do its work without triggering a full-scale panic?

That’s exactly what these seven daily habits do for me.

The Bible study grounds me. The exercise clears my head. The water and calories keep my body functioning. The reading fills the creative tank. And by the time I get to my creative hour, the lizard brain has been fed. It’s calm. It’s satisfied. And the Genius shows up.

In the last forty-seven days, the Genius has been showing up. If you read yesterday’s post, you know the list of what’s been accomplished. And today alone, I’m getting my first book uploaded to KDP and I outlined a full two-act musical that’s been rattling around in my head for four years. That’s not because I defeated the lizard brain. It’s because I gave it a structure it could trust, and then I created within that structure.

The Real Question

So it comes down to this: Is it worth it?

Is it worth it to engage your life, work out the steps, build the habits, and push through the Resistance? Or do you sit in the job you hate, accept somebody else’s direction, and spend your life as a member of the factory?

Gary Vaynerchuk said something that stuck with me: “If it was supposed to be easy, everyone would do it.” And that makes sense, because everything worth doing requires us to fight our natural desire to stay safe in order to succeed.

I choose succeeding. I choose making myself better and honoring God by doing the most with the talents He gave me. Because I refuse to be the servant in Jesus’s parable who buried his talent in the ground because he was afraid to use it. That servant didn’t get praised for playing it safe. He got cast away.

The lizard brain says bury the talent. The Genius says invest it. The choice is yours — every single day.

I know which one I’m choosing.

Day 47 of 280. Feed the lizard. Free the Genius.

Day 46: Guard Your Creativity

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

Round 2, Day 6
Friday, February 20, 2026

I’m going to be honest with you — I’m exhausted. Today involved picking up seventy pressure-treated boards for my wife’s garden, personally lifting them about a hundred and fifty times between loading, unloading, and repositioning. On legs that were already sore from Wednesday’s workout. It was a full day.

But everything got done. All seven habits. Book covers finished for both of my novels. And a decision I’ve been circling for a while finally locked into place: my first book is going up on Kindle. Soon.

All of that said, I have a thought for you tonight. And it has nothing to do with lumber.

More Capable Than You Think

Albert Einstein once said that imagination is more important than knowledge. Not intelligence. Not credentials. Not how many facts you can memorize or how high your test scores were. Imagination. Creativity. The ability to see things differently and do something unique with what you see.

That idea has been sitting with me all day.

Because here’s what I’ve learned over forty-six days of this challenge: we are infinitely more capable than we think we are. And the thing that unlocks that capability isn’t discipline alone, and it isn’t grinding harder. It’s creativity.

These daily habits I’ve been practicing — the reading, the writing, the exercise, the spiritual foundation — they haven’t just made me more consistent. They’ve made me more creative. And the creativity is what’s producing the results.

In the last forty-six days, I’ve written and revised two complete novels. I’ve designed book covers. I’ve written a blog post every single day. I’ve built social media channels from scratch. I’ve lost over twenty pounds. None of that happened because I’m smarter than anyone else. It happened because the daily rhythm created space for creativity to show up.

Protect It

Here’s the thing nobody tells you: creativity is fragile. It doesn’t thrive in chaos. It doesn’t show up when you’re running on empty with no structure and no rhythm. It shows up when you’ve built a foundation strong enough to support it.

That’s what the habits do. The Bible study grounds me. The exercise clears my head. The reading fills the tank. And when I sit down for my creative hour, there’s something there. Ideas. Energy. Output. Not because I forced it, but because the rest of the day made room for it.

Creativity is not a luxury. It’s not the thing you get to after the “real work” is done. It is the real work. It’s the thing that separates going through the motions from building something that matters.

So guard it. Protect it. Build a life that gives it room to breathe.

You are more capable than you think. And the creativity you’ve been putting off, ignoring, or telling yourself you’ll get to someday? That’s the very thing that will take you where you want to go.

Day 46 of 280. Tired, sore, and still creating.

Day 45: The Pain Is the Evidence

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

Round 2, Day 5
Thursday, February 19, 2026

I woke up this morning and my first thought was one word: OWWWW.

My legs are destroyed. My body is letting me know in no uncertain terms that yesterday happened. And you know what? Good. Because that soreness is a reminder that I did what I was supposed to do.

The Double Whammy

Here’s the context. I hadn’t lifted in three weeks because of a hand injury. And when I came back, I didn’t just pick up where I left off — I switched programs entirely. I went from an ABABAB workout rotation to an ABCABC split. Different exercises, different structure, different demands on my body.

It’s going to work much better long-term. I’m not overtaxing the same muscle groups. My workouts are more focused and don’t take quite as long. But the combination of three weeks off plus a brand-new program? That’s a double whammy. And my legs are paying the bill.

Sore, But Still Moving

Here’s what’s interesting. The soreness made me want to complain. But it didn’t make me want to skip anything.

I actually went on a walk this morning to recap a meeting via voice note, and it got me out of the office early enough to start working the soreness out. Movement is the best medicine for sore muscles. Not sitting still. Not waiting for it to pass. Getting up and moving through it.

There’s a lesson in that, and it goes way beyond the gym.

Soreness Is Not Just Physical

I was thinking the other day about moving back to Oklahoma last year. It was a good season — I got a new job, I was back in a familiar area, surrounded by people I knew. But learning the new role, adjusting to a new part of town, working on a new house — it was overwhelming. I was sore in every sense of the word.

But here’s the thing. Since I moved here in June of 2025, I’m down twenty-two pounds. I’ve written two books. I’ve started new social media channels. I’ve gotten a ton of work done on the house. I’ve launched the 7-40 Challenge and haven’t missed a day.

The season made me sore. But the season made me better.

That’s how growth works. It doesn’t announce itself with comfort. It announces itself with aches — with the evidence that something changed, that you pushed past where you were, that the old normal isn’t normal anymore.

What I’d Tell You on Day Three

If you’re early in a new habit — day three, day five, day ten — and you wake up hurting, whether that’s physical soreness or the mental exhaustion of doing something hard every single day, I want you to hear this:

Success is on the other side of the hard.

The pain is the evidence that you have challenged the norm. You’ve done the work. You’ve challenged the status quo of your own life. Your body, your mind, your circumstances — they’re all adjusting to the new version of you. And that adjustment hurts.

But it’s supposed to hurt. Soreness is not a warning to stop. It’s confirmation that you started.

So if you’re sore today — in your muscles, in your schedule, in your patience, in your faith — don’t quit. Move through it. Walk it out. Let the ache remind you that yesterday, you did something that mattered.

The pain is the evidence. Keep going.

Day 45 of 280. Sore means it’s working.

Day 44: Say It So They Hear It

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

Round 2, Day 4
Wednesday, February 18, 2026

How often do you get into a conversation and realize halfway through that the person you’re talking to has no idea what you’re telling them?

If you’ve been following this blog, you might remember an earlier post called “The Curse of Knowledge.” It’s a concept from Chip and Dan Heath’s book Made to Stick — the idea that when we know a subject so well, we have a genuinely hard time remembering what it was like not to know it. We start explaining something, we see the confused look on someone’s face, and we can’t figure out why they don’t get it. It seems so obvious to us. But that’s the curse. Our expertise has erased our memory of being a beginner.

I’ve run into this so many times since I first read about it that it deserves another post. Because tonight I want to connect it to something bigger.

Clarity Makes You Indispensable

I’ve been reading Linchpin by Seth Godin, and he talks about what makes a person indispensable. There are a lot of answers to that question, but here’s one I think gets overlooked: the ability to make your message crystal clear.

Think about it. If you’re not clear about what you know, what you work on, and what you do — how are you going to relay it to others? How are you going to work with excellence? How are you going to make sure everyone is actually on the same page?

The answer is, you really can’t.

You can be the smartest person in the room. You can have the best ideas, the deepest knowledge, the most experience. But if you can’t communicate it in a way that makes someone else say, “Oh yeah, I know exactly what you’re talking about” — then your knowledge is trapped inside your own head. And trapped knowledge doesn’t help anyone.

The linchpin isn’t just the person who knows the most. It’s the person who can translate what they know into something other people can use.

The Argument That Wasn’t

Let me give you two examples from my own life of how badly this can go.

I was in a meeting a while back, and I kept making the same point over and over. The person across from me kept responding, and I kept pushing back. I was convinced they weren’t hearing me.

Then it hit me: they were agreeing with me. The whole time.

I was so locked into my own way of saying it that I couldn’t hear them saying the same thing back in different words. I was arguing with an ally because I was too focused on my message to actually listen to theirs.

And if that wasn’t humbling enough — I’ve done the same thing at home. I remember a conversation with my bride where I was getting increasingly frustrated, and she finally looked at me and said, “We’re saying the same thing, aren’t we?”

Yes. We were.

The problem wasn’t that we disagreed. The problem was that I couldn’t get over myself long enough to hear how the person in front of me needed to receive the information.

The 7-40 Application

This matters to me in the context of this challenge because I want to be an encouragement to people — not a source of confusion. I want to be crystal clear about what I’m doing, about my motivations, about my struggles. I want to meet people where they are, not where I am.

That’s the real skill. Not just knowing something, but translating it. Not just having the answer, but delivering it in a way that actually lands.

Whether it’s at work, at home, in your writing, or in your relationships — the question isn’t “Do I know what I’m talking about?” The question is “Can the person I’m talking to understand what I’m saying?”

If the answer is no, the problem isn’t them. It’s you.

Say it so they hear it. That’s what makes you indispensable.

Day 44 of 280. Clarity is a superpower.

Day 43: The Factory Worker Inside You

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

Round 2, Day 3
Tuesday, February 17, 2026

I’m still working through Seth Godin’s Linchpin, and tonight I want to talk about something that might make you uncomfortable.

There’s a factory worker living inside you. And if you’re not careful, he’ll run the show.

The System That Built Us

Godin makes the case — and he wrote this back in 2010 — that the industrial revolution didn’t just build factories. It built an education system designed to feed them. Sit down. Follow instructions. Get good grades. Go to college. Get a job. Do what you’re told. Collect a paycheck.

The highest value of that system wasn’t innovation. It wasn’t creativity. It was compliance. The goal was to produce people who could do a job for a day’s wage and not have to think.

And for a long time, that system worked. For the factories, anyway.

But here’s the thing Godin saw coming sixteen years ago: that era is over. And if it was over in 2010, it is buried in 2026. The rise of AI, the speed of change in the marketplace, the sheer volume of information and tools available — all of it demands something the factory model never taught us.

Applied creativity.

The Moment You Start Phoning It In

I know the factory worker mindset from the inside. During my days working in an insurance office, I felt it pulling at me constantly. When your contribution doesn’t seem to matter, when you’re not making progress, when the environment is draining — it is incredibly easy to just phone it in. Go through the motions. Clock in, clock out, repeat.

I think we all have moments like that. Seasons where the path of least resistance is to stop caring and just do the minimum.

I started breaking out of it when I realized something simple but powerful: my level of effort actually moved the needle. When I brought energy and intention to my work, things changed. When I phoned it in, they didn’t. The results were directly connected to the investment.

That’s not a complicated idea. But it’s one most people ignore.

The Rogue in the Cubicle

Here’s what I’ve learned about myself over the years. I am a creative free spirit living in a corporate, data-ordered world. Those two things don’t always get along.

I have to turn on music to keep my brain engaged. I have to move. I have to conceptualize problems in different ways just to stay satisfied — not because I’m difficult, but because that’s how I’m wired. And honestly, that creative wiring is exactly what makes me good at what I do.

Because if we look at things the same way every time, we never solve problems. We just keep describing them. New solutions require new ideas, and new ideas come from people who refuse to think inside the factory lines.

That rebellious streak? It’s not a flaw. It’s the linchpin quality Godin is talking about.

AI and the New Frontier

This is even more real for me right now as I learn to work with AI tools. The way I see it, AI is the ultimate amplifier of applied creativity — but only if you know how to use it.

I’ve been learning how to iterate: ask questions, get feedback, supply my critiques, apply my business knowledge, layer in my creativity, get more feedback, and iterate again. The process works. But it only works if you bring something to the table.

And here’s what I’ve noticed: the quality of the answer depends entirely on the quality of the question. If you’re not clear about what you need, the tool won’t save you. You have to understand what you’re working with — the sophistication of the model, the way you communicate and express yourself — so that the response fits the context of what you’re actually trying to accomplish.

In other words, AI doesn’t replace thinking. It rewards it.

The factory workers of 2026 are the people who will ask a machine to do their thinking for them and accept whatever comes back. The linchpins are the ones who will use these tools to multiply what they already bring — their creativity, their experience, their judgment.

Which One Are You?

So tonight I’ll leave you with this.

Are you a factory worker or a linchpin? Are you phoning it in — going through the motions at work, at home, in your health, in your relationships? Are you following the old model: sit down, follow instructions, don’t make waves, collect your check?

Or is there a rogue inside you that knows you were built for more?

Because here’s the truth: in today’s world, nobody is coming to hand you a better life. The era of doing what you’re told and being rewarded for it is over. If you are not taking the initiative to drive your own success forward — to learn new tools, to think creatively, to bring something to the table that nobody else can — then you are falling behind. Right now. Today.

Not tomorrow. Not next quarter. Now.

The people who thrive in 2026 and beyond won’t be the ones who followed orders the best. They’ll be the ones who refused to stop thinking, refused to stop growing, and took ownership of where they’re headed.

So if you haven’t started, start now. Not when you’re ready. Not when conditions are perfect. Now.

Day 43 of 280. Be the linchpin.