ON DEATH GROUND
The Art of Fighting 3x Harder
Levi Clampitt
An essay to help do the things you said you would do by now
Preface
“Someday you will die, and until you know that, you’re useless to me.” ― Chuck Palahniuk
You are going to die.
Maybe not today and maybe not tomorrow but rest assured, your time is coming. Why is it so hard to come to terms with this?
When it comes to thinking about our own mortality, we’re just as entitled and delusional as the rest. Entitled enough to believe that we’ll have the same resources at our disposal in the future to accomplish whatever we’re putting off (let alone expecting the state of the world to remain the same) and delusional enough to think the types of things that kill, hurt, and ruin others won’t do the same to us and our loved ones. They will.
Life expectancy be damned, the likelihood that you or someone very close to you dies within the coming years is probably higher than you realize. Coming to terms with this (and fully absorbing it), doesn’t have to be all bad feelings and, alternatively, can be used to your benefit. Death, especially when it’s close, has a way of imparting clarity and purpose on one’s life that is unlike anything else. You have no choice but to become introspective after you survive cancer or after the loss of a loved one. What do you do next? How do you live your life? Where do you go from here? Life will have a different meaning now.
Thinking about death, like we are now, is important. Doing so creates a powerful connection to the present that can help with feelings of being lost, getting our priorities straight, and creating a sense of urgency to get shit done. It can also be a source of despair and depression, depending on one’s perspective and experiences. I want to talk about how we can use it positively. Society has taught us to be afraid of sickness and death and to keep it “out of sight, out of mind,” but all this has done is lead to procrastination and regret. If you don’t think people will get sick and die, then you won’t act like it either – until it’s too late. Let’s change that.
Maybe you disagree with this premise, or maybe you are indifferent. Maybe you are more concerned about landing a better job or finally getting in shape, and don’t see how this all fits in. The thing is, it’s all related. How you think about death is also how you think about life. It’s the yin to the other’s yang. To get the most out of living, we’ll have to address our own mortality. Luckily, there’s a strategy for that.
The Death Ground Strategy
“Throw your soldiers into positions whence there is no escape, and they will prefer death to flight. If they will face death, there is nothing they may not achieve.” ― Sun Tzu
According to Sun Tzu in The Art of War, if soldiers were put into positions where there is no escape route (such as with their back against a mountain, river, or ocean), they would fight to the death and achieve great feats. Tzu referred to this inability to retreat as “Death Ground”. By removing the possibility of quitting, the soldiers had no choice but to give it their all and in fact, Tzu found they fought 3x harder.
As Robert Greene discusses in The 33 Strategies of War, Hernán Cortés used this tactic when he burned all his ships so his men could no longer think about the prospect of going home, and Fyodor Dostoyevsky used this strategy to write all his books after narrowly avoiding a firing squad. When the Allied forces landed on the beaches of Normandy on D-Day, they found themselves on Death Ground, as did the 300 Spartans at the Battle of Thermopylae as they fought with their back against the pass. No retreating in either case, just fighting for survival.
When you have stage 4 prostate cancer, nature has placed you on Death Ground, and when you are sleeping on the floor of your business because you sold your home to pay off debt, you have placed yourself on Death Ground. In such situations, there is no guaranteed ‘tomorrow’, no ‘maybes’, and no ‘plan B’s’. Just today, just right now, just the course of action you have chosen or that has been thrust upon you. You cannot afford to fail as failure means certain death, either in the real sense of the word or in other forms.
While the Death Ground Strategy is straightforward in theory – throw yourself fully into something without an exit strategy – I believe there’s room for us to expand on it. Although the idea of risking it all might be appealing to some, it’s not always a guaranteed or sustainable approach (as survivorship bias causes us to overlook failures in favor of success stories). The Death Ground Strategy certainly can work, and I’ve written before how you can apply the 5 laws, but most of us will need something a little more practical.
Realistically, you probably don’t need to be as extreme as you think you do. Just like we no longer need to move to Hollywood if we want to become an actor, you probably don’t need to quit your current job to pursue side hustles or follow any crazy routines to see results. No bridges or boats likely need to be burned. Most of us have enough time and resources at our disposal, we just need to learn how to maximize it all. That is what this is for. If we can learn how to tap into this Death Ground mentality, we can fight 3x harder and achieve the stuff that we once thought was out of reach.
After having a few friends pass away recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about this. Whether you agree or disagree with some parts, I hope it is able to provide you some food for thought and maybe help you do the things you told yourself you would do by now. Thinking about our own mortality enacts the stress response and can feel uncomfortable, but this is the exact place where we need to be.
Alas, here is how you can put yourself on Death Ground.
1
Remember, You Must Die
“Let us prepare our minds as if we’d come to the very end of life. Let us postpone nothing.” ― Seneca
You are going to die.
Why is it so easy to forget this?
If we put all our collective lives under a microscope, one would think we are going to live forever. We tend to put off the most important things, binge on stuff that isn’t, and then complain that we have no time. Perhaps we forget our own mortality because we get swept up in the day-to-day chaos of bills, work, and to-do lists, or maybe society, with its focus on 401(k)s and retirement plans, has conditioned us to look so far into the future that we lose sight of the present. Whatever the reason, it’s typically only when people close to us die that we are reminded of how fleeting life can be. We then attend the funeral and you hear people (including yourself) saying how they wish they would have reached out or visited before they died and how we are now going to dedicate something or the other to their life. And then time marches forward, life gets busy again, and this feeling slowly fades.
So this is step one: learning to live by what the Stoics called Memento Mori to keep this feeling alive.
Here’s how.
Live Vicariously
We live in great times and because of this, we can get lulled into thinking that nothing bad will happen to us and that this will continue forever ever after. To combat this bias towards toxic positivity and death denial, read about others who weren’t as fortunate. History (with all its wars, natural disasters, and extreme poverty) will get you in the right frame of mind here. Read about the Holocaust, Slavery, and other books on the Death Ground Reading List. Feel their pain and then use it to your advantage.
Surround Yourself With The Dead
We have already experienced death, we just need to remember it. To help with this, frame up photos of your fallen friends and family members and keep them close by. On the wall in my spare room, I have a newspaper clipping from one of my friend’s deaths. Everyday, while getting ready for work, I look at it. Some times I have conscious thoughts on it, sometimes I don’t. Even subconsciously, it’s still communicating a message to me, which is this: He died and so will you.
Listen To Your Elders
The elderly are the wisest among us — and also closest to death. Not surprisingly, you won’t hear the elderly (or people on their deathbed) complain about how they wished they worked harder to afford material objects or for not holding their grudges longer. Instead, they will talk about the importance of making time for others, learning how to say yes to life, and not caring about what others think (besides, no one is thinking about you anyways). To tap into their wisdom, check out this Youtube channel.
The goal with any of this is to slow down and reflect on how we are living our lives. Find something that resonates with you and helps brings you back to the present moment because once you get there, we can start asking better questions.
2
Find Your Reasons
“Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.” ― Victor Frankl
You are going to die.
So what are you fighting for?
To become a better parent, to inspire the next generation, to solve a big issue? We must find our reasons. Without getting clarity here, we are much more likely to quit once things get hard because we don’t know what we are actually fighting for.
Let’s try to nail it down. Imagine for a moment that you have unlimited resources, both time and money. What activities would you now choose to devote your life to? Removing these constraints can help us determine what truly matters to us. For myself, I’d read, write, challenge myself in all physical pursuits, and help people do the same. From here, we can get more specific with your purpose, such as, “I’m here to help people overcome obstacles through training and writing”. It may not be some grand vision like solving world hunger, but it should be something bigger than yourself. It should also drive you, day in and day out. This is the key to fighting harder.
Once you have an idea ― something that is at the intersection of your interests, what you are good at, and what the world needs ― you’ll need to get to work on building the foundation.
Step 1 – Define Your Values
Your values or virtues are what you care about and are the set of ideals that you try to live by. In tough times, they help us remain strong and find our way through. They are our foundation for making difficult decisions; our moral backbone. In the absence of values, it’s more likely we’ll make choices we regret during moments of challenge and crisis. So don’t leave these up to chance ― figure them out before you find yourself on Death Ground.
These are the non-negotiables:
1. Integrity (doing the right things)
2. Courage (acting in spite of fear)
3. Perseverance (pushing through setbacks)
It’s going to suck at times and you are going to be scared, so you’ll need Courage. You are going to fail and get knocked down, so you’ll need Perseverance to stand back up. And you’ll need Integrity because you said you were going to do it and besides, it’s the right thing to do.
Others that may help:
4. Ownership (taking accountability for all things)
5. Adaptability (adjusting your course when needed)
6. Growth (drive for self-improvement)
7. Drive (prioritizing ambition and hard work)
8. Discipline (focus and willpower)
9. Curiosity and Knowledge (the quest for truth)
10. Humility (dropping the ego)
11. Service and Community (doing this for others)
Give this some thought, and create your own list. Think of the people you admire and the qualities they possess. Take their best parts, their best values, and make them your own. You’ll need to build yourself a character (i.e the person you are becoming) that can carry your purpose to completion. When it gets hard and you aren’t feeling up to it, you’ll need to tap into this future version of yourself.
Step 2 – Create the Principles
Your principles are your values in action. They are the Rules or Truths you live by to stay aligned to your values. If your value is “Honesty,” the principle is “Always tell the truth”. These are how we practice what we believe in.
Here is my list for example:
1. Read a friggin book
2. Lift, Run, and Explore
3. Seek Challenges
4. No complaining, no excuses, no gossip
5. Invest in your health
6. Develop a writing process
7. Surround yourself with good people
8. Do the things you suck at
9. Do the things you said you were going to do
10. Do the things that balance you
11. Question your own bullshit
12. Go first, be early, and act before you should
13. Put others first and leave people better than you found them
14. Remember your Why
15. Don’t take any of this too seriously
Once you’ve made your own list of principles to live by, the important thing here will be to keep them visible. Life is chaotic, and the chaos will make you forget what you are trying to achieve. To combat this, turn your principles into a poster and hang it on your wall. This is your code and these are the rules you live by. Don’t forget them.
In today’s world of distractions, pinpointing our true purpose can be hard. Death has a way of cutting through all this noise. However, we don’t need to wait for a crisis to happen before we can make meaningful changes. Decide what you are fighting for (goals, values, and principles) and then begin the journey.
If you are still struggling to find meaning, paradoxically, it may be because you haven’t struggled enough. Get out of your comfort zone, and prepare to do more.
3
Commit To Action
“Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one.” ― Marcus Aurelius
You are going to die.
What have you been putting off?
Big or small, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that you told yourself you were going to do this thing but by not doing it, you have weakened yourself. You have violated your own integrity. Maybe it’s a trip to see friends, maybe it’s a career venture, maybe it’s something simple but you’ve procrastinated on it for so long that it feels like a huge undertaking (like going to the gym). It sounds so cliché, but just do it. Purchase the flights, buy the gym pass, and commit to action. You told yourself that this thing would be better off being done in the future (when conditions were ideal), but if the COVID pandemic taught us anything, it is that the future is not guaranteed. Just do it, it’s not that big of a deal.
If a doctor were to tell you that you or a loved one only had a certain amount of time to live, you’d probably be acting differently than you are now. Try to harness that. What would you stop procrastinating on? What bucket list item would you cross off? Who would you forgive and finally make amends with?
If you are stuck, here are some things to think about.
On Forgiveness
You’ve no doubt been hurt as well as hurt others. We all have. Like most people, you are probably still holding on to some of that negative energy and this may be preventing you from taking action where you need to. This goes against our nature, but try to forgive those that have done you harm. Holding grudges doesn’t hurt anyone but the grudge holder. Stop letting people live in your head rent-free taking up vital resources and instead, let the karmic justice of the universe sort it out (everything comes back around anyways). If you are the “bad guy” in this situation, reach out and try to make it right. Feeling bad because of how you treated someone will eat at you if you are normal human being. Make amends. If they still tell you to get lost— well hey, at least you tried. It’s either you do it now or wait until one of you are on your death bed.
Inversely, learn how to forgive yourself for your past mistakes. You’ve no doubt had some real doozies in your life, but this is all part of the process. To paraphrase a Chuck Palahniuk quote, we are all rocks in a tumbler getting polished up nice and bright by the pain of life. Use these important lessons to better your life.
On Making Better Decisions
The goal isn’t to be mistake-free, but rather to not make the same mistake over and over again. So how do we do this without over-thinking it?
- Practice making faster decisions. Speed is the name of the game. If I can make three good decisions in the same time it takes you to make one, I win. It won’t matter if your decisions are better than mine as long as mine are “good enough”. Luckily, most decisions have room for error built in so that you can go back after the fact and rectify them if need be. So relax and strike fast. Having values and principles to fall back on will also make this easier.
- Lower your expectations. If you are thinking that taking a certain career opportunity or trip is going to be “life changing”, then you are probably setting yourself up for disappointment. With any large decision there is going to be lots of uncertainty and no matter how much planning you do, you are sure to “get punched in the mouth” as Mike Tyson eloquently put it. Because of your expectation, though, you are likely going to emphasize making a perfect decision, which can cause to you to over-research, delay action, and maybe defer it altogether. Just do it, it’s not that big of deal.
- Take ownership of the results. It comforts our ego when we can blame our mistakes on others, but more often than not this prevents us from actually correcting them. Even when we defer our decisions to others, we need to take ownership of those results. If you keep getting burned by people, that’s on you. Pick up Robert Greene’s The Laws of Human Nature and learn how to prevent that. If you don’t like the direction that your department is going, read Dale Carnegie’s How To Win Friends and Influence People to find out how to get your co-workers and higher-ups on your side. If you keep getting passed over in interviews or promotions, realize that it’s probably because of something you are doing (not them) and thus, the onus is on you to correct it. You have the power.
On Acting As If
Maybe you just don’t feel prepared enough to move forward or maybe you’re ready, you just need someone to give you a chance. In both circumstances, you need to act as if. As in, act as if you’ve already been offered the role of Batman. You have one year to prepare, how would you do it? You’ve landed that book deal, what do you need to research before your writing begins? You’ve been promoted to Manager, what are the first things you enact as the boss? Don’t wait until the opportunity arrives, make it happen. It’s yours for the taking. If you are not ready, then this is how you prepare yourself and if you are ready, then this is how you prove it. Don’t wait any longer.
Along with all this, you’ll probably need to stop talking your way out of things and learn how to talk your way into them. Pinpoint your fears and tell them to fuck off. Or conversely, give them a hug. By committing to a life of action, you’ll need to try a bunch of different strategies and techniques for going to war with yourself. And realize, you may not succeed at this one thing you are going so hard at but that’s just part of the grand plan. That failure then becomes a building block for the next thing.
In summary, we’ll need to take a lot of chances if we want a real shot at living. To be able to do that, however, we’ll need to overcome our biggest obstacle yet.
4
Kill The Ego
“In the end though, everybody dies, but not everybody lives—the climber, though he may die young, will have lived.” ― Mark Lawrence
You are going to die.
What is holding you back?
Your thoughts, beliefs, and attitude, if I had to guess. It always starts with mindset. If you can get your thinking on the right track, you can stop wasting so much time battling yourself and instead use this energy to do the things you told yourself you would do by now. To get to this stage, however, we must first go through the ego. This ego, this thing in our heads that tells us “I am this” and “I am not that” ― that makes us more or less important than we actually are ― is the key to improving our mindset. To be able to say yes to life, we must learn how to switch this off from time to time and be fluid to the circumstances. This is where the magic happens.
You may think you know yourself quite well and that your ego is fine, but you cannot be trusted. You’re too “You”, too close to the source. The reality is that most of what makes you yourself – your likes, beliefs, and behaviors – has just sort of been given to you and likely hasn’t been field tested yet. Because of this, we are terrible predictors of many things: how we would act in certain situations, what actually makes us happy, and how different life could have ended up.
As a thought experiment, just imagine for a moment how different you would be if you were raised in another part of the world or with a different set of parents. How much more confident would you be if you were assigned a math tutor or martial arts instructor in grade school? Consider how much your political views would have shifted if you chose being a boilermaker over a public school teacher as a career, or how your life would be radically altered if you removed some of your most critical moments. Surely, this would have all impacted your sense of self. You’d be different, life would be different. We must remain open to this.
We can’t know everything, especially about ourselves, and that’s okay. We don’t have to. What’s important is remaining open to experience so we can continue to learn and grow as a person. We all have hidden talents, interests, and potential waiting to be uncovered. The problem lies when we take the limited amount of stuff we think we do know (our identity, beliefs, fears) and take them too serious, to the point where it prevents us from discovering these new possibilities. This is the part we need to kill.
To paraphrase Alan Watts, you must practice not being yourself from time to time. We have conditioned ourselves to see things in a certain way, but to see things how they truly are, we’ll need to deflate our ego. It’s time to become a beginner again.
Here’s how.
Do Things You Suck At
First off, try new things. Outside of some rare talent you might discover, you’ll likely be terrible at anything you try. That’s okay, and also the purpose. As one of my co-workers likes to say, “it builds character”. We need to learn how to suck at things gracefully. Some people don’t know how to lose and it shows as they forbid themselves for trying anything where they look like beginner. Shed your perfectionism and this idea that you should only do things that you are naturally inclined for, and instead, practice working on your weaknesses and limitations.
Act before you are ready here and get used to peeing your pants in public (no one is really watching anyways). Give yourself a real shot. Boxing or dancing could be your thing, but you’ll need to get past all the beginning bullshit first (the nerves, the frustration, the boredom) to even get a whiff of what it’s really about. This is true for almost everything. You’ll need to persevere long enough to find out if “this thing” truly is your thing. The results may be delayed, but eventually they’ll pay off.
Secondly, go back into your past and work on all the stuff you told yourself that you are terrible at (like public speaking, math, or mechanics). Are you really bad at it or was it just a matter of circumstance? Honestly, it doesn’t matter. Go do that thing and become proficient at it. Get coaching if you need to, take some classes, and work on it every day. Don’t let it hold you down anymore. The goal isn’t mastery; it’s simply to become “decent”. If you can make it decent, you can take away the power it holds over you. Then you can start using it to empower you.
Do Things That Scare You
Your fears will set you free.
If you are afraid of going broke, go live on the streets for two days to experience homelessness. If you are afraid of public speaking because you don’t want to mess up, well, maybe you should plan on messing up. Get it out of the way! Free yourself by planning your screw-ups in life. Whatever your fear is, practice running towards it. Running away and creating distance will only cause your fears and anxieties to grow. Victor Frankl refers to this as Paradoxical Intention. If your anxiety is growing, it’s because the distance is getting too wide. Close the gap. Turn off the TV, get off your phone, and go handle some snakes and spiders. Or visit that place that you told yourself was dangerous because that BuzzFeed article said it had really high crime rates. Things are rarely that scary when we see them up close and personal, and getting punched in the face doesn’t hurt nearly as much as we think it will. Rip the band-aid off and get it over with.
Related, be aware of anything that makes you feel uneasy. It may not be a full-grown fear yet, but this uneasiness (which may be insecurity in disguise) may be large enough to prevent us from growing where we need to grow. We can call this “resistance”. You don’t need to do physically risky things to put yourself on Death Ground, but if you experience resistance when I mention traditionally masculine activities like martial arts, hunting, or working on your vehicle, then maybe that’s a sign. The same goes for feminine pursuits like acting, dancing, reading poetry, and creating art. Did you experience any resistance there? I did. Time to work on it.
Do Things That Don’t Interest You
Do you really have ADHD or have you simply trained yourself to respond to only what excites you? And do you need medication for it or do you simply need more meditation? Regardless of the answer, part of the solution will lie in learning how to embrace the boredom. I always laugh when someone says they don’t like reading. Of course you don’t, it’s hard. It’s like doing squats for your brain, but instead of physical pain it’s the pain of boredom. If you can persist, however, this pain will train your brain. Little by little. Eventually you’ll like it, or at least the rewards of it, because boring work almost always leads to sexy results.
Sometimes it’s not the actual boredom that stops us from doing stuff, but rather the assumption that something will be boring. I have never been to a monster truck rally, but I have an assumption of what it will be like. You do too. With this assumption, we decide where our “self” fits in with it all. You may tell yourself you are not a “monster truck person” because of a combination of factors, but you are just guessing. We must challenge these assumptions. Even if it does turn out to be boring like you assumed, remember, we can use this boredom as a tool for growth. Some of my best thoughts have come at a racetrack as a bored teenager. Not everything has to be super exciting nor does everything need to make sense or fit into a neat box labeled “Who I am”. Learn to go with the flow.
In the wisdom of Fight Club, you are not your bank account or car that you drive. Realize that we all have created various identities and belief systems that have elements of bullshit to them. Learn to question yourself like you do others. We are so quick to judge other people and rip apart their arguments but then we give ourselves a free pass. You’ll need to put yourself through the grinder so you can weed out all your dogma as well. Why do I think the way I do? Could I be wrong? And how can I test this? Get out, explore, and experience more. Go get your nails done, then go to a monster truck rally. Go shoot guns, then go to a musical. The truth will not be found behind a screen nor will it be found doing the same stuff you’ve always done.
Once you have killed the ego, there is only one thing left to do.
5
Live for Today
“Do not ruin today with mourning tomorrow.” ― Catherynne M. Valente
You are going to die.
So why are you looking so far ahead?
Recently, I was listening to a Navy SEAL discuss the type of candidates who survive Hell Week (which is a 108 hour phase of their training designed to mentally break people). The main difference in those that made it through, he said, was less in physical ability and more in how they managed the time in their heads. The candidates that were more “big picture” became overwhelmed by the immensity of it all and were the first to drop out. Conversely, those who didn’t think about the totality of the event and were able to break their days up into manageable segments (such as just focusing on making it to lunch or running to a certain checkpoint), were the ones who were more likely to make it.
This makes sense. When you are getting beat down with burpees and pull-ups, letting your mind drift to the fact that you have 90 hours left on the clock is not an effective strategy. To endure pain, we must stay present and focus only on what lays directly in front of us. This is what we must also do if you want to take back our time management and accomplish the things that suck, that we are afraid of, and that bore us.
Life is just too much to look at it as a whole. When we do this, we either feel like we have all the time in the world to figure it out or, in contrast, we may become overwhelmed at the thought of all the things we need to do. Even if you do manage to live to retirement age, your brain will sabotage you along the way (see Parkinson’s Law and all the other cognitive biases). We’ll screw around way too much on stuff that doesn’t matter because we will have told ourselves that we have time. So one, we need to add in constraints and deadlines. That is the essence of the Death Ground Strategy. Additionally, we’ll need to aim much higher than we currently are (because if something can go wrong, it probably will). Lastly, expectations must be tempered. All you can control is your effort and attitude not what the universe places at your front door.
Aside from this, here are a couple suggestions on how to win the day.
Figure It Out
If you had one year to live, what would you say yes to and stop putting off? What skills would you learn, where would you travel, who would you connect with, and what moments would you create?
A pet peeve of mine is when people say “someday” they should do this thing or that “someday” we should get together. No, you won’t – unless you figure it out. It’s either important or it’s not. If it’s important, write it all down, then figure out when this someday is going to take place. Figure out the year, the months, and the days.
If you consistently wake up in the morning and you haven’t given thought beforehand what your purposeful tasks of the day are, that will soon be a problem. Turn off the distractions and figure it out.
Do The Hard Things First
Whatever you have been putting off likely needs to go in the first half of your day. If it’s not a habit yet, it needs to go here. You can do habits when you are dead tired, but non-habits will require ample amounts of willpower. Don’t waste this part of your day sharpening a sword that is already sharp or hammering out the minutiae of life that doesn’t really matter.
If you need to wake up two or three hours before work to get it in, do it. Then string together as many mornings like this as you can. Once you hit 20 or so days, the habit will take over from there.
We all have time for this, we just need to slay our masters first.
Get Off Your Phone
Phones are preventing us from doing the deep work that our soul requires. Do what you need to do here. Remove the apps, delete your browsers, put it in one of those cages with a lock, or blow it up with an 8 gauge.
Your phone and the bullshit associated with it – a social media algorithm created to confirm our beliefs and fuel our ego, a never-ending news cycle designed to get us emotional and upset, and easily acquired dopamine hits that are turning us into crackheads – is taking us out of the present moment.
We have important work to do, and arguing on Facebook isn’t it. Get off your phone and earn your dopamine by doing the stuff that actually matters to you. Stop getting caught up in petty stuff and gossip, wasting so much energy on the words of Politicians, Celebrities, and the various enemies you have created in your head. Instead, reinvest this energy back into your life. Why care what others say or do? Because you think you have time. You don’t. Fix the things you can fix then move on.
We were not designed to win this battle. Invariably, I’ll receive a rebuttal from someone saying that they “barely” use their phone or barely play video games, and that they manage to do it all with no ill effects. And I say if they have the restraint to only do a little crack, then more power to them. Not me. I abuse the hell out of everything.
If you are like me (and you know you are if you feel resistance with the idea of giving up any of your devices), then throw the phone in the washing machine and get on with it. This is what it means to place yourself on Death Ground. I’ve tried to make this strategy as accessible as possible, but I cannot take away the difficulty of it. If you want to fight harder, you’ll need to do the things that others won’t. This is the way.
Closing Thoughts
“Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now take what’s left and live it properly.” ― Marcus Aurelius
To place yourself on Death Ground, you must believe you are going to die. The more you can come to terms with this, the more power you can generate to be able to face all the obstacles that lie ahead.
You don’t need to empty your bank account for some crazy scheme or burn all your bridges to place yourself on Death Ground, but you will need to mentally go back to this place of thought every day to reflect and meditate on your own mortality. This is the source of our strength. This is how we fight harder.
Once we are in this place, we can get to work on our purpose and accomplishing all those things we told ourselves we would do by now. It took a few funerals to get me to this place, but hopefully that won’t be true for you. Act as if you and those closest to you have already died and now you have a second shot at life.
What will you do?
About the Author
In 2021, I lost a good friend in a tragic accident. Then another. And then another.
Up until this point in my life, I had only attended funerals for much older relatives. I didn’t realize dying at my age was even in the cards, but now I had three much younger friends suggesting otherwise. This hit me hard.
I originally wrote On Death Ground as a personal guide for myself to navigate this confusing time. If I’m going to die (and maybe even much sooner than I am expecting), I might as well do the cool and meaningful stuff now rather than keep putting it off. So I did. I went on a journey of self discovery, both literally and metaphorically. I tackled the stuff holding me back (fears, procrastination, and bad habits) and I put my foot on the accelerator of life. It worked.
Now, I’m not perfect by any means. I still struggle and wuss out at times, but having this framework to fall back on makes it much easier to get back on the wagon after I get knocked off. This is why I created this website and continue to share it with others (i.e, if it helps me it will probably help someone else as well).
Of course I am biased but I think this is the best self-help advice on the internet. I’ve read hundreds of books on mindset, and nothing cuts straighter and deeper to the truth than death. It’s uncomfortable, yes, and maybe it’s not as soft as the more fufu stuff, but I guarantee this will get you thinking differently. Give it a shot.
If you found this useful, consider checking out my other writing:
Levi Clampitt
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Death Ground Strategy and Beyond
Knowledge is power so here’s a vetted book list to help you take this concept further. Now obviously, reading should happen concurrently with activity. It is not a replacement for action nor is it a prerequisite. If you treat books as a preparation tool, you will never stop preparing. So my advice is to read while doing that hard stuff you are supposed to do.
Origins of the Death Ground Strategy
- The 33 Strategies of War by Robert Greene
- The Art of War by Sun Tzu
Robert Greene is easily my favorite author and any one of his books (The 48 Laws of Power, Mastery, The Art of Seduction) would be a great investment towards helping you understand yourself and others. You can preview his chapter on Death Ground Strategy here (as text) or here (as video). This video is also a fantastic breakdown of the Death Ground Strategy using popular films.
The Top 27 Death Ground Books
- The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday
- Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday
- Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink
- The Laws of Human Nature by Robert Greene
- Man’s Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl
- The Night Trilogy by Elie Wiesel
- The Choice by Edith Eger
- Leadership: In Turbulent Times by Doris Kearns Goodwin
- Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing
- Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
- The Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter
- Can’t Hurt Me by David Goggins
- Do Hard Things by Steve Magness
- Atomic Habits by James Clear
- Deep Work by Cal Newport
- Hidden Potential by Adam Grant
- The Alter Ego Effect by Todd Herman
- Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert B Cialdini
- How To Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
- Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway by Susan Jeffers
- Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman
- Same As Ever by Morgan Housel
- War of Art by Steven Pressfield
- Road to Character by David Brooks
- Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
- On Fear by Jiddu Krishnamurti
- Awareness by Anthony de Mello
These books aren’t directly about the Death Ground Strategy, but they will help you take it to the next level by way of thinking about your own mortality, learning how to influence yourself, and reminding you that doing hard things is necessary for your soul.
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