Peter Jumrukovski and Living Like a Warrior to Create the Life You Want

Peter Jumrukovski and Living Like a Warrior to Create the Life You Want

What is a warrior? Maybe the first thing that comes to mind is a 300-style Spartan, or a modern-day gladiator inside the Octagon fighting mixed martial arts, or perhaps, most straight forward is an image of our military personnel deep in the trenches. A modern-day warrior can be any of these things and more. Maybe it’s a doctor saving lives or just someone with the determination to get the job done.

To be a warrior doesn’t necessitate any fighting skills or an aptitude for violence. The characteristic all of these have in common is a deep resolve to take action. When the goal is clear, developing the strategy to accomplish it can seem easy, but it’s the ability to take action that makes a difference. As Inazo Nitobe, author of The Way of the Warrior, writes, “A Samurai [is] essentially a man of action”.

Even before the Bushido spirit of the Japanese armies, and indeed, way before the landscape of our current society, a warrior spirit was just the way to survive. The only way. There are tribes still existing today that represent a way of life more similar to our early evolution as Homo Sapiens than the high-tech world we have become.

These tribes have clear goals and methods to achieve them, and their survival depends on it. They know they can’t be lazy when the moon is crescent because once it becomes full and bright, it is too light to hunt without scaring animals. And hunting is a vital aspect of their survival. There is no room for error when your life depends on it.

What a stark contrast to a society that has developed to be — well, soft. Our survival no longer depends on clear goals, strategy, and focus. No, those are characteristics reserved for overachievers. We can get by in a Wall-E-like reality where almost anything can be achieved while sedentary from a screen. Mackenzie Institute estimates a quarter of all US jobs will be automated by 2030. And those are just the jobs that are most likely to be automated first, not necessarily all the jobs that robots could potentially take command of. To prevent the decay of innovation, progress and retain our humanity, we must live like warriors valiantly pursuing it.

Maybe, now it’s called overachieving or having a competitive edge. Whatever you want to call it used to be a prerequisite for survival and is now disregarded as “hard work.” This action-oriented philosophy is embedded into the mindset of anyone who successfully achieves their goals. The saying goes, if nothing changes, nothing changes.

It’s the same umph that fueled Peter Jumrukovsko to move to the US after medalling at the World Championships in Karate, returning to Sweden to find out he has lost his job and needed to make changes. The same focus he needed to write a book about goal setting in just 40 days, start a podcast and release over 250 episodes on time, and now launch a mentorship program to help 10,000 people in 10 years.

But this achievement-focused drive must be balanced with self-compassion, empathy, and a genuine desire to give to be sustainable and avoid burnout. This speaks to one of the five laws of stratospheric success that Bob Burg identifies in his book, The Go-Giver, “Your influence is determined by how abundantly you place other people’s interests first.”