🌱 My “Tolerable Cringe" (and how to use yours)

Top regret. Disappointing others. Tolerable cringe.

Author

Mitchell Cohen
March 24, 2024

I’ve had this concept of “tolerable cringe” in my head for months. 

Finally wrote it all out this weekend. 

Here’s your 3-minute rundown. 

❌ Top 5 Regrets

Here are the top 5 regrets of the dying.

Notice a theme? 

All 5 require forms of courage. 

Courage to do the things WE really want. 

Not the things we think others want. (big diff)

đź’™ Disappointing 

When I first read this quote from Untamed it hurt my brain. 

I actually had to reread it a few times. (uhh I don’t want to disappoint anyone!)

But then it hit me like a ton of bricks.  

“Every time you're given a choice between disappointing someone else and disappointing yourself, your duty is to disappoint that someone else. Your job throughout your entire life, is to disappoint as many people as it takes to avoid disappointing yourself.”

Who are you disappointing?  

đź’Ş Tolerable Cringe

The #1 regret of the dying:

"I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me."

Tolerable cringe = courage to be ourselves

Most people don’t leave their comfort zone and therefore, don’t create their best work.

Because this work requires us to stretch into discomfort.

When starting anything new, this discomfort means we want to be really good… but instead we really suck.

Ira Glass calls this “the gap” between taste & talent.

  • Taste = what we want to make 

  • Talent = what we can make

Most people quit here. But a few persist through volume.

"The most important thing you can do is a lot of work. Only through a volume of work will you close that gap."

Ira Glass

But it’s more than just volume. We must put in reps with small improvements too. 

I think of it as "Tolerable Cringe."

For example, I'm currently making short-form videos and it’s this concept that keeps me publishing (and improving).

Each month my aim is to cringe a little at my earlier work.

But it’s a fine line. 

❌ Too much cringe → never publish
❌ Too little cringe → never improve
✅ Tolerable cringe → publish + improve

You can look at my Instagram or TikTok right now and see this in real time. (yes, please feel free to roast me lol)

But it’s my cringe tolerance that keeps me posting (with/ small improvements) rather than getting stuck in perfection mode.

And already, a few have popped w/ 185k+ views.

But more than any viral metric it's an identity shift.

From external (want to look smart) to internal (want to be an experimenter).

Is it easy to sometimes feel like a bozo? Nope.

Does everyone go through it? Yup.

I have to remind myself that ALL great work starts here.

For example, here's Tim Ferriss's first blog post in 2006.

And before "The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck" by Mark Manson was a best seller...

It started out as this blog post.

Many entrepreneurs & startup types understand this.

As Reid Hoffman famously said, "If you're not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you've launched too late."

So where do we start? 

The obvious starting place is just through sheer volume. No excuses just get going.

But the less obvious one is using a “most proud list.” I keep this list of things I'm most proud of creating to keep me excited and on track.

Important note: it has NOTHING to do with external views or likes.

The only rule = I am intrinsically proud of creating it.

This keeps me publishing and true to myself.

If you're unsure how much to lean into your own “tolerable cringe”, just remember this quote: 

“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.”

Check out my full post here.

Keep creating. đź’Ş

Salud,
Mitchell