I don’t know you, but I know you.
The things I talk about are so universal that they almost always apply to you. This entire time, I’ve been focused on getting to the core of what you want, which is what I want, which is what we all want.
We’re basically all the same.
How do I know we’re the same?
I see clues. I have followers of every color, gender, political affiliation, sexual orientation, and religion. Old, young, millennial, Gen X, boomer.
How is this? Again, I focus on cutting through the noise that divides us so we can focus on the things that matter. As long as we’re all distracted and fighting with each other, the overlords on all sides of the aisle can keep laughing all the way to the bank. If we all focused on what mattered most, this whole house of cards would fall apart.
It won’t, so the next best thing you can do is focus on yourself. Remember what’s important. Remember the things you really want from life. Focus on them, and let everyone else fight it out.
The Ultimate Overarching Goal We All Share
“Those who have a ‘why’ to live, can bear with almost any ‘how’.” – Viktor Frankl
You want to feel like your life means something. You want to feel like you matter. Everyone wants to feel like they have a purpose in life. The good news? Purpose doesn’t require money or status, it just requires you to stop lying to yourself and start working on things that matter to you.
Why do so many people end up living aimlessly — not by my standards, but their own? Propaganda plays a big role. You’re incentivized not to have a purpose in life because if we all lived purposeful lives the societal machine would collapse. Your overlords know this and this is why they’re constantly playing you.
While there may not be a secret cabal directly pulling the strings, the collective emergent property of the society aims to keep you distracted, feeling helpless, and unaware of how capable you actually are.
Here are the cliff notes of the propaganda machine:
- Learned helplessness – Notice how almost none of the messages coming from the media are uplifting or empowering. When was the last time you heard someone on the news talk about personal responsibility? Never. Sadly, I observe people who are wholly brainwashed. They genuinely believe upward mobility doesn’t exist because the T.V. told them so.
- Consumer culture – I talk about building wealth a lot — creating income streams, saving money, reinvesting said money, and owning assets. Sometimes I get called ‘greedy’ for this. But no one bats an eye when you buy a brand new car, a home you can barely afford, an iPhone, or name brand clothes. Notice how you’re punished for using the money for sovereignty and rewarded for building a personal prison with your spending.
- Tall poppy syndrome – You’re trained from a young age not to stand out. People sacrifice their dreams, mostly, sadly, for the need to fit in. That’s it. That’s what you’re most afraid of — people not liking you, a little judgment, embarrassment. If you’ve been brainwashed into sacrificing your purpose for the sake of looking good in front of others, you have to do the hard and time-consuming work of re-wiring your brain in the opposite direction.
The moral of the story – quit spending so much time focusing on BS, noise, and propaganda. If you want meaning, work toward it by doing something you care about. Not me, not society, not your friends and family, you.
Just don’t get so caught up in the shuffle that you forget to live your own damn life.
The Root of All Freedom
“You get up two and a half million dollars, any asshole in the world knows what to do: you get a house with a 25 year roof, an indestructible Jap-economy shitbox, you put the rest into the system at three to five percent to pay your taxes and that’s your base, get me? That’s your fortress of fucking solitude. That puts you, for the rest of your life, at a level of fuck you. Somebody wants you to do something, fuck you. Boss pisses you off, fuck you! Own your house. Have a couple bucks in the bank.” – John Goodman in the Gambler
Let’s piggyback on the point I made about money earlier. Do we all want to be rich? No. But we all want to escape survival mode.
What is survival mode? Survival mode is living paycheck to paycheck. It’s being in a never-ending cycle of debt. It’s having to do something you hate to pay the bills because you don’t have any other options.
You want freedom. Not freedom to never work again necessarily, but freedom to do what you want to do. How can you achieve freedom without resources? You can’t.
The propaganda around money is insane. Note that the full quote is actually “The love of money is the root of all evil.” Not “money is the root of all evil.” Money is a means to an end, nothing more. You decide the context money has in your life.
Who’s really the slave to money? The person who diligently creates wealth, thus not needing the money? Or someone who has to work for money?
Not only is it ethical to earn a lot of money, but earning money the right way can be a path to spiritual growth. Note that to rise up Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to reach self-actualization, you must properly meet your own needs first.
If you provide something of value people want to pay for and you don’t cheat anyone, you deserve every single penny to infinity. Don’t let anyone tell you differently. The creation of wealth through products and services makes your life better. Don’t kid yourself.
Don’t be the person who goes on Twitter or Facebook (owned by billionaires) to share your hatred of capitalism (web browser created by a billionaire) from an iPhone (owned by a billionaire) while you wait for your Amazon package (owned by the billionaire).
Yes, there are many problems with certain oligarchical mega-companies, but let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Don’t sacrifice your sovereignty because you were tricked into thinking like a poor person. You owe it to yourself to escape survival mode. Do it.
Take a look at these articles on how to build a vehicle for your freedom:
- Fuck You Money: How to Live Life on Your Terms
- The Simple Secret to Making Money Online (No Talent Required)
- How to Start a Profitable Side Hustle
The Lynchpin of Human Life
“True love is free of fear and characterized by non–attachment.” – Dr. David Hawkins
Who doesn’t want love? Who doesn’t want to have amazing relationships?
When it comes to maybe the most important factor in living a good life, many people fail to realize how other aspects of your life affect your relationships. How your inability to cover other bases causes fear and neediness.
Take money for example. Being in dire straits financially causes stress and bleeds into your relationships. What’s one of the main causes of divorce?
When are you more likely to find an amazing partner and great friends — when you’re aimlessly wandering through life or when you’re purposeful?
How do you attract the right people into your life? Much easier to do when you’re so focused on being the best version of yourself that you don’t need everyone in your life, but welcome the right ones in.
Which scenario provides more likely to foster better relationships? Being self-actualized, sovereign, financially free, purposeful, and spiritually content? Or being in a cycle of constant survival mode, obsessed with divisive news, not focused on your path, living an unhealthy lifestyle, doing something you hate for a living?
All of these wants and needs overlap with one another, the core pillars — health, wealth, love, and happiness. If one suffers they all suffer.
In ignoring one aspect, you lower the quality of others and vice versa. Some people will say “I’m not focused on money, I’m focused on my relationships,” then lose said relationships over money issues. Or, because they choose the wrong people to be around in the first place, people who bring them down, they get sidetracked on the path to purpose and freedom.
Relationships are interesting in that they are at the cause and effect of every area of your life simultaneously.
What do you do about this? You do the best you can to keep the right people in and the wrong people out. On top of that, you focus mostly on yourself. Focus on living a great life and welcome people in as they come along. Get yourself together in all areas of life so that you’re best equipped to have great relationships.
The Trait We’re All Dying to Have
“Confidence is contagious. So is lack of confidence.” – Vince Lombardi
The core emotions behind the outrage culture in society are fear and a lack of confidence. The media plays on your fears and teaches you to lack confidence in yourself.
Why? If you have no confidence in yourself that means you need to be saved. People who need to be saved…look for saviors — every four years in November and every two in each state. It astonishes me that people don’t see the game being played here.
Imagine yourself right now being totally confident in your abilities with absolute certainty that you could do anything you put your mind to. Would you be obsessed with politics? Would you be angry at the world and outraged and society? You definitely wouldn’t be picking fights in Facebook comments sections.
You’d know that the world is unfair, but that you’re still able to achieve the outcomes you want anyway. You’d know that society isn’t perfect, and you’d participate in your causes, but mostly you’d focus on becoming the best version of yourself for you, your family, your community, your peers, and however large of a tribe you have outside of that.
If you had true confidence and motivation, you’d be too busy winning and helping others to focus on much else.
This is going to sound so super corny, but trust yourself. When you see that maxed out version of you in your mind, understand that becoming that person is a function of time and effort. I’ve personally experienced the slow and gradual reinvention of your entire personality, career, and outlook on life. It just takes time.
How do you do it? I have some longer treatises here, here, and here, but you know how to do it. You overcome your fears piece by piece by engaging in activities you enjoy, help you grow, and challenge you to push past your barriers. Do this long enough and you become confident. Not unafraid, but confident.
You don’t want to have the absence of fear. That’s boring. You want to earn the right to be less afraid by leveling up. And with each new level, you want to have a new fear to overcome. The goal? Keep doing this forever.
The Ultimate Goal
“A fit body, a calm mind, a house full of love. These things cannot be bought — they must be earned.” – Naval Ravikant
Lastly, you want to be at peace, happy, content.
Who has the answer to that? Certainly not me. Philosophers have debated this for…forever. While there’s not a perfect answer, you can find an answer that works well enough for you.
What’s the answer for me? I’m happiest when I’m doing what I’m doing right now — lost in the zone of creative joy, fully engaged. I’mn happy when I’m around people I love and I’m grateful to be able to avoid people I don’t want to be around. I’m happy when I accomplish goals, not because of the goals themselves, but because of the person I needed to become to achieve those goals.
Back to you.
Will you ever be perfectly happy, content, at peace?
Probably not. But you can have the next best thing.
You can at least play the game. Most people aren’t even in the arena — so distracted by noise, running the hamster wheel, falling for lies, complaining, blaming others, taking no responsibility, angry, directionless.
As far back as I can remember, I’ve always been fascinated by what it means to live a good life. That’s always been my drive. Growing up, I looked around at most people and thought, “this definitely can’t be it.” So I went looking for answers. I didn’t get the perfect answer, but I got a game I can play forever.
Let that curiosity and fascination drive you. Go try to get the answers to a good life even if you never actually get them.
Do anything but be passive and let your life just go by.