The Fastest Way To Ruin Your Life (Avoid This While You're Young)

the fastest way to ruin your life is to follow someone else's plan but here's the problem the Mind craves order without thinking about it we seek security safety and comfort when I was young dumb and learning to survive in the world my fate was in the hands of my parents and my teachers I was too young to trust my own thinking so by Nature I followed what they said the path that I was set on was the only one that I knew and that's where things start to go wrong we all know the path of

least risk is the greatest risk of all we all know that a life of comfort is the most uncomfortable thing in the world so we get stuck in this Loop seek Comfort become uncomfortable seek more Comfort become more uncomfortable and eventually you end up so deep in a hole that it's incredibly hard to dig yourself out if it's so comfortable why do you have to numb the pain with quick pleasure but here's the thing getting out is not as simple as setting a new goal or a New Year's resolution because most of the time with

New Year's resolutions it's just that time of year right it's Conformity you're doing it because everyone else is or because everyone is telling you to and because you're pursuing the new goal for that reason and not an intrinsic reason you don't have an iceberg of wise that create this intrinsic motivation to achieve the goal so it's easy to quit and stop doing it and we've all done this before the fancy new goal is motivating for a few hours and then you eventually forget about it or just get trapped in the same cloud of distractions that

you were trying to get out of so if you want to avoid living a robotic and predetermined life the solution is to equip your mind with the right tools to think for yourself that is the fastest way to change your life here's how you start the journey May and probably will be painful what you aim at determines what you see that is a quote from Jordan Peterson and it aligns quite well with everything I've talked about over the past year mainly how goals shape your perception which is what we'll get into but first we need

to talk about this you need a plan there isn't any other way because if you don't have one Society does and they've been planning your life for decades a plan is not a list of things that won't happen it is an evolving blueprint that structures your mind to notice ideas that lead to progress the problem is that people conform to the goals of their parents or society and stop there now you don't really have a choice when you're a child like when I was a kid trusting my parents and teachers but after that once you're

out on your own you don't have to pursue those goals in order to survive anymore we're going to talk about this in the next video but you kind of have to adopt your a lot of what your parents beliefs are so that you don't get cast out of the tribe so to say right it's a survival Instinct you have to adopt their values you have to become a Christian a Muslim a republican a Democrat a whatever it is and yeah you can Rebel you can reject it and some parents may be okay with that but

in a lot of cases you know that it's not wise to lose your parents' trust because your survival is in their hands I'm not saying that this happens to everyone I'm just saying that it is a massive influence on how you are raised is the need for approval and just in the general productivity or self-help world you know that having a goal is a good thing you've heard all the arguments about systems are greater than goals and you need clear specific goals or smart goals but the thing here is that most people don't understand what

a goal is a goal is an aim a goal isn't some static point in time where you achieve something a goal is simply a tool to identify a problem it's a point of view so unfortunately most people are trying to achieve goals for the sake of acceptance and status and survival rather than the happiness that stems from resistance being overcome or problems being solved now why is this a problem because the goals that compose your mind identity and perspective often in that order like a set of concentric circles filter what you perceive a person with

the goal of going to school to get a job will not notice an opportunity to start a business and pursue their life's work a person with the goal of starting a business won't notice ideas that will help them get good grades that's because the person going the entrepreneurial route doesn't need good grades for Success it's a completely different set of goals that compose how you view the world in both cases those two people the person in the business and the person at school can read the same exact book and they're going to read it completely

differently because they're reading it from a different mind they're going to skip over some paragraphs they're going to skip over certain sentences certain lessons certain insights the person going to school is going to pull out the information unconsciously that will help them continue going to school it's going to reinforce the system that is helping you lead to your goals the same is true with the person that has the identity of building a business it shapes everything that you perceive so if you wanted to try and reverse engineer what the goals in your head are because

they are a set of conscious and unconscious goals often the ones that were programmed into you when you were a child you can notice them simply by understanding what sticks out to you or what sparks dopamine what signals dopamine in your brain because dopamine signals what's important for your survival in the future so when you feel that hint of excitement or like you found a novel Insight in a book or on social media or what may whatever it may be that is an arrow pointing to the goal that your mind is operating on to notice

that specific piece of information now this will all start to come together soon but the point here is is that we don't want Conformity we want creativity things like goals can either trap us or help us we know we don't want Conformity but that's just the default state that we find ourselves in we want that creativity we want to be different we want to be unique we want to create our own lives not live someone else's we want new discoveries not the same results of past Generations because if you look around most people don't have

anything remotely close to the Future you want so in order to understand how to start changing your life you need to understand that you need a plan and you need to understand that a plan isn't just this like list of steps it's a surface area for luck a surface area for discovery of frame let's get one thing straight there is an order of operations to achieve anything you want in life within the boundaries of what reality allows think of this simple equation it's 4 + 6 * open parentheses 5 + 3 - 2 closed parentheses

the answer to that equation is the goal you're trying to achieve the equation itself is the problem you're trying to solve in order to solve that problem problem and achieve the goal you need to add subtract and multiply in a specific order if executed in the wrong order you won't get the right answer so you can think of complex equations that you did in like uh math class advanced math class in high school or whatever the highest form of math was that you took you can think of simple equations like 1 + 1 equal 2

to us that's like tying our shoes or making food at this point but for achieving goals in the unknown for achieving different more complex things in life it is a much longer much more complex equation and you need to understand how to solve that equation or in order to reach the goal or get to the question but when you're pursuing more difficult goals like making a lot of money or having a thriving relationship or learning how to be more social when you're pursuing these big life goals that you're trying to achieve in order to create

a better life for yourself the the equations aren't that simple they're very complex if you think of uh a math class that you did in high school or in college the equations get very complex there but this is life you don't have the equation you don't even know the answer all you have is a guess for what you want the answer to be and the ability to create an equation or knowledge through experimentation and error correction that equation is valuable to both yourself and others it is specific knowledge that can take many forms sometimes the

equation is a product or service of book or advice you give your children to contribute to the progress of humanity if happiness comes from overcoming resistance and a connection to something greater than yourself creativity is the vessel for both this is personally why I write and do this over some other kind of business model or something like that where I could make a lot more money that's why I'm building something like cortex a note taking app everyone wants to build a note-taking app or to-do app or something of that nature and it usually fails but

I I feel feel like we can pull it off and we are pulling it off right now and it's going pretty well but that's why I chose to do something like cortex over some other Niche vertical SAS or agent model that would make so much more and can grow 10 times faster it's because I enjoy the creative challenge of this so that's where we start a goal or a problem one does not exist without the other but most people don't know what goal they want to pursue or their mind is programmed with assigned goals which

makes it incredibly difficult to notice a problem partying sleeping in and all other bad habits aren't problems unless they prevent you from achieving a goal since the goals of the known path are to go to school get a job and retire at 65 those don't require much effort or creativity so you can afford to be a degenerate when you have your own goals when you have your own plan when you have your own vision for the future that is incredibly strong and acts as a frame for how you view life and view situations you notice

problems in people's everyday lifestyle when you're going to school getting a job whatever that's that's kind of already decided for you you know the steps you know what you need to do you need to get good grades and you need to make your boss proud but those things the 8 hour work dayss and going to school you can show up to those things hung over you can show up to those things and put in minimal effort it doesn't require much from you so you allow yourself to do that because the goals aren't that strong they

aren't that demanding of creativity but when you do your own thing yeah it's going to be extremely painful to go out and get drunk and become and get hung over unless you know how to balance that lifestyle you're going to wake up and then your entire day's worth your entire morning's worth of work is going to suffer and then you're going to lose progress and you aren't going to hit the weekly goal of say getting a newsletter out or getting content out or getting the product out or making a meeting and actually being productive in

that meeting you have to show up for your vision you don't have to to show up for the life you were assigned so where do we start with all of this it's like I want to change my life I I have some kind of idea of what I want in the future actually maybe not let's assume that you don't know anything you don't know what you don't want or what you want so where we start is just being completely honest with yourself I thought this through so much over the this this video was surprisingly difficult

for me to make and think through because I was getting trapped like okay how do you how do you know what problem to solve if you don't know what goal you're trying to achieve how do you just think of a goal that's actually impactful right how do you find these things a lot of people can set goals and uncover problems but most people that's where they struggle is like I don't have a goal that I want to achieve I don't have a problem that I want to solve then where do you start that was my

entire question I was trying to think through like extremely hard is like just where do you go if you are lost in the middle of nowhere so this is what I came up with with it it it may not help many people but I feel like it'll help a lot of people the the place you start is just being honest with yourself extremely honest with where you are right now I want you to ask yourself this question are you content with life the thing about that is that it's a trick question because nobody is show

me someone who is happy at every second of the day and I'll show you a liar life comes in waves Cycles highs and lows it's baked into reality if there were no lows there would be no creativity and thus no Life as we know it today humans make sense of the world in stories we think of the story that we're partaking in we love watching movies we love reading books we love a good story because we can relate to it because it's it's the the structure of reality in a sense nature it goes through birth

and death Cycles you go into a forest it's not all beautiful Lush Greenery there's dead things everywhere you rub your arm and you're technically killing thousands of cells I don't know if that's the exact number thousands but you're killing cells there's birth there's death there's highs there's lows happiness this eternal high that you're trying to chase doesn't exist so you are not content with every aspect of your life in lies the problem and not just any problem the starting point of the infinite string of problems that you're going to solve in order to reach your

vision you can look at your life right now realize where you aren't content with a specific thing and you can start with that problem start there but now things start to get scary the unknown creeps nearer your knee deep in the water and want to Sprint back to shore the thought of that problem starts to multiply because your mind has lost all constraints and boundaries this specifically is known as psychic entropy or disorder in the mind you finally identify the problem that you're not content with a certain aspect of your life but then that thought

starts to Splinter you look in the mirror and you're like hm I'm a bit overweight and I don't really like that and then you start thinking about how you don't want to take off your shirt when you're out at the pool or what your friends will think or what your girlfriend or wife or husband or boyfriend will think about your weight and how that will impact your relationship and then you start to think of all the difficult things that you have to do in order to cut down weight and all the foods that you don't

want to give up in order to to exchange them for the healthy foods that will help you lose weight you think of all this exercise that you have to do and you think about well what happens if I stay this way if I continue gaining weight then the heart disease the chronic disease all of these other things start to flood your mind and if you don't have a structure to order your mind how to start you don't have the plan and then what we're going to talk about with breaking it down it's very difficult to

deal with that uncertainty and that's why most people shy away and quit so in between the problem which you have now and the goal which is the polar end the a problem implies a goal when you realize a problem you now have a goal make it conscious in between those two things is the opportunity for a plan a strategy a hierarchy of goals that allows you to get into this Flow State and make cumulative progress that helps keep the chaos at Bay as you Trek into the unknown or into your own different and unique life

so the question finally is how do you create a plan how do you stop the walls from closing in this is going to be a painful process navigating into the unknown Breaking Free of everything that you thought you knew because you aren't just creating a new life you're creating a new identity you're expanding your mind to house more complexity that allows you to solve more valuable problems and if problems are half the source of Happiness right happiness let's say enjoyment enjoyment is the feeling of resistance being overcome in a connection greater than something yourself a

connection to something greater than yourself so by solving problems that's where enjoyment lies because you're overcoming resistance you're entering the Flow State and by solving problems you are you have knowledge that you can pass down in the form of a product service I'm not saying an info product or service I'm saying that any product or service this water bottle is a deposit of knowledge by passing that thing on and contributing to the cumulative progress of humanity you find purpose and that's what solves the other end of the happiness or enjoyment equation now it's not as

simple as setting a goal or creating a New Year's resolution because you aren't the person who would achieve those goals you don't have the identity that would achieve those goals bodybuilders don't have a problem eating training and recovering their entire life revolves around their goals every decision is a vote toward their future writers don't have a problem generating ideas or publishing their work and on the complete other end Gamers don't have a problem staring at a screen for 8 hours at a time for better or worse of course if you're a professional gamer and that's

what you do for a living awesome you still don't have you don't have a problem doing that it's not hard being disciplined and that's the thing it's not that you aren't disciplined you have no problem eating partying going to bed late and eating brain fogging Totino's Pizza Rolls as a midday stack because it doesn't clash with the goals of your identity you're already disciplined in every single thing that you do but a bodybuilder on the other hand would be in deep chaos if they didn't have access to the food that was a requirement for their

Vision discipline is a feature of identity when you are trying to become a new person who you are is fighting who you want to become and that's painful you will go through a period of growing pains until your new identity solidifies so we need to take this process gradually the first thing we do is to create our own little world a frame a perspective a a little mental boundary to operate within this is what I've noticed in some of the most successful people that I know is that they live in their own little world they're

walking down the street they're not paying attention to other people they're in their own head they're in their own world they aren't living in other people's heads they aren't wondering what people think of them they're not wondering this that and other they're focused they've programmed their own video game it's addictive it's enjoyable it provides a logical sequence of steps that results an experience it helps them understand what's worth paying attention to and what's worth learning it is a frame for their mind that repels distractions and constrains entropy you start building your world by setting the

foundations of your new identity so we need to cover all bases we need to create a full circle that will act as a frame of reference we need a lens to view life from to notice New Opportunities make better decisions and sense when we are off track so that we can course correct in a better Direction now don't expect this all to happen at once because it took you decades to become the person you are today it's going to take some time to become a new person I wouldn't say a few decades but I'd say

it will take effort it will take pain it will take struggle in order to change who you are it will take I'd say at least 12 months to expand into this new mold that you are providing your mind write these down on a piece of paper first your antiv vision your picture for the life you despise second your vision your picture for your ideal Future Three is constraints what you aren't willing to to sacrifice to reach your vision four is a 10-year goal so where you want to be in 10 years and then five is

a one-year goal where you want to be in one year now if you want a worksheet for this there's a link in the description or you can join my newsletter and I send it as the welcome email you just click it you duplicate it you start filling it out we've talked about this many times before so I'm not going to go into the details of those things now with this this may sound like your typical self-help or productivity goal setting advice but it's really not because you have to remember that a goal is an aim

or desired outcome that's it goals can and should evolve to an exposed to better information a goal is not a static point in the future that must be achieved at all costs a goal is a tool for identifying a problem a problem requires a solution the solution must be arrived at creatively through making guesses and correcting errors goals are points of view that must be refined on a consistent basis so with this you are creating an outline for the story that you plan to write when you write a story when you're creating a new life

you don't just sit down and start writing you can if you have the ideas and that's great you should if you have the ideas to start writing that page then do it and you make progress faster but most people don't have the ideas top of mind they need the outline they need the structure to creatively navigate between those are what constraints are constraints breed creativity if you're if it's just absolute freedom and you have the freedom to to do whatever you want you're going to stare at a blank page you're not going to act you're

not going to start pursuing a goal but when you're writing and you have a topic and you have a goal for the writing and you have a story and you have these little quotes to include and you have this framework this boundary that's what breeds creativity another way to think about constraints or the sacrifices that you're not willing to make in order to reach your goals is like okay I want to build this business but I don't want to sacrifice family time the person who just wants to build the business is isn't going to have

to do it creatively like the other person will in order to not sacrifice family time they're going to have to pay a lot more attention to how they structure their days how they take meetings when they stop working all of these other things now the thing with this as well is that if you understand writing or how you write a story when you create the outline that kind of acts as a magnet for ideas or a frame from which you view life where whenever I write a newsletter or video script or a book whatever it

may be in cortex this is why we have cortex capture is because when I'm on a walk or when I'm having conversations or uh when I'm just thinking all of my ideas magnetize towards that thing that's how you notice ideas in reality is by having a project to apply those ideas too if you don't have the project or the goal so many ideas and opportunities are passing you by because your mind doesn't care about those things it's not signaling there's no dopamine signaling for the survival of that project now the thing with life is that

it's not just like a book it's not a book that comes to an end end in an infinite story that you continue writing until your demise so remember that is that the you don't just achieve a goal and stop because the story hasn't ended yet that's simply just a chapter in the story you have to write a new chapter these goals aren't final Peaks on the mountain because once you reach that mountain peak you see finally that there's another one but you can only see the other one once you reach the first one so how

do we start making progress toward these goals the the one-year goal 10year goal Vision anti- Vision Etc it's with projects so that's what we need to do is invest energy into a series of projects I say that specifically because you aren't interested in a project until you invest energy into it the other thing is that you don't learn skills you build projects skills like degrees are practically useless in isolation a series of projects is how you move toward the life you want if you want to receive you must give and keeping your knowledge in your

head is a Surefire way to become bitter about how smart you are and how little people care a project is a quest in your game the more you build the more experience you put into your traits profession character and abilities when you build a project you learn relevant techniques that allow you to solve a problem and achieve a specific result now we're not going to go over how to structure a project here with things like milestones and levers and tasks and deadlines because you understand what a project is it's something that you create it's something

that you build it's something that allows you to pursue an interest based education because you need to learn in order to build the project but the thing here is that your project must be a stepping stone toward your vision it must solve the problem that we initially came up with with how you aren't content with your life that's a project if it's your body then the project is going to the gym your project is your body so as a quick example if you struggle with money that's a problem from there you fabricate a project to

build in alignment with the example vision of having a successful business with the constraint of working 4 hours a day so you have the time for your family or relationships that drastically Narrows what kind of project you will build but the thing here is if you aren't in the right environment then you won't notice this as an option right you you struggle with money but you're not in the right environment you don't have the right beliefs uh the the opportunities aren't in that environment then you're not going to notice something like starting a oneperson business

as an opportunity you're going to have the belief of oh businesses require you to build a local business like brick and mortar or you need this much startup Capital to build the software or uh business is only for these people who have all of these skills and uh leadership experience when that's not the case at all if you were up to date with where the tech industry and business industry is you would understand that freelance work is a thing Creator work is a thing anyone can post on social media and get that post spread to

potential customers this is why talk about the one person business as a great starting point for other people is because it removes most of the limiting beliefs they have and gets them to just start learning skills building projects that they can evolve into something else so from there you create a project like starting a newsletter you don't get trapped in tutorial hell learning about newsletters you start you search for techniques like how to choose a topic and write a headline and then you continue stacking techniques like how to structure persuasive writing and before you know

know it you have newsletter writing as a skill but not in a way that can be taught in a linear progression in a similar context you are one step closer to becoming Irreplaceable then you move to the next project after identifying a problem like your newsletter not growing or it not leading to any money the reason I use these as examples many people not may not resonate with like newsletter or one person business or whatever they are it's because I teach those things right if you're new here and you don't know about that check links

in the description for toour writer oneperson business Launchpad Etc but you can exchange this for like any skill out there you're not learning skills you're acquiring techniques when you go to learn Photoshop to build a project you don't just start playing around with Photoshop you have an image in your head a vision for something that you want to create in Photoshop then you start with what you know you encounter a problem and then you go on something like YouTube and it's like okay how do I select and mass this and you learn a few select

and mass techniques and now you know how to do a lot more in Photoshop and then you keep going you're like hm how do I change the colors on this and then you go look that up you learn ACH technique for that you learn a skill by stacking techniques on a specific thing you don't take a course on Photoshop specifically and then go through it you can take a course courses are extremely valuable once you have the project and goal that you want to build so so far we've talked about creating your own little world

as a frame to notice opportunities and then we talked about building projects in order to build your world but now a third thing I want to talk about really quick is like okay well I don't have the motivation to do this like I just can't see it you need to create a stack of reasons an iceberg of wise because there are a few big moments where my life really changed and it started with just getting fed up with where I was getting kind of disgusted with where I'd let myself go and that realization alone realizing

that I didn't like where I was made me want to search for reasons to get out so I would search on Google for like what are the benefits of doing doing this this and this in terms of a diet if you're uh trying to lose weight just start looking up what are the benefits of this kind of diet what are the benefits of this kind of food and then you can start doing the opposite where you can come up with reasons to not do that thing where if it's a specific diet what is so bad

about fried foods and kind of get yourself to fear those things so you don't want to eat them and you create this like polar inbetweenness where that pushes you towards the positive end the thing here is is that in general no body does one thing for one reason right the the typical example of this when you look at another like social media person is like oh they're only doing this for the money and it's like yeah you can think of it that way and just narrow in on that one specific thing but that's not the

case at all people do a specific thing because it's a part of their life money isn't the only part of their life like as I said earlier I I don't only do this because it makes money I do it because I enjoy this more than the other option so your job is to become aware of this so that you can reverse engineer it and come up with your own stack of reasons to do something that isn't immediately gratifying now the last thing we had creating Your World building projects creating a stack of reasons to become

motivated we need to document our life why one reason is because of the Protege effect the Protege effect is a concept in learning that suggests we learn more effectively by teaching information to others even if those others aren't necessarily any less knowledgeable I've personally noticed this right it it's just the act of passing down your projects or teaching about the things that you know or sharing the things that you know this is why I love social media so much or at least the internet so much is because once you take the step to becoming a

Creator I'm not talking about a content creator I'm talk let's say contributor right not Creator contributor to the online space because there's two options there's consumer or contributor with a consumer you're just take take take take take you get mentally overweight because you're doing all of this stuff you never never piece it together and put your own perspective out there and share what you know because that comes back tfold with actually learning the thing and uh getting direct feedback on your beliefs so that you're kind of encouraged to challenge your beliefs and shape your thoughts

in a more beneficial Direction now the other thing with this the internet in general is that in a place like ancient Greek societies those in the upper class like Marcus aelius or other people that we know they had access to the best teachers one one they would learn mathematics strategy philosophy uh literature all of these other things from the best teachers now that disappeared for a while and especially with the school system where we are uh plopped in front of a government trained expert and encouraged to memorize and conform and get good grades but now

with the internet that's all changed but still most people don't realize it you have access you can go and look up the greatest thinkers of our time and get technically one-on-one educ a from them now I'm I'm not saying that I'm Marcus arelis here or anything but there's I think there's a lot of value in my videos right you can go watch those videos you can go watch the other people that you're watching you have access to all of this great information that people are just putting out and that frankly the teacher learns more than

the student I feel like I learn I'm sure you guys learn a lot I'm talking myself in circles here but what I'm saying is that I learn a lot just writing and making these videos way more than I would have by just consuming this writing or video by synthesizing my own opinion or worldview and then taking that and sharing it that teaches me so much and it it's helped me progress in my life a lot more because I have to think through and solve my own problems and then help others do the same which makes

me approach those problems from a different perspective so maybe that's what I'm getting at here is when you start solving problems in your life start thinking about how you can pass that thing down in a unique way to another person or help them do the same thing because that just also makes it more fulfilling because another question is like what do you do with your projects once you build them you don't just put them into some website portfolio that you're going to send as a resume to someone else or something like that did you set

out to build that project to share it with a potential employer or like the beginning of this video did you set out to do it to be different to be unique to achieve something great on the internet you don't need permission to publish your work beyond that you don't need permission to share what you know the best way in my opinion to drastically increase your chances of success is to document your journey where anyone can Discover it to become a Creator not a content creator but a creator that utilizes resources like content to spread their

work you think of Jordan Peterson he's a Creator but he's not like a content creator right he writes books he goes on tours he understands the importance of social media because that's where the attention is you need media because that's where attention is that's the top of funnel how you get in front of anyone it can be paid or organic right you can go and run paid ads but a lot of people don't have money so the option is and it's just better to build leverage by gaining an audience around your work anyways is to

become a content creator but that that's not the only thing that you do because that narrows your focus a bit too much in the scheme the grand scheme of your life's work you have to do more things than that so the point is share your thoughts opinions problems vision and learnings toward your goals turn your projects into products and test their value when you put your Creations in public in the form of posts and products you don't need to question whether they are valuable or not the market will tell you if they suck which they

will at first good you've identified a problem that you couldn't have before if you were to keep your progress quiet now I could keep going on this topic but I've talked about it many times before check out the oneperson business playlist on YouTube I talk about content I talk about business stuff or check out to our writer with the link in the description aside from that thank you for watching the video that's it for this one like subscribe do what you got to do bye