Life Is A Video Game (Here's How You Win)

let me ask you a question have you ever had a taste of the optimal Human [Music] Experience the State of Consciousness that professional athletes spiritual Masters and culture shifting artists swear by as the key to their success you've felt it before that sense of unbreakable confidence feeling light on your feet and secure with your future the moment where skill becomes art and you no longer care what people think you feel as if you don't exist and can't think of anything you'd rather be doing it's called The Flow State which is a state of peak experience

maximum enjoyment and effortless productivity it's quite similar to being present you know the thing that spiritual gurus won't stop preaching about presence comes from an open state of focus you release your mind from attaching to Any Given thought and become one with life itself flow on the other hand comes in handy when in the pursuit of a lofty goal you become one with the task in front of you which leads to the actualization of a meaningful goal Mii chiet mihi author of the best-selling book Flo and the Godfather of flow psychology describes flow as an

autotelic activity autotelic derives from two Greek words Auto meaning self and Telos meaning goal it refers to a self-contained activity one that is done not with the expectation of some future benefit but simply because the doing itself is the reward the big problem with today's society seems to be that we just can't get the work done on top of that we're in the middle of a purpose crisis we lack meaning in our careers but don't know what to do about it the tasks are repetitive and endless because that's all we're skilled to do distractions are

everywhere Which pull us away from what's important and worst of all we lack Clarity on what we want out of life dopamine is quite a popular topic these days for that reason dopamine plays a crucial role in reaching the Flow State but it goes far beyond that too many people get stuck in a state of narrow-minded living all they know is go to school get a job scroll on their phones Chase material objects and never truly experiencing the depth that life has to offer that isn't a way to live but what if I told you

that you can find enjoyment in the boring mundane or terrible aspects of of your life even further what if I told you that you could use the flow state to achieve the meaningful goals you've been putting off in 6 months rather than 6 years the result of understanding flow is discovering your life's work having a sense of passion for that work and having tools to navigate the dreaded anxiety and overwhelm that cause most people to spiral into chaos life enjoyment isn't dictated by Randomness or luck it's created by deconstructing life as the game it is

and learning how to [Music] play I used to play a game that consumed far too much of my life it was called World of Warcraft and if you played it before I'm sure you're familiar with the late nights and Dungeons and raids and grinding out quests and farming and all of that fun stuff so you're welcome for the Nostalgia but for those who aren't familiar World of Warcraft is an MMO RPG or massive multiplayer online roleplaying game and I often found this game more exciting than the actual real world that we live in at night

after coming home from my part-time job as a lifeguard over the summer I'd put on my headphones and get immersed in the online world nothing else mattered but my mind and the lines of code that kept It Sane when you first log in as a beginner you're met with a series of tasks first you choose a faction then race then class and customize how your character looks there were two factions Alliance and horde many players were passionate and rather ideological about the faction they chose I played Alliance but always thought the digital religion was a

bit too much so I didn't necessarily hate the other side I just thought the characters looked a bit funny most of my characters were either humans or night elves but you could choose anything from gnomes to Orcs to pandarin which is like Panda people I guess to the undead the class you choose determines much of what you do throughout the game a class is your role and play style you can play the role of tank healer or damage when you and others complete quests dungeons or raids together the tank keeps the enemy attacking them the

Healer keeps the group alive and the Damage role whether close combat with blades or long range with magic well they damage the enemies the cool thing about a video game is is that you can experiment with the character you play and start over if you don't enjoy it now let's stop and reflect for a bit are you noticing patterns in the real world how your identity influences your opportunity and potential how getting attached to one specific political religious or social ideology can make it difficult to get into that state of Maximum enjoyment we will break

down the psychology of this soon after you create your character you are thrown into a specific starting zone for that race or that character this is very similar to the culture that you were raised in all you know is one little spot on the map the rest is dark and unknown in reality the culture that you're raised in determines your values and beliefs because that's necessary for your survival if you were born in a different spot on the map geographically literally if you were born on the other side of the world your beliefs would probably

get you either Outcast or killed especially Western countries going going to the other side of the world there are many such cases of this so just lesson number one is be conscious of other people's beliefs and understand that your beliefs are not absolute truth and they are only serving you for the culture that you live in so they're worth questioning what you fail to realize is that you understand less than .1% of reality if you haven't branched into the unknown and it's very diff I don't think people can ever reach 100% understanding of reality maybe

the Masters the select few people but most people the average person that stays in a repetitive routine of tasks and doesn't break out and pursue their own goals they understand and know less than 0.1% of reality and I would argue that number is closer to 0.00001% of reality it's not all money girls Lambos and whatever people are chasing to solve their survival needs they have they can't even access their growth needs yet of challenge skill acquisition and understanding the game will not let you progress to new areas of the map until you acquire the skill

and ability to level up to the point of being able to survive in those areas as you level up you unlock new quests dungeons special abilities career choices and the ability to ride or fly to New parts of the world you don't need to understand many more details but this will help us answer a few questions why do we find video games so enjoyable to the point point of addiction is it possible to replicate that enjoyment to make progress toward our own goals in life can we structure our lives like video games so that we

become so immersed that we forget we are playing a game in the first place let's deconstruct the parts of this Fantastical game to understand the principles that addict our minds the Mind craves order and an ordered mind is a happy mind video games have quests leveling and skill development to narrow your mind on the Big Goal at hand and eliminate distractions video games are designed to make optimal experience easier to achieve quote they have rules that require the learning of skills they set up goals they provide feedback they make control possible they facilitate concentration and

involvement by making the activity as distinct as possible from the so-called Paramount reality of everyday existence the key word there is designed a question I want you to hold in the back of your mind for the rest of this video is how can I design a life month week and day that gives me a sense of control over my life like the tutorial phase leading into quests of a video game Society is designed in a similar way you go to school to make sense of the game Society wants you to play a hierarchy of goals

is placed in front of you go to school get a job praise your God at first there is ample challenge to keep the Mind narrow but soon life becomes repetitive and mundane as an aside we'll dive into this topic in a another episode but for now feel free to go through my other videos like Society is a pyramid scheme it is human nature to gravitate toward the things that bring us comfort and security but that can turn on us fast the massive problem with the default path in life is that one size doesn't fit all

we all find enjoyment in different things and what we find enjoyment in evolves as our identity does a level 100 player won't enjoy a level one challenge a level one player won't understand a level 100 challenge the lesson so far is that video games immerse you so far into the fabricated reality that it becomes your reality it's the only thing that consumes your attention that fills your focus at this point you reach absolute Clarity and there are zero distractions this is the key to maximum enjoyment it's maintaining the sense that one's skills are enough to

match the challenge of the situation and you make it easier on yourself to do this when you create an environment or a system that allows your mind to solely focus on that there aren't any problems or distractions that pull you away from putting energy into what it is that you're doing now this stresses the importance of having goals that you choose not ones that were assigned to you A big life goal to frame the information that you see as important so you can actually notice that information a series of reversed engineered goals from that to

bring Clarity to your actions and a small goal in the present to rivet your attention in the this very moment and kick you into flow and this is why weird deep work hacks like listening to instrumental music or even putting on a hat or setting a timer or other things those aren't those don't inherently put you into flow but they help you focus your attention so you can get into it easier it's an environment that allows you to focus your attention creating deadlines having a hat to literally narrow your eyesight and things like that the

mind is a machine that aids in reaching known goals and discovering unknown goals your mind will notice accept or reject and use information to achieve the goals you feed it if you're always focused on negative outcomes your life will become negative if you only focus on the goals Society assigns to you you lose a sense of control over your life in Psychology that is called pattern recognition you feel the dopamine when you notice information that helps you achieve your conscious or subconscious goals you can't help but use that information to make progress the question is

how do we use this knowledge about goals to live a more meaningful life if you want to change your life you must start by removing yourself from the repetitive string of tasks that make life unenjoyable you must dive into the unknown let's imagine that you don't know how to swim how would you feel if I offered you a Scenic helicopter ride over the ocean you may be a bit fearful you may actually reject it but honestly you'd be silly not to accept now how would you feel if on that ride I took the chopper low

to the water pushed you out and brought it up just enough so you were forced to swim a few things could happen here you'd succumb to the fear overthink it and drown you would flail like a madman doing whatever it takes to stay afloat but soon lose energy and again drown you'd remain calm attempt to float and potentially stay above water long enough to devise a plan none of those are optimal when you play a video game you have a map of the digital world on that map there are unknown areas places you haven't or

can't explore there's a reason you can't just teleport into the middle of those areas chances are you'd be swarmed by monsters 50 levels higher than you and you'd get killed in one single hit is that fun would you want to play the game anymore now what if you completed quests or just leveled up to the point of being able to fly or just being able to do your first dungeon that thing would be new to you and you'd be extremely excited to go and do it right then in that very moment you wouldn't procrastinate on

that quote unquote work because you know exactly what you need to do that's the only thing on your mind and you're going to do it because it's new and it's a fun Challenge and in the real world if you find this one thing you may even pull an all nighter or let other important things in your life that you thought were important go and you realize that this one thing is more important and that's a great hint at where you should be going in life meaning is found at the edge of your abilities the edge

of the unknown not so deep that you are met by chaos but not so shallow that you close yourself off to the depth The Sweet Spot where your skills are enough to navigate the challenge of any given situation you've been there before when you feel incredible for no apparent reason when you know exactly what to do to make progress in your life when you can't stop having ideas when your vision for the future is so clear that you can't help but act on it the Flow State of Consciousness is where the flow of information is

maximized all thoughts ideas and mental energy are useful for the meaningful hierarchy of goals you are attempting to achieve maximum signal minimum noise maximum Focus minimum distraction this is true education learning doing and discovering in unison not being told what to learn for a task you don't care about to do on a path that hordes of people have gone down before this gives us a hint about how we can maximize our time in the Flow State I like to think of the Mind as the metabolism for experience when you eat too much you feel sluggish

when you eat too little you feel on edge when you're overwhelmed with information you feel anxious when you're underwhelmed with information you feel bored it isn't uncommon for us humans to bite off more than we can chew to accept more work when you're already neck deep in the water to learn too much and expect it not to overwhelm you to know that you should say no but you say yes so that the other person doesn't feel bad the optimal State of Mind is when you metabolize life as it comes you learn and do without thinking

and emerge as a new person people often report that they don't remember the times that they were in flow but once they come out and their sense of self comes back it feels as if they've came back a new person there's one common misconception about the Flow State it is not the product of trying it is effortless quote I have always been fascinated by the law of reversed effort sometimes I call it the backwards law when you try to stay on the surface of the water you sink but when you try to sink you float

when you hold your breath you lose it which immediately calls to mind an ancient and much neglected saying whoever would save his soul shall lose it rest in peace Alan Watts now this is pretty obvious but you can't go from working a 9 to-5 you hate to making millions from your life's work but there is a quest you can create and follow in your life to reach any goal you want be it weight loss good looks Charisma more money or work you enjoy the only thing standing in the way is you at this point in

history it should be possible for an individual to build a self that is not simply the outcome of biological drives and cultural habits but a conscious personal creation you aren't where you want to be because you didn't make the choices that led to a purposeful career you didn't make the choices that led to fulfilling relationships and you didn't make the choices that led to a healthy and aesthetic body you right now are the manifestation of your past choices so if you want to take control of who you become your choices are of utmost importance there

are two things here one who you want to become comes from perspective and zooming out and two the choices that will take you there which comes from perception and zooming in the good life is created through constant reminders of your vision and programming the identity that would actualize it through aligned Action Now a question do you know who you are your identity your concept of self your personality that little character you've been playing in The Game of Life a web of ideas that shape your perspective a perspective that shapes your perception of situations a perception

of situations that determines the choices you make the choices you make that result in who you are and the quality of life you live you are a perspective vessel in a relative reality your perspective can be expanded or contracted absorbed in a task or at one with Life manhandled by an emotion or drowning in a sea of familiar future events in a video game you create your character the class profession quests and path you choose in the game determines what you can do in your future in other words if you don't like your life it's

because your identity doesn't allow you to notice and pursue the challenges you find enjoyable the day you were born you became a learning sponge your biological goal was to survive so you pulled information from your environment to allow you to survive that's the information you noticed you learned the language you speak you learn to crawl walk and run you were told eyes ears mouth and knows that nursery rhyme because you couldn't see your own face your parents teachers friends and books and every other environmental stimuli told you what was good or bad so your mind

shifted to only retaining the information that allowed you to survive in that environment you understood Touching Fire is bad you understood praising your God is good you adopted all of these program beliefs that may not be serving you now in the goals that you're trying to achieve and you feel that tension in your heart and in your mind to do the thing that you want to do but you can't or you feel like you can't because you're still a with choice of the bad words slave to your mind that wasn't created by you from a

structural standpoint a worldview or perspective is composed of goals and problems that the goals allow you to become aware of only then can you choose to solve those problems achieve the goal and open up room for the next one every day zoom out and remind yourself of what you you don't want you don't need to focus on what you want because that will make itself apparent through your choices hold that frame at the top of your mind do not allow distractions to penetrate it anytime a choice comes up zoom out and align will this benefit

the future I'm trying to create then be decisive make the decision allow failure into your life so you can correct your behavior the next time around awareness is a cure but if you don't have Vision you may accept a quest Society assigns to you which almost always results in you not being in control of the level of goals you pursue or problems you solve in other words you as a perspective stop growing around the age of 25 to 35 you are met with an inescapable bubble of responsibilities that trap you in a cloud of chaos

and meaninglessness if you identify as a smart student you have the goal of applying to college and the only problems you notice are those like the state tests that you have to study for so you invest mental energy into that goal when you achieve it your psyche is rewarded and you continue pursuing that narrow path the problem is that this path is known it was assigned to you people have done it many times before you know well that you were limited to the results of the people who have gone down this path before but you

don't care because it's what you've been programmed to do later on we will discuss a different vessel into the unknown in part three one that allows you to find Clarity on the path that you create or to create Clarity because you created your own path one that exposes you to your unique potential a path that nobody has gone down before your life's work your perspective goals and problems frames any and all information and opportunities Available to You by information I don't mean books or podcasts or words I mean anything that you perceive sounds sights smells

tastes and touches the combination of which composes the content of our Consciousness our experience the only thing that is real the conscious mind can process 50 bits of information per second the unconscious mind can manage 11 million bits of information per second so if we want to enrich our everyday experience notice more novel opportunities achieve the impossible and create more flow in our lives we must expand Who We Are by fundamentally changing the goals our mind operates on to navigate reality we must influence what information composes the 50 bits of processing power we have in

any given second there's an enemy we are all battling against that leads to us being stressed anxious and overwhelmed more than we'd like to admit that enemy is called entropy if you understand entropy you understand that by doing nothing with your life you choose to slowly drown in chaos you don't stay the same you dig yourself deeper into a hole without trying the good life demands consistent effort toward your own goals let's summarize what we've learned so far in one sentence the Flow State occurs when the content of your cont Consciousness is composed of one

challenging yet meaningful task but there's a problem most people feel like they are drowning in a cloud of chaos rather than one meaningful task occupying their attention there are 10 negative thoughts that have the potential to Splinter off into a 100 more like how you feel a pain in your chest then thoughts of Grandpa's heart attack come to mind the 10 different heart healthy foods you neglected eating and how an early death may impact your family I want you to think of your mind as a supercomputer your ability to process information is dependent on a

few things but the RAM or random access memory is the most important part of a computer that influences its performance the more RAM you use up with different programs running open browser tabs and the performance requirements of what you have running the slower your performance will be most people live with multiple high demand programs running that are draining the limited Creative Energy they have thoughts about regretful past mistakes thoughts about stressful future happenings desires of hunger and entertainment to escape those thoughts an internal cry to break out of their conditioned way of living a list

of mixed priority tasks that need to be finished open Loops of tasks they were supposed to complete but forgot about the list goes on and on the modern mind has its attention split in infinite directions by default we go about our lives stressed in near sickness rather than living in the present with singular focus and a worry-free mind we are the opposite living in a false reality created by split attention when we think too much of the scattered past or future chaos ensues the Mind tends toward disorder if not kept in check we lose the

sense of control over our lives that leads to enjoyment this leads to the question what is a state of consciousness that's an incredibly deep question but when it comes to the Flow State it's crucial that we understand it since we are tackling a metaphysical problem be open-minded ask questions and be okay with the fact that those questions may take time to answer and make sense of a lesson there ask more questions you won't receive the answer immediately but you can seed your mind to receive an answer that you normally wouldn't have it can take a

day a week or a month and for the questions that matter a decade reality is consciousness that takes different states there is nothing but States Of Consciousness all that is real is State the denial of states of Consciousness is done from a state of consciousness if it helps you can think of states of Consciousness as just states of mind they're synonymous for the most part there are higher and lower States Of Consciousness neither of which are better than the other they just are but higher States Of Consciousness may be preferable at times like getting it

to flow for deep work being sleepy drunk High anxious dreaming stressed bored or overwhelmed are all on a spectrum of conscious or unconscious open or narrow states of mind David R Hawkins developed a map for levels of consciousness or stages of Consciousness Ken Wilbur often speaks of the difference between states and stages States are fluid and temporary modes of mind you oscillate between various States every day you can think of this as your everyday experience from being tired at night to focus in the morning stages or levels represent your Baseline of development you can still

reach lower States but you come back to Baseline rather quick and tend to hang out around your stage of development so what causes chaotic states of mind that make it seem like our life is falling apart are we doomed to continue suffering from it and most importantly how do we increase our Baseline level of Consciousness to achieve more flow and live a better life we are going through a mental health crisis we lack the Curiosity passion purpose autonomy and Mastery that create a flow sustaining life's work most people have mental disorder not a mental disorder

just mental disorder by that I don't mean one that can be diagnosed and prescribed a solution even though that's been on the rise mainly to profit off of this epidemic when I say a mental disorder I mean disorder in the mind psychic entropy psychic equals of the Mind entropy equals systems tending toward disorder systems need consistent energy to thrive a system is a group of parts that are connected or work together to form a goal achieving complex whole each part affects the system in some way and depends on the other parts to function properly for

example your digestive system is made up of organs like your stomach and intestines that work together to help you digest food just like how your business is made up of brand content product and marketing if you don't have a good product which is a system in itself you won't make an income and if you neglect energy in the other parts of the system like writing your content so you can actually grow so you have the traffic to sell the product but then if the product landing page isn't good that's a system and you need to

identify the problems in it and fix it so you can put more energy into it more efficiently so that it sells if you want to learn to do these things if you want to learn to build an audience buy to our writer which is learning High income skill of writing an evergreen meta skill and then if you want to learn how to monetize your creative work or just your life's work get mental monetization you can find both with links in the description systems become more efficient with time unless you neglect them to describe entropy in

a system if your mind is a room and you don't put energy toward cleaning that room maintaining order then the room will get dirty one day without cleaning won't be bad but after a week a month a year that's when your mom starts telling you that you live in a pigy with that if you are a writer it takes time and experimentation to form the habits and systems that lead to an audience and income but once you have it down you don't need as much energy to keep it going this is the same thing with

learning any skill at all I've recently been learning animation for these videos and yeah it's really freaking hard at first and I'm spending a lot of time on it and I'm overwhelmed and I don't know what I'm doing but I keep going and I get better at the skill and I was able to learn it very quickly just by focusing on this one project we'll learn how to learn in part three but eventually I'll be able to create animations like it's the back of my hand and what used to take 8 hours will take one

and if you're working a job where tasks are assigned to you and you're not learning automating Outsourcing delegating skills you're not giving yourself the potential to be able to control what you work on therefore how much you work I talk about that a lot in my 4-Hour Work workday videos just type in for our workday but once you do this once you've learned something if you stop for a day month week year it becomes that much harder to get back into it but muscle memory is a thing where I stopped using Photoshop after doing digital

art for a long time it took a bit of time to get back into it but I got into it so much faster this is why skill stacking and consistently learning new skills is so crucial for your development because you can adapt so easily even if you don't use one skill for a long time but when you do stop that is where problems occur because that's where entropy takes hold you have to understand that problems are not personal they're systemic and everybody faces them it's when there is a blockage of the energy in the system

that is our mind mental health or fixing this mental disorder from Psychic entropy is about making sense understanding and Clarity so if you're just learning a new skill entropy is very high and you need to constrain it but when you stop learning a new skill or you let time go on then entropy starts to creep back in it gets released and then you have to constrain it again through effort and energy this goes for any domain of your life this is universal principle it applies to everything if you understand entropy and you keep that at

the top of your mind it will change your life and with this when entropy is high this is when one single negative thought can hijack your attention it makes it so you can't see a situation for what it is and then the Mind Game commences you have to learn how to play it and the more you do it the more you play the better you get attention breathes life into everything it touches when you give your attention to a false reality that your mind creates you act in a way that makes it real do you

think this will lead to beneficial outcomes in any situation the solution to chaos is finally taking control of your life you need four habits one that builds your mind one that builds your body one that builds your business one that builds your connection the good life is the process of becoming everything you could be in a video game your mind is framed by the game itself in reality this is your perspective we've discuss that to narrow your mind further there is a hierarchy of challenging goals finally to immerse you in the world and focus your

attention on the now there are rules and mechanics rules prevent you from cheating they make the game worth playing mechanics are skill-based your aim will suck at first you'll feel clumsy with your keyboard you won't be able to move around or land shots well but you get better you practice and improve as the challenges increase in life the rules are what you deem important and meaningful your priorities your values what you value the mechanics are the skills and habits you use to achieve the prioritized goals in your life to create a life of enjoyment and

flow you need to invest mental energy into self-generated goals stick it out long enough to create create passion you don't just find passion create new systems or routines for your mind to operate on that's how you reverse psychic entropy and Chaos in your mind you invest energy with your thoughts emotions attention and actions every single day in goals that create your ideal life through work study and practice thankfully there are only a few goals that can truly be meaningful they correspond to the Eternal problems that can't be solved by AI prescriptions or technology one is

business meaningful work that allows you to choose the problems you solve two is Health you live in your body it is your obligation to understand and improve it three is mind pursuing your curiosity acquiring knowledge and expanding your sense of self four is connection creating shared experiences and expanding your circle of concern to transcend the self like when you party up in a video game multiple Minds achieve goals faster than one these are like a skill tree in a video game as you improve the relevant skills in these domains you unlock new levels but there's

a catch you can only improve one trait as much as you improve another you can only reach a certain level of Mind by reaching a certain level in your creative work you can only reach a certain level of Health by reaching a certain level of mind because mental and physical health are deeply intertwined my question to you if you aren't building Your Mind Body Spirit and business every single day what are you doing that's a genuine question because is there anything more important than that or is everything you do now a distraction and you may

be saying but Dan I want to enjoy myself and do what I want I would say to that we just learned what actual maximum enjoyment is and by being distracted all the time and engaging in what you think is Leisure entropy is just high all the time and you're anxious and overwhelmed all the time you don't need to lie to yourself about this because there is a solution the other thing is do you understand what the difference is between enjoyment and pleasure do you realize that human psychology has been mapped over the course of human

evolution to show that humans have an innate drive to grow expand and create enjoyment is found in progress the Flow State points to much more than some neurochemicals in your brain it points toward the Divine doing what you want is often the ego's way of ending the train of thought that would lead to improving yourself because that's what your nature wants to do what you want in alignment with your goals pursue curiosity self-educate build meaningful projects that actualize your ideal lifestyle if you don't know where to start you're in luck that's next on our agenda

okay we understand the goal we want to create a life of more flow we want work that's meaningful to us we want to create a life where we have an overwhelming sense of control over its outcome we don't want to be assigned goals and therefore assigned an identity and Destiny to become a cog in the machine Steven Cotler author of The Art of impossible believes that there is a formula for achieving the flow State and thus achieving The Impossible when used correctly aligning motivations is the first step to doing this well he describes five intrinsic

drivers that fuel and energize our actions curiosity which is our compass into the unknown passion which is finding that one thing you can't pull yourself away from purpose which is how your passion will impact the world something greater than yourself autonomy which is the desire for Freedom required to pursue your passion and purpose and Mastery which is honing your skill set so you can monetize your passion per Cotler each of these contributes to certain neurotransmitters like dopamine oxytocin endorphin serotonin in neur and nephrine this neurochemical cocktail helps create the Flow State I would encourage you

to read his book to discover his process for reaching flow but I have my own methods in my eyes this is best tackled from the top down Mastery stems from your life's work your vision for the future autonomy stems from entrepreneurship the ability to create your own own work purpose stems from projects turned into products because a product is how you help more people than just yourself that's how you transcend yourself you give and you create for other people in exchange for another form of value it doesn't have to be money but it can be

status or it can be peace or it can just be the feeling of enjoyment it can be any of those things and all of those things are neutral like money and Status until assigned to a specific person who is good or evil pass stems from connecting the dots which is finding the pieces of the puzzle you're creating and then curiosity is the fuel the desire to acquire the knowledge to reach the next level there is one pattern I've noticed in all successful individuals they live in their own little world they disappear from society for months

at a time to force pure focus on themselves and their Vision they laser in on one meaningful goal and make it a reality as we you learned earlier goals and problems compose your worldview so we need to make those goals and problems conscious first we need to create an antiv Vision we start our story with an antiv Vision your antiv vision is the bane of your existence the place that you don't want your life to end up it's a positive fear mechanism to kick you in the right direction it is the first polar end of

the worldview that you're creating because your worldview is antiv Vision what you don't want Vision what you want inside of that another layer is goals and problems problems you need to solve to in order to reach the goals those things are what frame your perception and allow you to notice information in the world so if your vision is off and your anti- vision is off or you just don't have them and they're assigned to you then what you notice that programs who you are that leads to the actions you take are not your own and

they're not going in a beneficial Direction so how do you create this first you start a running note of the experiences you do not want to relive or to have so the things you don't care to learn or the places you don't care to live you have to actually go and experience life in order to figure these things out you need to experience something in order to think I don't want that that means you have to fail more you have to get uncomfortable more because then you can notice that thing and once you understand what

it is you can work in the opposite direction now you won't get rid of these things in an instant but you can write them down and hold that awareness in your mind so that your actions start to self-correct in a New Direction and just by Nature you read your vision so that's step two is what is your vision because if you don't have a vision you're lost kind of by definition you can't create outcomes so you're doomed to the mechanical living of determined outcomes every decision you make in any domain of your life must be

filtered through your vision that is how you bring meaning to your actions and minimize distractions so write down every single thing you want in life and don't miss a detail and get very specific but understand that again this doesn't happen overnight think of it as a minimum viable vision write one thing down in a note or on a piece of paper or just in a to-do list or something like that and add to it over time and as you write these things down those little inklings or figments of Consciousness will culminate in your mind and

again self-correct your behavior in that direction and allow you to notice and spot problems and goals or opportunities that you can take on solve or achieve after that step number three is setting big and small goals big goals are for direction small goals are for cl it neither are for Action you don't need motivation when the task in front of you is so stupidly simple that you can't help but complete it so break down your vision into goals by decade year month week and day these are your guide not your master they're there for direction

your goals will change as you do be okay with that remind yourself of your anti- vision vision and goals daily these are your own little world when your world is all you think about your mind conspires in your favor you notice small details that others don't that gives you an edge it spurts dopamine into your brain as a motivator it sets the scene for more flow you stop worrying about problems you don't have control over leave the drama of society what about the starving kids in Africa what about the next election What About That Celebrity

beef that's fabricated to make them money and keep you dumb what's going to actually solve the problem please zoom out and think about this because these election Cycles or just any cycle that raises your emotions unconsciously and controls you that narrows your mind and and makes you dumb it Narrows your mind and it has you adopt the goals and problems that other people have for you and that's the only thing that frames your attention and your perception so you can't notice information in the pursuit of your goals because you forgot your goals so is crying

about it and changing your profile picture going to actually solve the problem or is upskilling yourself pursuing your own goals impacting people on the way by doing your life's work and transcending yourself and helping other people in a conscious and purposeful Manner and creating change on the individual level that ripples out what's going to actually make the change is it the little like if you're so narrowed in on I need to do this that someone else told me and you do that what's next you lost Vision you don't know what to do next you didn't

make any form of a change you make a change by changing yourself cuz beyond that what you do when you pursue your life's work and you stay focused on that one thing is you pass along your obsession to others if you start a beer company of all things and you are the one working it and you hand out your beer with passion joy and you put so much freaking effort into that beer you pass that along to your customer they're happy they love that place they go there that's a part of their routine that brings

them Joy they pass that Joy on etc etc that's how it works what people don't understand is when you project your beliefs and force them on another person that they're not going to take that they're not going to accept that belief you're only creating more destruction so when people ask what your thoughts are on insert the flavor of the weak drama here your only response should be I don't care otherwise you're an NPC if your vision is Big audacious and truly impactful you won't reach it working for someone else Steven Cotler harps on how an

MTP or massively transformative purpose is key to achieving The Impossible in life Robert Green preaches about discovering your life's task in my eyes entrepreneurship is the only logical option for long-term thinkers entrepreneurship is a mindset not a title a mindset dedicated to solving an infinite set of creative problems a way to hedge against getting trapped in a repetitive routine that someone else assigned to you it is an infinite game not a finite one your work evolves it doesn't stagnate unless you allow it but even then at least it's your choice if you stay in a

9o5 for too long you become a monkey in a cubicle your psyche is wired to hunt to hunt is to make novel discoveries that Aid in your survival imagine our ancestors walking by a bare Bush every day it doesn't serve their future but one day it grows berries somebody walks by it they notice it and that novelty causes excitement they either gather the berries or remember them for later so they can survive longer when you get stuck in a job that you hate you live in the Eternal G now I want to make this clear

I don't hate jobs I just see them for what they are which is a stepping stone that allows you to eventually evolve Beyond it because you start and you only evolve and grow so much until you reach some form of a cap and then progression slows down and if if enjoyment is found in progress and you no longer progress you have to understand that a job is a stepping stone and that is that's that's really the case for 99% of things where 90% of people I would say just actively hate their jobs 9% of people

think they enjoy their jobs but they just don't understand their potential so they don't realize that in reality they do hate it 1% of people have the jobs that actually allow for all of the flow drivers like curiosity passion purpose autonomy Mastery that's 1% and the amount of jobs that allow that aren't going to change so unless you bank on joining the 1% and still limiting your income to a salary the wisest thing you can do is just bet on yourself because that's just simply by becoming an entrepreneur you unlock the ability to control your

enjoyment in life and you dive into the unknown which which is what we've talked about is the path to enjoyment entrepreneurship is the path of uncertainty like slashing your way through the jungle you're required to learn skills that aren't taught in schools you're required to be okay with failure rejection and slow progress you're required to learn from your mistakes show up again tomorrow and push until you strike gold you're required in other words to be human as an entrepreneur you hunt for your Survival by gathering knowledge creating a valuable product and giving it to people

who would benefit from it and you have to understand if you have a bad relationship with money or business you have to understand that people actually want to buy products right it benefits their lives so by selling a product if if you sell a product that hurts someone's lives then yeah obviously don't do that but that's not all that business is as I've discussed before in previous videos my path for doing this is to start a personal brand as the foundation solve your own problems in the real world health wealth and relationships distribute your findings

opinions and beliefs via writing start with a freelance or coaching service and get results sell a physical or digital product that requires less time invested once your audience grows make a hefty income in 2 to 4 years with persistence and iteration and then expand your vision for the future to build whatever you want to get there which could be software spaceships or just whatever you want this is the oneperson business model that I talk about a lot you can go and watch my oneperson business model playlist I'll eventually be making another one of these types

of videos very deep dive into the onep person business so just stay tuned for that but you don't need to build a$1 billion doll company and I mean you shouldn't even think about doing that until you have the cash flow to actually afford building the team and starting up the business to do that but for this one person business model you need to attract an audience by passing down the lessons that you've learned by gaining experience and making progress in your own life with self-generated goals that's how you become unique that's how you become the

niche and then you need to monetize that Audience by building a product by solving a problem in your life and selling the solution so if you're making progress and you're improving yourself you're qualified to start a business you have experience that you can pass down because most people are not improving themselves and they need that better option from a person that they resonate with that's the best form of education is when you actually relate to the person that's teaching you and now this option is 0 to start the one person business is $0 thanks to

technology thanks to social media it's a great way to build cash flow and then use that cash flow to build whatever you want so if you want to get started I have a mini course on it then yes I do promote my other courses in there this is all eventually leading up to the other products that I sell you but the mini course is actually quite valuable and that's free so if you want that oneperson business foundations course in the description if you want to learn faster don't start learning outline a project start building it

out and learn along the way too many people get trapped in tutorial hell stacking up useless knowledge as brain fog start encounter a problem seek specific knowledge to overcome it when you learn how to learn you can achieve 6 years of results in 6 months so let's take everything we've learned before and ground it with practical steps first you need to create a Clarity Catalyst there were a few moments in my life where I made giant leaps in understanding and progress the first was writing my book the second was building my products the third was

writing my newsletters and now the fourth is creating these videos which is like a next step up if you've taken to our writer you understand how I write my newsletters and turn them into the videos I used to do now I've sort of evolved hopefully we'll see into these types of videos and that's required that's demanded an entirely new skill stack from me and my editor so what do these all have in common it's that they're a project a big project a project has a scope for how large it is the bigger the better for

creativity it has an outline so you can note ideas to fill in that outline from everyday life in other words you notice more in life it has mileston so you have Direction and Clarity on your next steps it has a real world deadline that forces you to act or else your survival takes a hit it has experimentation trial and error so you can turn failures into lessons this video is long and creating this video is all I've thought about for the past like 8 to 12 weeks however long it takes to get this video out

and this presents the perfect environment for a flow State there's pattern recognition from novelty and dopamine Clarity from Milestones Challenge from deadlines and experimentation from learning so determine what you want to learn create a real world project that you will publish for other people to see and if you don't know what project to create just see what other people have done if you want to learn photoshop your project is going to be from anything from digital art to just a social media post to whatever you create in Photoshop it could be art it could be

a graphic it could be something figure out what you want to do if you want to learn how to body build or you just want a nicer body you want to solve that problem in your life then your project is your body nutrition regimen and training program and you use those systems to get better at what it is you're doing learn the thing Focus your mind and actually stick to that goal if those don't work then you you need to experiment with a new nutrition protocol and new training program and new whatever it it is

until you piece together the patterns that fit you to Perfection until entropy takes hold and you have to do it again because this game never ends if you're just looking to find that one thing that will get you results over and over and over again stop and now your project outline doesn't have to be perfect at first like I start these projects by just brain dumping all of my ideas on the paper and once that's there then it becomes an experience anchor so when I go out into the world or I read social media post

or I read a book The ideas that fit that project stick out in my mind and I'm able to go into it and add it to the outline and slowly piece it together until my outline deadline is there and then I can start working on the project because when I wrote my book that made my life meaningful so if you lack meaning it's because you probably lack your own project one that you assigned to yourself because almost every single idea that I had that came to mind was applicable to the book and so it's just

this constant good dopamine of wow I need to put this idea in my book write it down in the outline research it more find more ideas etc etc this constant back and forth of serendipity that made me feel like a child again it made me feel like it it gave me that Wonder for life again step two is to learn as you build if you aren't building you aren't learning if you aren't actively applying what you learn in that moment by either writing it down or putting it in the outline or putting it in the

project and actually doing it you're just stacking that knowledge as useless soon to be forgotten brain fog you aren't going to remember it and it's useless to learn that thing it's useless to learn if you don't have a project if you're reading or other things in that scenario then you aren't learning you're acquir you're starting to understand things that you already know it's Leisure it's not necessarily learning something new Because unless it's applicable to your life right reading a business book without having a business is kind of dumb reading a philosophy book Works in all

situations because it's your life that you're applying it to your life is the project in Big Picture domains like philosophy now when you start building something there's only a few things that you need to know and those are the fundamentals you have no business researching Advanced tactics yet the fundamentals will take you 95% of the way there and for most people that's millions of dollars a jacked physique or a stress-free life you don't understand how far the fundamentals can take you if you actually stuck to them new tactics or Advanced tactics may help with a

marginal 5% Improvement but I feel like that mental bandwidth should just be res erve for rest and Obsession towards your work pertaining to new specific skills and interests when you have a project to build do the following purchase a beginner level course on the topic watch overview videos on YouTube that teach the fundamentals study them until you have Clarity on what to do next then do it and when you encounter a problem refer back to sections of the course or video research how to directly solve that problem and watch tutorials where people build projects similar

to yours and see how they overcome those problems learning is problem solving not accorting as much knowledge as you can step three is to teach what you learn the Protege effect a psychological phenomenon where teaching pretending to teach or preparing to teach information to others helps a person learn that information when you teach you pay closer attention when you learn and identify knowledge gaps that help you learn faster now I of course recommend teaching in public as a personal brand or as some would call your public resume or the modern resume that's what your social

media profile is so you can attract high paying opportunities at as you learn so you don't need to really know this stuff before you start writing you write so you teach and you understand it further I learn things 10 times faster because I teach them to other people and this doesn't have to be online but doing it online makes it so it's a part of your life and you grow and evolve much faster and it's just a good career to get into because it's not really a career it's the collapse of work and life into

one and it becomes meaningful but to illustrate that point it's like when I learn something like animation or art or just some difficult Concept in a book and I explain it at night to my girlfriend then I understand that thing so much better just from that simple conversation of me trying to illustrate what it is because it identifies what I don't know so then that's a new problem in my mind that frames my perception so I pick up the information that fills that knowledge Gap so much faster so write in public and let people criticize

you because without the criticism you're not going to learn how to fix what you had wrong and then teach your friends by making just interesting conversation if you're naturally a quiet person start learning something and then teach just say hey I was learning about this new thing it's pretty cool this this this now you're a conversational person because with this you have to structure what you're saying explain it and ensure that you aren't giving false knowledge and that way you know what to learn next when I write my newsletters and create these videos I don't

know everything but I can guarantee that writing for four years on topics that I'm interested in has accelerated my knowledge and wisdom in those areas so much faster than if I weren't to actually create and right now the modern way to create is content and products your life becomes a meaningful series of solving problems learning how to solve them teaching others and making an income as you go I believe this is what evolution has allowed people doing what they love without barriers thanks to the internet step four is to expand into a new level of

Mind read to expand your mind right to organize your mind build to focus your mind by this point you may still feel overwhelmed or like you're not learning anything you have to understand that this is good your mind is primed for pattern recognition at this point if you're overwhelmed if you're in the unknown if you just feel this sense of chaos but you're going in the right direction then that's good because you're going to pick up information that allows you to survive on that path so launch yourself into the unknown immerse yourself in the culture

environment and information related to what you're trying to learn condition your mind through repetition and exposure slowly understand the lingo vocabulary and skill set of those who have seen success in that topic let your mind expand through the discomfort the worst thing you can do is quit when you feeling Growing Pains you aren't seeing results because you aren't the person who would see results this process allows you to become a new person by letting your old version die like when adopting new habits you have to get out of the old environment that fueled your bad

habits to make this more practical read books books give you 10 years of effort from 6 hours of reading consume lectures long articles and videos give you 3 days of effort in 20 minutes follow new people this is less about consuming short form content and more about training your mind to be in that tribe of people by three books one bestseller One Technical and one historical burn through them and don't let your obsession die this may seem like a long process but we aren't trying to learn something on a surface level we are trying to

become Masters as fast as possible step five is to make connections to solidify understanding when you master one thing it becomes easier to master others principles are Universal they overlap when you master Fitness you can Master business in half the time and then you can Master relationships in half of that most people never Master One domain of their lives so they never experience exponential personal growth zoom out one layer move from Photoshop to graphic design to creative work take note of signal when your mind signals important information write it down and build better projects from

a new level of Mind build a new project that will take you to the success you want to see in my own experience my knowledge compounded when I peeled back the layers from web design to business to just philosophy in general when I had these big picture overlapping domains like business philosophy Health Etc when you learn from a big picture you're able to notice patterns and Truth much faster and actually see progress on those things now that was an abnormally long video because I didn't want to miss any bases and to be quite honest I

could write an entire book on this whenever I start writing something I understand that everything connects so I can connect everything so I could write a book and I kind of did write a book on this it's called The Art of focus so if you want that get it with the link in the description but by now I hope that you realize that a State of Consciousness like flow connects to all of life it's not just Neuroscience it's metaphysics psychology self-improvement and productivity allinone and more than that because it's a it's a state of consciousness

right it it comes into play with anything that you do in life and this alone just the Flow State gives us incredible hints at how to live the good life now if you've watched this far consider sharing this with a friend I honestly don't share videos that much unless they're just funny or something else like that but with this if you enjoyed this and you made it this far there's something here for you right and there may be something here for your friends and that benefits me as well it's mutual benefit value exchange you share

a video to a friend and just be like hey I thought this was cool what do you think and then I get a view and we you guys get knowledge it just works out both ways and you never know because it might be what they need right now like I wish I had those friends when I was younger that would send me a video like this to expose me to something new in my life rather than just like an old meme that I've seen over and over again now if you want to learn how I

write these scripts for these videos or just how I create products or how I monetize creative work you can go to my website the danco.com and check out free products paid products cortex is coming in the future which is my writing app and aside from that if you want to listen to this in podcast form you can look up the coast on Spotify if you want to subscribe to the newsletter to get these early and get other emails uh every week or so just on good ideas that I've been thinking about that may expand your

mind and help you uh unlock new opportunities in life subscribe to the email list again that's the danco.com aside from that thank you for watching don't forget to like subscribe and do what every other YouTuber tells you to do but until then seriously thank you for watching this far if you did have a good one bye