How To Change Your Life So Fast It Feels Illegal

so I shaved my head every so often as you can tell and at first it was out of fear of going bald I buzzed my head to rip the metaphorical Band-Aid off and get used to the look that I was doomed to have and I also believe that just too many guys are dependent on their hair for their self-confidence but that's aside the point and it turns out that I wasn't going bald my hairline just looks like the top of an iPhone as Ian who's a cortex engineer gratefully Illustrated for me and now I know

this can sound cheesy but after doing it a few times shaving my head has kind of become symbolic for shifting into an alter ego and the alter ego is a coin termed by Todd Herman who has the book The Alter Ego effect that we'll talk about but for me it's like a sub identity that helps me achieve goals faster with pure Focus kind of like a warrior going into battle and this is especially the case right now because with cortex picking up and new features finally getting in I have to work a lot more and

so this is symbolic of me of like okay it's time to lock in we need to get things done this is all I'm focused on right now in my head is representative of that the other thing here is that it's a way to make myself so vulnerable that I have no other option but to be okay with it this is actually the secret weapon of Kobe Bryant because he had the alter ego the Black Mamba which was something that he adopted in a difficult period of his life and it reflected the mindset that he wanted

to have on the basketball court now in my own life I often oscillate between Warrior and Monk War mode and monk mode and many are familiar with monk mode because it's a self-improvement tactic where you disappear from the world remove distractions and practice some form of asceticism where you reject worldly pleasures in the pursuit of personal development War mode is the opposite you attack your goals you simulate a hunt you say yes to everything you expose yourself to massive experience you overwhelm your mind with chaos and force yourself to expand into a new identity you

become the person who can bear a massive load of responsibility some some who doesn't crack Under Pressure because that means death so I use this war mode as a means to take my mind body business to another level when I need to because the problem here is just the problem with modern life right now in general people work on simple tasks they hate all day never challenge themselves creatively and think they need a break from work now personally I think most people would benefit from more work than they would more rest one because rest for

most people is synonymous with a pleasurable escape from boredom rather than a deep recovery session from stimulating work if you want to understand more of this go watch the 4-Hour workday videos that I have rest is not laying on the couch eating Cheetos and watching TV all day that's numbing yourself from work you don't like doing and then that brings up two problems instead of one the problem isn't only work you don't like doing because rest isn't a solution to that your version of rest is making that worse the second thing here is that the

average person lacks period periods of pure intensity toward a meaningful goal they lack True Balance which lies in contrast meaningful work and meaningful rest both with pure Focus not the middle path but the path of high highs and low lows catastrophic failure and Blissful success those are where the most profound lessons are learned and if you're floating in the middle life becomes a blur of boredom and anxiety too many people simply want to escape the stress and mundaneness of everyday life so they think more rest or a fancy vacation we'll do it for them I'd

like to propose another solution to go a little insane to flip the switch overnight to transform into an entirely new person let's learn how the alter ego is a bridge between who you are now and who you are meant to be the alter ego allows you to step outside yourself to see the bigger picture so those are two quotes from Todd Herman who's the author of the alter ego effect and now the main question that comes up here is well like isn't putting on a mask or acting as a different person inauthentic and this reminds

me of a paper that I wrote in high school now I don't know what the topic was supposed to be about but I remember what I wrote and it was along the lines of uh I act as a different person when I'm around different people I'm a different person when I'm in class or at church when I was forced to go or with my friends or with my parents or when I was in a Call of Duty Lobby or Halo 3 or League of Legends and talking to Gamers now why would I speak to my

parents in the same way that that I would speak to someone who 360 no scoped me across the map and I'm just cursing them out now what surprised me here is that my teacher I think his name was Mr Wright he agreed with me he pulled me aside and he mentioned how he does the same thing but he doesn't like talking about it because it makes him feel inauthentic now I'm paraphrasing here that's just what I remember the reality is humans are shape shifters we are creators generalists we adapt to situations to survive and thrive

our mind has a unique capability to change its perspective thus changing the landscape for where your attention goes but so few people have practiced this skill you already do this every day you bring forth different qualities of your identity to act your best in different situations but once you learn to control this power you can do the impossible this is why so many people struggle with discipline and confidence they get trapped in a mind clouded with self-doubt and insecurity they fail to step out of that little box and view it from an entirely new angle

so they drown their goals dreams and ition sit on a bookshelf and collect dust that business you want to start that social life you want to have that body and mind you want to build they all nag at you as you go about the life you don't want to live and continue to make the chaos in your mind worse now in comes the alter ego Martin Luther King Jr would wear non-prescription glasses to become a distinguished intellectual for his talks Kobe Bryant would turn into the black mamba because it is fast smooth and terrifying now

in a similar vein I was watching this clip of Eddie Hall who is a strong man man where he was talking about how the the weight that he lifts in competitions there's no way that he could lift that weight just in normal training he wouldn't be able to he's not strong enough but when he visualizes in detail uh his family being crushed by the weights or by a car he kind of TAPS into this superhuman level of strength that he normally wouldn't have so all the people competing in these strongman competitions that's not what they

can normally lift they're using this Alter Ego they're adopting the quality ities of the identity that would be in a terrifying situation that allows them to get to that next level or reach the goal so you can see how powerful this can be by just bringing the qualities from a different situation from a different identity into you to thrive in the current one that you're in now why does this work there's many reasons psychologically why this works but a main one that I think is because of this when you adopt an alter ego your mind

starts to focus on how you should act your fin mental energy about 50 bits of conscious information per second is consumed by the shift in attention you don't have the bandwidth to give energy to your self-doubt and insecurities because the conscious mind can process 50 bits of information per second the unconscious is like 11 million bits of information per second I talk about this in my book The Art of focus but those those 50 bits the the minimal tiny amount of 50 bits of information that you can pay attention to right now when you give

all of that to your self-doubt and insecurities it becomes your world you become what you focus on but it takes effort to expand into a new mind that allows a shift in Focus so we need to create a mental frame to focus our attention away from self-doubt and fear we need to create a new identity to expand into with repetition and learning we need to create a plan so our attention is narrowed further and we live in the Flow State when you give this process time your life changes in innumerable ways so here's exactly how

you create an alter ego to jump into when it's time to perform step one is one that we've talked about all the time which is Vision what do you want because first we need an attention anchor we need something that pulls your attention away from doubt and insecurity you need a sturdy mental house that you built not someone else a house you can decorate and live in when outside conditions get harsh now this can't be any old goal or New Year's resolution that you set because everyone else is setting it or you feel a tiny

bit of motivation to do so it must have gravity it must be meaningful it must be something that you want to dedicate your life to but the thing with is none of this comes in an instant the the common thing whenever I talk about Vision or what do you want that you get the typical answers to that it's like well I'm not interested in anything I don't know what I want I don't know what I don't want I don't know what I want to do I don't know what I want to try and you can't

get past that perspective to finally realize what you want to do or what you want to try you're just reacting to these little thoughts in your head and you're not going any further Beyond those your your mind's in this little box and you aren't trying trying to open the box your vision is something that starts just like anything else you've started something before you started school you started a job you started something new how does that go it sucks at first it feels inauthentic but you need to get something on paper so you have something

to improve when we're creating design screens for cortex or actually building out the features we're just thinking we're just imagining it's just Theory we think it's going to work but then once people actually start using it or it's in the real world now it most of the time doesn't work and then you know how to improve that's called iteration you can't iterate on something that doesn't exist or that's stuck in your mind so that's what the vision is for you just get something down even if it feels inauthentic because then when you go about life

you can realize okay I don't want this and then you're like okay I do want this and then you refine it and you slowly course correct toward a life you want the progress in life isn't just this linear path from I'm here I want to get to this goal it's here's a weird cloud of what I think I want potentially I'm going to start going towards that and see where it goes and you go up down you go all over the place until you finally get to something that you think you want you never get

exactly what you want you just just try things experiment and you'll find some direction to go if you want a starting point you can use my simple life reset planner which there's a link in the description no email required or you get it when you join my newsletter or you can simply pull out a note taking app or a piece of paper and write down these questions how do you want to look speak and be perceived why what environment do you want to live in why if money is a reflection of the impact you have

how much money do you want to make what can you see yourself getting really good at and being known for why what do you want your average day to look like down to the detail why again this is a starting point you add subtract act and refine as you go about life but the thing here is what if I'm not motivated to start and what if I struggle to just get started that brings us to step two step one is Vision step two is Clarity how do you make progress a lack of self-confidence is brutal

you can't stop questioning your actions and can't find any sustainable source of motivation because it's always clouded over with doubt the truth is a lack of self-confidence comes down to a lack of clarity the first half of the clarity equation comes down to perspective we've solved that with a vision that gets stronger with faith the second half of clarity comes down to knowing what to focus on and luckily this isn't a matter of luck it's a matter of strategy in other words you need a plan your vision can seem so far away it's like a

North star but a plan is a guess that starts out dumb and becomes educated that narrows your focus on what steps move the needle forward and as a quote from mihi Chet mihi because optimal experience depends on the ability to control what happens in conscious Moment by moment each person has to achieve it on the basis of his own individual efforts and creativity when your attention Narrows in on a task distractions become much more difficult to register in your attention but if you don't know what to do next and next and next after you start

the task it all starts to fall apart if the next task is hard you get anxious if the next task is too easy you get bored then and there with anxiety or boredom your attention splits out of the task the present moment splits out of your vision and that's when distractions start to register so you can use this you can reverse engineer this as like okay if I get distracted notice that distraction when you get distracted and realize okay boredom and anxiety what's leading to what anxiety okay maybe this is too difficult for me or

I don't have the knowledge or skill or Clarity to achieve this thing okay this thing is too boring for me so I'm getting bored so how do I make this task more challenging how do I get myself in the Middle where I just can't help but focus and work on the task part of this is just creating a plan so let's do that first break down your vision into palatable Milestones so if you want to make a million dollar a year then Milestones could be your first dollar then 10,000 then 100,000 and so on you

probably aren't going to LEAP to 1 million without making your first 10,000 and what you must do to get to 10,000 is going to be much different than getting to 1 million so again the 1 million it's very up there you get anxious thinking about it and you don't know how to get there but $ 10,000 or even just $1 okay $1 that becomes a lot more specific and you can make sense of it so the second thing here is write out exactly what you have to do to reach the first Milestone so for the

million dooll example or the $1 example I would have to start a business obviously to make my first dollar specifically one that aligns with the rest of my vision and interest so in my case it involves writing now I have some clarity right I'm a beginner I want to make $1 okay I start researching learning and doing how do how do I get to $1 as a writer so now the third thing is write out exactly what you have to learn in order to do that thing for starting a writing business I need to learn

Marketing sales content creation and how to create a product or service if I focus on the first $1 Milestone I could create an ebook charge $10 for it and promote it on social media to the small audience I've been building with content creation Now I know this is a sneaky plug but if you like writing I teach writing you can join the writer boot camp that starts on March 4th where we go over how to build an audience how to write posts newsletters threads and now YouTube scripts and AI with cortex which will be really

cool which drastically speeds up how fast you can learn and how fast you can ideate your writing and refine it it's like a sparring partner doesn't right for you it just makes you sharper you learn more you can join the boot camp with the link in the description now the fourth step to creating a plan is to list out the daily tasks that actually get results not just busy work so for a writing business that means posting high quality content similar to Devin Ericson who I keep talking about but on Twitter follow Devon Ericson and

just look at how he posts you may not like what he posts he has some politics and other things and everyone disagrees with everyone in some way but he's very good at writing his opinions in a long form way that's very unique on Twitter and so other self-published authors like Wonder I've seen these posts where they're like is anyone making sales on Twitter for their books and then you go and look it's like they're asking for confirmation of like is Twitter a good place to sell a book when they're thinking about it completely wrong it's

not about Twitter or Instagram or YouTube or any of these things it's about your message and how people care about you you go to their profile and all you see is just book promotions and you go to Devon's profile and you see all of these fleshed out thoughts and other things worth following and people buying his book is just a bu product of that and of course he promotes it as well so he's doing extremely well as a self-published author because he's not just pushing the book constantly he's attracting people to his thoughts and opinions

and his book is a extension of him you need to post your beliefs opinions and teach people about your interests they don't care about your book or product at first they care about you first then they purchase your book or any other product because they like you this is what's different about being a Creator or Social Media stuff than marketing of the past where you're on the radio or billboard well even the radio like there was you had a personal connection with them but the advertising industry just makes it feel like marketing is so like

icky when it doesn't have to be that way you can just talk about what you want and provide something valuable now with your plan you should get as granular and detailed as possible with this because it's the same thing with a vision if you're not okay with like making guesses or taking a step into the unknown or doing anything that doesn't involve being told what to do from someone else you have to get used to just making your own decisions and understanding that all of life is going to be uncertain and the more you can

bear that uncertainty the more potential you have it's okay if you don't know what to do yet it's okay if you feel overwhelmed you're doing something new are you you just expect to not feel overwhelmed you're changing your life it's going to be painful but pain isn't that bad of a thing in this sense it's actually a very good sign but the thing here with people just wanting things handed to them that's like what they've been programmed to do they've been programmed to obey Authority and take orders and not be able to do anything unless

they have permission from someone else so we need to overcome that that's where identity in the alter ego comes into play we need to get rid of the residual conditioning that is in your head from when you were a child so that's step three identity we have Vision Clarity identity that's how you change your life so three identity who must you become so I want to pose this question to you what would Jesus do have you heard that before turns out that question can be the singular source of a good life now I'm not a

Christian but I get the point of the question Jesus Christ a person is symbolic for someone who achieved a high stage of Consciousness in some circles they even called this Christ Consciousness but they didn't have the word Consciousness or awareness back then or else I think we'd all be on a very similar page right now and the differences between religion would be few now we've talked about the stages of ego development in a previous video titled how to become more intelligent than 99% of people so you can go and watch that to understand the stages

of development and what a a highly developed person looks like when they reside mostly in that stage of course you go up and down and left and right and whatever it may be but like as a baseline instead I want you to create an alter ego more conscious and develop than you so you can adopt their perspective to thrive in what used to be difficult situations your Alter Ego is who you become to achieve your vision and execute your plan and as Einstein supposedly said you can't solve a problem from the same level of mind

that created it so we need to tap into a higher level of mind to overcome the struggles we face in the pursuit of our goals because most of your problems aren't problems they're a lack of perspective and thus awareness and Consciousness so here's what I want you to do the first thing is to choose two to three aspirational archetypes that have achieved the things that you want to achieve so as I'm building a startup I can often pull qualities from people like Steve Jobs or John Hugh and Vitali who I have a podcast on on

this channel with who are the founders of Stan who have built a $30 million company relatively quickly and they they've been willing to help me and answer questions so it's cool to have a mentor but for something like meaning or spirituality it makes a lot of sense to look up to Someone Like Jesus Christ or guat guat Buddha I didn't mean to say it like that gatama Buddha the beautiful thing about the internet is that you can literally just follow these people and absorb their advice step number two is to write down the qualities you

need to achieve your goals so your job is to study these aspirational archetypes and note the qualities that you need to adopt or you need to put into your Alter Ego Steve Jobs was articulate creative and high agency Buddha was mindful calm and sharp these are the qualities you're going to jump into when it's time to act the third step is giving your Alter Ego a name this kind of helps make it a bit more real this can be anything a name of a person a name of an animal just make it something descriptive of

the identity you want to adopt I personally thought of myself as Goku going Super Saiyan when I'm trying to hit a new record in the gym but you can do whatever you want now with this creating an alter ego isn't just some silly practice you've probably done it before without being conscious of it and now that you can make it conscious and you can tap into it when you want to that's powerful so it's not a mask that you put on that just disappears once you take it off it's a vessel for identity change you're

kind of consciously expanding into this new level of mind and the more time you spend there the more it becomes your natural state because you're viewing life from that lens you're going to be like shifting between in and out of it actually this was the reason behind the symbol on my book The Art of focus there's looks like a bullseye there's one line on the outside one on the middle and then a DOT on the inside and they represent your perspective the perspective of your ideal self and the perspective of the universe and being able

to go in and out of those things to act better in certain situations or to navigate life and your problems so now that we have all of that how do we just like go how do we do it how do we go War mode because you don't need motivation or discipline when you are the person who would take specific actions to change who you are you must educate practice and experience new information to reprogram your mind's faulty wiring that was installed by Society you must rip yourself out of the environment that is keeping you the

same you must force yourself into places you don't belong until you do you must Channel what you learn into a project that moves you toward your vision take your alter ego and go War mode and remember War mode is different from monk mode you attack your goals you simulate a hunt you say yes to everything you expose yourself to massive experience so the first step to going War mode is to commit and shave your head now you don't have to shave your head especially if you're a woman but the point still stands do something physical

that is representative of your commitment that you can't turn back from too many people in today's society want to try changing their life without consequences it's no wonder why they rarely achieve anything they have too many plan B's they aren't fully invested in their Vision because they're afraid to leave the comfort that will always prove to end up more uncomfortable than committing to a life you want listen to that again buy new clothes burn your old ones sign a lease on an apartment you can't afford so you're forced to make your business work get on

the plane across the country with a few dollars and a plan put your last few dollars into marketing for your business money doesn't buy happiness but it buys the ability to make mistakes which leads to growth which leads to happiness this is tactical stress do the thing that makes your self-doubt real because right now it's all in your head it's going to be a lot scarier than the reality of it it's like a goldfish you can only grow as much as the tank you were put in so put yourself in a new tank so after

committing doing something physical send me pictures if you shave your head the second step is to learn and you learn by embracing chaos you need two habits 30 to 60 minutes of learning and 30 to 60 Minutes of building because the most important thing you can do when the world is changing rapidly is learn new skills new technologies new p in life dedicate time to finding the ideas you can channel into your work hopefully I can help with this I have a lot of videos on skill acquisition and now that cortex AI is in I'm

going to be making more on how to enhance those with things like AI which is a Cutting Edge skill that many people should learn now in terms of building if you want any form of work money or the ability to sustain aain a better life you need to create something valuable that other people want you already spend most of your time building for someone else you can set aside some time to build your own thing but we don't stop there learning goes far beyond just reading books and watching tutorials learning is a fundamental human drive

you learn from your everyday experience but you don't learn in the known you don't learn in the mundane everyday routine that you've fallen into over the past few years when things get static you need to change something anything you need chaos you need novel you need the experiences and ideas that fuel forward progress build something new test test test rip apart your daily routine do anything but the same thing so we commit we learn and third step build your mind body and business if you don't know what to build start with the only things that

matter your mind which is how you interpret risks and opportunities to make better decisions your body how you look feel and are perceived by others and business how you contribute value to the world you live with your mind and body so it should be considered your full fulltime job to study them Master them and not be controlled by them your mind and body allow you to transform the world and help others the amount of Transformations you can make the ability to create is what uh that's David Deutsch's definition of wealth your ability to create is

your capacity to generate wealth now business is the modern way to package up the creative ability of your mind and give it to others in a way that allows you to sustain your ideal life your health and energy are your capacity to invest attention into your your life's work without getting distracted your mind body and business are the singular priorities that will lead to your vision becoming reality create a project for each adopt a training program start the business acquire knowledge in the pursuit of both and for those asking what about relationships don't understand that

by developing yourself you improve your relationships by proxy you become less of a leech your cup overflows into theirs and you no longer need them to pour into yours now the last step is to just expose yourself to massive experience because warm mode is a period of intense growth it doesn't last forever maybe 2 to 3 months you only have so much you can give before you burn out so give it everything you have say yes to everything talk to new people accept the invitation launch the business ask for help fill your mind with so

much chaos that even if you crack Under Pressure you come out a more developed individual fly too close to the Sun and land on the moon I promise you you will look back in 12 months and have no idea how you came so far after a period of recovery Do It All Over Again growth is linear it comes in short exponential burst of progress the good thing is once you practice it you can choose to set up the right variables to encourage this period of growth I'll see you on the other side thank you for

watching like subscribe writer boot camp Link in the description cortex AI should be out now go try it out I'll see you in the next video bye