Colin R. Stuckert's Blog, page 22

Experiment Or Die

“All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.”

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Do you regularly push yourself outside of your comfort zone? Or do you take the path of least resistance?

There are people that make the conscious effort to do things that make them uncomfortable, but they are the minority. The fact is, most people choose the easy path, also known as, “The path of least resistance.”

Because the majority of humans seek comfort as their default operating system, they don’t “experiment” much in their lives. Because of this lack of experimentation, they will never ever reach their full potential.

But I don’t want to just talk about that. No, I’d much rather talk about how you can do more experimenting and get better results whether you already do some or none.

No matter where you are on the “comfort” and “experimenting” scales, there is one thing I want you to do more of. This: be more scientific.

Let’s discuss why.

First of all, I’m a big believer in personal development, but more specially, in being methodical with personal development.

My belief in the importance of being methodical, scientific even, with personal develop is why I also believe that self-awareness is so damn important, integral really, to success. From what I’ve seen in others (and myself) over the years is that an awareness of one’s desires, thoughts, motivations, strengths and weaknesses is always the epicenter of a solid personal develop program. After all, how can you “develop” yourself into a better person if you don’t know what parts of you most need developing? 

Self-awareness is the key, my friend.

Combining awareness of the self with a step-by-step, goal oriented method of development is the key to success in every avenue of life.

An awesome byproduct of these two factors is you end up taking more risks and making more experiments in life when you utilize them. Thus, my advice boils down to this: Treat the things you do in life like you would treat any project at school or work; make lists, timelines and deadlines, and most important of all, set expectations for the outcome you are trying to reach. Then get out there and do and iterate and test and iterate.

Measurement for Improvement

They say what gets measured gets improved. I agree.

The individual that has a clear idea of where she wants to be is far more likely to get there, or at the very least, end up somewhere better than where she is now. On the flip side, those that take a more random approach to life and success tend to end up wherever they end up through happenstance. 

I don’t know about you, but happenstance is the last thing I want to direct my life.

To avoid ending up wherever the wind blows you, you must to be scientific and methodical and use visualization and planning.

The first thing you should do is write out what you want to accomplish. Writing down your goals should be applied to anything and everything you want to improve, from your smallest habits in life, such as flossing, to your grandest life goals, like starting that non-profit to change the world. 

The next thing to do is to start listing out (that means more writing down) the small steps, milestones and actions you have to do to get you closer to that goal. This is where you should be creative and try to connect things that might not easily connect. 

Example: you want to start a non-profit, but you aren’t great at asking people for things and since you know that you will have to regularly ask for money via fundraising, you make it a goal to start doing more asking in your life—ask for a favor, ask to borrow money, ask for advice, and so on.

Connecting seemingly small habits with your future goals and success might seem like a long shot. They aren’t.

How else do you become a brilliant speaker, actor, businessman, dancer, musician, linguist, etc.? 

Like this: You start with developing the smallest skills into habits by repeating them over and over and over for years on end.

Spend some time thinking about it and you’ll see that every improvement of the self translates to an improvement in every goal you are pursuing. 

Every. Single. One.

This is why personal development is the most important thing in life.

It’s why smart, wealthy people like Warren Buffet and Bill Gates regularly talk about the importance of reading and knowledge, and how each have been integral to their respective success. (Because reading makes you better in so many ways, in case you were wondering. In fact, I correlate any success I’ve ever had in my life to my love—and skill—of reading.)

It’s time you started thinking of your development as a person as methodical and scientific.

When you start thinking of uncomfortable situations as an experiment—as a way of improving yourself—you are more likely to take action and make it happen. And the more you do this, the more you’ll see how you can embrace every part of your life as a way of getting better.

A Real Life Example of Experimenting

Now let’s talk about the importance of experimenting with things that most people don’t think to experiment with, like improving your social skills, asking for things you want from people, being more open, honest and vulnerable, and so on.

These parts of your personality are things you’ve probably picked up through life depending on whatever your life has you doing on a regular basis. Maybe you have been staying inside most days to work on a big project and so your social interactions are lacking. Maybe you work the night shift and you don’t interact with people that much because you are sleeping while everyone else is awake. Maybe you are so used to being around people that staying home alone on a Friday night makes you feel lonely and anxious. And so on.

The life examples are limitless, but the thing that relates to them all is your life is going to be affected by what you do on the regular. There is no escaping this concept; it’s simply the way you, as a human, are hardwired.

And this is why self-awareness of your situation and your comfortability with various aspects of life are so integral to staying on top of your game.

What’s especially hard about combating life’s role in our development, or lack thereof, is how insidious these habits creep up on us. The more our habits, good or bad, become hardened into routine, the more we form beliefs, often called “stories,” that surround the way we are, which end up keeping us from seeing ourselves objectively. This is why it usually takes a drastic life circumstance to change the most ingrained aspects of our personalities.

The stories we create about ourselves trigger cognitive pitfalls like confirmation bias and can infect our professional lives as well as our personal. You find this in the employee that has been doing the same thing for years and is unwilling to try the new way. It’s found in the all too common relationships where one individual feels one way and is unwilling to change, let alone admit they need to, while likely blaming their partner. On and on the examples go.

What I’m trying to showcase is then fact that the concepts I am highlighting in this essay can be the catalyst for improving every single part of your life, which is why, fundamentally, you should want to experiment and make yourself uncomfortable on a regular basis.

Start treating your personal development like a scientist would and conduct conscious experiments with the goal of learning so you can improve. Start doing things that aren’t in your typical routine, which will put you in situations that make you think and improvise, each integral for improvement. 

What you don’t want: Complacency

Complacency is slow death. Human beings are made to pursue progress and the accumulation of resources. It’s built into our DNA, and since there’s no escaping it, you might as well embrace it.

Here’s a perfect example of what I’m talking about that also serves as a fun social experiment. I heard this from Noah Kagen over at OKDORK.com. I think it’s called the “coffee challenge.” What you do is this: The next time you order coffee at your favorite local coffee shop, ask the barista for 10% off. When they ask why, come up with whatever reason you want or just say, “Because.”

I like this kind of thing. It challenges you socially and definitely pushes you outside of your comfort zone. It also has profound implications for other areas of your life, like asking for a promotion, a meeting, anything.

Let’s look at a similar example from my own life. If you are like me, you hate small talk and it can be hard for you to be interested in people you just met. For those of you that struggle in social situations like this, a thing you can do is start making a point to ask people how they are and forcing yourself to be interested. You’ll be amazed by the connections you make with this little technique, not to mention how much better your social skills will get.

To Each His or Her Own

We all have our own version of what it means to take experiment and try new things in life. Maybe you need to really push yourself to the extreme to find development. Or maybe just getting out of the house is an exercise in personal development.

Whatever it is for you, the only thing you can do is start where you are at and operate in the arena that will bring you betterment, whichever arena that happens to be. That said, there is one bit of advice that is universal across the board and it is this: Think Bigger.

No matter where you are and where you want to be, think bigger than you are now. There’s always something bigger. By setting your sights higher, you’ll end up reaching higher.

This idea of thinking bigger is one of the reasons I’m a huge fan of biographies. The stories of other people have the knack of opening your mind to other styles of life and thinking, which for me as always resulted in expanding my idea of what was (is) possible for my life. Each time I read a biography, I adapt some of this “style” into my own thinking and life, which usually results in bigger goals. Trust me on this one. 

Of course, I want to do more than just tell you to read biographies. What I really want to do is give you techniques, as well as motivation, so you can experiment more in your life just like Emerson suggests above.

To experiment in your life means to take risks by doing things you are not used to doing; pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone. But most people are hesitant to take risks, which makes sense considering our DNA has programmed us to seek what’s easy because that used to be what was the safest thing to do in the world we lived in as nomadic hunter gatherers.

But today is a different. We live in a time where physical safety is high, and where our progress comes from taking the kind of risks that will hurt on an emotional level. This is why the better you know yourself, the more likely you’ll be to take calculated risks that will end up making you better instead of succumbing to fear in the form of excuses and biases. Further, the more you know about yourself, the more you learn about yourself when you do put yourself in these situations.

Get experimenting! Try new things and learn from the experience. Read new books, meet new people, visit new places, learn new skills, try new things, and so on. The more you do, the better you’ll become.

As Martin Yan said of travel, “People who don’t travel cannot have a global view, all they see is what’s in front of them. Those people cannot accept new things because all they know is where they live.” Or as Louis Boone said of failure: “Don’t fear failure so much that you refuse to try new things. The saddest summary of a life contains three descriptions: could have, might have, and should have.”

As you see, not experimenting is not only a way to stifle progress, but also something that will expose you to other risks, specifically the risk of “what if?” 

Happiness research has concluded that progress is integral to happiness in human beings. We must constantly be striving, hoping and anticipating to live a full and happy life. You know, the old: It’s not the destination, it’s the journey.

Victor Frankl, from his experiences in Nazi death camps, concluded that the prisoners most likely to survive were the ones that possessed some kind of hope or meaning—hope that they would be reunited with loved ones, or meaning in a purpose or job they fulfilled. (Frankl himself treated patients during his time at Aushwitz.)

To say the least, progress is integral to life.

Experiment or die. (See the analogy?)

If you don’t make a point to move forward in life, you wind up like the muscle that doesn’t get used. In case you are hazy on Anatomy 101, a muscle that isn’t used will atrophy–waste away. This analogy applies perfectly to life: If you aren’t moving forward, you are wasting away.

The opposite of growing is dying. Experiment to grow.

Embrace that progress and change are integral to life instead of fighting each the way many do. Then, start taking risks and experimenting. Open your mind to new ideas and experiences. Get out there and cause a ruckus.

Experiment or die.

Get to work.

-Colin

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How Do You Know Where You Are Going If You Don’t Know Where You Are Going?

“Remember that thought is the fire that creates the steam that turns the wheel of fortune, upon which your experiences depend.”

–Haanel, Charles F. – The Master Key System

There’s a thing we all do every day. Some do it better than others, more controlled and directed. Others do it randomly and haphazardly.

This thing is called thinking.

We all think every day; our brain controls all kinds of things without thought while our consciousness is in charge of the actions we take on a daily basis.

I’ve written before about the brain and mind and how it is what makes you who you are. Today, I’m going to talk about how you can use your brain more effectively.

So, what does it mean to “be better” at using your mind? To me, it means you are good at focusing your attention while also having a high level of self-awareness.

The reason self-awareness is an integral part of using your brain effetely is because Self-awareness helps you understand what you are trying to accomplish so you can direct your attention towards it, thus making your conscious thought effective. Without awareness, you aren’t effective because your focus is scattered in too many directions (perhaps why the word “scatterbrained” has a negative connotation).

Study any successful person and you’ll see that they invariably posses the skill of intense focus. This focus allows them to identify the path—and focus on it—that will lead them to where they want to be. Without focus, and the awareness needed to direct that focus, you will accomplish a whole lot of nothing and very little of anything.

Where are you going? Do you even know?

An aside: I use the word “successful” often in my writing. Most people read it and think I’m referring to only tangible things, like success and external accomplishment, but that’s not the case. When I refer to “success,” I’m referring to success in all parts of life, from relationships to happiness to external accomplishment and everything in between. Simply apply “success” and “being successful” to whatever the word means to you for your life.

Focus and awareness are a few examples of how being good using your brain is a combination of things, which help to showcase why some people are better in certain areas than others when it comes to matters of the mind.

Think about it: some people have a better awareness–and acceptance–of the things they want and so they go after it with zeal, and some are good at focusing when they are interested but seem to have trouble finding the things they are interested in enough to direct that focus. Then we find those individual that can focus on a thing if they could only figure out what thing they should be focusing on for what they are trying to accomplish (and maybe they don’t know what they are trying to accomplish and so they make their goal money).

Enter Vision

Let’s say you have identified which area of the brain you are good at, and which you are not. For you, I would prescribe the same thing that I would to prescribe to the individual that is your opposite; I would prescribe vision.

Vision has the ability to trump everything when it comes to using your mind effectively (granted it’s a clear enough, and strong enough, vision).

Without vision, you don’t know where you are going or how to get there. As Seneca said, “If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable.”

A strong vision trumps all other qualities of the mind if it is powerful enough because it utilizes the law of attraction. By focusing on a clearly defined vision, your subconscious moves toward that vision on the regular, often without you realizing it.

Your subconscious will move you towards the realization of that vision the more you visualize it. It might even help you overcome the things you aren’t that great at and perhaps bring them up to par.

Another thing about a vision of the future is it brings about a strong motivation in the present. Most people have shitty visions of the future, or worse, their vision doesn’t extend beyond what they are doing this weekend. Compare this shortsightedness to the opposite end of the spectrum; the visionary that is always thinking about the future, always whittling away at the clarity of it, and as a result, is constantly moving toward its manifestation.

If you had to go the distance in anything, which individual would you want in your corner? The short-term thinker or the visionary?

Hardly a choice.

It’s time to start thinking about your future. Most people don’t think about the future because it’s hard. It’s hard to be patient, and to have faith that the future will look like the visions in your mind. In fact, most people can’t fathom the idea of a world changing to meet their desires. They have been conditioned their entire lives to play by the rules, not cause a ruckus, and to rely on the government and corporations to take care of them.

Further, most people can’t think big enough, even if they try really hard. Their mental conditioning is to confined by what it has lived in. Even if they try to think big, outlandish even, a part of them feels like it’s nothing more than a fairy tale, with no real chance of coming to fruition.

The individuals that change the world are the one’s that are not limited by the status quo.

Like I said, visualization is hard. It requires a lot of mental strain as well as the belief that you can build the future you visualize if really set your mind to it. No wonder people are so shortsighted in their visions of the future… it’s easier.

Instead of viewing the future as a mental chore, and as something that will just come when it comes, I implore you to embrace visualization as a fun thing to do. Then, the more you visualize the future, the more you will believe in those visualizations and the more fun it will get, which is, as we have seen, a necessary ingredient for making your visualizations come to life.

Are you floating through life, blowing wherever the wind decides to take you?

Visualization

A common mistake with visualization is visualizing a future using only the present as a reference point. In this case, one will end up visualizing a future that is just a little bit better than the now. To the true visionary, one who thinks of a world entirely different, this is hard to fathom. Of course, the fact is, this is the reality for most individuals.

The visionary sees a completely different future, both for himself and the world. He does not imagine an upgraded version of the now, he sees (creates) a completely different paradigm in his mind.

So, how do you become a visionary? And is it necessary?

Well, it isn’t necessary, but if it means it pushes you further outside of your reality, than I say it is a worthwhile goal. Shoot for the stars and reach the mind, ya know?

To start thinking more like a visionary, you must first think bigger. Way bigger.

No matter what you want in life right now,  start multiplying it. Take your current goals and multiply them by 100 or a 1000. Next, start visualizing what your life, and the world, will look like based on these projections. (Recommend books on thinking bigger: The Elon Musk biography and The Magic of Thinking Big.)

Second, start thinking hard about your visualized future on a daily basis. What does it look like? Where will you live? What will your daily routine look like? What people will you surround yourself with? And on and on.

Creating a truly grand vision is like creating a world inside a video game, where there are no limitations but the ones you make for yourself.

At first, you won’t be a great architect of your future. Your designs will be boring, bland, sloppy and vague. However, with practice, you will iterate and improve. And the more you iterate, the better defined and designed your vision will become.

I know this all sounds a bit esoteric, but most powerful ideas are initially. The key is to get working from whatever baseline you are currently at.

Try this as well…

As a thought experiment, ask yourself two questions:

“If I was living in the Matrix, would I ever know?”

And

“If I woke up tomorrow and all the math books said that 1+1=3, and if every mathematician and history book you could find said the same thing, would I have to change my beliefs or would I hold true to what I know?”

The point of these questions is to highlight the fact that you only know what you think you know, and that ultimately, you don’t really know anything because how do you know what you know is the truth and not just what you know?

Excuse me for getting all philosophical on you, but I think it’s necessary.

(I highly recommend you think about these questions for a few minutes. You might be surprised what other questions and ideas they raise for you.)

Just so I don’t leave some of you hanging, here’s what I’m suggesting in plain English:

Your vision (and life) are only limited by the limitations you place upon them. Free yourself of your preconceived ideas, notions and current circumstances and get dreaming. Then start moving towards that vision on the daily.

-Colin

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How Much Attention Equals How Much Success

“Attention or concentration is probably; the most important essential in the development of mind culture. The possibilities of attention when properly directed are so startling that they would hardly appear credible to the uninitiated. The cultivation of attention is the distinguishing characteristic of every successful man or woman, and is the very highest personal accomplishment which can be acquired.”

Haanel, Charles F., The Master Key System (p. 29)

I haven’t been writing lately, which is bad. But, holding true to my Stoicalness which says to find opportunity in everything, I have learned something about myself.

This is what I learned about myself: When I don’t write, I don’t cope well with life. When I am failing to fulfill my daily writing practice, life is harder to be good at.

And I like being good at life.

Writing is a therapy of sorts, allowing my subconscious to release the lid on things that are under pressure. When I write, I feel better than when I don’t write, and so I will make it a point to never again let my practice slack.

What thing provides you therapy? Are you staying on top of it?

We all have things we do on the regular basis that help us stay balanced—our own flavor of self-therapy.

For you, maybe it’s watching movies or taking long contemplative walks. Perhaps it’s meeting a friend for lunch every week. Whatever.

The thing is, we often don’t realize the power these therapeutic activities have on our sanity until after we’ve been neglecting them for awhile and life has started becoming more difficult than we are used to.

Attention

I’ve read lots of self-help books over the years. Some aim to motivate and inspire, and some try to teach you practical skills you can use in everyday life (like the book quoted above).

While I think each style of book is necessary for making real change in one’s life, it’s the practical recommendations that I find myself seeking out the most—visualization, gratitude practice and meditation being the three wisemen of these recommendations.

A thing about visualization and the power of the mind is it’s usually a subconscious act. Successful people have different brain chemistry than average people, and because of this different conditioning throughout their lives, they often use techniques like intense focus and concentration coupled with clear visualization of the future they want to create. While there are plenty success-minded individuals that purposely use techniques like visualization to their advantage, I bet the majority do it subconsciously as an innate part of their personality.

This is probably why we so often see individuals try to explain how they think and developed this way of thinking in retrospect—usually through books and seminars—long after they developed their method and after they realized that their method of thought was different from everyone else’s.

Sure, there are many rabbit holes to venture down on the topics of success and the mind, but today I want you to think of only one after you finish reading. It’s this: Attention.

Attention is a thing you were told to do in your younger years when you sat in cold classrooms and uncomfortable chairs while listening to boring lectures on things you  probably didn’t care about (yet, at least). So maybe attention sounds like a chore, and maybe that’s why attention, in general, doesn’t get enough attention (I couldn’t resist).

Spend some time thinking about it and you’ll see that attention is the single most important thing in human existence, and not just as it relates to tangible success. (Read up on the Buddhist principles, and the techniques—and purpose—of mediation and mindfulness, and you’ll see what I mean.)

Attention is of paramount importance for us all because all we ever have is this moment, and if you aren’t able to focus your attention on the present moment because you are stuck in the past or future, you’ll never actually enjoy anything in life because you’ll always be somewhere else. (Not to mention all the suffering we inflict on ourselves by a mind that is always somewhere else other than the now.) Before I fully venture down that rabbit hole, let’s leave it at this: Attention is paramount.

Now, let’s talk about attention as it relates to success.

Think of any thing that has been ever built—your home, a city, a car, the Internet, Facebook, Google, the pyramids—and try to list which ingredients went into their creation?

You’ll probably answer something like, “Stone, metal, time, money.” You might even say, “Intent.”

And you’d be right on all accounts, but still missing the entire picture.

The thing you are missing that is paramount to every creation is attention. Attention is the universal thing to every thing that has ever been, and will be, built by man.

Without attention, your stone, metal, time and money are just potential. With attention, you can build a pyramid with nothing more than rope, wood and slaves. With attention, you can build the world’s best search engine, or the first automobile, and so on.

And the thing about attention is you’ve been applying it your entire life.

It’s pretty easy to see how attention is the fundamental ingredient for building anything, but is having good attention enough for success?

Nope.

Attention combined with intention is the formula for success.

Intention can come in many forms; a vision in your head, blueprints on paper or a spreadsheet, or the simple desire to make something out of nothing.

This is why the most successful humans in the world always combine extreme focus with crystal clear intention.

To build anything, you need attention focused on intent.

My Writing

Back to my writing practice I mentioned at the beginning of this piece. What does my writing practice (or lack thereof) have to do with attention or intention?

For me, it has everything to do with it. Let me explain. My writing practice is a way I pull my attention to my intention, which is what I think is probably true of any therapeutic endeavor. By pulling out the things in my subconscious—the yearnings, desires, expectations, stresses—I get to learn what I really want, who I really am, and how to go about getting what I want while quelling things I don’t really want.

For me, writing keep me in touch with myself, honest with myself. It helps me sift through the many things in life so I can focus on my true self and purpose. And when I slack, I get lost.

What thing keeps you focused and aware? What things are getting your attention? Are they moving you to where you want to be, or further away?

If you ask me, figuring this out is a must.

-Colin

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What Reality Do You Live In?

“In response to those who say to stop dreaming and face reality, I say keep dreaming and make reality.” 

― Kristian Kan

I often tell people, “I’m living in my own reality and everyone else is a guest.”

Egotistical or honest? Maybe both?

Meh… who cares? In my reality, I don’t, nor should anyone care about such trivial a thing.

Let’s just say, I’m stating the obvious.

Of course, people don’t want the truth because they can’t handle it (name the movie), but the fact is, we all live in our own realities.

That means you, and that means me.

My reality, your reality, his reality, her reality; they are all uniquely strange and different even when they are all looking at the same exact thing.

Let’s rap about your brain for a moment. Did you know that your experience in life is nothing more than your brain interpreting signals from the external world, which only exists in your mind because your brain tells you it exists? 

There is only a universe because your brain tells you there is one.

What does the reality of a “crazy” person look like? What about a “sane” person? What about an “average” person? What about a “successful” person? 

The easily identifiable thing each of these realities have in common is the fact that they are different. They are unique and impossible to explain or quantify by anyone but the individual living in that reality.

What makes anyone’s reality more “real” than another’s? Maybe all of us “normal” people are the crazy ones and the people locked up in the asylums see the truth. Maybe there is no truth because truth is only subjective to the individual?

And still, we are so egotistical to think we know things, like math, space, science, nutrition, and so on. How do we really know anything?

We don’t!

That’s the beauty and the tragedy of it all, depending on how you look at it. And that’s where our power lies if we are wise enough to grasp it and use it to our advantage.

Socrates often said he knew nothing. It wasn’t until recently that I formed an understanding of this for myself. I may be wrong in assuming what he meant by this phrase, but for me, it reminds me that everything in life that I see, touch and feel around me, is as much a truth as it is not. I could be in a computer simulation. Maybe we are living in 2150 and AI has taken over and enslaved mankind, something like The Matrix. How the hell would I know any different?

But then, why does it matter if I actually take the red pill and see the harsh, ugly reality that is the truth? Why not live out a more enjoyable existence inside the machine? I know which pill I’d take if given a choice between the terrible truth or blissful ignorance. (Hint: the blue pill.)

Since we really don’t know whether we actually know anything, nothing or something, why not choose what to know?

This. Is. What. I’m. Talking. About.

We have the power to choose the reality we want to live in. You live in your reality and I live in mine, and no one will ever be able to experience or understand ours the way we do, and vice versa.

Ever wonder why it’s so hard to understand people at times? Have you ever felt like other people were idiots for not being able to understand you?

Join the club.

Your Brain

If your brain signaled to your body that anytime you touched something it felt like you were touching a hot stove, to you, everything would feel like a hot stove. It would be your reality and no one else will get it. As a result, you’d probably try to touch as little as possible. Some people will accuse you of “faking it” and/or call you crazy. Don’t feel bad, this is how most people react when faced with a form of reality they don’t understand.

This might not be the greatest example, but it does help illustrate my point: that your brain is you. Without a brain, you aren’t a person, nor do you have a personality or possess the capacity to love, laugh or cry. Your brain, and the trillions of neural connections that comprise it, is what makes you you.

I am my brain and it’s consciousness. You are your brain and it’s consciousness.

Knowing this, imagine the power you’d possess if you could find a way to “rewire” your brain. With this power, you could rewrite your reality, and thus, your life. Literally.

This might sound like woo woo hocus pocus type style, but I assure you it’s not. It’s the kind of stuff Tony Robbins has been teaching for years (see: NLP).   

You really can change your reality through conscious effort. That’s the good news. The bad news is, it’s really freaking hard to do, and can take a really long time.

So what? What worth having has ever come easy?

Nothing, my friend, nothing.

I shouldn’t have to tell you that possessing the power to rewire your reality gives you the ultimate power to turn your life into whatever you want. 

Yes… anything.

You see, I have this theory about successful people. It’ this: they understand this concept, whether intuitively or through conscious study, and they put it to use in their lives on a daily basis.

Spend any time studying successful people and you will see that the words they use, and the thoughts that direct those words, are not the same ones that most people use. Because they think differently, they act differently and get different results. 

(I purposely choose not to use the word “better” in place of “differently” to maintain some form of political correctness. That said, if you are aspiring to success, you should read it as if I didn’t go the PC route.)

Perception is reality.

You have been conditioned, since you were a child, to do, say, think and feel a certain way. You have been molded into who you are by things outside of you. It’s not until you grow older, when your brain develops to the point in which it starts asking questions of the self (self-awareness), that you start seeing things differently. 

For most, this is when they start to realize the immense power they posses; the power of choice. Some people learn how to wield this power and go on to use it to make positive changes in their life. Those that don’t get to this realization in life will end up living at the mercy of whatever randomness life brings their way.

You have the power of choice; the power to choose how you will live out each day of your life. Either you accept the responsibility of your reality and get to work or you sit back and let whatever happens, happen.

I’m not suggesting any of this is easy. It’s all really hard, in fact. Just reaching a point in life where you realize you have a choice at all is a really hard thing to do, and one that most people will never get to.

Reaching this point requires a lot of life experience in addition to a willingness and openness to learning and improving. You also have to learn things about yourself, the world around you and just enough about human evolution, anthropology and psychology so that you will be able to grasp the fact that you really do have the power to choose how you live your life.

I sometimes wonder if I would think and act the way I do if I wasn’t put through some of the things I have been. (Actually, I  already know the answer: I would’t.)

Self-Awareness is Everything (If You Ask Me)

Individuals that obtain the self-awareness needed to reach the choice, often feel as if they’ve had an awakening of the Self. A kind of “rebirth.” This often brings the individual an “existential crisis,” where the individual starts questioning their life, meaning and purpose.

For some, this is torture because it challenges firmly held beliefs, notions and perceptions. It also rarely comes with a clear answer, and instead brings more strife than before the individual reached this point.

As they say, “With great power comes great responsibility.” And great responsibility can be a heavy burden.

Individuals that realize they have the power to change their reality are the ones that do so. These are the individuals that usually pursue a not-traditional route of pursuing an income. They are often outspoken and passionate about how things should be better than they are now. More often than not, these individuals open themselves up for criticism and ridicule, even death in certain circumstances.

Joining the mob is easier for most because most have been conditioned their entire lives to follow the rules, plan for a safe and secure future (usually in the form of a job) and not cause much of a ruckus of any kind. Sure, some escape this conditioning, but most don’t.

You can probably guess that I recommend not joining the mob, and I do, but since I’m verging on the edge of a major digression with this piece, I’ll just leave it there. Do with it what you will. (Don’t join the mob! Create your own reality and live in it!)

The Brain

For retention sake, I’ll say it again: Everything in your life, i.e., the things you do, see, think, feel and hear, are simply a signal to your brain and a response from it. Your brain receives stimuli and then converts it into thoughts, feelings and actions. Everything is anything because your brain tells you so. (You and I might be just a sim in some kids computer game in some dimension we’ve never heard of. You just never know.) 

This is why your brain is the center of everything.

Without a brain, you are dead. When someone is “brain dead,” they are just an organic shell that holds organs, blood, and a collection of cells. They really are, as far as being a human goes, dead. 

We are our brains, and our conscious Self is the expression of the thoughts that go through that brain. Our brains are what make us human. It’s what allows us to rationalize and become self-aware, which is one of the things that separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom.

Your brain forms thoughts based on the learning it has received thus far. These thoughts, many of which work under the surface at the subconscious level, form your reality and perception. 

Based on all of this, would’t it be nice if you could have a better control of your brain, mind, thoughts and reality? 

Duh.

For thousands of years, humans have been trying to gain better control of the mind in an effort to control it. The most common technique for controlling the mind is meditation—which I recommend for everyone. Other forms to mental training include self-help content, reciting affirmations and incantations, music, dance, and all other kinds voodoo magic.

While each of these methods might work for you, I’m only here with one goal: getting you to become aware enough of this concept so that you will do something about it.

If you don’t accept that life and reality is what you make it, you’ll forever be what I call, “A pinball stuck in the pinball game of life,” bouncing around from external to external with no rhyme or reason or way to make it stop.

The first step in taking control is knowing you have a choice. 

You have to learn that what you interrupt through your senses, and what your brain spits out back to you, can be controlled. Then you have to get to work training that control.

The Stoics were big on interpreting everything in life as neither good or bad, but as it was. Marcus Aurelius said, “Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.”

Damn… I freaking love that set of words.

The reason I keep harping on about how your reality is just a construction of your mind is because I want you to grasp the concept that you can take ownership of this construction. You can literally build your reality brick by brick into whatever you want it to be.

Buddha said, “The mind is everything. What you think you become.”

Smart guy, that Buddha.

Since you become what you think (Buddha said it!), you can start constructing your reality by consciously forming your thoughts. The more you do this, the better you’ll get. Your mind is a muscle, and science has proven that just like any muscle you not only have to use it or lose it, but you can also make it stronger through focused training.

Are you a guest in someone else’s reality or is everyone else a guest in yours?

Let’s summarize all this a bit

1. Understand what reality is: signals to and from your brain.

2. Know that you have the power to shape your reality by shaping your interpretation of these signals.

3. Use as many mind training techniques as you can—meditation, reading, research, psychology, philosophy, thinking, problem solving, hallucinogenics, anything that helps you reach other levels of consciousness and/or self-awareness.

4. Commit to the long haul. Developing your reality, just like developing anything of the self, is a long process that is the result of thousands—often millions—of small actions.

You have the ability to control your thoughts, and thus, your reality. The implications of this power are life-changing. You really are what you think, and since you can choose to think anything you want, why not think bigger and better?

Controlling your thoughts is a hard process, which takes a lot of practice and patience. In fact, most people don’t learn how to control their minds until they are at least mid-way through life, and even then, most don’t get it all that right.

Of course, you and I don’t have to wait that long, and we shouldn’t.

A consciously constructed reality is available to those that pursue and practice it.

Get to work.

-Colin

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The Point Isn’t To Fail, it’s To Win, But Fail You Must

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This essay was originally featured in my  free Sunday newsletter .

“There is only one way to avoid criticism: do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.”

-Aristotle

Comfort is warm and cozy, and sure, we all want to be comfortable in our lives as often as we can. But is it possible to be too comfortable? Is a comfortable life the best life you should live? Perhaps you have the potential for more?

Questions we must all ask of ourselves…

It makes perfect sense to desire a warm and cozy life. After all, a cozy life doesn’t have big ups or downs. It’s even-keel, mellow, low-stress, safe, and for some people, exactly what they need (like a Hobbit).

While a warm and cozy life is safe, it’s also uninspiring and uneventful. It’s not exciting and it’s not going to do anything grand or worth remembering. And again, for some, this is just fine.

Ask yourself this question: Which are you?

For me, a warm and cozy life is the last thing I want. I know that about myself well enough. Of course, that being said, I do sometimes wonder what life would be like if I did want warm and cozy. Life would be much easier for sure.

But I don’t want easy and I never will, and this is why I embrace–seek out, even–what’s hard.

Highs and Lows

Here’s the thing about life: If you want to experience grand highs and do grand things—as many of us do—you also have to experience the grand “lows.” These lows bring us pain, anguish and misery, and while we naturally want to try to avoid them, we really shouldn’t.

We can try to mitigate them, and learn from them, but resist them we should not.

Every time I’ve ever tried to avoid or control the lows of life, I failed miserably. Now, I aim to trigger as much of my Stoic side as possible so I can accept, even embrace, the lows of life.

And yes, in case you were wondering, it’s really freaking hard.

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Wanting the High Without The Low

For those of you that want the highs but can’t or won’t accept the lows, I’ve got bad news for you: life don’t work that way.

To do anything great, you have to get your hands dirty. You have to fall down and scrap your knee… a lot. You have to make an absolute fool of yourself, usually more than once. You have to take risks and be vulnerable. You have to open your life up to ridicule, judgement, and at times, hostility.

However, on the flip side, if you would rather have a more even-keel life, without all the ups and downs, that’s perfectly fine too. Go for comfort and easy and you’ll get just that. Of course, I’m going to assume that you probably don’t want that since you are reading this.

And so, a rule of life that you and I must follow is this: We can take the safe, easy route or the unsafe, difficult route, and as a result, we will get a safe life or an exciting life but not both.

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”

-Robert Frost

I say DO IT!

If you want to reach the highs, you need to take the risks and survive through the lows. It’s the toll you must pay to cross the bridge that leads to greatness. And there’s no cheating or shortchanging this price.

The thing is, most people don’t realize this is how life works. They either want greatness and don’t want to pay the price, or they think they want safe when they really want excitement. In either case, they struggle because they haven’t taken the time to figure out who they are and what they want.

No one way is right or wrong, actually, scratch that; that’s wrong. Here’s actually how it is: One way is right for the individual for whom it is right and one way is wrong for the other.

Again, you have to figure it out for yourself.

My purpose in writing a piece like this is to inspire you to seek the unsafe, uncomfortable and exciting life, and to embrace the struggle that is going to be apart of that chasing. As Hellen Keller said, “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.”

This is for you:

If you want to live an exceptional life that is full of abundance and unique experiences, you will have to get out and get your hands dirty.

You have to fail often and hard. Then you have to pick yourself up and go again. You have to do this over and over and over until the end of time.

Those who reach success in life at anything are the ones who have the grit to stay the course when it winds them down unknown, and difficult, paths.

A Thought Exercise

Take a moment to imagine yourself failing at something. Imagine you just tried FIVE times and failed gloriously each one of them. Now, if you are like most people, you would definitely have quit by the fifth attempt, maybe sooner.

Now consider that you went 10 times, failing each one still. Do you think you’d go for an eleventh? Do you have the grit to do that? Do you have a stomach for the embarrassment and insecurity that is going to increase with each failed attempt?

If you are like 99.99% of the population, you don’t.

Attempt and fail 50 times: Few individuals will ever get past a few tries.
How about 100 times? These individuals almost always “win” because they go until they do. (It’s what I like to call, “Manufacturing results.”)
How about 1000 times? These are the people that end up in the history books because they changed the world.

No matter what your personal tolerance for failure is, you can always increase it and fail more. And that’s what I want you to start doing more.

Fail more

Something to note here: The goal isn’t to fail, it’s to succeed. So when I say, “Fail more,” what I mean is you should be constantly doing the things that are hard while trying your best to succeed, and as a result of constantly putting in that work at the highest levels of your threshold, you will fail naturally as a byproduct of those efforts.

Make sense? Good, I’m glad we understand each other.

How willing are you to fail?

This single question will determine your success in life. This law applies to everything, not just monetary success. In your relationships, your career, and in the relationship you have with your yourself, you will forever grow exactly correlated to how willing you are to push your limits and fail.

Your willingness to fail, because you are doing what’s hard and operating in that arena, will translate exactly proportional to your success.

From now on, when something stands in your way, look at it as your path to greatness. Remind yourself: This is training for my future.

When you are experiencing pain, torment, or anguish, know that you are being prepared for your destiny. Then use your lows as a source of strength and future appreciation for the highs that are just around the corner.

Operate at your highest levels on a daily basis and fail as a result. Make no excuses for yourself and take none from others.

Yours in Life,

-Colin

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Will Money Buy You Happiness?

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This essay was originally featured in my  free Sunday newsletter .

Preface: The following piece does not come from a place of judgement—I am as much a perpetrator as the next guy. It is meant as an observation of humans (and myself) living in modern society. In fact, writing this is as much a reminder for myself as it is, hopefully, one for you.

From the 48 laws of power by Robert Greene: “Fyodor Dostoyevsky, similarly, whenever he wrote a successful novel, would feel that the financial security he had gained made the act of creation unnecessary. He would take his entire savings to the casino and would not leave until he had gambled away his last penny. Once reduced to poverty he would write again.”

The vast majority of people spend most of their time pursuing externals—money, fame, power, resources, approval—with the idea (assumption maybe?) that gaining such things will solve their problems and/or make them happy. The thing is, it’s rare when people take a moment to think about whether this is actually going to work. Further, it’s even rarer when an individual that reaches said goals takes the time to express genuine and lasting gratitude for what they have achieved because they are usually already on to the next thing they are after.

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The Hedonic Treadmill: a constant chasing for more, better and best.

People think I’m a bit crazy—or at least their eyes say it—when I tell them I often worry if I will be happy when I reach my goals. I try explain to them that I worry because when I think about my life, and how the pursuit of accomplishment is so integral to it, I’m forced to wonder what life will be like when I no longer have to pursue accomplishment. Will I then wake up each day without a driving purpose, like I do now? And if that happens, where will I derive my purpose? Will I still be fired up? After all, I’ve long since learned that I’m a builder and creator, and that much of my happiness is rooted in the act of creating and building and not as much in the end result.

Will I still build and create even though I won’t need to from a financial point? Will life then bore me? Will this boredom then lead to discontent, and eventually, to misery? Perhaps I chase more “success” in the hopes of recreating the ‘struggle’ that was part of pursing success in the first place—the way many successful entrepreneurs do? And, if I do this, at what point is enough enough? I don’t know the answers to these questions, but I think it’s smart to always be thinking about them.

Ultimately, this is what I fear: that success will remove the luster from life because it will remove the struggle.

Struggle is what gives the opposite of struggle meaning. I’ve long since accepted this, and try to appreciate it in my life on a daily basis.

A rule of life: The greater you struggle, the greater you appreciate the times you don’t struggling.

I’ve long since understood the laws of positive and negative as it pertains to the duality of life. This understanding has made me aware of how important struggle and not struggling is to the human condition. It’s also the reason I ponder what life will be like when I find myself with success. When I read a quote like above, it brings me back to these thoughts.

Of course, most people won’t be able to understand how I think this way, or how Dostoyevsky would have to gamble his money away. Without being Dostoyevsky, it’s near impossible to full understand the internal battles he faced and why he would need to be broke to be able to write and to maintain his identity as an artist. Sure, you and I know (think) we wouldn’t do that. We know (think) we would be different. We know (think) he is just a crazy outlier and probably off his rocker. We know (think) we would be happy and content with fortune, fame, success and power.

Of course, the fact is, we don’t know jack.

We don’t know anything until we are in the situation ourselves.

::break::

I just spent 20 minutes trying to find a quote I’m remembering. I think it was by one of the great Stoics—Aurelius, Seneca, Epictetus—but I’m not sure and my search was fruitless. The quote I’m thinking of pertained to how living a comfortable life is not noble. This quote was going to support my point about struggle and comfort. It spoke to the importance of living a life of struggle, how a hard life is integral for happiness and purpose, as well as the pitfalls of an easy life. Instead, here’s a quote I heard on one of my favorite podcasts, The Tai Lopez Show. It goes like this: Proverbs 27:17: “As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.”

Having it all, yet lacking it all

There are around 12 million millionaires in the world, more than ever before. Plenty of these individuals are happy, I’m sure, but plenty are also depressed and struggle with being happy even though they have all the things that the rest of the world spends the majority of their lives trying to achieve—security, power, freedom and money.

Why, then, do these individuals struggle with happiness when they have all the things that the rest of the world is trying to pursue through their pursuit of happiness? It’s this: purpose.

To anyone who still invests the majority of their life into producing an income to support themselves and their family, it’s hard to understand how someone can be rich and miserable. That just doesn’t compute in our minds. For us, having money would solve so many of our problems (we think) and so we just know (think) we would be happy if we were rich. Of course, like I said before, we don’t know anything until we are in that position.

It really comes down to this: The problems the middle and lower classes face are not the same problems the rich and privileged face.

Problems are problems and we all have them. As Biggie Smalls said, “Mo money mo problems.”

One of the most pervading problems of the upper classes is, in my opinions, this: their success has removed the “struggle” they faced when they struggled as a part of the lower class making their way on up. When an individual has enough money to provide for his or her family forever, there is a lack of struggle, and thus, purpose that comes as a result. This lack of struggle/purpose creates a kind of inertia and causes existential angst.

This is, according to happiness research, a big problem. Human beings need purpose and forward movement towards a better future to feel fulfilled and happy. And this is why they say it’s about the journey and not the destination, of which I wholeheartedly agree and try to remind myself of.

Don’t get me wrong. Success does solve many problems, specifically the ones that the lower classes face on a daily basis, but in return it brings with it its own set of problems—inertia, lack of purpose and hope, lack of excitement, fear of loss, inability to find true friends or partners and so on.

A critic to my theory might say that since the rich now have new struggles to overcome, my point about a lack of struggle would be invalid. I disagree. The thing is, the struggles brought to the upper classes are insidious and not easily recognized because they are not as common nor recognized as actual problems. Think about it: who would feel bad for a depressed rich person? Aside from another rich, depressed person, I doubt many.

Another thing about the problems of success is they require a lot of self-awareness and soul searching to figure out and combat.

Sometimes the pursuit for accomplishment—and the hope in that pursuit—is the perfect antidote to the pitfalls of the human mind. Working towards tangible accomplishment aligns perfectly with the human genetic imperative of acquiring resources, which we are genetically predisposed to do as the result of our ancestors living in the harsh wild for hundreds of thousands of years. In a nutshell, human beings are not adapted to have everything we want or need, and so we find ourselves faced with an existential crisis when we reach a point where we no longer have to work or struggle for survival. This is very much a paradox: we have so much desire for acquiring more resources built into our psyche that we become miserable when we acquire them for long periods of time because we are not programmed to have them for long because, in the wild, we would use up our acquired resource to survive and then have to go out and get them again.

Why do empires want to get bigger? Why do companies always want to grow huge? Why do we want more and better to no end? Above is why. Now, do you now see how Dostoyevsky would need to gamble away his fortune so he could recreate the struggle again, and thus, write?

Happiness

Happiness research shows us that a key to happiness for human beings is rooted in forward motion. Striving for something in the future gives one hope and purpose, and as research shows, is necessary for living a healthy and happy life.

We all have to move forward in life; it’s a survival instinct that our ancestors, who had to survive in the harsh wild without modern advancements in the form of refrigeration, farming or a consistent food system, have passed down to us. Because our ancestors had to fight every day of their lives to survive, acquiring more and more resources gave our ancestors a better chance of survival, and this has been built into our DNA.

When one has abundance, he or she loses the struggle that was a part of acquiring that abundance. When one loses that struggle, he or she loses the forward momentum that has been a natural part of human life for millions of years. Finally, when one loses forward movement towards something—like what happens when you have massive wealth—he or she runs into big problems. Again, the bizarre paradox of the human species: we all want more and better until we actually get it.

It’s the wanting and getting that we need, not the having. We really only need enough to survive and feel somewhat secure. Our brains aren’t programmed to handle anymore than that.

Again, to drive the point home, it’s the struggle that makes us happy,  not the having.

In a nutshell, human beings are a part of nature, and being so, are designed to struggle the way the rest of nature struggles. We are made to have a lot sometimes, not enough sometimes, and everything in between. Since society has granted us an overabundance of many things we once had to struggle for, we find ourselves struggling with a new set of problems, ones nature has not prepared us for (and that we will have to evolve through).

Struggle and happiness are intertwined; you can’t have one without the other. Without struggle, difficulty and hardship, life becomes a lifeless gray and we find ourselves searching for “better” as a means of bringing the color back into our lives. The problem is, when we start thinking the grass is greener, we don’t realize that we aren’t actually going after the greener grass because we want that better grass. In fact, we are actually chasing the struggle that comes with our seeking of better. And after we struggle and get what we want, we have to find something else to chase to recreate the struggle again or we will become unhappy.

When you chase bigger and better, you are chasing struggle, not bigger and better.

Understanding this, and using it to your advantage, will save you a lot of problems along the way.

I’m afraid of greener grass.

Initially I thought my fears were rooted in the constant seeking of greener grass, but what I’ve now realized after writing this is it’s rooted in a lack of understanding of why I’m chasing that grass. Sure, with certain things, greener grass can be dangerous, and that’s why I’m a big practitioner of gratitude and self-awareness.

Some things in life need greener grass, like purpose, personal growth, knowledge and wisdom, and some things don’t, like relationships, money, power and security.

In the former, you want to always be growing and chasing better and more while in the latter you want to learn how to express gratitude for what you have and aim to be aware of when enough is enough.

The reason I think about these topics before they become huge problems is, I want to better pursue happiness while also preparing myself for the pitfalls that future success has waiting for me.

Now, this isn’t all theoretical. I actually have a few ways I’m preemptively planing for these problems. One is through nonprofit work. By incorporating nonprofit work into my business, life and future goals as much as possible, I think I will have the purpose part covered. After all, no amount of success will ever make nonprofit work a solved problem. Through nonprofit work, I’ll always have something to find purpose in, and there will always be countless ways I can challenge myself personally and professionally.

The more I think about this, the more I understand why Fyodor Dostoyevsky would need to gamble away his last penny. He was a novelist, and since being a novelist was probably integral to his identity, the only way he was able to maintain his identity was to make himself broke so he could write again. I get it.

So, what’s the point to all this?

After reading this, you still might think it’s a bit audacious to be afraid of something that isn’t a guarantee to happen in the first place. Well, to that I say: “I’m different.” I come form the “Think and Grow Rich” school of thought in which I know I’m going to be successful. One way or another, I know I’m going to figure this success thing out. To me, this is a perfectly reasonable, even necessary, problem to ponder.

There are a few lessons here, but it’s up to you to take from it what you will. For me, this was a wonderful piece to write as it helped put some of these thoughts down on paper. I hope these words will give you some things to think about—and plan for—in your life and future.

Yours in Life,

-Colin

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“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” -Oscar Wilde

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”

―Oscar Wilde

There was once a research survey done of nursing home residents around the country. A question on that survey was, “What is your greatest regret?”

One answer that kept coming up went something like this:

I wish I wouldn’t  have spent so much time trying to win the approval of others. I wish I would have lived for myself.

Growing up, we are taught to follow the rules, mind our manners, and not be loud around other people. We are conditioned to keep other people in mind when we act so we don’t “disturb” other people. The thing about this conditioning is, it has seeped into every part of our lives, from our relationships and careers to the kind of music we listen to, the food we eat and the dress we wear.

I don’t know about you, but one of my life goals is to completely detach myself from the shackles of other people’s opinions. I want to put myself first before I do. I don’t want to make decisions by having fear of what others will think. I don’t want other people to be able to influence my life without my consent. The thing is, the opinions of others have a toxic effect that insidiously affects our entire lives.

This is not OK for me.

One way I am conditioning myself to not worry about what other people think is to constantly put myself out there and take risks in social, business and personal situations. By striving to be as much myself as possible, I’m hoping to become to into my own reality that I don’t take notice of the realities of other people.

Of course, this habit is a hard one to break.

Because we have been conditioned our entire lives to be conscious of other people’s thoughts, feelings and opinions—and because it’s programmed into our genes because those who worked well with others were more likely to survive in a nomadic tribe scenario—the majority of us wear a mask when we deal with other people. We are “nice” and “pleasant” and “courteous” when we wear this mask.

Sure, a mask can be useful for interacting with people, even necessary at times. The thing is, this nice mask isn’t really who we are because it is refined, restrained, and ultimately, fake. And since we are so used to putting this mask, we often forget that it’s even there, which can make it hard to take off and be our “true” selves. This mask is one of the reasons we filter everything we say. It’s why we have trouble letting down our guard and letting people in.

In our social media and email age, where we can hide behind a text message or an email, it’s becoming easier and easier to wear a mask that is filtered, edited and, again, not really who we are. It’s becoming easier to hide behind a screen and curate our masks, which ends up contributing to the continuing disconnect between who we really are and who we portray to the outside world.

Basically, our society is full of people that are great at acting the way everyone else does: pleasant, nice, and that don’t cause much of a ruckus. And because of this, it’s hard to tell who is being real and who is just acting real.

One of the most not-so-obvious ways this mask hurts us is the fact that we won’t be remembered because we haven’t given anyone a reason to remember us. There is a reason that the masses are so drawn to controversial and outspoken people and that’s because they break this social norm of reserved niceness. Deep down, we all yearn to express ourselves and remove our masks so we can be real. This is why we are drawn to people that aren’t afraid to be their true selves. It’s refreshing and we live vicariously through these individuals.

I think this “nice,” and “lying” culture we live in is worse off due to our unwillingness to be vulnerable and real. Ultimately, we have traded pleasantness for realness, and to me, that’s a bloody shame.

I don’t know about you, but…

I want to be free of other’s opinions because I have learned that the only thing that other people’s opinions have ever done for me is cause me pain and hold me back.

Never have I been better off because someone held a “desirable” opinion of me, while plenty of times I’ve hurt and stifled because I was too worried about what someone(s) thought. And if there was ever a thing to hate, this is it.

I don’t like it when I find myself hesitating on something because my mind has started working out the possible responses I might get from someone else. This is really stupid when I think about it, but it’s prevalent and powerful and affects us all to one degree or another.

In fact, I just had a profound realization. It’s this: the vast majority of fear we face in our society is a fear of the opinions of others.

Think about that for a moment. You and I don’t have much to be afraid of as far as physical danger goes and illnesses aside, there is very little that we actually have to be afraid of on a regular basis that isn’t based on other people. So really, the question becomes:

What are you so afraid of?

And still, so many of us live in fear—fear of the unknown; fear of our financial situation; fear of what this person will do or say or think. The thing about most of these fears is they are almost always rooted in not eliciting the shame, or seeking out the approval, of other people.

You and I are not going to starve or die because we are stranded in a harsh wilderness. Even if we lost everything we had, we would still be ok. We live in a land of opportunity and safety, and as a result, we fear the things that are relative to us. We fear other people.

When you spend some time thinking about it, you see just how crazy it really is.

Afraid of not getting into that college because you don’t want to let your parents down…
Going into a career you hate just so you can win the approval of your peers and family…
Afraid to “come out of the closet” for fear of shame and ridicule…
Too scared to approach that guy or girl for fear of rejection…
And on and on and on the fears based on others go…

Throughout my twenties (which are over in less than three weeks), I spent a fair amount of time reading up on men’s personal development topics like dating, psychology, relationships, fitness, health, happiness, etc. A common them of advice for men that kept coming up was the importance of being an authentic, true, real man. They say that women are attracted to men that are opinionated, strong, confident, and in-tune with their sexuality and individuality. Basically, a man that polarizes. (This is why “bad boys” so strongly attract certain women while “nice guys” are often boring and not worth remembering. They don’t polarize!!!)

I think this is good advice, and I strive to be as solid in my individually as I can, but I also think it is good policy for both sexes. In general, people are attracted to authentic, genuine people that are full of energy and passion. That are real and vulnerable. And to be full of energy and passion in an attractive way, you have to be authentic, bold, even controversial at times.

You have to polarize!

The problem with this advice is, it’s a bit vague and esoteric. What action steps does a person take to become authentic, raw and real, and to polarize as a person? It’s not the easiest thing to quantify, and it seems like some people have it and some don’t.

The big question then becomes: How can you become confident and assured in the person you are while living a life that puts your dreams and desires before the approval and opinions of others?

Unfortunately, I don’t have the answer for you. I’m still figuring much of this out myself. There are some things I’ve done that have helped me get better, but I can’t give you a silver bullet for making this happen because I’m pretty sure one doesn’t exist. Maybe you can learn a bit from my journey. I’ll start with that.

You see, I have strong beliefs and opinions about most things in life. These form the “code” that I live by. I’m resolute enough in this code to know that I will never change it for someone else. It’s definitely “me first” when it comes to my belief system and how I live my life. In this regard, I have the individuality and authenticity part covered.

The problem is, I tend to be my truest and most open and real self when I’m around friends and family. I struggle with opening up when I’m interacting with people I don’t know very well. I have a “guarded” and “filtered” way when I interact with new people. As a result, I avoid doing the things recommend above, like polarize, and as a result I often feel like I’m being a deplorable “nice.”

For some people, this would’t be such a bad thing, but for me, it is just that. It’s bland, boring, unoriginal and uninspiring. It’s also a form of easy, which you probably know I try to avoid like the plague.

To me, when I’m being “nice,” I’m not being the best I can be. I’m not being true, raw, real and vulnerable.

This may have something to do with the fact that when I was younger I would often get criticism from peers when they would tell me about someone had said they “didn’t like me” or thought I was “too sarcastic” or “too cocky.” This used to really bother me because I didn’t feel like I was that way at all. I was always just having fun in my good-natured, real way.

In an effort to curb this pervading misinterpretation of my personality, I started (subconsciously, I think) conditioning myself to throttle my personality when I was around new people. This has resulted in me opening-up less with people I didn’t know until I feel like I have “calibrated” my personality to mesh well with theirs. After I calibrate, I rarely have trouble getting along with people although I sometimes have trouble opening up as much as I’d like.  I also struggle with being interested in people I’m not close with, which is obviously not a good thing from a business point of view (I’ve gotten much better at this in recent months).

I want to be able to be raw and real, and to be able to open-up faster with people because I feel like that’s a better thing to do in life and business. I also want to do it because I like living life on my own terms, and I feel that my unwillingness to open up with other people is me putting the opinions of others before my own.

A Goal for Life

So, what am I doing to get better with being real, raw, honest and my true self?

One way is, I am forcing myself to engage in more social situations than I normally would as I go about my day-to-day. By forcing myself to engage with new people more often, I’m aiming to get better at opening up and being vulnerable with people I don’t know. I think this will have a great effect in other areas of my life.

If I had to provide an answer to “How do I free myself from the approval or opinion of others?” it would be this:

Practice!

The more you can be your true, raw, real self, the better you’ll get. Then, hopefully in time, you’ll realize just how pointless it was to worry about what other people thought in the first place.

The goal here is to condition yourself to put you first. Some of us are better at this than others, but I’d guess that we all need work and so we all should be making a point to distance ourselves from the opinions of others.

There’s so much social conditioning built into our brains. This thing can take years to get under control. All the more reason that you and I need to force ourselves to get out there and cause a ruckus. We need to show the world our art; to take risks and say things that aren’t popular or politically correct; to call someone out when they need to be called out; and so on.

My advice: Don’t arrive at your deathbed and regret your life… the way most people do. Live for yourself. Be who you are regardless of who doesn’t like it. Be controversial. Cause a ruckus. Say FUCK YOU to norms, mores and rules. Take risks and fail. Remove your fear of failure because you understand that it’s just the fear of other’s opinions that is holding you back and that that is pretty stupid.

Realize this: Most people avoid risks not because they are worried about losing time or money but because they are worried what their friends, family and peers will think. Think about how stupid that is considering we all only get one chance at this fleeting thing called life?

How many times have you taken the “safe route” for this reason? Better yet: How many times have you told yourself that the path you took was “better” when it was really just “safer”?

The fear of eliciting a negative response from other people is how you end up living a lie. It’s how you end up in some shitty job you can’t stand, in crappy relationships, in the wrong business, or partnership, or program, or whatever. It’s why you keep your art hidden from the world. It’s why you don’t tell that someone how you really feel. And on and on and on.

Detach yourself from the thoughts, opinions, and judgements of others and you will be better in every single possible way because of it. Then, ironically, you’ll be able to take their opinions into account in a healthy and productive way that can actually help you and not hinder you.

Practicing Restraint

-Colin

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To Practice Restraint Is To Practice Life

This essay was originally featured in my  free Sunday newsletter .

“Practical exercise is even more important for the student of philosophy than for the student of medicine or any similar art, just as philosophy claims to be a greater and more difficult discipline than any other study. The reason for this is that men who enter the other professions have not had their souls corrupted beforehand – they’ve not learned the opposite of what they are going to be taught! Those who start out studying philosophy have been born and raised in an environment filled with corruption and evil-thus turning to virtue from their starting point means that they need longer, more thorough training. How should they receive this training? A human being isn’t soul alone, nor body alone, but a synthesis of the two-those in training must take care of both, the better part, the soul, more intensely-but also of the other-if they aren’t to be found lacking. Obviously the philosopher’s body should be well prepared for physical activity, because often the virtues make use of this in the affairs of life.”

-White, Ben (2012-10-11). Musonius Rufus on How to Live. Ozimandias Publishing. Kindle Edition.

I write often about the importance of training oneself in body and mind.

We all know what training of the body looks like, and nowadays, it’s more of a “you do it or don’t” type of thing.

But what about training the mind?

Training the mind is not so common of a thing, which is why it doesn’t have a clearly defined definition. Some might think of training the mind as going to school, or reading, or writing, or meditation.

While I think each of these are valuable in their own right, I’m more interested in the training of the “philosophical mind” and the controlling of one’s thoughts, beliefs, opinions and actions that dictate their each day.

From the same book that contains the quote above, Musonius elaborates on what training he refers to:

We train both body and soul when we discipline ourselves to cold, heat, thirst, hunger, meager rations, hard beds, avoidance of pleasures, and patience under suffering. By these things (and other like them) the body is strengthened and capable of enduring difficulty-sturdy and ready for any task. The soul is also strengthened since it is trained for courage by patience despite difficulty, and for self-control by abstinence from pleasures.

Now, if I told you to go without food, shelter or a soft bed for a period of time, I’d have my work cut out for me. But I’m not going to suggest that right now (someday, though).

What I am going to suggest is this: recognize the times in life when you can practice restraint.

Times when:

… you are kinda hungry. Don’t eat.
… you want to go out but staying home to stay or work would be a wiser decision. Stay home and work.
… you are feeling lazy. Go workout.
… everyone around you is ordering dessert. Go without.

And so on.

It might not seem like much, but these small decisions have a domino effect towards bigger actions—or lack of—which can also lead you to building positive habits around them.

As Musonius says, “The soul is also strengthened…”

When you restrain yourself, you are training the muscle called self-control, and like any muscle, the more you train it the stronger it is going to get.

Another cool thing about self-restraint is the fact that you are killing quite a few birds with one stone; you are practicing gratitude, appreciating and utilizing what’s hard, and being a healthier and more balanced person overall.

Your everyday life provides you countless opportunities to practice self-control. The more you take advantage of these micro opportunities, the stronger and more appreciative you’ll become.

Practicing Restraint

-Colin

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Plans Suck. Do.

This essay was originally featured in my  free Sunday newsletter .

“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.”

-Confucius

There is this concept known as Neophiliac, which is a personality type in which a person has a strong affinity for novelty.

I think that we all are, at least in our Western culture, a bit neophiliac; we always want “new,” “shiny” and “different.”

We complicate things and make them harder than they have to be  instead of taking the simplest and shortest route.

I’ve seen this in myself, business partners, employees and friends and family, but most of all, I’ve seen this effect in my own life when working on various projects.

For some reason, my brain loves to “build up” how much effort or energy something is going to take. It has a need to figure out every little detail of every little part of the entire whole before it feels comfortable doing the work. You might think this is a good thing, to plan out everything, but the problem is I end up wasting time planning out things based on assumptions and expectations that never come true.

It’s very presumptuous, and is a road block for getting shit done. It’s almost always better to just start and figure it out as you go.

When I catch myself overanalyzing–which is a subtle form of Resistance and procrastination, I try to take a step back and figure out what is the simplest and most direct way of getting started. Once I figured that out, I figure out the next step.

Then I forget the rest so I can get to work.

This process of figuring out, and focusing on, the next step is the secret to accomplishing anything.

Anything .

To get stuff done, you have to simplify and subtract and avoid your tendency for novelty, or to add, which is what our brains love to do. Adding causes convolution, which not only makes you less effective at what you are doing, but also leads you further and further away from your intended destination.

Of course, there’s a catch to this technique. It’s this: It takes a lot of time and experience to get good at it.

This is a skill that you build. You don’t just wake up one day and are good at getting stuff done. You have to learn and iterate and learn some more. Then, through all that learning, you start seeing trends in your habits of what works and what doesn’t.

As you go through this learning, you will start seeing what I’m telling you now: that it’s best to focus on what’s next and do it as well, and as fast, as you can.

Everything… and Now

As humans, we get ahead of ourselves. We have an insatiable need to do everything, and now. This ends up bogging us down to the point of inaction, like quicksand.

A major contributor to this problem is our tendency to want to predict the future. We try to account for all the possible variables so we can plan accordingly, and hopefully, predict what’s going to happen. Obviously, this never works because we aren’t fortune tellers, and ends up frustrating us when reality doesn’t end up matching our expectations.

This concept doesn’t apply to just work and getting stuff done, it applies to everything:

We do this in our relationships by our desire to want all answers and assurances of where “it’s going”—also known as “overanalyzing.”
We do this with projects at work and school when we try to formulate a plans based on things we think we know, which usually just leads to paralysis by analysis.
We do this with anything new and unknown: we try to account for all the variables so best to avoid failure or pain.

But there is a better way. It’s this: Figure out the first thing that needs to be done, and do it. Then repeat the process, iterating as you go.

Success in anything is a process of moving forward while learning. That’s what they mean when they say, “Fail fast.”

Fail fast means to take action so you can get feedback as fast as possible and then iterate based on that feedback. You are just figuring it out.

What you learn as you do anything in life is it’s going to be hard, it’s going to hurt. You aren’t going to prevent bad things from happening. You aren’t going to avoid the difficulty of anything worth having. In fact, it’s the difficulty and pain that makes the things you are pursuing worth freaking pursuing!

That’s why you have to get in there and give ‘em hell!

Do, Learn, Win

If you start moving to a place of focus on the next step over a desire for more, for obsessive planning and for a desire to protect yourself from pain the best you can, you are going to get better results across the board, and, ironcially, end up avoiding much of the pain and obstacle you want to so avoid by giving them attention.

It’s time you get in the beginner’s mindset. Don’t assume, just do.. Don’t plan, learn.

Learn and do—two words to live by.

-Colin

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You Are Designed To Be Unhappy (Here’s Why and what To Do About It)

This essay was originally featured in my  free Sunday newsletter .

“Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.”
-Epicurus

Think about all the things in your life right now: your car, job, career, education, and every purchase you’ve ever made in your life up to this point. You may not have thought about it in awhile, but all of these things were once something you wanted. After all, if you didn’t want such things, it’s unlikely you would have gone through the trouble of acquiring them. 

Law: Anything you’ve ever taken the effort to acquire was something you desired.

Now, when you think about these things, you don’t feel the same because ‘have’ them in your life. As a result of having them for a period of time (the longer the more this effect shows itself), you don’t think about them the same way you used to when you desired and sought them. They just are a part of your life now. 

Another law: The longer you have something the less appreciation and gratitude it garners. 

Try to think of a specific thing in your life that you used to be excited about but no longer are—a car, a relationship, a watch, a game, a home, a new city, whatever. Now, think back to the time when you were excited about this thing. Try to remember how strongly you felt and how excited you were as you progressed toward attaining it. Finally, compare those feelings to the way you feel about it now. 

It’s crazy how our desires, wants and appreciation changes, isn’t it?

(If you didn’t put much effort into this thought exercise, I highly recommend you do it now.) 

The reason you are no longer excited is because of a concept called Hedonic Adaptation. Basically, Hedonic Adaptation means you have ‘gotten used to’ something. This thing is now just a part of your life, and as a result, you don’t appreciate it the same way anymore because you don’t think about not having it, and thus you have no reason to think about being grateful for it. In fact, you are now probably desiring something else new and shiny.

A Thought Exercise

It would serve you well to remind yourself what you have now was once new and shiny. Try to remember how you desired the things you have, and how you worked to attain them. Remember how, once you got them, you were ecstatic. Visualize what you saw in them when you wanted them. Engage these thoughts so that you will recreate the desire. Try to relive the same feelings of excitement and yearning. Finally, imagine losing them. Imagine they go away and never come back and think about how this would make you feel? 

Try it!

This simple—yet powerful—practice of reminding yourself what you have from the point of view of your former self is useful for combating the dangerous trap that is hedonic adaptation. We can call this the practice of Negative Visualization—visualizing loss—and Gratitude—promoting appreciation.

To practice Negative Visualization and Gratitude: View everything you have as if you didn’t have it. Let the desire well up: remember what it was like before you had it and wanted it. Move your mind to a place of appreciation and gratefulness.

Gratitude moves the mind from a place of expectation and wanting more—which is the default mindset for most—to a place of appreciation and contentment. This is, in my opinion, a secret to a fully healthy, happy and content life.

Life lesson: Spend more time and energy being grateful instead of desiring more. 

Hedonic Adaptation

Humans are notorious for wanting new, better and shiny. Thanks to our ancestors living in a state of perpetual resource gathering that was necessary for survival in hunter gatherer times, our yearning for new and more is programmed into our genes. But nowadays we live in modern society, and since living in a modern society is not the same as living in the harsh wild, we have an environmental mismatch that forms the root of many of the problems that the human species faces on a daily basis—obesity, disease, loneliness, depression, etc. 

As human beings, we have to learn how to focus on gratitude for what we have so we can remove many of the negative effects of hedonic adaptation while also controlling our impulses for more and better, which lead us to compulsion, addiction and discontentment. For most of us, we have all we will ever need to live long, healthy and happy lives. You’d think we’d be happy and totally taking advantage of this, right? 

W. R. O. N. G.

Unfortunately, human beings are more unhappy, sick and depressed than ever. And I believe one of the root causes is this constant chasing of more, new and shiny. The reason this constant yearning for more is bad is because we have so much available to us, that, with nothing limiting us, we end up moving from thing to thing in an obsessive, unrestrained and neurotic manner in search of fulfillment. Of course, this is a fool’s errand; we never reach fulfillment because the premise that external things will bring fulfillment is flawed, and so, we are just stuck in the hedonic hamster wheel.

So many turn to shopping, drugs, entertainment, sex, money, and power as a means of fulfilling the need for new, more and shiny. This is the “shiny ball syndrome” in full effect, and no human is spared from its nasty sway. 

The human hamster wheel goes like this: we want, get, then want more. And when we get, we are temporary satisfied before we want the next thing. 

A real life example: You save up for years to buy your first car, all the while counting down the days until you get your license. Then the day comes, and you buy the best car your money can buy. You are ecstatic. It’s the perfect car. You are throughly excited about the freedom and autonomy you now have. It’s a great feeling through and through.

Then… what happens in 6 months?

Your car, and the freedom it affords you, are now just another part of your life. You don’t think about them much anymore, if at all. They aren’t exciting to you. As a result, they aren’t something you think about much (appreciate) anymore. You might even start to feel entitled to them, as if nothing or no one could take them away from you. You are ‘hedonically adapted’ to them and it’s likely you are well on to the next thing—a boyfriend or girlfriend, an exotic trip, a drum set, an Xbox, whatever.

Then, once you acquire this new thing, what happens again in 6 months? The same damn thing!

The Hedonic Treadmill: This cycle of wanting, getting and adapting repeats itself over and over and over. You seek things out, get them, then seek out other things after the things you have gotten have lost their luster. You are a drug addict in the most socially acceptable sense. 

And here’s the thing: We all are addicts.

I’m not here to speak on the morality of all of this. Maybe the buddhist monk that shuns all worldly possession has the right answer, maybe not. Either way, I know I don’t want to live like a monk and that’s why my goal is to try to avoid—reverse if possible—the adverse effects of hedonic adaptation: anxiety and fear of loss, discontent from always chasing and wanting, and a fundamental lack of gratitude for the now and what I have in the now.

I will always seek more in my life, as will you. This is just something we should accept. Instead of criticizing the fact that we consume too much and are never satisfied, let’s instead think of ways we can be better at the entire process. Perhaps we can move to a place of appreciation so much so that we don’t get (too) stuck in the hedonic treadmill. Perhaps we can find ways to can avoid slipping into the “shiny ball syndrome,” such as expressing gratitude for things we have instead of focusing on what we don’t.

I don’t know if there is a best answer or just a better one. That said, I know that it is possible to get better t this stuff because I’ve been able to do just that in my own life. I’ve also seen it in others.

Of course, you don’t get better at this stuff overnight. It’s a process, with the first step being: think about the things you have now so you think about them from the point of view of your former self. The practices of Negative Visualization and Gratitude will move your mind from a place of yearning to appreciation.

An amazing thing we all should be grateful for: being alive!

Think about it: being alive is something we all want and have been granted each day so far in our entire livers. That’s pretty amazing if you consider that you and I were not one of the  150,000 or so people that died yesterday—or that will today, tomorrow and every day until the end of time. That’s a pretty damn awesome thing to be grateful for, wouldn’t you say?

Instead of wasting so much energy on what you don’t have, expend it on being grateful for what you do. This simple change of mental frame can change your life for the better in more ways than one.

Look back on our past and use it as a way to appreciate what you have now. Then spend more time thinking about what you have instead of what you don’t.

Grateful,

-Colin

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