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The (Secret) Chinese Wisdom That Makes Work Effortless

The (Secret) Chinese Wisdom That Makes Work Effortless

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From the outside looking in – I think that most people believe that I must have an insane level of discipline to be able to work as I do for days, weeks, and sometimes even months at a time.

And yeah – sometimes I do need discipline – sometimes I am overwhelmed by the constant chaos and unpredictability that is inevitable when one pursues excellence in so many different areas.

But ONLY when I stray from the teachings of the philosophy that quite literally saved my life.

That philosophy is Taoism – and when I live by it’s principles – which I do more and more with each passing year – life becomes… effortless.

I wake up and within 30 minutes I’m at my desk with a warm cup of hot chocolate ready to start working on the days tasks.

I start my day working on NelsonQuest, my passion project –

And then around 9am I shift my focus to AgentFire (my business), for the remainder of the day.

Within my day are always at least two one hour blocks reserved for my various physical and expressive pursuits – one in the morning and then one later on in the afternoon.

When I’m in my ‘zone’ – working entire days is not something that requires discipline or dedication – instead – working entire days becomes effortless.

My essence is greatness – and when I’m in my zone, it actually becomes more difficult for me to not exist in this way.

Now I think that we’ve all experienced ‘being in the zone’ at some point in our lives – but until I discovered Taoism, it never occurred to me that it was possible to simply exist in this state.

It’s been about 8 years since I dedicated myself to a careful study of ‘The Tao Te Ching’ – the sacred text of Taoism.

Hidden within its teachings, I found the tools that I needed to combat the many mental afflictions that were wreaking havoc within my mind and preventing me from being able to express my essence.

In this video, I’m going to introduce you to the Taoist concept  of ‘Wu-Wei’ – the beautiful art of living without friction.

I’ll show you how I’m able to apply Wu-Wei  it within my own life to quickly achieve incredible, effortless results in virtually everything I do.

And by the end of this video – especially if you’re an entrepreneur, or someone who is moving down the path of self-development, you’ll understand how to replace the toxic ‘hustle’ mentality, with a power far superior.

A power that can enable us to actually get more done, without actually doing anything.

The Insight (Rising Action)

Growing up in New York –  the ‘hustle’ capital of the world – it was essentially hard-wired into my DNA that if I wanted to get ahead… if I wanted to achieve ‘success’… that I needed to work HARDER, to sleep LESS.

That we need to PUSH ourselves as far as we can past our limits… and when we can’t go any  further… to drink some coffee or pop some amphetamines.

In my late 20’s, when I decided to start my own business and embark down the path of self-development.

This ‘hustle’ mentality was all that I had ever known… and it nearly destroyed me.

By the second year of my business I had so much accumulated stress, anxiety and fear, that I couldn’t even sit in a chair for more than a few minutes before it felt like my shoulders were on fire.

I spent that entire year working off of a mattress on the ground – my whole body hurt – and I could now drink a double shot expresso from Starbucks and still feel exhausted.

What I’m describing is the inevitable end-game of ‘hustle’ mentality… burnout.

It was around this time where, out of desperation, I discovered the philosophy of Taosim and the essential concept of ‘Wu-Wei’, which roughly translates to  ‘non-doing’ or ‘non-action’ – action without action.

I was initially very resistant to this idea for obvious reasons – it seems to be the exact opposite of the hustle culture to which I was a disciple.

But here’s the thing – Wu-Wei doesn’t mean to be lazy or to just sit around and not do anything, quite the contrary. Wu-Wei means ‘effortless’ action.

It means that regardless of what task we’re engaged in.

Whether it be writing a script for a YouTube video, working on a new ad campaign for our business, or even training past our perceived limits.

That we engage with these tasks in a way where – instead of ‘pushing’ or ‘forcing’ ourselves to do these things, that we simply ‘become’ these things.

Where the ‘task’ is simply an expression of who we are and what we’re striving towards, without focusing on the result or even striving at all – so that we can perform the task, at a high level, in a way that ‘sustains’ our energy instead of burning through it.

To exist in a state of ‘Wu-Wei’ is essentially to exist in a state of constant flow.

Wu-Wei Explained Through The Metaphor of the River

We are all, at every moment, floating within the river of life.

When action feels effortless, it can be said that we are moving with the flow of the river.

When action feels difficult – when it tires us out mentally – it’s because we’re swimming against the flow of the river.

In the west, we’re essentially hard-wired to swim against the flow of the river.

A lot of this has to do with misunderstanding the nature of ‘control’ – we mistakenly believe that we need to control everything around us.

If we look carefully, there’s actually a surprising amount of stuff that we can’t control – nature is one of those things.

MOST of what happens around us, and even within us – is beyond our control.

Our blood flows by itself… our wounds heal without us having to manually intervene –

Even thoughts themselves, more often than not, simply ‘come’ to us.

Which brings us to the first part of learning to move with the river, – making sure that the water is clean and free from blockages.

Keeping The River Clean

Thoughts actually flow much in the same way that water does, and when we over consume things like social media, junk food, video games, and porn.

The neural pathways within our brains actually change to motivate us to consume more of these things, instead of motivating us towards the things that are actually consistent with our essence.

Our rivers become polluted and full of blockages, and so we need to start here.

When we limit or abstain from the consumption of the things that pollute us, the river becomes clear and moves freely.

This is why, when we value health and avoid sugar, we find that the river moves us towards healthy food and away from junk food.

When we value strength and avoid activities that numb the mind, the river will move us towards physical activity, and away from laziness.

And when we value success, security, and freedom – the river will move us towards  occupational pursuits.

But there’s still something we need to understand before this action can become effortless.

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The Dark Mode Guide

is a simple system designed to help you achieve a specific goal by facilitating the development of relevant habits and creating the perfect environment to make failure impossible.

This guide is about actually walking the path. It creates a perfect environment devoid of excuses and forces you to face who you are and what you need to do in a way that’s sustainable.

Be present ‘within’ the river.

Within the act of ‘striving’ – it’s implicit that we are striving towards a ‘result’.

The results exist in the future and the past, and therefore, when we focus on them, it implies that we are leaving the present, where we do have control, and entering a future or past where we have no control.

A future or past where we encounter feelings like stress and anxiety – worrying about things that have happened or that may happen.

What we can control is how we act in the present moment, that is, whether we choose to move with the river, or against it.

This is why you often hear successful people say things like ‘don’t focus on the money, focus on creating value’.

Money is a ‘result’ and people who focus all of their energy on the ‘result’ of money, rarely have any.

Instead, those who ‘choose’ to do what they do… to do things with love… will always produce a better result than the person who ‘forces’ themself to do what they do because they see it as being necessary to achieve a certain result, i.e. a paycheck.

Move Like The River

The final step to learn how to ‘move with the river’ involves being as water is, which is to say to to be soft – to be ‘yielding’.

Water does not stop when it encounters obstacles – it simply moves around them.

Water is an essential part of all creation- yet it has no specific goals or desires. Without it, all creatures would perish, and so by benefitting all creatures without conflict, it represents the virtue of humility.

This part is perhaps best encapsulated in the immortal words of Bruce Lee.

“Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”

Conclusion

As always, if you enjoyed the article – please subscribe to my YouTube Channel… maybe consider sharing it with a friend who you know is struggling through their own path of self-development.

This article was a really special one for me – I’ve been in a pretty bad place these past few weeks – and in writing this script – which I spent over 25 hours writing between Saturday and Sunday – I was able to reconnect with the primary philosophy that has guided for many years…that I had for whatever reason… I had forgotten.

I hope it’s able to help you as it’s helped me.

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How to Change Your Life in a (Single) Moment

How to Change Your Life in a (Single) Moment

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So how many of us, if we’re being honest, are desperately searching for that one thing… that one book, that one experience, that one… switch…

Where we DECIDE we’re going to develop a skill or habit, improve our physical, or launch that new project – and despite years of repeated failures, that this time we ACTUALLY stick with it until it becomes hard coded into the fabric of who we are.

Where we ACTUALLY make it to the point where the person reflected back at us in the mirror CLEARLY understands something that the person who was there only a few weeks ago WISHED they could understand.

Where we wake up to the feeling that we are finally ‘at home’ with who we are.

And who we ‘were’ is now just a memory  – a prior reference point, for this new, TRUE ‘self’ that has only just begun to emerge.

What we’re searching for is an ‘epiphany’ – a sudden, profound insight that fundamentally alters our reality to where what was previously impossible, now becomes effortless.

What Is an Epiphany? (and what it isn’t)

The word “epiphany” originates from the ancient greek word “epiphanea” – which was used to explain when a God or deity appeared before a worshipper…

And THIS is a MUCH better definition than whichever one you currently hold – I’ll explain.

Let’s start with the idea that to experience an epiphany, we first need to worship something.

As David Foster Wallace so brilliantly points out “Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship…

is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough.

It’s the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you.”

So, we’re all ‘worshippers’… now consider the following 3 ‘epiphany’ type scenarios:

1. The girl working a cushy corporate job for 100k who wishes they could trade it all in for a life where they travel the world and work online.

2. The boy who has spent years -reading books and watching videos striving towards that ‘moment’ where they finally begin to take action.

3- The dog, who… uh…  is a daily reminder to their owner that ‘happiness’ should be experienced here and now – instead of merely existing as some ‘future point’.

What do all three of these people have in common?

It’s that they are all ‘worshippers’ at the altar of the ‘ideal self’ – we all are – and it’s a great thing to worship.

Because we don’t just want money or beauty – we want to manifest our true potential so that we can bring happiness and success to ourselves and those around us.

There’s just one problem… we’re trapped in a reality where we can feel our ‘ideal self’ clawing frantically within us, trying to break free.

But for some reason we’re just… waiting… or searching…. or striving for that ‘moment ‘ when it just, happens.

And let me tell you – when it does happen… IF it does happen, it is EXACTLY like the experience of a faithful worshipper who after years of difficult practice, FINALLY has a divine experience.

Here’s the thing most of us fail to understand – For even the ‘remote’ possibility of an epiphany, we actually NEED to be extremely unhappy, unfulfilled, uncomfortable – we need so much ‘negative’ experience to accumulate that, trapped and with nowhere else to go, we are forcefully routed into a divine space where we are obligated to not only QUESTION reality, but to outright DENY it –

So that we can forge our OWN reality where we are no longer bound by silly, societally derived limits.

How To Have An Epiphany (and how to not have one)

I’ve thought a lot about this, and I would say that the ‘secret’ to having an epiphany, if there is one, lies in taking extreme EMOTIONAL risks –

Allowing ourselves to love someone so deeply that should they leave or betray us, we would be absolutely devastated.

Committing so thoroughly to a career pivot or business idea that we believe in that we eliminate all possible paths of retreat – no plan B.

To go from years of watching fights on TV, to lacing up a pair of boxing gloves and stepping into the ring ourselves.

Basically, to take the sort of risk where we’re doing something that we FEEL we must do, even and especially if it scares the absolute shit out of us.

And that we don’t just do it, but that we go ALL IN –

If we feel the undeniable pull to do something we know to be true, regardless of what our friends, parents, or even society thinks – it is in risking everything that we come to know the true emotional floors and ceilings of our brief but beautiful existence.

I have loved with all my heart, and gone all in on things that I truly believed in, and those decisions were NEVER wrong in the long-term.

‘Risk’ as we understand it is just an illusion of a reality designed to consume us- the true risk is to not take risks.

And if we’re hoping to have an epiphany that enables us to do something so audacious as to rewrite reality itself, then we had better accumulate enough challenging life experience to be able to at least somewhat perceive where the limits are.

Get the Dark Mode guide

The Dark Mode Guide

is a simple system designed to help you achieve a specific goal by facilitating the development of relevant habits and creating the perfect environment to make failure impossible.

This guide is about actually walking the path. It creates a perfect environment devoid of excuses and forces you to face who you are and what you need to do in a way that’s sustainable.

My Epiphany Moment

So my epiphany moment came to me at my absolute lowest point in my life – where after years of on and off depression, I found myself heartbroken over a girl who had left me to get back with a previous boyfriend who was far superior to me.

He was smart, career focused, philosophically and spiritually inclined –  i was an emotionally immature loser whose entire existence was revolved around having fun and getting drunk on weekends – she made the right choice.

Anyway, after months of feeling devastated and barely being able to lift myself out of bed – I experienced a moment where I was FORCED to DENY my present reality, where depression was something I had to just sort of  ‘wait’ out.

And I instead created a new reality –  where I could actually channel all of the ‘depressive energy’ was experiencing into immense positive action… into POWER.

And so in a single moment – I transformed – and suddenly, effortlessly, began to take MASSIVE action – training for an ironman even though I had never run for more than a few blocks, making MASSIVE leaps in my career, immersing myself into ancient philosophy.

Anyway you guys know the rest of the story – fast forward to today and I’m living a live that is beyond what I coil have even dreamed was possible.

And hey, if you want to learn about my story and philosophy – subscribe, click the notification bell, and  follow me on instagram @nelsonquest – and check out the description below for a link to my ‘dark mode’ system – which will give you the exact 7 tenets that I practice daily – it’s free of course.

Anyway, so when I strip my epiphany moment down to its core essence, here’s what I’m left with:

I took a huge risk that didn’t work out which threw me into the deepest depression of my life – and it was precisely there where I was ‘forced’ into a divine space where I was able to create my own reality – one where negative emotions, instead of weighing me down, now give me incredible power.

So if you’re someone who feels like they’re ‘waiting’ for that one big moment where everything suddenly changes – Then you already understand the pain of living with regret… question for you…

 – do you really think that the pain of going all in on something you believe in, and possibly failing… could be worse?

To CHANGE reality we have to first UNDERSTAND it, which means we need to feel emotional highs as well as lows, and the ONLY way to feel either of those things is to take extreme emotional risks.

If things work out, well hey that’s great, I guess we didn’t need an epiphany in the first place.

If things don’t work out, we gain extremely valuable insights into the things that need to change.

It’s only when we stagnate, when life passes us by while we just sit there and do nothing – where an epiphany becomes necessary.

And so perhaps the greatest epiphany we can hope to have…  is that we don’t fucking need one.

This is the path.

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How to Make an Ordinary Life Extraordinary (The Hero’s Journey)

How to Make an Ordinary Life Extraordinary (The Hero's Journey)

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“The hero’s journey always begins with the call… ‘Look, you’re in Sleepy Land. Wake. Come on a trip. There is a whole aspect of your consciousness, your being, that’s not been touched. And so it starts.So you’re at home here? Well there’s not enough of you there’ ”

– Joseph Campbell, A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living.

In his book “The Hero of a Thousand Faces”, Joseph Campbell observed that the hero of every great story or myth, across the whole of human history, has more or less the same narrative progression.

Ushered forth by the call to adventure, the hero, aided by a wise mentor, must journey into an unknown world where they will battle through great adversity as they make their way towards a great monster they must slay, to claim the treasure they will need to defeat their ultimate challenge, before finally returning home, completely transformed from when they left.

Campbell referred to this progression as  “The Hero’s Journey”, and if we look closely, it’s the same progression that we all pass through on the journey of personal development.

So in today’s video, I’m going to summarize the ‘Hero’s Journey of Personal Development’ in 12 stages.

Understanding this journey will be a revelation for many of you because, if you’re stuck or not entirely sure where to go next, this video will give you tremendous clarity.

If you really want to benefit from this video, I suggest that as we move through the 12 stages in this video, try to layer them onto your own journey… What was your ‘call to adventure’?… who or what was your ‘mentor’ that helped you to ‘cross the threshold’ into the world of the ‘unknown world’?

…This will all make sense shortly. Let’s begin.

Stage 1: Ordinary World

Every hero begins their journey in the  ‘ordinary world’:  the world as we have always known it to be.  Here’s where the story begins… or rather… where the story has yet to begin.

Here, we are comfortable. Here, every rule and tradition was established by the society around us long before we had any say in the matter. Here, the final destination of our path is not to discover what Campbell would describe as “the inward thing that we basically are”,  but rather (and perhaps tragically) to merely conform to the expectation of ‘what we ought to be.’

Here, we have a sense that something is ‘not quite right’, but don’t yet possess that which will enable us to articulate it.

Stage 2: Call to Adventure

The call to adventure is an invitation to embark on a new quest into an Unknown World. A quest that we know we must accept, because we sense that within it, we will find our salvation.

The call to adventure can happen intentionally, such as when we move to a different country, start a new business, or embark on the journey to master a new skill.

But more often than not, the call to adventure happens unintentionally – like when someone breaks our heart, when we have an epiphany, or otherwise any sort of life circumstances that causes us to fall so far down (or up) we are forced out of the comfort of the ‘original world’ and into a space where we can see into the ‘unknown world’ and understand this potential life-changing adventure that awaits us.

Stage 3: Refusal of the Call

The ‘unknown world’ is terrifying at first, because it’s completely foreign to us.

To enter this world IS to understand the many risks and perils of the journey ahead, of which we are woefully underprepared.

And so when presented with such vast unknown, most of us initially choose to scurry back to the comforts of the original world, where many of us remain permanently.

If we are to answer the call to adventure, we’re going to need a bit of help.

Get the Dark Mode guide

The Dark Mode Guide

is a simple system designed to help you achieve a specific goal by facilitating the development of relevant habits and creating the perfect environment to make failure impossible.

This guide is about actually walking the path. It creates a perfect environment devoid of excuses and forces you to face who you are and what you need to do in a way that’s sustainable.

Stage 4: Meeting The Mentor

The Mentor is somebody who, having already ventured out into and returned from the unknown world, possesses a unique knowledge of it, which they can use to prepare us and give us the confidence to venture out ourselves.

While the archetypal mentor is a ‘wise old man’ – mentor’s can come in many different forms and iterations – friends, philosophy… a movie or blog post.

The mentor that helped me to answer the call was Napoleon Hill – and while he passed away 30 years before I was born, his book “How to Think And Grow Rich” gave me what I needed to accept the call and venture out into the unknown world myself.

Stage 5: Crossing the Threshold

Here, the hero departs from the cherished comfort of the ‘original world’ and ventures forth into the discomfort of the ‘unknown world’ where many challenges lie ahead. This is a point of no return.

Where in the original world, we could faintly sense that something was not quite right’, here in the ‘unknown world’  that sense transforms into an extraordinary all-encompassing goal: to find the monster of ‘that which is not quite right’ and to slay it and claim its treasure.

I crossed the threshold and entered my point of no return when, at the lowest point in my life, I had an epiphany. A sudden realization that all of the pain and suffering at that moment, I could in fact experience as power. The sort of realization that is impossible to un-realize.

If you still haven’t crossed the threshold, understand one thing – to do so, you must give yourself no viable path by which to return. So burn your ships… take the leap… ad astra per aspera.

Stage 6: Tests, Allies, Enemies

Here the hero begins to battle through the obstacles of the unknown world, and in doing so, begins to distinguish allies from enemies.

While these can be ‘people’, the greatest allies and enemies are encountered within.

One of the greatest enemies of the unknown world is often our own ego, which, desiring the external validation of others, will encourage us to pretend we know things, which is precisely the thing that prevents us from ever truly knowing.

Thus, one one of our greatest allies in this world is thus humility. To come to know, we must accept that we do not.

There are many more allies and enemies in this world that will reveal themselves to us as we progress through more battles.

Stage 7: Approach to Inmost Cave

As Carl Jung describes: “That which we need the most will be found where we least want to look.”

The inmost cave is thus the place that we most fear to enter, because it’s the place where the monster of ‘that which is not quite right’ resides.

To come face to face with it is to come face to face with our ‘shadow self’ – the side of our personality that contains all the parts we don’t want to admit having.

Stage 8: The Great Ordeal

After making preparations and delving into the inmost cave, the hero comes face to face with the monster.

I’ve faced this monster many times – in my business, when my company almost went bankrupt and I had to trust the person I least wanted to trust in making decisions, myself.

In boxing, when I stepped into the ring to face my first opponent and had to overcome the desire to win and the fear of losing to be able to truly and freely express myself.

Even with this channel, clicking ‘publish’ on my first video meant going to battle with the most formidable monster I’ve ever faced: my fear of judgment.

It’s important to note that sometimes we don’t slay the monster on the first try, heck it may even initially  seem impossible. However,  through repeated confrontations and thus gained experience, we will eventually succeed, even if victory comes in a different form than we had anticipated.

Stage 9: Claiming The Treasure

When we do finally defeat the monster, we get to claim its treasure – the weapon of sacred knowledge, forged from the most valuable material in this Unknown world: experience.

Stage 10: The Road Back

With the treasure in hand, it’s time to make our way home to the ordinary world, however the journey is not yet complete, and even greater challenges lay in wait.

However when confronting these challenges, the hero now wields their treasure – the weapon of sacred knowledge – and with each new battle, the hero becomes more skilled in the use of it.

Stage 11: Resurrection

Here the hero must face what can be considered the ‘final battle’ of the journey – which determines whether or not they have truly earned the right to wield the treasure they possess.

We don’t earn knowledge simply by reading something in a book – we earn it by acting on it. To know the path is not to walk the path, to walk the path is to know the path.

After saving my business from bankruptcy, armed with that knowledge I now had to rebuild everything and achieve growth.

In boxing, I’m now wielding what I learned in my first fight, in the many fights that are to come.

After releasing my first YouTube  video, I had to release MANY more videos before I could actually understand the judgments of others enough to become emotionally unaffected by them.

Stage 12: Return With The Elixir

By overcoming the ‘final battle’ of the unknown world, the hero is now worthy of the treasure, the ‘knowledge’ that they believe themself to possess.

In becoming worthy, this knowledge is transformed into an ‘elixir’ which can be brought back into the ‘ordinary world’ once more. Here, not only can it be used to continue to benefit the hero, but it can also be shared for the benefit of others.

 

Alright guys – so it’s important to note that this hero’s journey is not a one-time process, but rather something that, if we’re living an honest life, we will embark on many times over the course of our lifetime. 

As Campbell puts it, “What I think is that a good life is one hero journey after another. Over and over again, you are called to the realm of adventure, you are called to new horizons. Each time, there is the same problem, do I dare?”

Joseph Campbell – Pathways to Bliss: Mythology and Personal Transformation

“We have not even to risk the adventure alone for the heroes of all time have gone before us. The labyrinth is thoroughly known … we have only to follow the thread of the hero path. And where we had thought to find an abomination we shall find a God.And where we had thought to slay another we shall slay ourselves. Where we had thought to travel outwards we shall come to the center of our own existence. And where we had thought to be alone we shall be with all the world.”

Joseph Campbell, Hero with a Thousand Faces

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How to Channel Your Sexual Energy (Enhanced NOFAP)

How to Channel Your Sexual Energy (Enhanced NOFAP)

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I don’t talk about it often, but sexual energy is the the primary fuel that I use to power 100+ hour weeks focused on growing my 50+ person business, mastering salsa, and climbing the tallest mountain in every continent

The majority of people don’t know that this energy exists – and so they waste it by consuming porn and chasing meaningless sex… rarely ever considering ‘why?’. 

I used to not know that it existed. 

Channeling sexual energy – or ‘sexual transmutation’ – is about learning how “channel” our strong biological reproductive motivations towards PRODUCTIVE action.

If you’ve ever practiced NoFap, and suddenly felt more motivation and energy towards becoming your best version  –  then you’ve already had a small taste of what this feels like.

In my  ‘Dopamine Switch’ video – one of the most popular videos on my channel – I explain how we can combine ‘Dopamine Detox’ with ‘Productive Action’ to SWITCH our motivation AWAY from the short-term gratification of social media, netflix, and videogames, and TOWARDS long-term goal oriented activities such as work, study, and gym –

Sexual Transmutation is essentially THAT, but within the realm of sexual energy… and when done correctly,  it feels like a constant surge of motivation – here’s how it works.

First – we have to look at dopamine – which is NOT some sort of ‘feel good’ chemical.

dopamine ISN’T the reward – Dopamine doesn’t get released when we HAVE sex, Dopamine is what MOTIVATES us to pursue sex in the first place –

Dopamine is what motivates us in anticipation of a reward.

This is why the more time we spend watching porn or browsing instagram – the more our body begins to see those things as ‘rewards’ and the more dopamine it releases to MOTIVATE us to consume more of those things –

Leaving us with very little motivation towards the things that we should ACTUALLY be doing.

Now for EVERY species of known animal, both male and female,  reproduction is one of the PRIMARY instinctual goals that drive behavior.

So our brains release MASSIVE amounts of dopamine to motivate us to reproduce.

Now here’s the problem – modern society has learned to ‘HIJACK’ these impulses via pornography and the overglorification of meaningless sex, which I’ll get to in a minute.

Our impulse to reproduce is so strong – and our behavior so conditioned – that we often don’t even realize that we’ve opened PornHub until we’re covered in our penis vomit.

And so the important thing to understand here is that this SAME overpowering impulse, can INSTEAD  be used as FUEL.

When we see it in this way – learning to ‘channel’ our sexual energy is really about making the conscious decision to readjust the REWARD that we’re aiming towards, and then letting our dopamine system do the rest.

If we’re aiming towards the feel good sensations of ‘ejaculation’, or meaningles sex – well then of course our dopamine is going to motivate us towards meaningless bullshit like porn, partying and pickup.

But if we aim instead at a meaningful connection with a beautiful and talented partner – well then there is a LOT that we need to improve within ourselves to become worth of that –

And with THIS mentality, we can channel the sexual motivations of our dopamine system towards MASSIVE self-growth.

In this video, I’m going to take you through that same process that I went through –

First UNLEARNING the toxic, self-destructive beliefs that I was born into as part of a profit-oriented society designed to consume us and then RELEARNING sex and sexual energy in a way that fuels me to be better.

If you can make it to Step 2 and ACTUALLY APPLY it, I promise that therein lies the potential to COMPLETELY transform your motivation and productivity.

Step 1: Unlearn What Doesn’t Serve Us About Sexual Energy

Learning to ‘channel’ our sexual energy is really about making the conscious decision to readjust the REWARD that we want our dopamine systems to motivate us towards.

If we’re not already using our sexual energy towards constructive outlets, it’s BECAUSE whatever understanding we DO have, is rooted in the lies of a society that is designed to profit off of us.

Consider the multi-billion dollar porn industry –

For practically 24 hours a day, most of us are never more than arms length away from what is essentially an INFINITE gateway to porn and the feel-good sensations of masturbation and orgasm.

Elon Musk has an interesting perspective on this.

“A massive amount of thinking has gone into sex without procreation – which is actually quite a silly action in the absense of procreation. So why are you doing it? It’s pretty absurd really.”

He’s not saying that casual sex or even that masturbation are bad – but it is fascinating to consider how billions of dollars have been made off of an act that has ZERO evolutionary value.

And it isn’t  just porn – the cosmetic, fitness, and pickup industries all exploit our instinct to reproduce for profit.

And it isn’t just these industries – virtually EVERY industry is uses ‘lifestyle manipulation’ to get us to believe that their products and services will make us more attractive to the opposite sex.

This is most obvious in rap culture – which glorifies meaningless sex and limitless consumption as being the highest human values.

But my personal favorite example  of this are all of the fake gurus on YouTube – who showcase expensive cars and paid-for girls to PRETEND to sell some sort of course, when what they’re really selling is a lifestyle.

A lifestyle that’s not even real – most fake guru commercials are essentially just what poor people THINK that rich people do.

And this is how we are where we are today – with an entire generation of men who aspire towards these things without any REAL consideration as to WHY.

Because if they DID consider why – well… that would be bad, because then it would be a LOT harder to turn them this.

When these are the things we aspire towards, well then of COURSE our dopamine systems are going to motivate us towards meaningless bullshit like porn and cars and clubs and manipulative pickup techniques.

We are BORN into this ugly, toxic cycle, this false reality – and we are TRAPPED here unless we make the conscious decision to challenge the truths that form the very foundations of our reality.

Step 2: Relearn Sexual Energy in a way that serves us

So if the first step involves UNLEARNING most of what we know about reality, and questioning  who we aspire to be.

The second step becomes about deciding what want to believe about sex – and then recalibrating WHO we actually aspire to be and whether or not our sexual energy plays a creative or destructive role in that process.

In my case – I aspire to be the sort of man worthy of the HIGHEST level of relationship – a soul mate – 

It’s probably less than 1% of people who find their soulmate, and from my perspective – that means that I ought to be better than 99% of men –

I aspire to be GREAT – And with THIS sort of mentality, it becomes possible to harness the power of our dopamine system…to CHANNEL our sexual energy – towards unimaginable growth.

When I had my epiphany and realized that everything I THOUGHT I knew was just the predatory hardwiring of a society designed to consume me –

In that moment I became free to channel my energy however I wanted.

In the book “Think and Grow Rich”, Napoleon Hill dedicates an entire chapter to the power of Sexual Transmutation:

In it, he explains:

“Sex energy is the creative energy of all geniuses. There never has been, and never will be a great leader, builder, or artist lacking in this driving force of sex.

The mere possession of this energy is not sufficient to produce a genius. The energy must be transmuted from desire for physical contact, into some other form of desire and action, before it will lift one to the status of a genius.”

What he’s explaining here is essentially that – if we can learn to harness the driving forces of our reproductive instincts and channel them NOT towards a desire for physical contact, i.e. sex for the sake of sex.

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But INSTEAD to channel that energy towards activities and actions that we believe will make us BETTER… that THIS is the way to reach ‘greatness’.

I’ll give you 3 examples:

Build a business: 

Instead of starting a business with the hopes that we can just make lots of money to be able to buy things to impress women in the hope of ‘physical contact’

That we should instead look at building a business as an opportunity increase our intelligence… to improve our ability to think critically and solve difficult problems –

All of which improve our overall ‘level’ of human, thus making us more deserving of a high quality partner. 

Improve our bodies: 

Instead of aiming to have big biceps and a 6pack in hopes of encouraging more ‘physical contact’.

That we should instead look to improving our bodies as part of the challenge of mastering ourselves –

to see our bodies as the physical representation of the strength of our mind, to be worthy of a partner whose mind is equally as strong.

To Learn Expression: 

When I first started learning Salsa I saw it as a way for me to have more ‘physical contact’ with women  – which is why I always struggled with motivation to keep practicing.

When I began to see salsa as this incredible vehicle through which my very essence could manifest itself –

As this beautiful conversation where the highest level male dancers learn to communicate through energy, and where the highest level female dancers learn to read that energy and communicate back.

Which, beyond enabling deep connections with people – IS the reason why dancers are better in bed…  it’s not just because they move better.

Anyway – when I saw salsa in this way – as something that made me a much better human – I suddenly felt INCREDIBLE motivation to keep learning and reach higher levels –

And the reality is that EVERYTHING we do within our Physical, Mental, Occupational, and Expressive dimensions – can be interpreted as something that moves us further along the path towards manifesting the ‘greatness’ that is our best version.

Conclusion

That’s it, guys – just 2 steps.

And this becomes much easier when we consider how foolish it is to NOT act in this way – which hopefully is a bit easier after watching this video and more deeply considering these things for yourself.

The people who most often complain about not being able to find a ‘quality’ partner, are almost always those who most ‘lack’ quality themselves.

The people most often frustrated by the role that sex plays in their lives, are almost always those unwilling to consider why.

The people who learn to channel their sexual energy – are almost always those who actually understand these things.

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You Should Start Over in a New Country (Here’s How)

You Should Start Over in a New Country (Here's How)

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It’s hard to believe that I’ve been living in Medellin, Colombia for over 8 years now – and with respect to my own personal development, the decision to move to another country was probably the top life-changing decision I’ve ever made.

And as I’ll explain in this video – I think that especially if you’re a young person or at a point in your life where you don’t quite have things figured out and feel like you still have so much more to learn about yourself and your place in the world…

Or if you’re someone who wants to completely reinvent yourself like I did –

Then moving to another country is probably one of the best life-changing decisions you could make as well.

Let’s begin –

How Living in A Different Country Went from Dream to Reality

So if you’re anything like what I once was – the idea of moving to another country probably feels like more of a fantasy than it does a real possibility… so let’s see how you feel after hearing my story  😊

So I grew up in Long Island, NY – and the idea of ever leaving, let alone moving to a different country, had either never crossed my mind, or seemed so utterly preposterous that I had never really considered it. That was just something that other people did.

Virtually everything I do now, I used to think only other people could do.

Anyway to make a long story short – 2012 is when, at 27 years old, I sold everything I had and moved back in with my parents to start a real estate web design company.

Fast forward a few years to 2014 and I was watching an interview that one of my industry friends had done, where he mentioned that he was living in Medellin, Colombia – and this blew my mind for 2 reasons.

First was that, like most Americans – the only things I associated with Colombia were drug cartels, and murder – yet my friend seemed to be in a really nice place, where, at least at that moment, he was not being murdered by a drug cartel.

Now the second reason that his interview blew my mind was that, for the first time since starting an online business, it occurred to me that I didn’t have to live in New York… that I could actually live anywhere.

So with my curiosity piqued, I reached out to my friend and that conversation ended with an invitation to join a private online forum consisting of mostly location-independent entrepreneurs who were living and traveling all over the world.

Suddenly I was now talking to these ‘other’ people and as it turns out, they were just like me.

Most of these guys were living and traveling throughout South America –  where new cultures, warm climates, stunning geography, and a very strong US Dollar all merged into a dazzling offer that many young, broke, starved-for-adventure entrepreneurs living in their mothers’ basements couldn’t say no to…

The reality is that if you make money online you are ‘location-independent’ too – and you can technically live anywhere that will give you a visa… which is most places.

You may be thinking that you can’t afford to live in many other places, and if that’s the case – I think you’d be surprised at just how many amazing, affordable places there are in the world.

In addition to South America – places like Thailand, Bali, Vietnam, Spain, and most of Eastern Europe  are all hotbeds for location-independent entrepreneurs because they’re all extremely affordable while having a very high quality of life.

Once you have an idea where you want to live – you can easily find online communities (either forums or Facebook groups)  of foreign entrepreneurs or expats who are already living in those areas where you can ask questions and make friends.

That’s exactly how I was able to find my first ‘home’ here in Medellin – it was a small room in a big apartment where I lived with 4 other entrepreneurs for about $150USD per month.

Not only was I paying roughly 10x less than what it would have cost me to rent an apartment in New York, but I was now spending entire days working at a kitchen table with other like-minded young entrepreneurs who i was able to ask questions, talk strategy, and bounce ideas off of –

That experience alone is worthy of it’s own video but what I’ll say briefly is that, if you’re a young entrepreneur and you an opportunity to live with other like-minded people, do not hesitate even for a single fucking second. Do it.

Why You Should ‘Move’ And Not Just Travel

So despite the title of this section – I highly recommend traveling a bit before you decide to move somewhere, because it will teach you a lot about yourself.

You may even end up deciding to go full-blown digital nomad and spend many years traveling the world- but my recommendation is that if you’re really seeking personal growth, you should commit to living somewhere and fully immerse yourself into the culture – let me explain.

So when I first arrived in Medellin back in May of 2014 (I was now 29 years old) my plan was to travel all throughout South America while I grew the fuck out of my business.

I planned to blog about these experiences on a domain that I bought – thetravelingsuit.com – where I spent almost $1000 (that I didn’t have) to get a logo designed that would change depending on the country I was in.

Well here’s what actually happened – after a few months in Medellin, I spent another 6 months in Mexico, where I spent time living with other entrepreneurs in El Rosario and Valle del Bravo, and then finally a few months living alone in Mexico City – and at the end of all of this, I learned two things.

The first was that If I really wanted to grow my business the way I wanted to – I couldn’t be traveling like this. I needed routines and systems and lots of other things that are difficult to set up when you’re living out of a suitcase and moving around every few months.

The second thing I learned was that even though I was meeting amazing people and having amazing experiences –  I felt like I was missing out on the experience of true immersion.

I didn’t want to just keep floating in and out of ‘digital entrepreneur bubbles’ across South America…  What I wanted now was something deeper.

I wanted to visit small pueblos and local attractions and not feel rushed – to learn the history and the culture inside and out –

To go from broken spanish to Fluent Spanish –  To learn to move like the salseros I saw at dance clubs –

I wanted to be able to walk down the street and just… blend in… and probably more than anything, I wanted to find love.

So after 1 year of travel, I officially retired from the digital nomad lifestyle and made Medellin, Colombia my permanent home – where I promptly began the full immersion experience that radically changed my life.

I practiced my Spanish for hours every day – not with books or courses, but through actual conversation – mainly with my girlfriend at the time who only spoke Spanish.

The fastest way to speak a foreign language is to date someone who only speaks that language. The second fastest way is with Spanish VIP – the sponsor of this video… but more about them later on).

Soon I even started dressing like Colombians, and got a motorcycle that I’d use to ride out to small pueblos on weekends where I would just walk around, talk to people, and record interesting things on my GoPro.

I enrolled at a local salsa school and practiced 7 days a week for 2 hours per day – and what began only as a desire to dance and be more social, evolved into a profound love of an art-form that allowed me to express myself in ways that I had never even dreamed were possible.

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This guide is about actually walking the path. It creates a perfect environment devoid of excuses and forces you to face who you are and what you need to do in a way that’s sustainable.

Speaking of dreams – Back when I was still living with my parents and  just dreaming about what it would be like to live in South America – I started having this recurring fantasy where I’d be somewhere in South America at a random bar with a beautiful latin girl. I’d order us a couple of mojitos in fluent Spanish – and then we’d hit the dance floor and blow everyone away with our amazing Salsa.

In 2018  – that dream became a reality – and it was one of the happiest days of my life – because… well… not only did I finally make real something that I had fantasized thousands of times –

But there was a moment I had shortly after ordering another 4 mojitos (with my now less than fluent Spanish)  where I did something that I rarely do – I paused to reflect just how much I’d actually accomplished…

And allowed myself to feel pride over how much I had improved as a person.

In New York, I believed that my happiness depended entirely on what care I drove,  how much money I had in the bank, and how many girls I slept with – and because all of my friends had the same sort of values – I couldn’t see past that.

Moving to Colombia and fully immersing myself into a culture that was so radically different from the one I grew up in gave me the context I needed to be able to not only SEE, CLEARLY, all of my beliefs and values – but the POWER to change them.

People here have so much less, and yet are so much happier and more generous than the people where I’m from.

I credit this for helping me to derive less of my value from material things, and more of my value from how much I’m able to help others.

Who knows how much more money I could have made with my business over the last 4 years if I hadn’t directed so much of my energy and resources towards making these videos –

But when I get messages from you guys, and it’s thousands of messages at this point, saying that I’ve positively impacted your life…

Or when you come up to me in person…

The other day I was at the mall and some young kid came up to me and started telling me all of the stuff he was going through and it felt like I was literally talking to my younger self –

And so for him to tell me that my videos were helping him – which is LITERALLY why I do all of this – to help the younger version of myself… yeah there’s no price you could ever put on that.

I’ve become the man that I needed when I was younger – and hopefully as I’ve shown you guys through this video – moving to another country was a critical piece of that journey.

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Become INSANELY Productive: The Dopamine ‘Switch’ Technique

Become INSANELY Productive: The Dopamine 'Switch' Technique

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Up until a few years ago, I had no idea what dopamine even was…

And if you’re like me and have watched any of thousands of ‘dopamine detox’ videos on YouTube, you might be led to believe that Dopamine is just some ‘thing’ the human body releases in little ‘pleasure hits’ whenever  we browse through social media feeds, play video games, or watch porn.

That’s not what dopamine is, and when we look at it this way  we see it exclusively as a ‘problem’ that we need to detox from.

But after reading virtually every dopamine research study I could find on PubMed, combined with lots of my own personal experiments, what I’ve discovered  is that Dopamine is just as much a problem as it is a solution.

And that by properly administering it within my own life, I’m able to literally transform into a different person capable of achieving virtually anything.

As I’ve detailed in other videos (which I’ll link below and at the end of this video), our bodies actually produce dopamine to MOTIVATE us to do things, which is precisely why social media and video game companies, the porn industry, and fast food corporations have collectively spent at least hundreds of millions (and possibly billions) of dollars learning how to manipulate it.

They’ve learned how to hijack our dopamine to alter neural pathways in our brains so that we feel motivated towards consuming more of their stuff, leaving us with ZERO motivation for anything that requires more effort than this.

But much in the same way that we can and do easily form these types of ‘negative’ dopamine addictions, we can also easily  form ‘positive’ dopamine addictions, where we can become addicted to improving our bodies, learning skills, building businesses… becoming ‘better.’

So in this video, I’m going to share with you guys a dead-simple 3 step system that once implemented, can fundamentally change who you are as a person – reprogramming your brain to steer AWAY from low value, instant-gratification type rewards, and TOWARDS high-value, long-term rewards.

We’re essentially going to be ‘switching’ how our dopamine is used, which is why I’ve named this system ‘Dopamine Switch’.

You’re free to run this system for however long you’d like but my recommendation is to do it one day at a time. Even after a single day you’ll feel a big difference and learn important lessons.

Step 1: Identify Negative Dopamine Addictions and Remove Them

Take as much time as you need  to identify every single negative dopamine addiction currently present in your life and then work to completely remove as many of them as is possible.

Addicted to video games? Don’t just just say ‘ok I’m not going to play video games today’

Literally unplug the console and stick it in your basement or storage – give it to a friend, sibling, or parent to hide for the day… get rid of it.

Addicted to unhealthy food? Don’t just say ‘ok I’m not going to eat unhealthy food today’ – take every-single- piece of junk food in your house and either give it away or throw it away.

Addicted to Facebook? Instagram? Tik Tok?… YouTube? Get rid of your phone for the day. Give it to someone else, put it in a safe where only someone else knows the code… figure it out.

If for some reason you need your phone, then uninstall those apps and delete or deactivate your accounts.

In case I’m not being clear enough, you need to be as extreme as possible.

Look at it this way:

If you had a friend that was addicted to drugs – and they told you that they wanted to stop using drugs for a day, but had a massive bag of drugs in their house, what would you tell them?

Would you tell them to just use their own willpower? Probably not.

Would you tell them to throw out the drugs? That’s a bit better, but more drugs are still just a phone call away.

The best advice would be for them to put themselves somewhere with no drugs AND no way to get more drugs.

Treat yourself like your drug addicted friend. It’s actually not that different. Your drugs are Social Media,  Video Games, Porn, and unhealthy foods.

Step 2: Identify Positive Dopamine Addictions and Perform Them

Remember, Dopamine itself isn’t the problem – it’s how our dopamine is motivating us towards low value activities with false rewards that’s the problem.

We want our bodies to instead use our dopamine system to START motivating us towards high value activities with life-fulfilling type rewards, ideally in a balanced way.

So for your Dopamine Switch, I recommend choosing roughly one activity or habit to work on from within each of our 4 dimensions – physical, occupational, expressive, and mental.

Because our days for the most part consist of 8 hours of sleep, 8 hours of work, and 8 hours for everything else, I believe that out of our 4 dimensions,  the occupational dimension should be the primary focus.

Here are some examples of activities you can choose within each dimension:

Physical things could include running , going to the gym or doing bodyweight exercises at home, swimming… anything combining movement in some way that requires effort.

Mental things could include meditation, cold showers, organizing your apartment or computer, fasting, doing the most difficult thing in your day before you do anything else… anything that challenges your mind.

Expressive things could include dancing, learning to play an instrument, creative writing, telling stories, drawing – anything that you perceive will allow you to EXPRESS that THING inside of you.

Occupational things could include… really anything you do that relates to how you’re going to improve your ability to earn within your chosen profession.

If you’re a student then you should probably focus on studying or getting that important research paper wrapped up.

Now listen, these are all just my personal recommendations. The fastest way to fail a Dopamine Switch is to make it overly complicated or to try to copy exactly what I’m recommending instead of figuring out what works best for you.

If you’ve never run more than a few blocks, and decide that today is the day that you’re going to run a full marathon, knock out a few hundred laps in the pool, and then start a powerlifting routine… don’t do that.

And listen, If I see anyone in the comments below asking for advice on which activities they should be focused on, I’m literally going to go to your house and f*cking slap you.  If your mom opens the door I’m going to f*cking slap her too.

Do NOT overthink this stuff… just keep things simple by focusing on what feels right.

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The Dark Mode Guide

is a simple system designed to help you achieve a specific goal by facilitating the development of relevant habits and creating the perfect environment to make failure impossible.

This guide is about actually walking the path. It creates a perfect environment devoid of excuses and forces you to face who you are and what you need to do in a way that’s sustainable.

Step 3: Reflect

So as you’re moving through the day, try not to think too much. Figure out your plan of attack (which should be as simple as possible) and then execute.

You don’t need to dive into the science or theory of WHY you should be doing those things,  you just need to do them.

If at any point you feel tired – sleep! Take a nap – take as many as you need.

The goal of your first day and every day of a Dopamine Switch is to simply get to the finish line… get the victory…  because if you can do that.

Well, I don’t want to ruin it for you, but I promise that you will learn things… very important, special things.

Once you’ve made it through a full day of Dopamine Switch, take some time first thing the following morning to reflect on the experience, at which point you now have full permission to think as much as you’d like.

How did you feel when you first started the day and then as the day went on? Did you notice that the world suddenly seems quieter?…More tranquil? What do you think you can achieve or who do you think you can become if you keep this up?

Most importantly – start to think about how you can begin to incorporate some of what you experienced into an actual lifestyle, and then start implementing those things immediately.

Conclusion

Alright guys – so let’s bring this all together now – starting with a helpful analogy.

Performing a Dopamine Switch is exactly like cleaning a computer.

Removing all of your negative dopamine activities is like getting rid of all the viruses.

You don’t just want to remove a few viruses, you want to remove them all.

Remember to be as EXTREME as possible, and everywhere you can, don’t just rely on willpower – identify the ‘source’ of whatever the negative activity is, and remove that.

By removing the source, you remove temptation – which will remove the distracting thoughts you’ll experience that will try to justify a “quick peek on instagram” while you go to the bathroom, or “just one YouTube video” while you eat lunch.

Then, choosing positive dopamine activities to focus on is like choosing which software you want to keep, and which NEW software you want to install on your computer.

You obviously don’t want to install a bunch of stuff right away which will slow your computer down and make it more vulnerable to viruses.

Instead – just keep whatever software is already working well, and only add the new software that you think is absolutely necessary.

Once you’ve got your plan in place, get the victory – always focus on just one day at a time. Then every morning when you wake up, reflect on the incredible experience you’re having.

Pay careful attention towards figuring out how to implement what you’re working on into an actual sustainable long-term lifestyle, and get to work.

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A (Real) Guide To Becoming Your Best Version

A (Real) Guide To Becoming Your Best Version

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I spent most of my life feeling like I’d never really amount to much –  and this feeling only got worse after graduating high school – where it seemed like with each passing year, everyone around me was moving forward while I just stayed the same.

So if you told my younger self that one day I would move to another country, learn spanish and salsa, box and climb mountains , build a massive business, learn philosophy and discover spirituality.

That, as a lifelong introvert, one day I would make YouTube videos where I helped to illuminate this path for others.

If you told all of this to my younger self, I would have told you that you were out of your fucking mind.

Anyway – all of the big questions of personal development – ‘how can I develop confidence? Discipline? Work ethic? ‘How can I stop procrastinating? Stop making bad decisions. Stop feeling depressed?’

All of these questions are all rooted in a much deeper question – perhaps the question of questions: “How do I become my best version?”

Now, judging by the number of bullshit, pseudo-motivational  ‘how to be your best version’ videos there are on YouTube, two things are clear to me.

  1. A lot of people aspire to be their best version 
  2. A lot of people have no idea what the fuck ‘best version’ even means, let alone how to get there

So in this article – we’re going to go DEEP. I’m going to break down the complex psychological implications of all of this as I share the exact 3 steps through which I was able to become my best version.

Step 1: Understanding “Me” and “Ideal Me”

“How do I become my best version?”  … if we look closely, this actually implies two different people.

We have ‘me’ – who exists in the present moment –  and ‘my best version’ – an ideal version of me who exists at some future moment.

PRESENT ME is lazy, unproductive, weak, and sometimes masturbates in excess of 5 times per day.

IDEAL ME wakes up at 5am, effortlessly works entire days, and climbs mountains in his spare time.

So when we ask the question “how do I become my best version” what we’re really saying is that “I am me, right now, but that’s not who I want to be. Who I want to be, is the ME that I want to be, somewhere in a future moment”

These are two different people…  which implies something else really important: The reason that our ‘Present Me’ is not yet our  ‘Ideal Me’ can be summarized in a single word: CONTROL.

Because if we had control – then we would ALL go to the gym and have 6 packs, and instantly develop good habits… But that’s NOT what happens… instead we fail and procrastinate and delay things – because we LACK control.

For most people, it’s uncomfortable to acknowledge this.  I used to HATE the idea that I was not in control of myself because it made me feel weak… but here’s the thing.

Most people who begin this journey immediately start posting motivational bullshit to social networks and want to see themselves as a model for everyone else.

But wow are we supposed to BEGIN an AUTHENTIC journey of PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT if we can’t even acknowledge the obvious stuff, like how weak (and probably also pathetic) we are RIGHT NOW IN THE PRESENT MOMENT BEFORE we make changes?

The acknowledgement that we LACK control – that we are not NEARLY what we COULD be, is what allows an AUTHENTIC journey to even begin in the first place.

Anything else is just delusion, and not the good kind.

I am me, in the present moment – a weak pathetic creature who has very little control over the sort of decisions and habits that will help me transform into who I want to be – my ‘ideal me ‘- who exists in the future and is primarily characterized by one thing – CONTROL.

Got it? Ok let’s move to the next step.

Step 2: Authentically Understand “Me”

Ok so we’ve got ‘Me’ and ‘Ideal Me’ – if we’re going to move any further we should probably work to have an authentic understanding of both of them.

So let’s start with the first one, ‘Me’. What exactly is ‘Me’ ?

Well, we might think we know, but let’s be honest here. For most of us, who we ‘THINK’ we are is not even close to who we ‘REALLY’ are.

We all know someone who thinks they’re things that they’re clearly not – these are ‘inauthentic’ people – and while this is easy to observe in others, it’s extremely difficult to observe in ourselves.

I’ll give you an example that most of you, if you’re being honest, will relate to.

In the past – when my friends shared accomplishments on social media – on a surface level I would feel and act as if I was happy for the person – but deep-down on a ‘root’ level I was jealous.

When my friends ‘failed’ – on a surface level I was supportive and compassionate -but on a root level… I actually wanted them to fail.

Now most of us don’t want to think of ourselves as being jealous and bitter – probably just as much as we don’t want to think of ourselves as weak –

And so even if we authentically experience these emotions, instead of acknowledging them, we instead choose to bury them beneath the mask of who we PRETEND to be.

There are lots of problems with this, but at least insofar as it has to do with becoming our ‘best version’, it is CRITICALLY IMPORTANT for us to honestly identify as much weakness within us as possible because this all comes together to form the STARTING POINT of the journey.

The AUTHENTIC starting point.

To acknowledge our lack of control and how the people around us truly make us feel IS how we come to understand our ‘Me’ more authentically, which is ½ of the ‘become my best version’ equation.

Being honest about how things REALLY made me feel allowed me to understand ‘Me’ on an authentic level, and in doing so I was able to realize that I felt ‘jealousy’ because I wanted the success of other people for myself.

I felt happy when others failed because their failures made me feel better about my own position in life.

THESE discoveries then led me to realize that my entire self-worth and everything about how I measured myself had to do with others – the external, fake world where, to make matters worse,  most of the successes people share are highly exaggerated, and most of the failures people share are to garner likes and attention.

Realizing this allowed me to stop comparing myself to others, and to start comparing ‘me’ to my ‘ideal me’ – which is the CORRECT comparison to be making if we want to become our best versions.

Now, instead of comparing myself to others, I simply see myself in them.

When people succeed, I see myself succeeding, and I feel genuine happiness.

When people fail, I see myself failing, and I am genuinely supportive and compassionate.

We are probably not who we think we are – and if we want to understand ourselves authentically, we should start by turning off the TV, disconnecting from social media, and at least temporarily REMOVING ourselves from the external world, because that world is governed by profit and virtually nothing is as it seems.

The external world doesn’t want us to authentically understand ourselves because there’s no profit in here.

The less we understand ourselves – the less capable we are of solving our own problems and dealing with our own issues -and  the MORE likely we are to seek out all sort of bullshit products and services to fix SYMPTOMS and NEVER root causes.

The external world programs us to believe that we are something that we are NOT- and who we REALLY are is waiting to be discovered in the INTERNAL where not even a 12 minute YouTube video can take us.

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is a simple system designed to help you achieve a specific goal by facilitating the development of relevant habits and creating the perfect environment to make failure impossible.

This guide is about actually walking the path. It creates a perfect environment devoid of excuses and forces you to face who you are and what you need to do in a way that’s sustainable.

Step 3: Authentically Understand “Ideal Me”

Most of us have a rough idea of our “ideal me” – The problem is – society generally has its own plans for what it WANTS us to be, and it’s very easy to confuse ‘who I THINK I want to be’ with ‘who I REALLY want to be’

I’ll share another personal experience and maybe you can relate.

During my early teens – When the other kids were playing outside, I was busy working on 3D renders of fighter jets, or writing reviews for the role playing video games that I used to play and posting them to a website I had designed entirely with HTML and photoshop.

But because my parents had different ideas of what ‘success’ meant – they steered me away from my passions and towards what they considered to be ‘high paying’ careers – my choices were basically banker, doctor, or lawyer.

To make a long story short… I spent 5 years getting a degree in economics – and a couple more years fumbling around in internships and jobs that I hated before somehow stumbling back into building websites ( something I was actually passionate about) and now many years later I own a massive real estate web design business.

Anyway my point in all of this is that the idea that I had of my ‘ideal me’ had been COMPLETELY defined by society and other external influences and yet I FULLY BELIEVED that being a high-paid banker was part of my ‘ideal me’.

It was only when I started building websites again THAT I came to more authentically understand my true ‘ideal me’ -at least the occupational part.

Our ‘ideal me’’ also has expressive, physical, and mental components, and we’ve got to work to authentically understand those parts as well, which is NOT EASY because society already has plans for us.

Now as far as how YOU can discover your ‘Ideal Me’.. well that’s a really good question.

I think that if your ‘ideal me’ is something along the lines of a famous, rich person, with a huge mansion and lots of cars… then that’s probably an indication that you have a lot of work to do.

To discover your authentic ‘ideal me’ – I’d recommend taking a closer look at things you truly enjoy doing when nobody else is around.

If you’re not sure what you really enjoy doing, then just keep doing more things… out there in the real world.

Conclusion

Alright guys, If we want to become our ‘best versions’, then we had better understand what that means in the first place –

To that end, I hope this article has been helpful – if you feel that it has, please give the video a like and consider sharing with friends.

Now here are two final pieces of advice that should help you bring this all home.

First, is that if you don’t feel tremendous motivation to make progress on this journey – then you probably have very inauthentic understandings of ‘me’, ‘ideal me’, or both.

Because regardless of how much effort this all takes, it should feel effortless because authentic progress is far more rewarding than it is difficult.

You will NEVER become your best version if what you’re chasing are inauthentic, false constructions of society.

And my second recommendation – and this may come as a surprise – is to keep in mind that your ‘ideal me’ is not your ‘best version’.

Ideals are perfect things and so your ‘ideal me’ is simply what you should aspire to. Unlike ideals, we are not and will never be perfect things, and so your ‘best version’ is simply what you become when you live mostly in accordance with what your ‘ideal me’ stands for.

This is the path!

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How to (Quickly) Turn Depression Into Motivation

How to (Quickly) Turn Depression Into Motivation

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I spent most of my teens and early 20’s feeling depressed, despite talking with friends and family, spending hours every day… mostly at night… scrolling through internet forums learning about how others cured their depression, and I even met with professionals.

And we’ll talk about how useless these things were shortly, because what I really want to focus on today is a different way to treat depression that you won’t read about in any book or hear about in other videos.

Once I FULLY understood it – it didn’t JUST cure my depression… it turned me into a GOD.

Ok it didn’t turn me into an ACTUAL God, but it made me GodLIKE – transforming me from an average mortal who never did any of the stuff they always promised themself they would do – into the exact opposite of that.

The massive business I’ve built, my investments, the salsa, boxing, smoking hot girl and of course my growing action figure collection –

All of it is because of the uncommon knowledge that I’m about to share with you. To understand, we’ll need to go on a journey of 4 steps, starting with:

Step 1: Hitting Rock Bottom

In 2011, I found what I thought was the girl of my dreams. A few months later she left me to get back together with a past boyfriend of hers who was smart, successful, spiritual, and philosophically inclined –

While I was just some loser whose entire existence revolved around New York sports teams and getting drunk on weekends.

So when she left me,  I was POSITIVE that I would NEVER find a girl like her again, and for all of the depression I had experienced up until that point in my life, this was the worst.

At first I did everything we’re  ‘supposed’ to do to get better, and when that didn’t work, I decided I would just ‘wait’ for the pain to end… and that’s when a miracle happened.

I was smoking a cigarette on the rooftop of the building where I lived, gazing woefully onto the New York City skyline as I had done every night for months, when suddenly a little after midnight on March 11, 2011, I officially hit the absolute lowest point of my life.

I know this because the very next moment was when everything changed.

In a fraccion of a second, less time than it takes to snap your finger, I awakened to the mind-blowing revelation that I didn’t HAVE to experience depression the way that society had taught me to experience it – but that I could instead use it as ENERGY.

In understanding this, I felt an unimaginable power enter my body. I flicked my cigarette away and started jumping as high as I could, tears streaming down my face.

Then I ran back to my apartment, and OBSESSIVELY began doing  ALL of the things that I always knew I had ought to do but never was quite able to do – starting with – for the first time in my life – ordering a book.

From that day forward, I would start every morning with a few chapters and a cup of coffee, and from there it was game on.

I completely cut myself from friends and social media. No procrastination, no distractions – every second of every day spent working towards realizing my true potential.

In my career, I quickly went from earning very little for designing websites that took me MONTHS to complete – to earning thousands of dollars designing websites that now only took me days.

In my physical, I went from having never run more than a few blocks, to running, biking and swimming for hours every day – a year and 2 months later I would fly to South Africa to compete in my first ironman…

And you guys more or less know the rest…

Now here’s the thing – to fully understand what I’m trying to share in this video – we need to be able to look into the mirror and ACTUALLY be honest with ourselves – we probably are already at rock-bottom.

Incapable of doing the things we know we should be doing, which has caused us to fall far behind in life. We know we have to change, but we’re completely powerless to do so.

So why the hell are we spending so much time trying to improve something that’s already  broken when COULD be doing the exact opposite?

FUCK self-improvement, self-DESTRUCTION is where it’s at. When we destroy what we presently believe ourselves to be, we FREE that thing that we might become.

This all starts by systematically destroying the fundamental truths that constitute present reality, which is a lot like a prison. This is a long process which I’ll talk about in other videos, but for now let’s start by talking about the ‘reality’ of depression.

Step 2: Understand How Society ‘Distorts’ Depression

We’re taught that depression is a long-term mental illness that requires treatment from a trained medical professional, who can decide whether or not we should be put on medication to help alleviate symptoms. Nothing inherently wrong with this.

When those around us see that we’re depressed, they encourage us to ‘take our mind off of things’ by hanging out with friends or doing something that we enjoy. They try to help us, because they care about us. Nothing inherently wrong with this either.

But here’s the thing, everything that society encourages us to do – Confide in others, Seek help, take medication, distract ourselves – these are all EXTERNAL remedies that do NOTHING to address the underlying root of depression which is of course  an INTERNAL problem.

And we NEVER hear about internal solutions, because the primary goal of modern society is PROFIT, and there is absolutely NO profit to be made in our inside.

Imagine for just a second, how catastrophically the world economy would collapse if everyone first looked internally to solve their problems instead of looking to EXTERNAL things.

What does that tell us about the true nature of reality?

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Step 3: Understand The True Reality of Depression

The societal beliefs surrounding depression are so concrete that it’s considered taboo to even REMOTELY question them.

Why? Why can’t we have a rational conversation about whether depression is possibly a  ‘choice’ without ravenous, mouth-foaming zealots shouting us down?

Depression itself is an ‘effect’ – and we know that every ‘effect’ has a cause, which in the case of depression is different for everyone.

Not being happy with who we are, or where we’re at in life, sexual frustration or the feeling that we’ll never find a good partner, a particularly difficult family or life situation or circumstance.

For most of us, Depression is the end result of feeling lots of these things for a sustained period of time, and what we ‘feel’ isn’t depression but rather ‘negative emotions’ – like sadness, loneliness, anger and fear, and this is precisely where the problem begins, because the idea of a ‘negative emotion’ is absurd… 

a fundamental truth that we plainly accept as one of the pillars that form our reality which I implore you to destroy.

Because if we look closely, there is a place before positive and negative, where emotions exist simply as emotions.

And in this place, we can choose how to perceive them – and this is where the power that I’m describing begins.

Step 4: Decide How to React to ‘Negative’ Emotions

When something HAPPENS to us – Maybe we fail a difficult assignment, we get fired from a job, someone we like rejects us, or it’s saturday night and we’re all alone… again.

Society teaches us that it is NORMAL to react NEGATIVELY to these things… but does it really have to be that way?

If we really think about it, isn’t it even a bit silly to react that way, which only makes things worse, when we could instead be making things better?

Because  if we look closely here as well, there’s a space between the things that happen to us and how we react to them.

When we feel powerless to fix our depression… It’s because we don’t see that this space exists.

And when we learn to observe this space, we can execute the following  formula that I use to channel my depression into godlike power:

First, something happens to us which usually causes us to feel some sort of negative emotion.

Then, instead of reacting “negatively” as we always do – we should CHOOSE to use to use the emotion as the FUEL to drive the ACTIONS that will instead MOVE US towards the AMAZING thing that we know we can become if we simply do the things that we know we MUST do.

As soon as we begin to do this – in that same space where we are now choosing to react positively to negative emotions, we can now start to PERCEIVE negative emotions AS positive because of the POSITIVE effect they are creating.

This is the formula.

Now I can’t stress enough that for this to work, we HAVE to be willing to challenge the things we currently accept as truth, which is easy if we just observe how profoundly those truths are limiting us.

After that, all that’s left is to try it with the full-belief that it will work. And if you’re not convinced, what do you have to lose by at least giving this a try?

For me this is no longer a formula that I need to practice, it’s simply who I am. I still feel sadness, anger, frustration etcetera, but I rarely react negatively to them.

Instead I channel them into the fuel I use to give me a life that I previously thought was impossible.

If you feel like you got something from the article, please like and subscribe to the YT channel,  and visit  nelsonquest.com to download  ‘Dark Mode’ for free – it will  give you a framework that will make it much easier to channel negative emotions into power.

This is the path.

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How Being Alone Became My Superpower

How Being Alone Became My Superpower

If you’re someone who ‘struggles’ with loneliness or has a hard time being alone… read this article through to the end and I promise that you’ll never look at being alone the same way again.

I spend a lot of time alone – and in this article, I want to talk about my relationship with loneliness, and how it has evolved over the years.

One of my favorite things to do at night is to look out my window.

I love the stark contrast of light versus darkness.

Tens if not hundreds of thousands of tiny lights – what an interesting sensation to realize that every single one of them represents ‘life’ in some shape or form.

I look out to some of the apartments in the building across from me.

In one apartment I can see kids and puppies running back and forth, while the adults hang out in the main room, sitting around in a circle of chairs… just … talking.

I love that about Colombia.

In another apartment, I can see the lights of the TV dancing off the face of someone bouncing up and down on an exercise bike.

In yet another apartment, someone is on their balcony, staring out into the distance – I wonder what they’re thinking about…

I like the exercise of observing my own loneliness within the greater context of those around me.

I don’t really have ‘social’ friends – It’s been years since it was a normal thing for me to ‘go out’ – even for a quick bite at a restaurant is a rare occurrence.

Weeks at a time where I wake up – spend the entire day doing my best to make progress towards my goals, and then I go to sleep.

Almost a decade of existing this way – I find that the more I embrace periods of ‘being alone’, the more that I am able to absolutely THRIVE in my personal and professional life… but it hasn’t always been this way…

There were a few specific periods in my life characterized by overwhelming loneliness, and understanding those periods has been an invaluable tool on my journey so far.

When I was 13 years old – puberty hit me hard. My face was so covered in acne that nobody wanted to be my friend. Even people who had previously been my friends, were now embarrassed to be seen with me.

It’s one thing to be alone in an empty room, it’s another thing entirely to be alone within a large group of people.

Every day felt like a full year – at lunch period, because I didn’t have a table to sit at, I’d grab my lunch, and when nobody was looking, I’d go to a bathroom stall and just sit there until the bell rang to signal the next period.

This was before cell phones, and so I didn’t have a digital companion –

It was just me, alone in that bathroom stall, counting down the seconds until the next period, afraid to death that someone would discover where I was going and what I was doing every day.

Thankfully, it turns out that people don’t care what you’re doing as much as you think they do.

School days couldn’t finish soon enough – I’d race home to where my real social was waiting for me – in the form of Role playing games.

First was Chrono Trigger – then Final Fantasy 7, and then Xenogears.

My only real social interactions were with the characters in these games. It’s where I learned my values – where I began to develop and understand that hard work and discipline was required to achieve difficult goals, and it fact it was hard work and discipline that made difficult goals even worth it in the first place.

It’s where I came to understand important traits and emotions, like honor, courage, loyalty, trust, and even love.

It was where I modeled ALL important archetypes like the hero, the dreamer, the martyr, the mentor.

I’d go to sleep feeling like I was still in those games – but every morning it was back to school – back to the reality of being alone… being a loser.

I was a loser, more than anything,  BECAUSE I was alone, BECAUSE I had no friends  – this was a universal rule… right?

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is a simple system designed to help you achieve a specific goal by facilitating the development of relevant habits and creating the perfect environment to make failure impossible.

This guide is about actually walking the path. It creates a perfect environment devoid of excuses and forces you to face who you are and what you need to do in a way that’s sustainable.

Fast forward a bit to March 2nd, 2011 – I was now 26 years old – it was close to midnight, I was on the roof of the apartment that I lived at, in Brooklyn NY.

I was staring out onto the Manhattan skyline. New York City has a funny way of either making you feel like you’re on top of the world, or making you feel like you’re being crushed by it.

I had been going through a massive depression – and while most of the day I was able to fill the void with mindless instant messaging and internet browsing, there was something about being alone at night that felt unbearable.

Just a few weeks earlier, a girl that I thought was the love of my life had left me to go back to a man that was FAR better than I.

And so standing alone on that roof, pulling on a cigarette, feeling more alone and depressed than I had ever been – I had an epiphany.

What exactly happened in that moment I’ll talk about in another video – but I returned to my apartment a COMPLETELY different person from when I had left it.

I spent the near year and two months in almost COMPLETE isolation – seeing friends and family only a small handful of times.

I began to immerse myself in books – I would read, and then I would apply.

For the first time in my life I had a desire to discover who I was, and to work hard to improve that person.

I decided that in roughly a year’s time, that I would compete in an ironman – and I went from someone who had never run more than a few blocks, to training up to 7 hours per day.

Every morning I’d get up from my warm blankets, and run over to the public pool where I’d throw myself into the freezing cold water to start my swim training.

I’d run at night time so that I could avoid the crowds – cold new york nights that took me over the Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan, and then back over the Williamsburg Bridge into Brooklyn where I’d often be completely alone.

Every day was me, alone,  versus myself – and for the first time in my life, not only was I conscious of this battle… I was winning it.

On the weekends, long 7-hour bike rides that took me deep into New Jersey.

Every minute of those 7 hours, I was pushing myself – they say that most long-distance competitions, aren’t so much about endurance as they are about pain management, and I COMPLETELY agree.

Every time I trained, I was alone, and I trained every day, for hours at a time, for a YEAR AND TWO MONTHS – where every training session – there was always a part of me that wanted to stop – and every training session, the part of me that wanted to push harder, was more dominant.

I find that in all of the stories of my life, this is the one that I am least able to use words to communicate to others – that year and 2 months – being completely alone and working to overcome something I saw as so much greater than anything I had ever previously thought I was capable of…

When I look back now, this was the most beautiful experience of my life…. Up to this point 🙂

When I wasn’t training, I was reading. I was working on my skills as a website designer – where I went from working for free, or a measly few hundred dollars, building good websites that took me months to build – to getting paid thousands of dollars to build incredible websites, that took me a fraction of the time to build.

Working to improve myself in an environment where I was completely isolated – completely alone – I felt ever-present.

Why had I feared being alone before this point? Why had I always felt like a loser.

If we all have a unique essence, this is certainly mine. I thrive when I’m alone. This was certainly where I was meant to be. Meant to thrive.

Before my epiphany, I had treated ‘loneliness’ as something I had ought to just… avoid.

I never really thought about it – I just believed that being alone was bad.

This was the thought of a slave – a slave to a system designed to maximize profit at all costs.

If we are taught to FEAR being alone, well then that reduces the ‘RISK’ that we may go inside of ourselves and discover who we really are, like I did – risk that we may come to know ourselves on a deep level.

I say “risk” to know ourselves is not profitable to the system. Imagine what a catastrophe that would be if everyone knew themselves?

If we all suddenly realized that we didn’t need pills and shortcuts to fix our problems.

If we all suddenly realized that the consumption of material things can never lead to fulfillment – that consumption is a never-ending game where there will ALWAYS be something else that we need to consume to be happy.

If we all suddenly realized that to be ‘ok’ being alone, is ok.

In the years since my epiphany, there have still been numerous times where I’m alone – and I feel scared… where I don’t WANT to be alone.

Now of course there are legitimate reasons for that – times where I should feel pain when I’m alone, I mean after all, I want to find love. I want to raise a family.

But if I’m alone eating a meal, or alone in the bathroom, and I felt the urge to watch YouTube not for any specific reason beyond wanting to REMOVE that feeling of being alone – I realize that these are the tentacles of a system – the false reality – desperately trying to pull me back in.

In many ways, to exist within this system – as we all do – is a form of disease.

Browsing the internet – watching TV, – even just talking to friends – this is all part of the closed-loop of the system – and the more time we spend ‘not alone’ – the more we become infected.

Being alone… being OK being alone,  is the cure.

This is a huge benefit of meditation –

Meditation for me is the realization that there is only the now, and in this now, I am not alone, because in this now I am present with myself.

The more I understand that, the easier it is to be alone.

Now what’s interesting is that when I sit down to meditate, I’m essentially ‘going’ to the meditation.

But when I’m alone – 3am in the morning, writing words like the ones you’re presently hearing – when I’m alone, that’s when the meditation comes to me.

When I’m alone, staring out my window at the hundreds of thousands of lights and realizing that each one of them represents an individual life with it’s own unique experience…

I realize that I’m never alone.

Some of you watching may perceive this as sad or depressing, but if you spent some more time alone, perhaps you realize that what you’re perceiving is actually a deep reflection into yourself.

The happiest part of my day is waking up at 3am to complete silence – in a world that is so overwhelmingly noisy, I find that the silence now passes over me like a cool, relaxing breeze.

I write in my journal, meditate, and then sit in front of the computer, to work uninterrupted, for HOURS on end while the rest of the world sleeps.

I LOVE being alone.

Guys – i’m not trying to motivate, i’m not trying to tell you guys what to do, I’m not TRYING to do anything.

What I’m doing is sharing an experience that you guys can relate to and use to reflect within your own unique experiences and journeys.

If you like and want to support that idea – if you enjoyed this article – can you please give the YouTube video a like?

And of course, if you want more content like this, make sure to subscribe and click the goddamn notification bell.

This is the path.

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Why it’s getting harder to take action

Why it's getting harder to take action

Table of Contents

Success isn’t a secret – you set a goal, and the distance between where you are now and your goal is a certain amount of action that you need to complete. 

And we all have a rough idea of the sort of things we should be doing to be successful – work hard, build good habits, take care of our health. 

We’ve read lots of books and watched lots of YouTube ‘how-to’ videos, yet why is it that some people are able to effortlessly apply the information that they consume, while others end up in an endless loop of consumption? 

There’s actually something really sinister going on in the world that prevents the majority of people from taking necessary action – which I’m going to uncover for you in this article. 

I’ll also give you 4 easy to implement steps that are designed to not only make taking action effortless – they’re designed to turn ‘taking action’ into a default state. 

A quick warning before we begin, this will require you to keep an open mind as I’ll be asking you to destroy old programming and adapt new programming. 

Is This The Weakest Generation Ever?

This generation is constantly critiqued as being the weakest in the history of humanity. From what I’ve been able to gather from history, I tend to agree – and I think the primary reason for this is what I like to describe as ‘external first’ mindset – I’ll explain. 

Not that long ago, if we wanted to use information as a tool, we had to literally get into a car and go to a library… which was only open during certain hours….

Before there were libraries, if we really wanted to solve a difficult problem, we might have had to dedicate our entire life to solving that problem. 

To put that into perspective, those same problems we can now solve with a 5 second google search. 

So in the past, if  we wanted to ‘build good habits’ or ‘start a business’ , we had no choice but to first consider these questions internally, and it’s precisely here that we arrive at the core problem behind why most people seem crippled to take action… it’s because they have no internal. 

Having no internal, they can’t possibly trust themselves to take action, so they reflexively cast the nets of their consciousness out into the external world hoping to find some magical knowledge that will give them the confidence to take action. 

However, having no internal, they’re also not capable of understanding what true knowledge is, and so they waste their lives searching for knowledge that they’re doomed to never find. 

By contrast, if you take any successful person and ask them how they became successful, chances are they’re not going to respond with “I learned from a YouTube course” or “I’m successful because of this book that I read”

Now that’s not to say that they won’t reference those information sources as potentially key pieces in their overall development… but at the end of the day, information sources are just that… information “sources”. 

Successful people use information to sharpen the blade… but they ARE the blade. By contrast, most of us are just READING about the blade – imagining what it’s like to be the blade – and we rust and become dull in the process. 

So how do we make the shift from the modern default state of ‘external first’ mindset, back to ‘internal first’ mindset – how to actually be the blade instead of just fucking theorizing about it? 

Here are the 4 steps. 

Step 1. Reprogram our understanding of ‘knowledge’

Books are not knowledge, books are just information in a raw state – good information as well as bad information – and frankly, most modern books actually make us WEAKER by reading them.

Mel Robbins “5 second rule” is a perfect example of this – it’s a great ‘idea’ that can be explained in about 15 seconds – here’s the explanation taken directly from her website:

“The 5 Second Rule is simple. If you have an instinct to act on a goal, you must physically move within 5 seconds or your brain will kill it.The moment you feel an instinct or a desire to act on a goal or a commitment, use the Rule. When you feel yourself hesitate before doing something that you know you should do, count 5-4-3-2-1-GO and move towards action.”

Ok great,  thank you Mel Robbins. Oh wait, can you explain one more thing? Can you explain WHY THE FUCK we need a 240 page book to explain this? Are you fucking kidding me? 

Anyone who reads all 240 pages of this book, is WEAKER by the end of it, because they will have wasted… how long does it take to read 240 pages? … about 7 hours? They will have wasted 7 hours reading about the THEORY of something that can be applied INSTANTLY.

Watching informational YouTube videos is no different – the bottom line here is any information that we consume is not KNOWLEDGE until we’ve directly applied it. Before application, information exists only as theory. 

And even after applying it once, in most cases it’s still not quite knowledge – it’s imitation. 

Knowledge is only achieved when we APPLY what we consume enough to be able to formulate our own critical thoughts on it by observing our own direct experiences with it. 

Developing an ‘internal first’ mindset really isn’t REMOTELY possible until we reprogram ourselves to see  knowledge in this way. 

To know the path is not to walk the path, to walk the path IS to know the path. 

Get the Dark Mode guide

The Dark Mode Guide

is a simple system designed to help you achieve a specific goal by facilitating the development of relevant habits and creating the perfect environment to make failure impossible.

This guide is about actually walking the path. It creates a perfect environment devoid of excuses and forces you to face who you are and what you need to do in a way that’s sustainable.

Step 2. Never Read More Than 1 Chapter (or watch more than 1 video)

Now that we’ve defined knowledge, let’s put it to the test in real life. 

Books are separated into chapters for a reason – as nownovel.com describes: “They give the reader space to pause and digest the plot developments and complications of the preceding chapter”

When it comes to self-help or business type books, chapters generally start by outlining a specific problem or concept, then they go on to solve the problem, usually with relatable examples, and almost always wrap-up with some sort of important takeaway or a set of actionable steps to follow.

Chapters are literally designed for us to be able to consume information in manageable chunks that we can then review and apply. 

When someone with an ‘internal first’ mindset reads a chapter of a book – let’s say they’re reading a chapter dealing with the development of good habits. 

As they’re reading, they’ll simultaneously be considering how they can apply this information within their own lives. What sort of experiences do they already have developing good habits (success, failures and everything else) and how does that compare to what they’re reading? And perhaps the most important question: is the author making a compelling enough case for them to actually try implementing what’s being taught? 

To start to ask lots of questions and reflect against our own experiences while we consume information is how we go from ‘mindless consumption’ to ‘critical consumption’ – which is a key characteristic of ‘internal first’ mindset. 

The same applies to YouTube videos. I know even videos like the one you’re watching now can ‘feel’ enlightening – but how much of what you’re consuming now will you just forget a few hours later? 

YouTube, like all social media platforms, is designed to keep us consuming,  and if we watch 5 videos before we even have the faintest impulse to think “oh wait, I’m wasting time”, that’s a hallmark of the ‘external first’ mindset that we’re working right now to reprogram.  

Step 3: Consume information only when we can ‘quickly’ apply it

If we like to start our mornings at the gym, and we’re going to work on our business afterwards – then our warmup on the treadmill at the gym is a perfectly good time to consume information about fitness or business.

Before I work on these videos I usually like to spend an hour or so studying philosophy – so that when I start writing I look for ways to apply what I’m studying. 

But what about if you’re sitting on your couch, watching a video about how to improve your discipline, when you know you’re going to spend the next few hours playing video games? Not a good time. 

Eating breakfast and watching a video about how to be more creative, when you won’t be doing anything creative any time soon? Useless..

If you can’t immediately apply, don’t consume.

Sitting on the couch may be a good time for you to just… rest, or meditate. Breakfast is a great time for you to think about the day in front of you, or maybe do a quick review of messages or emails so you can figure out how the first part of your day needs to be organized. 

Shifting to an ‘internal first’ mindset means not only knowing ‘how’ to consume information, but also ‘when’ to consume it. 

Step 4: Never consume any information without thinking about it ourselves first

This is the final and most important step – the culmination of this whole video and the last 3 steps we talked about. 

Imagine what our lives would be like if we internalized whatever question we have FIRST – BEFORE searching externally for the answers. 

How do I start a business? How do I learn how to dance? How do I work out? … when we consider these questions ourselves FIRST, BEFORE we look to external information sources, we may be blown away by the results. 

Here’s a personal example: When I first started dancing salsa, after a few months I got to a point where I was no longer enjoying the classes… I just hated the music. 

Instead of going online to search externally, for a solution, I thought about the question internally first.

After a bit of introspection, I figured that, to ‘enjoy’ the music, that perhaps I should study the flow of the music and understand how different instruments and harmonies work together. 

Study the origins – understand how ‘cuban’ and ‘puerto rican’ salsa’ evolved into their own unique styles – the tragic story of Hector Lavoe and how that translated into his music. 

I called my mom, who loves salsa, to ask her a few questions – and she told me stories about how she and her cousins would go to Central Park to watch the Fania Allstars during the early 70’s – I learned that the short, friendly chubby guy that came to my house for Christmas that one year was actually Willie Colon – one of the pioneers of salsa. 

By doing all of that, not only did I come to appreciate Salsa music, I came to absolutely fall in love with it. 

Now I listen to salsa music all the time. When a great song comes on I’ll instinctively move my body or feel the urge to get up and dance. When any of the Fania Allstars are on, I imagine my mother listening to the same music all those years ago in Central Park- and I feel… bliss.

My point here is that – I ‘wanted’ to love salsa, because I saw it as a beautiful vehicle for me to express myself through movement – and when I started ‘failing’,  instead of looking to the external – I went ‘internal’ first, and there I was able to figure out and discover what I had ought to do to succeed. 

Now imagine if we considered every one of our challenges or goals with an ‘internal first’ mindset. 

If we’re trying to develop a habit, we can first use OUR OWN experiences trying to build habits – successes AND failures – before looking externally. 

If we want to start our own business, what sort of observations have we made about previous jobs we’ve had within different types of industries, what made those businesses successful, unsuccessful, and how could we have improved them? 

I started my career as a freelance website designer having never read a book or studied anything about design – I just started by designing template websites and went from there. 

Today I’ve got a thriving business with over 50 employees and thousands of clients – and I’ve never just ‘sat down to read a business book’ although I have occasionally picked up books and read chapters that were relevant to a specific objective I had, like when I hired a team of ISA’s to do outbound calling. 

To date, I have never even so much as clicked onto a YouTube video pertaining to any aspect of how to start or grow a business, although I will occasionally listen to podcasts featuring business people that I respect. 

I’m not saying books and YouTube videos are bad – I just think they’re overrated. Building a business is mostly just common sense – figure out how to solve a problem for someone and then figure out how to solve that problem at scale. Internal-first. 

Recap

This generation is probably the weakest generation because – at least in my opinion – we’ve been programmed to look externally for things that we should first consider internally. 

To reprogram ourselves to take action by default, we should implement these 4 steps

Step 1: Reprogram our understanding of ‘knowledge’

By understanding that information does not equal knowledge. Information only becomes knowledge only once we apply enough to formulate our own critical thoughts about it.

Step 2: Never read more than 1 chapter (or watch more than 1 video)

Apply what we’ve learned to ACTUALLY learn it before consuming anything else.

Step 3: Consume information only when we can ‘quickly’ apply it

Step 4: Never consume any information without thinking about it ourselves first

BE the blade – always – and use information sources only to make ourselves sharper.

Closening

Alright guys – well if you enjoyed the article and can appreciate how hard I work on these, can I ask you to please take a single second out of your day to click the ‘like’ button on the YouTube video? And maybe consider sharing the video with a friend who you know is struggling with taking action? 

In the comments – be honest – let me know how many YouTube videos you consumed mindlessly before you got to this one, or how many you’re going to consume after this one. 

If you enjoy exploring the darker side of personal development and want to read some of my deeper insights, make sure to follow me on Instagram @nelsonquest and sign up for my newsletter at nelsonquest.com

Which is where you can also grab a free download of my incredibly popular  ‘Dark Mode’ productivity system – the exact system that I use to achieve insanely difficult goals by combining philosophy, science, and silence – it’s all about creating the perfect conditions to be able to exist within a state of constant, instinctual action.

And last but not least, if you want to be notified first when I release new videos just like this one, don’t just subscribe but make sure to also click the notification bell, 

Unless of course you’re currently on page 157 of ‘The 5 Second Rule’ and find yourself thinking ‘damn this is a good book’…. For crying out loud have some fucking self respect. 

This is the path.

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