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Porn vs. Personal Development (The Battle of Dopamine)

Porn vs. Personal Development (The Battle of Dopamine)

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So you’re laying in bed – scrolling through instagram – knowing that you should probably be doing something more productive – 

… and then you see a little bit of delicious flesh.

Maybe it’s a sexy bikini photo.. Or maybe it’s just a little unintentional… well, let’s be honest – Very intentional side-boob.

Suddenly, you feel a little tingling down under – and you know what you have to do.

Now, you could just take care of business here on instagram –

But instead, that little  voice in your brain DEMANDS of you that you immediately detour to your favorite porn site while the rest of the world seems to just fade away.

You come back to your senses a short while later, now covered in your own mess and feeling disgusted by what little self control you have.

You suddenly remember all of the things you should be doing… how far you are behind in life…

And how powerless you seem to be to change any of it.

If this sounds familiar – don’t worry – it’s something that pretty much all of us can relate to.

But… why?

Why is it that ESPECIALLY with porn – the more that we consume, the more it feels like we’re… being consumed?

Is lack of discipline the problem?… Partly.

But the main problem is actually what’s happening on a neurological level

How our body’s reward system, and more specifically DOPAMINE, gets HIJACKED more and more when we consume porn.

In this video, I’ll break down EXACTLY what’s going on, so that we can reclaim our dopamine system and INSTEAD use it to accomplish our goals.

I promise that by the end of this video,  you will NEVER watch porn in the same way.

Heck, you may even never watch porn again.

Let’s dive in.

Dopamine isn’t just the ‘feel good’ chemical - it’s what MOTIVATES us to do things that result in a reward

Most people understand dopamine as something that our bodies release to make us ‘feel good’ in response to some sort of reward.

And yes, our bodies release dopamine when we see we’ve got new likes on that photo we just posted – when we learn something useful -when we log onto YouTube to see that NelsonQuest has just uploaded a new video – and of course, when we orgasm.

But dopamine isn’t just released when we GET the reward – heck that isn’t even it’s main purpose.

The PRIMARY responsibility of Dopamine is to MOTIVATE us towards rewards.

Dopamine is the thing that MOTIVATES us to grab our cell phone and open instagram so that we can upload that photo to instagram,

Just as it’s the thing that MOTIVATES us to go to our favorite porn site in search of that orgasm.

Dopamine is literally the thing that motivates us to do ANYTHING – even the most basic of things.

Like motivating us to get off the couch and pour ourselves a glass of water when we’re thirsty.

If we like the feeling of being in shape- dopamine gets released to motivate us to go to the gym.

And when we feel sexually aroused – Dopamine is released to MOTIVATE us to pick up our cell phone and start fapping.

Porn Creates A Massive Overload of Dopamine

Unfortunately, our bodies can’t distinguish between the rewards that IMPROVE our lives, and the rewards that don’t.

They instead simply PRIORITIZE the rewards that cause the biggest dopamine release… and guess what –

Porn can cause our dopamine levels to raise over 200% for what’s normal! Just a little bit less than cocaine!

Here are the two big reasons why:

1. The ‘Coolidge’ Effect

When a male rat is placed in a cage with a female – at first they have lots of sex – but over time the male rat gets less and less excited –

meaning less sex and a longer amount of time to orgasm. 

But when a NEW female is placed into the cage – the male becomes excited again and lots of sex ensues – but again over time, the rat begins to get less excited until yet ANOTHER new patner is introduced.

This process can be repeated again and again with new females partners –

This is what’s referred to as the Coolidge Effect – which is present in ALL humans… even females… but that’s a topic for another day.

With porn we’re like a lab rat with nearly infinite access to new partners – all we need to do is click onto a new video or explore a new category of porn –

Which is ALSO why… while we may start out watching more innocent porn… like… two people having sex with each other.

That can QUICKLY escalate to interracial midget gangbangs. 

The more porn that we consume, the more it becomes ‘normalized’ – and the harder it is for us to find porn that gives us that sensation of feeling ‘new’.

Which is how we end up spending more time trying to find the ‘perfect porn’ than we spend on Netflix trying to find that perfect thing to watch.

2. Porn is a ‘Supernormal Stimuli’

Supernormal stimuli are essentially artificially exaggerated versions of normal stimuli that we perceive as more valuable –

The term was coined by Nobel Prize winning ethologist Nikolaas Tinbergen –

Who observed that male stickleback fish that would attack a WOODEN fish model more aggressively if the wooden model had an underside that was redder than a real male.

And that fake cardboard butterflies with more defined markings were more likely to attract males than REAL female butterflies with less defined markings.

So maybe you’re asking… What exactly  do stickleback fish and butterflies have to do with humans?

Well according to Harvard psychologist Deirdre Barret, in her book ‘Supernormal Stimuli: How Primal Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpose’. She argues that the link is actually much closer than we realize – 

She shows how ‘supernormal stimuli’ like junk food, tv, video games, the internet, and of course, pornography – can easily hijack our brains.

Consider this – In the 80’s – where Hugh Hefner and his Playboy centerfolds reigned supreme –

Porn was essentially just limited to static images… not a big problem.

But fast forward to today, and porn is now LOADED with supernormal stimulation.

Endless waves of free, instantly accessible, high definition videos featuring women with watermelon sized fake breasts and men with horse sized penises,

groaning and screaming in exaggerated ways as they engage in utterly unrealistic “casual sex” within the context of some fantasy scenario like “the horny librarian”, or “the lucky pizza man.”

These heavily exagerrated representations take sex from being a ‘normal’ stimulus, and turn it into a ‘supernormal stimulus’.

Resulting in a MASSIVE dopamine dump that is EXPONENTIALLY exacerbated by the fact that we don’t have to reach further than our own pockets to experience it.

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.

How Negative Dopamine Pathways Develop When We Consume Too Much Porn

When we consume porn – we’re triggering dopamine release along a specific neural pathway.

And the more porn that we consume, the more our brains are ‘reprogrammed’ to seek out more porn without us even having to think much about it.

In other words – it becomes more and more automatic.

Studies have shown that this can be particularly damaging within teenagers – whose brains are at ‘peak’ dopamine production and levels of neuroplasticity –

Which means that they are MUCH more vulnerable to forming porn addictions…

So young people… be PARTICULARLY careful! 

Ok – so now for the good news 🙂

The way that brain neuroplasticity works is essentially ‘use it or lose it’.

If we can break the habit of watching porn  (which is of course more difficult and will require more discipline to break based on our level of addiction).

Over time, our brains will return to a healthy baseline where we no longer experience a  massive rush of dopamine motivating us to consume porn whenever we’re sexually aroused.

Conclusion

So me personally – knowing what I know now and having experienced a lot of these negative side effects myself –

I RARELY consume porn – and on the rare occasions where I do – I just stick to the ‘normal’ stuff 🙂

Keeping my consumption to a bare minimum – combined with eating healthy, restricting my social network usage and avoiding  ‘dopamine driven’ video games like call of duty – 

IS literally the reason that I have so much motivation to do so many things that improve my life –

If you’re interested in dopamine and how to use it the right way – make sure to also check out my YT Channel.

If you want to see how I apply everything I talk about in my videos firsthand –

Then make sure to also check me out on Instagram @nelsonquest

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The 4 Things Every ‘God-Tier’ Mentor Has in Common

The 4 Things Every 'God-Tier' Mentor Has in Common

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A good mentor, coach or more broadly speaking ‘teachert can literally be the difference between whether we fail to learn something or whether we develop an intense passion for it. Over the past few years in particular I’ve learned from hundreds of different teachers as I’ve sought to reach mastery levels within business, personal development, spirituality, salsa, boxing, overall health and nutrition, and that’s just naming a few things. Good teachers are rare… legendary teachers are like unicorns… and bad teachers, well, bad teachers are everywhere: classrooms, books, social media, YouTube, and here’s the thing: learning from a bad teacher could irrevocably damage our lives. Some of them may just drain our bank accounts without imparting any real value, while others can actually lead us off of our paths entirely, where we can spend months, years, possibly, even our entire lives having never discovered our true essence or potential. 

Nowhere is this more true than within the self-improvement industry, where most mentors, coaches and again, broadly speaking, teachers, literally don’t know the first thing about true personal development, what they do know is how to promote the same toxic positivity and momentary motivation strategies that only end up creating a false sense of improvement, which is why when you look at the broad population of people who are trying to improve themselves most of them are just like zombies all repeating the same things but with no actual Improvement to show. For all of their supposed efforts this is the illusion of improvement and it originates in bad teachers. In this video I’ll show you the four qualities that all legendary teachers have in common, so that you can separate the good from the bad to cultivate true learning and passion in everything that you do and maybe one day even become a legendary teacher yourself. Let’s begin.

Number one: they've already excelled at what they're teaching.

The most dangerous teachers are the ones who teach entirely from textbooks or from what they’ve read or seen online, because these teachers exist only within the world of theory. Trust me when I tell you that the reality of something is very different than the idea of it. You can’t be a good millionaire mindset coach if you haven’t already earned a million dollars, you can’t be a good business coach if you haven’t ever built a successful business, you can’t be a good Fitness coach if you yourself aren’t in great shape, so while bad teachers in these areas may have read tons of books or even have college degrees they’re missing the key ingredient which is how to actually translate that knowledge into reality. When we read, the best that we can hope for is to memorize, to truly learn something is to take it from the world of theory into successfully manifest it within reality.

To know the path is not to walk the path, to walk the path is to know the path. Unfortunately many people choose to teach as a way to seek validation for being good at something without actually being good at that thing, and if this sounds like you, please don’t feel bad. When I first started my personal development journey I would post all sorts of motivational quotes on all my social networks, I would give my friends advice on how to be successful that they never asked me for because I was trying to externally validate the idea that I was successful instead of just doing the difficult work required to actually become successful. Good teachers have already done the thing that we’re seeking to learn and the higher their level the more they’re able to see with clarity what lesser teachers are simply unable to see.

Number two: they love to teach.

For the longest time I hated dancing salsa. I knew that I wanted to learn how to dance but lacing up my Salsa shoes felt like a death sentence. Most of my teachers hated teaching, I imagine because they mostly taught the same steps over and over to the sandal wearing foreigners who smell like sweaty cow. Most of these teachers only taught me how to memorize steps, which is not only boring but it doesn’t make you a better dancer. I wasn’t seeing any progress from which to feel motivated and so I struggled to take classes with any sort of consistency… but then I found teachers like Daniela and Maira, who not only love salsa but also love teaching, they celebrated every little Improvement that I made, while also giving me enough room to safely fail and try again over and over and over.

They taught me how to move my body with the music, how to express myself through movement, which was the result I was pursuing in the first place, and in doing so they helped me to love the journey of salsa, which is the most important thing when it comes to not giving up something that anyone can force themselves to do something for a brief period of time in the pursuit of a specific result, but unless we love the actual journey of the thing it’s not likely that we’ll ever make it to see the destination and this is why it is so critical that we learn from people who love what they’re teaching, because their love of process is contagious through them we can vicariously develop a similar love of process, even if we haven’t yet tasted the sweet reward of what’s waiting for us at the finish line.

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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.

Number three: they push us to be uncomfortable.

Most teachers will just talk and talk and talk as if their words are somehow translating into knowledge. They try to make the experience of learning easy, providing answers instead of using questions to provoke critical thinking. Learning should be uncomfortable, here’s why: we only learn through application, when we are taught by a teacher, teaches a book or a video and then we apply those teachings we’re always going to feel uncomfortable initially, since we have no experience doing that thing, then over time, the more that we apply those teachings, the more comfortable we begin to feel because we become good at those things, but unless we want to remain at the same level we need to continually push ourselves to apply new information to try out new techniques to once again be uncomfortable. To repeat this process over and over is to move towards mastery and a good teacher will thus teach us in a way where they’re constantly pushing us to always exist within the uncomfortable frontiers of our limits.

Number four: they help us discover our Unique style.

Early on, a teacher who is still learning who we are, will teach us their style, which is perfectly fine and normal. This is actually just one of the many ways that our teacher can begin to observe our tendencies, predispositions and our overall essence, but as we develop the job of the teacher is to help us find our own unique path our own unique style, instead of always just imposing themselves on us. Now, there are nuances here in boxing, in salsa, for example there are certain fundamentals that we need to first learn how to rotate the body, to generate power in our punches, how to maintain our gaze on a fixed position to properly execute a spin, but when it comes to style which has a lot less to do with fundamentals and a lot more to do with how our essence translates into our actions.

A bad teacher will demand that we do these things according to their style, while a good teacher will help us to discover our own unique style. Now, style is not specific to physical activities like salsa and boxing, it is universal, it is a manifestation of our essence with whatever thing that we’re doing. Within business and self-development there are, of course, fundamentals as well. We should learn how to love the process, we should learn how to seek discomfort as we move towards mastering, but a good teacher will help us to establish these fundamentals in everything that we do, as a platform that we can then use to reach our potential, while a bad teacher will try to guide our growth even after that platform has been established.

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Do This Stoic Exercise To Become Limitless

Do This Stoic Exercise To Become Limitless

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“Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now, take what’s left and live it properly. What doesn’t transmit light creates its own darkness.” - Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 7-56

On February 24, 2022, Russia invaded a completely outmatched Ukraine.

Boasting 10x more military spending, 5x more active personnel, 5x more armored fighting vehicles, 10x more aircraft and 20x more helicopters – Many expected that Russia would capture the Ukrainian capital within days, and in doing so, would execute President Volodomyr Zelensky.

Fearing much the same, just the day after the invasion began, the United States made an offer to Zelensky: flee your country and we’ll make sure you’re safe.

His response? 

“The fight is here. I need ammunition, not a ride”

This confused me greatly.

A politician?… a world leader that was actually willing to risk their life to defend that which they had sworn to defend?

With this confusion, came the shocking realization of how we’re living during an era where it’s become normalized for most people (and in particular authority figures) to betray the values and ideas they claim to champion, when it becomes convenient to do so.

By choosing to stay and fight and lead his people, Zelensky inspired the world by breathing new life into virtues that most of us assumed were dead… and the result has been magnificent.

Ukraine, just like every other country, has their fair share of political corruption and civil disagreements, yet Ukranians from all walks of life – farmers, programmers, accountants, grandmothers – – most of whom have never so much as fired a single bullet, have taken up arms and are ready to die to protect their homeland.

Even boxing legends like the Klitschko brothers, Vasily Lomachenko, and Oleksandr Usyk, men with power and money, wives and children – 

In the west, we see those things as reasons not to fight. These men see them as reasons for why they must fight. Think about that for a second, and if that doesn’t blow your mind, consider this:

The Ukrainian battle with Russia IS literally redefining the very idea of what power is as well.

Because sure,  tanks and planes are powerful, but perhaps even more powerful are people with pride and courage and LEADERS who embody those same virtues –

People with enough moral fortitude to draw a proverbial line in the sand, and boldly declare that ‘he who dares cross this line shall have hell to me’ – regardless of the size of the enemy!

If you feel like all of this inspires something within you as it does within me, then I invite you to join me as we work our way through the stoic exercise of TRULY considering what we are  willing to die for.

If your experience is anything like mine, I think you’ll be blown away by the result.

I’ve spent weeks contemplating this question, and understanding where I draw MY line in the sand has dramatically improved my motivation and ability to take action.

Let’s begin.

What does it mean to be willing to die for something?

“I have to die. If it is now, well then I die now; if later, then now I will take my lunch, since the hour for lunch has arrived – and dying I will tend to later.” - Epictetus

First, we need to understand what it actually means to be willing to die for something.

My wife Gabby once asked me if I would die for her, and I told her ‘absolutely not.’

She was a bit upset by this so I explained to her “Listen, Gabby, if ever there was some sort of grave threat to your life, I’d find a way to keep you safe from it.”

“I have a tremendous amount of life experience, and I’ve been in many life threatening situations, all of which have granted me the wisdom to act quickly, decisively, and without emotion”

“So, as long as you’re with me, I promise to do everything I can to keep you safe from danger. If I were to die for you, then how am I supposed to protect you?”

Upon saying all of this, a massive grin spread over her face.

And then I added “plus, if I were to die, I know you would never be able to move on with another man, and you would probably just end up taking your own life, hoping to reunite with me  in the afterlife.”

To this she began to laugh, but before she could even squeeze out a single giggle, I slapped her across the face for even considering that this was a joke.

I’m joking! But my main point in all of this is that the ‘willingness’ to die for something shouldn’t be the first option, it should be the last option.

If it comes down to it, yeah, I’m willing to die to protect what I love, but not before I’ve exhausted every possible way to either protect us from, or eliminate the threat itself.

Once we understand what it means to be ‘willing to die’ for something, then we’re ready to consider the question further.

Here are the 3 main things that I’m willing to die for.

1. Freedom

“You want to live, but do you know how to live? You are scared of dying and tell me, is the kind of life you lead really any different from being dead?” -Seneca

I firmly believe that the greatest existential threat to our time is the gradual encroachment by the 3-headed monster of corporations, government, and media, onto our freedoms.

It’s insane to think that Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, the ‘public square of the 21st century’, have taken it upon themselves to become the arbiters of what is ‘truth.’

Yeah what could go wrong when soulless multinational corporations, motivated by profit and swayed by massive political biases, get to decide what’s true?

To the extent that should you dare use one of their platforms to voice anything they’ve determined to not be true, you can receive a strike or have your account shut down entirely, without any real way to appeal.

What people don’t realize is that this slow encroachment onto our freedom of speech – arguably our most important freedom because it allows us to speak up against tyranny and other horrible ideas – is creating a situation where those who disagree with whatever narrative the 3-headed monster is pushing are essentially guilty of ‘wrongthink’ and branded as enemies.

And when you study history – I would particularly encourage you to study The Gulag Archipelago, or the rise of Communism in China – you understand that the death of freedom always begins the same way –

A systematic elimination of constitutionally protected liberties under the guise of ‘being for the greater good.’

In the words of Marcus Aurelius, “Look back over the past, with its changing empires that rose and fell, and you can foresee the future too.”

I believe that to exist within a system where our every move is manipulated by the slimy tentacles of totalitarian policy is the equivalent of death – and so why wouldn’t I be willing to die in the battle to prevent that from happening.

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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.

2. My Country

“Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.” ― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

Would I be willing to die for my government? Absolutely not.

Would I be willing to die protecting my family, friends, neighbors… people who follow this channel?

Yeah, I would.

Because when you log out of social media and log into the real world what you find overwhelmingly is that people are great.

They’re honest, they care about one another, and generally speaking, they’re doing the best they can given the information and resources they have available to them.

For a country to actually be a country, there’s an implicit assumption that we should all be willing to fight, and yes, even risk our own lives, to protect those around us.

Because if we’re not willing to do that, then what are we really? A geographic area with artificial boundaries.

3. My Family

“Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by…. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.” - Marcus Aurelius

So for me this is where things get a little complicated – I’ll explain.

My mother and father – my heart tells me that I should be willing to die to protect them,but I’d like to think that if it came down to it, that I wouldn’t give my life, because I know how important it would be for them, in that situation, to lay down their lives for me instead.

So I guess when defining family, within the context of what I’m willing to die for, I’m referring to ‘those who come after me.’

I’m at a point in my life where I’m just now starting my own family. Last week, at my 2nd amateur boxing match, seeing my wife and her daughter (who I’m only just starting to get to know)  watch me go to battle filled me with something I still don’t fully understand, so I can’t explain it to you here.

But what I can explain is that, many years ago, I came to understand profoundly that my life would have absolutely no meaning so long as I served myself.

And since I’ve learned to serve those around and above me, life has given me more in the ways of blessings, success, and motivation, than I ever could have imagined.

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How to Be a Weak Pathetic Failure (forever)

How to Be a Weak Pathetic Failure (forever)

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Do you ever find yourself doing something you told yourself you weren’t going to do, and think ‘wow, I f*cking suck.’

Well, you probably do, and maybe it’s finally time to just… give up.

I mean, life is hard enough as it is – so why waste another second struggling to “improve” yourself, when you can quickly and easily join the legions of worthless, feeble-minded geniuses who have discovered that the secret to an easy life is a single word….

Which I’ll share at the very end of today’s video, which is a complete 6  STEP guide on how you can transform from someone doing their best to improve their life, into the weakest, most pathetic, piece of garbage you could ever possibly dream of.

Step #1: Understand the REAL Reason You’re Broke

If you’re broke – it could be for a nearly infinite number of reasons – excluding of course the possibility that it’s your fault.

It’s most likely because of the limited opportunities in your city or even country, despite the nearly endless ocean of job opportunities that exist online…  most of which only require a basic laptop and stable internet connection to get started.

But how could anyone in their right mind honestly expect you to know how to get started?

I mean, despite a nearly endless ocean of free online resources detailing how to get started and make money in virtually any online profession, what you need… AND deserve… is an actual mentor who can hold your hand and guide you.

Yes, I’ve seen the hundreds of messages you guys have sent me asking if I would be willing to mentor you in exchange for your extremely valuable gratitude… and if I say that I can’t, or don’t respond – it’s NOT because I’m busy running a business, making YouTube videos, starting a family, and trying to win a Colombian National Title in boxing –

It’s because I’m racist.

Step #2: Blame Ageism, Sexism, and also definitely Racism… ideally all 3

Listen – as a business owner with over 50 employees, I can tell you first-hand that I’d be OUTt of business…  and probably living on the street and eating out of garbage cans… if I hired people based on the ‘merit of their abilities’.

Because businesses can’t afford to care about profit – what we REALLY care about are 3 things.

The first is what age you are.

Why would a business care about the actual skills you possess or the impressive things you’ve accomplished when you are CLEARLY a young person with no future upside.

The second is what sex you are – please – the last thing I need some intelligent,hard working woman distracting my 100% male work-force.

The third, and definitely most important, what country you or your ancestors are from.

Who cares if you’ve designed hundreds of websites or written hundreds of thousands of lines of code –  what really matters is that you’re not white, because we have diversity quotas to hit.

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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: Accept that which you cannot change, i.e. your weight and physical appearance

So let’s start with the obvious – if you’re overweight and/or think that you’re ugly, then you already understand firsthand that these things are COMPLETELY out of your control.

Popular YouTubers are always bringing up the “law of thermodynamics”- that its not possible to store more calories than the ones we consume –

But this has already been debunked SO MANY times.

Not by scientists or nutrition experts, but by the masses of people who claim that despite eating only lettuce and cucumbers, that they STILL somehow can’t lose weight.

They’re obviously telling the truth.

And there are so many obvious paradoxes when it comes to improving your physical appearance.

If you’re OUT of shape, how are you supposed to have enough energy to work out and get IN shape?

How are you supposed to get in a car and go to a gym when you ARE a car.

How are you supposed to dress better, or change your hairstyle, when you ARE a car.

Step #4: Stop dating because you’ll never get who you deserve

Women don’t give a shit about how much confidence you have from all of the impressive things you’ve done, how much pride you take in your appearance, or the absolute fucking gauntlet of of trials and tribulations that you’ve survived to be able to achieve financial success –

What they really care about is how much money you have and how tall you are.

Take me for example, I don’t have enough money to buy any of the high status things that we know women flock to because I waste all of my money investing in myself and in investments.

And I’m only 5’6 – a little known fact that I’ve had to painstakingly hide from the hundreds of beautiful women I’ve been with.

Last year I finally gave up on dating and decided to settle down with Jabba the Slutt.

She’s vile, repulsive and I literally hate everything about her, but with a few more surgeries I’m hopeful we can get to the point where I don’t immediately vomit or break down in tears after she forces herself upon me.

Step #5: Embrace failure, and then quit.

We’ve all heard the famous quote ‘talent always beats hard work, even and especially if talent fails to work hard”

Everyone that’s ahead of us in life got there not because they worked hard, but because of god-given talents or luck, both of which we’ll never have.

Henry Ford famously said “the only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.”

What I’ve learned is that when we fail and then IMMEDIATELY give up, we NEVER have to experience the pain of failure again.

Thomas Alva Edison famously said “I have not failed. I have found 10,000 ways that don’t work.”

Now, when I fail, there is only 1 way: I don’t work.

If you don’t try, you can’t fail – it really is that simple.

Step #6: Maintain healthy levels of jealousy

When we see others who have either achieved or obtained those things that we’re striving for – a lamborghini, a rolex, or a dinosaur skeleton  – it’s completely NATURAL for us to experience feelings of jealousy.

What’s NOT natural is for us to then closely examine these feelings, realize that we’re only jealous of others because we want the things they have for ourselves.

Which then causes us to then see OURSELVES in them,

which then causes us to experience jealousy in a way where we feel HAPPY when the people around us succeed, because we now  see OURSELVES succeeding.

Again, not only is this NOT natural – but this also requires EFFORT, our sworn enemy.

What IS natural and requires NO effort – is to simply blindly react to jealousy –

We SHOULD have the things that everyone else has, PERIOD and it’s only because of our not having a mentor, where we live, our age, race, sex, weight, physical body composition, deficiency of money, short stature, and lack of god-given talents, that we don’t have those things. 

 

—

 

Alright guys, so I mentioned at the beginning of this video that the SECRET to effortlessly being a weak pathetic piece of garbage is hidden in 1 single world that MILLIONS of people across the world have already discovered –

And that word is, COMFORT.

Now here’s the thing – the art of comfort involves both ‘physical’ and ‘mental’.

The physical part is easy –

Find the most comfortable place you could be -recreate the most comfortable sensation you could possibly experience – and just do that all day.

The mental part is a tiny bit more involved –

Basically, what you want to do is try to remain as ‘mentally’ comfortable as possible –

which unfortunately means that you will have to use a tiny energy to violently reject anything that even remotely threatens to make you uncomfortable.

For example, if someone even mildly implies that you should take any sort of accountability for your life, or tries to challenge you with ideas that aren’t 100% consistent with the extremely narrow and superior reality that you’ve carefully woven for yourself. Don’t engage them with  rational, energy-wasting type conversation.

Instead, fiercely remind them that they have no idea what the f*ck they’re talking and then immediately shut your brain off until they leave so that you can conserve what little energy you have remaining.

If this article helped you to understand how to truly manifest all this is worthless within you – please subscribe to my YouTube Channel.

This,  is not the path.

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4 Instant Mental Shifts That (Massively) Improve Life

4 Instant Mental Shifts That (Massively) Improve Life

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Personal development is easy. We all know, more or less, the things that we need to do if we want to truly manifest our potential.

Work diligently. Eat healthy and exercise. Apply what we consume to transform raw information into knowledge.

The problem though for many of us is that when we begin construction on this improved version of ourselves, in our rush to start building the visible portions of the house first – good habits, solid work ethic, meaningful goals – we neglect to inspect the foundations upon which we’re building – which as it turns out for almost all of us, are extremely faulty – and so the house collapses… over and over and over again.

So in this article, I’m going to show you 4 mental shifts you can make right now to fix faulty foundations before you start your next personal development endeavor.

And you’ll see that it won’t just be easy, it will feel effortless… as it should be.

This stuff has taken me the better part of 10 years to fully figure out and I’m about to spoon-feed it to you guys in a 10 minute video, so f*cking  pay attention and seriously commit to implementing these shifts immediately after you’re done watching for at least 24 hours and that will give you all you need to want to commit permanently.

Let’s begin.

Shift #1: Think Less

Thoughts are a curious thing, especially here in the West where we’ve been programmed to perceive thoughts as somehow being a critical component of solving every type of problem.

The reality is almost the exact opposite, and it’s actually really silly if you ‘think’ about it.

Look at the entire self-help industry as an example – where the overwhelming majority of players suffer from the same simple problem – a complete inability to take action.

And so how do they try to solve this problem? By thinking themselves into action… which is not only absurd, it is quite literally a paradox.

It is IMPOSSIBLE to think ourselves into taking action. Action, by its very nature, requires us to stop contemplating it in order to take it.

A really good example of this is procrastination – where in an effort to stop procrastinating, virtually everyone tries to ‘think’ or ‘motivate’ themselves out of it, many going as far as to watch videos and read books on the subject.

They’re trying to solve the problem of procrastination with more procrastination. It’s insane.

In the words of, “a person who thinks all the time has nothing to think about except thoughts, so he loses touch with reality and lives in a world of illusions.”

Think less. Do more.

Shift #2: Feedback Loops

For the past few days I’ve been pondering this quote from Nietzsche:

“We labour at our daily work more ardently and thoughtlessly than is necessary to sustain our life because it is even more necessary not to have leisure to stop and think. Haste is universal because everyone is in flight from himself”

If we look closely at our failures, I think that most of us will find that our natural condition is to actually never look very closely at them at all.

Instead, we simply vow to ‘try harder’ the next time, because it’s actually a bit painful to look failure squarely in the eyes because doing so requires confronting the reality of who we really are.

To solve this, I think it’s critical to make a conscious effort to create what are called ‘Feedback Loops’ – a concept that I actually learned from Elon Musk, who explains them as “where you’re constantly thinking about what you’ve done and how you could be doing it better.”

I think the best way to do this is to have a set point during the day – ideally first thing in the morning – where we review the previous day and consider our actions critically and directly.

Where and why did we fail? Where and why did we succeed? What adjustments should I make today to improve on yesterday?

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Shift #3: Willpower Is a Last Resort

My guilty pleasure food  is ‘oatmeal bread’, lightly toasted, with a single swipe of peanut butter on top…  mmm delicioso.

Even though I have very high levels of willpower – recently I had a problem where every time I bought more bread with the self-promise that I’d eat only two slices per day,  MOST days I ate a lot more. There was even one day where I ate the entire bag. Yeah that was most definitely a low point in my life.

Anway, after a few weeks of this, it finally occurred to me that I should more closely inspect the foundations upon which this apparent weakness was manifesting itself, and what I discovered was surprisingly profound.

The hungrier I became, the more I thought about the bread.

Thinking about something that you don’t want to be thinking about even a single time is distracting enough, but I was probably thinking about that bread at least 50 times per day…

But my problem was actually much worse than that, because when I looked even  closer, I found that within every single one of those 50 distracting thoughts, a battle was actually taking place where my primitive brain was on the offense, looking for any rationalization it could find to justify eating more bread.

“Eating some of the bread will help me focus”…“I’ll just skip dinner later.”.. “I’ll just workout another 30 minutes to burn it off”…

Out of those 50 battles, my willpower only had to lose ONE for me to end up eating more bread.

In realizing all of this, I determined that the only feasible solution was to go to the source and remove the possibility that I could eat more bread than intended.

Hoping I could find a solution that didn’t involve giving up the bread completely, a few creative Google searches led me to the K-Safe – a time-locking container that allowed me to take out the amount of bread that I wanted to eat on any given day, and then lock the rest in the container for 24 hours.

From that moment on, not only was I no longer overeating bread, but once the locks of the container slid into place I was no longer even thinking about the bread. I went from 50 battles per day, to none.

Now the point I’m trying to illustrate here with my enthralling bread battle is that if we want to eliminate negative habits or addictions, we shouldn’t expect our willpower to have to win 50+ battles of the course of the day – we should instead find the source of that thing and use our willpower one single time to restrict or eliminate it there.

If we’re addicted to social media, we shouldn’t just tell ourselves we’re not going to use it – we should uninstall the applications from our phone or even delete our accounts.

If we’re addicted to video games, we should literally remove the ability to use the console by giving the power cord or controllers to someone to hold onto, or stick them in a kSafe if you have one – at the end of this video I’ll share a link you can use to buy one if you’re interested.

Anyway – if we exercise willpower to eliminate the source, we remove possibility, which frees us from having to battle temptation.

I still keep my bread in a kSafe, but most days I forget to even set the lock. Think about that for a minute before we move to the next and final foundation.

Shift #4: Aspire Towards An Addiction To Progress

It’s just as easy to become addicted to fast food, video games, porn and social media.  As it is to become addicted to exercise, work, passions and good habits.

And for as much as I believe it’s important to always keep things simple, I do think it’s important to have at least a basic understanding of how the neurotransmitter ‘Dopamine’ is responsible for our motivation… or lack thereof.

I’ll link a few videos on the topic below in the description – including one where I describe how to ‘switch’ our Dopamine so that it actually motivates us away from low value instant-gratification type activities and towards high value, long-term reward type activities.

This is exactly the reason why some people seem to be addicted to success – because they actually are addicted to success.

Most people make the mistake of looking at everything I do in a day and thinking that I have tremendous discipline and willpower, and while I won’t say that I don’t possess those things, what I will say is that they are almost completely  irrelevant when you consider how utterly addicted I am to what I do.

If I had to rely on willpower to train as hard as I do with boxing or salsa, I would have never become good at them.

If I had to rely on willpower to be able to work entire days, I’d probably still be a struggling web designer instead of owner of a web design company with close to 50 employees.

So the question now becomes, how can we quickly form positive addictions?

Well, from my experience it has a lot less to do with focusing on any individual activity, and a lot more to do with focusing on the underlying element that makes all activities enjoyable – progress.

When we become addicted to progress, then we only need to feel progress within any activity to be able to perform it consistently and effortlessly.

As a bonus, an addiction to ‘progress’ also simultaneously deters us from any activity that threatens to ‘cost’ us progress – like wasting time on social media or Netflix.

To feel progress, all we need to do is take action towards a defined goal.

What helps me here (and something I believe is really important) is to conceptualize an ‘idealized’ version of ourselves. Think of him or her as the ‘culmination’ of all of our goals.

My ideal self is a genius businessman and wise philosopher – who lives a simple life despite others perceiving it as overwhelmingly complex.

He can dance and fight and swim and bike at the highest levels – and has climbed the tallest mountain on each continent.

By defining my ‘ideal self’ – not only is it easy to feel progress within any of the positive activities that I perform, but that progress now also serves a higher purpose.

To become addicted to progress IS to make effortless what was once difficult.

 

 

Follow me on Instagram @nelsonquest – Unless of course you hate learning new things from someone that’s gone through what you’re going through and come out on the other side… looking really handsome.

This is the path-

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Sexual Desire vs Personal Development

Sexual Desire vs Personal Development

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Over the last few months I’ve had the opportunity to meet face to face with hundreds of fans of the channel –

And by far the most interesting theme at each of these meetups has been how much the desire to sleep with attractive women can secretly nest itself in the motivation behind EVERYTHING that we do to improve ourselves.

I say ‘secretly’ because what I’ve discovered is that most men are not only reluctant to admit this to others…  they’re reluctant to admit this to themselves.

This was certainly the case for me – When I first started down this path over 8 years ago and began to take an active interest in expanding my knowledge, developing unique skills, growing a business and improving my physical appearance-

To anyone who asked, I claimed my motivations to be solely rooted in achieving financial independence, maximizing my full potential, and chasing dreams.

But if I was really being honest with myself (which I rarely was in the beginning) my true motivation was this.

And I know I’m not alone – so in this video, I’ll explain ‘why’ sexual obsession tends to be such a dominant subconscious motivation behind everything we do – I’ll explain why we lie about it to others and to ourselves – and then finally I’ll show you what I did to turn this from a ‘toxic’ obsession into a healthy one.

Factor 1: Technology

Technology evolves at a much faster rate than our ability to adapt to it, which is why some of the most profitable corporations and industries in the world are those who use technology to hijack our biological instincts with what are called ‘supernormal stimuli.’

Examples of supernormal stimuli are:

Social Media, which hijacks our instinct to seek social approval. 

Video Games, which hijack our instincts towards hunting and progression. 

Fast Food, which hijacks our instinct to consume calorie-rich foods-

And then there’s the mother of all supernormal stimuli – Pornography – which hijacks our instinct towards reproduction – one of our strongest biological drives.

When we consider this – it’s no wonder that men feel such overwhelming compulsions to consume porn – where we have instant, virtually infinite access to every type of mate we could ever hope to reproduce with.

Porn is seen as a ‘reward’ by the body, and so the more we consume it, the more the neural pathways in our brain become wired to release dopamine to motivate us to consume more porn – an unhealthy obsession that tends to spill over into everything that we do.

Factor 2: Women

There’s this idea that men and women like to dress up just  to ‘look good’ – but this is merely a surface motivation.

Spend 5 minutes with an evolutionary biologist and you’ll understand that the desire to ‘look good’ is rooted in the much deeper evolutionary motivation to increase our sexual attractiveness.

We feel this motivation even if we’re just out with friends or at a business meeting, because sexual attractiveness increases our standing within social groups, which was critical to our survival in primitive times.

I hope it goes without saying but what I’m about to talk about is not a critique of women, who are playing the exact same game that we’re all playing – but women have a massive array of ‘supernormal stimuli’ which they can use to artificially exaggerate their attraction – let’s go through a few of them quickly.

  1. Blush & Lipstick: The purpose of makeup is to be sexually provocative. The reason that red blush and lipstick are popular is because lips and cheeks turn red during sexual arousal. 
  2. Eyeliner: Female eyes are larger in proportion to the size of their faces than a man’s – so using ‘eyeliner’, which makes their eyes look even bigger – enhances their femininity which increases attractiveness. 
  3. High Heels: These cause women to take smaller and more frequent steps with more rotation at the hips and less bending of the knees – which increases femininity and attractiveness. 

Again my point with all of this is to simply lay more foundation as to why sexual obsession is so prevalent among men.

Virtually every woman who we encounter out in the wild is at the very least using makeup – but more often than not they’re using multiple supernormal stimuli. 

Now carry all of this into social media – where you have the additional supernormal stimuli of filters, photoshop enhancements, AND algorithms which pre-select the most ‘virally’ attractive women and place them at the top of our feeds – and is it any surprise sexual obsession is so common when highly sexualized females make up such a large part of our conscious reality?

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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.

Factor 3: Society

There’s an old saying that “sex sells”, and while this is true, it’s merely a surface observation.

A truer statement would be to say that  “biological impulses sell” – let me explain.

We exist in societies where ‘profit’ is the highest goal – and as can be easily observed from advertisements, media, and social networks – our biological impulse towards sex is the one that is MOST exploited for profit.

This is why companies overwhelmingly use attractive models to promote their products via what’s called ‘aspirational’ marketing.

The idea is the same whether it’s a clothing brand, a car company, or even a gun manufacturer – that by purchasing their product or service, we’ll be just as attractive to females as the handsome models in their ads.

Nowhere are these impulses more exploited than within what I like to call the “success projection” industry – which includes social media influencers, day-traders, dating coaches… virtually everyone selling a ‘get rich quick’ online course – basically anyone whose personal success is directly tied to the ‘image of success’ that they project to others.

I like to joke that the image of ‘success’ that these guys project is essentially just what poor people think that rich and successful people look like – and while exotic cars, rolex watches, and lavish vacations are all important staples…  ‘attractive women’ are at the very top.

Why We Lie

The reason we lie to others and to ourselves about our sexually rooted motivations is because it makes us feel pathetic to admit it…

In primitive times, men who were perceived as ‘more fit to reproduce’ held higher standing within their tribes – which meant better access to resources and mates, and overall a much higher chance of survival.

Here in modern times, we are terrified to admit that we are not worthy of an attractive mate because our primitive brain is telling us that to admit low social standing is tantamount to admitting that we have a low chance of survival.

…At least that’s my own highly educated theory – for anyone who’s interested I’ve linked ALL the sources for this video in the description below.

So now the question remains – Once we identify these root obsessions and motivations, how can we then realign them to be healthy and beneficial?

Conclusion

So how do we ‘fix’ this?

Well the first step is in understanding everything I just laid out in this video.

When you understand the rules better than everyone you’re competing against (which in this case is basically the entire male population) is when you can start to bend the rules –

To everyone else, this will seem like magic – to you, this will be blatantly obvious.

Take your obsession for women, and turn it into an obsession for becoming ‘worthy’ of an ideal partner.

Someone who is just as rational, loving, intellectually curious, and physically attractive as you’re working to be.

That’s it. That’s the secret. Play it back a few times if you need to – maybe even write it down.

If you can understand that, and begin to live it… you will understand what true power is in this lifetime.

 

If you want new articles just like this one, don’t just subscribe to my YT channel, but make sure to click the bell icon.

Unless that is you’re a pathetic, sex-obsessed beta-simp – we can’t have any of you poking around the channel.

This is the path.

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How to Destroy Your ‘Self’ to Free Who You Are (3 Steps)

How to Destroy Your 'Self' to Free Who You Are (3 Steps)

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A quick note before we begin – this video details the extremely dark, painful and ultimately glorious process through which I was able to transform myself into a completely different person.

What I discovered, and the process I’m about to share with you guys… will probably make you uncomfortable, and possibly even upset, especially if you’re someone who believes that these sort of transformations can only be achieved through positive mindset and self-love.

I say this respectfully, but unlike the overwhelming majority of people who create content on this topic –

Not only have I actually achieved colossal transformations within each of my dimensions – but I’ve also spent years working to understand underlying psychology and mechanisms behind those transformations to the level that I can now articulate them to you – the viewer.

Regardless of who you are and what your beliefs are – if you truly want to get the most out of this video, all I ask is that you keep an open mind.

In first part of this down the concepts and exact process that were CRITICAL to my transformation.

And then at the end of the video, I’ll give you the exact formula that I used to reinvent myself from a powerless, futureless nobody, into a powerful, destiny-fulfilling somebody.

Lesson 1: The Self Is Not Something To Improve, It Is Something We Must Destroy

It’s no secret that I absolutely detest the industry of self-improvement.

The problem, ironically… starts with the name itself. The words ‘self-improvement’ positively reinforces the absolutely ridiculous idea that there is even a self to be improved.

EVERYTHING, and I very much mean EVERY SINGLE THING that we are seemingly powerless to improve about ourselves IS literally because of who we believe ourselves to be.

The ‘self’ is nothing more than a construct – the end product of a lifetime of accumulated attitudes, values and behaviors that we mistakenly come to believe are us –

This ‘idea’ that we carry of our ‘self’ –  otherwise referred to as ‘self-image’ – can best be summed up with the following quote.

“I am not who you think I am; I am not who I think I am; I am who I think you think I am” - Charles Cooley

Otherwise referred to as the looking glass theory – it posits that ‘self’ is essentially just what we think other people think we are.

This is why so many of us work so hard to ‘project’ a self that is happy, hard-working, disciplined, and filled with purpose – even if we’re not really any of those things – because as long as we think that other people think we are those things, then WE think we are those things.

This is why when we try and fail to develop good  habits, the real reason more often than not is because we’re blind to the truth that we are NOT who we project ourselves to be.

No – to the contrary, the overwhelming majority of us are weak, pathetic creatures who retreat to hedonistic pleasures like social media and Netflix in the face of anything that threatens the comfort that we are programmed to seek in every waking moment.

It’s why the overwhelming majority of people who project themselves to be improving, are not. They care more about the projection, because to them, the projection is the reality. True reality is irrelevant.

Our  ‘self’ is also an accumulation of things.

We are born as nothing and with nothing, and then over time our ‘self’ accumulates things – mainly material things like clothes, cars, houses – but also ‘beliefs’ – how disciplined we are, how good-looking we are.

The more we have, the more we have to lose.

The more we believe ourselves to be something, the more risk we associate with taking action.

This is why most people who read self-help books take virtually no action – they’re terrified of shattering the illusion of their  improved self that they’ve spent months or even years cultivating from the comfort of their sofa.

So this all brings me back to my original  point – if the very idea of who we are IS what’s standing in the way of what we could become – why the fuck would we want to ‘improve’ that?

Why not just DESTROY it… and allow something far more powerful to emerge.

For me to be able to understand this lesson, I had to first lose everything.

Lesson 2: See Ourselves As We Really Are

The problem with this – and this was certainly my problem – is that we don’t dislike our ‘self’ enough to want to see it as anything other than what we want to see it as.

The old me was an idiot. He knew nothing of the world and had no curiosity to even want to learn, perhaps because he already thought he knew everything.

He spent his entire life following the path that society had laid out for him. He went to college for 5 years, studying a career he hated, only to finally earn a degree that he would NEVER use.

What ‘good’ habits he did have was entirely motivated by the pursuit of material and superficial bullshit that he never thought to question.

Then, at 26 years old, the girl of his dreams left him to go back to a previous boyfriend – a guy who was superior to me in ways that actually mattered.

He was worldly, virtuous, spiritual, philosophical. He had goals and purpose.

When it finally sunk in that the girl was never coming back to me, I sent this superior man an email where I shared very intimate details of our relationship – and email that was designed to devastate him…

However in a final earth-shattering display of superiority…  he thanked me for sending the email and wished me well.

I spent the next few months spiraling deeper and deeper into depression until one day, the pain was so great that my entire concept of self – everything I believed myself to be and all of the things I had accumulated – NONE of it mattered.

By losing everything, the faulty notion of ‘self’ that I had spent an entire lifetime accumulating suddenly disintegrated into nothingness… I was free.

My new self was free to experience the raw energy of pain however it wanted, and as easily as one might decide to blink their eyes, I chose to now experience that energy as power.

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.

Lesson 3: The Importance of Solitude

In the years following that epiphany moment, I spent virtually every second of everyday taking action to improve myself.

By far the most critically important element of all of this, is that I decided to completely remove myself from the world until this process had fully taken its course.

No TV. No social media. No interaction with friends and family.

My initial motivation for retreating into the shadows was that I wanted to absolutely blow everyone away with the new person that I had become when I re-emerged.

But after even just a few days of existing like this, solitude became the most important weapon in my self-transformation arsenal.

All of the external noise of life was gone. It was just me, alone in my apartment, with some books, a computer, and a massive amount of work to do with nothing to distract me from doing it.

I could no longer compare myself to others – I could only compare myself to who I had been yesterday, and who I could be tomorrow – and as I made rapid progress within each of my 4 dimensions, these comparisons became the most prideful aspect of my existence.

I had started training for an ironman, and within a few weeks I was training multiple hours every single day –

Every morning began with swimming in an ice cold public pool – Every evening ended with  long jogs into and out of New York City – And every weekend featured a 6 to 8 hour bike ride through New Jersey.

ALL of this training was performed in complete and total silence.

In each individual second I found myself making a choice between taking it easy or giving it my all – my ‘old’ self and my ‘new’ self engaged in all out war – a war that raged for one year and two months until it was finally race day.

By the time I set up on the starting line, I had severe plantar fasciitis in both feet, impingement syndrome in both of my shoulders, and a torn bicep muscle that forced me to let my arm dangle when I jogged…

but my ‘new’ self was all that remained.

Oh, and by the way – by the time I did re-emerge, everyone I knew was completely blown away by my transformation, but that mattered a lot less to me now.

I was just getting started. 

Conclusion

I know that a lot of people are going to critique these techniques – trust me when I say that the overwhelming majority of them literally have no idea what the fuck they’re talking about.

What I’ve shared in this video are just my experiences, research, and opinions. Always do what you feel is right.

Make sure to follow me on Instagram @nelsonquest – there’s so much more I want to share in these videos that’s much easier for me to share there.

And lastly, don’t just subscribe to my YT channel, but if you want to be notified first when I release new videos then make SURE to click the notification bell – unless you’re too busy thinking positive thoughts or masturbating to yourself in a mirror over the idea of how great you are, in that case…

This is the path.

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How to be a Master: The Philosophy of Bruce Lee

How to be a Master: The Philosophy of Bruce Lee

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Bruce Lee passed away on July 20th, 1973 – nearly 50 years ago.

Yet his instagram page has over 7 million followers, “The Warrior” – based on an original concept by Lee, is now a hit show on television,  And t-shirts and sneakers bearing his likeness are still flying off of shelves.

Even all these years later, Bruce Lee is still a cultural icon.

And while his movies and overall aesthetic were astonishing – the real reason that his legacy continues to inspire millions of people around the world is because of the philosophy that he came to represent.

It was this philosophy that initially drew my attention and made me curious to learn more about him.

More specifically, it was a clip I saw where explained how to ‘be like water’.

"Be Water, My Friend. Empty your mind. Be formless, shapeless, like water. You put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle. You put it into a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend." Bruce Lee

This was my gateway into the philosophy of Bruce Lee.

It was in investigating his philosophy where I was introduced to Taoism – which I have spent much of the last 8 years studying and applying within my own experience and producing incredible results.

I was introduced to the idea that hidden within paradoxical nature of Eastern philosophy, was a deeper knowledge that held the key to so much of what ails of us here in the West, the key to so much of what was limiting MY own ability to achieve what Bruce Lee considered to be the highest form of human achievement: self-expression.

In this video, we’re going to deep dive into Bruce Lee’s philosophy of Jeet Kune Do and how it lays what I believe is the BEST foundation for the true cultivation of any skill.

The Style of No-Style

Most people understand Jeet Kune Do as being solely a  ‘style’ of martial arts.. And that could not be further from the truth.

Jeet Kune Do was at its core a philosophy of learning, which Lee taught through martial arts.

The core tenet of Jeet Kune Do is ‘instant, frictionless reaction’. To put it another way “the expression of one’s feelings with the minimum movements of  movements and energy”… wu-wei.

It was a ‘style’ of martial art, only in the sense that it was ‘the style of no style’

“Because of styles, people are separated. Research your own experience, absorb what is useful, reject what is useless, add what is essentially your own”

“The man who is really serious, with the urge to find out what truth is, has no style at all. He lives only in what is.”

He dislike styles when referring to personal processes like self-development,, because he believed that to adhere to any individual ‘style’ was to essentially put ourselves into the ‘box’ of that style – which is restrictive.

Instead Lee saw styles ‘collectively’ – similar to Taoist world-views – and so instead of focusing on any individual style, he focused on the foundations which connected the best elements of different styles.

“Man is always in a learning process. Whereas ‘style’ is a concluding, established, solidified something, you know? I mean you cannot do that, because you learn every day as you grow on, grow older. Each person must not be limited to one approach. We must approach it with our own self”

Lee believed that it was important to not take positions.. In his words “be not for or against”. That we should instead allow our circumstances to dictate our actions.

I see this sort of limiting style approach manifest within so many of the different themes that encompass self-development.

I’ve had people criticize me for laying down while meditating… for walking on a treadmill while I work…  for doing Pomodoros of 50 minutes instead of 25.

I see this in particular when it comes to which style of ‘diet’ or exercise is superior – as if the best diet and best style of exercise isn’t the one that produces the best results for the individual…

As if we shouldn’t experiment with all styles, and “Absorb what is useful, reject what is useless, add what is essentially our own.”

In the past, I had the bad habit of ‘marrying’ myself to individual styles and believing that my way of doing things was superior to other ways… even if that way was no longer actually working for me.

When I started to apply Lee’s ‘style of no style’ philosophy within everything I do – my work, my physical activities, my artistic activities,  I’ve now been able to evolve year after year.

The 3 Stages of Cultivation

Within Jeet Kune Do was also Bruce Lee’s unique philosophy towards the actual learning process, which he referred to as the Three Stages of Cultivation.

First, is  the “Stage of Innocence” – or what Lee referred to as “Partiality.”

In this stage, we are completely ignorant to the particular skill we’re trying to learn.

Because of this, if we try to perform the skill, having no knowledge but our own instincts – we’ll act in a way that is natural and reflective… but because we have no knowledge of the skill, our actions will often be incorrect.

Second, is the “Stage of Sophistication” – or what Lee referred to as “Fluidity”.

In this stage we begin learning the skill that we’re seeking to master. We’re taught different ways to perform the skill and we do so in an ‘imitative way’ – meaning that we essentially try to imitate the teacher, whether that be an actual person, a book, or even a video – until we feel like we’re ‘doing it right’.

Because we imitate, we lose the natural, reflective qualities of our actions – often becoming almost robotic.

We constantly second-guess ourselves, and because of that we often freeze.

Third, is the “Spontaneous Stage” – or what Lee referred to as “Emptiness”.

This stage occurs after years of disciplined practice – where, instead of having to consciously force our actions, they happen spontaneously.

Instead of trying to ‘impose’ our mind, we simply react without friction, to whatever the unique circumstance is that we are faced with.

As Lee described, “there is nothing to try [to] do but try to be purposeless, and formless, like water. All of his classical techniques and standard styles are minimized, if not wiped out, and nothingness prevails. He is no longer confined.”

The first time I read about Lee’s 3 stages of cultivation, I was still confused – until one night at a salsa club here where I live in Colombia.

When we first set out to learn how to dance – we don’t know anything – or worse – we know that we’re not good at dancing.

Someone who dances but has no skill at dancing – will still move naturally… instinctively… this is most easily observed in little kids who haven’t yet reached the stage where society has taught them to feel shame over their own unique self-expression – that’s a topic for another video.

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Anyway at the first stage, we move instinctively and naturally, but are ignorant as to how to actually dance.

In the second stage, we begin to learn how to dance. We imitate our teachers and because of that our movements are initially very jerky and uncoordinated as we constantly second-guess ourselves and seek to do the thing that makes our teacher happy.

As we get better, we are still mechanical… robotic, because we’re getting better at ‘imitating’ what we believe to be the ‘correct’ way to do something.

Then.. what I realized all those years ago as I sat, buzzed after a few mojitos, trying to figure out the essence of what made these dancers so good.

Was that in the final stage – these dancers weren’t ‘planning’ out their moves. 

Instead, in this ‘highest’ stage of learning… these dancers were simply… forgetting.

Interpreting the music within their own unique styles – no thinking at all – simply ‘existing’ within the unique circumstance of each individual second.

That was the moment where I decided to learn salsa – and here I am 6 years later and I’m still very much in stage 2 – still practicing, ‘imitating’ thousands of repetitions.

But slowly… I am creating my own style.

What I’m describing here is the process of mastery – what Bruce Lee considered to be ‘limitless self-expression’.

And if you’re aspiring to mastery within individual dimensions of your own life, whether it be physical, mental, expressive, or occupational.

Hopefully the philosophy of Jeet Kune Do can help you as it has helped me.

“Before one studies Zen, mountains are mountains and waters are waters; after a first glimpse into the truth of Zen, mountains are no longer mountains and waters are no longer waters; after enlightenment, mountains are once again mountains and water once again waters.” ― Dōgen

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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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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

Table of Contents

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.

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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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