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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.

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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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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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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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Broke Freelancer to $8MM Web Design Business (in 7 Steps)

Broke Freelancer to $8MM Web Design Business (in 7 Steps)

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In 2008 I built my first real estate website. Fast forward to today and I’ve now got a thriving business with over 50 employees valued at close to $8MM.

Now here’s the thing – anyone, if they worked hard enough, could achieve the same result… because when I started, I had practically nothing… less than nothing.

I had no money, no skills, a cheap laptop, and only a few months earlier I had graduated college with a degree in economics that as it turns out, I would never use.

I also had no idea how to make websites. I didn’t know how to code. I wasn’t a photoshop expert.

Here’s what I did know: I wanted to work online.

And in this video I’ll share with you the 7 exact steps that I followed to get where I am today – steps that if I had understood earlier, would have helped me to get here in a fraction of the time.

Step 1: The ‘A-Ha’ Moment

For most of my life, I had pretty much just blindly followed the path that had been laid out in front of me.

After graduating college, my dad had an idea to start a real estate brokerage. That idea went up in flames, but before it did, I had the opportunity to build a website for it using a popular real estate website template builder.

I LOVED building that website – working on my computer from the comfort of my bedroom, reading photoshop tutorials to improve my skills, and the indescribable feeling of seeing the final result of all the hours I had invested.

Anyway, after that business failed, I decided that I would be a real estate agent, and the first thing I did was build another website for myself.

That website won an award for ‘site of the month’ → I put a little graphic on the site saying ‘if you want a website like this, contact me’ → and from there, I got my first paying client.

This was my ‘a-ha’ moment. The realization that I could actually make a living from this.

I think we all need an ‘aha’ moment to realize that we can escape the 9-5 career path, and chances are that if you chose to watch this video, you’ve already had it in some shape or form.

Let me know what that moment was for you guys in the comments below. It will be a fun reflection for you,  and helpful for others.

Step 2: Master Freelancing

Before I could start my business, I needed design skills. I needed to be able to generate leads and convert them into sales. I needed MONEY. I needed reasons that people would even want to do business with me in the first place ( aka a portfolio and testimonials).

And then finally, I needed to identify a ‘problem’ that my business was going to solve.

Masterirg the game of freelance gave me all of this and more, and I firmly believe that any budding digital business owner should start here.

As already mentioned, I got paid $50 for my first website – and I had no idea what I was doing, but I had a month to complete everything.

Working every hour of every day, 7 days a week, that ended up being just enough time to learn enough to be able to deliver a really nice end result to what ended up being a very happy first client.

With every subsequent website, my design skills were improving, meaning I could charge more and deliver a better end result, all in less time.

My prospecting also got better. I didn’t have money so what I would do was go to real estate agent websites and write them a personalized message through the contact form on their site where I offered my services and included links to view my growing portfolio and testimonials.

Initially I’d spend up to 30 minutes on each message, thinking that being more personal would give me a better result…  that strategy failed miserably.

Then I tried sending copy and paste messages, but that didn’t work either.

After lots of trial and error, I found a way to semi-personalize each message enough so that they seemed personal, even though they were mostly just copy and paste.

This worked great and with just a few hours of prospecting each day I was generating lots of leads, which I then still had to sell, which over time I learned was all about passionately communicating how I the website I built for them would deliver WAY more value than what I was asking them to pay me.

Value that came in many forms – saving them time, reducing their headaches, and most importantly, making them more money.

As my design and sales skills grew, I was able to charge enough to where I could now start saving the money that I would need to lay the foundations of my business, and after building enough real estate websites, I was able to start identifying some specific problems that my business could solve.

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 3: Specialize Within a Niche

As a struggling freelance designer, I would hungrily accept every job that was offered to me because I didn’t want to say no to money,

Ironically, this mentality was costing me money, and it’s the biggest mistake that I see freelancers make.

When you specialize within a specific niche, you develop niche-specific skills, you figure out specific processes that allow you to work faster, AND perhaps most importantly, you build a reputation.

At about 1 year into my freelance career, I had built a name for myself within the ‘real estate website’ niche, and was now charging $2000 for sites that were taking me only 2 weeks each to complete.

But I was still stupidly saying ‘yes’ to side jobs, one of which was a $10k ecommerce site (more money that I had ever been offered).

That site took me 10x the amount of time that it took me to build a single $2000 real estate website, meaning that I could have made 2x the amount of total money if I had just focused on real estate websites, not to mention that all the time I spent on a one-off website where I could have instead continued to grow my real estate niche specific skills, reviews & portfolio.

Moral of the story is this: when you work online, you’ll be exposed to lots of different industries and niches. As soon as you find one that seems promising, focus ALL of your time and energy there.

Whether you’re building websites or providing marketing services to ecommerce websites that use Shopify, providing online accounting services for doctors or dentists, or helping YouTubers improve their social media growth.

The failure to specialize in a niche, as a freelancer OR business, will make you less competitive than the freelancers or businesses you’re competing against who do specialize.

Step 4: Create Systems for Repetitive Tasks

When you specialize within a niche, you end up doing a lot of the same things over and over, meaning there are HUGE gains to be made by creating systems.

My first system was for client onboarding, which was basically just 

  1. A form that I’d have my clients fill out
  2. A dropbox folder where I’d have them upload their logo and any images they wanted to use on the site. 
  3. An email that I’d send to the client explaining all of this 😉

Seeing the amount of time this saved me, I proceeded to create a “go live” system, “prospecting” systems, and even a ‘design system’ which helped me to finish websites in as quickly as 1 week.

It’s really simple guys – the more you specialize within a specific niche, the more you should build systems that help you spend less time on each subsequent project while delivering an equal or superior end result. This is the game.

When I see freelancers who are ‘stuck’, it’s almost always because they don’t have a niche, don’t have systems, or a combination of the two.

And here’s the thing, once you’ve got yourself a niche and some systems, you now have a business.

Granted, it’s a shit business, because you’re the only employee and you’re not making any money unless you’re actually getting new projects, which brings us to…

Step 5: Figure Out How To Generate Recurring Income

Ok so at this point in my freelance career I was earning a good amount of money per project, but if I didn’t have new projects, I wasn’t making money. In the world of freelance, this is what’s called “feast or famine” and it sucks.

To solve this, I decided to charge my clients $20/month for hosting. It wasn’t a lot, but once I had 10 clients paying this amount, I realized that I was now earning $2400 per year ($20 per site x 10 clients x 12 months), all on auto-pilot.

What would happen when I got to 50 clients? 500 clients? 

This was a mind-blowing revelation for me, and suddenly the game changed from  “how can I charge more per site” to “how can I sell more sites to collect more monthly fees”.

So I developed a real estate website ‘template’ that I could customize in just a few hours and boom, each new website meant more monthly fees.

Within a year my monthly recurring income was now greater than what I had been earning directly through freelance projects!

To put this into the proper perspective for you guys, this meant that I could spend a month in Africa climbing Mt Kilimanjaro, hunting with the Masaii, and eating breakfast next to elefants, and earn more money than when I was actually in the trenches sending prospecting emails, running demo’s and building websites.

There’s a reason why businesses with low or no monthly recurring income have shit valuations. Make no mistake, the name of the game IS recurring income.

Anyway, at this point in my business journey, I was maxxed out at what I could do alone. If I was going to go any further, I was going to need employees.

Step 6: Hire Employees As Soon As It Makes Sense

When you’re just starting out, it’s easy to fall into the “why would I pay someone to do something that I can do better?” mentality.

When you’re broke, this mentality is necessary, but as soon as you’re able to, you need to hire people, starting with hiring for the things that take the most time while involving the least skill.

For me, this meant first hiring for data entry and prospecting.

It was extremely important for me to outsource this stuff as quickly as possible, and while it was crucially important, in my eyes, I don’t really consider it to count as ‘my first employee.’

No, for me my first employee was the one I was worried about hiring, because not only was I going to pay them pretty much all of the profit I was bringing in, but they were going to take over the main thing that I had been doing up until that point; designing websites.

Now was the person I hired as good as me? Of course not… but he was pretty good, and within a few months he was able to take over almost ALL of the design work that I had previously been doing, which meant that I was now free to focus on the most important part of the business: growing it.

Step 7: Systematically Replace Yourself

I focused my free time on marketing and lead-gen… the problem was that I was not particularly good at marketing and lead-gen, and so this was the next thing I hired for.

We now had leads flying in from Google ads at $25/each, which meant we no longer had to spend hours each day sending far less effective prospecting emails.

As already mentioned,, my business has over 50 employees – entire departments for support, design, and sales, and the key that facilitated all of that growth was me constantly looking at the things I was doing and asking the question “is this the best use of my time?”

If the answer was ‘no’, then I knew I needed to hire someone.

Alright guys so listen, if you enjoyed the article please give the YouTube video a like – then subscribe for more and and click the bell – doesn’t cost you anything and it gives a HUGE boost to the channel, and to me.

Follow me on Instagram @nelsonquest to see me living everything that I talk about, and visit nelsonquest.com to get my Dark Mode productivity system for free –  it’s the same system I use when I really need to work on my business.

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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My Super Productive Daily Routine (CEO & Athlete)

My Super Productive Daily Routine (CEO & Athlete)

Table of Contents

For those of you that don’t know me, my name is Nelson Quest – I’m a 36 years entrepreneur from the US.

In 2013 I founded real estate technology company that I’ve since grown to over 50 employees –

in 2014 I moved to Colombia donde me aprendí a hablar español con fluidez – improved my salsa level from ‘human tree’ to ‘casanova’ –  am currently working towards climbing the highest mountain in every continent while also trying to win a national title in boxing.

And in my spare time I’m basically trying to give myself a brain aneurysm by spending 30 hours per week  on YouTube videos – where I dive into the darker, more authentic aspects of personal development that nobody else is really talking about.

Funny story – about 3 years ago I had the fastest growing personal development channel in North America until that channel was deleted with no explanation, after uploading more than 100 videos and investing over 100k.

I actually cried – for about 15 minutes – and then I started working on a new channel, which I launched a few months later.

That channel is now the  fastest growing personal development channel in the spanish speaking world.

And so you might be able to tell, given that I’m speaking English right now – the prodigal son has finally returned to making english content… , and in the time that I’ve been gone I’ve made some significant upgrades.

My goal with this video is to introduce or reintroduce you to who I am, through a daily routine that has evolved IMMENSELY over the last 10 years as I’ve worked obsessively to dominate each of my 4 dimensions – physical – occupational – expressive and mental – or what I like to refer to as the P.O.E.M. framework, which I’ll cover in other articles.

Morning

These days I tend to wake up 6am and the first things I do are piss and check my phone.

I have employees working in every time-zone so that over the course of 24 hours my business is always moving forward – and so I like to check to see if anyone is waiting on me for feedback.

I find that blue-light exposure first thing helps me to wake up and maintain healthy circadian rhythms, and to help with that, I put on blue-light glasses as I move through the rest of my routine.

A quick note on my house – everything is automated – I’m obsessed with efficiency and virtually every time-saving investment I can make is worth it to me, even if it only gets me a few extra minutes.

So at certain times throughout the day the curtains go up or down, lights go on and off – the stars turn on after the sun sets – and my bed even tucks me in at night.

My apartment design was heavily inspired by Tony Stark – full tour video coming soon so for the 1% of you that didn’t immediately subscribe when I winked at you a minute ago, make sure to subscribe and turn on notifications.

Ok so after I check my phone, I head to the kitchen and drink a big bottle of celery juice – It’s got some vitamins and helps get me hydrated, but I mostly just take it because it helps me go to the bathroom. I’m getting old.

I also take a single serving of FOCL day – I promise this video will not turn into an infomercial, but with that being said, I’ve been using FOCL products for over a year now and I swear by them – FOCL day kills morning brain fog and helps get me focused for the work that’s coming –

After that I ask my housekeeper Girlesa to help make me my morning drink – which is a caffeine-free probiotic tea that I mix with some keto chocolate, and a a single serving of collagen powder – which is amazing for my skin and joints.

I try to avoid carbs from 6pm until around 10 am the following day and I find this gives me the same benefits as intermittent fasting.

Girlesa works with me every day now – she’s obsessive-compulsive, which is basically a dream disorder to have in a housekeeper –

If every inch of my apartment isn’t completely spotless, she feels like she can’t breathe. I really don’t know how I get so lucky in life.

Girlesa also prepares all of my meals, which are always delicious – as well as fresh cold-pressed vegetable juice – my favorites are carrot and beet juice with a bit of ginger – 

While Girlesa is getting my drink ready I take a quick 2-3 minute shower – start out hot and then slam it over to cold for about a minute to wake up – Then I dry off and it’s time for meditation.

I always start my meditation with some Rapé – which is a type of tobacco that I was introduced to me by a shaman a few years ago –

It’s considered ancient medicine, and has lots of physical and mental benefits.

In my case I find that it it purges my thoughts puts me into a space of calm awareness that’s perfect for meditation – it also clears the fuck out of my sinuses.

Although I have a really nice meditation area – lately I’ve been meditating in my closet so that I simultaneously do my red-light therapy – which improves my energy – makes my skin young and sumptuous, and boosts recovery from workouts.

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.

I do a 10 minute timed meditation on the Calm app – where every 15 breaths or so I rotate a little bit so that I’m getting light exposure across my entire body.

Meditation increases that little space between the things that happens to me and how I react to them, and most of who I am today is a direct result of constantly working to amplify that space.

Meditation was also my gateway into Taoism, which I consider to be my principal philosophy.

Taoism’s most powerful metaphor is “The River” – at any point, we’re either moving ‘with’ the river or ‘against’ it –

Learning how to move with the river at all times has been an invaluable part of my process.

Now listen – at this point you may think that I’m extremely disciplined, and while I won’t say that you’re mistaken – what I will say is that most of what I do is really… effortless.

To me, ‘difficult’ is… laying on a beach with a pina colada, going out partying, or anything that isn’t moving me closer to my goals.

People love to tell me that I need to be more social. Respectfully, these people have no idea what the fuck they’re talking about.

I don’t go out, have virtually no friends, work entire days, every day – and I’ve never been happier.

I’ve spent most of the last 10 years living a very lonely and isolated life, which sometimes did get pretty difficult, but it was in that solitude where I discovered, and continue to discover, who I really am.

These days,  I am rarely lonely, thanks to my two beautiful ladies.

First is my almost 2 year old boston terrier – her name is Ro, which is short for ‘Rorschach’ because her face reminds me of a Rorschach test.

She’s blind in one eye and everyone thinks she’s a mute because she doesn’t bark, but I love her anyway. She loves me unconditionally

I also have a beautiful, brilliant, intellectually curious girlfriend who supports me in ways that makes me feel like it’s actually OK for me to be me. I’ve never experienced that before.

We don’t have a normal relationship – she understands that I need to work and train every day, even when we hang out on weekends– but when I work, she studies. When I train, she trains with me.

Sometimes – actually a lot of times, I find myself looking at her and wondering if she’s really real.

Anyway, from the moment i wake up I try to be at my desk working within 30 minutes.

From 6:30am to 10am, which is when I’m most creative,  I work exclusively on NelsonQuest.

For my first few years of making videos, I used to absolutely detest writing the scripts – but a scary voice in my head demanded that I keep going,

And I’m glad I listened because at some point I began to experience writing as a boundless artform, and that’s when I became obsessed.

There are few things I enjoy more than getting on my treadmill first thing in the morning and queuing up a beautiful symphonic playlist as I sip on my tea and lose myself within the infinite corridors of my mind.

Hopefully you guys are noticing this passion reflected in my videos, and if you have any questions about writing, let me know in the comments below.

At 10am I have my first 1 hour training session – boxing – which despite my profound predilection for writing,  is my favorite part of the day.

Pre-workout, I have a glass of sanson wine with a spoonful of honey, 1 egg ,and beta alanine – it’s an old boxers’ potion that tastes just as disgusting as it sounds, but it gets me fired up.

During my workout I sip on my patented intra-workout recovery drink –  8oz orange juice, 100 calories of dextrose, 25g of protein, and a few big scoops of greek yogurt – which tastes delicious and helps me recover much faster from intense workouts.

My boxing coach and I have lots of chemistry – We’re both bullies and always try to be as offensive as possible in our interactions.

I laugh hysterically when I’m around him, at least until the warmup is finished. From that point onward it’s all business.

I always work with a training partner so that every combination, every drill, everything I do has the context of an actual fight.

At the end of training we do sparring rounds -which is the part of the day where I most feel alive.

I love developing new movement patterns and then having an opportunity to test them in a scenario where there are dire physical consequences if I make mistakes.

I also fucking love hitting and getting hit – love having to wipe the sweat out of my eyes so that I can see – I even love the way my coach cackles away like a hyena in the background whenever I get cracked with a big shot.

After boxing we all usually head to the pool to swim a little bit,  grab some sun, and then another cold shower before I head back to my apartment where my housekeeper has my breakfast ready –

When I’m done, I go to a cafe to work for at least 4 to 5 hours. From this point of the day onward I focus 100% on my business, AgentFire.

For the past 7 years my cafe order has been the exact same – 1 oatmeal cookie, 2 bottles of water, and a shot of espresso – of which I only take a few sips so I don’t get addicted.

I spend most of my days in meetings and working on big picture stuff, focusing mostly on sales and marketing.

Fun fact: I use the exact same setup, equipment, and team for NelsonQuest to help me make videos for AgentFire.

Afternoon

At around 4pm I head home and it’s time for workout #2 – which is either a workout in my home gym, which I do about 2 times per week to keep my body strong and injury free for boxing.

A salsa class, which is my go-to recovery day workout, or, my personal favorite – the green goblin.

I train on a Trek Madone SL6 with a full Wahoo system that adjusts resistance through the back part, and adjusts the incline through the front part for when I’m going up or down hills –

I always pick a different 60 minute training program using my Zwift app – picking more intense programs based on how I feel.

I only allow myself to play videogames if I’m training on my bike – and I LOVE video games, especially Role playing games – which is kind of a problem because I end up always wanting to train on my bike.

I play on a big 8k TV with bose surround sound and Hue Sync, which syncs all of the lights in the room to the TV and makes me feel like I’m in the game –

So much so that there are times where I’m pushing myself to the max, and I forget that I’m even working out.

After I’m done, I’ll shower again, eat my dinner – and then it’s back to work until 8 or 9 pm.

At home I alternate work between my treadmill, seated – where I have a vibration plate I use frequently, and then sometimes on my sofa using recovery boots –

I think sitting for long periods is horrible for our bodies and as someone who used to suffer from chronic leg pain because of this, I now do everything I can now to keep my blood flowing.

I also do do ALL of my work using the Pomodoro technique – my sweet spot is 50 minute work sessions followed by 10 minute breaks.

Evening

At 9pm I shut everything down, take my FOCL night along with ZMA, which helps me sleep like a baby – and then hit the sauna for as long as I can survive, which is usually about 15 minutes at 120 degrees fahrenheit.

After that I take a very dark shower (for those of you keeping track at home, we’re at 4 showers now).

And then I like to listen to a podcast or a fiction book to wind down while Ro tries to smother me to death with her body.

At 10pm it’s time to go to sleep – and then I do it all over again the following day.

Closening

Hey guys – so that’s my full day… or at least the 10% of it that I was able to cram into this short video –  if you want WAY more detail then make sure to follow me on Instagram @nelonquest.

If you’re wondering why my girlfriend disappeared by the end of the video – we actually broke up… that fucking bitch.

Nah I’m just kidding. She lives in a different city and had to fly home.

Anyway if you have any lingering comments or questions from the video,  let me know in the comments.

Make sure to check Dark Mode – the productivity system that I designed and use to achieve insanely difficult goals – which you can download for free.

This is the path.

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© 2021 NelsonQUEST.com. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.