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5 Surprising Life Lessons From Ancient Chinese Wisdom

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ONE DAY a student came to Confucius and made a confession. ‘Master,’ he said with downcast eyes, ‘It is not that I don’t delight in your Way, it is only that my strength is insufficient.’

Instead of being moved by his pupil’s honest humility, Confucius replied ‘Someone whose strength is genuinely insufficient collapses somewhere along the way. As for you, you deliberately draw the line.’

To him, the pursuit of the way (that is, the right way to live life) was something to be prioritized above everything else. It was something you willfully cultivated inside yourself, even if you were to discover you didn’t have what it takes.

To do anything less was unacceptable. It wasn’t an honest failing, it was a willful failure at life.

Confucius is arguably the most famous of the ancient Chinese philosophers. Rivaled only by Laozi’s Tao Te Ching, Confucius’s teaching had widespread influence over Chinese history, one that survived repeated attacks and dismissal by opposing schools of thought (read: Communism).

Describing himself as a “transmitter who invented nothing” Confucius saw himself as simply reaffirming the ancient wisdom that had come before him, going so far as to have supposedly shaped the famous Five Classics himself. Confucianism, the school of thought born from his teachings, stresses the importance of this ancient wisdom, namely in the form of emulating moral exemplars, study, and skilled judgment; all stemming from a foundation in the cultivation of the self. That is the virtues, behaviors, and habits that brought them to life.

THE ANCIENT CHINESE WISDOM OF SELF-CULTIVATION

Self-cultivation was extremely important for ancient Chinese thinkers. Similar to Aristotle, they believed it lay at the root of everything that was important. ‘There are many charges’ wrote the Confucian thinker Mencius, ‘but the charge of one’s self is the root of all others.’

Personal responsibility wasn’t just recommended, it lay at the heart of everything. Aristotle wrote similarly, referring to courage (perhaps the ultimate sign of responsibility) as the virtue that made all others possible. This idea carried on in Western thought and is can be seen throughout works of art. In Milton’s Paradise Regained, when tempted by Satan with dominion over the earth, Christ responds:

Yet he who reigns within himself, and rules 

Passions, Desires, and Fears, is more a King

The idea of taking responsibility for your life is one that has reverberated around the world. But not always with the same implications in behavior, and not always taken as far as the ancient Chinese thinkers instruct.

Through proverbs and wisdom, they reveal a different approach to some of the problems of our lives: being a good person, making plans and setting goals, becoming more present and less aimless, and learning to understand ourselves.

In other words, it’s time to dust off some ancient scrolls and see just how they can help us live a little better today.

1) YOU’RE NOT AS GOOD AS YOU THINK YOU ARE

Everyone has an idea of how moral they are. This idea is often unconnected to reality, but rather a justification of whatever actions we’ve taken. Actions that are motivated by thoughts and feelings we rarely admit.

It pays then, to figure out just how moral we actually are.

Confucius never made his stance on whether people were innately good or evil clear. Mencius and Xunzi, however, thought otherwise.

‘Human nature is evil,’ Xunxi wrote. ‘And goodness is caused by intentional activity.’ Similar to Christian ideas of original sin, Xunzi saw you, me, himself, and everyone else as predisposed to being at best, dicks, and at worst, monsters – people who were more often than not going to make the wrong decision.

Far from being a pessimistic douchebag though, he viewed goodness as a possible outcome of accepting this innate evil character and taking actions towards goodness instead. Where Aristotle stressed the importance of exercising the habits of virtue in the pursuit of excellence, Xunzi saw it as the one thing keeping our negative qualities at bay.

In contrast, Mencius wrote ‘The tendency of man’s nature to do good is like to tendency of water to flow downward.’ In other words, goodness to us was as natural as gravity. We are inclined by nature to do it, and it takes deliberate effort to do otherwise.

The reality probably lies closer to Confucius’ own ambiguous stance. That being, you don’t know. But you can actively move in either direction. Whilst the idea of practicing good virtues is nothing new, the concept of actively practicing immortality doesn’t get as much attention. At least, not outside of fiction.

Books like Crime and Punishment, Anna Karenina, and Paradise Lost demonstrate how being grossly immoral isn’t so much a product of our nature as it is our deliberate encouragement of what is already there. Raskolnikov entertains the idea of killing, Anna convinces herself her marriage is boring to justify her adultery, and Lucifer egotistically clings to his pride, even though he knows it only brings him to ruin.

Where books like The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker have shed light on our own fixed, biological nature, it remains the case that alongside that nature is the way the world and everyone interacts with it. Whether we’re born innately good, bad, weak, strong, brave, or cowardly, we also always have our choices.

We can always strive to be better. One small habit at a time.

2) YOUR LIFE PLAN IS DOOMED TO FAIL

In all corners of western culture is echoed the same message. “Find your passion, become successful.” This idea permeates storytelling, advertising, and internet culture so much that it’s rapidly become taken as fact. Inside you, me, and everyone else, there is something that we can find that once found, will set the world into a simple, straight line to success.

Except, in reality, there’s one little problem. When it comes to your dreams of success, your passion, and your goals … The world isn’t a simple, straight line.

It’s the opposite.

This idea is central to many of the ideas in ancient Chinese wisdom. ‘The way that can be made into a clearly defined way is not the way’ writes Laozi in the Tao Te Ching. Which is a more eloquent way of saying ‘Your long term plans suck.’

The world isn’t as logical as we’d like it to be. We can order time from 365 days right down to the millisecond, but it doesn’t change the fact that the world, our lives, and ourselves are fundamentally ruled by randomness. Shit happens that we haven’t planned for, struggle to deal with, and want to run away from. Other stuff happens that is unexpected, good, and sometimes amazing.

And this randomness happens all the time.

When we make plans about how we want our lives to go, set ourselves long term goals, ambitious new years resolutions, or declarations of where our lives will be in 5 years time, what we’re actually doing is neglecting to take into account just how powerful the rule of randomness is in the world.

Because the world is random and misshapen.  It doesn’t fit a plan, and no plan could ever fit it. There is only the right reaction that occurs at the right moment. And that changes day by day.

This understanding of Laozi’s, that the ‘way’ cannot be clearly defined, is similar to Tolstoy’s observation about life in Anna Karenina. In passages often overlooked as boring, Tolstoy has various characters attempting to improve the lot of their peasant’s work ethic. To do so, they employ popular English theories of labor, as well as English machines, and hope everything will go well. But it doesn’t. Neither the plans nor the machines fit with the experience, culture, habits, or land of the Russain people. It turns out what works in England doesn’t work in rural Russia.

Tolstoy, like Loazi, is attempting to illustrate the folly of plans that don’t first take into account the randomness of the world, and how that randomness takes on a unique character of its own. Similarly, just as our plans must be flexible to accommodate reality, our ideas of our own ability to build habits or motivation must be as well. We can’t just lay whatever we want down. We first have to see what’s already there.

3) MINDFULNESS DOESN’T MEAN YOU SIT ON YOUR ASS

Alongside clean eating and hitting the gym, mindfulness is the most commonly touted way of improving your life.

Want to be more successful? Meditate. What to have better social skills? Meditate. Want to achieve A, B, C and be X, Y, and Z? Meditate.

The idea is everywhere, but the most commonly accepted form of it might not be the one that serves you the best.

Mindfulness has come along way from Siddhartha sitting under the Bodhi tree. There are books on how to use it to become more successful, more at peace, to achieve no-self; as well as at least two popular apps where grown men talk quietly into your ears as you sit in the lotus position.

(If you’re into that sort of thing…)

But outside of its modern popularity, mindfulness actually has other forms.

Confucian mindfulness takes a different approach than sitting on your ass trying to achieve no-self. In fact, Confucius was cynical about exactly that. He wrote ‘Living in retirement to study their aims, and practicing righteousness to carry out their principles – I have heard these words, but I have not seen such men.’

To him, mindfulness was active. It has you getting up and doing something. Interacting with others and engaging with the world. Because it is only through that action, interaction, and engagement that you can truly cultivate yourself and the correct way of living.

This way of thinking sees mindfulness is an active relationship with the world and other people. It’s not an act of sitting cross-legged and focusing on the breath but finding the true, moral way to live, as it exists in a moment by moment basis. And as you find that moral way to live, developing the strength, through practice, in order to live it.

Now whilst this might seem radically different to traditional ideas of meditation, the theme, at least metaphorically, is similar. The death of self is the ultimate result of taking action. It is not something that arrives through 15 minutes of practice, focusing on the breath, or staring at your navel.

It requires you going out into the world and doing what’s right.

4) YOU ARE WHAT YOU THINK YOU HATE

We all like to hate. You’ve probably, in the last five hours alone probably thought about things you hate multiple times. Many of those will be people. Donald Trump; the people who voted for him; the people who didn’t vote for him; your parents; your ex-girlfriend; your boss; maybe even me.

(I hope not…)

But the implication of hatred is that we are somehow different to someone else. That they have done something or acted in a way that is entirely contrary to who we are, what we value, and what is important to us. So we despise them.

But what if their actions, rather than being contrary to who we are, were actually closer than we think? What if everyone else was just a window into ourselves.

‘When you observe goodness in others,’ wrote Xunzi, ‘then inspect yourself, desirous of studying it. When you observe badness in others, then examine yourself, fearful of discovering it. If you find goodness in yourself, then approve of yourself, desirous of holding firm to it. If you find badness in your person, then reproach yourself, regarding it as calamity.’

To him, other people weren’t just people to interact with, they were ways of learning more about ourselves.

Contrary to Western thinking, ancient Chinese wisdom thought of the self as not really a thing (like, for instance, a soul), but more a mess of energies, emotions, and habits being pulled in all sorts of directions. Some of these ‘messes’ form patterns, some of these are forever random. We’re constantly in an environment that we’re passively reacting to.

And far from being just you, it’s this way for everyone.

Everyone is a mess. And it’s this mess that you have to take responsibility for.

(Well, not you, because according to this idea there is no you – so wait a minute, your mess has to take care of your mess? What the fu—)

Practicality this means that your idea of ‘you’ isn’t as certain as you think. What you want isn’t what you think. And your idea of others is often just a window into yourself.

A lot of this has been backed up by research. Neuroscience seems to increasingly be suggesting the self is an illusion. Research on happiness suggests we have no idea. The entire idea that you know who you are, and that you know how different you are to other people is flimsy at best.

What’s more likely is that you’re a mess. But in taking a close look at the mess presented by others, you can take steps to sort out your own.

5) YOU SHOULD TAKE A STEP INTO SOMEONE ELSE’S SHOES

Because we are such a mess, ancient Chinese wisdom suggests that one of the best ways to deal with this mess would be to engage in rituals. And no, I don’t mean stuffy religious rituals, I mean practical, empathy-based ones. Rituals that help us break through the illusion of self, and see ourselves from another perspective.

One method was to deliberately put yourself in the shoes of the person you’re in conflict with. If a father was in conflict with his son, it was both an individual’s obligation to imagine the life and situation of the other.

The son must imagine the responsibilities, concerns, and intentions of the father, and the father must imagine the youthful energy, the growing desire for independence, and innocent foolishness of the son.

It isn’t hard to see how this practical application of empathy would be a good idea. As a ritual, it actively strives to lessen conflict and build a deeper understanding of each other’s position – something that is integral to compromise, and in turn, healthy human relationships.

In the West, the two ideas that parallel this come from Carl Jung and Christ himself. The former wrote at length how the flaws we see in others were merely projections of our unconscious shadow – the traits we wished to hide from ourselves because of shame. When we judged someone for their greed, egotism, or promiscuity, it was rather those traits we were judging, and repressing in ourselves. Rather than accepting and moderating.

The latter stressed the importance of looking at yourself before you judge others. When confronted with a woman who had committed adultery and was to be stoned to death by a crowd, he confronted the crowds own immoral behavior and their right to judge anyone. Later, he advised his followers to avoid judging anyone at all, lest they are judged in the same way. And that before you can understand the faults of anyone well enough to judge, you have to understand your own.

THE ANCIENT, EVERYDAY PRACTICE OF CHINESE WISDOM

You aren’t who you think you are. You aren’t as good as you think you are. Your plans are uncertain. And you are what you hate.

On the surface, this might seem like bad news, but on closer inspection, all it says is that you need to release your certainty and treat uncertainty with the respect it deserves.

Instead of believing you are something, you take steps to actually become it. Instead of assuming you are fixed, you look for the evidence that says you are not. Instead of assuming you can predict the outcome of the world, you remain flexible enough to handle whatever outcome it thrusts upon you. Instead of looking at everyone and seeing what you separates you, you instead look and see what brings you together.

This way of thinking might seem the opposite of a Western mind, but the ideas of ancient Chinese wisdom actually have a lot of crossovers with some of our oldest ideas, and many of our newest advances. And the heart of rings true, regardless of your background.

In order to live the right way, you have to take care of yourself. You have to take on the charge of cultivating who you are.

Because as Confucius understood, that lies at the heart of everything else.

 

Photo by Justin Lim on Unsplash

WANT A BETTER DATING LIFE?

Yeah, I know. You’ve read enough. But this is important. I made a dating course. Like, a really big dating course.

It’s over 8 hours of video content, 30 lessons, and over 80 exercises. It covers everything you need to know from making yourself more attractive, building sexual confidence, having great dates, and finding the right women for you.

It’s based on years of experience, a library’s worth of scientific research, and just the right amount of common sense. So stop listening to me and check it out for yourself.

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Taking Risks is The Most Important Part of Self-Improvement

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why risk is good

Did you know that on the eve of his first Indian rights demonstration Mohandas Gandhi thought “You know what? I might get smacked about for this!” And called the whole thing off, staying in his neat black suit, practicing law with civilized gentlemen, and earning a nice and comfortable living for himself and his young family.

You might also be surprised to learn that Count Leo Tolstoy, on deciding to pursue a career as a writer found his prose abominable and couldn’t bear the effect of failure on his social reputation, so sacked the whole thing off and remained an officer in the Russain military, who in between moments of gambling and whoring, went back to his country estate, where he gambled and chased peasant girls, never to touch pen to paper again.

You will certainly be shocked to discover that Sylvester Stallone (I know, a bit of a step down from the last two) when sitting down to write the first draft of Rocky, couldn’t help but find the movie formulaic, his characters simple, and the idea of some Cinderella boxing story just a little too hokey. So two scenes in, he called it a day, and went back to being just another schlub, except with a bizarre, scarcely intelligible voice.

Or at least, that’s how it would’ve gone had they never taken any risks.

WHAT IS RISK?

“My momma always said life is like a box of chocolates.” Said Forrest Gump. “You never know what you’re gonna get.” But Forrest Gump is full of shit. And although it seems tangential to the article, this actually illustrates a key point.

People often fail to understand the difference between true risk and what is in fact uncertainty. And as a result, react in a way that doesn’t have any bearing on reality.

When Forrest says you never know what you’re going to get in a box of chocolates he is speaking in terms of uncertainty. As far as his analogy applies to life, he’s correct. The odds of anything in life are uncertain. But as far as a box of chocolates is concerned, he’s wrong. You have a fair chance of knowing exactly what you’re going to get. Because unlike life, the box of chocolates has pretty tangible odds. I mean, not only is he going to get chocolate, but there are fairly standard types of chocolate that someone gets in a box. For instance, it’s good odds that he’ll get a chocolate with strawberry filling.

While slightly less certain, Forrest’s catchphrase is no more realistic than saying “Life is like a pack of 52 playing cards, complete with Kings, Queens, Aces, suits, the lot. You never know what you’re gonna get.”

Tell that to Rain Man.

REDEFINING RISK

In life, risk and uncertainty are not the same things. When it comes to true risk, elements are known and an outcome can be potentially calculated. It’ll rarely ever truly be known, but it’ll be far more certain than otherwise.

For instance, in a freshly opened pack of cards, you have a 1/4 chance of drawing a Heart. With those odds in mind, you have an idea of the risk you’re going to take if you’d gamble money on that outcome. It’s the same with reaching into a box of chocolates. You might risk pulling out the wrong flavor, but if you only dislike strawberry filled chocolates then there are good odds you’ll manage to pick one of the many that aren’t.

That is what actual risk is.

Uncertainty, on the other hand, is what life is all about. There are no real tangible odds for whether your business will succeed, whether your motorbike will crash, whether you’ll win a fight, fall in love, publish a book, or have a good time traveling alone. In reality, nobody could possibly know these things. At best you’ll get statistics that fall apart under scrutiny.

So when people talk about “taking risks” in life, what they’re really talking about is uncertainty. This is what “taking a risk” in life is. Confronting the unknown. Yet when people talk about these kinds of risks, they talk about them as if the odds are already known.

The call uncertainty risk, yet treat uncertainty like it operates under the rules of risk. But in life neither of those things are true.

Got a headache yet?

So, for the sake of cleaning up:

When you think of TAKING RISKS IN LIFE, RISK-TAKERS, or tell yourself “THIS IS RISKY” you are thinking of an unknown that you have to confront. An unknown where there are no odds.

Unless it’s gambling or a box of chocolates, this is the rule.

This is what I’m referring to when I say “risk” from now on.

(After all, I’m not here to give you gambling advice).

WHY IS RISK SO IMPORTANT?

You. Your life. The opportunities you are confronted with. The very idea you have of your own identity. All of this is affected by the risks you choose to take in life. The more you choose to take risks and confront the unknown, the more each of these elements expands. The less you take risks, the more you’re confined within your apparent certainties.

“I can’t do that.”

“That’s a bad idea.”

“X will happen, which will cause Y, and that would be stupid.”

“Only an idiot would do that!”

And so on. Whether it’s starting a business, riding a motorbike, defending yourself in a fight, approaching a woman, writing a book, traveling alone, there is always a certain answer as if the outcome is already known. And why confront the “unknown” if you don’t believe it’s unknown in the first place?

This is the hallmark of people who are risk-averse: they’re certain about something that it is not possible to be certain about. And as a result, they rarely discover what they never had the uncertainty to discover.

“I did have it in me to start a business.”

“I did have it in me to defend myself.”

“I was capable of getting her number and I did end up in love.”

“I did have a great time traveling alone.”

And when you never discover this, you never get to say the next part:

“I’m glad I risked it.”

The only way to engage with any form of self-improvement in life is to take consistent risks and confront the unknown. And the only reason you don’t take these risks is down to incorrect assumptions about the nature of risk itself, and incorrect, negative assumptions about yourself. As good old Mark Zuckerberg says “the biggest risk is not taking any risk… the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.”

(I imagine he said this prior to the Cambridge Analytica scandal…)

But if you’re risk-averse, then taking consistent risks is easier said than done.

THE ART OF RISK-TAKING

As that last tasty little quote demonstrates, it’s not out of character for successful people to recommend taking risks. On the one hand, they may be offering good advice, but on the other, given that -as I’ve pointed out- risks in life are a complete unknown, their faith in risk-taking probably has a lot to do with survivorship bias.

That is to say, it worked for them so they think it’ll work for you. But it doesn’t take a genius to work out that quitting your job and eating baked beans whilst broke isn’t necessarily going to turn you into Richard Branson.

However, regardless of the odds of it working, taking risks in life and confronting the unknown is an unavoidable step in changing anything in your life. It can’t be avoided and it can’t be eliminated.

So how do you do it?

The essence of embracing risk-taking behavior lies in the fact that a single big risk does not exist in a vacuum, but is in fact composed of much smaller risks you take day to day, and even, in the way you choose to think.

For instance:

If you choose to always think you can never make a lot of money, you will likely spend your money frivolously instead of investing it into your own development or opportunities, and when an occasion or idea strikes you that may have large potential returns (like say a business opportunity), it is unlikely you will have the courage to pursue it. In fact, you’ll probably self-sabotage it.

New position open up at work? Too late, you never asked about it.

Great business idea strike you? You’ll probably write it down, then find the piece of paper down the back of your bookcase in a years time.

Have a skill that you can offer to people? That’s great, but you’ll never face rejection by marketing it so nobody will ever know.

YOU HAVE TO APPROACH IT HOLISTICALLY

The big risks don’t happen as long as the small risks don’t either. And neither occurs if the thinking is confined by false certainties about yourself and resultant self-sabotage. But where does this process exist? Do you solve the thought and the rest follows? Or is it more complicated?

I think risk in life is something that has to be approached holistically. It’s not as simple as fix the thoughts and the rest will follow, as every step operates by the same principle. Whether it’s the thoughts, small risks, or big risks, the same principle is true:

You don’t know.

This is the only real certainty you have. You have no idea what thoughts are true and what aren’t. You have no idea whether a small risk of self-improvement (like saving money or reading) will pay off. You have no idea whether pursuing a promotion will end will in your favor; the big risks are always more unknown than any.

And I’m not here to tell you that they will pay off if you muster the bravery to try. I’m just here to say you have no idea. And neither do I.

It’s up to you whether you risk it.

THE MOST IMPORTANT RISKS YOU NEED TO TAKE

Ironically given my earlier examples, I don’t actually think the risks you have to take in life involve chasing big dreams like starting a business or writing a book. In many ways those are irrelevant, or outcomes of smaller, more fundamental risks that play out day by day, altering you in ways that actually push you towards those kinds of eventualities.

In my experience, the most important risks to take in life are actually fairly simple, but almost universally avoided. They’re risks that fundamentally relate to our character, and specifically what makes us comfortable. Whether that’s in life, love, friendships, or the way we view the world.

Here are the most important risks to take:

1) RISK FAILING TO CHANGE… OR CHANGING AT ALL

One of the main reasons why I believe people genuinely avoid real, challenging self-improvement is that they’re afraid of the result. And I don’t just mean the one where they fail.

When you’re used to living a certain way it becomes comfortable. And as much as you might think you want to change, improve, or achieve your dream the way you do; the reality is that this change threatens your comfort now.

Let’s say you feel like a loser and want to be successful. Sure, succeeding might make you feel better, but it also threatens your conception of yourself now. On the flip side, if you attempt to become successful and fail, what might that confirm about you? Again, pretty threatening.

Either way, the answer is uncomfortable. So what do you do? You never risk failing or changing at all. You procrastinate, put off, or distract yourself with easier, lighter forms of change – like hitting the gym till you get that endorphin high.

But the real, identity level change? That remains untouched.

2) RISK REJECTION

A great relationship and a great dating life are determined by the same thing:

Your willingness to reject or be rejected.

In brief, as I’ve built an entire dating course teaching this, the more you are willing to be rejected, the more you will naturally, and attractively express who you are and attract women into your life who are great for you.

The less willing you are to be rejected, the more you’ll engage with needy, manipulative behaviors, and all around have a shit time.

Sure, you have to do some groundwork on yourself too. But actively risking rejection will determine the vast majority of your results and happiness in dating. So next time you get shot down, remember that you’re doing yourself a favor.

3) RISK VULNERABILITY

Emotionally exposing yourself is the easiest way to defeat the persistent sense of loneliness. When you constantly repress, hide, and filter your emotions from other people, you stop yourself from ever feeling truly connected to others.

This obviously has a negative effect on your happiness, relationships, and friendships but it also has an effect on your ability to express yourself, and ultimately, understand yourself.

When you develop the habit of never making yourself vulnerable with others, you’re actually developing the habit of never being vulnerable with yourself. Everything that would be beneficial for you to understand you’re instead jamming down into your subconscious. Typically for stupid reasons like being “more masculine” that have nothing to do with actually being masculine.

As far as taking risks in life go, the risk of vulnerability has its hands in everything from success to just your overall well being. Don’t discount it.

4) RISK CONFLICT

There is no way to be honest without inciting conflict. You can be the nicest guy in the world, but if you’re honest, someone’s going to get pissed off. Don’t believe me?

Look at what happened to Martin Luther King Jr and Gandhi. Hell, Western civilization revolves around the idea of one guy getting whacked for being a decent bloke.

But when you fear confrontation or reprisals, you’ll do your best to never be honest. You’ll supplicate, you’ll amend and filter your opinion until you either have no idea who you are, you’re walked all over by others, or both.

Ironically, you do this to become more likable to others. Not only is this vain and insecure, but as I said in an earlier article, the best way to actually be likable is to embrace being unlikeable. Go figure.

5) RISK YOUR CERTAINTIES

Beliefs and intellectual opinions are some of the things we hold closest to us. But they’re often the most confining.

The easiest example of this is the divide in US Politics. Guys on the Right shout about how the Left are all Marxists and must be silenced at all costs, and guys on the Left shout about how the Right are all fascists whilst simultaneously recommending kids in MAGA hats get beaten up. Neither listens to the other, both shout at great volume, and both think they have all the answers.

Who’s right?

The right answer probably lies somewhere in between. A little bit of left and a little bit of right. But being locked in zero empathy certainties does nobody any help. Not only does it shut down discourse, but it’s fundamentally unintelligent and fearful.

You don’t become intelligent and confident by only understanding one side of a debate. And whether this is politics, religion, economics, or just the basic everyday opinions you have about yourself and other people – you owe it to yourself to challenge them.

Because it is in challenging them that you not only form unique opinions and get closer to the truth, but you also begin to face why you were clinging so tightly to those beliefs in the first place.

THE COSTS OF NOT TAKING RISKS

The cost of taking any risk is failure. If you were to take any of the risks listed above, you would be exposing yourself to the (possibly bleak) reality of your potential, rejection, emotional shame, conflict, and realizing how little you actually know.

And guess what? All of those things suck.

Some of them are painful. All of them make you question yourself. But despite this, all of them are worth it. Because the hidden cost of taking any risk is not taking it at all. Behind the painful outcomes, the embarrassments, and the shame that comes from failing, there’s also the reality of what you and your life will be if you don’t take the risk at all.

Sometimes this will mean you’ll stay exactly the same. Many times it’ll actually mean you’ll get worse – growing into someone bitter, who resents the opportunities they let slip away. Always wondering “what if?”

Because that “what if” is the biggest price to pay. We all have to choose a life, to commit to certain things and discard others – but we all want to make that choice from a place of freedom, not fear. And it is making it from fear that has us paying that price.

The real cost of not taking risks isn’t the potential you see in your dream, in someone else’s life, or on a movie. It’s the potential you have no idea that exists. The potential you have no certainty of and have to attempt to discover.

Because just like Mohandas, Leo, or Sly – until you try, you’ll have no idea.

 

Photo by Josh Appel on Unsplash

WANT A BETTER DATING LIFE?

Yeah, I know. You’ve read enough. But this is important. I made a dating course. Like, a really big dating course.

It’s over 8 hours of video content, 30 lessons, and over 80 exercises. It covers everything you need to know from making yourself more attractive, building sexual confidence, having great dates, and finding the right women for you.

It’s based on years of experience, a library’s worth of scientific research, and just the right amount of common sense. So stop listening to me and check it out for yourself.

CLICK ME!

How To Build Strong Character – The No Bullshit Way

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how to build strong character

WHEN IT COMES TO MY CHARACTER, I’m lazy. If money wasn’t an issue, I’d spend most of my life thinking, reading, or wasting time with my friends. As much as I have things I want to achieve that require work, I don’t actually enjoy working. I don’t enjoy the thought of writing, I just enjoy the things that enter my head; I definitely don’t enjoy blogging (or anything internet related), and I sure-as-shit don’t enjoy sitting in a room alone giving myself headaches. Most of the time, it’s something I don’t want to do. I get bored and can’t be bothered. And hell, why should I bother?

For most of my life, that’s what’s going to hold me back. I’m lazy.

In some ways, laziness has been a benefit for me. It’s made me think outside the box and choose a unique lifestyle for myself. But as far as personal development is concerned, it’s always there trying to hold me back. It’s just part of my character.

And that’s the problem.

It’s part of my character.

Personal development is really a single problem. We have an idea of a life we want to live and personal development is the act of bringing that life into being.

But if it’s so simple, why do so many people fail?

When we look at personal development we see it as actions we need to take in the present that will affect outcomes in the future. Build better habits, exercise more, get a better social life. But rarely do we account for two fundamental problems:

  1. The reason we want a different life is that the one we have right now is unfulfilling.
  2. The reason we have an unfulfilling life is we have, over the course of our life, built a person who is incapable of getting the life we want.

Therefore, immediately, we are hit with a roadblock to any progress. The person we’ve built over the course of our life just isn’t up to the task of changing our lives. When it comes to having the life we want, we just aren’t the kind of person who can have it.

The bad news is that, if you’re trying to build a new life and failing, it’s probably because you suck. The good news is, you can build someone new.

(This is one of the first thing I get guys to do in my Complete Dating Course. When they improve their character, everything falls into place).

People usually see personal development as a set of habits that they need to engage with in order to be successful. An example of this would be an entrepreneur learning that he needs to work 70 hour work weeks in order to get started.

Sounds simple, right?

But when he’s used to spending most of the day in his underpants, waking up at 2 in the afternoon and has a chronic fear of failure – any attempt to pursue this 70 hour work week is going to be met with failure, or eventual burnout and then failure. 

The problem isn’t due to his habits, it’s due to his character. Before we get to the habit, we have to deal with the person pursuing the habit.

HOW TO BUILD STRONG CHARACTER THAT DOESN’T SUCK

Strong character is becoming increasingly rare. In the age of limited attention, instant gratification and soaring rates of anxiety, we are no longer exposing ourselves to lives that encourage the development of strong character; in fact, we’re often doing the exact opposite – we’re making our character weaker.

Now, before I go on, let me set a definition of character:*

Especially related to achievement, character is the quality on which you can rely on to do what needs to be done. Character is what determines how you respond to your emotions (such as fear) and it is how you respond to challenge (such as the stresses of effort).

Feel some kind of talent inside you? Character is what builds that.

Tempted to take a day off because you’re not feeling it? Character is what prevents that.

Feel afraid and not sure you can act? Character is what makes sure you do, despite that fear.

Character is what lies beneath all the efforts you make to change and propel your life forward. Character is what determines the longevity, direction, and speed of that change and propulsion.

As you can imagine, weak character is going to make life difficult and strong character is going to make life easier.

When we have weak character, our ability to drive our lives towards ones which require great effort and success is greatly diminished. Our efforts to reshape our habits will begin to peter out, our attempts at challenging projects will be crippled by procrastination, and what we perceive to be aiming high, will, in fact, be aiming low due to our unconscious fear of failure.

So if character is the problem, how do we build it?

You’ve been consciously / unconsciously building your character since you were a kid.

In my experience, character is built by:

  1. Taking responsibility for our problems.
  2. Taking on tasks that require a large amount of effort.
  3. Taking on tasks that require the confrontation of fear.

The more we engage with the above, the more we express and confront our character. By this I mean, we develop our character through expression (whether that be in confrontation, creatively, romantically, and so on) and through being confronted by, what Richard Brooks calls our central flaw (i.e aggression, supplication, laziness, lack of self-worth).

In essence, character is built by confronting life, and in doing so, developing and confronting ourselves.

This is why strong character is a rare quality; nobody does much of the above, and they, like you until now, have failed to pay attention to the person they’ve been building and are continuing to build. Their character until now has been something that has not been consciously cultivated. Instead, it has been built on its own accord, to an end result that may or may not be wanted.

I’d wager that’s the case for you. It sure as hell is for me, and everyone else I’ve met.

Now, the method for developing character is simple, but the process has a slight hiccup:

It is extremely difficult and takes years.

Unfortunately, this means two things:

  1. There is no better time than today.
  2. It’s going to require sacrifice.

BUILDING CHARACTER TAKES SACRIFICE

Building someone new comes at the expense of the person you were; often, the sacrifice of the person you were. This, in plain terms, can mean a few things:

Leaving your job because it’s unfulfilling and takes all your time; moving to a new city to start afresh; going to sleep earlier; waking up earlier; stopping drinking; leaving your toxic relationship; quitting masturbating; cutting contact with a bad friend.

In essence, this element is simple – you remove from your life whatever element is going to get in the way of you building stronger character, and through that stronger character, developing the habits to achieve the life you want to live.

This is where most people go wrong. They see personal development as an act of adding things to their lives. They want to add better habits, more confidence, more hours worked; but in actual fact, the solution is often the reverse.

You strip away, simplify, and sacrifice. You leave yourself with less, and get really good at what’s left. Instead of adding elements, you focus on what you can remove.

As our lives go on, they often fill with clutter that fills up our time and drains our emotional resources. It is this clutter that is both the product of our drained emotional resources and time and the cause of it. It’s a cycle feeds on itself and continues.

This is why sacrifice is so important. Arguably the most important step.

You cannot have the life you want by continuing to live the life you don’t.

Let me say that again, as it’s the heart of this article:

You cannot have the life you want by continuing to live the life you don’t.

You have to make sacrifices. You have to say no to everything that isn’t essential or helpful, and strip down so you’re left with two things:

  1. The essential elements you need, which you will now get better at, thus developing better character.
  2. Free time which you can now use to develop better character.

BUILDING CHARACTER REQUIRES HONESTY AND COURAGE

The most important trait you can develop when it comes to building character is brutal self-honesty. The second is courage.

Brutally self-honesty shows you what needs to be done and courage is what have you actually do it. Brutal self-honesty shows you where you’re holding yourself back and courage is what has you confront that flaw.

There are countless things that anyone could recommend to build character – boxing, novel writing, entrepreneurship – but in many ways, the actual challenge itself is irrelevant. The challenge is naturally arrived upon when you mix and develop those two traits of honesty and courage. You figure out where you need to be confronted, and you do it.

Now, you might be thinking: I’m not that honest with myself and I’m not that brave.

No problem.

 Both of these traits are ones that grow and develop through expression and wither through repression. The more you engage with them, the stronger they get. You might be the most cowardly guy in the world, but the more you engage with small acts of courage, the more you’ll get comfortable with the big ones. Likewise, you could be unaware of your own behavior, but simply sitting down and asking yourself why (and continuing to do so) would open up new realms of insight into your own motivations and your own flaws.

Each trait develops the more you consciously choose to express it.

And if it’s that simple, then building character is an act of conscious will. Building character, like developing courage and self-honesty, is something we willfully and consciously engage with. It is an act of presence, and engagement between ourselves and the world. We decide to build character, so we decide to be more honest, and we decide to be more courageous.

At the start of this article, I wrote about myself being lazy. I said that laziness was part of my character. And it is. It’s something I deal with every day. Through being honest with myself, I’ve come to learn where it comes from – fear of failure, lack of self-worth – and through courage I’ve learned to suck it up and get working anyway, eventually leading myself to big decisions that radically altered the trajectory of my life; like quitting my comfy job, traveling the world and working for myself, despite being scared and not having the slightest idea what I’m doing.

YOU NEED TO MAKE YOUR CHARACTER CONSCIOUS

Character is often described as the reaction to circumstances. People, myself included, often say that unforeseen events, like trauma, reveal who a person actually is. In my experience, this is half true. What actually happens is that you’re confronted with the character that was already there, you’d just failed to see it until now. Sometimes this is good, sometimes this is bad.

But neither is permanent.

When we decide to make our character conscious, we are taking more control over the individual that reacts to circumstance. And in terms of our future, we are cultivating the kind of individual who is capable of dealing with the problems confronted by the life we wish to have.

To return to the entrepreneur example, this would be developing the kind of character that is autonomous, self-motivating, self-supervising and thus capable of managing their own work ethic. But if you were trying to improve your dating life, this would be developing the kind of character that enjoyed life and was comfortable with rejection and sexual expression.

Whatever your personal development is being directed towards, it is your character that is the foundation on which your results will be built, on which your habits will be built, so it is the character that you should focus most of your effort on building.

Because once you’ve built it, everything else will take care of itself.

 

*I chose this definition of character as it is one that defines how strong character specifically relates to achievement and thus personal development. However, character also encompasses much more, like empathy, bravery, generosity, and every other trait you can imagine. I plan to write about this in future, but none of this was particularly relevant to what I was writing now.

 

Photo by Ricardo Gomez Angel on Unsplash

Photo by Michał Parzuchowski on Unsplash

WANT A BETTER DATING LIFE?

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It’s based on years of experience, a library’s worth of scientific research, and just the right amount of common sense. So stop listening to me and check it out for yourself.

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The 3 Biggest Mistakes That Screw Up Your 20s

by ·

 

IT WOULD BE EASY for me to say that I wasn’t financially literate, I looked for confidence in all the wrong places, I really wanted to be liked (and loved) and this made me needy, I didn’t know how to have fun, I didn’t work hard enough and I didn’t treat my time like it was important.

But those mistakes, whilst irritating, are stuff we all go through. They’re obvious. And if I’ve learned anything about mistakes, it’s this:

Not all mistakes are made equal.

The shitty thing about growing up is that nobody teaches you how to become an adult. The truth is, you have to teach yourself. The mistakes that you make in life are the problems you have to solve because it’s in solving them that you become the adult nobody could ever teach you to become.

Looking back on my early twenties, it’s become apparent to me that past the detail of my life there were patterns of mistakes, each with specific underlying principles, that were directly getting in the way of my growth as a person. And far from being obvious at the time, these patterns were almost impossible to spot.

So they continued, and instead of growing up, I stood still.

Eventually, I slowly (read: far too slowly) figured out what was going on, and started to fix these mistakes. Some of them were easy, but other’s took years. And it was midway through all of this fixing that I realized something:

These mistakes weren’t unique to me.

Far from being a special snowflake – these were in fact patterns of mistakes I saw in everyone. Sometimes much older, sometimes much younger – it didn’t really matter.

The patterns just kept showing up.

Which got me thinking. If I could fix them, then everyone else could too.

YOU’RE HOLDING ON TO CHILDISH THINGS

When you leave school, university, and your parents behind, life suddenly becomes very different. Instead of being surrounded by people your own age, you’re working with people of all ages; instead of your parents paying for everything, you have to pay for everything; instead of everything being simple and uncomplicated, everything is complex, difficult and often threatening.

It’s a cliche, but the world is a scary place. It’s a constant – whether you like it not – competition, where you have to compete with other people and your own shortcomings in order to provide a life for yourself, and in many ways, in order to be happy. Life after childhood is a series of complex, mature problems that we have to take responsibility for, or they will dominate our lives and determine their direction.

If we don’t get financially smart, we get financially trapped. If we don’t get good at dating, we end up in dead end, unhappy relationships, or worse, alone. If we don’t develop a good work ethic, we hamstring our career or kill our dreams. And all of these, rather than being simple, are complex issues that require us to use a lot of emotional horsepower.

In other words, it’s incredibly easy to get in our own way.

This is why, when confronted with this new reality of adult life, we often sought a retreat into childhood.

It’s funny, looking back, to see how, frightened by the idea of what I needed to be in order to have the life I wanted, I instead prolonged my teenage life well into my early 20s in order to dull the constant feeling of anxiety the world gave me. I was well aware of what I needed to do, but instead of building myself up and educating myself, I retreated to video games and shallow escapism. Games where I could temporarily make myself feel like a winner, and shallow stories that fed my fantasies about a simpler, more black and white life; where I was special and important, instead of not.

This was comforting, and in the context of my youth, seemed harmless. After all, a lot of people my age were acting this way. Hell, most of western culture seemed to be acting this way. Geek culture had spread across all mediums and instead of our lives and hobbies and interests changing and growing to reflect the deepening challenge of our lives, culture seemed to be feeding a demand for the exact opposite; something that nourished the desire for the cocoon of childhood to return.

The complexities of a struggling adult life were replaced by power fantasies of superheroes or normal guys becoming drug kingpins – both under the guise of being ‘mature’, even though, at their core they were just more stories about a wish to not be powerless.

Dating, one of the most challenging things we can do emotionally, was reduced to what was essentially a slot machine. And reality TV fed us fantasies of being attractive and getting attention.

And finances? Well, they were just fucking boring. Savings? Investments? Pensions? Cashflow? What benefit was that to a life?

Like anyone else, I sought avoidance whenever I could. And it hurt my life.

My work ethic stunk, and I wasted years procrastinating. My dating life was shallow, stupid, and made me a vain, insecure, try hard. My finances were a mess and constantly ate away at me in the back of my mind.

And all of this, compounded on itself until a single voice echoed in my head:

“You can’t do this.”

When we turn our backs on reality and run for comfort, we are unconsciously telling ourselves that we’re not capable of taking responsibility for our own lives; that we don’t have what it takes to solve the actual problems we’re being confronted with.

When we drown ourselves in power fantasies, we’re telling ourselves life would be better if we were someone else. When we drown ourselves in fantasies of love, we’re telling ourselves life would be better if we felt like someone else. When we frivolously blow all our money and fail to secure a solid financial foundation for ourselves, we’re telling ourselves that consequences aren’t our problem. And all of this just makes us want to bury our heads in the sand even more.

The retreat from the responsibility of adulthood is nothing other than a retreat from the challenge of taking command of who we are.

And it’s a retreat that stunts our maturity and cripples our potential.

But if we took on the problems adult life puts in front of us – if we engaged with a world that was intellectually and emotionally challenging; if we developed a robust and consistent work ethic; if we built an exciting and rewarding dating life that stemmed from our interests and personality; if we took steps to develop a growing and secure financial situation for ourselves, we would be taking on the challenge of our lives in a way that made us leave every stage of our lives behind, and develop our abilities and personality into capable reflections of the world in which we existed. Reflections that thrived on the challenges presented.

And I guarantee, if you did that, you’d look at all that childish shit as it always was. A dream of being the person you are now.

YOU’RE WAITING FOR A FEELING THAT YOU CANNOT CONTROL

Early into my twenties, I was struck by an idea by for a movie that I felt was entirely original and needed to be written immediately. Seeking to coax more of it from my head, I plugged music into my ears and let the sounds take my small kernel of imagination and grow it into a vast world; one I could shape into a story.

Once home, I wrote a few notes, messaged my friends about it, then left it, touching it occasionally over the next few years.

To this day, it’s never been finished.

I imagine that you, like me, have often found yourself in a place where you’ve been seized by an idea, and felt such a strong feeling towards it (for instance happiness, aggression, passion) that you felt it was extremely important for you to pursue it. Yet, after starting, the initial feeling begins to dwindle, and so does your effort, until you cease pursuing it entirely, and your idea that was conceived with such a great strength of emotion ends up as just another scrap of paper in the trash – or worse, a reminder of how you don’t “finish things.”

You start things because of a feeling, and then stop them because the feeling goes away.

This same principle I see in countless people looking to change their lives or, often, just make small changes. They feel something strongly, they make a decision, they take action, the feeling dwindles, they stop. The shame they felt at their weight as they entered the new year fades away, and their resolution to go the gym fails; the energy they felt, when imagining their story, dissipates, and they cease to write it; the ambition they felt towards starting their business dwindles under the difficulties, and it becomes just another aborted startup.

Now, sometimes this is fine – we get older, and the way we feel about things change. I no longer chase girls like I used to, and I certainly spend less time in the gym. But more often than not – we give up on the things that are actually important to us (i.e our creative passions) because the feeling just isn’t there. We’re not in the mood, we lack motivation, we lack passion. So we stop.

That is, until we feel something again, start as we did before, only to stop, once the feeling fades away.

Repeat ad infinitum.

It would be easy to say that rather being in love with what it is we want to do, that instead we simply love the feeling associated – the heightened sense of being, of purpose – or perhaps we just love the fantasies that our imagination brings to life alongside them – of success and adulation.

This was largely the case for me.

I would start and stop, over and over, enjoying the idea of success rather than the effort required to bring it about. But even when through discipline I started to avoid that kind of thinking – the pattern of starting and stopping over and over didn’t cease. Because, as ever, I was relying on my feeling to keep me in the game.

When I felt good, the days were easy. When I felt bad, I didn’t bother. And the bad days came a lot more often than the good.

That’s the lesson I failed to learn: it doesn’t matter whether it’s a good day or bad; it doesn’t matter how you feel. All that matters is the consistency of effort.

The basic principle of anything difficult is that some days it’ll come easy, some days it won’t – and that’s fine. Your feelings are transient and fleeting and based on hundreds of other factors, many of which are difficult to control. In many instances, the feelings you’ll feel towards the work you need to do are beyond your control and take care of themselves.

That means the only thing that is in your control is whether you continue to keep being productive despite the feeling. This means doing what needs to be done.

In other words, discipline.

YOU’RE PRETENDING TO BE SOMEONE YOU’RE NOT

The longer you fail to perceive who you actually are, the longer you prevent yourself from solving your real issues. The longer you spend pretending to be someone else, whether to yourself or others, the longer you will never develop confidence in who you are, and will always be plagued by insecurity.

When I was a teenager, I was socially anxious, insecure and sensitive to the opinions of others. When invited to social events, I told myself I wasn’t interested “in that sort of thing” and instead hid away in my room and played video-games. Later, when I was at university, I alternated between this same avoidance, or extreme overcompensation, where I drank heavily and acted like an idiot. This continued for some time, until, in my early twenties, it dawned on me that:

  1. I was socially anxious.
  2. I was avoiding confronting this.
  3. As a result of this avoidance, I was dealing with that anxiety by fleeing it or trying to smother it.

I realized that as long as I kept doing the same things I was doing, my social anxiety (the true problem) would never change, and I would be stuck being swept around by my various ways of trying to deal with it. I realized that because I had failed to perceive what my actual problem was, I incapable of ever actually solving it.

Now, you might say, well, if you were acting in that way, wasn’t it obvious you were suffering from anxiety?

No, it wasn’t.

Because the other way I dealt with this problem, was by trying to create an image of myself where none of this existed. Just as I did with myself, I didn’t want anyone to perceive me as I actually was.

And so, my focus was almost always external.

“Does this person like me?”

“Does this person find me funny?”

“Will those people reject me?”

In other words “will these people treat me like someone who is anxious and thus confirm what I am fleeing from?”

Eventually, I realized what was going on, and through honesty, therapy and effort, I was able to heal what was causing my anxiety. But this principle, of failing to perceive myself accurately, and thus pretending to others, is a principle I have spotted everywhere. And it always has the same implosive effect.

  • The guy who’s insecure about his self-worth compensates by going on about his intelligence, what he knows, how he’s right and builds an identity around this. As a result, he rarely recognizes what he doesn’t know, and thus leaves huge gaps in his thinking, hamstringing his intelligence. (This is actually called the Dunning Krueger effect).
  • The guy who’s scared of violence compensates by going to the gym and creating a large physique and carries himself around aggressively, only to watch the facade come crashing down around him when confronted with real violence. 
  • The guy who lacks self-esteem doesn’t respond well to feedback. As a result, when people accurately point out he’s not very hard working and easily distracted, he gets aggressive and rejects everything they’re saying – regardless of whether it’s actually true or not.

In each case – whether it be acknowledging what he doesn’t know, learning how to fight, or accepting that feedback is not a criticism of who he is, but what he does – the best solution is always to confront the source of the actual problem, as the solution the problem often creates of its own accord usually just sends you in a repetitive, self-destructive cycle.

This is, I believe, why people stay stuck in such repetitive cycles. Whether it be anxiety over their future, their safety, their parents, their relationships; whatever it is, as long as they fail to perceive it as it actually is, they’ll be constantly chained to its control over their behavior.

So how to fix it?

Honesty.

Take a long, hard, honest look at yourself. Be brutal. Take a look at your actions and choices and really question what they say about you? Take a look at your patterns of behavior and consider what might actually be motivating them. Ask yourself – what am I really accomplishing with this choice of behavior? What am I actually trying to achieve? And why?

9 times out of 10 you’ll be trying to protect yourself from something. That ‘something’ is your real issue.

Fear of failure, fear of intimacy, fear of rejection. Fear of anything, experienced in a way that’s unique to you.

Then, once you’ve found it and explored it, you’ve got to confront it.

Sometimes, this means making taking certain actions. If you’re socially anxious, this means leaving your comfort zone and going in the opposite direction your anxiety is trying to compel you to go. If you’re afraid of the opposite sex, this means gradually pushing yourself to approach them more and build a dating life. Whatever your issue is, taking actions that directly confront the issue are some of the most powerful ways to solve them.

But sometimes it just requires that you open up to someone else, anyone else, and let go of the shit that’s weighing you down and confining your life. This can be with friends, this can be with family, or it can be with a professional therapist.

In my own experience, all three work.

SHUT UP AND SOLVE YOUR PROBLEMS

When I look back on my early twenties, the most staggeringly obvious learning is that I failed to take responsibility for my own life. I looked for retreats into childlike avoidance whenever I could; I waited for things to feel good before I took on any challenges, and I failed to perceive myself, and what my problems actually were.

And as long as I was acting in that way, I failed to grow.

The more we hang onto childishness, the less we focus on the problems we need to solve. The more we wait to feel ready to take on those problems, the longer we will go without ever solving them. The longer we attempt to be someone else, both to ourselves and others, the longer we will never work on our actual flaws and capitalize on our actual strengths.

That is in a nutshell what happens over and over again.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

When it comes to adult problems, there are generally three categories of stuff we need to keep in check, which when we do, result in the growth we desperately need.

Foundational problems

Essential, otherwise known as getting your shit together

  • Financial intelligence
  • Discipline and work ethic
  • Health
  • Career

Social problems

Has huge effects on your emotions

  • Social circle
  • Dating life
  • Family life

The Real Shit

By far the most important – the 80/20 rule of all of the above

  • Your ability to deal with your own emotions
  • Your understanding of yourself
  • The development of your self-confidence

When we keep these in check, we are actively solving the problems of our lives, and through that responsibility, are growing into a more capable version of ourselves.

At the beginning of this article, I said that nobody teaches you to be an adult. And I was telling the truth; nobody does. Becoming an adult is a by-product of making mistakes, creating problems, and solving those problems. Often that’s external things like finances or relationships; but in each of us, there are things we’ve carried over from childhood and our teenage years, that live within us and deeply affect who we are, what we want and what we will become. These are the problems that are unique to us, and that we owe it to ourselves to solve.

We cannot escape who we are. We’re stuck with ourselves for our entire lives. And because of this, we owe it to ourselves to take responsibility for what’s going on up there, to confront ourselves – in all our ugly, shitty, flawed ways – both externally and internally, and take care of our lives and how we feel about ourselves, and grow until everything that troubled us in the past is no longer an issue.

Because here’s the truth about getting older:

The problems never stop coming.

 

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WANT A BETTER DATING LIFE?

Yeah, I know. You’ve read enough. But this is important. I made a dating course. Like, a really big dating course.

It’s over 8 hours of video content, 30 lessons, and over 80 exercises. It covers everything you need to know from making yourself more attractive, building sexual confidence, having great dates, and finding the right women for you.

It’s based on years of experience, a library’s worth of scientific research, and just the right amount of common sense. So stop listening to me and check it out for yourself.

CLICK ME!

How To Develop The Self-Trust That’ll Keep You Going No Matter What

by ·

WHEN I FIRST DECIDED I wanted to change my life, the most palpable objection I faced was not from anyone else, but instead from my own mind. Young and naive, I believed that I inherently had the ability to achieve what I wanted to do; I believed it so strongly that it didn’t seem like a question as to whether I could accomplish it or not. But just as I believed this, I also knew, with certainty, that I could never trust myself to do it. I knew that even though I could accomplish what I wanted to, I was almost guaranteed not to. As if in response to my self-belief, a voice would say:

“Yes you could do it, but you are going to piss your future away.”

This wasn’t self-loathing or lack of confidence in myself, it was instead a simple assessment of how I had behaved to date, and the actions I’d taken (or rather, failed to take) with any consistency.

As far as my life was concerned, I was someone who started things then abandoned them. I was someone who got periodically obsessed, burned myself out, procrastinated, doubted myself, then gave up.

I was a quitter.

And really, given the overwhelming evidence – a lackluster school performance, failure at not one but two university courses, and a tendency to fantasize about my future rather than actually finish any attempts to achieve it – why would I think otherwise? Why would I trust myself?

When the way we’ve lived results in a life we’re unsatisfied with, then more often than not it’s due to the bad habits we’ve accumulated on the way. When we’re young and stupid, we give no thought to the life we’re building for ourselves, and often let various unconscious inclinations lead us to develop patterns of behavior that create a life we would never have consciously chosen.

So we want it to change. But just as we unconsciously built a life we never wanted, in equal measure do we learn to lack trust in our ability to build a life we’d consider worthwhile. Even though we might believe we have the capability to achieve what we want, we have zero trust in our ability to actually do it.

The trick then is rebuilding that trust.

LESSONS FROM A SALESMAN

To start, I need to talk about selling. Why? Because that’s where I came up with this idea.

Sales jobs, if you haven’t had one, are what I’d describe as the worst-best jobs ever. The worst, because you’re constantly exposed to how much bad performance crushes your self-esteem, and the best, because they show you just how ruthlessly productive you have to be to get exceptional results.

In order to stay profitable in a sales business, you have to develop a work ethic that is reliable. Sales is an emotional process. The closer you get to a sale, the more heightened your emotions become; positive and negative. When things are going well, you get excited, energized and elated; when things are going bad you get anxious, stressed and irritable. And it is this exact heightened state of emotions that engineers the haphazard work ethic of sales employees.

When things are going well, their priories shift. When things are going bad their priorities shift. But in reality, it is rare that the actual nature of their effort should ever change. In any sale, the fundamental elements are almost always the same. In any sales pipeline*, the fundamental elements that go into building that pipeline are almost always the same. Therefore, it stands the reason that the same consistent actions should be carried out.

Outside of sales, the importance of a work-ethic can be harder to grasp. In activities that aren’t like sales (i.e directly tied to your income), it can be harder to emotionally connect with the importance of consistent actions. In fact, more often than not people confuse their lack of emotional connection to their work for an inability at it or a fear of failure. Often, it’s neither, it’s simply the perspective they’re viewing the work from. But if you’re building a business, writing a novel, or developing a saleable skill (like, for instance, coding), then the consistent actions you take determine the eventual success you will have in that field – no matter how far off or abstract they are.*

Whilst the eventual reward might seem far away, it’s eventual materialization exists in the here and now; in the choices and actions you are making day by day. In sales, we described this as “every action you take now pays off 3 months from now”, and it lies at the heart of what necessitates a solid work ethic.

And in my experience, this work ethic always boils down to three truths.

THE THREE TRUTHS OF AN EXCEPTIONAL WORK ETHIC

1) Focused work trumps ‘hard work’.

2) Consistent, targeted work trumps ‘hard work’.

3) Trust is built on consistency and predictability.

Truths 1 and 2 are simple. When talking about their work ethics, people often like to brag about how hard they work, how many hours they put in, and what time in the morning they like to wake up and so on and so forth. But in my experience, the amount of time worked isn’t the crucial factor, and in fact, isn’t always the best perspective.

And that’s for a simple reason.

Burnout.

The more aggressively you push your body, the quicker you will burn out in the long term (crashing, losing motivation), and the quicker you will burn out in the short term (procrastination, creative blocks).

This is not to say that you shouldn’t push yourself (you can and always should), but your metric of success for your work ethic should never, ever be the degree to which you’ve pushed yourself; but instead the caliber of the work ethic you’re engaging with.

When I say focused work trumps hard work, I mean to say that 1 hour of attentive, focused work trumps 3 hours of distracted, multitasked work. When I say that consistent, targeted work trumps hard work, I mean that 1 hour, repeated each day, of specific and productive work, trumps 3 hours of random, unpredictable working.

This means that your work should be judged not on how much time it required, but by…

THE THREE METRICS OF SELF TRUST

  1. How much undivided attention you give your work.
  1. Whether you do your work every day.
  1. Whether your work was specifically targeted in a way that has a strong influence on your desired outcome.

And the reason that all three of these metrics are important is that, when combined, they bring us to the 3rd truth:

Trust.

The easiest way to stay on top of an excellent work ethic is to have the trust in yourself that you are capable of achieving the work you need to achieve and that you are definitely going to do it. And this truth is built on nothing more than a reflection on your own consistent and predictable output, that in turn nets you constant and predictable results. The way we apply our energy informs the habits we build. The habits we build inform the person we become. The person we become not only informs the results we get but the trust in what we can continue to get.

When you’ve put in consistent effort towards your work, you’ve developed the trust that means you’ll never stop.

 

*A sales pipeline is a rolling forecast of prospective deals that are currently in process and may or may not occur.

*If they’re right actions, that is. For instance, writing a lot is a more efficient at making you a better writer than reading a lot is.

 

Photo by Anthony Intraversato on Unsplash

 

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This Is The Most Attractive Thing You Can Ever Do

by ·

PATRICE O’NEAL was an exceptionally gifted comedian. Referring to his standup as performances, he would prefer to improvise what he knew he wanted to talk about, adjusting it based on his own mood and the mood of the audience. As a result, his structure was haphazard and unpredictable, but the authenticity of it built a relationship between himself and the audience; a relationship where they were often at his mercy.

Jerry Seinfeld once said he never looks at the audience, instead preferring to focus on the noises, the rhythm, and sticking to the material he had in this head. Patrice was the opposite; during his standup, he didn’t just look at the audience, he involved them, he held them hostage to the uncomfortable conversations he wanted to have.

It would be easy to look at Patrice and say that his talent lay in his ability to improvise where other comedians would need planned routines; that he was just that funny. But this would miss what gave Patrice his real talent:

His unflinching honesty when it came to what he believed was the truth.

No matter who he was speaking to; man, woman, black, white – he said what he thought, and he said it unashamedly; often calling people out on their hypocrisies and exposing people to parts of themselves they weren’t aware of.

I remember when, in one of his radio appearances, a female writer called in to promote her book on how to train men to be better husbands – a book she based around applying the same techniques used in animal training. Barely seconds on the air, Patrice launched into her, saying:

“Urrrgh – that’s hilarious. Again, automatically I’m gonna tell you what the flaw is in your thinking: you don’t want to be the – the controller. That’s the thing. Women don’t want to win, you want a winner. You don’t want to rule the nest – that’s why you’ve never met a happy woman boss. You don’t wanna be there. You’re angry about being a boss. You want a boss. You want your man to be the leader. This is why it’s already flawed on a prehistoric level. Why – you don’t wanna run your husband. Do you know why running your husband is not sexy? Cause you don’t wanna be there doing it. That’s why it never works for a woman to run things – cause you don’t wanna – you look at your husband like URRRGHH – look at this bum letting me run his life. Phooey. You have a – you just have a loser for man.”

She left the call a few minutes later.

Now, I’m not here to debate the merits of Patrice’s argument (if you really want to know, I agree with him*), I’m just here to explore what it was he was doing. Which, in essence, was staying true to himself no matter what. No matter how uncomfortable, how confrontational, how alienating it was; Patrice stayed true to himself.

Whatever the subject matter. If he had a view, he said it.

In my article on Charisma, I wrote that being okay with potentially being perceived as unlikeable, and actually leaning towards that, was a hallmark of charisma. Instead of trying to please anyone, just shamelessly being yourself and expressing who you are with a take it or leave it attitude was essential.

Nowhere is this truer than in dating.

WHY MEN LIE TO WOMEN

If you’re a woman and you’re reading this, I think I need to reinforce to you the fact that men rarely tell the truth. We want to do it. But we don’t.

Instead, what we do is filter.

A common trait in people struggling with social anxiety is that they will be very conscious of what they say. They will be extremely picky about when they enter a conversation, how they enter a conversation, and acutely sensitive to how what they say will be received. Now, I don’t just mean received after they’ve said it, no, I mean how it will be received before it’s even been said.

They’re like the bad Politician version of themselves. What they say is essentially the pre-packaged, planned, and politically correct version of whatever they actually think – if you’re lucky that is. Usually, it’s just what you want to hear, regardless of what they think.

The reason for this is simple. They want you to like them.

Now you’re probably wondering “yeah that’s great, but what the hell does that have to do with men and women?”

Well with men, they almost always talk to women like they have social anxiety.

In fact, a man who talks freely around women is so rare, it may as well be a myth.

And the logic behind this makes perfect sense. When someone with social anxiety is altering their conversation, it’s to get someone to like them so they aren’t a threat and won’t socially hurt them. When a guy talking to a woman is altering his speech its also because he wants her to like him.

Can you guess why?

What is it that he could possibly want?

Whether you like it or not, a fundamental part of the male-female dynamic is that men want what women have, but women are the gatekeepers for what men want.

Part of the male psyche is always dedicated to winning what we want. Like one of those birds who builds a nest and does a dance, or a silverback who drums his chest the loudest, on some level, our actions are guided by the desire to charm or impress the gatekeeper into giving us what we want.

The problem with this, however, is that it sucks.

When you allow what you want from a woman to dictate all of your behavior, you’re allowing yourself to be driven by your neediness, your shallow baser needs, or your manipulative nature; but worse than this, you’re trading your self-respect for sex. Or in the case of relationships, love too.

Yes. Sex has become more important to you than who you are.

And on any level, relationship or single, placing sex (or love) as more important to you than who you are isn’t just a lack of self-respect, it’s an act of stupidity.*

THE MODERN PLAYER IN SEARCH OF A SOUL

The more you lie to a woman in order to get what you want, the more you aren’t just disrespecting yourself, but through that disrespect, you are making yourself far less likely to get what you want.

And the reason for this is blindingly simple.

You’re unattractive.

And I don’t mean – big nose, bad teeth, small dick unattractive.

No, I mean your soul is unattractive. Who you are is just ugly.

In my article on the Fundamental Characteristics of the Attractive Man, I stated that the only trait that mattered was that a man developed himself, for himself. Not for her. That he built his life around who he is, what he wants, and who he wants to be. He accomplished his potential, he found his enjoyment and he went after goal, after goal, after goal, because that’s exactly what he wanted to do.

But this principle of developing yourself for yourself extends even further, in a way that is so essential it baffles me that I didn’t really expand on it. Here’s what I forgot to emphasize:

When you lie to a woman, you are using your own voice, your own words, your own expression of your identity, not for yourself, but for her.

On a fundamental level, this is the most unattractive thing you can do. It doesn’t matter how much you live for yourself, develop for yourself, and have fun for yourself; if your basic expression of your own identity, in words, is not for you, but for her, then you’re toast. You’re kablooey. Like some kid who acts tough only to come across someone truly aggressive; your attractiveness was an illusion that she will very quickly see through.

Your words are the expression of who you are. Before you do anything else with your life, the words you choose to communicate with, the words you choose to say, and the words you choose to stand by are the clearest representation of who you are, and what you firmly believe. Your words are your soul.

And it’s either attractive or unattractive.

It’s either for you or for her.

KILL THE POLITICIAN

Before you do anything else you have to fix how you speak. You have to start aligning your words with what you actually think and feel.

Not what I think, not what the news thinks, not what your friend thinks, not what will avoid confrontation, not what will get you laid and not what will make you friends, get you a promotion or make your parents love you; you have the say what you think and feel.

You have to find the Politician within your soul, put a .44 Magnum to his head, and blow his brains right across your frontal cortex until there’s nothing but your unfiltered voice blasting out like a guitar solo.

In words of the late, great Bill Hicks “play from your fucking heart”.

And you have to do this every time you speak.

Now, this might sound complicated, but it’s the method is actually very simple.

  1. You get in touch with who you are.
  2. You have to take the risk and just say it.

But as step one requires being traumatized, falling in love, breaking up, reading, questioning your values and all the gold of living that you naturally will have experienced to some degree already, I’m just going to say this:

The easiest way to start understanding who you already are and what you think and feel and believe is to start writing all of it down and exploring it. Get to know yourself by confronting yourself, and supplement that with the writing of people who have also done this; Freud, Tolstoy, Rousseau, Eliot, Levi, Frankl, Emerson, Dostoyevsky, Thoreau, Twain, Nietzsche, Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Schopenhauer, Jung, and pretty much anyone whose writing has stood the test of time.

Because that’s what good writing is; identity – distilled and perfected. The more you do this, the more you will figure out the essentials of who you are. The only tonic that works better is trauma, and that’ll show up when it shows up. Just strap in and enjoy the ride.

Now let’s move on to 2) You have to take the risk and just say it.

I know countless people that practice meditation who are completely out of touch with their identity and words. They have almost nothing to say, and if you ask them any penetrating questions about themselves, they sit there with this airy look about them, eyes glazed over like a caught fish – what do they sit there doing? Have they attempted to think about nothing for so long that they’ve emptied their brain of all their merit as well?

God knows.

The reason I find this ironic is that the single greatest way to murder your Politician is to develop presence. When you develop presence (read: the awareness of what is happening right now and what you are doing right now) you develop the ability to spot your own bullshit, and when you’re faking your own identity – i.e saying stuff to appease your boss, women, make friends – instead of saying what you actually think.

The more you learn to spot when you’re not saying what you think, the more you can start pulling the trigger and start saying what you actually think.

This is best represented by looking at the conventional patterns of behavior, and how they fit into your life and automatic behavioral patterns.

Friendliness, being nice, being agreeable, being a gentleman, being confrontational, expressing displeasure, expressing annoyance, silence, hatred, anger, sadness, laughing at misfortune, taking pity on someone’s misfortune; all of these are examples of typical patterns of your own behavior.

But here’s how it needs to work:

Don’t be friendly unless you want to. Sometimes, you’re gonna feel like annoyed, irritated, you’ll want to be alone. The same goes for being nice. You don’t have to be nice if you don’t feel nice; if someone’s fucked you off, tell them.

Don’t be agreeable unless you genuinely agree or get on with the person. This one is essential. If you don’t enjoy their company, if you don’t agree with what they’re saying, if you think they’re wrong, say it and voice your opinion. Yes this will be confrontational, yes this might mean you’re in the wrong sometimes, but yes this the absolute right thing to do. Back your own opinion.

Don’t be a gentleman unless you want to. Big shock but not every woman deserves to have the door held open for her. Hell, some deserve to have it slammed shut on their way out. 

Be confrontational. If your opinion, beliefs, and values come into conflict with someone else’s and you don’t say or do something – why the fuck are you even alive? Why are you the spectator of your own life?

The same goes with displeasure, annoyance, silence, anger, hatred, black humor, empathy – if they are real within you, then you need to start expressing them. Don’t hold them back.

In other words: Never lie. Never pretend.

Because the more you learn to align your voice and actions with your soul, the stronger it becomes.

This is the pumping iron of spiritual strength. And when you’ve backed who you are long enough, and developed an identity, a will, and a soul that is robust and honest – then you’ve developed a strength that nobody can fake, and nobody can take away.

This is taking responsibility for your own inner strength and worth – your own personal power.

And in seizing your personal power, you’ve made the most attractive decision you can ever make.

 

*I’ve met many individuals who claim they’d be happy with this. But I’ve never met a woman who actually was.

*This is far from something I just see in single guys. No, I see this in guys in relationships even more. Because those guys aren’t just worrying about sex, they’re worrying about love as well. If neither of those needs is in a healthy place within you, then you’re sending the Politician to talk to your partner so much that you start to morph into the Politician. 

I can’t think of a single guy I know who isn’t like this with their partner.

 

Photo by Everton Vila on Unsplash

 

Liked this article? Help me make an impact, and share it on social media. Just click one of the icons at the bottom or top of the page. Thanks!

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WANT A BETTER DATING LIFE?

Yeah, I know. You’ve read enough. But this is important. I made a dating course. Like, a really big dating course.

It’s over 8 hours of video content, 30 lessons, and over 80 exercises. It covers everything you need to know from making yourself more attractive, building sexual confidence, having great dates, and finding the right women for you.

It’s based on years of experience, a library’s worth of scientific research, and just the right amount of common sense. So stop listening to me and check it out for yourself.

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3 Unexpected Life Lessons From The Greatest Warrior of All Time

by ·

KOJIRŌ SASAKI stood on the beach waiting for his opponent. He looked out along the shore, and across the rolling waves, but there was no sign. He had waited for hours; they had all waited for hours.

The year was 1612 and the location was Ganryu island, located off the coast of the Bizen Province in Japan. Sasaki was a masterful swordsman, who eschewed the traditional katana in favor of a ‘No-Dachi’; a long and heavy two-handed sword considered by most to be too cumbersome to be effective. But despite its length and weight, Sasaki wielded the sword with incredible speed, accuracy, and grace; basing his strikes off of a swallows tail in flight.

He had fought many duals before, and he had never lost. That’s why they called him ‘The Demon of the Western Provinces.’

His opponent was a man named Musashi Miyamoto. A vagabond and Ronin, Musashi was known for his heavy drinking, his unkempt appearance, and his flagrant disregard for the conventions of the Samurai. Despite this, he, like Sasaki, was rumored to have fought many duels and never have lost.

For each man, the other was to be his greatest opponent. Yet Musashi was nowhere to be seen.

Stood on the beach, surrounded by officials and the noise of the ocean, Sasaki began to wonder. At the very least this was a sign of disrespect, at the worst it was a sign of cowardice and his opponent had fled.

As if to confirm his suspicion, the officials around him began to whisper to one another. “Perhaps he has fled.” “Yes, he has run away in fear!” They said.

Sasaki wondered. Perhaps he had fled.

———

A few miles south of the beach, in a small inlet, a fisherman sat in his dingy. The sun was hot but wasn’t a bother. He had been paid handsomely by his passenger; a strange, disheveled looking man who sat hunched over at the end of the boat. The man, who as was usual for him, was hungover, wiped the sweat from his brow stared up at the sun, then grinned at the fisherman. Almost in contrast to his unconventional appearance, he looked happy.

Reaching down into the belly of the dingy, the man picked up a spare oar, and drawing a knife from his belt began to carve strips of wood from it. After some time and many blade-strokes, the belly of the dingy had been filled with shavings and the oar was long and curved in a smooth angle like a katana. The man smiled at his work.

“Let’s go.” He said.

Musashi Miyamoto had woken up drunk that day, and spent most of his journey to the island passed out; but his strange appearance and lateness were not accidents or flaws of character, but rather his strategy itself. Having won his first duel at the age of 13, Musashi was no stranger to combat and was something of an expert at killing samurai. Over the course of his life, he had fought in wars, killed entire dojos, and traveled far, killing famous, notable warriors; all whilst being a masterless Ronin himself.

Killing samurai wasn’t just what he did, it was what he was. Not only did he know their techniques, but he also understood their code and culture. He knew how to get under their skin.

———

It was some hours into the afternoon when Sasaki spotted the boat on the horizon. Stepping forward and shading his eyes from the sun one of his officials shrieked “It’s him! It’s Miyamoto”, which sent all the officials running back and forth, flocking to and fro from Sasaki, unsure of what to do.

Grabbing the nearest man, Sasaki looked into his stunned eyes and said “My sword.” The man stared, mouth agape then fled up the shore to a small hut, shouted at a peasant woman, then hurried back carrying a large, sheathed weapon. Sasaki took it from him and securing the sheath and hilt in each palm strode down the beach towards the shoreline.

The boat was parked just offshore, in the shallow water. A small fisherman sat in the back, fixing a wide-brimmed straw hat to his head, and in the front, a ragged looking man cut the final touches on a large wooden carving, then sprang from the boat into the knee-high water.

The man waded to the shore, drenched from the knee down, and once free of the water stopped a few up the beach to brush the sand from his feet. Saski walked forward and took in his appearance. His clothes looked like they’d be worn for days. His face was pockmarked and unshaven. But it was his gaze that affronted Sasaki most. Behind his serious composure, the man’s eyes seemed to say “Oh, so this is Sasaki – Well, what of it?”

Sasaki’s face was a carved stone, and his eyes did not blink. The two men stared at each other for some time, until an official ran between the two, followed the flock. “Miyamoto,” he said, and Mushashi nodded. The officials all stared, and their heads turned between the two, back and forth, waiting for some kind of movement. Some were stunned, some were scared, and all of them standing on edge.

Striding forward, Sasaki gripped the hilt of his sword, adopted his footing (never too wide, never too short, with his feet loose and agile), and drawing the katana from its sheath, tossed the scabbard onto the sand.

Musashi looked at the sheath, then him, and with a new wildness in his eyes said: “if you have no use for your sheath, you are already dead.”

But Sasaki heard nothing. His hands did not tremble, his body did not move. His pulse was steady, his breathing was rhythmic. This, he had practiced. He was Sasaki Kojiro and he had never lost a duel. He knew this from experience, from what others told him, and from what he told himself in comfort, whenever he felt pangs of doubt or moral discomfort. He was Sasaki Kojiro, victory was as certain as it ever was, as it always was, not simply for the work and achievement he had so far accrued, but because of the being that he knew he was in relation to other men. The knowledge of his superiority to other men and his habitual expectation of their deference was why, despite his outward and internal physical calm, his mind blazed with fury. He was Sasaki Kojiro, and here was his opponent; a filthy, unkempt man who kept him waiting and arrived carrying a piece of wood. To any Samurai this would be a mark of dishonor, but to Sasaki, this was a disgrace.

Musashi stepped forward and their eyes met. He raised his weapon, an enormously long carved wooden oar, as long, if not longer than Sasaki’s own No-Dachi. His internal state was hidden, Sasaki detected that much, but his stance was fine, comfortable and confident; all the details of his body, his expression and the position of his sword spoke clearly; disgrace or no, Sasaki knew, as any master of a profession knows, that he was in the company of a man equal in his craft. Sasaki stepped forward, Musashi back; it seemed he too, had come to the same conclusion.

The officials gasped and sprang back. Many who were friends of Sasaki said nothing and simply stood horror-struck, tearing at their beards. A few seagulls had flown down to the shallow water, bobbing like boats, to watch the proceedings. All were silent, save for a young boy who at a slight movement from Sasaki burst into tears and fled towards the trees.

Sasaki felt calm now. His body was relaxed, but his grip was firm. His eyes, locked on Musashi, felt like dew drops. There was little sensation in him except for his breathing; but behind it, there was a disgust that was held for Musashi. He cared little for him and wanted to disgrace him by killing him on the beach.

A wave crashed and Sasaki struck a swift blow, Musashi moved and lashed out with his oar. “Ah ha!” Sasaki thought to himself, “that was the fatal strike!” Sasaki moved forward towards the sand. “He is defeated!” But there was a glare in his eyes, and he thought “What is this?” And could not recall where he was and what had occurred. “Yes, this is the beach.” He thought. Then, lying on his back in the sand, he grew tired, cared nothing for fighting, and forgot about that and everything else, and only wished for the sun to leave his sight.

— — —

Musashi Miyamoto stood above his opponent, watching him die. The officials were half-mad, some screaming and others stooping over to look at Sasaki.

Musashi, still trembling with nerves, felt great unease at how important the man had seemed only a few seconds earlier, only now to die peacefully on the sand, with a childlike smile on his face that was quite detached from the reality of everything that had occurred. He couldn’t help but think the man was quite beautiful, and he had destroyed something beautiful for no reason at all. He wished he could end all of this nonsense, wake the man up and talk to him. Instead, the man slowly stopped breathing, as the blood pooled around his chest.

Musashi felt a pang of sadness. Here was one of the greatest swordsman that ever lived, and now he was dead, and that was that. Musashi looked at him and bowed, then, leaving the officials with the body, he turned and marched down the beach, through the waves, and climbed back onto the boat. Some of the officials who loved Sasaki ran down the beach into the surf after him, swinging katanas and shouting, but it was too late, the tide had gone out and Musashi had gone.

— — —

Musashi Miyamoto* had fought in countless duels, but it would be this one that would change his life. Self-taught from a young age, Musashi had his first duel at the age of 13, where he struck down a Samurai. Continuing on to fight in wars and dueling, Mushashi came to know everything there was to know about combat, going so far as to develop his own style; which ignored most of the accepted teachings at the time, and was based largely on efficiency and practicality, removing all flowery movements.

Later in his life, he retired to a cave and would go on to write his treatise on life and strategy called “The Book of the Five Rings”, as well as his “Dokkodo”; his 21 rules for a disciplined life. Remembered mostly for his incredible fighting ability and for the wisdom of his later writings – Musashi has always struck me as a fascinating figure, not so much for what he accomplished, but because of the principles that allowed him to accomplish it. He’s a man who sought complete perfection in what he did, but at the same time completely spat in the face of the accepted culture of his time.

There are many lessons to learn from Musashi, but I believe it is these principles that serve to teach us the best lessons. Not just on achievement, but on living itself.

Here are the lessons of Musashi Miyamoto.

YOU’RE GOING ABOUT LEARNING IN ALL THE WRONG WAYS

It’s easy to think that in our desire to acquire mastery of a skill we have to rigorously adhere to the way of mastery that has gone before us. We ask “how do I write a book?”, “how do I start a business?”, “how do I have good relationships?” and we search and consume information that we believe will show us the way to master and achieve these various goals.

But in many cases, this is failing before we’ve even begun.

In many cases, there is no way, there’s only your way.

Musashi defeated every opponent he came across. No matter how much they trained, no matter which style they’d mastered, no matter how many people they’d beaten; they all lost.

Yet Musashi never had a master or even a formal style. He taught himself. In his own words:

“You can win with a long weapon, and yet you can also win with a short weapon. In short, the Way of the Ichi school is the spirit of winning, whatever the weapon and whatever its size.”

A Ronin from a young age, Musashi was forced (or rather, compelled) to wander through life figuring everything out for himself. His approach was unconventional from the outset, and in many ways seems to have been set in tone from his first duel, when, at the age of 13, he defeated a master samurai using the man’s own short sword and a wooden pole.

Because he taught himself, Musashi didn’t have a fighting style that was particular to anyone else; in fact, he invented his own. It’s a style that’s best captured in his own words: “I practice many arts and abilities — all things with no teacher”

Musashi approached the craft of fighting from a place of reality. Taught entirely through his own real-world experience and ruthless desire for perfection, Musashi was quick to disregard many of the accepted practices of other fighting styles – considering many of their movements unnecessary, impractical, and serving only to impress onlookers. Instead, his style was quick and efficient, utilizing both hands and simple, practical movements. The clearest embodiment of this was his choice to weird two swords, instead of one.

When we’re attempting something new we almost inevitably come to a head-on collision with our fear of failure. We feel constrained or withheld, we avoid and procrastinate, and we doubt and deny our ability. This is normal, hell I feel it every day, but it also causes us to look for ways to circumvent our fear and find a path towards our goal that will make us feel safe.

Like a guide, a teacher, or a master.

But if we stop for a moment, and really consider the skill we are trying to achieve, how often can the skill we desire not be learned with common sense? Is writing a book really that complicated? Is starting a business truly that confusing? Is having good relationships really a mystery?

Or are you just scared you’ll fail and not sitting down and using your own imagination and problem-solving abilities?

Musashi is an example I always return to when I think of self-trust. When I want to try something frightening and doubt myself, I always think:

  • How can I solve this problem?
  • What do I need to achieve in order to solve this?
  • What do I need to do in order to achieve that?
  • What do I need to learn in order to do that?
  • What is the best way to learn this?
  • Is there any reason I can’t learn this by action and reflection?
  • Will I learn more by teaching myself than by having anyone else teach me?

This is nothing new. Experience has long been touted as the best teacher, and I’m not here to say anything different. What I’m suggesting is that when fear strikes, and you begin to doubt your ability to do this on your own; fight doubt with doubt. Doubt your reasoning up until now and instead break down the problem you’re confronted with. Engage your brain and figure out solutions for yourself. Because it’s going to force you to come to the conclusion you’re desperately trying to avoid:

That you need to take action. You need to try.

Instead of reading how-to guides, your attempt to write a book becomes a process that evolves as you write the book. Instead of going to seminars and taking lessons on entrepreneurship, you start building a useful product that you can either pitch to investors or start selling. Instead of reading blogs on the internet on how to have good relationships, you go outside and start talking to girls, getting rejected and learning from it.

Because in doing so, you don’t learn someone else’s way, you learn your way. And that’s something nobody else knows and nobody else can teach, and the world has never seen before.

STOP LOOKING FOR SUCCESS IN ALL THE WRONG PLACES

I imagine that after killing Sasaki, the greatest rival of his age, Musashi looked upon his dying opponent and wondered why it was that instead of feeling happiness, he felt only sadness. He was finally the greatest fighter of his age, but instead of feeling joy, he felt only the sadness that he had killed this warrior for no reason at all.

It’s been noted that this was the moment Musashi refused to kill in duels ever again but I would imagine it was also the genesis of what he came to express later in life:

“There is nothing outside of yourself that can ever enable you to get better, stronger, richer, quicker, or smarter. Everything is within. Everything exists. Seek nothing outside yourself.”

Everything is within. Seek nothing outside yourself.

A product of his age and ambition, Musashi was a killer, but he was not a psychopath. He came to realize that despite achieving what he’d wanted to achieve, it did not bring him anything he wanted, it only came with the cost of a great man’s life. Something he ultimately did not want.

Although a dramatic example, it taught him the example he needed; we cannot find what we want outside of ourselves without first finding it inside. For him, this was satisfaction that came from dueling, but for yourself, it might be a sense of importance from fame, a sense a manliness from having a lot of sex, a sense of superiority through becoming successful – all of this isn’t going to work. You’ll just end up like Musashi, wondering where the feeling you thought you’d have has gone. If you don’t already have it internally, you’ll never find it.

You have to change how you feel inside. Nothing else will work.

I believe this is why a lot of guys I know continually find themselves chasing women. They believe that aside from the satisfaction of getting laid, they’ll feel a sense of internal fulfillment; but when they do finally get laid, they never feel this sense of fulfillment, and instead of questioning this, they simply chase the next girl hoping she will be the one do it for them. They crave more, thinking that will solve their problem rather than confronting the problem itself.

I see this with sex, money, success; any form of material ambition that once achieved doesn’t live up to what we think it would. We either reevaluate or we chase more.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the same people who chase more, only to feel nothing, often end up spouting nihilistic beliefs. They looked for meaning outside of themselves. And as Musashi says “there is nothing outside yourself.” When you’ve lived a life finding nothing, you start beginning to believe life is meaningless.

This perspective is often the most challenging to take on because it directly confronts our ego. But ultimately that is the choice. We have to let it go, or let it win. We have to keep feeding it externally, or instead look internally, and find what we were always searching for in the first place.

THE COMPOUNDING OF SHITTY LIFE CHOICES ™

One of the most harmless ways to ruin your life is to waste your time on pointless crap. At the time, it might seem like you’re enjoying yourself, but as these small moments of waste pile up and compound on each other, suddenly it’s 5 years later, and you’ve spent nearly a quarter of your life staring at a smartphone. It’s moments like this that make people wonder where their youth went, and why they can’t seem to achieve their dreams, or even worse, never did at all.

Aristotle said that “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.” The way we use our time then determines the person that we are. And when we use our time poorly, this poor use of time compounds and grows until years have passed and we are no longer a person we ever wanted to be.

Queue the panic attack and mid-life crisis.

I call this the Compounding of Shitty Life Choices™ and it’s acting on you every day. It’s acting on you right now. Each time you take an action which is poorly chosen, worthless or completely negative, this adds to the pile of shitty actions you’ve already taken, stored away in your life like a bank vault of fuckups. And like a bank, you get interested on this in the form of the resulting poor self-esteem.

And the more you add, the more it grows; and the more it grows, the more you hate yourself.

This brings me to two quotes I’ve always liked by Musashi:

“Do nothing which is of no use.” And “Today is a victory over yourself of yesterday.”

The first is probably my favorite, exceptionally brutal qualifier on how we spend our time. Once it’s in your brain, it sticks like a virus and questions “is this useful?”, and then if it isn’t “why are you doing this? What could you be doing instead?”

When we orientate our lives into useful activity, our choices compound into massive results that are massively useful; like a book, a business, or a good relationship. When we orientate our behavior into useful activity, we actively medicate ourselves against the ever building effects of the Compounding of Shitty Life Choices™.

When we get all stuffy and bogged down with crap, all it takes is one useful decision to start setting it right. And when we start building the habit of doing that every day, we’re not just setting our days right, we’re setting our lives right.

This is not to say that things like playing video games and watching youtube videos are something you should never do. Fun is useful after all, it just comes down to moderating excess, knowing whether your actions are truly making you happy,  and being conscious of how you are spending your time. If all of your actions are like water that spills into either one of two cups, a good choices cup, and a bad choices cup, make sure the majority of your actions flow into the former, so that at the end of the day, it’s as close to the brim as you could get it.

Try it and see if you aren’t satisfied.

Musashi’s second quote is a useful reminder and antidote to the ever-present and ever negative berating of self-esteem.

“Today is a victory over yourself of yesterday.”

It’s easy when we’ve consistently failed to develop ourselves to get caught in patterns of negative self-talk where we endlessly reinforce an idea of who we are (usually, that we suck), telling ourselves that we cannot achieve what we want to achieve because not only have we failed but that we are a failure.

Sometimes, the argument can seem pretty convincing.

But just because you’ve failed in the past doesn’t mean you are a failure, it just means you need to do something different today. You need to take a different action to the one that resulted in failure. You need to start the day anew and try something new. And then you need to do that tomorrow. And the day after that. And the day after that, until finally, you are that ‘something new.’

Don’t get hung up on the past. Defeat the past.

 

*In Japanese, the last name is typically said first, so the correct way to say his name would be Miyamoto Musashi, although, as I’m writing in English I felt it better to stick to English conventions. The same can be said for Sasaki Kojiro.

 

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