Don’t Try

Be confident in who you are. The more you desire something, the void of what you aren’t makes you less happy.

Not giving a f*** doesn’t mean indifference. It means being comfortable being different.

Happiness is a Problem

Pain and suffering are feedback mechanisms.

Life is one problem after another. Happiness comes from solving problems. But they never go away. Happiness is a form of action. And some problems are better than others to have.

To choose your happiness is to choose your struggles. What do you want to suffer through? What pain are you willing to sustain?

The joy is in the climb itself.

You Are Not Special

F*** entitlement. You have to actually do the work.

The Value of Suffering

Keep in mind that Dave Mustain of Megadeath thinks of himself as a failure because he was kicked out of Metallica. Your standards of success are relative.

The values you have, measure your individual success.

You are always choosing.

You can choose to enjoy your suffering or not.

You are responsible for your own actions, emotions, actions, and feelings. That’s where the real growth comes from.

You’re Wrong About Everything But So Am I

Some of the worst experiences in our lives can be the most formative and motivating. Some of the positive can be the opposite.

Manson’s Law – the more something threatens your identity, the more you will avoid it. If it changes who you are, it scares you.

It’s the same reason why success is as scary as failure. It’s why you avoid writing that screenplay you’ve always wanted to write.

That’s why you should maybe never “find yourself.“ This will lead to constantly remaining humble and looking for different things on the horizon about yourself.

Failure is the Way Forward

Improvement means a thousand tiny failures. If someone’s worse than you, they haven’t failed enough and been through the painful learning process yet.

It’s growth that generates habits, not an arbitrary set of achievements. Picasso continued painting until his 90s.

Sometimes, to improve, you just have to do it. (If you started a business – you had to learn to code, web development, writing, copywriting, etc)

Action isn’t just effective motivation – it’s the cause of it. There is no such thing as motivation. Just do it.

To floss your mouth, start with one tooth. If you want to be a great writer, write two hundred crappy words per day.

The correct three-part chain is Action -> Inspiration -> Motivation

The Importance of Saying No

Depth over breadth. Fewer choices are better than more.

And Then You Die

People need to be more comfortable with their own death. It’s inevitable. F*** your immortality project.

Without acknowledging that you’ll die someday, the superficial will appear important. What legacy will you leave? Instead of chasing fame and power, what great values will you bestow?

Choose values that are beyond yourself.