Humans are mimicking machines.
This is why they say you become the average of the people you spend the most time with.
You almost have no choice in the matter… other than choosing the people around you.
I believe there is a way out of this.
It requires deep inward reflection and work.
You have to get down to the core principles so you can understand your biology and psychology.
From there, you can build up an independent identity that goes beyond copying the people around you or famous people you idealize.
I think there is a genetic factor at play here—I’ve never been naturally envious or jealous, and that coupled with natural confidence.
But I’ve still had to work on it.
I’ve had to resist not comparing myself to others, and sometimes this tendency slips in.
The second I notice it, I destroy it.
When you figure out who you are, you no longer feel the need to mimic others.
You have become internally driven.
And every day you live this way, the easier it gets.
Over time, you become so detached from the idea of trying to be someone else that it becomes hard to emphasize with those still stuck in that paradigm.
Go inward.
Find yourself.
Then become the best YOURSELF you can.
If you’re going to be envious of anyone, become jealous of your future self.
Fragile = Is only weakened by stress
Robust = Not easy to break but does not gain from stress
Antifragile = Grows from stress and becomes stronger
Avoid fragility as much as possible.
Become as Antifragile as possible.
Take in stress, change, uncertainty, and use it as fuel for learning, growth, and preparing for the future.
Exercise makes you antifragile.
How you think can make you antifragile if you have the correct mental models that will allow you to grow from chaos.
Fragility leads to destruction by the law of entropy.
Your immune system, when stressed, makes you stronger.
Sitting inside being afraid and anxious makes you fragile, and ironically, more susceptible to the very thing you’re scared of.
Think about these concepts in all aspects of your life and find ways to move up the spectrum and away from fragility. And for certain things that can’t be Antifragile, aim to be as robust as possible.
People today are soft.
They are soft mentally and physically.
And this softness is infecting our culture like a creeping mold.
Prosperity brings comfort and softness. And if you look at many failed civilizations throughout history, it's the property that killed them.
We need strong people, strong mentally, especially.
We need iconoclastic thinkers willing to challenge the status quo and ready to be "canceled" to stand up for what they believe in.
If we sterilize culture, we destroy culture. There will be nothing left.
Every attempt in history to make outcomes equal for all has failed, and millions have paid the ultimate price for these failed experiments.
As our living situation has been in disarray these past couple of weeks, I've been thinking about how most modern problems are just tests of resilience.
If you embrace these tests, you will grow as you overcoming them.
If you sidestep them, complain about them, or otherwise avoid them, you will end up weaker than before because now you've solidified the habit of avoidance, AND you missed out on the opportunity to sharpen yourself.
A blade of grass does not sharpen the iron sword. Iron sharpens iron. Hardness begets hardness.
Antifragility is getting BETTER from stress.
Remind yourself of this with every challenge or inconvenience you face. Embrace it as resilience training
If you want to build a strong mindset that will translate into a stronger will, character, and body, go to BetterHuman.School to enroll in the Better Mind training course to learn the first principles of human resilience.
No matter your goals—health, wealth, relationships—better modes of thinking will get you better results.
Since your mind is the constant in everything in your life, it makes sense to dedicate some time to developing it. That's exactly what the Better Mind program is all about.
2am Monday. Our power went out. Outside temp: 15°
Tuesday, we stayed at a hotel after running out of firewood and burning a few wooden Ikea shelves.
Wednesday, we tried to stay at the hotel, but they sold our room.
Hotels sold out.
That night we stay at in a friend's guest bedroom.
We take a trip back to the house to get some food, and as I walk to the front door, I hear smoke alarms going off. I open the door, and I hear rushing water, and our entire floor flooded with more pouring down from the ceiling.
We manage to get the main water line turned off and setup bins and trashcans on both levels of our house. Then for the next three hours, in 25° weather, I'm barefoot sweeping as much water out of the front door as possible. Luckily adrenaline kept me warm.
It's going to take four days to get a cleanup company out there. I don't know if we will stay there, so after moving a week ago, we might have to pack up and move again.
I wouldn't share this if there wasn't a lesson.
What served me the most in this situation was one of our Better Mind Principles: The Framework of Control.
By identifying what I can control vs. what I can't, my focus moves to HOW I WILL RESPOND to the situation rather than getting upset.
So I snapped into action after a short moment of emotion tried coming up.
A few hours later, after I reached the point of physical exhaustion, I had done all I could do. So I was content to leave, even though leaving my house and everything I own sitting in pools of water was a hard pill to swallow.
On the drive home, I thought about the many ways it could have BEEN WORSE. This is called negative visualization, and the Stoics recommended it. And it works.
I thought about how the kids could have been sick or hurt but were sleeping in a warm bed. Then I thought about how this could have happened at our house we just sold two weeks ago, potentially complicating our transaction.
On and on the list of potentially worse things are.
So now, as I write this, I have peace of mind. And I'm focused on the many things to be grateful for.
If we have to move, we will be in a better place, since that's usually how life works.
To this day, I'm still flabbergasted that there is so little emphasis on HOW TO THINK in our modern culture and the institutional education system.
You'd think we'd spend more time on helping people deal with the many stressors of life that happen to EVERYONE.
But we don't.
That's what the Better Mind program is all about: helping you build mental models that prepare you for life's challenges while also serving as the roadmap for flourishing in all aspects of your life, from your finances to your relationships to your health.
To enroll today in our 8-week group training program or try the self-paced option to get access to our BM8 Principles method, head over to BetterHuman.School.
There was this one time when I worried about something. I obsessed over it. It kept me up at night.
Then it didn’t happen.
And this is what Mark Twain meant when he said, “I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.”
There’s a book I just read.
It’s called 30 Lesson For Living: Tried and True Advice from the Wisest Americans.
The author interviewed hundreds of elderly Americans, most between 70 and 90 years old.
He was trying to figure out the best advice for living a good life from what he called ‘the experts'—experts at living.
This book is excellent, you should read it. It makes a great gift.
At the end of the book, he cited the most commonly recommend bit of advice from most of the experts he interviewed.
It was to stop worrying.
Worrying is an insidious and toxic habit of the mind. It’s a bad habit that serves no purpose and often makes things worse.
You don’t win an award because you worry a lot about something. It doesn’t prove you care. It is instead rooted in fear of the unknown.
Along with its close cousin, anxiety, worry has become one of the most prevalent mind states of the modern human.
Mindfulness and meditation are great strategies for destroying the worry habit. But I’ve found that it takes more than that to overcome chronic worry since focusing your mind on the Now does not remove the root causes.
Solving worry (and anxiety) is a foundational goal of the Better Mind program. One of the foundational BM8 principles we use is called The Stoic Framework of control.
When you truly internalize what you can and cannot control in life, you grant yourself the ultimate power. It gives you everything you need to identify what you should be focusing on and what is a waste of time because it is entirely out of your control.
The areas in life this principle applies are limitless.
First, figure out what you can and can’t control.
Second, apply what you learned in step 1 to your worry muscle—identify that worry is pointless.
To learn how to kill worry and anxiety and stress for good, as well as level up your thinking and get UNSTUCK in your personal and professional life, head over to BetterHuman.School to learn more about The Better Mind course and training program.
"What we think, we become." -Buddha
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What you think is the result of the information and people you allow into your life.
Do you want to see your future?
I can show you how to travel through time to see your future.
Here's how:
*Look at your friends and family
*Look at your co-workers
*Look at your boss
You are statistically likely to end up the same financially, physically, and internally as the people and environment around you.
After that, think about who you were a year ago.
How much the same or different are you?
Are you better, wiser, happier than your past self?
Or are you about the same, or maybe slightly worse?
You have now traveled through time and can confidently visualize your future…. for as long as you keep doing what you're doing...
If you don't like the future you foresee, then you have to make changes, and now. There is no time to waste.
Most people make changes only when and if life forces them to change, and they usually resist the entire way.
This is odd, considering change is only constant in the Universe. Shrug.
A smaller percentage of people actively change themselves because they are focused on growth. They are afraid of missing who they could be, so they are proactive in making that happen.
Since people are one of the most significant environmental influences for who you will become, you want to start adding people to your life with traits you want to absorb. You don't have to fire all your friends and family to take control of your future.
But you absolutely do need to add the right people to your world.
I can help you do just that while keeping you accountable long enough to make your new habits stick. That's what the Better Mind program is all about—helping you a growth mindset and using it to destroy blocks so you can make progress DAILY towards a future self you are excited to meet in person.
And while it would have been better if you started this process yesterday, you have the next best time: NOW.
Learn more and enroll today over at BetterHuman.School
If you want to know your future, look at how you spend your days.
How often are you focused on what you are doing and consciously taking actions to improve?
How often are you distracted, anxious, and bouncing from this to that?
Do you know? Have you tracked this?
Or are you like most and you are constantly bouncing around in response to your environment with little awareness of where your time is going?
Take your TV watching and cut it in half. Then add in a walking routine, a reading routine, an exercise routine, a spending time with loved ones routine.
Do the same for your social media use.
Are you commuting and listening to useless content on the way? Download some audiobooks and podcasts.
The more distracted useless habits you can reduce and replace with better activities, the faster you will level up and achieve your goals.
I recommend every human buy Bitcoin and hold it.
It doesn’t matter if you only have $100 to spend, a little is better than none.
Then watch as you are apart of the revolution that is taking place.
Bitcoin is one of humankind’s greatest inventions. Those that currently understand this are taking advantage and will benefit tremendously in the years to come.
Finally, even if you consider it a purely speculative gamble, there is no greater risk-to-reward ratio in the world today. To not own some is mathematically negligent.
The key is to buy and not sell. So ignore the daily price swings or the news or whatever. Buy and hold for a minimum of 5 years. Thank me then.
*This is not investment or financial advice. This is what I tell my friends and family. I currently have 25% of my net worth in BTC.
I’ve had a limiting mindset of coaching for years.
I now realize how limiting that was.
I always figured I could figure things out myself and that I didn’t need a coach to tell me things I either already knew or could quickly figure out.
But that’s the fallacy—a coach is not there to give you information.
A good coach is there to help you see through your blind spots, help you think differently, and challenge you when you’re being stubborn and myopic.
So I’m looking into coaching for myself while also taking on a few coaching clients because it will be fun to help others get to that next level.
Power's primary goal is more power.
The first action is always to get more power.
If more can't be attained, then you focus on protecting your power.
Remember this the next time you listen to anyone in a position of power.
If you're actually interested, watch what they do.