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How To Completely Reinvent Yourself In 6-12 Months

Dan Koe37:38Added Aug 31, 2026

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Contributed by 刘嘉琪

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  1. Lock in, fall off, lock in, repeat

  2. 00:00At some point, usually in your 20s, you'll notice that the people around you stop believing in themselves. And no
  3. 00:05matter how hard you try, you can't save them. By all means, do not let it infect your mind. Stay on your path. So, I was
  4. 00:13mulling over that thought for the past few days, and the more I think about it, the deeper the problem goes. I can't
  5. 00:19help but notice that people between the ages of 20 and 35 just get trapped in
  6. 00:25this vicious cycle. You get motivated by some external source, a video, a book, a
  7. 00:30conversation, whatever. You feel like this is your moment. So, you go allin. You start the business. You start
  8. 00:37working out. You start learning the skill. But then, like clockwork, 2 days, a week, 2 weeks later, you fall off. You
  9. 00:43so easily go back to the life you swore you despised. It's as if you were addicted to it. As if you preferred it
  10. 00:49over the life you just said you wanted. as if the desire to change your life was just another form of cheap dopamine that
  11. 00:55you couldn't resist. So life goes on. You get another hit of motivation. You start again from zero. The cycle
  12. 01:02repeats. You get frustrated, but not enough to solidify the change. Then you wake up 1 2 10 years later. What's going
  13. 01:09on? Why is this such a common thing? Why is it so damn hard to change your life?
  14. 01:15And I'll tell you why. And it's not anything that you've heard before. Maybe you've heard of it before, but you
  15. 01:20haven't really understood it, or else you wouldn't be going through this cycle. And another video about
  16. 01:25productivity or self-help or motivation or discipline or dopamine isn't even going to solve half the problem. You've
  17. 01:32obviously watched enough of those and nothing's changed. We need to dig much much deeper into the mind. We need to
  18. 01:38understand the composition of the mind. We're actually going to break that down. It's like you have how the body is
  19. 01:44formed, but how is the mind formed? Do you ever think about that? How is like the intangible parts of your mind just
  20. 01:50acting like a puppet master over your actions every single day to the point where you're not even in control like
  21. 01:56you can't even change your life. So by the end of this video I hope that you will have what you need to adopt the
  22. 02:01traits of a highly successful person specifically a person with this admirable quality. A person who works
  23. 02:07with tremendous intensity on things that matter to you and more importantly a person who is strangely unbothered when
  24. 02:13those things don't work out. So, if you actually attempt to understand what's in this video, because the first part is
  25. 02:19dense, you're probably going to fall off within the first part. But if you actually try to understand it rather
  26. 02:24than just try to hoard the knowledge like you do every other video, your life will look drastically different in 3 to
  27. 02:306 to 12 months. So, the first thing we need to do is we need to understand the composition of the mind because that's

  28. Your mind is a collection of survival strategies, that’s why it’s so hard to change

  29. 02:36why it's so hard to change. And your mind is a collection of survival strategies. This is where it gets dense.
  30. 02:43This is where it gets complex. Don't fall off because understanding this will change just how you view life in
  31. 02:49general. Now survival is the mechanical often unconscious engine behind every thought, emotion and action. Everything
  32. 02:56you think, feel, or do is rooted in survival. I repeat, your entire human
  33. 03:01experience right now is directed by survival. This is one of the most important topics you can understand to
  34. 03:07change your life because it's the root of what's keeping you the same. You hear the word survival and you're like,
  35. 03:13"Well, I don't live in the past. Like, I'm not about to be attacked by another
  36. 03:18tribe. What does survival have to do with this? My basic needs are met." I'm not talking about that kind of survival.
  37. 03:24And the thing here is that you cannot win this survival game. You can only transcend and include it. You can only
  38. 03:29learn how to play it. Trying to win this game is the ultimate source of suffering. Now, there are two types of
  39. 03:36survival here that we have to understand. And most people only understand what the first one is. The first one is physical survival. So like
  40. 03:43animals, we attempt to reproduce the information in our genes. This is largely solved in today's world and most
  41. 03:48reading this aren't worried about getting eaten or dying from starvation. And then there's psychological survival.
  42. 03:54We also attempt to reproduce the information in our consciousness. We feel the drive to preserve our non-physical identity. The ideas,
  43. 04:01beliefs, practices, and worldview that shape our mind. So to understand this, we have to understand the gist of what
  44. 04:07evolution is. So billions of years ago, some self-replicating molecules existed
  45. 04:12and some of them replicated more successfully than others. And the ones that happened to build protective structures around themselves, so cell
  46. 04:19walls, then cells, then multisellular bodies were better at replicating than others. So over billions of iterations
  47. 04:26or natural selection, we have genes that are very good at building bodies that
  48. 04:32can survive. And then human consciousness became a thing. I don't know how. Don't ask me how. So that's
  49. 04:37not what we're here to talk about. But the same process continued. So we have genes which selected and
  50. 04:44self-replicated. And then we have memes. And this is the difficult part because
  51. 04:49when you think of memes today, you think of memes on your phone. Like your friend sends you a meme. But what a meme really
  52. 04:55is is a unit of culture that is spread from mind to mind. So, think words or
  53. 05:01language or concepts or the beliefs that your parents passed down to you that you didn't even have the time to question
  54. 05:08because like you didn't know any better as a kid or when you went to school and you were you were rewarded for getting
  55. 05:15good grades and punished for getting bad grades or if throughout your entire childhood you were told to go to school,
  56. 05:21get a job, retire at 65. And in today's world with AI and things accelerating so
  57. 05:26quickly, that's not beneficial for your future. But so many people are stuck in that paradigm. The memes that compose
  58. 05:33their mind and dictate their actions are not aligned with what's going to lead to success in today's world. But the thing
  59. 05:39about these memes is that one they compose your mind. If your genes kind of
  60. 05:44compose your body or dictate how like what your body can do, then memes do the
  61. 05:51same thing for your mind. So ideas, beliefs, habits, practices, traditions,
  62. 05:56other things of that nature. And the thing with memes, if I haven't already said this, is that they're just like
  63. 06:01genes. Like they have naturally selected over time and culture through creation
  64. 06:06and destruction to the point where the memes inside of our head, their sole goal is to persist. Their sole goal is
  65. 06:14to go on, to survive, to self-replicate. That's why the memes that compose who
  66. 06:19you are right now don't want you to change, and they're going to try to avoid changing by all means possible.
  67. 06:26We'll learn more about that soon. Now, one important survival mechanism of memes are institutions and ideologies.
  68. 06:33We create larger structures like religions or nations or political parties and corporations that have the
  69. 06:38goal of protecting, perpetuating, and replicating the beliefs and values they were founded on. Religions want more
  70. 06:45members. Nations want more control. And corporations want more customers. So, a religion that tells its adherence to
  71. 06:51have children and convert other people to the religion is obviously going to spread and replicate faster than a
  72. 06:58religion who just tells people to not have kids and stay quiet. Obviously, and I promise we're getting to a point here
  73. 07:03because what I'm saying is that the memes in your head, who you are, how you act are shaped by those memes or the
  74. 07:10information or the language or the words or the identifications or the concepts or all of these things that compose your
  75. 07:15mind. It's really hard to put together. These things are fighting for survival because they're like genes. They
  76. 07:21naturally self-replicated into what they are today. So, just like the example I just gave with the religion that tells
  77. 07:26people to have more kids and to convert other members applies to other things as well. It applies to political
  78. 07:33ideologies. It applies to brands, conspiracy theories, jokes, fashion, the
  79. 07:38clothes that you wear, video games, which video games you play, which video games you identify with, the culture
  80. 07:43within that. coffee, alcohol, whether you're team Apple or team Android or team claude or team chat GBT or team
  81. 07:50anti-AII or team keto or team carnivore or team vegan and really anything else. And now these are things that are
  82. 07:57outside of you, right? The point that I'm trying to get at here and why I talked about the complicated things such
  83. 08:03as memes, you don't really need to understand that. What you need to understand is that everything is a
  84. 08:08religion. Your morning routine is a religion. Your political opinions are a religion. Your identity as a gamer, a
  85. 08:14lifter, a minimalist, a stoic, a craft beer enthusiast, they're all religions. And with social media and global access
  86. 08:21to information, we're experiencing the religionization of everything. Very few
  87. 08:26people actually do things because they want to anymore. Almost everyone's life is built around actions that allows them
  88. 08:33to fit in to the digital tribe or the digital culture. So, our bodies are
  89. 08:38built by genes to replicate genes. Our identities are built by memes to
  90. 08:44replicate memes. And again, a meme is a unit of culture that spreads from mind
  91. 08:49to mind. And its only goal or observed goal when you look at what a meme does
  92. 08:55is it tries to persist. It tries to survive. So I think you get it right. I
  93. 09:00think you understand that your mind is trying to survive. So, how does this actually relate to getting stuck in this
  94. 09:07vicious cycle of trying to achieve a goal that you say you want to achieve, but then just falling off and kind of
  95. 09:14getting stuck in getting motivated, falling off, getting motivated, falling off. What does it have to do with that?
  96. 09:20It has to do with the fact that your mind is a selfdeception machine. When you try to pursue a goal that would
  97. 09:26fundamentally change who you are, so your self-image, your identity, it's hard to conceptualize that there is a
  98. 09:33mental body that there is a you because you think your body is you and that you're just you. But it's a composition
  99. 09:40of these ideas, beliefs, worldviews, etc. that were conditioned into your head by your parents, teachers, and
  100. 09:45peers and that you never really had the chance to question because you didn't know any better as a kid. who haven't
  101. 09:51observed and examined what is this like web of ideas that actually composes who I am. And so when you try to change who
  102. 09:58you are, it's very difficult to notice because your mind doesn't want you to notice, right? The memes in your head
  103. 10:04are trying to survive and replicate. So your ego starts throwing out defensive reactions left and right. Your mind
  104. 10:10starts to flood with anxiety, fear of failure, irrational thinking, and the closest distraction that will give you a
  105. 10:16quick hit of comfort. It's like an addict going through withdrawals. And those things, the anxiety, the fear of
  106. 10:22failure, really your old identity trying to claw its way back is kind of synonymous with like in the past if you
  107. 10:29were attacked or even now if you're held at gunpoint or you're about to die, your body goes into fight or flight. The same
  108. 10:35thing happens to your mind because your identity or your psychological body is
  109. 10:42trying not to die. Now, the thing here is that this is just a natural thing.
  110. 10:47This is how we've evolved to be. So the cool thing about being human is that you
  111. 10:53can zoom out and detach from this stuff. So how do you actually zoom out, see the
  112. 10:59composition of your mind and then make tweaks? How do you reprogram it so that the opposite happens? And this is the
  113. 11:06key point. This is the mind-blowing part. If you get it, what if you felt
  114. 11:11threatened when you stopped pursuing a meaningful goal? So much so that
  115. 11:16achieving the meaningful goal didn't require much discipline because it's just a part of who you are. It's what
  116. 11:23your mind wants to survive. It's what your mind wants to do. So with that
  117. 11:28complex section out of the way, we need to actually get into the meat of what's going on here. We have to understand
  118. 11:34this survival game and we need to understand how to leverage it in our favor. And if it helps, just think of
  119. 11:40this as the mind game, right? This is the mind game of life and most people don't play it because they are a slave
  120. 11:46to their mind. And the characteristic of being a slave to your mind is that you don't even know it. You don't know
  121. 11:51you're a slave. So you need to become the master so to say instead. So we'll
  122. 11:56start with this. Effortless self-discipline happens when the desire to become the highest version of
  123. 12:01yourself outweighs the desires of the lowest version of yourself. Now the key point that I want you to understand here
  124. 12:08is that the core difference between winners and losers is that losers are
  125. 12:13afraid of success while winners are afraid of mediocrity. As an example, the person who does not identify as a fit
  126. 12:20person will feel threatened when they make the commitment to be healthy. You may not consciously identify as an unfit
  127. 12:27or unhealthy person but you identify with the preferences, habits and abilities or the properties of the self
  128. 12:34of your mind that an unfit person would have. So when you try to change and become a healthy person, your mind
  129. 12:41starts sending warning signals because it's threatened. It starts asking questions like what happens to going out
  130. 12:46and partying with my friends? What happens to the late night snacks while watching Netflix? What happens to relaxing on the couch instead of going
  131. 12:53on a walk? All of the little things start to surface, even if you're not consciously aware of them. Like, oh,
  132. 12:59what happens if I have to eat this bland food? You're telling me I can't add an entire stick of butter to this thing
  133. 13:05because it tastes better. What if you never had a slab of butter in your food before in your entire life? What if you
  134. 13:11didn't even know that thing existed? Would you resist that change or would you eat the bland food or would the bland food be good to you because that's
  135. 13:17all you know? And so if you're trying to be healthy, when the opportunity comes to go out or relax on the couch or add
  136. 13:24the slab of butter to your meal, are you actually going to be able to break that deeply ingrained pattern? The thing here
  137. 13:31is that the fit person would be threatened by the opposite. This is the key to changing your life in general.
  138. 13:38And this would baffle the unfit person because they don't understand it. They can't understand it. So, if a fit person
  139. 13:44travels to a place where they're not in their normal routine or they don't have access to the same healthy food that
  140. 13:50they would eat or their meal plan or their diet plan and let's say the only place they can eat is McDonald's if that
  141. 13:58was their limitation. Then they almost like spontaneously combust. They think they're going to lose all their gains in an instant. Every single negative
  142. 14:05thought starts to flood their mind of like, I've worked so hard for this. This is who I am. I'm a fit person. I if I
  143. 14:11touch this one single seed oil, then I die because I've studied all of the people on Twitter and Instagram talking
  144. 14:17about how seed oils are bad and I've adopted that as a part of my identity. It's a meme that's trying to replicate and survive and I've joined this tribe
  145. 14:23and I want to feel as if I fit into that tribe. So if I eat even one seed oil, I'm cast out from the tribe and my mind
  146. 14:31is wired like my ancestors was. Me personally, I can't distinguish then from now. So I feel like I'm at threat.
  147. 14:38I feel like I'm going to die. Even though I don't specifically say that, that's what my body and mind feels. And
  148. 14:45because my body and mind have evolved to this point, it's going to fight tooth and nail to keep me the same, keep me
  149. 14:53the fit and healthy person that I identify as. Now, if you don't care about being healthy or unhealthy or
  150. 14:59whatever it is, almost everyone wants to make money. The same thing applies to every single domain of life. This is
  151. 15:05life. So the businessman or someone who starts a business and is actually good at it and it has become a part of their
  152. 15:11identity, they would feel like a failure if their revenue started to go down. So much so that they would do anything to
  153. 15:18get it back up. They're going to study. They're going to learn. They're going to talk to people. They're going to try to identify the bottleneck in their
  154. 15:23business. They're going to implement new things. They're going to fire people. They're going to do whatever they can to
  155. 15:28get the revenue going back up. They're going to compete with other people. They're going to copy other people's features. So on and so forth. they
  156. 15:34wouldn't be able to sleep at night until that problem is resolved. And now some of this I'm being hyperbolic. This is
  157. 15:40the really extreme cases. But even in the subtle cases, it's enough to influence your behavior to the point of
  158. 15:46staying the same, which is the problem that we're trying to solve here. So, how did you actually get to this point in your life right now to the point where
  159. 15:53you can't change? It's so hard to change. You keep locking in and falling off. Well, when you were young, people
  160. 15:58expected you to act, think, and behave a certain way. Your parents were influenced by their parents and culture.
  161. 16:04Your parents' worldview was passed on to you as a child. You started growing up. Maybe you rebelled a bit, but you
  162. 16:11couldn't escape the subtle programming from your teachers, peers, and even worse in today's world, social media.
  163. 16:16You could effectively search up any information on the internet and program yourself into being a part of a tribe whose general actions aren't beneficial
  164. 16:23to a meaningful future. Literally, the places that you hang out on the internet could dictate the entire outcome of your
  165. 16:30life. and you don't pay any attention to it. You just let all of these things unguarded go into your mind. And I mean,
  166. 16:37think about how just insane that is, right? You have this house that you live in. Are you just going to leave the door
  167. 16:43unlocked and then are you going to like, I don't know, let everyone come in and party and just ruin your house and then
  168. 16:50leave or even just stay? Are you going to let people live in your house? Are you going to let a hundred people live
  169. 16:56in your small apartment with you on your bed? Like, it just doesn't make sense. They're going to eat all your food.
  170. 17:01They're going to do every That's what's happening in your mind. But the good thing is is that you can flip the script
  171. 17:06here. You can just turn it around. Not easily, but you can turn it around. You can change from a person who is
  172. 17:12threatened by success to a person who is threatened by failure. So the thing here is I want to teach you how to weaponize
  173. 17:19your survival mechanism in your head and you'll get results from that. But you have to understand that you will still
  174. 17:25suffer until you transcend the game. And that's what we're going to talk about in the last section of this video. Now,
  175. 17:30with that said, this isn't going to happen overnight. You're going to go through withdrawals. You will have
  176. 17:36relapses. But these things are what I found to be the most potent for recreating yourself. These aren't
  177. 17:42exhaustive. These aren't all of them. These might not even help you specifically, but these are what helped
  178. 17:47me. Now, all of these four things overlap and synergize with each other. So, one leads to another and they stack.

  179. You need a reason with extremely high gravitational pull, and when that one fades, you must find another.

  180. 17:53So the first thing is that you need a reason with extremely high gravitational pull and when that fades you must find
  181. 18:00another. Because the most intense periods of my life came after I stumbled across a very intense reason to change.
  182. 18:08It was a reason with such an intense pull that I couldn't focus on anything else but actualizing the positive
  183. 18:13trajectory of my life. And the thing is this reason doesn't last forever. You can quickly find yourself back in a rut
  184. 18:19months later because you let autopilot take over. And it's difficult. It's very difficult to force this reason. I've
  185. 18:26talked about related topics on my YouTube channel a few times and whenever I put out a video, I can't help but
  186. 18:32think like this just isn't going to hit for some people. This isn't going to hit for the majority of the people that
  187. 18:37watch this because they're not at the rate. They're not at the right phase in life in which this information will
  188. 18:43cause that spark to change. People try to do that all the time. They try to just force themselves into action or
  189. 18:50force themselves to think through everything and they still can't change. So what has to happen here? You have to
  190. 18:57find the reason in a book, a conversation or experience that happens at such a perfect moment that everything
  191. 19:03clicks for you. You have to discover it by breaking out of the familiar past and predictable future. Because for most
  192. 19:09people, right when they wake up, they are met with a thought that triggers a behavior and instantly they are now
  193. 19:16operating as the past version of themselves. You think about the commute to work which was stressful for you in
  194. 19:22the past. So you bring that feeling into the present and now you're stressed and narrow-minded. Then the cascade
  195. 19:27continues. You experience the feelings and behaviors of your past which create a predictable future that you don't
  196. 19:33want. You get stuck in this loop of living yesterday today. You don't do
  197. 19:38anything new. You don't break the pattern. And so only in the unknown, only in the things that you haven't
  198. 19:44experienced so far or at least internalized or made repetitive is where you will find the novel insight that
  199. 19:50will launch you into the next phase of life. So how do you start to live in the unknown? That leads to point two, which

  200. You need to become brutally aware of who you don’t want to become.

  201. 19:55is that you need to become brutally aware of who you don't want to become. Now, in my opinion, the most powerful
  202. 20:02visualization exercise you can do is this. For the next day, look at all of your current actions. Look at them all.
  203. 20:08What you do when you wake up, what you do throughout the day, what you do at night. Now, sit with a pen and paper and
  204. 20:14write down exactly where your life is going to end up if you keep doing the same thing. And if you're honest with
  205. 20:20yourself here, the answer preferably would disgust you. And that disgust can
  206. 20:25be used as this ultra potent fuel to slingshot you in a positive direction
  207. 20:30for quite a long time until you need a new reason. So, none of this is permanent. You aren't going to find your
  208. 20:37quick little fix that's just going to solve everything for the rest of your life. That's not how life works. Nothing is permanent. Now, the problem here that
  209. 20:43I've seen and experienced is that most people are just dishonest. This visualization of where they're going to
  210. 20:49end up in life doesn't really hit them. So, why doesn't it hit them? It's because the self doing the exercise is
  211. 20:56the self being evaluated. You are asking the current identity to honestly assess
  212. 21:01where the current identity is heading. But the current identity has a survival interest in not seeing this clearly
  213. 21:07because seeing it clearly would mean death. So you soften the blow. You rationalize it. You imagine future
  214. 21:13variables that may rescue you. So changing right now doesn't really matter. So for this exercise to work,
  215. 21:18you have to be able to receive the honest answer. And what helps is just grounding this in reality. So you have
  216. 21:25to observe society. You have to observe the people around you. That's very potent. You have to find an anchor for
  217. 21:32where your life is going to end up. That could be in your parents. That could be in a random person at the grocery store. That could be a person at the gym. If
  218. 21:39you live in a city, just go walk out in the city. And look at how lifeless people look. And another thing that is
  219. 21:45the real requirement here, which again is hard to fake, is that you need something that has already created a
  220. 21:50crack. So when you actually do that exercise of visualization, it just splits you open. So what creates the
  221. 21:57crack? For most people, something catastrophic has to happen before they actually make the real decision to
  222. 22:03change. So, their car has to break down before they realize how broke they are and that they're not able to afford it.
  223. 22:08And so, they have to actually do something to make more money to be able to fix it or for that not to happen
  224. 22:14again because they hated the experience so much. Or you have to have something like a health scare like maybe you need
  225. 22:20to have a heart attack. I'm not saying go and do that, but a lot of people they have that and they're like, "Oh I
  226. 22:27need to be healthy." Or something else happens like a parent or a loved one dies and it just hits you really hard.
  227. 22:33Or a very common example when you're a kid and you go through a breakup and you're just like in emotional turmoil
  228. 22:40and so you decide, I'm going to go to the gym. I'm going to get jacked and so on and so forth. I'm going to make sure this never happens again. then obviously
  229. 22:47that doesn't solve the problem but you get the point that someone's behavior and habits can change very fast once
  230. 22:53they go through a catastrophic event. Now point number three is that you need to change your environment faster than

  231. You need to change your environment faster than the identity can recalibrate.

  232. 23:00the identity can recalibrate because your old self is partly stored in your
  233. 23:05surroundings. The people you follow online, your bed, your routine, the people you hang out with. That's a big
  234. 23:10one and points to why so many people aren't where they want to be in life. Your identity is often programmed
  235. 23:15socially. The same person in two different friend groups will behave like two different people. More so when you
  236. 23:20log on to social media, you also become a different person. So a simple move here is to just wipe your phone or throw
  237. 23:28your phone in a lake and get a new one and start from scratch. And you'll really be able to notice the threat
  238. 23:34response then. Well, oh, what about all my contacts? What about all my apps? What about all my accounts? It's like you're so tied to these things and you
  239. 23:41should be in many cases. Like I would do the same thing. I'd be like I I wouldn't know what to do if my phone just
  240. 23:47randomly got lost. Actually, right now that's happened to me before. And the last time it happened, the last time I
  241. 23:53had to actually switch my phone, I really wanted to. I just started from a clean slate. If people needed to contact
  242. 23:58me, they would contact me. If I needed to contact people, I'd figure out a way to do so. If I needed something, I'd get
  243. 24:04it. But if you decide to do this, wipe your phone. Only download what's necessary. Do just that. If you need to
  244. 24:10do something, then do it. Go through the friction of doing it. Don't make it this easily accessible thing. On a side note
  245. 24:17there, I just hate the fact that anyone can get a hold of you nowadays. Like
  246. 24:23literally anyone can just like text you or message you or email you or do whatever. That shouldn't happen. Like,
  247. 24:30we're not wired for that. So, if I don't respond to an email that you send, that's why. Personally, I think that
  248. 24:36social media should abolish the comment section. Not because there aren't good comments, but because that's the most
  249. 24:41toxic part of social media where people go and identify with things so strongly. Like people don't even have a chance to
  250. 24:47form their own opinion because they're just bombarded from all angles. And now
  251. 24:52maybe we shouldn't abolish the comment section itself, but like something needs to happen. And most people can't handle
  252. 24:59themselves in the comment section. I'm not talking about my comment section, but when I look at comment section, it's
  253. 25:05very entertaining because it's just a war zone. Now, aside from wiping your phone, another difficult thing that
  254. 25:11a lot of successful people do is they just take a sbatical. They just go for a week off into the woods or they rent an
  255. 25:18Airbnb at this remote location, just them themselves. All they bring is their laptop. A lot of creatives do this if
  256. 25:24they want to actually respspark their creativity and have better ideas for something important that they're working
  257. 25:29on, like if they're writing a book. But this is something that you can do to immediately just remove yourself from
  258. 25:34your environment and form new habits and behaviors. Now, beyond that, if you want
  259. 25:40to change your life fast, the most useful thing you can do is immerse your mind in the environment of your future
  260. 25:46self. Bathe your psyche in the opinions, beliefs, and education that person would have without judgment. So, when I was
  261. 25:53first getting started in business, I was just curious about business, right? I didn't know where to start. I didn't
  262. 25:58know where to learn. I didn't know what kind of business to start and I searched for courses and I took a few and they didn't really make sense. It's like like
  263. 26:05I took a digital marketing course and it taught me about Mailchimp and other things. I'm like what do I do with this?
  264. 26:11Like I don't know if that makes sense to you guys now, but like as someone who knew nothing prior, it's like why am I
  265. 26:17learning Mailchimp? What what do you mean emails? What do you mean lead magnet? I have to do this stuff for what? It just didn't make sense. So, it
  266. 26:24wasn't until everything that I read, every video that I watched, every person that I followed online, and all of the
  267. 26:30conversations I had revolved around business and starting a business, that's the best way to learn. A course is very
  268. 26:36useful for learning structured knowledge. But the ins and outs and the opinions, all of the different angles are best learned by just like diving
  269. 26:44into a new environment where that's all there is. That's the beautiful thing about modern living today. In the past,
  270. 26:50you're just in your little tribe. Today you can pick and choose. You can become anything that you want to because you
  271. 26:57can just plop yourself in the environment, deal with the discomfort, and you'll want to become that person
  272. 27:03because memes replicate. They want to survive. So I would pick up tips and tricks from the
  273. 27:09videos, the books, the whatever. But more importantly, in this environment, if I wasn't building a business, I
  274. 27:15didn't fit into the environment. And so that felt wrong. And so inadvertently
  275. 27:21I started a business so I could fit in. So identity is created through learning.
  276. 27:27That's like the lesson. But the thing is that you're not learning if you're just
  277. 27:32reacting all the time or think you know everything. So you're not actually absorbing all of the information. So you must willingly expose yourself to
  278. 27:38perspectives that you disagree with and try to understand why they are right. Now the fourth pattern here is that you

  279. You need to increase the gap between impulse and response.

  280. 27:44need to increase the gap between impulse and response. And there was a meme going around a meme an actual
  281. 27:52a not actual meme on social media was going around where the background audio was like like break the pattern today or
  282. 28:00you'll repeat the loop tomorrow and it was some like motivational thing. So that's kind of what this is. Break the
  283. 28:06pattern today or you'll repeat the loop tomorrow. But the way that you detach from old patterns is to do nothing. You
  284. 28:13increase the gap because doing nothing is the only way that you can interrupt the survival mechanism in real time.
  285. 28:20Everything else from finding a reason to changing your environment happens outside the moment of the urge to remain
  286. 28:25your past self. Those things create better conditions, but they don't help you in the 3 seconds when your hand is
  287. 28:31reaching for your phone. And you can think of everything like you don't even notice it. It's not just your phone.
  288. 28:36It's everything. It's yourself. So your job is to starve the old self that is
  289. 28:42trying to survive of the normal feedback it receives. And of course this is a difficult practice, but you must observe
  290. 28:47and examine yourself throughout the day. Are you just repeating yesterday on autopilot? When you read an opinion or
  291. 28:53belief, are you going to solidify your own stance further by arguing with them in your head and saying how wrong they
  292. 28:58are? So when you sit with this uncomfortable feeling without making a decision, you train your nervous system to tolerate the gap between impulse and
  293. 29:05action. From that neutral state, it's much easier to make a conscious choice in the right direction. Now, there are
  294. 29:12plenty of ways to train this gap. What I'm telling you here is something that's already been said many times before.
  295. 29:18There are very popular ways to train this gap, but they've become popularized and kind of bastardized from what
  296. 29:24they're supposed to be. So, there's meditation, there's cold showers or cold exposure, there's fasting, etc. But
  297. 29:30those things have become religions. That's the exact opposite of what we're trying to accomplish here. So, anything
  298. 29:36that helps you delay gratification is useful, but just don't join the religion of doing the thing. Like, you don't have
  299. 29:43to have an opinion on whether or not cold showers are good or bad. They're just a tool for increasing the gap
  300. 29:48between impulse and response. But outside of all of those things, I don't think you need to do any of those aside
  301. 29:54for meditation. But like, that's what I'm trying to say here. The most impactful thing you can do is to
  302. 29:59practice some kind of a 247 meditation. You have to become the observer of the
  303. 30:06self that's trying to survive. You you try to operate from a higher level of mind, from a more expanded level. You
  304. 30:12attempt to get really good at that, at expanding and contracting your mind because that's what it can do. You can
  305. 30:18zoom out very far. You can hold a lot of ideas at once and then you can zoom in and you can work and you can get in the
  306. 30:25flow state and blah blah. It's like creativity and productivity and it's a spectrum and you expand and contract between it and the further you can
  307. 30:32expand and the deeper you can contract in that contraction you can get more focused work done or more deep
  308. 30:39conversations done you're zooming into reality right here right now what's the task that I'm working on the expansion
  309. 30:46is like it's you probably felt it before and it's just like training a muscle right you expand and contract eccentric
  310. 30:53concentric that's how you build the muscle But the problem here is that most people just live in a perpetually
  311. 31:00zoomedin state. We call it survival mode. So the goal here is to just notice
  312. 31:05it, do nothing about it, and then neutralize the impulse. You kind of wait until the calm has arrived, and then you
  313. 31:13make your own decision in the direction you want to go. You make your own choice. So that's kind of how you can
  314. 31:19weaponize your survival is you start to identify as the person you want to become. You put yourself in that
  315. 31:25environment. You reprogram your mind so that naturally, almost automatically,
  316. 31:30you start just doing the actions that are going to make you that person. But the thing here is that you're still
  317. 31:36playing the game. You're still going to be stuck in this kind of cycle of suffering. So that leads to the last

  318. Winning the game is how you discover it’s the wrong game

  319. 31:43section and the most important section is that winning the game is how you discover it's the wrong game. So we'll
  320. 31:48start with this. The greatest trait you can acquire is to work with tremendous intensity on the things that matter to
  321. 31:54you and more importantly be strangely unbothered when those things don't work out. So if you're smart, you've noticed
  322. 32:00just that, that we've replaced one survival game with another. Meaning we replaced one source of suffering with
  323. 32:07another. Because sure, learning how to stress yourself into becoming a hyper successful businessman or building a an
  324. 32:14aesthetic physique is better in my opinion than stressing yourself into this endless loop of stress of being
  325. 32:21overweight and broke. But the problem is this. The business owner will be unhappy until they hit a certain level of money,
  326. 32:27like $100 million. But even once they hit that number, they still have the same identity. So if they don't increase
  327. 32:33that amount, the money and continue working, they will remain unhappy. It's the same old story when someone is
  328. 32:40working at a startup or a corporation or building a business for most of their life and then they sell the business for
  329. 32:46a huge payout. They have this existential crisis. They're like, I don't know what to do with my time. I'm
  330. 32:51depressed. I have all this money, but it's not making me happy. But that's kind of the thing is that you kind of
  331. 32:57have to experience it before you can transcend it. And the same thing happens for let's say a bodybuilder here. I'm
  332. 33:03using health and business as like major examples because that's a lot of my life. So the bodybuilder as an example
  333. 33:09won't be happy until they get their pro card because that's their goal. But unless they have a shift in who they
  334. 33:15are, they will continue moving the goalpost until they have that existential crisis and they're forced to
  335. 33:21change after a period of a deep depression. And so this is a crucial piece that so many people are missing is
  336. 33:26like you think you want the lives of the business and fitness influencers on social media. But if you look a bit
  337. 33:33closer, you can see very clearly that they are covering up their lack of fulfillment with more work. So the goal
  338. 33:39then is to play the survival game because there is a great deal of fulfillment that comes from continuous growth and life is a if you
  339. 33:46stagnate. But you must also transcend the game. You must also remain largely unbothered when things don't work out.
  340. 33:51So the question then is how does one become unbothered? And the hard thing there is that you can't try to be
  341. 33:59unbothered. You can't try to be cool and lax because the bothered self attempting
  342. 34:04to become the unbothered self is just another survival strategy. The person who says I'm going to detach from
  343. 34:11outcomes has just made not being attached to outcomes the outcome they're attached to. So it becomes the axis of
  344. 34:18their suffering. This is like a huge spiritual trap. It's like you read one spirituality book and then you kind you
  345. 34:25see that and you're like hm this is like a higher form of being. If I just act
  346. 34:30like I'm that person, then people will perceive me as this like high and wise person. But you haven't put in the years
  347. 34:37of work to naturally become that. And that's the big trap. It's premature
  348. 34:42transcendence. So I kind of just yanked your tail this entire video. And I was kind of hesitant to put this section in
  349. 34:48the video because what most people want on YouTube and in content is just like, give me the actional strategy. Give me
  350. 34:55the give me the cheap dopamine hit now. Give me the higher form of the cheap dopamine hit by watching a [snorts]
  351. 35:02video that promises them a lot of success. So they can feel as if they know more than the other person. Or they
  352. 35:08can feel as if they're making progress when they really aren't. Because in relation to this video, most people have
  353. 35:14to be deeply attached to something before their attachment becomes visible
  354. 35:19enough to see through. Right? There is no quick fix to that. What you can do, however, for the sake of giving you
  355. 35:26something to do is this. First, just continue increasing the gap between impulse and response. Work your psychic
  356. 35:32muscle. Expand and contract the mind and be aware of it. Become very familiar with what those states of consciousness
  357. 35:38feel like. Second, distinguish pain from suffering. Pain is a feature of life.
  358. 35:44Suffering is the identity's refusal to accept the event. Becoming more conscious and open-minded doesn't remove
  359. 35:50pain, but it removes the second layer. The businessman whose revenue drops still feels the punch, but he doesn't
  360. 35:56have to feel the subsequent spiral of this shouldn't be happening to me. I feel like a failure. My life is ruined.
  361. 36:03The intense and unbothered personality is powerful. It is near the pinnacle of human development across both material
  362. 36:09and spiritual plains. They are a walking contradiction. They fear mediocrity enough to work hard and they're
  363. 36:15unbothered enough to not collapse when things don't work out. It is the mark of a mature mind to be able to hold two
  364. 36:21opposing forces at once. I hope that you are able to one day master that state. Until then, thank you for watching. If I
  365. 36:28were to pitch one thing to you, it would be the paid version of my Substack, which is a library of AI prompts,
  366. 36:35writing strategies. When I say writing strategies, it's mostly like how do you take your ideas and put it into a form
  367. 36:41that other people want to read, watch, study, because if you're pursuing your life's work, you need to attract people
  368. 36:47to your life's work. So, that's kind of what it is. And then marketing strategies. So, how do you actually take what you know, package it up into
  369. 36:53something valuable, and get paid for it? And I recently added on, I'm going to be doing monthly live streams of breaking
  370. 37:00down other successful people, creators. They're going to be coming on. So, Max Bernstein just came on before I released
  371. 37:07this video and he went over his cognitive fingerprint, which is meant
  372. 37:12for people who feel like they have nothing to say or feel like they don't have ideas worth putting out into the
  373. 37:18world. And what Max does is with the help of AI is to help uncover the things
  374. 37:24that you do have to say and you just can't find them because they're stuck inside of your head. So if you're interested, join that. There may or may
  375. 37:31not be a discount in the link in the description just for people who finish the video. But aside from that, like and
  376. 37:36subscribe. I'll see you in the next video. Bye.