How to be unstoppable in life:
Lately, I’ve seen more of these posts than is healthy. They’re the main reason I’ve completely quit Twitter for some time. I’m pretty sure you’ve already seen some of those posts where they present you with just a few simple changes you need to do in your life to become successful. Unfortunately, they’re full of bullshit (Wow! No shit Sherlock.). Sadly, they are the most usual advice and blueprints you see on the internet on the topic of success. But after all, they managed to do one good thing for me. They made me think. Think about the whole culture of success advice on the internet. I realized that lists like: Do this and win in life, How to become unrecognizable, Disappear for six months, and other types of this shit are just the tip of the iceberg which is a crisis of identifying and pursuing success in the 21st century. Let’s dive in.
Success is a complex and multifaceted concept that can’t be reduced to a simple formula or blueprint, and it’s important to recognize the diversity of experiences and perspectives that shape our understanding of it.
The thing with the word success is that it cannot be perfectly defined. The plain notion of success is so subjective that you will never be able to put a straight-fit-all definition. And that’s where the problem lies with the online content surrounding the topic of success. All those gurus specialize usually on the one and only kind of success. The material one. But here’s a thing. For most people, this isn’t the real success. And all those gurus—of course—take advantage of the fact that the majority just accepts what is presented to them as a success in life and cares no more.
People in life often choose goals they don’t even care about, that they don’t want, and yet they still wonder why they constantly feel like shit.
Maybe all you want in life is to have a wife, few kids, enough money, and free time to chill with lads twice a week. Maybe you want to get to the deepest level of your consciousness, maybe you want to shave your head and become a monk, join the army, or a fucking drug cartel, cure cancer, save abandoned kitties. It can be anything. It can be a large thing that affects the lives of everyone in the world, but it can also be small and seemingly meaningless for our society as a whole. All that matters is that it matters to you. What then may be surprising is that many of these definitions don’t need extreme materialistic success. You don’t need much money to teach people how to meditate or be a gym trainer. Why keep running for them papers when all you want is to play guitar in a nomadic indie-rock band driving from city to city living only out of gifts from society? There’s one reason for that:
You don’t know what you want. You don’t think enough. You don’t know yourself enough.
Spend some time just staring at a wall. With a pen and blank paper. Or meditate. Of don’t eat for 3 days. Or go for a very long walk into nature. Anything that will shake the bare roots of your everyday routine. Be alone. Without stimulation. Think, think, and think. And do it as often as possible. It is very unlikely your life purpose will appear in front of you after the first 10 minutes of meditation you ever did (but it can happen though). Let your deepest and darkest thoughts and desires come to a surface and realize what you actually want in life. Be bored. Once you’re bored, the real you comes to the surface. If it’s too painful, don’t get scared if there are too many demons appearing once you stop your endless stream of stimulation. It just means that you have a more acute problem than a lack of purpose. In this case, you need to fix your mental health first (which in some cases can take a hell lot of time). Once you fix it, or get to some satisfactory level, you will realize you have a lot of extra energy, and this energy you can invest towards realizing what is your actual definition of success, what is your purpose.
Once you realize this, go for it. You can never be absolutely sure you want something until you try it. For example, I now think I know what I want in life, and it’s actually pretty simple. It is to not spend the majority of it inside of a work I don’t enjoy. I want a lot of free time. At least 50% of the week to do creative things like writing, reading, or playing guitar. I want to publish a novel. I want to explore my mind with meditation and long solitude retreats. I want to visit Buddhist monks and spend some time with their teachings. I want a life partner with whom I can have long and deep conversations. For that, I will of course need an income and some of it has to be passive to have this free time and freedom, but I don’t need millions to my name. Yeah, I like pretty things but I really don’t need a garage full of cars I never drive, a wardrobe full of clothes I’ll never wear, or a house full of rooms I’ll never use. There’s nothing wrong in wanting this, of course, maybe it is your definition of success and that’s fine, but it’s not mine.
You need to look at your future through your own eyes, not the eyes of someone else.
Now, how to get there? To the place, you call a success. A guru would show you this perfect 10-step formula to surely get to the place you want but the thing is, nothing like that exists. There is NO blueprint for your own success. Yes, there are maps, for sure. But you need to find your own paths in them. Reading another book, watching another episode of Diary of a CEO, buying another course, all of these things are cool, but you know what is cooler? Actually taking action towards your goals. It doesn’t matter what you want to achieve, it always contains an extreme amount of reoccurring tasks that need to be done. And they won’t be done by themselves. If you want to be a writer, then write. You want to be a speaker speak. Coder? Code. Just do the thing as much as you possibly can. I mean—duh—it seems a little too obvious for this day and age to tell you to do the thing you want to succeed and yet, this advice is such an outlier between all those fillers that people tell you to do.
The thing is, you probably already know like 97% of everything you need to know to get to your desired success, but the hard thing is to act upon it. You need to do the thing.
Preparing to do the thing isn’t doing the thing.
Scheduling time to do the thing isn’t doing the thing.
Making a to-do list for the thing isn’t doing the thing.
Telling people you’re going to do the thing isn’t doing the thing.
Messaging friends who may or may not be doing the thing isn’t doing the thing.
Writing a banger tweet about how you’re going to do the thing isn’t doing the thing.
Hating on yourself for not doing the thing isn’t doing the thing.
Hating on other people who have done the thing isn’t doing the thing.
Hating on the obstacles in the way of doing the thing isn’t doing the thing.
Fantasising about all of the adoration you’ll receive once you do the thing isn’t doing the thing.
Reading about how to do the thing isn’t doing the thing.
Reading about how other people did the thing isn’t doing the thing.
Reading this essay isn’t doing the thing.
The only thing that is doing the thing is doing the thing.
— Strangest Loop
Now I don’t want this section to sound like the typical Sigma grindset shit you once again hear online, but there’s some truth to that. You already know what you need to do. You know if you need to study or know enough to do it yourself. You know if you need a mentor or you can do it on your own. You know everything. You’re just too anxious about leaving your comfort zone. So you just default to the easiest task at hand. The next episode of the podcast, the next book, the next Twitter thread. These activities are dangerous, maybe even more dangerous than your typical procrastination. They can be—in reasonable amounts—pretty beneficial to you, but so many people these days just use them as another way of procrastinating. And it is a much more comfortable way of procrastination as it tricks you to feel productive. But are you really?
Another “life-changing” video won’t actually change anything. Grabbing your balls and jumping straight into the unknown will.
Once you jump in, you’ll meet your greatest enemy. Resistance. Resistance to new experiences. Resistance from leaving your comfort zone. I wish I could present you here one guaranteed way to get through resistance but unfortunately, there’s none. All of us struggle with resistance and all of us have different methods to overcome it. You need to find what works for you. If you have no idea where to start, then I highly recommend you to read The War of Art.
I know a little hypocritical of me to recommend a book after writing that reading won’t do the job for you but take it this way, you can’t do the job if you have no idea HOW to do the job and for that you need to study, to learn. I don’t want this essay to sound like telling you you should never ever read a book in your life. No. You should read a ton shit of books in your life, do a ton shit of courses and watch a ton shit of videos on the topic you want to master, but this should never exceed your primary activity you have, which can be really anything, it only depends on your goals.
Consumption should never exceed creation.
That was how—in my opinion—should be a path to success presented and now back to how it is actually presented online and why I feel it’s making more harm than good. Let’s take into consideration a generic success story that usually backs up all the advice, courses, and other products your guru of choice is offering you.
You have a guy (or girl of course), that is nobody—or better, even worse than nobody. A broke outsider with only one thing, the ability to do hard work. So he wakes up early every day, leaves his old friends who are holding him back and grinds like a madman. Goes to the gym, eats pussy, and grinds, grind grinds. He spends a huge chunk of every day doing that one thing that will soon make him millions (usually social media marketing, drop shipping, or something in this flavor). Through years and years of hard work, he finally makes his millions and now he drives Ferrari and teaches other people how to do the same thing as he did. To add extra fancy points you can add up that he did all of this since he was twelve or some other unreasonably young age when you should just eat mud and not give a fuck about anything.
Of course, good for this guy, I have no doubt he worked much harder than most people and he deserves all this success, but there are nuances to his story. Nuances that are usually not spoken aloud but should be. Here’s a little reality check.
The first thing you need to ask when you see a guy on the internet offering you a guaranteed way of success—some kind of course or community for example—is what came first? Was it the success or the course for the success? Did he really make his money, happiness, or whatever else by doing what he teaches, or are the assets he gets from teaching the actual source of his success? That’s the first thing. Then, what is obvious and yet usually ignored is the luck factor. Who you see popping up on social media are just the guys on the tip of the iceberg, the luckiest of them all. But once again, I don’t want to underline their work, after all:
You first need to be good to be lucky.
What I’m trying to say is that you don’t have absolute control over your success. Sometimes what you really need is luck, and that may take years for it to turn your side.
The next thing takes me back to the consideration I presented at the start of the essay. What is it that the guy is really selling you? Is it your own idea of success or his? You cannot just copy another one’s road to success step by step and expect to arrive at a different destination, the destination of your own success. And even if the guy’s success was the perfect definition of your own, there’s no way you can copy-paste it into your own life. Yes, you can use it as a map, but you need to find the path yourself. That’s because you’re not that guy. You’ve got different life. Different disadvantages and advantages. Different starting point. There are too many variables that can affect the outcome of specific actions (Butterfly effect). Does this mean you can never learn anything from those guys? No, but:
Everything you hear, read, and learn—you have to always put through the filter of your own life.
These problems are still pretty much alright as long as you’re aware of them, but the next—and most problematic—thing is the reason you should really think twice before you jump into a rabbit hole of someone else’s success. It’s the effect on your psyche. Social media algorithms are smart. The more time you spend watching those young and successful people, the more of this content it will show you and before you realize it, all your feed is nothing but these perfect lads. Now there’s only one outlier between them, it’s you. You’re the only person that is not winning, that is not successful. You start living within the illusion that you’re extremely behind in life, that you’re the only person that sucks and the worst, everyone makes you feel like it is only your own fault that you’re like that. If you worked harder, did more stuff, and bought his course for just $999.99 you would already be a millionaire. And this notion, that it is yours and only yours fault leads me very surprisingly into politics.
Not that I want to present to you some specific political opinion or something, but it is a great analogy to use to explain to you what view this community forces you to and what view would be much better for your well-being. I’m really not the proper person to explain to you the way how politics works (or doesn’t work maybe) in the 21st century, I’m only going to use my own—and maybe wrong—understanding and put it into a context of success guides on the internet.
Let’s make the most basic and lazy division of political views you can have. Simply right or left.
First, people on the left. They focus on systemic problems and how they hold everyone back. Lefties see problems everywhere around but in themselves. They can spend hours arguing about what changes in the constitution we can make to improve something or how we need to get rid of this and that to finally live good lives.
Then, people on the right, the complete opposite. They focus on the absolute achievement you can achieve as an individual, they take 100% responsibility for everything there is. They accept system is broken and do what needs to be done to prosper in a system like this. If something goes bad, it is always their fault, there is no way it may be the effect of some outside force they have no control over.
Obviously, both those mindsets taken to the extreme are stupid.
If you were exclusively Left-focussed, you’d let your restrictions define who you’re so you’ll never bother to try to do anything.
If you were exclusively Right-focused, you’d observe how much further ahead everyone else is, and you’d give up shortly after starting.
As you can see, the second option is exactly what happens in the world of success gurus on the internet. You have a small group of outliers that—even though worked very hard for what they have—were extremely lucky in what they achieved and now they present to you the framework for how you can do it as well. They emphasize how everything is your responsibility, how you need to outwork everyone, and how it’s yours and only your fault if you fail. This notion keeps you in an illusion that no matter what you do, you will never be enough because you will never reach the highs of these few lucky lads. Now how to get out of this tricky situation? You need to mix into this shake some realism of things I told you a moment ago and some of the leftish worldviews.
I’m going to work as hard as I possibly can because I want to be the best version of myself. I recognize that how good I can be as myself might be controlled by some environmental factors. These environmental factors provide the range I can exist within. But within this range, my personal effort entirely determines where I exist.
Let’s take into consideration the CCC framework (don’t try to google this, I just made it up for the sake of this essay).
To keep this essay still in the scope of success, let’s look at this framework from that point of view. To succeed in life—whatever it means to you—you need to learn a lot. You need to process a lot of information, books, courses, videos, etc. As you’re doing this, you’re exposed to all of the dangers I spoke about in previous parts. You may get overwhelmed and even fall into a depression states just from the fact of seeing other people—younger, healthier, prettier—doing so much better than you. Other dangers are that you will forever hold onto one specific notion or view without questioning it, even though it may be actually harmful to you (eg. totally left-focused or right-focused as in the previous part). For that, let me present to you the CCC framework (not to be confused with a store that sells shoes)
Check
Do (check on) a lot of things. Read books. Old, new, fiction, non-fiction, biographies. Listen to the opinions of people on the left, listen to the opinions of people on the right. Listen to the opinions of people who have NOTHING to do with politics. Listen to what that random hippie guy in your Uni class has to say about life. Try things. Try different sports, volunteer, get your ass kicked, go to a concert or a protest. Go on a long walk, alone or with someone. Touch grass. And again, think, think, and think. Look for metaphors, even in places there wasn’t meant to be any, in the context of your own life, you can find it.
But most importantly, don’t take any of those things as either absolute truth or absolute lie.
You need to be a filter, not a sponge.
And for the sake of being a filter, there’s the second C.
Compare
Don’t compare yourself with other people, I know that’s easier said than done as it is pretty much against our human nature, but if you think about it, most of our humane virtues go against our natural instincts. How other people have it makes absolutely no difference in how you have it, there is no reason in comparing yourself to them.
If somebody else has it much worse (or better), that doesn’t really change that you have what you have. Good and bad.
The only person you should compare yourself to is you. You that you were yesterday, you that you’re now, you that you want to be. Take the thought—or activity—from the first C and put it through the filter that is your life, your virtues. Look at who you were before you knew this information—before you did this activity—and judge truthfully if it is really worth adopting into your life or dropping it completely.
Combine
And for the last, there is a combine, this C serves mostly as a reminder. Sometimes, when you find some game-changing ideology—or activity—it is tempting to turn your whole life around it. To drop everything you’ve already learned and work only by this new doctrine. I don’t say to never drop old ideas as they no longer serve you but you may be surprised how often you can actually combine them with new ones to create your own unique life philosophy. Who cares if you take one thought from left, another from right, another from Christianity, and next from Islam? Accepting only one ideology as the holy truth is the end of your growth. Fuck boundaries. Combine things and craft them to fit exactly your goals. Create your own philosophy!
Why keep in your life activities, ideas, and virtues that are not helping you to achieve your very own definition of success?
And exactly on that note, I would like to end this essay. To run full circle what I meant by creating your own philosophy, is pretty much the same thing I meant by definition of your own success. You’re unique—don’t let anyone make you think otherwise—and because of that, you will also have unique goals. The unique combination of skills and knowledge will be the best combination for your own life, that is your unique life philosophy. If I shall conclude all of the most important thoughts of this essay into only one sentence, it would sound something like this:
Your life is different from any other life which means you will never fit into a mainstream definition of success and that’s alright because you can create your own.
I can’t say it enough times so let me repeat this for the last time. Think, think, and think. Be open to ideas and activities, but in that be a filter, not a sponge. Always put things through your own experience. Don’t fall into a comparison with other people, they have nothing to do with your own success. And lastly, it’s not enough to read about a thing, it’s a good start but then you need to go and do it. Whatever that is. Without action, there is no growth. Without grabbing your balling and running straight out of your comfort zone, there is no real possibility of you becoming successful, be it anything to you.
If you’ve read this far then I really, really, really hope I’ve provided you with a value that made your life better, that I made you think and maybe even do some changes for the better. If you have anything you would like to ask, or discuss, I will be very happy to be at your service. You can contact me at any of these:
Wish you all the luck in the world and may you find your definition of success and your purpose very soon.
Hope you have a wonderful day and see you soon.