Comfort is a sweet pill and it is also a slow poison. It numbs you and makes you forget your ambitions. Instead of doing what you are supposed to do when you have the time, energy and opportunity, you postpone pursuing your dream. It is not strange that most people regret:
- Not doing what they love
- Being lazy and wasting their time
- Not spending more time with their family
- Not taking care of their health and wellbeing
- Working hard for nothing in return
- Not travelling when they were young
- Not enjoying life to the fullest.
You can decide to embrace the pain of change today for the lifetime benefit, or enjoy your present comfort for a lifetime of regret.
The process of becoming the best version of yourself is supposed to be hard.
"A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trials." — Seneca
Most people expect it to be anything but hard. They set ambitious goals, stay consistent for a few week and get disappointed after what feels like ages of a lack of progress and quit.
The challenge of building something from nothing. The thrill of turning ideas into reality. The satisfaction of creating impact must be your internal drive.
Uncertainty is not the enemy—it's the teacher.
It forces you to adapt, to innovate, to keep pushing forward.
If you're in it for the easy road, you chose the wrong game.
But if you're ready to face the unknown, welcome to life.
Explore the Unknown. Pursue your own goals
One pattern I’ve noticed in my life is that I’ve always set apart time to build something of my own.
Things like schoolwork, client work, and even projects assigned to me on a job were necessary, but they didn’t bring me the fulfillment I was looking for.
Thanks to deep knowledge being accessible to those who want to find it on the internet, you can become top 10% in any skill with 6-12 months of focused effort.
I realized that the source of most people’s lack of fulfillment is that they’ve never learned or built something that they chose to learn or build.
Since birth the mind was conditioned with the conventional life path. Learn this. Build that. To the point where people hate the only two things that will free them from that enslavement — learning and building. If you did not have parents you were developed to support your dreams, you were conditioned to follow someone else's dream. Most people don't know what they want.
They work a job because they want a paycheck. They support party A or B because it is their parents favorite. They follow a certain religious doctrine because that is what they've been fed all their life. To a point where they don't even know what they want.
If you are confused on what you want, make that your highest priority.
Experiment with everything you can imagine. New jobs, new skills, new interests, new places, new people until you find the one you can't pull yourself away from.
You are bored because you don't have a goal that demands you to acquire new knowledge, learn the skills to solve the challenges life presents you.
You are anxious because your current knowledge and experience is limited to solve the problems facing you.
You need to pursue new information, learn new skills in order to operate at the level the challenges you face demands.
Life becomes interesting when you can move up the level of personal development by solving problems and unlocking the next quest.
It is your responsibility to take yourself out of any situation you have dug yourself in right now. It is useless to blame something else for all your problems. You can blame your friends, family, spouse, or anyone else. The good thing that blaming others does is that it makes us feel good from the inside by convincing our minds that we can’t do anything in this situation, but that’s wrong. There’s always something that you can do. Even if you can’t change the situation, you can always do the best possible thing
In life, you must push into the unknown to fuel your mind. Growth rarely happen in the known domains of life.
Expose yourself to new information and experience (curiosity).
Create something of value with that information to digest it (passion).
Expand your mind when that experience becomes a part of you with practice (mastery).
Transcend that phase of life by passing down that value to others (connection).
That’s the recipe for the good life:
Create, expand, and transcend with the experience you acquire by pursuing self-generated goals that lead you into the unknown.
The Traits Of An Irreplaceable Individual
To win in life you must find the courage to become a first mover.
And cultivate the traits needed to succeed where most fail.
- Become comfortable with uncertainty
- Become comfortable with taking risks
- Become comfortable with being called a fool until the masses realize you’re actually a genius
To quote Mr. Beast: "You’re called crazy until it works. Then you’re called a genius.”
Only those who fear failure and have a pessimistic world view are ignorant enough to call you crazy.
These people lack the perspective, experience, and knowledge to see the hidden upside that most people are too blind to see.
It isn’t until the upside becomes so obvious that the masses can no longer ignore it.
That’s when most people hop on board.
Once this happens, it’s too late, the profitable opportunity is no longer highly profitable (for beginners).
Back in 2019, building an online business off the back of Facebook traffic seemed insane.
But you know who did it anyways?
Ecommerce guys, bloggers were all over.
I was among.
And who are the most successful creators in the space in terms of audience size and annual income?
Still same people.
A hard lesson you need to hear: Waiting for other people to reassure you that you’re on the right path is the quickest way to find yourself on the wrong one.
It’s hard to do the opposite of what everyone else is doing.
It goes against the evolutionary psychology designed to keep you alive by conforming you to your tribes social consensus.
When you see everyone signing up for AI, building an audience, building an online business you feel the pull to hop on the band wagon.
"Ignorance is always afraid of change." — Jawaharlal Nehru
These opportunities make you feel good because the results others have gotten give you a sense of FOMO and false security.
You think:
“If I don’t get on this opportunity now, I’m missing out.”
But the harsh truth is, you’ve already missed out.
The top 5% of creators are milking these opportunities dry.
Making all the money and leaving only the scraps for you.
If you want to build true wealth and influence, you need to test things without fearing to put your feet in the profitable rivers around you.
Only then do you rise to the top of the pyramid.
Thanks for reading.
-Patrick.