Heeeeeeeeeeey there, have a seat, how have you been DOING??
I wanted to call you into my office today for a bit of a “serious” talk.
No, nooooo, I’m not going to tell you I want to touch you in your secret place, or pull down my pants and tell you to “open wide”.
(That was my last appointment.)
But I wanted to talk to you about some REAL SHIT that’s pretty significant to me, and that’s taken me years of oftentimes bizarre and intense experiences to go “click” in my head.
The topic for today is………: What I personally believe it takes to become TRULY successful.
I’m not talking on a level where other people give you props and admiration, or where you can give yourself a pat on the back for being a few steps ahead of the “average man”.
I’m talking about a level beyond this: a “zone” of personal pride and self-respect, where you can honestly say you’ve stepped the fuck up to the fullest of your potential abilities.
You obviously know that this exists, and that you COULD get there if you really decided to. It’s just that it’s often tedious, annoying, and inconvenient to summon the motivation to walk the treacherous path.
And why should you?? Why should you keep going further and further, and further and further, to fulfill what you know you’re capable of??
I mean, hey, if life is already treating you pretty agreeably—if you’ve already TAMED that sweet bitch—then why is it even worth your time??
Well your story as a “self-improved” dude: it usually goes something like this.
You start with the realization that the way you’ve been living your life is no longer working.
Maybe it was good for a while, and even served your needs to a certain extent. But you reach a point where it’s become more painful to continue as you’ve been going than it is to make a change.
This prompts you into taking MASSIVE ACTION.
You take on new missions, new ideals. You pursue them with a single-minded focus. All of your day-to-day habits are reconsidered, and everything is shifted to align with your newfound goals.
This forces you into confronting many daunting challenges, internal foes and adversaries. Many weaker parts of your personality are even forced to DIE.
At the end of the day, you realize that the only evils were the ones within: that what you perceived as the enemy outside of yourself was nothing more than an illusory projection of your own limited sense of reality.
Maybe most important of all, you realize that EVERYTHING IN LIFE WILL BE OKAY.
All of the overwhelming challenges that seemed so bad at the time: the universe was secretly orchestrating them at just the right moment, so that you could become the person who you are today.
Then the taste of “ultimate victory”: returning to share the knowledge that you’ve gained.
Joseph Campbell has dubbed this the “Hero’s Journey”— the pattern of human adventure that spans across cultures; where we’re called upon to undertake a perilous journey, locate the necessary mentors and resources, pass a number of difficult tests that transform us, and return home to share the wisdom that we’ve learned.
There’s a sweet and pleasing flavor in this, where you can be a source of strength for other people who are confronted with their own difficult challenges.
And the most important piece of knowledge you can share: that as long as you maintain a positive attitude and unwavering belief that the universe is unfolding in your best interests, you WILL be okay.
Trust that “the universe will provide”. Trust that the difficulties that lie in front of you are an opportunity in disguise, and that as long as you don’t lose sight of these important realizations, everything WILL work out for the best.
But then there’s a problem with this.
Yuuuup, a PROOOOOOOBLEM. Woooooooooooooo!!!
And in fact I’d even say that this problem is so sneaky and insidious, so downright NASTY, that it has the potential to create havoc in the lives of the most intelligent and talented individuals I’ve met.
The problem is that you think THE JOURNEY IS DONE.
You’ve taken on the identity as “The guy who has already made his journey, and is now the source of strength for others.” You freely give advice to people that they need to get outside of their comfort zones, and embrace the tedious and repetitive tasks that are necessary for success in any field, while believing that you no longer need to do the same.
That outside-the-box thinking you used to do?? That hunger to experiment, to be exposed to new situations, to bang out that day-to-day grind??
Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaahn!!
It’s been replaced with a more “matured” and “adult” point of view. All that running around like a chicken with your head cut off is for kids who haven’t “made it” yet—not you, wonderful you.
This is, of course, is a load of bullshit, and here’s why.
The “universe” that you trust to “provide” for you is ultimately made up of UNSTABLE ENERGY that is always changing, shifting, and morphing into new forms.
This is the beauty of the universe, and I mean kidding aside, it is fucking beautiful.
What’s especially beautiful about the universe is that it is engaged in endless cycles of creative conception and creative destruction.
“Out with the old, in with the new…”
To believe that your journey is done is NOT to “trust in the universe” but to disrespect it; to stagnate, to rot from the inside out, to disengage with “flowing” forces of life.
SOOOOORRY!!
But again, the delusion that “the journey is done” is a powerful and vicious one. Why??
Perhaps it’s because we believe that in re-assuming the youthful hustle and experimentation, we would somehow be DISRESPECTING the universe—which has clearly taught us that all we need to do is have faith and “everything will work out for the best”.
And maybe it goes even deeper.
Maybe we mentally and emotionally associate the process of taking “massive action” with being a naïve and confused youngster, and it brings back all of those uncertain and confused feelings that we thought we’d long outgrown.
To re-engage with the process also feels like we’re required to forfeit our roles as the “wise dudes who made it” and be condemned to rubbing shoulders with the other youngsters who are still out to “make their mark”.
BLAAAAHHHH!!
So there are not only a number of negative emotions that are associated with admitting the journey isn’t over yet, but a resistance to giving up an “identity” and “social standing” that’s provided a lot of benefits up until this point.
AND YET in spite of all these bad emotions, in spite of how inconvenient and mentally-agitating it is to evolve and hustle…the ever-changing, shifting, morphing universe will eventually come crushing down, even upon the wise old man who believes himself “above the fray”.
The process is impersonal and indiscriminate. Why??
Because ultimately, we are all made up of unstable energy ourselves, and the universe has proven ruthless towards any unstable energy that deceives itself into believing it can “become stable” for too long a period of time.
What I’ve come to believe the “wise old man” fails to understand is this.
Yes, there is absolutely a process whereby if you undertake a journey, and you maintain a positive attitude towards all the nasty shit that comes along the path, all the problems that seemed bad at the time will turn out to be amongst the best things that ever happened to you.
However to gain these benefits for yourself, you have to 1) keep your cool, and 2) actually be on a journey, which involves TAKING ACTION of some form.
The first doesn’t work without the second, as keeping your cool has little benefit without the component of action—which is what the wise old man conveniently forgets.
The universe is a WOMAN who rewards those who ENGAGE with it.
It has a tendency to get all hot and bothered by certain qualities: personal initiative, industriousness, enthusiasm, discipline, concentrated effort, and of course, alertness to opportunities and the courage to act on them decisively.
But the universe is also a bit of a demanding bitch.
From time to time it gets all crazy and hysterical, and demands that you adapt, evolve, and assume new paradigms, ultimately transforming into something better than you are, again and again.
Just like a demanding woman, the universe does this to you because it secretly knows that you can become MORE. And when you have singularity of purpose, willingness to actualize whatever potentials within yourself are needed to reach it, and acceptance that the weaker parts of yourself will have to painfully die, you eventually receive all of the “unexpected and hidden rewards”.
You’ve engaged with the universe, and the universe provides.
How about no action?? No change in your behavior?? No using the road blocks as a force against which to evolve??
Well then you just suck.
There is no “master plan” of the universe to make all of your petty little dreams come true. The universe doesn’t care if you’ve got a cute girlfriend you get along with. It doesn’t care if you have a nice house, or a cool car, or a creative and rewarding job.
It just seemed that way because when you engaged with it, a lot of amazing things happened to occur.
The universe is impersonal.
It rewards those who move in harmony with its proclivities, and it eventually crushes, or PULLS APART AT THE SEAMS any entity that stubbornly “stays the same”. Whether it’s the Himalayan Mountains, the continents, or just some random dude who thinks he’s the shit—it doesn’t care.
There are many, many examples of people who’ve had bad things happen to them. And guess what?
They just got messed up, their lives were worse off, and that was it. In fact that is the majority of people for whom problems arise.
Most people don’t go on to live their dreams—to create their vision, to become the person they want to be, to develop those amazing skills. Mostly they go on to become average, and then rationalize how they never wanted their dreams anyway.
These people aren’t walking their own personal journeys, so when setbacks, frustrations, or even tragedies inevitably arise, they receive no lesson, no personal evolution, no increased “depth of being”.
They just feel pissed off and sad, maybe victimized, and THAT IS IT.
The wise old man who has retired from his journey: he has re-engaged with a similar pattern of stagnation.
Except when bad things happen to him, he rationalizes “This will work out for the best.” And because he doesn’t realize that he’s no longer ENGAGED with the process that spins bad events into personal transformation, his situation gradually gets worse and worse.
It’s like how when you drop a frog into boiling water, he’ll have the reflexes to jump out and save himself. But when you put him in water that’s room temperature and gradually increase it to a boil, he won’t notice and stay right where he is.
This is what so often happens to the wise old man who has walked his journey and now retired to offer advice: a change finally comes up in his life, and he simply FAILS TO ADEQUATELY RESPOND.
“Oh well this sucks. But it’ll work out for the best. I mean hey, I’m ME, and good things happen to me because I have the secret knowledge that if I keep my cool the universe will take care of the rest.”
He’s come to this conclusion from years of watching people freak out and make their problems worse—when if they’d just had faith that “This too, shall pass…” they’d have been better off. But he’s extended the epiphany too far.
He’s now in a headspace where he resonates more with “being chill” than “taking action”.
And when you’re in a zone of “self-acceptance” over “self-improvement”—instead of a healthy balance between the two—it makes sense that anything involving a big fuss to improve your situation won’t resonate with you the way it did “back in the day”.
The pattern is also reinforced by our human tendency to create “personal myths”.
It is healthy and normal that to retain our sanity amidst the chaos of life, we’d be inclined to create our own personal myths.
The belief that the universe is constructed to allow you to achieve your greatest potential is of tremendous value to your morale and spirits, insofar as it makes your mind positive, and frees you from the limitations of self-doubt, discouragement, and indecision.
But the TRUTH that the universe tends to be a friendly place to those people who LABOR TO ACHIEVE their potential is only of benefit to you, so long as it does not become the DISTORTION that it OWES IT TO YOU to do so.
Rome’s myth of itself as an eternal empire was of value as long as it supported the standards that assured its growth and dominance. But when leaders took their own myths too seriously and became more petty, prone to infighting, and lazy than they could get away with, their empire was eventually destroyed.
Britain’s myth as being inherently superior to its colonies benefitted them as long as it had the clout to maintain their subject’s loyalty and compliance. But when the idea of self-government proved to be a stronger motivator than service to a monarch who claimed to be chosen by God, both their economy and global influence were eventually surpassed.
And while America’s myth as “the greatest country on earth” is NOW valuable for maintaining accountability to a higher set of ideals and moral values, it will become a hindrance if it leads to a culture of apathy and entitlement—and likewise, if its citizens come to believe the government is mostly responsibility for their prosperity, as opposed to their own innovations and hard work.
(Obviously the government needs to continually become more stream-lined and effective as well.)
The universe feels no obligation to conform to ANYONE’S personal myth—no matter how sacred, widely-believed, or convenient the myth may be.
Although feelings might be hurt in the process, all beliefs about one’s permanent nature will eventually be proven as false, unless they are adaptable to the constantly changing landscape of WHAT’S REAL.
Of course failure, like success, is rarely achieved overnight: it is the culmination of many small decisions (and consistent execution of those decisions) over an extended period of time.
Failure is a teacher, and one of our most valuable RIGHTS on this earth is the RIGHT TO FAIL.
The right to fail is the other side of the coin of our right to succeed—and it is equally important. We all need to taste failure, again and again, in order to grow up.
However when confronted with failure, we ultimately have two choices.
The first is the strong choice: to look directly in the mirror, to even CRY at our own incompetence and inadequacy, and then proceed to correct our course.
This is what leads to increased happiness over the long term, and as funny as it sounds, over my thirty years of life I’ve been at this point a few times myself.
To look at yourself and recognize, “There is a weak / apathetic / arrogant / fear-based / unfocused side of my personality that’s brought me here,” means that the failure cannot continue forever—and a better future has now become possible.
This requires the ability to look at yourself in disgust for your incompetence, but also the compassion to quickly forgive yourself and move forward.
Of course, anyone can recognize OTHER PEOPLE who’d benefit from a good old-fashioned “self-disgusted cry in the mirror”, but the harder part is admitting you might be in this situation YOURSELF.
This leads to the second choice, which is the weaker one: to create elaborate narratives about how our failure is anyone’s other than our own.
To do so means we forego our right to fail, one of life’s true gifts, and turn our heads away from the lessons that failure is designed to teach us.
Obviously this fritters away an amazing potential, and gives birth to a chain reaction of problems we may fail to predict.
We can be told that we’ll fail for months or years until it finally happens, but if we choose to dodge and weave around the negative emotions instead of allowing them to “sink in” and wake us up, we retreat further into a fictional universe in our minds.
This “fictional universe” could involve how other people didn’t give us the support we needed, or how we’ve been persecuted and punished for upholding a higher moral standard. It doesn’t matter, as long as it allows our existing self-image, behaviors, and beliefs to remain undisturbed.
(Leo DiCaprio’s recent movie “Shutter Island” explores this topic—the decision between waking up and admitting we’ve failed, so we can move forward; or “shutting our eyes” and maintaining our pleasant illusions, even if it destroys us.)
Conversely, our fictional universe might be based on some far-fetched “grand plans” that could supposedly solve all our problems in a single bold move.
This is often even more seductive, as it seems more “befitting” to our inflated self-image than the REALITY of success, which often requires tedious and repetitive day-to-day tasks, as well as ongoing risk taking and openness to new thinking, in order to gradually produce the results that we want.
“Why should the wise old man have to hustle like all those gophers that haven’t “made it” yet?? Pfffft!! With this GRAND PLAN I can keep chill-axing without all the crazy drama.”
Grand plans, like blaming easy-to-identify outside forces blocking us, are the beloved distraction of the mind to avoid facing the larger complexity of what’s needed to succeed.
They allow us to dodge, deflect, and procrastinate handling what needs to get handled—as there is no reasoning with someone who believes the small tasks are a “waste of time” and “unworthy” of their amazing potential, just as there is no reasoning with someone who believes they are being unfairly “blocked from succeeding” regardless.
But then why bother dealing with all this?? Why not just live in our own happy little reality, even if we’re not technically as well off in our external lives??
Happiness is subjective, and it’s now common knowledge that the people who’ve achieved the most success are not necessarily the most happy.
I think we can say it’s pretty obvious at this point: when we place our entire focus on winning at one area, we often lose out in the rest of our lives.
Nonetheless, I feel this is also an epiphany that is often extended too far. I’ve seen it stretched, exaggerated, and ultimately distorted from a life-affirming truth into a self-deceiving lie.
It’s pretty rare that I’m exasperated, but it’s often felt like an annoying pet-peeve, as words that have personal meaning and significance to me are taken out-of-context, and used as an excuse for stagnation.
(If there is one consistent pattern I’ve drawn from thirty years of life, it is that underachievers whose lives are NOT balanced, whose results are NOT worth emulating, are compelled to talk about “balance”—just as those who live out of integrity are compelled to judge the integrity of others, deflecting the task of examining their own thoughts and behavior.)
Happiness is not achieved by avoiding what’s meaningful to us, in exchange for an easier, safer, more predictable life. That is particularly the case for a man in his twenties, thirties, and forties, but it is also the case for ANY man who wants to enjoy his life to the fullest.
And while I believe that happiness is in fact our “default state”, and that it is our “inner purpose” to get out of our conceptual worlds and into REALITY long enough to realize it, I ALSO believe that by ignoring our “outer purpose” and creating layers of lies in order to deal with it, we in fact drive ourselves FURTHER INTO OUR HEADS, and away from the reality that could bring us happiness by default.
I remember returning to Hawaii from a three month stint in Brazil and Argentina, and as I returned home from the airport, I spoke to the taxi cab driver about how Hawaii had changed.
At first he spoke about it with enthusiasm, recalling the island when it was more natural and less commercially developed. He’d point out places where he and his wife and friends used to spend time together, and how much fun they’d had “back in the day”.
Initially I admired him for leading an ideal and serene existence—living a happy life with a woman he loved, among friends on a beautiful island paradise.
But as we spoke further, the end result of his existence became apparent.
The taxi driver now lived mostly in the past, and he was noticeably confused. He spoke of how he was miserable and purposeless for the past fifteen years since his wife had died, and how he never wanted to re-marry so he wouldn’t have to go through the pain of loss all over again.
He didn’t understand why people had come and commercialized his island, and why everything had to change when it was perfect the way it was.
While he’d lived decades in a womb of predictable tranquility, he hadn’t become the type of person who could cope with change and find a deeper meaning in loss. He felt only internal resistance and vexation, and lived life in the past in order to avoid the significance of his present circumstances.
Fifteen years of his life, fading away in a haze of bewilderment about what went wrong. Who would have looked at his old life and expected this type of “happy ending”??
Of course, the taxi driver could have had other factors influencing his train of thought in my brief encounter with him—maybe he was in a bad mood. But I take his story as a common sense analogy more than anything else.
From my meeting with him, I walked away with the realization that any fantasies I had about building the perfect life where I was never disturbed was a fool’s paradise.
I realized that the closest I’d ever get to any “paradise” was to engage with the reality that was directly in front of me, with its subtle textures and endless variety, and that the price of admission was to WAKE UP from one’s self-imposed slumber as often as possible, until it became engrained.
And this brings us back to the idea of “true success”. What is it?? How can you explain it??
In my personal view, it can be boiled down to two factors.
The first is the willingness to keep going.
Not “making an identity” from external success and then sheltering your self-image from being challenged, but pursuing the “next level” for the thrill of seeing your highest vision become real.
And the second is the realization that beyond a base level of personal security and amusement, stepping up isn’t about “getting the stuff that you want”, but the decision to become the person you want to be.
Not pursuing challenge to reach a “final destination” and then maintain it, but using it as a means to continually call forth your attention from the confines of the mind, and wake yourself up to higher degrees of awareness and appreciation for your experience.
THESE TWO are what bring you the deeper, more profound levels of contentment in my opinion—as the world is such a rich and astounding environment, and your ability to see it through the lens of one who has achieved the “bigger picture” offers more reward than any material or self-image gratification have with them to provide.
Ultimately, you may require a more complex level of stimulation to be happy in life, or you might find the simpler pleasures to be what turn your crank—it depends on your personality and tendencies, and neither is better or worse.
What’s important however, is your willingness to keep that “candle of awareness” burning bright, because the decision to stop travelling your journey is usually a slow “fading away”.
Not because you accumulate “less stuff” or live a less “glamorous” life…
But because you become less grounded in the world of experience, and increasingly dependent on a fictional realm of ideas, principles, rules, and values as your mode of orientation—and this realm up in your head gradually becomes too disconnected from how the world works, where you stand in it, and what it takes to get things done.
“Well yeah, but, things SHOULD work this way…I think that that’s only reasonable!!”
The “substitute reality” intended to preserve mental energy and make the world simple then becomes a dependency, atrophies your mind and suffocates your spirits, until they flicker out like a candle with plenty of remaining wax, but insufficient oxygen to stay aflame.
You’ve seen this happen to countless people—most OLD folks tend to look like this. But conversely, you’ve also seen older people who exemplify what someone of their experience could potentially accomplish over their years of life.
These are the people to whom the average person would seem gifted with extraordinary talent, but in reality, are mostly just mature adults who KEPT WALKING along their chosen paths.
And so to wrap up, the reason I wanted to speak with you today…………..
It’s my firm belief that life does not have to be hard.
Frantically clasping at outcomes and being addicted to struggle are GREAT for creating an initial momentum, but they are hardly the “be all, end all” of being alive.
There is a natural “zone” that human beings have the capacity to slide into, where the abiding presence of contentment, non-judgmental gratitude for your situation, and seemingly effortless “non-doing” to reach your goals becomes simple and easy.
Focus is in high definition—you process information rapidly and make decisions in a fluid manner, not paralyzed in the analytical part of what you need to do. You’re FAST, because if you’re afraid to fail then you’ll fail, so FUCK IT, you enjoy failure as the sign that the next paradigm needs to be achieved.
You cut through obstacles like a buzz saw: you are hungry and yet complete.
And all this comes from “flow” and “momentum”—the opposite of most people’s concept of success.
The NON successful person is often even dissuaded from taking action when they see this—as their paradigm of happiness is based on “doing the least amount of work for the most possible gain” and their “journey being done”.
The elusive obvious, however, is that the collective wet dreams of winning the lottery, or receiving passive income, or having people who want to be nice to you, or even girls who want to sleep with you, are WORTHLESS GARBAGE if they are not associated with WAKING UP, but falling DEEPER ASLEEP.
The trouble is falling in and out of the realization—because when the lessons you’ve acquired have been hard-earned and allowed you to achieve an initial level of success, the tendency is to IDENTIFY with them and clasp too tight.
OF COURSE IT’S TRUE we have to respect what’s worked for us over the course of our lives, and preserve the essential core of what’s gotten us to where we’re at.
We will enjoy our lives to the fullest, however, by keeping in mind that our TRUE selves are not the lessons that we’ve learned, but the “self” that is not overly self-monitoring or aware of personal myths, and simply creates and perceives.
THAT is the “self” that has the ability to continually evolve, and is coaxed to the surface as you walk along your path………………
Which makes you happy, and is in my current opinion, the essence of your success.
You can sum it up by saying that flow is the essence of life, stagnation is the essence of death, and the journey is the compos that keeps you moving, flowing, and in alignment with a happy, friendly universe that tends to “provide”.
Does this make sense?? I hope it does.
Even if it’s possibly the most ultra-preachy nonsense I’ve ever spewed out of my brain—it’s been brewing in my mind for a few years, and the synthesis of a lot of nonsense and bullshit I’ve come across, as well as positive situations I’ve been fortunate to perceive.
" and is loving it.