If I could attribute all of my progress to one thing — it would be clarity. The ability to order consciousness, that is. Clarity makes focus seamless, and we all know how important that is in the age of information.
As a kid, under 12 years old, I would carry a notebook with me everywhere. One of those “college-rule” notebooks that you would go school shopping for. Except this one wasn’t for school. This is where I drew weird monsters, robots, and anything else that my young mind could imagine.
These drawings were usually the same shape. A humanoid creature with a body, arms, legs, and a head. Sometimes I would make them muscular, sometimes skinny and alien-like, sometimes with horns, sometimes with halos.
As I grew up, I stopped drawing but kept the notebook around. Instead of imaginary figures, I wrote imaginary scenarios for my future. A vision board, if you will. A map of steps I needed to take to get there. I would pin these to my wall above my computer. Whenever I was feeling especially lazy, my vision would stare me in the face — reminding me why I am here.
Turning Dreams (Or Nightmares) Into Reality
Awareness begets awareness. Thoughts beget thoughts. Ideas beget ideas. Projects beget projects… I can go on.
The point: you cannot create a future reality for yourself if you have not first imagined it.
Vice versa, you can only create a negative present reality if you have first imagined it (or experienced it).
Tesla — the company — would not be here if the wheel, wagon, carriage, electricity, and car came before it.
This brings up what could be the biggest problem we are experiencing as a species. And of course, we are the only ones who experience it, because we are the only species alive that has the cognitive ability TO experience it.
I am talking about psychological time or the concept of linear time. That is the big problem. Reminiscing on a familiar past — something you have physically experienced before — and having the same familiar thoughts. Those thoughts pull your past experience into the present. You literally have the same sensory experience. You ARE your past self.
As you repeat these thoughts, emotions, and experiences — your brain hardwires these patterns via neural networks. This is how habits and routines are formed. These are dangerous when unconscious. You remain the person you were in the past. Living out the same negative thoughts and sensory experiences over and over again. We have to learn how to program (internal) or be programmed (external). Create or be created.
The same thing happens with the future. You project into and stress over the predictable future based on your past experiences. Again, you feel those experiences in the present, meaning you haven’t changed throughout your entire unconscious life.
There is a specific neural network for each of these. One for the stress your boss causes. One for getting in the shower. One for arguing with your spouse when you get home. As time goes on, these become more unconscious and disastrous.
Most people wake up and immediately project into a stressful future because of their programming. They wake up as a past version of themselves, having the same exact negative sensory experience they have every morning.
The only way to solve this problem is by diving into the unknown. Thinking new thoughts. Exposing yourself to new ideas. Immersing yourself in an environment conducive to growth (my notion of tactical stress). Building projects that lead to a positive potential reality. Taking unfamiliar actions that you have been told were “risky” — because the people saying that haven’t experienced the “risk” itself.
90+% of the population are a walking contradiction. They live out a “safe” and “certain” path on autopilot — which holds the most risk and uncertainty in our ever-changing world.
The Greatest Skill Of The 21st Century
The mind can cause a lot of problems as we’ve learned. This is because of psychic entropy — the mind tending towards chaos and disorder. This is not bad if you understand how to navigate these phases. They can be very rewarding. However, the solution is clarity. Ordered consciousness. The ability to organize information in a way that quite literally brings it to life. From mind to matter.
Nobody knows what they want to do in life. Nobody sees this as a blessing. Not knowing what you want means you get to create what you want in the infinite potential of the unknown. We will dive more into the science behind the quantum realm in a future letter. Just know, the unknown is where all potential exists. If it is known, that potential has already been actualized. You need to break the habit of living as your known, familiar, and predictable self in your known, familiar, and predictable life.
Now, understand that this is a BIG topic. Everything in the pyramid above deserves its own letter. People have written entire books on all of the different aspects of the pyramid. Hell, I’m writing an entire book on it. We will not be able to understand this all in one post. All future and prior posts incorporate this.
In this letter, we are focused on ordering consciousness to create a positive reality for ourselves. Here are the steps to do that:
1) Material VS Immaterial Experience
“I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.” — Carl Jung
Do not interpret this quote from a materialist paradigm. Think of it from an immaterial, experiential perspective. You ARE who you choose to become. Right now. In this very moment. There is no gap to bridge in the immaterial world.
When you tap into optimal experience, or the flow state, you are having the sensory experience that you crave. You do not care about the fancy car, house, or lifestyle. You care about the feeling or experience it gives you.
You can achieve that experience right now.
Unpopular opinion: “fake it til you make it” is incredible advice.
From a material perspective, it makes you look like a fraud. From an immaterial perspective, there is no faking. You already are that person. The material world will catch up.
2) Create A Crystal Clear Vision
How do we dive into the unknown? Through the power of our mind to visualize the potential reality we want to attract and work towards through intention.
Fun fact: “Intention” comes from Latin intentionem (nominative intentio) “a stretching out, straining, exertion, effort; attention,” noun of action from intendere “to turn one’s attention,” literally “to stretch out”
When you act with intention (a driver in The Creation Pyramid) — you are stretching towards something through attention.
Many people talk bad about the “Law Of Attraction” but think of it like this: through consistent and specific visualization, you are framing your focus. When you practice focusing on your vision (instead of your boss causing you stress) you begin to deprogram the unconscious thought patterns in your brain.
Another example: if you believe you can make money online (because you have clarity on your vision) you will start to notice money-making opportunities. Like when you see a certain car that you haven’t seen before — then you see it EVERYWHERE. You are actively opening your mind to pay attention to new, unknown things and “attracting” those experiences into your life.
By getting specific on how you want your future to look — you can start to tap into that energy.
Energy? Like vibes? What do you mean?
Have you ever “looked forward” to going on vacation and gotten excited in that present moment? That’s what I mean. Environments hold energy. Nature holds energy. Everything holds energy. The frequency of certain energy is information. Our brains process and organize information. Stop thinking about all of this from a materialist paradigm.
You can use my free planner if you want a guided way of doing all of this.
3) Reverse Engineer Your Vision Into Goals
The purpose of creating goals isn’t to focus on them, but to provide more clarity and prove that it can be accomplished. You can think of these as micro-visions if you want. They are simply here to provide additional energy sources to tap into and be able to create a process to execute on when it’s time to actualize your vision.
Everything here is variable. That’s why this is such a large and difficult topic to tackle. I am trying to guarantee success in a world where success is reserved for the 1% that understand The Creation Pyramid.
How I have done it is break it down into 3 goals depending on the scale of what you are trying to create. If you are trying to create a better life, think big. Write out a 10 year goal, 1 year goal, and monthly goal.
Now we can complete these quests, milestones, checkpoints, or “micro-visions” by executing on a specific process.
4) Begin Testing A Process
Think of all of this phase as an experiment. You don’t know what will get results unless you test specific parts. Scientists don’t come up with a replicable process that gets results the first time around. It may take weeks, months, or years.
Patience, faith, and surrender is necessary here. You are creating a reality that nobody has created before. If you want to go back to the “secure,” predictable, and conventional path of living, be my guest. If not, open yourself up to failure.
What lever-moving actions can you execute on everyday that will actualize the monthly, yearly, decade-long, and life-long vision for the reality you are working to attract and create?
If this part makes you anxious, you will need to self-educate and practice to increase your skill. If this part makes you bored, you will need to increase the challenge.
5) Leverage Intrinsic Drivers
Curiosity, passion, purpose, inspiration, and intention are all tools at your disposal to improve the quality of your work.
These all influence dopamine and other neurochemicals in your brain. When you are inspired through curiosity pursuit, you do better work. When you have a strong why or purpose, you do better work. These are energy sources that you can tap into at any time.
These should be intrinsic motivators, not extrinsic.
6) Control & Channel Your Attention
This deserves an entire post in itself. For now, understand that you can tap into the energy from any level of the pyramid. These are all options to free up creative energy.
Attention gives and receives energy. We process the information that comes from frequencies, but can only process it if attention is given to it.
When you give unconscious attention to negative energy — like visualizing a stressful scenario with your boss at work — you tap into that energy source. There is an exchange of energy and you feel that energy going to waste.
By managing your attention, you free up energy to put maximum effort into your vision.
When in doubt, bring your attention to the present moment. Expand your awareness. Open your focus. And tap into the infinite potential and positivity that the unknown holds.
Example Breakdown:
One aspect of your vision for the future is to make 6 figures with a creative skillset. We can get more specific, and you should, but let’s break it down into goals:
- 10 year goal: make 6 figures creating content selling design tutorials (4 clients at $2250 per month OR 84 sales of a $99 course)
- 1 year goal: make $60,000 with graphic design mentoring and plan out a course
- 1 month goal: land one consulting client at $1,000
Now we need a process to focus on for making that a reality:
- Post 3 tweets a day to build authority and a public resume
- DM 10 people that interact with my posts and run them through a DM outreach soft-script
- 1 timeline promotion per day for your product or service
Now, tap into certain intrinsic drivers. Even better, bake it into your routine with my free creative process.
Frame your focus further by blocking off 1 hour every day to execute this process.
Becoming Multi-Dimensionally Jacked
The Creation Pyramid is not only for creating a better life for yourself. It can be applied to all dimensions of your personal and professional life.
Starting a new project?
Create a vision for it, gain clarity with goal setting, reduce the friction of taking action, and focus.
How about creating a better relationship?
Create a vision for how you want the interaction with your significant other to go, gain clarity on how to make that happen, and frame your attention.
Starting an online business with a personal brand?
This is how you create your brand.
Your vision is the desired outcome you are helping others reach. The goals to get there are what you educate your audience on. Your drive is what attracts like-minded people. Capturing attention and framing the focus of your audience is how you help them navigate roadblocks.
Bonus: create a vision board of images that you like. I like black and white skyscrapers (I used to dream of living in a big city, and black and white is just my style) can you see that in my brand?
What about the feeling you want to convey? What environment, profile pictures, colors, and other forms of information that humans process through attention do you want to convey? It’s about the experience.
The same thing goes for creating a product or service. What is the desired outcome? How do they get there? What is the process that gets results that you walk them through? Are they able to focus and actually achieve those results? Are you making it seamless for them?
The next time you feel lost in any dimension — mind, body, spirit, business, and the rest — refer to the creation pyramid to gain clarity and create the reality you want to live in.
— Dan Koe
What Happened This Week
My school for future full-time creatives, marketers, & solopreneurs — Digital Economics — starts June 14th. The price increases by $100 in 3 days.
A new YouTube video went live on how to “copy and steal” your way to success. Watch here.
A podcast went live on generating content ideas and not caring what people think. Listen here.
Inside MMHQ — I posted the growth strategy I used to get my first 1,000 followers (without engaging with others). Sana, the personal brand master posted 15 authenticity mistakes that people make. Koe Letter readers can join for $5.
