The problem:
People are programmed at a young age to rely on everyone but themselves to secure their future.
- The parents who are living in the past and out of touch with new opportunities.
- The schools that are funded by the system they train you into.
- The employers who benefit from you not seeking better options (and will probably lay you off in the next 10 years).
- The society that distracts you with news, memes, and other noise that controls your emotional well being.
The perfect formula for an insecure future.
Learn this. Do that. Take your exams. Believe in this God. Get this job.
By the time you start navigating your 20s, your mind is a computer program that runs the same functions over and over again.
Wake up. Go to work. Put in minimal effort. Pay the bills. Scroll social media. Wish for the past. Worry about tomorrow. And have brief glimpses of a future where your delusional sense of security will be threatened by AI, automation, or just the randomness of life.
There is no doing nothing with your life.
There is only doing what you want, or doing what others want for you.
And if you choose the latter, your life becomes more and more mechanical until it is near impossible to escape.
The solution:
Become independent.
Think for yourself.
Earn for yourself.
Dive into the unknown.
Create your own security.
Revolt against all conventional paths in life, as that is the only way to allow room for truth.
Krishnamurti wrote:
Life is really very beautiful, it is not this ugly thing that we have made of it; and you can appreciate its richness, its depth, its extraordinary loveliness only when you revolt against everything – against organized religion, against tradition, against the present rotten society – so that you as a human being find out for yourself what is true. Not to imitate but to discover – that is education, is it not?
This leaves us with one task:
Open our minds, take our own path, and discover our way into a life of meaning.
Before we begin, enrollment for the Writer’s Bootcamp closes tomorrow night.
If you want to build an audience (AKA the first step to building any business or monetizing any creative work) with writing (a timeless skill that doesn’t require intensive video editing and animation) – check it out here.
I would like to think that the courses we provide start with the fundamental teaching to think for yourself. We give you templates and processes, but they are made to help you create your own way.
Learning How To Hunt
You can’t find enjoyment in life because you don’t know how to hunt.
- You’re assigned material to read to pass your exams.
- You’re assigned a routine to complete your tasks at a job.
- You’re assigned beliefs and values to survive in your culture.
The problem with assigned goals is that the path to achieve them is known. You are doing something that’s been done before, or you are repeating tasks that a visionary assigned to you to build their dream instead of your own.
Your psyche, or mind, is wired to hunt for its survival.
If you were to put a chimpanzee in a flourescent lit cubicle for 8 hours a day, do you think it would thrive?
Of course not. It lacks the natural environment that contributes to its psychological well-being. You don’t need a scientific paper to assume this.
When you perform the same tasks, day in day out, at a job, there is no more learning. There is no challenge. There is no growth.
The only options you have are:
- Focus on the predictable future and get anxious, so you numb your mind with distractions.
- Focus on the familiar past and get bored, so again, you numb your mind with distractions.
- Set a new goal so you can finally take control of your life and start navigating the unknown – the only place you can learn, grow, and expand.
If you don’t have a goal, the only option is to get distracted.
To “hunt” is to discover knowledge, skills, ideas, and opportunities that help you achieve the goals you set for yourself.
And once those goals become known, you must have another one ready so you do not get lost.
That leads to step one.
1) Vision For Direction
The world’s greatest artists, founders, and creatives are all visionaries.
They have an evolving image of what they want the future to look like.
Your vision is your life’s work.
Your vision is the Massively Transformative Purpose that Steven Kotler illustrates as a step to achieving the impossible.
Your vision is your life’s task, as Robert Greene would point to as a key to a good life.
As I said, your vision is an evolving image.
You discover what you want by realizing what you don’t want and revolting against it.
Your vision will come and go.
You’ve felt its power before.
When your vision is clear, use that energy.
When your vision is foggy, keep an open mind for the lessons that life is trying to teach you.
2) Goals For Clarity
Set a 10-year goal.
Set a 1-year goal.
Set monthly goals.
Set weekly goals.
Set daily goals.
Then, forget about them all.
You need goals to reorient your mind toward the habits you must form that create the future you choose.
You need goals to form the system that would achieve those goals.
You need goals so your pattern-recognition machine of a mind can notice and store information that aids in the achievement of those goals.
You probably won’t hit all of those goals.
They probably won’t keep you motivated.
Use them to reverse engineer what you need to do to reach your vision, then forget about them.
3) Systems For Progress
Winners and losers have the same goals. – James Clear
A system can’t exist without a goal, a goal won’t be achieved without a system.
What is a system?
In terms that are relevant to your life, it’s a series of actions or processes that lead to a specific result.
We see these in the forms of habits, routines, rituals, practice, and repetition in the areas of your life that are important.
We are talking about conscious systems in alignment with a self-generated goal. Not unconscious, known systems toward assigned goals. Big difference.
Self-generated goals evolve when achieved.
Assigned goals stay the same, and the modes of achieving them become efficient with time and get replaced by technology.
If you want to make money, you need a system for writing content every day to generate traffic.
If you want to get fit, you need a system for training and eating, preferably one that you find enjoyable and sustainable.
If you want a better relationship, you need a system for communication and connection.
One system doesn’t fit all.
The path to full control over your future is to solve your own problem with a unique system and sell the solution, over and over again, evolving as society’s personal and collective problems do. That’s how you adapt.
You can see this happening right now on social media. Some inidividuals sell clothing, some blue light glasses, others knowledge, others software, and so on. Less corporate, more individual.
How do you create a system?
Self-experimentation.
Nobody can teach you how to do something. They can only teach you how they do something.
- Research processes that others have found success with. You can find these on social media, in courses, or with a simple Google search.
- Experiment with various techniques. Implement the processes you learn and attempt to get results.
- Discover patterns and principles. Note the similarities between each and double down on them.
- Create your own process. Tailor what you learn to your unique lifestyle and situation.
- Contribute to true education by passing it down. Give people education that can’t be taught in schools with a fundamental grounding in critical thinking.
If you want to learn how to pursue your interests, create systems, and sell them as a high-leverage digital product – check out Mental Monetization.
4) Open-Mindedness For Awareness
Traditional education and hyperspecialization is a way to make people subservient to the dominant paradigm / system. Study the generalized principles of nature and be a deep generalist. – Daniel Schmachtenberger
Many people don’t want to hear this, but schools were created to keep you narrow-minded and dumb.
You are given a hierarchy of goals to pursue.
You learn within one niche to reach the fabricated prestige that niche offers.
You want that degree, even when you know deep down you could succeed massively without it, so the only things you learn are in alignment with that degree. By the time you get it, you aren’t educated at all. You just spent 4 years learning your way into limited opportunities and potential replacement. Education is not programming.
Slaves were expected to perform one task for the entirety of their lives.
Free men were expected to do many things throughout their lives, because that brings power, flexibility, principles based decision making, and the ability to change direction with a well-rounded skill set to nearly guarantee success.
If you are just getting started on your own path, this will be a difficult transition.
Your mind will close off and react to everything that threatens your worldview.
Social media? That’s toxic. It’s all memes and negativity.
Starting a business? That’s for people who already have money, not people who want to start making more.
Writing? That’s only for English majors, academics, and authors. I definitely don’t text and persuade my friends every day. I definitely couldn’t provide some form of value and find more like-minded people on the internet.
You must practice opening your mind when you notice a negative reaction.
You must call yourself out on your own bullsh*t.
You must see beyond the ideas and beliefs that older generations programmed into your head, because they’re blinding you from your potential, and you don’t even know it.
Rather than reacting and distracting yourself from problems, open your mind and think through all perspectives, not just the one that discourages action and keeps you a slave.
5) Agency For Problem Solving
The difference between an employee and an entrepreneur is agency.
An employee is given a problem to solve to achieve the goals of the company they work for.
An entrepreneur identifies and solves problems without the need to ask permission from someone, or else they will never achieve their goals.
At Kortex, I’m grateful that everyone on our team is high-agency.
They are not employees, they are entrepreneurs collaborating with other entrepreneurs.
They hold the same vision for our product. When they spot a problem, they solve it and share the solution with us, even if we have to make small changes to that solution. But even then, we can’t improve on a solution that doesn’t exist.
As an example, one of our developers, Ian, came to us randomly one day with a complete redesign of the app. It set us back a bit, but the app wouldn’t have seen an exponential jump in quality without his initiative.
In your own life, if you want to stay relevant in the coming years, you can’t depend on anybody for your security.
Problems will always exist.
If you can’t spot them, you lose.
If you can’t give yourself permission to solve them, you lose.
6) Creativity For Unique Solutions
Unfortunately, most of us are becoming mere technicians. We pass examinations, acquire this or that technique in order to earn a livelihood; but to acquire technique or develop capacity with a paying attention to the inner state, brings about ugliness and chaos in the world. If we awaken creative beauty inwardly, it expresses itself outwardly, and then there is order. – Krishnamurti
What is creativity?
That is an extremely difficult question to answer when you peel beyond the surface of skills and identities labeled as “creative” like designers and filmmakers. But those “creatives” can still follow mechanical stupifying processes in their work.
Creativity, in my eyes, is the process of bringing order to consciousness. To embrace chaos, collect the dots, connect the dots, and create with the dots:
- Create certainty from uncertainty
- Create sense from non-sense
- Create clarity from chaos
- Create focus from distraction
- Create signal from noise
- Create something from nothing
- Create success from failure
- Create meaning from struggle
- Create life from death
- Create positive from negative
As Krishnamurti said above, most of us are becoming technicians. Robots.
It’s no wonder why people are so afraid of losing their jobs and being replaced. They lack creativity. They are not creators.
Machines can solve a problem in 30 seconds that used to take a human hundreds of hours to solve.
That means, if you follow a string of assignments at a massive corporation, it isn’t a question of if you will be replaced, it’s a question of when.
What most worried people don’t understand is that problems will never go away.
AI may help solve for our basic needs, but what about our growth needs? What about the new problems – that people can’t predict – that emerge from advancements in technological efficiency?
This isn’t anything new, it’s just happening faster than it has before, meaning the chances for replacement are happening more than before, unless you adapt.
Can AI solve the need for challenge, health, connection, meaning, spirituality, and every other aspect of self-actualization that can’t be reduced to an external solution?
This shines light on the emerging Meaning Economy.
To solve your own problems and sell the unique solution.
To dive into the unknown, set your mind on the vision for the future, collect the knowledge and skill that allows you make it reality, and distribute your findings to others to unify consciousness.
To create or be created.
In a research paper titled “ChatGPT is Bullh*t,” a sort of sequal to the declaration that “ChatGPT is a bullsh*t generator” from computer scientists Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor:
Because these programs cannot themselves be concerned with truth, and because they are designed to produce text that looks truth-apt without any actual concern for truth, it seems appropriate to call their outputs bullsh*t.”
In my interpretation, the major downfall of machines is they lack conscious experience.
If you can harness the singular yet infinitely complex trait of self-reflective consciousness, you have a chance to survive.
That is to say, if you learn to earn (or survive) with the creative ability of your mind – not time, labor, looks, status, prestige, handouts, or any other fickle and replaceable materialistic resource – you unlock a level of power reserved for those of true wealth.
Making Money Is A Meta Skill
This is going to sound shallow to those who have a bad relationship with money.
“Making money” is the most valuable skill you can learn.
I don’t mean following the generic advice of “learning a marketable skill and selling it as an agency or freelancer.” That’s just another assignment that narrows your mind and makes you dumb.
I mean understanding how to make money in any environment.
Even if a skill becomes outdated.
Even if AI is going to threaten all jobs.
Even if you lose everything you have tomorrow.
Your job is to reach the point where you have the utmost confidence you can succeed in any environment. You no longer rely on someone else to provide for you.
If you were forced to make $10,000 by tomorrow, and you don’t know how to do that, you have work to do. And yes, for those who had a similar mindset to me, it’s possible. Very possible actually, we are just so used to attributing a certain amount of money to a certain amount of work.
Entrepreneurship is how you hunt for your survival in the modern world.
Why?
Because true entrepreneurship requires you to become future-proof.
So how do you make money? How do you become an entrepreneur? How do you become future-proof?
It’s simple on the surface but complex in depth as all meaningful things are:
- Create value through creativity, experimentation, and experience (improve yourself).
- Distribute value through attention, media, and persuasion (improve humanity).
When you are in control of the vision, AI and technology become the tool, not the master.
The beautiful thing about that simple process is that it never ends.
Value evolves with time.
Value is perception.
Meaning, you have to give the right thing to the right person for them to see it as valuable (for them to pay you money).
A boomer will see gold as more valuable than Bitcoin unless persuaded otherwise by getting in front of them with persuasive media where they hang out.
We’ve already learned how to create value in the previous section:
Solve your own problems and sell the solution.
Preferably in the eternal markets: health, wealth, relationships, and happiness.
Modern Distribution – How To Get Your Value In Front Of The Right People
The distribution of value has been around since the beginning of time, but it has taken many shapes.
The most accessible form of distribution at this point in time is writing on the internet:
Social media, email (where I’m holding your attention right now), scripts that turn into videos and audio for YouTube and podcasts, etc.
Writing allows you to become a one-person media company.
You can write one post on X and cross-post it on Instagram and LinkedIn.
You can turn that post into a script and post it as a reel, short, or TikTok.
You can choose your best posts and expand them into threads or newsletters, which then get repurposed into carousels, video scripts, and podcast episodes.
Even better, you don’t have to show your face as a writer or edit videos if you don’t want to.
You just sit down in the morning and become one with the words on the page. It’s a very meaningful lifestyle and means to improvement.
You learn more by teaching, organizing your thoughts, and getting feedback on your ideas. It is a catalyst for growth and value.
As you can tell, I’m a fan of basing your success on persistent principles applied to the modern landscape (which will continue to change). Writing, speaking, persuasion, entrepreneurship, creativity… these are things that have been around since the first two humans came into contact with each other.
The mediums to distribute those, like graphic design software, web design, email platforms, and other “marketable skills” people tell you to learn can be valuable, but not as a singular skill that lacks the underlying foundation that makes them work.
You can get a job as a web designer, or use AI to create a website, but you are not in control of the vision. You are not in control of whether people deem that valuable to their own life.
If you don’t “get it” yet, you make money whenever you want by:
- Creating a product or service based on a problem you solved for yourself.
- Building an audience where the attention is right now, the internet.
- Monetizing the audience by offering your product or service in a persuasive way.
Business and entrepreneurship have always been the same.
Build an audience, monetize the audience.
A “business” is just a legal structure that allows you to build a solution to a problem and get paid for it.
Your ancestors didn’t need the legal structure to make a living, they could simply trade goods and services directly.
Let’s recap.
Achieve a self-generated goal by creating a system.
Focus on health, wealth, relationships, and happiness.
Turn that system into a product or service that can help someone with your same problem.
I recommend starting with Mental Monetization so you can build cash flow before building a software or other cash-intensive startup.
Build an audience by writing to yourself so you can attract people who share your same vision, and thus same problems, so they see your system as valuable and purchase it.
Write about your opinions, beliefs, and mindset. Teach your interests and skills. Share your favorite ideas. Show people how you solved your problems. Share your vision so others can resonate.
If you want to learn writing over another skill like speaking or video – the Writer’s Bootcamp enrollment closes tomorrow night.
Then, iterate iterate iterate.
Don’t get trapped in client work. Don’t get trapped with one product. Keep solving problems as they arise in your life and business. Never stop growing and evolving.
You’ll figure out what to do next.
– Dan
