This year has been one big writing experiment for us. Different angles, trying to get a read on what people love most, what it takes to win, and where things are heading. Across 153 posts, a few main ideas kept coming back. This post was originally supposed to be #150 in the series... But we didn’t have time to publish it. So here it is. The unintuitive principles, ideas, and actions for living well that apply to any situation.
Part 1: The game inside your head
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself… and you are the easiest person to fool. - Richard P. Feynman
Energy is the foundation of everything
It is one of the four resources: money, time, health, and energy that you can only impact by how you take care of yourself and live your life. Energy is a prerequisite that dictates everything else. From the type of day you will have to the year and what you have managed to achieve in it.
We start the list with it because without complete control over your energy, you will be VERY limited in what you can achieve. One of your top priorities should be to optimize your energy and ensure what you are doing aligns with your big idea. That is how you "trick" your mind into unlimited energy, where you have managed to combine interest and curiosity into something meaningful.
What has worked for us:
Regular bloodwork and digging into what we should focus on. Using results to prompt and get the answers we need.
Figuring out our chronotype and sleep schedule. Waking up at 5 am was a game-changer.
Get at least 10k steps a day. This helps you get into the flow and kills brain fog. One of the lowest-effort, highest-return habits we incorporate into our schedule.
Nobody is coming to save you
The moment you take control of your life and the choices you make is the moment you start living. You create the life you live, but you also control it. The initial hand of cards you have been dealt plays a big role. But it isn’t permanent. It just makes things easier or harder. You are reading this on the internet, just like someone on another continent. Which means you already have the same opportunity as everyone else. At least when it comes to making money and reaching the same customers as others.
One of the key things you have to realize is that the world owes you nothing. Forget about the financial system that will save you. Forget about the government. Forget about anyone else being required to save you. The world is NOT fair. The important part is realizing that you have to take full ownership of your life situation. Decide that the ONLY person you should be able to blame if something is not working out is yourself. Not others... Yourself. This is not an easy observation. Most never manage to reach it.
What has worked for us:
Write down every area of your life where you are waiting for something to happen. The things you have been waiting for to finally start working out. The perfect opportunity to invest your money. List everything you have been postponing. Then go deeper and be HONEST with yourself. Are you waiting for something, or are you looking for excuses?
Are you outsourcing your agency and ideas to someone else, or staying true to yourself? You don’t need a financial advisor or the government to tell you what you should do with your hard-earned money. Neither do you need a manager to tell you what to do with your career. You already have all the answers.
Stop blaming the environment, timing, the economy, or your financial situation. Lead with what you could have done differently given the situation you have found yourself in. No matter whether something is your fault or not. This puts control in your hands. The exact opposite of what most people do. They blame everyone else around them for their failures.
Your mind is building your reality
How you see things is shaped by how you perceive yourself and the world around you. The information and content we feed ourselves shape our perception and reality. That is why protecting your mind and avoiding a victim mindset matters, especially when every algorithm is designed to poison your thinking and who you TRULY are.
Consume only what moves you forward in life. Forget everything the algorithm pushes. No more random street fight videos, car crashes, or anything that fits that category. They fight for your attention and try to poison it so you get emotional and consume more of it.
The same concept applies to the people you spend your time with and the beliefs you have held since childhood. Watch how you treat yourself. Do you call yourself stupid or unlucky for no reason? Is there something about yourself that bothers you and that you constantly reinforce? All those things subconsciously create your reality. And it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know you don’t want to be your biggest enemy. Everything you allow into your mind influences you... One way or another.
What has worked for us:
Mindset rewiring workbook. Use this to change everything you do in this area and how you treat yourself. There are no limitations on the approach you want to take.
Stop saying things to yourself that you do not mean. Everything you say out loud has massive power over your life, often without you even noticing. Do not say things you do not mean... Not even as a joke. Sooner or later they will become part of your reality.
Forget about calling yourself unlucky, stupid, or poor. All those things will work against you. You reinforce beliefs you don’t even believe in the first place. Society has made self-disrespect and negative propaganda feel normal. Do not fall for it.
Optimism is a strategy (and competitive advantage)
Irrational optimism. It sounds stupid until you realize that positioning it strategically is one of those unfair advantages you can have over others. Not in a way where you know that something simply will not happen and you are doing everything you can to push it. But in a way that you are ready to take on things and try to look at them from perspectives others around you do not see. Wealthy individuals often possess this trait as their default. Deep down knowing that the best is yet to come and that there is plenty of room to get what they want. When you start paying attention to your approach... It will feel like you are faking it, to a point, being unrealistic.
This is where you have to push it and make it your default mechanism. Over time, that lets you see what no one else around you sees. It will only click when you actively start paying attention. There is a massive difference between being optimistic and trying to achieve something vs. starting from an already pessimistic perspective and thinking it will work.
What has worked for us:
It took us years to reach this point, but we deeply believe the best is yet to come. At all times. No matter what you are doing. Maybe you are just starting your new business idea, or you are trying to get better at a new hobby. Whatever you are doing, operating from this frame and state of mind will change how you see things. Repeat it often... The best is yet to come. This alone pushes you toward a mindset where no matter what happens, you will still be in a better position than you were yesterday.
What no one ever told you is that the key to being an optimistic individual is to be happy when others around you win. If you feel resentful when a friend wins. It is a clear sign that you are working against yourself. You have a problem that needs fixing. Once you fix that part, optimism will naturally start to show up in your life. It will also show you that you can achieve that same success or more.
Cut the doom BS. There is too much of it, and you will get nowhere reading the same headlines over and over again or listening to people who complain 24/7.
Build your operating rules (set of principles)
"The mind is like a propagandist. It needs to be fed, given a direction, and it will create all the words, thoughts, imagery, and reasoning that is needed to get there. Since it is impossible to blindly follow how you feel at the moment, neither is that the right thing you should do. The better way would be to follow a set of idea (think goals) you have about where you want to go and moving in that direction." - CEOLandshark
The simplified version of the point above is that you want to create your own set of operating rules. Treat them as guidelines for how you approach things and what you are all about. Following this approach (we do) lets you create a great medium (predictable output) for whatever you do regularly. It is much better than having goals you have to tick off before you start.
This lets you create your system as a set of principles for how you do things. The only requirement is that you create them yourself and have a CLEAR sense of where you want to go. Don’t think of it necessarily as goals, but more as a system you will reference each time before you engage in a certain activity. Your personal manual for doing _____.
What has worked for us:
We started doing this recently and have been experimenting with it for the last few months. Our idea is that whatever we do regularly (such as writing articles, marketing...), it deserves a set of core ideas and principles to base our work on. This means that before we do any writing... We go through those principles first.
Here is how we do it:Write everything down. It doesn’t matter whether you have it on paper or in your Apple Notes.
Before doing the activity you have come up with principles for, reread those same principles. Remind yourself what it is all about for you.
As time goes on, you also need to be prepared to update your principles list and replace your previous "beliefs" and "actions" with new ones.
Forget about making it 8 pages long, covering every single aspect. Focus on the key movers you have identified and keep it to a maximum of 2 pages.
Read our earlier work around being the creator of your own kingdom
Everything in life compounds
Make yourself a promise to do everything you can to understand that everything in life compounds. Skills, health, relationships, mindset, and money. They all compound one way or another. Everything worth something in your life works under compounding principles. This is the same idea behind why the game is not won by the one who works hardest. But it’s actually won by the one who stays in it the longest and makes the most right moves. One who can take the most pain and adapt based on it.
The key requirement for this idea to click is to start putting things on paper from a mathematical perspective. Take a basic example most can relate to... Gym session. Now let’s do some math behind it. 1 hour per day. 3 days per week. Around 12 hours per month. Spread it across a year, and you get over 100 hours of work. The same idea applies to anything else. Both positive and negative perspectives.
What has worked for us:
Run the numbers on paper. Look at the gym example above and apply it to anything else. Nothing makes the power of compounding more obvious than seeing the numbers. We tend to overestimate what we can do in a week and underestimate what we can achieve in a year.
Audit what is working against you (compounding). It is easy to fall into the trap of pushing too hard on one side and completely ignoring the other. When you work day and night on your business, you are likely skipping the gym. The result? Your health suffers. What about your social life? Similar story. You are more likely to become antisocial, given what you are doing and how much time it takes. Make it a habit to reflect on these and keep paying attention so you don’t get surprised.
Health, time and money… Know the order of your priorities
Without health, you don’t have time… Without time, you don’t have money. Without money... You can still have the other two, which means you are more than capable of making it. Simple as that. Energy is another factor in this category, but we have already covered it. This idea doesn’t mean you have to prioritize one over another. It means that if you find yourself constantly making moves that require trade-offs, you always want to cover them in this order:
Health
Time
Money
It sounds ridiculous that we even have to mention this, but most people around you do it in the exact opposite order: money, time, and then health. Only to find themselves living miserable lives after 20-30 years of doing this.
What has worked for us:
Health: Cardio and weight training are a must. Eat a diet that is not full of processed foods and sugar. This also covers your energy and helps you stay on top of it.
Time: Remove anything that forces you to multitask (turn off notifications first. It is something that will impact most people). Try to optimize your living location so you are close to all points of interest. If you love playing golf, live near a golf course. Working in the office? Try not to live so far away that you have to commute 3 hours every day. Easier said than done, but you get the point.
Money: Understand that every dollar you have should have its own role. It has to fall into one of these categories:
It is making you more money
It buys back your time
It improves your health or energy
Money should buy back your life… Not more stuff
Put aside all the luxury watches, fancy cars, and expensive trips. The real reason you want as much money as possible is to improve your quality of life. Money should buy you life-changing experiences and help you escape the masses. Freedom is one way to call it. At least this is our definition of true wealth.
What do most people do wrong? They start spending their hard-earned money to impress people who aren’t even paying attention to them. They fall into a never-ending spiral of staying in the same spot for years without anything worth showing. They do everything without ever paying attention to the fact that one day they will wake up with the golden handcuffs. Living in a luxury prison they know will disappear if they miss a few months of payments.
What has worked for us:
Understand how to spend money for maximum return
Start implementing the 48-hour rule. Postpone every nonessential purchase by at least 48 hours. If you still want it after sleeping on it for 2 days… Buy it. Do this hundreds of times a year, and you will be surprised by how much money you save and how much energy you stop wasting on unnecessary purchases.
Take what you earn in a month and divide it by the hours worked. That is the number you were looking for. Before any purchase, ask yourself:
How many hours of my life am I trading for this?
Make sure you never rush your standard of living type of upgrades. Because going back is one of the most brutal experiences you can go through. Forget about hiring a cleaner, going to a top private doctor in the city, or anything similar that you know you will not be able to repeat. When upgrading your lifestyle, make sure you do it in a way you can repeat (buy, visit, pay...) month after month. If you can do something for only one month and may not have the money to afford it the next month, you are doing something wrong.
Reverse-engineer the life you actually want
You will never live the life you want if you cannot reverse-engineer how to get there.
Write down everything you currently have going for you.
Write down everything you want for yourself.
The next step is to identify the difference and analyze the gap between where you are and where you want to be. This alone will tell you everything you need to know and what you have to do. The next step is to figure out what actions you can take to close that gap. For each item you want, write down the action you should take to get closer. Before you ask yourself how you should know what it is in the first place... This is where you will have to be honest with yourself and audit what you are already doing.
Most people know exactly what they need to do to get where they want to be. But they do everything they can to avoid it and don’t follow through. This is by far the most practical way to identify and reverse-engineer the life you want to live. You can use the same approach for everything from simple business plans to big life goals.
Reverse engineering formula
Where you want to be > where you are now > action steps needed to be where you want to be
Remind yourself often that the only way to get what you want is to know what you want in the first place.
What has worked for us:
Take 30 minutes without distractions and list what you are doing right now. Once you are done with that part, take another sheet of paper and start writing what your ideal life looks like (what you actually want). No holding back with this one. To get the most out of this exercise, go as deep as possible. Take your time.
The next step is to compare where you are vs. where you want to be. This is what most people skip or do wrong. There is already a good chance that 50% or more of what you consider your ideal life is present in your current situation. You are not paying attention to it.
The final step is to write one action for each gap you identified. You don’t need a whole strategy or a plan… One action you know you can take that will bring you closer to your goals. It might be something simple, such as creating a landing page or finishing the email you have wanted to send to a recruiter. What you will realize is its importance and how things will start to move toward your ideal life, because everything you do will support that big vision of yours.
Decision framework for the choices that matter
The cost of inaction is never zero
Make sure you understand that whenever you decide not to act on something you know you should act on… That cost is actually not zero, but much more. Cost of indecision. If you do nothing month over month, you will be in the same place you were. This oversimplifies a much more complex idea. But keep in mind that there is no such thing as staying neutral or doing nothing. If you do nothing, you are not going anywhere. The hard pill to swallow is that indecision is still a form of decision.
What you can reverse and what is irreversible
Separate all the decisions you make (and the risks you take) into reversible and irreversible. Make reversible decisions fast, driven by momentum and speed. Irreversible decisions should be given time to process and handled slowly. What do most people do wrong? They do the opposite. They spend hours choosing what show to watch on TV or what kind of food slop to order through Uber Eats. They don’t even think about the big stuff that actually matters. Career decisions, choosing who you will spend your time with, or what you should do with your free time. The difference is that none of them dictate anything. It doesn’t matter if you eat sushi or tacos. While choosing what company to work for or what role you are aiming for does.
Before every big decision, ask yourself
Would future YOU thank you for it? This alone resolves most of the decisions you will have to make in a way that benefits you tomorrow (in 5 or 10 years...).
Read more about the questions you should be asking yourself.
Part 2: Do work that makes you feel alive
Work is love made visible. - Kahlil Gibran
Meaningful work changes everything
This alone might solve most of the problems and friction you experience in your day-to-day work. Whether we want to accept it or not. Believing that what you do matters plays a massive role in your ability to create your best work. When you find yourself in a position where you have something that brings you happiness, joy, and excitement while working on it. It is a game-changer. You have found something that is worth your time and meaningful. We would go so far as to say that if you reach this phase, you have found your purpose. Something you can do comfortably for hours and hours. Iterating until you get the desired results without ever getting tired. Approaching it with childlike curiosity and optimism. All of those are clear signs that you have found something worth living for... It is that deep.
What has worked for us:
ALWAYS bet on execution
We doubt anyone reading this post has a good enough excuse not to do what they should. That is even more true now, when you can get all the information you need in less than 60 seconds (thanks Claude). Which brings us to the next point… You have no excuse not to bet on execution. Not to bet on yourself and what you bring to the table. One key takeaway from this read is that as soon as you have enough information to act on something you want to do... You should do it.
The reason is that spending 1 to 2 years doing something and failing at it will likely be more beneficial than spending 5 years reading about it and waiting for the perfect moment. That perfect moment will never come. Which brings us to another realization. The more time you spend doing something, the easier it gets. Whether you are winning or failing. Those reps you put in? They all count toward your experience level and ability to recognize patterns. There is no negative scenario when you approach things from this perspective.
What has worked for us:
Never spend weeks researching something. It shouldn’t take you more than 2 weeks to research and act. After 2 weeks, if you are not executing... It means you are wasting your time. Being in an endless cycle of research is a trap that keeps people in tutorial hell for years.
Always test demand before you start building something serious. For example, take someone trying to run an online business. All you need is a landing page that looks as close to the final product as possible. Set up the backend software that lets you see the statistics (a basic Cloudflare account lets you do that) and drive traffic to it (organic or paid). Take this seriously. This is a game-changer and applies to anything you are trying to put in front of the audience. A minimum viable product (service or anything else) will do more for you than researching a topic for hours...
Realize that you will never be ready. There is no such thing as being ready when it comes to doing the important things in life. For example, have you been ready to go to college? To start working? To have kids? The moment you start hearing yourself make the excuse that you are not ready is the moment you know you have to find something worth chasing.
Learn to sell yourself or remain invisible
A common belief from the old world is that the work you put out and the things you do will speak for themselves. Wrong. We all operate in the attention economy, which means everyone has to optimize for it. It also means that the only way you will get the recognition you deserve and the things you are putting out will be seen by others is by you learning how to sell yourself. This applies not only to what you are building, but also to every other area of your life. Interviews, promotions, relationships, or even when trying to get a mentor. Every area of your life will benefit from knowing this.
What has worked for us:
Read and understand our guide on how to sell yourself
Treat every interaction as practice, from convincing your friends where to eat to deciding on which bar to go to this weekend. All the way to getting your point across in a meeting. Every conversation is a chance to practice getting what you want.
Make sure you understand the basics of body language. Open posture, eye contact, and how to smile without looking like you are forcing it. These basics are a great way to start building a better understanding of how to sell yourself.
When everyone zigs… You zag
Think for a second about how everyone around you lives. Now ask yourself whether you want the same lifestyle. Consider that our readers are above average and intentionally unwilling to blend in with the masses. The answer is that you do not want to live as everyone else does. What does that mean in practice? Doing what everyone around you does will get you the same results they have. So doing the opposite of everyone else will get you results they won’t.
When everyone treats life like a lottery, you do the slow work. When everyone offloads their cognitive work to AI, you go harder on building your skill set without fully relying on it. When everyone has an attention span like a goldfish, you do the opposite and focus on long-form content. Look at what everyone else (recognize the pattern) is doing and find an unfair advantage by doing the opposite. The safest long-term bet you can make that will pay off enormously is social intelligence and knowing how to talk to people.
What has worked for us:
A basic example most of our readers can relate to. Stick to index funds and BTC while everyone else chases another memecoin or stock they know will 32x overnight. It never happens... The same applies to real skills. Build them. Don’t rely 100% on AI. Just because you can create the output doesn’t mean you know what you are doing. It is not necessarily true and might limit you in the long run.
Stop gambling on yourself. You are not a lottery ticket. Everything worth having in your life requires dedication, a lot of effort, and an enormous number of hours before you see the results you want. Process this and allow yourself to fall in love with the journey you are on.
Spend hours and hours working on your attention and ability to focus. Patience is another unfair advantage. Do not mix this with passivity. Be patient. Put effort into something and stay patient enough to get the BIG rewards. Few can say they have this ability. Be one of them...
Building is the antidote to slop
No matter what you do, as long as you are putting something out there for the world to see… creating, building, making, developing, engineering. It doesn’t matter. As long as it fits into one of these categories, you are doing something right. The importance of this only becomes clear once you realize that 98% of the people around you are feeling lost. Desperate about their lives because they never allowed themselves to discover what gets them going. Not even thinking about what their life should be about. Never figuring out what they are passionate about. Sleepwalking.
The antidote is spending your time creating something for yourself. Something you enjoy now and that you can showcase to others at some point. Maybe even make a living out of it. That is what will give you a sense of meaningfulness that shouldn’t be ignored. That is how you find your true self. By creating and working on things that provide you with self-purpose. Getting to know who you are and what you should be doing for the rest of your life. Don’t ignore it. Most never get that lucky and figure it out.
What has worked for us:
Your #1 goal is always to produce more than you consume. There are no exceptions to this. A 1:1 scenario where you spend an hour creating something and an hour consuming something would be a perfect ratio. That ensures you keep moving forward with whatever you are doing. Most people do the opposite, and the ratio shifts heavily toward consumption.
There is no perfect when it comes to what you are doing. Forget about spending hours on something until it feels perfect and you are finally ready to ship it. The hard truth is that it will never feel perfect, and there will always be something else to add. As you get more experienced with what you are doing... You learn to ignore it. Yet you never stop thinking about how to make things better.
Forget about permission. You do not need any (or anyone’s) permission. You do not need a degree. You do not need a title. You do not need someone’s approval to start building something. None of those matter. Those days are long past, and the economy is run by obsessive individuals on a mission who aren’t afraid to put themselves out there. You just need to find one thing you are interested in and embrace it.
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Part 3: People, places and environment
We are like chameleons, we take our hue and the color of our moral character, from those who are around us. - John Locke
Your environment breaks you… or makes you
Everything around us influences how we behave and what we do. It also influences what we like and how we act. People are like chameleons… John Locke was right. This means your environment sets the baseline for everything else in life. The people you spend your time with. The places you go in your free time and what you consume. They are all part of your environment.
Everyone has heard about junk in - junk out. And this is where it becomes apparent that this is correct. If you don’t pay attention to and curate your environment (both physical and digital), you start treating things you shouldn’t as normal. When you are in an environment where it is normal to put 110% into everything you do, it becomes normal for you. Monkey see, monkey do. Think about this for a bit, and it will all be clear. You have to be ruthless about engineering your environment and removing things that cause friction or don't add anything positive.
What has worked for us:
It mostly comes down to realizing who we spend our time with. Ask yourself: what is going on with the people you surround yourself with? What are they about? What are their standards? Do they treat things they should not treat as normal? This is by far the fastest way to get the reality check you need.
Curate everything you consume. The digital environment plays a massive role in your life and should not be taken for granted. Remove anything that does not improve your life. Your goal when spending time in front of the screen should be to:
Make money
Improve your quality of life
Be so good (think all-time classics) that it is worth your time. Nothing else.
Whenever we are stuck on something or feeling uninspired, it’s time to change our location. It might mean traveling for a week or two. Or simply taking your laptop and working in the hotel lobby (you should explore all of them in your city). You will have to figure this out yourself and decide what works best for you.
Social skills are the #1 skill for the next decade
It should be pretty self-explanatory. If you work in a professional environment, it is an advantage. Looking to connect with others? It is an advantage. Much more so now when we have an epidemic of poor social skills and people being unable to make eye contact.
This makes it even better because it won’t take much effort to stand out. It is also one of those skills that AI and tech advancement won’t impact. This belongs on our unintuitive list because everyone is trying to convince us that real progress will come from technology. It will... But human nature will not change. And we all know how the world operates... On human connections and the guy who knows the guy.
What has worked for us:
The same principles for selling yourself apply here... They share the same core concept.
Start by reading and understanding Improv. This alone should serve you in a way that you will find yourself reading about principles most people never manage to pick up.
Become the "yes" person… Just do it.
Understand that making people feel good and elevating their mood will make things much easier for you. It will also ensure that you get invited back. That is the key. Nothing else shifts the mood faster than someone complaining or bringing the group’s energy down.
Curate your digital environment
To add a bit more to the point in the first part. Less is more when it comes to a digital environment. There is no reason to have music playing 24/7 or to have someone talking in your ear all the time (podcasts). Pay attention: this is what most people underestimate, and why it matters.
What has worked for us:
Delete all social media apps from your phone, and access them only on your desktop. This alone will do more for your sanity than anything else in your life.
Get comfortable with silence. This is one of the harder ones at first, but it gets easier over time. The first time you manage a 30-minute walk without anything playing in the background, you will feel like you have discovered something different.
Install an application to help you avoid things you shouldn’t be wasting your time on. OneTab, LeechBlock, ColdTurkey, Jomo…
Finding a mentor and what it takes
Imagine having someone give you a clear blueprint to solve the problem you are dealing with. It saves your time, energy, effort, and everything else that comes with the learning process. If you bring something to the table (energy, potential, your knowledge…), you will find a mentor. The misconception is that a mentor finds you. That is not how it works. You find a mentor by doing the hard work and putting in the hours. Your goal is to make it easier on yourself by putting yourself in proximity to people who can expand your knowledge and speed up the process you can’t do on your own.
What has worked for us:
Do the work first before looking for a mentor. You can't find a mentor if you haven't started working on something. Approach this from the perspective that mentors help you become more efficient at what you are already doing. The starting phase is on YOU.
Only take advice from people who are further ahead than you.
Never expect someone to tell you that they will be your mentor. That is not how it works... It just happens as a byproduct of someone seeing potential in you.
Want real leverage? Start sending those DMs. Most people never do it because they are afraid and overthink it… That is exactly why you should make it a habit to contact the exceptional people.
Part 4: Play the long game and outlast everyone
Twice a year you want to be brutally honest with yourself
To get the most out of your life, you will have to make it a habit to give yourself a performance review. Audit. Reality check. Whatever you want to call it... What you want to do every 6 months is have an honest 1on1 conversation with yourself about where you are right now. What has changed? Are you actually progressing, or just being busy without moving forward? What can you do now that you couldn’t do 6 months ago? You should be asking yourself A LOT of questions and looking for answers you didn’t have before. This is where it’s important to stick to this practice and make it a habit.
What has worked for us:
Do it 2x per year. Once at the start of June, and the other time somewhere in mid-December, before you fully engage in the holidays. The other option is to do it on your birthday (a great time to reflect), and repeat it again 6 months later. The key is to do it 2x per year. When you do it, or how you do it… Matters much less in this context.
Lead with heavy questions. This is what gets these exercises from 3 to 5. You want to ask yourself questions such as:
Am I lying to myself right now?
What is the one thing I am avoiding that I should be doing?
What did I say I would do 6 months ago that I have not done?
Cover all four main categories that matter the most to people: money, health, relationships, and work.
Build YOUR tribe
It would be a lie to say you can achieve everything by yourself. Without anyone’s help or support. You definitely can. But if you choose this path, you will be playing the game on HARD mode. We already mentioned that who you surround yourself with is who you become in the end. Add a few "guy who knows a guy" connections to your life and every door opens.
This is exactly why you want to build your tribe and surround yourself with people who help you be in a better position than yesterday. That doesn’t mean you have to get rid of your childhood friends. But as you get older, the emphasis shifts more to the transactional side vs. the emotional one that drove you when you were younger. It is one of those realities of growing up. Just something for you to keep in mind.
What has worked for us:
Realize that if you want to associate yourself with winners, you will have to become one first… It doesn’t mean you have to be on top of everything, but being exceptional at one thing will open doors. The easy metric to follow is how useful you are to the others around you.
Don’t expect to go all in on one social group. As you age, you realize you will have multiple social groups, and each will serve a different purpose. One will be your go to group. Another will be friends from early childhood. The third one? It might be sports or something else… Your goal is not to burn any bridges. Or think that one group will fit all the scenarios.
The real secret to a good tribe? Drop your ego and learn to be the one who initiates. The person who organizes dinners, plans trips, all that boring stuff everyone is too busy to bother with. What you realize is that people who can do that hold enormous power and are respected in their social circles because everyone depends on them. As you get older, you realize this is 100% the truth. Everyone waits to be invited.
Give without expecting anything back
Another unwritten rule in life is that everything you give without expecting anything in return will be multiplied and returned in your favor. The only requirement is that you don’t expect it. But understand that it is a consequence of what you have done before. This applies to money, opportunities, and even people who will start to appear in your life. Your goal is to be genuine and not keep score. You have to do it from a place where you don’t even think about it. Just do it because it feels right... Once you are there, it is a clear game-changer.
What has worked for us:
We don’t have magic advice to give you here… Be genuine and help wherever you can. It will return.
You can’t plan for _____ (people, things, events, or situations) that will change your life
The most important part of this whole read is realizing that you can’t plan for when something important in your life will happen. When you may come across an opportunity that can change the whole trajectory of your life. When you meet someone you were supposed to meet who will change your perception. All those things usually happen when you least expect them. One random DM, dinner with your friends, or a night out. All of those can change your life. Yet you can’t plan for any of them. You have to accept the uncertainty and embrace it. What you can do is play the exposure game. Where you constantly take shots and increase your luck surface area. Meaning that none of the life-changing things will happen while you are watching TV and wasting your life away. It will all come to you when you put yourself out there in the right rooms with the right people. What happens is that you will find yourself waking up to a life that you once dreamed about.
What has worked for us:
Keep the simple formula in mind: people you expose yourself to = opportunities you take = luck. More of those, and the easier it will be for you.
Start going where the people you want to meet hang out. Tennis. Golf. High-end gyms... Go where the people you want to meet spend time. Proximity is the name of the game.
The only way to win this is always to be prepared. Every day, you should try your best to be your sharpest. Not only the sharpest, but the most willing to go out of your comfort zone. Because doing it right 2 or 3 times could have a huge impact on your life. Seriously. Don’t underestimate it.
Don’t give yourself excuses. The older you get, the more excuses you will have. Much more so when you are building your business or have a family. The things that change your life usually happen during the events you wanted to skip but somehow managed to push yourself and actually do it.
Disclaimer: None of this is to be legal or financial advice of any kind.