Location: A Russian Citadel in The Jungle.
Subject: Four Things I’d Tell My 18 Year Old Self.
Some people like to ask the question, what would you change if you could go back in time and try again?
My answer to that is nothing.
I would not change a single thing I have done.
Why?
Because all of it was worth it. Sure maybe I could be in an even better position than I am now, maybe I could have more money and a different setup, but maybe is just maybe. Maybe a lot of things, maybe I won’t be alive next week, maybe I will. All I know right now is that when I look back over the last 7 years to the crisp age of 18, I’m glad I did everything I chose to do.
Regret isn’t a pointless emotion like you may often hear. I think it is a very important emotion, because you are feeling the consequence of what you did or did not do in the past. To live without regret is what you should be striving for as a young man, and that is what I am going to write about in this letter because there is not a single ounce of regret within my being. If it is still that way in 50 years then I have succeeded and will take my last breath as a content man.
You can use regret positively, but most will not. They will drown out their sorrows with distractions, drugs and alcohol. If you do regret something then just sit in it and let it eat away at your heart. Let it teach you a lesson. Don’t fucking do whatever you did that made you feel this way ever again, and if you are reading this and too old to be able to do anything - then accept it.
Write it down in a letter and send it to someone younger so that they can avoid it. But whatever you do, don’t waste it or hide from it. Don’t drink yourself into oblivion over it. Put it to use, somehow.
Have I made mistakes?
Oh yeah.
I fucked up basically everything I ever did the first time. But I learnt from it and kept trying. As a young 18 year old man I didn’t have an older brother to ask for advice. I just learnt everything the hard way and charged through life like a bull in a china shop. I ended up back in my mum’s spare room about 7 times before I finally started winning a little bit. Pure determination and resolve got me through that. The inability to quit. Pure hatred for anything less than what I wanted.
But you don’t have to do it that way. I was just a fucking idiot running through the jungle with a blindfold and machete looking for a way out.
All you have to do is sit back and think first, that will save you a lot of time and money. Learn from my mistakes. Learn from the mistakes of others. Pay attention and trust yourself.
Here’s four things I’d tell my 18 year old self to help him win at life faster.
I - Life is Neutral.
One of the most important things you can learn as a young man when it comes to creating a successful life is that there is no such thing as positive or negative events that happen to you.
Everything is completely neutral.
You simply choose to label what happens as either;
A) Good - this is amazing, this is great, this is positive.
B) Bad - this sucks ass, this is horrible, this is negative.
When in reality both are simply chosen frames of perception to view what are really just events occuring in the world as the effect of some particular cause. They are events that are neutral, and have no inherent positive or negative basis. The feelings these events generate within your body can either be positive or negative, but the events themselves are not. They are just things that fucking happen. Shit goes wrong, shit goes right, things work out and things don’t work out.
None of it has anything to do with being good or bad, it just is what it is and it’s part of the natural flow of life.
The start of becoming a truly powerful man is learning to accept reality and people for exactly what they are, without projecting your own subjective opinion onto them, without projecting your own personal issues onto them, and without labelling them as something they are not because until you can do this you will not be able to navigate life with a clear mind and operate at a high level.
People, issues and personal problems weigh you down and prevent you from peak performance.
When you can just accept things for what they are and look at the world with a totally neutral perspective, you can deal with life for what it is instead of what you are imagining it to be.
You’re not the center of the universe but at the same time you are. Because all of your life is experienced through your own mind. So if you can be detached but in the game at the same time, you’re going to beat 99% of people who believe the world outside of them happens to them, instead of just around them.
II - Time is Ruthless.
When I was 18 years old sitting in the school library, reading an article online about how ruthless time was…I understood the words but I did not understand them. I mean they made sense. Time was something I could not get back. It passed every second, as it still does now. But it is only now being able to look back on years which have vanished into the abyss of the past, that I have come to understand the true meaning of those words.
For thousands of years men have sat around pondering the nature of time and how it relates to our lives. One of my favorite books is the shortness of life by Seneca. In that he talks about how we have plenty of time to live well and make something great out of our lives…but we waste most of it on useless activity, worrying, and bullshit that does not truly matter. Then all of a sudden you have spent your best years. The time is gone. Only then does it come over you that you’ve lost most of your life without realising it.
As a young man all I cared about was lifting weights, reading, writing, and having adventures of which I had plenty. From deep sea diving, to being a beach bum, to bartending and writing novels - I lived a rich life of experiences. I spent my time well without realising it and now as I already mentioned, I have very few regrets. But I could have spent that time differently. Often I think about it. Maybe I could have travelled further, visited countries around the world. Maybe I could have started in sales earlier and already made millions. Maybe this, maybe that. None of it matters because now that time has passed.
This is the point I am trying to make here; you can make as many mistakes as you like when you are a young man. The more the better. Just don’t make bad mistakes. But what you need to be genuinely afraid of is these youthful years slipping by without you doing anything with them, without you trying and failing, without you experiencing and suffering, without you learning how life actually works.
I am 26 now and am feeling my 30’s approaching on the horizon. When I was 18 I wondered what it would be like to be 26, but now that I’m here I can tell you that it’s no different. I’m just older and more experienced. I have more life under my belt. I know how to fuck. I know how to make money. I know how to get what I want.
So to the young men of 18. I advise you. To spend your time well and realise how ruthless time is, to understand that time is indifferent to how you spend it….because you have no option but to spend it. Do things that make you better. Travel. Train. Meet new people. Have experiences. Go after what you want and don’t seek permission. Fuck all of it up again and again, because you’ll end up way further ahead than everyone else if you do this. Try to take what life teaches you and internalise it fast. Don’t be a slow learner. The quicker you can adapt yourself to the world around you and apply what life teaches you..the better you future will be.
A very successful old man once told me the worst thing you can be is a slow learner.
Because what is more retarded than continually making the same mistake over and over and losing pieces of your life simply because you refuse to realise what you are doing is not working.
Pay attention.
III - Boredom is Good.
Why should it feel good?
This is a question I often ask people during sales calls who tell me they’re not sure if they should proceed because it does not FEEL good.
It’s a useful insight into the minds of people who are unhappy, unfulfilled and unsatisfied with their station in life. They believe that everything should feel good. They think life gives a fuck about them. That people give a fuck about them. That feeling good is a gauge for which direction to head in life. But this is not true.
As a young man of 18 years I thought the same thing. Pleasure was what guided most of my decisions and as a result I continually struggled to build anything worthwhile or reach a place in life that was what you could consider successful. Because everytime shit got hard, I would quit and look for something that felt better.
Which leads me to my point;
IT IS SUPPOSED TO BE FUCKING HARD.
There is nothing overly exciting about building success and making money. It’s all a result of boring tasks repeated consistently day in and day out. It’s a product of overcoming difficulty and doing hard things well, over time, then developing a high level of skill and profiency.
Every time I have given in to weakness and quit, my life immediately got worse.
Every time I have pushed through pain and not given up, I have broken through to higher levels of success and made a whole bunch of money.
Without. Exception.
Some of the best advice I could give you as a young man is do not listen to people who tell you to put your feelings and emotions before anything else. I have, and it didn’t work out. Listen to men who have the life you want. Because 9 times out of 10, they will tell you to harden up and keep going as that’s the only reasonable solution to getting through difficult periods in life.
No matter what you do, there will come a time when it gets very boring and tedious. You won’t want to do it anymore. It will suck. You’ll probably experience some level of depression, you will start to question why you went down this path. Your mind will start to weasle itself towards the path of least resistance in an attempt to avoid the pain it is experiencing.
Don’t give in.
When it comes to making decisions in life now. I have a simple rule that I follow in the form of a question I ask myself whenever I find myself at a crossroad.
“What is going to be the hardest and most painful thing to do?”
I sit down with a coffee and cigar, and I answer this question with brutal honesty.
The answer is always exactly what I need to do.
Mummy. Your therapist. Normal people. They will all tell you to take care of yourself and do what will make you feel good.
But that isn’t what gets you luxury swiss watches, genuine freedom, and enough money in the bank to never feel financial stress.
Only pain gets you that shit.
Only embracing boredom and pushing through.
Only becoming a tough son of a bitch and earning your success.
Fuck feeling good.
Look for the hardest thing you could do and go in that direction because it will pay off more than anything else.
IV - Money is Everything.
I already knew this when I was 18. But I was still broke. High school dropout bouncing around entry level construction jobs, digging trenches all day and getting my ass roasted in the sun - listening to the older guys complain about how much they worked and how little they got paid.
That’s when I started to learn the reality of the world.
Money is God.
If you can start to understand the game of making money at the ripe age of 18, and rid your mind of all the bullshit beliefs that most people hold. You will end up doing very well in your 20’s as opposed to what most people do.
Debt for useless degrees. Wasting money on bullshit. Living week to week and depending on their paycheque.
At the very core money is purely a tool to buy back your own time and shape your world in the way which you desire it. It gives you choice, which is what all men really desire - the ability to decide for yourself. Without money you are dependent, weak and helpless UNLESS you possess the mind of a true killer who can get what he wants but that is not most people.
For the majority money is their master and they give away their life for small amounts of it because they never question what it is, what it is not, and how to change the way they make it so that they can have a better life setup.
I like having a lot of money. I like the way it helps me sleep. I like the way it makes me feel. I like making lots of it and I like wearing a watch that costs more than most people have as life savings.
But I’ve been at the opposite end of the spectrum. Which has it’s pro’s and con’s. Men like myself are the most dangerous and hungry when we are broke. It eats away at us day and night and steals our sleep. Because we understand that without those pieces of paper and numbers on a screen we are destined to be pawns in somebody else’s game. So money is the ability to decide your fate and live the way you want.
As a young man you should be focused on learning how to get a lot of it and keep it. You need to learn how to play this game, and you need to learn how HARD it really is to play this game - because it’s far from fucking easy. You will learn to become ruthless. Cunning. You will learn to see through people and assess life for what it really is instead of what you naively think it is.
I love money more than sex. More than beautiful women. More than anything. Because it equals the freedom to live how I want to live. There’s a lot of ways to make a lot of it. But none of them are taught in the conventional system because it’s specifically designed to keep you in poverty.
The only way to get money is to make a plan to get it and to follow through on that plan with absolute ruthlessness - to take it from other people. There is no other way.
Making money is warfare. Psychological warfare.
You’re engaged in it already but you just don’t know it.
Each day money is taken from you by people smarter than you.
The world you live in is engineered to extract resources from your pocket and put them into the pockets of those who understand the game better.
You can either learn how this works and participate for your own benefit, or you can remain on the sidelines getting fucked in your sleep.
So where should you start?
I have two simple suggestions; learn sales and learn how money works.
If you learn the skill of sales and you learn how money works, you will never have to worry about money ever again. Because sales is how money is made. It’s the only way it’s made. Somebody gives away money for something else. Sales is the art of facilitating in that. Convincing somebody to part with their cash for something that will help them meet a need and solve a problem.
That’s all this is.
Money moves around every day based on the wants, needs and desires of the human population.
It’s quite simple at the core.
Start with sales as a young man and you will be building yourself a solid foundation. You can even turn it into a full-time profession. That’s what I did. I made more money in the last 3 months than most people make in an entire year through closing deals. Sales gives you massive leverage over time especially when your skills are highly developed.
For example my hourly rate under optimal circumstances, based on my current skill level, and my current positioning within a business - is $920 per hour.
You read that correctly.
$920 per hour.
That number used to be $22 when I was pouring beers as a bartender.
So it has increased by 41 X what it used to be.
I can usually close a deal paid in full within 30mins, which puts $460 of commission into my pocket.
$460 x 30mins x 2 = $920 in 60mins.
There’s a hell of a lot more that goes into making those numbers work. Getting leads into my calendar. Executing a professionally designed process. Not fucking up. But done properly and executed successfully I can earn almost $1000 per hour using my brain to manipulate another human into giving me money, while you are digging trenches in the sun for $30 per hour.
Sit on that and re-evaluate your life for a moment.
Keep in mind though, that what I do is extremely difficult. It’s warfare. I don’t recommend it to anyone unless you have personal issues that make you want to work yourself into oblivion and spend most days plotting strategies like a total psychopath.
Making a lot of money is simple, but it’s extremely fucking hard. It takes a lot of time and skill development which is what makes it worth it. Anyone who has genuinely earnt a large sum of money knows this. It gives you an amazing sense of confidence having real skill and genuine competence, as opposed to winning money or being given it.
If you can get it on your own, you know you can get it on your own.
That’s a good feeling.
Be wary of anything that comes easy. Don’t listen to the seahorse looking cunts telling you how easy it is to make money online with sales and business. It’s actually very hard. It’s not for everyone. Which is why most people have safe jobs. I don’t blame them to be honest, and sometimes I wish I could do that without literally going insane. But I’m cut from a different clothe.
So are you I’d say.
That’s why you’re here.
Until next time.
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