From the Desk of Maverick Brenton.
Subject; Sunday Morning Thoughts.
For many the ability to sit alone in silence and be with your own thoughts does not come easy, or at all in most cases. Doing nothing isn’t thrilling, or exciting - but if you can learn how to master it then you open yourself up to a world that most people NEVER get the opportunity to experience. I know this because I have been doing it, and in this article I want to dive into why I think this is something that any man who is serious about building a high quality life should also do, if he so desires.
In some sense it is a form of meditation; sitting in the quiet of your bedroom, or a comfortable spot where you can relax, and doing nothing except looking at the surroundings and allowing yourself to get lost inside your visions. Many great thinkers of the past have done this, and before technology took over the world it was something most people would do because there wasn’t anything else to do. They didn’t have phones or technology of which they were endlessly plugged into. Life was much simpler, and you didn’t have as many options.
Now it is genuinely difficult to disconnect from the digital world and it’s shallow pleasures. At any moment when your mind craves it you can plug it into the matrix and get drip fed dopamine from social media and various forms of entertainment - all of it filling the mind with more and more information, but none of it quietening the mind and allowing you to think clearly.
For a long time I have admired men like Charlie Munger and Warren Buffet for their ability to think with such precision and clarity. You can see it in their writing and you can see the outcomes of such calm and precise thought in their lives. These men live with order and common sense - they don’t fall prey to false ideas or trends, and their thinking is governed by principle and comes from a place of deep calm.
This calmness is precisely what I find comes to me after sitting in the comfort of my office, relaxed in my reading chair, with a mind that isn’t distracted by bullshit. I just sit there and listen to the birds chirping outside, and watch the flickering flames of some candles on my desk. Once the mind calms down and stops it’s chaotic chatter, you will usually find a state of peace where deep thinking is now possible.
It is in this state that many of the answers you need will come to you; with business, your personal life, training, relationships. The silence brings clarity. It eliminates the never ending noise and chatter of this world we live in, and it will give you a supreme advantage in life if you learn how to achieve this state on will.
Why?
Because this age we live in is the information age, and everywhere you look on the internet there is content to consume. People want to tell you the best way to live, people want to sell you something, just like I am writing my thoughts for others to read right now. It confuses the absolute shit out of you if you let it, and any original thinking becomes almost impossible due to all the noise inside your head.
You cannot sit alone with yourself and reach independent conclusions because your mind has become one with the mind of other people via the medium of a wifi connection and you will base your decisions and thought processes of what influential people on the internet say or do.
There are many smart individuals who know how to influence other people on a deep level, and they make an absolute fortune doing it through the internet using various psychological tactics to win over the hearts & minds of millions. All you see is the image they have manufactured, and all you hear is the script they read off - which is all you need to hear and see for your brain to be deeply influenced.
Spend enough time immersed in this world and living the lives of other people, and you will literally forget who is under your skin. You’ll wear someone else’s clothes, eat someone else’s food, and live someone else’s life. It feels good too, because it’s better than being lost - emulating authority figures on the internet gives you direction, but it never fills the hole within yourself that comes from having no idea what you actually want out of your time on earth.
Being alone without distraction is how you combat this. Learning how to sit in silence and be in the company of your own thoughts is how you see what you need to do next. It’s how you find out where you need to go, what direction you need to take, what the smartest move for your career or business is.
The peace that comes from learning how to do this will also reveal universal wisdom to you and that is more valuable than anything else. Principles that govern life, the truth beneath the surface of reality, the answers to questions that have always gone unanswered. Most people only see the surface and make assumptions, very few read between the lines and seek to understand WHY something is the way it is - they only see it’s appearance, not the history, the true nature, or the process that went into creating it.
We live in an outcome dominant era; nobody gives a fuck how things are done or what goes into them, all that matters is getting it done and having it without any issues. People want stuff now. Enter credit cards. Fast food. Modern comforts. Waiting? Nobody’s got time for that. Life now accommodates for all desires, much as Rome did before it fell. The result is a cheap world filled with cheap people, where true competency and value is harder to find because the process is largely skipped.
It is this deep introspection and pondering which leads to a revelation of how life really works.
It is this that allows you to cut through the bullshit and see reality.
You slow down, take a step back, use your mind to break apart life and understand it.
To think on this level and pierce through the endless noise of the modern world takes practice and the effort must come from a place of deep calm. This is curiosity. You are fascinated by what is outside yourself and your own insecurities do not get in the way of genuine thinking. For most people this is unattainable. They cannot even hold a conversation with someone else, without comparing their self and their circumstances to whoever they are speaking with.
”Think lightly of yourself and deeply of the world.” ~ Bruce Lee
I know this because I do it myself.
When engaged in conversation with someone interesting or successful, there is always a part of me and you that wants to come forth and compare stations in life. This is a deeply rooted function of evolution and is designed to function as a gauge of social status. It needs to be ignored and put in it’s place if you want to achieve focus.
This exact mechanism is what I wrestled with when at a networking dinner last week. In attendance was a current UFC fighter, seven figure earners and numerous other men absolutely worth listening to. Instead of thinking about what I am doing and where I am at, I did my very best to shut the fuck up and absorb everything around me. Since my expertise is sales I spoke largely on this, but I also enjoyed hearing a world level athlete tell me how important consistency is, and a seven figure earner telling me about his business pursuits.
After relaxing with a drink and smoking a cigar, my mind shut up and I soaked in the wisdom being shared. The ego was put aside and I listened. This is how you learn and it is how you gain understanding. You shut up and you listen - two ears, one mouth
I have some final thoughts now before I finish off this piece and go tear up country roads on my Harley. These thoughts are based around the intangible principles of success, which was a subject of discussion with the fighter last week. As we sat smoking our cigars, looking out over the glowing lights of Melbourne’s CBD - he said to me;
”There have been countless mornings when I just have not been able to get out of bed - my girlfriend had to get me out. Everything hurt, everything ached, my knee is fucked and my wrist is fucked. But I kept going, kept training no matter what. Then I was ranked X in the world, and then Y in the world - now I am here. Consistency is key, you have to keep going even if you fucking hate what you are doing.”
Over the days that followed while in Melbourne and on the flight home, I kept thinking about what he said as I referred back to the lessons a very wealthy businessman from Sydney taught me when I was younger. His words were very similar to the fighters, in that he always spoke of intangible principles that helped him create his success.
Extreme focus. Dedication. Hard work. Consistency. Purpose.
I woke up today thinking about the same thing and how it applies to my own life, and that in my own life I can confirm that all successes I have experienced - large and small - were again created through following the basic principles.
Unless you have rocks for a brain, you should be picking up what I am putting down right now; that success is simple and there is nothing complicated about it. In fact I think it is glorified to the point where people think success requires magic, and maybe this comes from those who are poor, insecure and don’t believe they can become successful.
The fact is that it is the basic intangible principles of life that make it all work - but you won’t understand this unless you REALLY want to figure it out. Interest is not sufficient, you must have a burning desire for anything to happen. You must be clear of mind and know exactly what you are trying to achieve.
Your mind needs to be in the right place, your heart needs to be in the right place, and you need both of those core aspects of yourself to be in the right place because that is FUNDAMENTAL to sticking to the principles of success. It’s hard enough to maintain discipline, extreme focus and consistency WITH yourself together - if you are all fucked up and a mess - you will just get distracted, fall over, and continually forget what you’re even working towards.
It should come as no surprise that those who do extremely well in life;
A - Know exactly what they want
B - Work tirelessly and with intensity to obtain it
C - Don’t quit
There will be another article published on this because I think it is very important.
I understand only a fraction of it and my life is infinitely superior to when I did not understand what I now do…so imagine what your life could be like if you put yourself together and internalised the intangibles of success?
You could do great things, my friend.
Thanks for reading.
~ Maverick Brenton
Filed under · Daily Journals
