Life is a mind game, here's how you win
At some point, usually in your 20s, youâll notice that the people around you stop believing in themselves. And no matter how hard you try, you canât save them. By all means, do not let it infect your mind. Stay on your path. I was mulling over that thought a few days ago. And the more I think about it, the deeper the problem goes. I canât help but notice that too many people between the ages of 20 and 35 fall into the blatantly obvious vicious cycle. You get motivated by some external source. A video, a book, a conversation, whatever. You feel like this is your moment. You go all in. You start the business. You start working out. You start learning the skill. But then like clockwork, 2 days, a week, 2 weeks later... you fall off. You so easily go back to the life you swore you despised. As if you were addicted to it. As if you preferred it over the life you just said you wanted. As if the desire to change your life was just another form of cheap dopamine that you couldnât resist. Life goes on. You get another hit of motivation. You start again, from zero. The cycle repeats. You get frustrated, but not enough to solidify the change. Then you wake up. One, two, ten years later. Whatâs going on? Why is this such a common thing? Why is it so damn hard to change your life? Iâll tell you why, and itâs not anything youâve heard before. Another video about productivity, motivation, discipline, or dopamine doesnât even solve half the equation. Youâve watched enough of those, and nothingâs changed. We need to dig much, much deeper into the mind. By the end of this letter, I hope you will have what you need to adopt the traits of a wildly successful person. Specifically, a person with this admirable quality: To work with tremendous intensity on things that matter to you, and more importantly, to be strangely unbothered when those things donât work out. If you actually attempt to understand this letter rather than just read it to horde knowledge, your life will look drastically different in 3-6 months. Survival is the mechanical, often unconscious, engine behind every thought, emotion, and action. Everything you think, feel, or do is rooted in survival. I repeat, your entire human experience, right now, is directed by survival. This is one of the most important topics you can understand to change your life, because itâs the root of whatâs keeping you the same. There are two types of survival. People tend to only think of the first one. Physical survival â Like animals, we attempt to reproduce the information in our genes. This is largely solved in todayâs world. Most reading this arenât worried about getting eaten or dying from starvation. Psychological/conceptual survival â We also attempt to reproduce the information in our consciousness. We feel the drive to preserve our non-physical identity. The ideas, beliefs, practices, and worldview that shape our mind. To understand this, we need to understand the gist of evolution. Billions of years ago, some self-replicating molecules existed. Some replicated more successfully than others. The ones that happened to build protective structures around themselves (cell walls, then cells, then multicellular bodies) replicated more than the ones that didnât. Over billions of iterations, you end up with a world full of genes that are really good at building physical bodies that are able to survive. Then, human consciousness became a thing. Donât ask me how. I donât know. But the same process continued. We have genes that selected and self-replicated. Then we have memes. You can think of them as genes for the mind. Iâm not talking about memes that you find on Instagram and send to your friend. Iâm talking about the original meaning, coined by Richard Dawkins, which is defined as âunits of culture that spread from mind to mind.â Memes are the fabric of the social world. Memes are the ideas, words, language, concepts, beliefs, and worldviews that allow you to make sense of and survive in the world. When you were a child, your parents spread their memes to you. Their beliefs, their ideas of what success means, their ideas of what failure means, and the language they speak that allowed you to communicate within your culture. Most of these were installed in your head before you even had the time to question them. You just think âthis is how life isâ when itâs really been a process of natural selection that has led to how we speak, relate, and communicate today. Then you went to school. You were rewarded for good performance, solidifying certain memes that benefited the survival goals of society, and punished for bad performance so you didnât pose a threat. The most dangerous set of memes right now is the classic go to school, get a job, retire at 65 which represent the pinnacle of success. Anything less is considered failure by those who have not evolved beyond the industrial set of memes. In todayâs world of rapid advancement and AI, those are no longer beneficial to success and survival. Culture is evolving. One important survival mechanism of memes are institutions and ideologies. We create larger structures like religions, nations, political parties, and corporations that have the goal of protecting, perpetuating, and replicating the beliefs and values they were founded on. They try to spread their memes to you, and if they are successful, youâre more likely to attempt to spread them to others, because they are now a part of who you are. They are something youâve identified with and hold as a part of your âselfâ (a composition of memes that create a psychological structure/body). Religions want more members, nations want more control, corporations want more customers. A religion that tells its adherents to have many children and convert outsiders will spread faster than a religion that tells its adherents to remain celibate and keep quiet, obviously. Same with political ideologies, brands, conspiracy theories, jokes, fashions, video games, coffee, alcohol, team Apple, team Android, team Claude, team ChatGPT, team anti-AI, keto, carnivore, vegan, your morning routine, and really anything else. Understanding this is largely a key to get what you want in life be it money, fame, or success. Everything is a religion. Your morning routine is a religion. Your political opinions are a religion. Your identity as a gamer, a lifter, a minimalist, a stoic, a craft beer enthusiast... all religions. With social media and global access to information, weâre experiencing the religionization of everything. Very few people actually do things because they want to anymore. Almost everyoneâs life is built around actions that allows them to fit into the digital tribe. The point: Genes have gotten really good at survival. Memes have gotten really really good at survival. Theyâre primary goal is to persist. I think you get it. How does this relate to the vicious cycle of trying to achieve your goals and quickly going back to your old ways? Because the mind is a self-deception machine. When you try to pursue a goal that would fundamentally change who you are, itâs very difficult to notice, because your mind doesnât want you to notice, but your ego starts throwing out defensive reactions left and right. Your mind is threatened. Your identity is threatened. Your memes want to survive, and their goal is to persist. Your mind floods with anxiety, fear of failure, irrational thinking, and the closest distraction that will give you a hit of quick comfort. Like an addict going through withdrawals. When you are physically attacked, your body goes into fight or flight. You do anything and everything you can to survive. When you are psychologically attacked, the same thing happens. Your mind reacts as if you were just shoved, punched, shot, or stabbed depending on the severity of the threat to your ego/identity. If you were to deeply observe your reactions, you would realize that they are all dictated by survival. Every single thought you have or action youâŠ
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