12 Things I Learned In Hell – Forever Young Making Money

Posted on May 18, 2021June 2, 2021 by erikj462 — Leave a comment

Either You Do Or You Don’t

Either you do, or you don’t. The choice is yours, and yours only.

The origin of this life lesson was in middle school, in seventh, eighth grade. It was my history teacher, and it was either history or Spanish, I can’t remember now. One of those things, if I wasn’t trying to explain it, I’d know exactly where it was. However, it was my teacher, nonetheless. One of the students, she didn’t do her homework the night before. She came, and she had an excuse. Right? And he said, “I don’t want to hear your excuse.” He dropped the pen, or a pencil, on the ground. He said, “Try to pick it up.” Now, being a seventh, eighth grader, she was sarcastically picking it up, kind of, “What am I, stupid? Of course, I can pick it up.” He said, “Exactly. You did it. There is no try. Either you do something or you don’t.” So I challenge you to do the same thing.

Let me see. Here’s a pen. Try and pick it up. You can try as much as you want. Either you don’t pick it up, which means you didn’t try, or you do it, and you pick it up. There are no excuses. Either you do it or you don’t.

You Don’t. You have excuses. You always have a reason it can’t get done. You procrastinate. Loves a constant state of stress or chaos. Is a victim. “The world’s only raining on me.” Avoids responsibility. “I didn’t do it. It was not my fault.” Associates with like-minded procrastinators. Misery loves company.

Excuses. Always has a reason it can’t get done. I think we all know a person, who, no matter how simple the task, they can never get it done, or how challenging the task, they never can get it done. There’s always a reason why they couldn’t do it. It’s, “I didn’t feel good,” or “I was busy,” or “I forgot,” or, “It was really hard, and I just couldn’t do it.”

Whatever excuse you give, is what’s going to define you.

So if you make an excuse for everything, well, then let’s translate what that really means. “I can’t find time to be successful.” “I was sick, so I can’t be successful.” “It is hard, so I can’t be successful.” Because each one of those excuses, what people don’t realize is, when people tell an excuse, it doesn’t affect the other person. People tell me excuses, why they can’t get things done all the time, all the time. It’s never an actual excuse or an actual reason. It’s always an excuse. “I can’t do it, because of this,” or, “I didn’t feel good.” I like to remind everybody, Michael Jordan, we all know who Jordan is. You might not know who he is, but you know the clothing brand, Jordan.

One of the reasons he’s the greatest is, it was the NBA finals, and he’s sick. Now, there was another game they could have played, so it wasn’t the worst. It wasn’t the end. It wasn’t game seven, I think it was game six, but he was extremely sick. He didn’t feel well at all. He could have been like normal people, and he could have found an excuse, not to go out there and compete, but he wasn’t normal. He was an exceptional player. That’s why he was the greatest, because no matter what it was, he was not going to have an excuse why they lost. So he went out there, and he gave it every inch that he possibly could. And they won.

In life, you can make excuses as much as you want, but they’re just like assholes. Everybody has them, and they don’t affect anyone other than yourself. When you have excuses, you feel accomplished, in that the person that you’re telling the excuse to lets it slide.

You’re like, okay, so you have another excuse when something else happens. But what you’re not realizing is that little by little, the person you’re giving an excuse to is losing faith in you. Eventually, before you know it, that person’s not going to have any faith in you at all. Then, to you, it’s going to seem they just cut you off, with no warning or anything. But the fact is, they didn’t cut you off. You cut yourself off. Why? Because you could never get anything done. You always had an excuse why you couldn’t do something. If you always have an excuse, why you can’t do something, then someone’s going to find somebody else that can.

Procrastination. Loves a constant state of stress and chaos. I’ve heard a lot of people say they work better under pressure. I’m going to translate that for you guys, just in case you don’t quite understand what that means. What that means is that you work better under stress and chaos, because pressure is just stress and chaos. There’s nothing beneficial about stress. So either you do or you don’t. When you procrastinate until the last minute … I used to be the king procrastinator, come on.

I never really cared about school. I never really read any books until I was in Mexico. I mean, I read when I was trapped in the rooms, but I wasn’t at school. I don’t think I read any school books, until Mexico. However, I was one of those people who worked better under pressure. At least I thought I did. Because in all actuality, if you do it before it’s done, do it before you need to have it done. If you have a week to do it, and you do it the first day, then you won’t have any stress.

It’s like, work hard now or work hard later. Because you’re going to have to work hard regardless, but you can waste as much time, and then at the end, work hard. Or you can be proactive, work hard now, and then move on to another project.

If you procrastinate to do things, you’re never going to see the full potential of your capabilities because you’re always going to be behind. When you have a week to do something, and you do it on the last day, then that’s four or five days that you could have had it done, and been working on something else.

Victim. It’s only raining on “me”. No, it’s true. It’s true. But it’s also only raining on me, and it’s also only raining on the other person, and another person, because in their life, the rain is only raining on them. I could be standing next to somebody else, but guess what? In my world, the rain is only raining on me. The other person’s not my world. It’s only my world. If you want to control the rain in your world, you have to take the steps in order to control your world. You’ve heard of an umbrella, a raincoat, a poncho. There are different things that you can do to protect yourself from the rain.

So just in life, if you don’t want to be the victim, unless you choose to be the victim, and then, that’s something that you choose to be. You want people to feel sorry for you. But if being the victim is not what you want to be, then just like when it’s raining, prepare. Put on a raincoat, bring an umbrella, have a poncho handy. You can get a poncho for 99 cents. Actually, you could probably get five of them, for 99 cents, on Amazon.I say that because some of the tools you need in life can be very inexpensive and simple. It all depends on how you want to look at life.

Now we’ve discussed this in previous chapters. What are the two things that you can control? There’s only two. Attitude and action, right?

Here’s a quick story. When I was at Cascade, this should be another lesson, but it works perfectly here, not to be a victim. One of the counselors, he was explaining a story. He could see the morale was down in everybody, and he was trying to cheer everybody up. I don’t think anyone got it. I got it, and it changed my life after listening to it.

He was like, “All right, I got a story for everybody. Now there’s two people. Now there’s a worker and there’s an owner. “Now this worker, he’s in a happy-go-lucky mood. Can’t change his mood for anything. The owner’s mad. He’s in a horrible mood. He can’t stand the fact that the worker’s happy. “Here’s the owner. He owns the mansion. He has all the goodies in the world, and he’s miserable. Here’s this worker who’s singing the work, and he has nothing. So the worker is doing hard work around the farm. It’s a horse farm, or cow farm, whatever. “The owner, trying to break the spirit of the worker, brings him over to the barn, with a smirk. ‘I need you to clear this room out.’ It’s a pile of horseshit all the way to the ceiling. They had been collecting this for years. So it’s rank. It’s terrible. “The owner walks away and says, ‘I got it. There’s no way he can be happy after this, right?’ Well, the worker looks at the shit, nods his head, grabs the pitchfork, and starts shoveling away. You got a little tune to it, singing, you know what I mean? Shoveling to the beat, right? “But a hour goes by, the owner comes down and sees that the worker’s still not sad. He’s like, ‘All right, I’m going to check on him in a little bit later. It just hasn’t been enough time.’. “Now, it’s been hours later. The owner comes down, the worker’s still working, and he’s about halfway done, but he’s still singing, and being cheery. “The owner just discombobulated, doesn’t understand how, after all the shoveling of shit, how could this worker still be happy? So he goes in, and he asks the worker, ‘How are you so happy, with all this shit?’. “You know what the worker says? He said, ‘I figured, with all this horseshit, there has to be a horse in here somewhere.'”

You can only control two things, your attitude and your action. The worker had two choices. He could have been the victim and looked at it as, “Oh, look at all this shit. What a miserable job I have to do.”

Or he could choose the one that he did. And he chose not to be a victim. He chose to look at the bright side of things, and wasn’t broken. The entire time, he’s whistling away, shoveling shit.

Now if this worker can shovel all day long, and keep a good attitude, just imagine how much shit you can shovel out of your life, and still keep a positive attitude. The world’s raining only on everybody. You’re not the only one.

So there’s absolutely no point in spending time worrying about how much other people have, and you don’t have. The only thing you should focus on is your attitude and your action. Change your attitude, and that will change your actions.

Avoid responsibility. These are the people that, either you do or you don’t. “I didn’t do it. It wasn’t my fault.” When I was in Mexico, if you read the book, you can see how this one, avoiding responsibility is completely foreign to me, because it was drilled into our heads that no matter what happens, there’s always responsibility, your own responsibility in whatever situation that happens.

So, “I didn’t do it,” and, “It’s not my fault,” those don’t register with me. I don’t understand it, but I hear it all the time. Like, “I didn’t do it. It wasn’t my fault.” Well, you’re the only person that was around, so whose fault was it? Just own up to it.

Have you ever seen a little kid? Literally, it’s easiest when I say this for a little kid, because people can register when they see a little kid do this, but what’s funny is, they don’t realize that that same little kid that did that when he was two or three or four, is still doing that at age 30 – 35. They haven’t changed, right?

If you were that kid that came up with these stupid excuses, and always say, “It wasn’t me,” even though you’re the only person that was around, but somehow, you just don’t want to take responsibility, and so, it wasn’t yours. Those traits carry you through life. So whenever you think about not taking responsibility, think of the two-year-old that just spilled his milk. Someone comes in and says, “What happened?” He says, “It wasn’t my fault. I didn’t do it.” “Whose fault was it?” “I don’t know.”

So avoiding responsibility, keep that image in your head, every time you try not to accept responsibility. There’s nothing wrong with accepting responsibility.

My mom taught me this a long time ago. “Just be honest, accept the responsibility. Because once you accept the responsibility, what’s there to do?” If they’re going to punish you, they’re going to punish you whether you accept the responsibility or if you don’t accept the responsibility. Now, if you didn’t do it, all right. But be honest. If you are known to accept responsibility, then people trust you. They know if you’re wrong, you’ll own up to being wrong. Then, when you won’t back down, then they are going to side with you, because they know when you’re wrong, you will admit it. Or at least after, you’ll admit it.

There’s been numerous times where I’ve been in the wrong. I could have swore up and down I was right, but I was wrong. But when I’m wrong, the one thing I do is, I will go tell the person I was wrong. I apologize.

You must always find fault in everything, because if it’s not your fault, then whose is it? Your make-believe friend? Grow up. How old are you? Two, three, four, five? If you’re broke or if you’re unhappy, or if you’re overweight, it is 110% your fault.

Associates with like-minded procrastinators. Misery loves company. I think we’ve all heard that saying, “Misery loves company,” but some reason miserable people are still around miserable people, and then they wonder why they’re miserable.

If you like going to the gym, and you’re in the gym every day, and you play basketball, then your friends are probably going to like basketball. You tend to be around people that have the same likes and interests as you. Maybe you’re not around those people all the time, because, maybe it’s just a three time a week ordeal.

You go play basketball, because that’s what you love to do. But then, the rest of the time, you like playing video games, or you like procrastinating, being a victim, having excuses. So during that one hour, or three hours a week, you’re motivated because you’re around motivated people. But then, when you leave that situation, you’re around other like-minded people like yourself, lazy and miserable.

If that’s the case, then what should you do? Maybe hang around the people that you feel motivated around, and spend less time around the people that are slow and not doing something.

An inactive person is lazy, right? I might sit in my house all day long, but I guarantee, I’m not just sitting here. I am being active 24/7. Even when I’m sleeping, I’m active, I’m plotting and strategizing when I’m sleeping.

I don’t enjoy being around people who are miserable. I don’t enjoy being around people that don’t strive to beat the best. So I have to be alone, until I meet people that are like-minded like me, because what happens is, you can be as motivated as the Energizer Bunny in the beginning. But then, you get around people who haven’t accomplished anything in their life to be proud of. They project their failures and disappointments onto your dreams and aspirations. And before you know it, you’re no longer energized like the Energizer Bunny. You’re pretty much slow. You’re like one of those cheap batteries that you get at the grocery store that lasts for a couple of weeks, and then they’re dead.

So if you want to maintain energy and determination and motivation, then sometimes it’s best to be alone. If you can’t find other people that are just as motivated as you, be alone, because at least when you’re alone, you can motivate yourself.

But it is nearly impossible to motivate yourself, when you have other lazy people or miserable people around you, spewing their laziness, their procrastination, and their misery onto you. Does that make sense? If you’re an individual that’s a motivated person, be alone, or be with other motivated people.

Because the worst thing that can happen for you is to be around an unmotivated person, they’re going to drag you down. If you don’t believe me, go ahead, be around them. See what happens.

Either you do or you don’t. This is,

You Do.No excuses, only reasons. When failure happens, they look for a reason than adjust to improve and become more efficient. Multitask. Multiple projects. When procrastinating with one project, work on a different one. Looks at loss as an opportunity. One door closes, another one opens. Looks for responsibility. Too busy to hang out.

No excuses, only reasons. You might think a reason and an excuse are the same thing. Very different. An excuse is, “I was feeling sick.” A reason is, “I got in a car accident, and my arm is broken.” And you come back the next day, you’re bruised up, and your arm is in a cast. That’s a reason.

An excuse is, “My tummy hurts.” While I was in middle school, our basketball coach used to say this. “Are you hurt, or are you injured?”

Because if you’re hurt, “Eh, that’s just an excuse. Get out there, keep playing.” If you’re injured, then you go on the injured reserve list, you’re done.

When you put that metric in things, you’ll see how fast people are no longer injured. That they can play through this so-called “hurt”.

Same thing with excuses. If it’s life or death, I guarantee those same excuses won’t happen. If it’s life or death, that reason’s still going to be there.

What about when you fail?

I fail on a daily basis. “I failed this morning.” “I was supposed to be on the bike at two o’clock in the morning,” or, “I didn’t get on a bike until 2:30, maybe 3:00.” That’s a failure.

“Last night, I drank two beers this morning. I could feel it.” That’s a failure. I drank too much. Maybe that was the reason I didn’t wake up early enough to get on the bike. So doers look for a reason, then adjust to improve. Me not waking up early in the morning, I’m looking for a reason.

What did I do yesterday that made me less effective and efficient today? Then I’m going to adjust accordingly, to make myself more efficient. So there’s no point in giving an excuse, there’s always points to give reasons. And then you can brainstorm on how you can solve that reason.

Multitask. A doer is doing things. He’s always doing something. There’s never a time where he’s not doing something.

Even when he’s just sitting there, he’s doing something. Even when he looks like he’s not doing something, he’s still doing something. He has multiple projects.

Now everybody procrastinates. Everybody has a sense of laziness, but there’s ways to be lazy and procrastinate in a healthy, productive manner, right? This is how you do it. I’ve been practicing this for quite some time. This is how I get a lot of things done. I have two or three projects. And I’ll burn myself out on one project, and then I’ll move right to another one.

So I have to get these chapters done. Well, I don’t have to, I have no reason to get them done, but my goal is to have them done by the end of the day. This is the last chapter, I’m going to have it done.

There are times where I’ll push myself a little harder on one project, and stay hyper focused on this one project. But starting tomorrow, I have to edit these pages. I have to start another project. I have to brainstorm how to build the website. It’s not on there anymore, I already moved it, but I have about six or seven different projects I need to do.

How do I accomplish so much in such a little time ? When I don’t want to do one project, I’ll put it off for a little bit. I’ll procrastinate as much as possible on it, but then I will do everything else.

If all things start at the bottom, my goal is to finish these chapters. Well, I’ll work until I don’t no longer want to work on the chapters.

But even though that’s my goal, I’ll start procrastinating on it, midway through the week or something, but then I’ll start working on something else when I’m procrastinating on writing chapters.

Then once I’m bored with that project, if I’m still not ready to write chapters, then I’ll start another project, and start another one. So then, by the time I’m sick of doing everything else, I’ll be ready to write chapters again. Then I’ll work hours on writing, and then I get to pick and choose whichever one I’m less bored with doing.

Does that make sense? The ones that I’m less bored with doing. The things that I don’t want to do all the time, sometimes I just don’t do it.

I avoid it for a little bit, but I’m doing other things. And then, when I got myself up to being able to do it, I accomplished a whole bunch of other things, and now I do that, the project I was procrastinating on.

But while I’m working on other things, I’m brainstorming how to accomplish or knock out the bigger problem, if writing these chapters is a difficult issue, all right? So while I’m working on other projects, doing other things, to save time after I do the chapters, and to work on other projects, I’m steady brainstorming on what I’m going to say, and what I want to talk about. Does that make sense?

I’m still working on the project, even though I’m not working on it, and I’m working on something else but in the subconscious. That’s how you can manipulate your brain. You got to use your subconscious.

Looks at loss as an opportunity. One door closes, and another one opens.

Now when I was really young, I was watching, I think, it was Mighty Ducks II. Yeah, because they were playing the Russians, or something. And the Russian coach was all mad, or something, I could be off.

I haven’t seen the movie in years. I’m 37, and the movie came out when I was eight, or maybe seven, so 30 years ago. The Russian coach was mad because it was a tie. The Mighty Ducks coach was like, “It was a tie, it was a good game.”

He said, “No. I would have rather lost than to tie. You learn more from a loss than a tie.” If you don’t look at your losses and study them, you’re never going to get better.

If you avoid looking at why you lost, then you’re going to continuously lose that way. So every opportunity, just like with failure, when failure happens, you look for a reason it happened, and then you adjust accordingly.

When you lose, you look at why you lost, and then you adjust accordingly. However, with loss, you have to also remember, when you lose a girlfriend, lose a job, lose whatever it is … Now if you’re a victim, you’re not going to see the opportunity.

But if you’re not a victim, then you’re going to look at it as an opportunity to test your skills, an opportunity to sharpen your saw on different avenues of your life. If you break up with a girl, don’t be a victim. Look around. That might have been the perfect opportunity.

And you never know. The very next day, or next week or something, you might find somebody, and run into somebody at the mall, at the beach, or wherever it is, and that could be the perfect person. But if you’re so concerned about the loss, you’ll never look for the opportunity.

Looks for responsibility. So as a person that does not accomplish things, he tries to avoid all responsibility, a person that does things looks for responsibility. Let me explain something. The more responsibilities that you have, the more money you will make. However, don’t overload yourself with stupid responsibilities.

I didn’t say, be a yes man or a do boy, and then, just take on everybody else’s responsibilities. I’m saying, take on your responsibilities. The more responsible you are for yourself, the happier you will be.

It’s when you don’t take responsibility for the things that you need to take care of for yourself is when you have stress. It’s when you start not doing things, and it’s when you start avoiding responsibility.

Don’t overload yourself with stupid stress and stupid responsibilities. Make sure that your responsibilities are only responsibilities for progression, not degression. Now, if you do, you are too busy to do anything else.

You’re too busy to hang out.You might specify a small amount of your time for hanging out, just human interaction, and less time to be a machine all the time. When I’m considering being a machine, I’m not saying, “Be a robot.” I’m talking about, your mind’s always on business.

Sometimes, you might need some time, where you just need to relax, and let go of business, but don’t let that be a common thing. Don’t forget, the only way you’re going to accomplish something is to do it.

When you’re hanging out, it amazes me how much people tell me, they don’t have time, or they can’t get something done. But you know what? You know how many hours I waste in a single night going to my neighbor’s house or something?

It might take me, what, 40 minutes to make a lesson, and I dread it all day. But I’ll go up to my neighbor’s house, and before I blink my eyes, I’ve been there for two hours, wasted two hours.

Yeah. I was enjoying myself, kind of, but then when I come home, I’m like, “Well, damn, I wasted all this time I could have been doing something productive.”

That’s why you’re too busy to hang out. Because you understand hanging out wastes a lot of time that you could be doing something to project yourself to a higher standard of living.

To end everything, either you do or you don’t. No excuses, multitask. Always look for opportunities in loss. Always be responsible, and be too busy to hang out.

Posted on May 18, 2021June 4, 2021 by erikj462 — Leave a comment

Be Selfish

Be Selfish. There’s nothing wrong with thinking about me first.

The origin of this, I was at Aspen and it was with one of my counselors. Now, if you’ve read the story, 12 Years In Hell, you’ll recall when I was at Aspen, I was moving up the chain of accomplishment. That was my goal. I wanted to achieve the greatest level they had. However, I didn’t make it. I made it to the second highest level, but when I became Buffalo, which I got my own knife, and then I also became, or assumed the responsibility of divvying out the food when staff would resupply our food. So it was me and my other buddy. He was also a Buffalo. We were the only two in the group that wanted to achieve greatness. The other ones were kind of whatever. They’re here, they’re fine. And they didn’t have any real motivation to progress in the program.

They were just biding their time and then they’re ready to go. However, the other one with me, my good friend, the two of us would go off with the staff and then divvy out all the piles. Then the other group members would come and pick their food. Now, one of the staff members told us this and it didn’t sit well with me because there’d be extra food every week. Now he didn’t tell us it was our food, which it could have been. It could have been our food because we had upgraded ourselves in the program. But the way he put it was he asked us, “What do you guys want to do? Do you want to divvy this out equally among everybody? Or keep it for yourself and basically hide it from the group?”

Now me being me, I was going to divide it by the group because I figured we were all a group, but he told us both this. He said, “Nah, man. You need to be selfish. You need to think about yourself.” He said, “You put in all this hard work. You are at a level that none of them wanted to be at. So it’s only fair that you give yourself more.” Now, with this counselor, he always rubbed me the wrong way. This is the reason he rubbed me the wrong way. Before this conversation he had with my friend and I, he used to always want his fair share. So we’re out there camping for the whole week. He’s only out there for a few days and he gets to go home, but we couldn’t leave if we made something good, he wanted his fair share. He always wanted to make sure he was not forgotten.

It rubbed me the wrong way because I was like, “Man, you get to go home. Why are you trying to eat our good food while you’re out here with us?” But then after he had that conversation with us, with me and my friend, I looked at what he was doing a little different. He was showing us to basically be assertive and make sure that you don’t get forgotten. And that’s where we get be selfish. There’s nothing wrong with thinking me first. So if you put in the hard work, then give yourself more. Don’t put in all the work and share evenly. That doesn’t make any sense. I thought it made sense when I was younger, but the older I get, I understand what he’s saying. If you’re willing to put in the hard work, because not very many people are, if you’re willing to put in the hard work, then be selfish and give yourself more. Now let’s get into the class.

Forget to love yourself and others will follow suit. Never have time for yourself or never have time for themselves. Yep. Giving your time and energy to others allows their body to go. Everyone has a moment when enough is enough, some just fail to do something about it. Searches for external approval, opposed to within and stays in bed all the time. Lack of stimulus.

To be selfish is almost to love yourself. It’s okay. Everyone always thinks being selfish is wrong. “Don’t think of yourself. Think of others first. Think of everybody else.” But no. If you forget to love yourself, no one else will. I attest to that. If you don’t care about you, no one else will. If I didn’t care about myself, nobody else would. If you haven’t heard the story, if you haven’t read it, read it.

Throughout those 12 years, I had absolutely nobody. So I had to depend on myself and I don’t know. Maybe love yourself is kind of cheesy because I did love myself, but it was more than love myself. I had to depend. Everything was about survival. So was it beyond loving myself? I had to survive, right? So fight or flight, either I’m going to die or I’m going to fight to stay alive. I didn’t make the right choices all the time, but I’m still here. So whatever. So never have time for themselves and giving time and energy to others. If you don’t love yourself, then you’re always going to be persuaded to do other things that doesn’t necessarily benefit you.

Does that make sense? So if you don’t have a goal, like we’ve talked about throughout these 12 steps, right? We’re on step 11 right now. So, by this point in time hopefully you understand that you need to set time for yourself. You can’t be a yes man. You need to have a well-defined plan in order to succeed. So never having time for yourself, if you don’t have a plan, if you don’t have a mission, if you don’t know exactly where you are going, then you have too much free time. And then that free time, you might not think you have free time. You might always be busy, but that doesn’t mean that you’re accomplishing anything. So if you don’t have a mission, a goal, a direct plan, like a direct place where you’re going, then you’re going to fill that time with other people’s dreams, with other people’s missions. You might not know it, but you are.

Allow their body to go. When you don’t love yourself, you’re not going to do certain things to make sure you’re going to survive. And it’s almost, it’s crazy. They call it relationship weight or whatever. I’ve never understood this. Okay? You’re in a relationship with somebody and then you guys gain weight. You worked so hard, you cared about yourself to attract another person. And when you get attracted to that other person that’s attracted to you, you hook up, you become an item. You’re a couple. Well then, it almost seems like both of you guys forgot why you were attracted to each other. You were attracted to each other because you took care of yourself. And then after they’re together and it’s kind of like their belly kind of sticks out a little bit and then they get the double chin. All that and they forget to love themselves. They’re so consumed about loving this other person because they’re happy. They’re no longer alone or whatever, that now all their time they were loving themselves, they didn’t think they were loving themselves because they were alone. And so how could I be loving myself if I’m alone?

It’s actually easier to love yourself when you’re alone, Because the person who loves you, doesn’t want to hurt your feelings. So if you’re getting a little chubby around the waist, “No, honey, you look great,” even though that back of your mind, you’re telling you, “Man, I’m getting fat.” “Honey, am I getting fat?” “No, babe, you’re great.” “I guess I’m not fat. She loves me anyways.”

Well, that’s searching for external approval opposed to within. When you have that split second thought, “I’m getting fat,” you’re not approving yourself. But when you ask someone else who you know is going to be your cheerleader, you’re looking for external approval because you know that you are critical on yourself so you’d rather take the easy route. Now I skipped a little bit, right? That’s searching for external approval, but it also goes with allowing their body to go because everybody has this moment when they look in the mirror and they’re like, “I’m fat. Enough is enough.” But how many people fail to do something about it? And they fail to do something about it because they’re looking for external approval opposed to within. You know you don’t approve of the way you look. You know you don’t approve of huffing and puffing, walking up and down the stairs.

You know you don’t approve of not being able to play with your kids. You know you don’t approve of your sexual relationships and not being able to breathe and much less enjoy it because you’re out of breath. You don’t enjoy that. What are you going to do about it? Most people go try to find a pill. All right, but something’s wrong with my heart. No, something’s wrong with what you’ve been eating. Something’s wrong with the lack of exercise. It’s not fixable with a pill. This is what not loving yourself gets. It gets you down the rabbit hole of medicine and pills and prescriptions and everything else to lose control of your body. 30 years later, you will look at yourself and then understand what I’m talking about.

Let’s say your finances are mediocre. You’re not doing very well. But then when you ask all your friends or coworkers, how they’re doing and you’re doing better than they are, even though for yourself, you’re like, you know down inside you could be doing better. You could be more responsible, but searching for external approval. Everybody else approved of how irresponsible you’ve been with your money, because they’re just as irresponsible or more.

Not listening to yourself. Listening to other people and being influenced by their goals, their dreams, their satisfactions, their standards for themselves. Stays in bed all the time. Lack of stimulus. I didn’t say lacks motivation. I said, lacks stimulus. Now, I’m not one to be in bed all the time. Although I’m in the room majority of the time and I might be sitting in the bed just because my chair’s a little uncomfortable and the beds a little bit more comfortable. But when I’m talking about them in bed all the time, I’m talking about they need to be sleeping all the time. They’re not happy. They’re depressed. They’re sad. They’re slow. They’re moving slow. They’re not walking with a purpose. Right? You can tell when someone’s not walking with a purpose. We went over this already. They’re not happy. They’re depressed. They think that it’s some magic pill or magic potion they need to feel better. But then they get that magic potion. They feel better for just a minute but then they’re right back in the bed feeling miserable.

That’s one searching for external approval because they don’t approve of themselves. So they’re searching for somewhere else to find approval. So when they have a party,or they go to a party they’re so excited because they’re going to get interaction from other people. “Oh, you look gorgeous. Oh, you’re so handsome tonight.” You’re getting approval by other people. “Oh, do you want to go hook up tonight? You want to come home with me?” External approval. You might not approve of yourself, but this girl wants to take you home. Or this guy wants to take you home. So they’re giving you that approval. But then the next day, once everything’s back to normal, you’re back in bed because you were searching for external approval, opposed to searching within, to find your own approval for yourself. Now I believe the cause of this is lack of stimulus, right?

You’re not stimulating your brain. You’re bored, not depressed. You’re bored. I talked about this yesterday. I don’t remember exactly when I was discussing this. So I don’t want to say in a previous chapter. I was watching YouTube. I watch YouTube when I ride the bike or when I’m running. YouTube’s great, however, when I search a topic, then all they do is bombard me with the same exact topic. So after a week, there is no more stimulus for it. And so that initial burst of energy, I had excitement about, “Oh, I’m learning great new things. This is amazing,” it dies out because lack of stimulus. They have over saturated me with so much of the same information it’s, “Okay. I watched this one video. That’s great. Watch another one. No, it’s kind of the same thing, but still great.”

After a week because I watch an hour every morning it’s, “My goodness. They’re saying the same thing they have for the last week and a half.” So I’m done. My stimulus for that topic is over. But then what happens in today’s society is there’s no other stimulus around because like I said, unless you are constantly finding stimulus from other sources, if all you’re doing is finding sources of stimulus from the same media sources that you have been doing, then of course, you’re going to be depressed. They berated you with so much of the same information. It becomes boring. There is no growth because they have restricted your growth. Does that make sense? They think that they’re doing you a favor by finding your interests.

But in all actuality, they’re restricting your interests. They’re not allowing you to be interested in anything other than what you’re interested in right now. Because they’re only going to bombard you with what you’re interested in right now. So it’s impossible to grow and it’s very, very restricting and can cause a lot of depression and I understand why people can’t get out of bed because they’re only seeing the same world over and over and over and over and over.

I don’t want to toot the horn on a library. But part of the reason why I say get a library, do you see how many books… That’s just one bookshelf. There’s thousands of books in this house. Thousands of books in this house. So every day when I wake up, I have… What there’s one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, there’s almost 700 books in here, probably more. 700 different stimuli to stimulate my imagination. So on Google, I can stimulate something else. So I have that ability, which most people don’t have, which is the stimulus, the little pockets of stimulus all over my house, through these books. But most people, they stay in bed because they have no stimulus. They’ve been restricted and confined into this little finite box through social media and they’re trapped and they don’t know how to get out.

It Is Impossible To Love Others If You First Do Not Love Yourself. In this section, we’re going to go through integrity, creating a goal and sticking to it at all costs. Allow yourself to trust yourself, understands change equals change. Being brutally honest with oneself, then making the correct changes. Sets extremely high standards and sets out to achieve and maintain, constantly raising the bar to improve. Understanding sleep is vital, but prefers creating, experimenting, and working.

With being selfish and loving yourself. So if you don’t love yourself we just talked about what will happen. So loving yourself. I’m a firm believer you can’t love somebody else if you don’t first love yourself. If you think you do, but you’re dependent on the other person to feel good about yourself inside. It’s a codependent relationship. It’s not a true, healthy relationship. We can go into that, how it is a codependent relationship, but that’s a whole different rabbit hole.

Integrity, creating a goal and sticking to it at all costs. So we talked about this in, “I Stay Ready” about accomplishing small little goals, right? Well, with building integrity to yourself, it’s holding yourself to a higher standard and sticking to it. So if you’re like, I’m not going to call my ex after a bad breakup and you stick to that goal and you don’t call that person until you understand that you’re no longer emotionally attached. That’s building a little bit of trust within yourself and it’s allowing yourself to build self-confidence. Well, you’re building self-confidence and through that, you’re trusting yourself a little bit more. So by creating small little goals, some little challenges, and then sticking to it, not just achieving it. Achieving, it’s like writing a paper and getting over it, but doing something challenging a habit if it’s working out. Like, “I’m going to do this and hell or high water, I’m going to do this every single day. Nothing in this world’s going to stop me from running 20 minutes a day or walking,” if you need to start somewhere.

If it’s walking 10 minutes a day, if you stick to that goal and there’s hell or high water, you will not fail. Over time your body will start listening to itself and will start to trust itself. Then if you’re having problems with finances and you’re like, “I’m not going to overspend anymore. I’m not going to spend money on frivolous things,” and you stick to that goal, well, slowly but surely, you’re going to have more opportunities come into your life and you’re going to trust yourself more. You’re going to trust your decisions, which makes you happier. If you could trust every decision that you ever make, you’d be a happy person. The problem is, a lot of us don’t trust our own selves. We think we trust ourselves, but we don’t. We act on impulse a lot, your argument is going to be, “I trust myself.” Is that why you’re in debt?

Understand change equals change. Being brutally honest with oneself, then making the correct changes. Change equals change out of the cascade playbook. They used to always say that, “Change equals change. If you want something different, you have to do something different.” But if you want to start loving yourself, you have to look in that mirror and be brutally honest about everything there is about you, you don’t like. And don’t just look at the physical, look at the emotional, look at the spiritual and take time to change it little by little. A person that doesn’t love themselves and looks externally for love, they look in the mirror and they might feel stupid, or they might not feel adequate. So they go ask their mom and their mom reassures them how great they are.

In the world today everybody gets a trophy even if you came in last, they still give you a trophy because they don’t want to let you feel left out and they don’t want to be brutally honest with you that you lost. And you are not as good as everybody else. In today’s society they want everybody to think that everyone’s equal. Nobody’s equal. They never have been. Some people work their ass off and some people do not.

I’ve used this before. This analogy is with most of my friends, we started off equal, but I chose to lock myself in a room and read books and educate myself, while they chose to spend time with their families and enjoy life. But in the end, we’re no longer equal. My finances are much better than theirs. Their finances are basically the same as when we first started our friendship. Mine have not. My education level, not school education, my personal gain in education is not the same. So there’s no possible way that you could even fathom the thought that we’re equal. we’re not. The more you learn, the more you earn. People who spend the time being brutally honest with themselves to fix what they do not like or feel. I mean, you might like it, but it might not be the best thing. So you get rid of what’s not working and you keep what is working, right?

And part of Getting rid of what’s not working is being brutally honest with yourself. And through being brutally honest, you’re going to start to love yourself. You’re going to not like people who are not honest with themselves, because you can tell. You can tell, when someone’s taking a selfie, a beautiful picture, and they got half their belly hanging out, right. That person is just taking that picture trying to feel good, but there’s no possible way they feel good about themselves when they’re huffing and puffing, walking up stairs. But you can start feeling great about yourself if last month it was hard to walk up those stairs and this month it’s easier. You’re starting to love yourself by being brutally honest with yourself and making the correct changes necessary to begin to love yourself.

Sets extremely high standards and sets out to achieve and maintain, constantly raising the bar to improve. Now, how much do you love yourself? To what degree? I say that for this. They say that we only use 15% of our brain. We probably only use 15% of our whole entire body, right? Because let me ask you a question. You ever played a sport you haven’t played in a while and the next day you’re like, “Man, I’m sore in muscles I didn’t even know existed.” All right. So when you’re being brutally honest with yourself and set extremely high standards, when I’m asking you, “How much do you love yourself?” to what degree? It’s a valid question. To what degree do you love yourself? Do you want to utilize yourself 100% as in using all your muscles for what they’re made for? To use 100% of your mental capability. So use 100% of your brain. Is that what your goal is? Is that what loving yourself means, is to utilize yourself or do you only want to love yourself maybe 5 to 10%. True love of oneself is wanting to maximize yourself.

Let me give you an example. If you love your kids, I mean, in theory, you want the absolute best for your kid, right? Sound education, loving family, loving wife, or husband, financial success. A parent’s dream wanting the best because you love them. Well, wouldn’t that also mean if you love yourself, you want the absolute best for yourself? The only way to achieve the absolute best is to start breaking down the barriers on your inability to use your full mental capability. Does that make sense? So when asked, “How much do you love yourself, to what degree?” If you’re brutally honest with yourself, you can gauge how much active participation you are participating in to better yourself, mentally, physically, spiritually.

Now sets extremely high standards, then sets out to achieve and maintain, consistently raising the bar to improve. The only way that you can achieve full love of yourself is to get to one level, love yourself for that, but then seek for the next level. No, I don’t know what using 100% of my brain looks like. So maybe once I get to 50%, my mentality changes and I’m like, “I can move things with my hand. I can fly. I can manipulate people with my mind. I can turn the TV on just by thinking, I can manipulate the stock market by visualizing it.” All right. I don’t know what power can happen when you use 80% of our brain. Never seen it. So maybe when I get to that, my standards might be a little bit different. I’d be like, “Well, I’ve accomplished everything. The only thing else there is, is maybe move the world.” All right. But until I get to a point where I’m maximizing my personal ability, I have to consistently raise the bar, set a high standard and then try to maintain it. Once I can maintain it, raise the bar even further.

If you consistently do this, don’t worry about where you started. You’re wasting time. But after a while, you can look back and be like, “Wow, that’s crazy. Something that took me months to write a year ago, now I can do in a week. It’s a great progression. I love myself even better. I’m more efficient.”

Understands sleep is vital but prefers creating, experimenting, and working. Now this goes with the opposite of not loving yourself and wanting to be in bed all day because you’re not stimulated. But when you love yourself and you’re completely stimulated, sleep is a little bit in the way. You understand the importance of it and you might even have to take naps throughout the day to maintain maximum capacity of your mental capabilities. So yes, sleep is vital for the brain, for your body to recharge. However, when you’re truly in love with yourself, it’s more, “Just let me get this sleep over and let me wake up and do some more stuff. Let me finish creating this project I was in. Let me finish this experiment. Hold on, babe. Let me finish working real quick. I’m almost done.” When you have that amount of care and compassion and love for what you’re doing, it’s because what you’re doing is a part of yourself.

Does that make sense? So when you’re creating something that you just can’t sleep in, you can’t sleep. You’re so giddy. You’re so excited, but you’re falling asleep because you know sleep is vital. All right. Well, when you wake up, you’re motivated, ready to go. Let’s keep on going. Where did I leave off? Okay, let’s go. When you’re in creative mode and you’re focused about being creative and creating, then your creation is your love for yourself. When you’re experimenting and you’re trying to experiment with a new gizmo gadget, new formula, you’re putting your heart and energy into that because that’s your love, working. You hear the greats like Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant would spend hours in the gym, mastering their craft. Basketball is love for them. They love themselves so there was no amount of work that they could put in that was too much for them. They were living what made them the happiest, being on that basketball court, being in that gym, struggling, sweating, bleeding, whatever it was, broken this, broken that, stubbed this stub that.

They were willing to go through all the pain because they loved it. Not every moment was great. Just like when you’re creating, not every moment’s great or experimenting. Some things could blow up in front of you and set you back. But it’s the hunt and it’s the grind that keeps them going because they’re trying to maximize their mental capability, their physical capability and their spiritual capability. And when you multilaterally combine your mind, body, and spirit, like we discussed in “staying ready”, then you understand what loving yourself is and all the other noise won’t even matter. It won’t. It won’t matter what people think of you because you’re doing what you feel is best for you. It won’t matter about what’s going on in the news. You’ll be focused on what’s going on in you.

All right. Our last chapter is going to be a fun one. Either you do, or you don’t.

Posted on May 18, 2021June 4, 2021 by erikj462 — Leave a comment

I Stay Ready It Keeps Me From Having To Get Ready

All right, let’s get started. I stay ready! It keeps me from having to get ready. Be prepared for tomorrow today, not today be prepared for yesterday.

The origin of this was when I was about 19, late 18, early 19 when I was making … or about mid-19. Around those years, it wasn’t a saying that was said once. It was something that was said continuously over, and over, and over again. So I heard the phrase numerous times over a course of maybe two to three years. It was the boss, the person I was working for, the person I ended up going to Kentucky for, the person that I ended up going to Korea for, he would always say, “I stay ready because it keeps me from having to get ready.” He would drill that into my head.

When I was with him, we literally would be waking up at 5:00 to 6:00 in the morning and then wouldn’t get home until 11:30-12:00 at night, and then having to do it again. I was a driver, so if he was taking a nap, I still had to work. The only time I got to not do anything was when he was having a meeting or something, but then I was usually either eating lunch or doing something else. So it was a consistent go, go, go atmosphere.

Now why this is so important is if you want to succeed in life, if you want to accomplish anything, you have to be ready. The amount of time it takes to get yourself ready, it’s a lot of time if you add it all up. Now think about it. Then we’ll get into the class. I ride my bike every morning, about 20 miles an hour every morning. Now I understand that when I am just waking up. I’m a little slower because I’m groggy. I’m not awake yet, so I understand it takes a little bit of time to process waking up.

Now if I’m prepared for my bike ride, I have my paper towel. I have my water. I have the remote control. Everything’s already set up for the morning. I stay ready because it keeps me from having to get ready. So then in the morning, I don’t have to focus on getting, finding my water, finding a paper towel, finding the remote control. I’m already set up. I’m ready to go. So while I’m slow and my brain’s not awake yet, and I’m kind of discombobulated because I’m just waking up, I have prepared myself to where I don’t have to think. I’m already prepared.

So let’s get into the lesson.

Being Unprepared, being late, which causes stress, rush, anxious, frustration, lashing out, to depression, digression. Body, and mind start to deteriorate because of lack of use. Impulsive. Making irrational choices. Sounded like a good idea at the time, and low self-esteem. Breaking little promises to ourself. Always feeling behind.

Being late, being unprepared. I don’t have any stress. If you look at my hair, I don’t have any gray hair. Occasionally, I get a couple of grays here and there, and I’m almost 40. My brother because you’d be like, “Well it’s genetics.” Well, my brother who’s the same mom, same dad, he’s gray all over the place. I don’t put myself in stressful situations. To other people, that might be stressful, but to me it’s not stressful.

Rushed. I can’t stand being rushed because I always tend to forget. I’m one of those people that if I’m rushing, I forget stuff. Like I was just talking about it, if I don’t prepare the bike for the morning, then I might forget something, get on the bike, and then I have to stop because I wasn’t prepared. I was ill-prepared. That’s why I don’t like being rushed.

Anxious, an anxious person. I don’t like anxiety. I don’t like surprises. I don’t like being out of control. So anxious, being anxious is not knowing what’s coming. You’re anxious. You’re worried about what’s coming, which being anxious, all these add onto each other. So if you’re stressed, you’re going to be moving really fast, which is going to rush you, which when you’re rushed, then you start forgetting things, which is going to cause you to be anxious. So then when you’re anxious, you’re going to be on the edge. You might not think it. You might be in a constant state of being anxious, which you have anxiety problems, which if you have those problems, you won’t even notice what I’m saying because it’s so common to you that you already noticed maybe 10 years ago.

So what happens is once you become anxious, then you start getting frustrated at everything, little things that if you were not stressed, if you were relaxed, and you weren’t anxious, it wouldn’t frustrate you. It wouldn’t even bother you. But since you’re stressed, you’ve been rushed, now you’re anxious. Now it’s causing frustration because when you’re anxious your heart beats really fast. You feel like you’re having a heart attack. I cannot stand my heart beating really fast and me not knowing the outcome of what’s about to happen. I’m very bad when it comes to being anxious.

When I’m anxious, this is part of the reason I don’t like surprises because before a surprise, I get really anxious, and then I get really short, I’m really frustrated. So I’m on edge. People can frustrate me really fast and someone could be literally trying to do the nicest thing for me in the world, but since it’s a surprise and I’m extremely anxious, I’m frustrated. What that causes is it causes lashing out.

If you have kids, or if you’re in a relationship with somebody, you need to pay attention to this because being late, just being late, as being unprepared, ill-prepared, causes stress, which causes you to be rushed, which causes you to be anxious, which causes frustration, which causes you to lash out, and then after all of those things, this lovely thing happens. It’s called, you become depressed. You don’t understand why you’re lashing out at your kids or your loved one. You don’t understand why you’re always so frustrated. You don’t understand how you’re taking pills for anxiety, and they’re just not working. You don’t understand why you’re so rushed with everything, how you just never seem to have time. You never understand why you’re getting gray hairs all over the place and so stressed. It could come from the smallest little thing, you’re always late, and you’re ill-prepared for the day coming. I challenge you to become prepared and see if it changes anything.

Digression. Being unprepared, it causes your body and your mind to start to deteriorate because you just seen being late, how it causes … We go through all, what, six different steps, which lead us to down the road to eventual depression. So what happens if we are consistently late, and we go down those six steps to where we end to depression, our mind and our body start to deteriorate. Our mind starts to deteriorate because, we keep telling ourselves how stressed we are, how anxious we are, how frustrated we are, and then our mind starts believing it, so it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I honestly don’t understand depression. I don’t. If you don’t like something, or if you’re sad about something, just go change what you’re not liking, or what you’re sad about and try something different. Keep trying different things until you are no longer depressed or no longer stressed, no longer rushed, no longer anxious, no longer frustrated.

Now what comes with: Being prepared is using your body and your mind. So being ill-prepared means you’re not taking care of your health. You’re not exercising every day. You’re not reading every day, so your mind’s not being stimulated and your body’s not being stimulated. So if that happens, it starts to deteriorate. Everything deteriorates, if you don’t take constant care of it.

No time in life should somebody be less intelligent than they were before. However, in today’s society, that’s part of what’s happening. We’re digressing because we’re in a society where it’s okay to be late. We live in a society where it’s okay to avoid responsibility, which I don’t have that on here, which is a very important part of this, is being irresponsible. If you’re irresponsible, you’re going to be stressed. You’re going to be rushed. You’re going to be anxious. You’re going to be frustrated. You’re going to lash out on people, and you’re going to be, in turn, depressed. Responsibility is being prepared for the unthinkable or unimaginable.

Impulsive, making irrational choices. If you’re rushed, and you need to make a decision at a moment’s notice, you are not going to make a good decision. You haven’t thought of everything. You haven’t compared and contrasted the benefits or the consequences, whether they’re positive, or they’re negative. When you’re acting on impulse, I’ve done this a lot and it never works out well. You want to see someone who acts on impulse, if you don’t understand what I’m saying, look at somebody that’s drunk. When someone’s drunk, they make really irrational decisions, a decision that you’re like, man, if I was not drunk, I would not have made that decision.

Yes, because you’re in a drunken state. You’re rushed. You’re not patient. You’re anxious. You’re easily frustrated, and you make extremely irrational decisions whether it’s, I would have never slept with that person if I wasn’t drunk, or I would’ve never drove last night if I wasn’t drunk, making irrational decisions that can have extremely horrible consequences all because it sounded like a good idea at the time. It’s about being irresponsible and not having any structure in your life. The more structure that you have in your life, the less apt you are to making irrational decisions, the more apt you are to not live by a code, and being late, and digressing in life, and being impulsive.

Low self-esteem. Now you might not see how you can connect being late and being ill-prepared with your self-esteem, but the two of them are immensely connected. On a daily basis, we make an assortment of promises to ourself. You might not think that you do, but on a daily basis, you probably make about a thousand promises, small promises to yourself. I’m going to exercise. I’m going to read. I’m going to go this way. I’m going to start thinking this way. All these little promises that you have, if you keep them, you build self-esteem. If you break them, your self-esteem starts to deteriorate. It’s an internal thing. It’s about accomplishing small, minute goals on a consistent basis, which builds self-esteem. It has nothing really to do with anything else. It’s about accomplishing small, minute goals.

So you can be like, “Well, self-esteem has to do with your body.” Not really. The only way that it has to do with your body is because over the course of months, you have kept the little promises to yourself of going to the gym, of eating healthy, so the end result of all that, yes, you have some self-esteem. You’re happy, you look good, but that’s wasn’t the cause of the self-esteem. The cause of the self-esteem was the small, minute challenges that you accomplished, and you achieved. The more challenges that you accomplish, and you achieve, the better you feel. What is it? Your endorphins or whatever it is, shoot off and have little chemical reactions.

Now when you’re ill-prepared, and you stop going to the gym, or whatever it is, your self-esteem is going to deteriorate because you’re breaking the small, little promises that you’ve made to yourself. If you’re always feeling behind, then it’s difficult for you to have a strong self-esteem because you’re always having to look at the pack or the rear of the pack. You never get to see the light of day because there’s always something in front of you. You’re always at the back.

So with being ill-prepared and how we get to, “I stay ready because it keeps me from having to get ready, be prepared for tomorrow today, not today, be prepared for yesterday”, I’ve seen that with a lot of people. They are prepared today for yesterday, but if you ask them about tomorrow, they haven’t thought about it yet. You are never going to succeed if you are prepared for yesterday.

Being prepared is being punctual, having a well-thought out plan for the day. Accounting for negative moments. Progressive. Always learning new tactics. Investing in personal development. Sharpens the saw. Multilateral. Mind, body, spirit congruently working together. Having the ability to put things into perspective. Does it really matter?

Punctual. Having a well-thought out plan for the day. Accounting for negative moments. My schedule is not normal for most people as it’s 4:15 in the morning. Well, no, it’s probably about 4:20. Excuse me, it’s 4:38 in the morning, and I’ve already rode 20 miles on the bike. I’ve already gone to the bathroom. I’ve been moving around since 2:00 in the morning. I woke up at 1:30 this morning, so I understand my schedule is very different than most. However, the reason I wake up when I wake up is because I need the time. There’s not enough time in the day for me if I were to live a normal person’s life just because I need time. I have different things I’ve learned about myself to where it takes me all day to accomplish what I want to accomplish.

But through my planning, I also understand that during … I’m not going to have an entire bad day, that’s impossible. Even the day my mom died wasn’t all the way a bad day. It had a lot of bad moments, but the entire day wasn’t bad from the minute I woke up to the minute I went to bed. It wasn’t all the way bad. The majority of that day was bad. Maybe if I was awake for 18 hours, maybe 16 of them were terrible, but there were still two hours where they weren’t very bad. So whatever you’re doing, you always have to count for the negative moments, the negative things that can happen throughout the day. That doesn’t necessarily mean dwell on them, but it does mean take in consideration that you might have negative moments throughout the day. There’s nothing wrong with having negative parts of the day. What’s only wrong about it is how you deal with those negative moments throughout the day.

A few days ago, a friend of mine was calling me, and they were extremely frustrated. They were trying to explain to me what was going on. I asked them, I was like, “Well, didn’t you get what you wanted?” They’re like, “Yes I did, but I didn’t like how they were talking about me.” In my mind, I was like, what does it matter? Who cares? But this person allowed the negative thoughts to consume their entire day. That’s not what we want. When you’re being prepared and you’re being punctual, you have a well-thought out plan for your entire day, accounting for negative moments. But we also understand that those negative moments are not the entire day, so we can’t give them the control of the entire day.

Progressive. Always learning new tactics. Investing in personal development, and sharpens the saw. Let’s start with sharpens the saw. You don’t sharpen the saw every day. You might sharpen the saw before you use it. If you’re going to use your chainsaw, you sharpen it. You might sharpen it every other day, depending on the usage. If you’re using it a lot, you might need to sharpen it every day, but it depends on how much you use it, is how much it needs to be sharpened. So if you don’t use your saw, but once a month, you only need to sharpen it once a month. If you use your saw every day, well, you’re going to have to sharpen it every day, and you might have to have extra chains.

Now why am I talking about a saw and chains? Okay. You need to sharpen yourself. You need to sharpen and refine your skills. You need to define your goal on a daily basis.

Investing in personal development and always learning new tactics. When you’re always learning new tactics, after you learn that new tactic, you got to sharpen that saw. That’s sharpening the saw, is learning a new tactic, actually. So when you’re learning a new tactic, it’s the same as the saw before you’re about to cut a tree. You’re sharpening it, and then you’re how do you sharpen it? Invest in personal development. So it’s like when you’re learning a new tactic, it’s personal development. You’re taking the time to sharpen your skills, which is sharpening your saw.

So you can’t be digressive. You have to be progressive in everything because, especially in today’s age with computers, what’s happening is every few years we’re doubling in technology, it seems like. So if you’re not learning new tactics, if you’re not investing in your personal development, then your saw is going to be very dull. It might’ve been sharp five years ago, but those same skill sets are no longer useful. I went to school. I’ve met a couple people and one of my buddies. He went to school for computer science and after it, I still have yet to see anything that he’s been able to create.

Now that’s a lot of money that’s been down the drain, a lot of time and energy down the drain. I would say, if he wanted to enter the workforce right now, his saw is dull. He hasn’t refined his skills. He hasn’t practiced. He hasn’t invested in personal development on his trait. He hasn’t learned any new tactics. So through that, if you don’t actively invest in yourself in growing and sharpening your saw, your saw will be dull, and it will be worthless. Try to cut a tree with a dull saw. It doesn’t work very well. You might be able to get it down, but you’re going to be doing it for quite some time, and it’s a waste of time.

Being multilateral. Being prepared, you have to have your mind, body and spirit working congruently together, or congruently working together in order to reach the maximum potential that you might have, so your spirit. You got to be in good spirits. You got to feed whatever it is. If you’re Christian, if you’re Jewish, if you’re Muslim, whatever it is, whatever you believe in, you have be involved. Coming from me, it could sound a little different because I’m not a major religion. I believe in my mom and dad, and they’re the ones. They died when I was younger, but every time when I needed help, I always looked to this sky, and I talked to them. Sometimes their name is god, but for the most part, it’s Mom and Dad. So that’s me sharpening my saw with my spirituality, is taking the time to talk to my mom and dad, if that makes sense.

So with my body, every day, I’m exercising. If you heard me just earlier in this chapter, I’ve already been on the bike for 20 miles. Later today, I’m going to go on for 30 minute run. So I’m working on my spirituality. I’m working on my body, and then I’m consistently learning to better my mind. So when all three of these are congruent and congruently working together, that is the epitome of being well-prepared. Now if only you have your mind working, that’s great, but you’re missing out on two-thirds of the equation. If you’re only focused on your body, but you’re dumb as a doornail, again, that’s amazing, but you’re only focusing on one part of the equation. In order for yourself to reach maximum potential, you have to have all three of them working together.

Having the ability to put things into perspective. Does it really matter? This is a good one. When you’re stressed out, frustrated, ill-prepared, everything matters. But when you’re focused on your own life, your own goals, your own dreams, and you have the ability to put things in perspective, well, that’s a whole world completely because then you can ask yourself the real questions. Does it really matter? Now for some, everything matters, but does it really, what someone said about you on social media? Now in that brief moment, you could think this is the end of my world, and I can’t believe they said that. But in the larger perspective of things, does it matter? When you put things in perspective, you realize a lot of people are very arrogant. They think that it’s easy to become famous. They’re like, “No, I don’t want that. I don’t want my face out there for the whole world to see.”

Does it really matter? People work their ass off on a daily basis for people to notice them, but you’re so arrogant in your way of thinking, that you think it’s just going to be given to you. Does it really matter? No. The more experiences I’ve been through, I’ve done lots of things that people will look at me and be like, “There’s no way I’d do that,” but I’m still alive, and does it really matter? Quick, little, brief story that popped into my head. It’s not from the 12 years. It’s a little bit later. Excuse me. It’s actually much, much, many years later.

I was in this house. A friend I hadn’t seen for years came and visited, or she really just came and stayed for a couple hours. Now I gave people fair warning that I’m working on my house. I told them, “This is a warehouse.” Another buddy came, and he said, “No, it’s like a ware-mansion.” Yeah, okay, whatever, but it’s a warehouse because I was working on my books. I was working on my Amazon bookstore. I was doing other projects. They come, the first thing they do is judge me. We talk about money, and they arrogantly discuss how much money they have. I listen. I keep my mouth shut. Why? Because my business is my business. To make the story come to an end, this person ended up leaving because the state of my house. Now little does she know, and to put things in perspective, my house has appreciated more than her entire net wealth in the state that it is.

So the fact that I can sleep in a house that maybe has a fly flying around in it, or a mosquito, does it really matter? No. Put it in perspective. I’m in the process of working. I’m in the process of fixing the house. It should be common knowledge that when you’re building something, or when you’re working in the middle of something, it’s not going to look perfect, but people forget that part. They see TV, they see this, they see that, but they never see the struggle. They only see the house when it looks like shit and the program is only 30 minutes, so they got a jam pack a month, or two months of fixing on this house into 30 minutes.

So they see the house, and they see the house look amazing, and so people perceive that this is an easy process. It’s a process that went like that, snap of the finger. However, that’s not how it really goes. There’s always going to be shit you have to muddle through in order to come out on top, so having the ability to put things in perspective. If instead, this person came over and started asking me about my house and about my finances, then she would understand that the amount of money that she has, if I had that amount of money, I would be extremely nervous because it’s not enough money.

Now she arrogantly was trying to be condescending towards me because she assumed she had more than me, even though the amount that she has, I have more than 10 to 20 times the amount her net worth. So her net worth is minuscule to mine, but she was very judgmental because she did not have the ability to put things in perspective, and with that. I will see you on the next one, which is, to be selfish.

Posted on May 18, 2021June 4, 2021 by erikj462 — Leave a comment

I Hate People – People Are STUUPID

I hate people/ People are stupid. There is a reason 2% control 98%. The origin of this lesson, I was between 19 and 21, and this is another lessonUncle June Bug taught me. The story behind this, Uncle June Bug would always say this, he would always say, “People are stupid.” What he meant by that is really people are stupid, and he didn’t like being around stupid people and that’s why he would say, “I hate people.” He would basically say, people waste your time, they don’t talk about anything useful and they’re stupid.

Now, a lot of what he was discussing was true. Now, remember, this is the same person that taught me the lesson, “Does it hurt yet?” So when he’s seeing me run into the brick wall continuously, what he was saying, “People are stupid,” he was correct. I was being extremely stupid, and that’s what he was referring to, that people are stupid, people keep running into the brick wall, or people continuously do the same thing over and over again, or people always choose somebody else’s life, like we just discussed in, “Picking your own shit.”

“People are stupid. I hate people”, is what he would mostly say is. The majority of people in your life are going to be a waste of time. Only about 2% of every interaction you have, is going to be worth remembering. Well, not necessarily remembering, are going to have a grand impression on your life, cause lessons are always good to remember. So you might learn a lot of lessons from a stupid person, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it is a positive influence you want to keep in your life forever, it’s just a lesson that you want to learn and have that lesson stick with you. But the person, maybe not so much.

Love And Believe Everything, And See Where That Gets You. Someone that is stupid, is gullible, easily taken advantage of, takes advice from a broke man, every broke person knows how to get rich, a yes man, a do boy, a doormat, or basically a slave. Everyone’s an expert, tell you what to eat, feel, dress, think, and do. So let’s get into it.

Love and believe everything, and see where that gets you. This isn’t the 70s where there’s free love everywhere, and everyone’s wearing flower dresses dancing around on psychedelic drugs. This is the real world. If you do not protect yourself, nobody will. Unless you want to be taken advantage of, and be gullible to the world around… And what I mean gullible, I’m not just talking about being naïve, I’m talking about really being gullible. About someone selling you a story and you believing that story because you don’t know any better. Being naïve is a little different. But being gullible, you’re just stupid. If I told you it was raining cats and dogs outside, and you really think it’s raining cats and dogs outside, then you’re just stupid. You’re not naïve, you’re stupid. There’s a difference. Just being stupid is stupid.

If you’ve burnt your hand on a stove and you continuously put your hand on the stove, there’s nothing about being naïve about that, you’re just stupid.

Pay attention and make sure you are not in a situation where you’re gullible and being taken advantage of. What’s the saying? If you walk into a room and you don’t know who the mark is instantaneously, then you’re the mark. If you are walking into a situation that you know nothing about, then it’s very easy for you to be taken advantage of. So before you walk in, to any environment, do some research so that you’re not taken advantage of.

What do you mean by that? If you’ve ever read the book by Robert Green, The 48 Laws of Power, there’s one story which comes to mind, if you remember in the story I read this book when I was homeless and Louisville. So this is a lesson I learned through these 12 years. Now in this book he was discussing a fraudster, that convinced some people to mine for rubies or gems or something, and give him a large salary of money for some land that he had went to a local jewelry store, bought some jewels, went around the property before the investors came and sprinkled the jewelry onto the ground. Raw jewelry, so it wasn’t a diamond, it was raw. And the investors came and without him having to do any selling, the investors looked on the ground and they’d find rubies, or diamonds, or whatever stones that he was putting on the ground, and the investors automatically thought, “If the diamonds and the rubies are so easily and so abundant that you can find them on top of the ground, then this land must be full of rubies and diamonds.” Being gullible, not hiring a geologist to come out to double check there were actually diamonds and rubies, or whatever you want to use as your treasure. Being easily taken advantage of.

Taking advice from a broke man. Every broke person knows how to get rich. Now, when I was younger, 18 years old, and I had money, I didn’t know this lesson. I was naïve, or maybe even just gullible, or even just plain old stupid. I took advice from people that never had any money before. And what happened… See, this is a love and believe everything and see where it gets you. Where it got me, is the exact same situation that the person who gave me the advice. They were broke, I was not, after the advice, I was broke. He gave me the best advice he knew how to give me. However, that best advice was how to be broke. Why? Because if the advice that he knew, was valid and good advice, then he wouldn’t be broke.

I say that to say this, throughout my life I’ve listened and discussed and brainstormed with people that don’t have any money. And it hasn’t really worked out for me. I’ve had capital. I’m not always poor, but I’ve been broke quite often. But my mind works in a different mindset than others, so I’ve been able to accumulate a lot for cheap, like let’s say, a house for $3800. I was able to do that, live there for a few years, it cost me less than a few $1000 for a few years of living. I’ve been able to figure things out. However, during this journey, or adventure, I’ve interacted with a lot of people that have all given me advice when it comes to finances. And I’ve listened, even though I’m able to acquire things for pennies on the dollar, I would tend to listen to people who with all their advice they, haven’t been able to acquire anything.

It took me until I was middle-aged… Middle-aged. Pun intended. About until I was about mid 30s, about 35 where I just had enough listening to people that hadn’t acquired anything. And I started looking back over my life and I started to realize something. My life wasn’t transgressing into the way I wanted it to be because of the people around me. All the people that I was listening to didn’t have anything, so the advice that they were giving me was to be like them. Now, that’s a different part of the book, that’s not in this 12 things I learned while I was in Hell, so that’s part of the next chapter of my life.

However, let’s bring it back down to where we were. So if you remember when I was in L.A. throughout the book, I had met CLA- The Kenyan. the very first time that we met, he had reminded me of this when we were in south San Francisco and he told me, “Do you remember the first time that we met?” And we were talking about my entourage. And he said, “I knew you were in trouble when the person who said they were your financial advisor had a missing front tooth.” That’s how lost I was. Take advice from a broke man, every broke person knows how to get rich. My financial advisor, at the time when I was 18, not listening to anybody, had absolutely no money. So the advice that he could give me was absolutely worthless.

A yes man, a do boy. So you’re a yes man, you think if you’re a yes man that you’re gaining acceptance, or gaining respect. But it’s usually the inverse that happens. When you think that you’re gaining responsibility and gaining respect by saying “yes” to everything, two things are happening. One, the person that’s telling you to do everything and you’re saying, “Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.”, you’re becoming their doormat, so they’re depending more upon you to do more things. And the other thing that happens, is that you are losing time for yourself. Now, this could be a good thing and a bad thing. In a good way, if you have a mentor who is very stringent and requires an insane amount of time, but you see directly how this is benefiting you for the future, than it’s okay to be a yes man, because you are acquiring new skills and you’re following in a good path. However, if you being a yes man is not directly benefiting you, than you might need to re-look at that because you might be transformed into a doormat and what happens when you become a doormat is everyone walks all over you.

Now a do boy, the reason why these are together, yes man and a do boy, is the do boy is like the yes man, but it’s more, “Do this boy. Do this boy.” So it’s what happens after you’ve become a doormat. You become the slave/do boy, where you’re not respected at all. They’re going to ask you to do the menial, retarded… Sorry. Politically correct. The more worthless tasks, and they’re going to just use you and walk all over you. How does this work? When I was younger I was the do boy and I started as the yes man. I was bored after I went broke and I didn’t want to stay at Mom’s house all the time, so I became the do boy, or the yes man.

It was, “Erik do this,” or “You want to go detail a car?” “Yes, I do. Let’s go.” “Erik do you want to go do this?” “Yes, I do. Let’s go.” “Erik, do you want to go to Louisville?” “Yes, I do. Let’s go.” What turned into a yes man, became a do boy and slave because I was never paid for anything that I did. I was just a doormat and I was the slave. “Erik, go to Korea go find these jerseys, bring them back. Erik risk your life, drive across the country. Oh, here’s some “get drunk” money.” When you love and believe everything, you can turn into the yes man and the do boy, because you’re a good kind hearted person and people will take advantage of that.

Everyone’s an expert. They tell you what to eat, feel, dress, think, and do. In today’s world… Now, back in the olden days you had one salesman. He’d come through your village with his little horse and buggy and he’d try to sell you something, some magic potion. We’d call him… What is it? A snake skin salesman. Or a snake oil salesman. Now, he would always have an elixir that would change and whatever it is that you wanted, that potion would work for you. But the catch was you had to believe that would work, it wouldn’t work if you didn’t believe.

But today we have phones, we have TV, we have iPads, we have watches, we have everything telling you different information. If you want to Google, “What to eat”, you’re going to have five million, if not five trillion, searches. All telling you what to do when it comes to food. If you want to lose weight, do it this way. If you want to lose weight do it this way. If you want the perfect skin, eat this food. If you want the perfect abs, you have to eat celery. If you want the perfect hair, make sure you use olive oil. You understand what I’m saying when I’m saying there is millions of people giving you advice, telling you what to do when it comes to food, how you feel. They have 8,000 different emojis, emotion emojis so you can describe how you feel. It’s not happy, mad, sad, scared, it’s now too many to name.

Everyone’s telling you what to do when it comes to your clothes. Years ago, clothes used to be made. Now if you don’t have a name brand on your clothes, your clothes aren’t important enough. That brings me to a story from when I was younger. I’m not sure if it was my grandfather or if it was my uncle. When I was younger I was falling into the trap of brand name and wanted to have everything brand named. My uncle or my grandfather said, “Erik, how much is that company paying you?” I said, “What do you mean?” He said, “Well you’re advertising for them with that big logo that you have on there, so how much are they paying you?” I said, “They’re not paying me, I paid for this.” I said it proudly. And he said, “Well, that’s your problem. You’re paying to advertise for somebody else.”

Now think about that for a second. Wait a minute, I’m paying to advertise for somebody else. And he said, “Yes, you’re paying to advertise for them. Because when you’re walking around and you’re showing everybody what you’re wearing, that’s an advertisement.” I had to think about that, it’s just like what I’m saying right here, everyone’s telling you what to eat, feel, dress. So if you see a celebrity wear something, they’re thinking, “Well you’re going to wear it too.” If you see Peyton Manning get insurance from Nationwide, then you might just get insurance from Nationwide too. Everyone’s telling you what to think.

Over the last few months I’ve really jumped into watching YouTube. But here’s the problem… Now, I’ve had to sign out of my accounts, sign in to my accounts, to get different information. What’s happening is when I search something then all Google does is bombard me with the same topics. I don’t want to watch 8,000 of the same thing. I would like to mix it up. And what happens when Google does this, is that it closes off the world of creativity and inspiration. Because I might think I’m being inspired, but I’m not, because it’s all formatted off of my search history. This is why I say the importance of having a library. Because when you have a library you’re not influenced by… There’s no machines in my house… I have a library. That’s what I’m saying, in my house. There’s no machines in my house telling me what book I should look at. It’s when I scroll through, something catches my eye, which is completely random, but on YouTube it’s not random, it is created to show you things that you’ve looked at before. So if you want to get creative or be inspired by something different, you have to see it on the outside world and then YouTube search it, and then next week you’ll have too many videos of that new search topic.

In today’s world, whether you like it or know it, all of your thoughts are being controlled by a computer, telling you what to do. Well that’s basically what to think, because if they understand what you like then they purposely put ads in front of you that are strategically created to have you make an action. That’s why they call it a call to action button. They understand how you think, and then they are presenting advertisements that will make you call to action. Click the button and you’re presented with a product to what? Buy.

There’s an expert for anything there is, so they’re telling you what to eat. They’re telling you how to eat. They’re telling you how to feel, giving you all the emotions. They’re telling you how to dress, if you don’t have Gucci then you’re too poor for us. They’re telling you how to think. If you don’t think the way that we think, something’s wrong with you. And they’re also telling you what to do. If you don’t buy now, you’re going to miss out.

Be Cautious. Don’t Believe Anything You Hear, And Only Half Of What You See. This is being wise, common sense. Already has been stupid. Intelligence, studies the greats before them, pays close attention to their struggles and how they overcame them, not their successes, diligent, always striving for greatness, sees every problem as a challenge, obedient, has rules and follows them, has defined what is healthy and not, understands how toxic people affect their actions and mentality.

Being wise. When I was younger, in these 12 years my aunt repeatedly told me, “Erik, all you need is common sense.” So I grew up in all these programs thinking, “All I need is common sense.” The one thing that she forgot to tell me, was that common sense isn’t common until you make a mistake. Let me give you an example. Do not touch a hot stove. We all know that, it’s common sense. No, it’s not. If you’ve never seen a stove before, then you might not know don’t touch a hot stove, you will burn yourself. So it’s not common sense. You have to have been stupid and burnt yourself to understand when something’s red and it’s hot, don’t touch it, it’s going to hurt.

So, yes, my aunt was very correct. All you need in this life is common sense. However, for that common sense to be common, you have to make a lot of mistakes. I didn’t say live in the mistakes. I said make the mistake, get over it, and move forward. It’s just a mistake.

Let’s think of an experiment. Mind you, hopefully you don’t blow yourself up. But how many experiments… What was it? Thomas Edison had 1000 attempts per patent, something crazy, so he had to learn a lot throughout all those times he failed. And I can guarantee the first failure and the last failure were very different. In the first failures nothing was common. By the time he finished and he was about to go get a patent for his brand new idea, everything was now common to him. But if someone brand new came into his workshop, nothing was common. How could it be? But to Thomas Edison, after months of working on it, and months of figuring everything out, and maybe burning his hand a few times, he’s like, “Obviously you don’t do that.” It becomes common after you are stupid.

Let’s say this. I have made almost every mistake that a person can make. I am not still alive because I’m smart. I am still alive because I’m resilient, and I’m hard to break, because I have made horrible decisions. But after those decisions I’ve become very wise on what maybe I should do and what maybe I shouldn’t do. I’ve been very stupid.

Intelligent. Studies the greats before them, pays close attention to their struggles and how they overcame them, not their successes. So it’s taken me a while, and full disclosure, within these first 12 years I didn’t really understand this at all. It took me after these 12 years to learn this, or to really practice this and really grasp the full concept of it.

Now, when I was younger, I’ve obviously read books. If you read the 12 years in Hell, then you’ll understand, I’ve read books, I’ve read lots of stories. So some of the stories, yes. That’s very true. One of the stories I read when I was in Mexico… We’ll bring it back to what I learned in those 12 years. One of those stories when I was in Mexico, was how these two people had a wager. One was an old banker, one was a new banker. The old banker he was probably in his 40s, and the young banker was a young banker, in his young 20s, and over dinner they had a wager, and it was something as, “I’ll give you $25 million if we lock you up from the age right now until the age I am right now.” So it’s a 20 year age difference, and it was going to be a large sum of money. But the old man, the older banker was so wealthy that it was pennies to him at the time. The one stipulation was the man who had to go to jail was able to receive any amount of books he wanted.

So he couldn’t have human interaction with anybody, he was able to get books, knowledge and food. He was basically on an extended solo for 20 years. Now, the first few years it was difficult for him while he was in jail. The food was good, because the banker, the older banker was still doing well, he was making a lot of money. Well, about five years in, the person in jail, started to grasp the concept of learning. So he started asking for lots and lots of books and would study them, over and over and over, and the banker on the outside about 10 years in started to change. His wealth wasn’t as prominent as it was when they first made the agreement.

Now over the next 10 years the person in jail had basically 15 years of acquiring knowledge. He didn’t have anything else to do besides read books and acquire new knowledge. He started noticing there might be a little bit of a problem, because the food stopped being quite as nice and not quite as regular. He couldn’t get the books that he was asking for quite on time. He was hearing rumors from the guards, the people would give him the food and the books, that the rich man wasn’t quite as rich anymore.

Now, here’s the thing, if the man left one day before, he got no money. But if he made it every day, he got paid. So close to the end, the man in jail was starting to get nervous because he knew this was a large amount of money, and he didn’t want to embarrass the rich man, because everybody knew about their deal, and he was concerned the rich man wasn’t rich anymore and this would break him. He was concerned for his life that he, the richman, would just have someone come in and kill him. So the day before he was going to win, he left. But he left a note saying, “There’s no amount of money you can give me, for the knowledge I learned.”

When I was 17 I read that story. So 20 years later, I have a library, there’s no amount of money that anyone can give me that these books can’t teach me how to get for myself. So with that, I’m studying the greats before me through all these books. I’m paying attention to their struggles and when I’m paying attention to their struggles I’m realizing one very important thing, all of them struggled. All of them had a point in their lives that they wanted to give up. All of them had a point in their lives when they almost quit. And all of them had a point in their lives where they sacrificed relationships for the betterment of their own dream.

The reason I don’t like to study their successes as much as their failures is because you learn more from somebody’s failures. Before you succeed, I want to know how.Yeah, I like to see the Lamborghini’s and the Ferrari’s, I’m a normal person. However, I want to learn, what did these people do in situations where they didn’t see the light? What happened that allowed them to push through when others didn’t? How many hours did they put into this? How dedicated were they? That’s when you’ll find intelligence.

Being diligent. Always striving for greatness. Sees every problem as a challenge. I have a saying. I forgot which program. Progress over perfection. It is nearly impossible to be perfect. You might have a perfect round, a perfect trade, a perfect day, but to be perfect consistently is nearly impossible. That’s why the saying is progress over perfection. Don’t strive for perfection. Strive for greatness, to be great at whatever you do, not to be perfect, to be great, because perfection is not a capable thing. You can’t be perfect all the time. You can strive for greatness, and you can understand that when you’re striving for greatness you’re building the necessary habits to perform better, to be more efficient, to find out how the great people in all the books that I have, how they were always able to not give up and continuously strive, how they were continuously able to achieve when other people could not.

When you understand “strive for greatness, and progress over perfection”, you have to always remember the people before you were also striving for greatness, and use that for comfort on those rainy days where you don’t feel like doing it, when it’s cold and you just want to give up. Be diligent and always strive for greatness, progress over perfection. You’re not the only person who’s struggling. You’re not the only one who struggled. You’re not the only one who wanted to quit. All the greats had a point in time when they wanted to quit. Always strive for greatness like Michael Jordan when he won the NBA Championship with the flu. Most people when they have the flu they can’t go to work. Michael Jordan always strove for greatness and was able to win the NBA Championship.

How was he able to do that? Because he saw the problem as a challenge. If you do not see your problems as challenges, then they will always be problems. I don’t have a single problem. Never have. Well, younger I have, before I realized that problems don’t exist, they’re just challenges. I’m going to say that again. Problems don’t exist, they’re just challenges. When you change your mind to thinking, a problem is a challenge, it changes the way you perceive whatever’s in front of you. If it’s a problem, that’s a negative thing. A challenge is something you overcome to learn a new skill. So, if your problem is to save money. No, it’s not. That’s your challenge, is to save money. Find some way to challenge yourself.

Obedient. Be cautious. Don’t believe anything you hear, and only half of what you see. Being an obedient person means that you have rules and you follow them. Remember, you have to have common sense now. You’ve been stupid before. So now, you have rules and you follow them. You’re not going to listen to the broke people. You’re not going to listen to the guru’s, who are telling you that it is healthy to cook with oil on this side and then the other half of people are telling you it’s unhealthy to cook with oil. Half of the people are telling you to eat carbs, and the other people are telling you to not eat carbs. You have rules and you follow them for yourself. You have to find what is healthy for you and what is not. Because I can guarantee you, this is one thing in life I can guarantee, that there is not another person exactly like you. I can guarantee it.

I can guarantee that you are the only person that is exactly like you. Now think about that. If you are the only one of you on this entire planet, then nobody knows what’s best for you but you. However, in order to know what’s healthy for you or to not, you have to try things. You might not be wise yet. You might not have common sense. So I’m not telling a young kid, who’s 15 years old, that you’re the only one that knows what’s best for you. You probably don’t. You haven’t learned it yet. You don’t have common sense. But after you’ve bumped your head a few times and learned what works for you and what doesn’t, then you need to follow your rules.

Understands how toxic people affect their actions and mentality. If you don’t understand how your best friend affects you in a positive or negative way, then watch out. Your friends can either hurt or help you. I tend to sway away from friends. I don’t understand them, because I feel like unless we’re working together to better ourselves, than you’re a toxic person in my life. A lot of people look at friends as someone they just like to hang out with. To me that’s a toxic person, because if this person is lazy then that’s going to affect my actions and my mentality, because if this person wants to play video games, then when I’m around this person, what do you think I’m going to be talking about? Most likely, video games. If this person has excuses, and I’m around this person all the time, then guess what? I will probably have excuses as well.

That’s why to be obedient you have to understand how these people affect your actions and your mentality, and adjust accordingly. Because if you don’t pay attention to it, you might have every motivation in the world when you’re 18, but then you’re around toxic people and by the time you’re 30, you’re fat, out of shape, and playing video games and drinking energy drinks all day. Looking back, wearing your Letterman jacket from high school, talking about the good old days.

Posted on May 18, 2021June 4, 2021 by erikj462 — Leave a comment

Picking Your Own Shit

Picking Your Own Shit: If your grass is brown, then you will ruin the greener grass on the other side. Origin. It came from Mexico when I was in my program, and it was from my counselor. So the backstory; everyone was down, the morale of everybody in my group in the upstairs house was down. Everyone was more or less complaining and bitching, and he could hear it and he could understand it. And he got tired of it, so he sat us all down in a circle and with a stern voice, you could tell he was serious, it wasn’t a joking manner or anything, and he said, “If everybody were to throw their shit, all their problems, everything, all your pity,” so, for me, it’s, “I lost my parents. I was adopted. I have abandonment issues,” whatever else it is, he’s like, “Throw it out. Throw it all. Throw it all into the center.

“And then if each of you get up,” because at this point in time, we knew everybody in my house, so I knew another friend’s problems and issues that they have with their parents or their family or with their health or whatever it is, or I know this person’s issues, what issues they’re dealing with, or whether addiction, or whatever it is, I know all their problems, and I also know my own, and he said, “if all of you guys got up and got to choose anybody’s problems, guaranteed you’d choose your own.” That had a drastic effect on me, a drastic effect. Because what he was basically saying is, “Picking your own shit.” So if the grass is brown, then you will ruin the greener grass on the other side. So what he was saying to me and saying to all of us was, “It’s up to you to make your brown grass green, because no matter where you are, whose problems you have, you choose your own. You do not want anyone else’s problems.”

So with that being said, if you perceive the grass being greener on the other side, that’s your fault, because if you get over there, you’re just going to ruin it, because you’re going to bring all your stuff with you. So if you want to change, you’ve got to change your brown grass and start watering it, make it green over on your side, because thinking of someone else, is never going to solve your problem. Because, in the end, you don’t want their problems, you want your own. So the only way you can have the greener grass is to take care of your own shit.

Choosing Someone Else’s Shit. These people are condescending, judging other people’s life. They gossip, always have to say their opinion. They’re envious. “If I had what he had, I would do …” Ungrateful. Nothing is ever enough. Now, let’s dig in deeper.

Condescending and judging other people’s life, choosing someone else’s shit. This is someone who chooses the grass is always greener on the other side. They’re condescending, so they’re always looking outward. It’s like this, here’s a story. I know everyone’s always heard this before. Two men walk into a car dealership. One’s in a beat up old pickup truck and the other one’s in a fancy sports car. They both walk in. Who are you going to choose to help? A lot of us would treat the one in the beat up truck, smelling funny, smells like horse manure, we might treat him differently than the person who spiffed up, smelling good, has the latest cologne on, nails done. We might treat him better, but in all actuality, we’re being condescending, because we don’t know why the old man with the beat up pickup truck came in that smells like horse manure. He might come in there ready to buy a truck, everything he has, has been and is paid in cash he doesn’t spend his money frivolously. He’s very frugal with his cash.

So he’s been thinking for a while on how to spend this, while the other person has been living above his means the entire time. So if you were to be condescending and judging other people’s lives, you would project success. You would project what you believe as success onto other people. Does that make sense? So just because you perceive that a Mercedes and cologne and a nice suit equals success then you would unconsciously service the person that looks like success to you and judge the person that does not look like success to you. Does that make sense? But if you grew up as a farmer in the middle of nowhere, then you’re judging in this same situation. It’d be a little bit different, but then you would perceive the rich, smells good guy as a sleazy slime ball but the old farmer that smells like horse manure, you’d relate more to them.

So you’d be condescending towards the person that has the suit on. Does that make sense? So it goes both ways. It’s not just one way. It goes both ways. So being condescending and judging other people’s lives and other people’s choices is choosing other people’s shit. You’re projecting your own thoughts onto other people, onto their lives. So you’re judging people based off of your beliefs, not theirs.

Gossip, always has to say their opinion. So this is more or less the person on the soap box that just always has to talk, or the person that, if you want gossip, they’re the ones to go to. They can tell you everything about everybody else’s life. It is their life’s mission to know everything about everybody else. They’re meddling in other people’s lives, other people’s shit, and then they always have an opinion about somebody else’s life.

But if you were to ask them about their life, they might not have much of an opinion. So they’re choosing to live in someone else’s shit. Well, this person’s choosing to live in multiple other people’s lives. But when you do that, you’re not choosing your own life. So you’re never going to progress if you’re worried and gossiping about everybody else.

Envious. If I had what he had, I would do this, or I would do that. I have heard this in every instance of my life. So when I turned 18 and I went broke. Part of the reason why people didn’t like me is because I went broke, and in their mentality, they would say, “Well, if I had that type of money, I would have never went broke.” So they were very condescending towards me and a lot of gossip towards me. Everyone always had an opinion about what happened, even though they might not have been the most helpful on the decision making,

They were all living in someone else’s shit. They were all living in my life, judging my life, very condescending towards me judging my life without knowing anything about me. Everyone had an opinion about me and everyone was envious about what I had, but no one takes into consideration the struggle that I went through. I didn’t know anybody. I was dropped off in the middle of nowhere basically and said, “Fend for yourself. Here’s some money.” But then people would be envious of that. It never made any sense to me. I lost my mom and my dad, I lost everything that I’ve ever known, and people are envious of that and said, “If I was in that situation, I would have done something different.” We’ll never know, but that’s where envious gets you, is you’re thinking of one minute situation.

You’re looking at it, “Well, if I had the money, I would have done something different,” but you’re not taking into consideration everything that led up to me losing the money. Does that make sense? And the truth of the matter is, if you did have the money, you’d probably be broke too, because, hm, there’s a reason you don’t have the money. Because if you had the necessary skills in order to make that money, then you’d have that money. But since you don’t have that money, you don’t have the necessary skills in order to do that. And we’re using money, but it’s a euphemism for whatever you want to add into the blank. Good looks, the body, whatever it is, envious of somebody else’s body. But they don’t take into consideration how many hours this person put in to looking like this. So when you’re choosing to live in someone else’s shit, you’re only deciding to live in a small section of the reality of that person’s life.

Ungrateful. When you’re living in a world that’s not yours, when you’re living in the TV, when you’re condescending, you’re judging other people’s lives because you’re basing other people’s life on what you perceive as success, when you’re gossiping and you always have an opinion about somebody else’s decisions, when you’re envious about other people’s success or other people’s struggle or whatever it is, you can be envious about just about anything, it creates an environment where you’re very ungrateful and nothing is ever going to be enough. No one will ever be able to love you enough. No one will be able to give you enough, because you’re not living in your world. Your life is always going to be miserable because you’re always looking at the grass over there over the fence that’s greener.

So no matter what someone does for you, they could give you that same exact grass, the same pool, the same jacuzzi, the same cars, the same everything that that other grass has, but if you choose to live in other people’s life, by consequence, you’re going to be ungrateful and your grass is going to be brown, and over there, the grass over there, is always going to be greener, no matter what you have. Does that make sense? So you’re never going to be happy, because the grass is always greener on the other side no matter if you already have everything over there or not. And that stems from choosing to live in other people’s shit. Dealing with your shit means that you’re focused, not worried about how other people are doing, focused on growing internally and externally, you’re private, you do not need approval from others to act, mind your own business. You’re humble, has no need to prove to the world how great you are, and you’re grateful, understands great fortune can change at a dime, takes time to appreciate and self-reflect on trials and tribulations.

Dealing With Your Own Shit. Focused, not worried about how other people are doing, focused on growing internally and externally.

All right, if you’ve read to this point and you remember in. “A Man Can’t Be A Man Without A Plan”, in order to do this, you have to be:

Focused. You have to not worry about keeping up with the Joneses, because by keeping up with the Joneses, if you’re not financially there, you’re going to hurt yourself for the long term. It’s not all about today. You’ve got to think about tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that. You’ve got to be focused on a larger goal than immediate gratification. So in order to do that, you have to be focused on growing internally and externally. You can’t do that if you’re focused on other people. You can only grow internally and externally if you focus on yourself.

Growing internally, that’s your brain or your mind, how to articulate words, maybe learn another language, what you put into your system, internal growth. External growth, we can work on our exercise, our finances, our business, we have to mind and be focused, have goals for our internal goals, and also our external goals. Now, when you have those set up, you’re going to be so focused on accomplishing what you need to focus on for yourself, you won’t have time to worry about other people. And that’s the goal, is to be focused on yourself, focused on changing your brown grass into green grass.

Private, does not need approval from others to act. Mine’s his own business. I’ve observed why a lot of people don’t try, they need the approval of others, someone to hold their hand and be like, “Yes, it’s going to be okay.”

And I’m not going to lie, for me, during my 20s, and when I was younger, when I first was getting out in the world, it was pretty scary. I didn’t know what was going on. And then I just went broke. So it was a little bit scary. I needed someone to hold my hand. I wasn’t as private as maybe I should have been, and that had grave consequences, telling other people my business. I never really acted for myself to build myself. I wasn’t private. I wasn’t minding my own business. I was trying to incorporate everybody into my business. I was being as public as possible, and that helped me lose all my money and be alone, because when you’re extremely public and you’re not private, you’re giving everybody too much information about yourself and you’re not minding your business because everyone will have an opinion on what they perceive is the best for you.

And just like when dealing with not being able to deal with your shit and the gossip and the opinions and everything, when you’re not private, you’re opening yourself up for all of the negativity, the envy, the jealousy, the gossip, whatever it is. You’re opening yourself up to it because you’re searching for other people’s approval. But not everybody deserves to know your business. And that’s also with a couple chapters back, understand the environment on which you’re in. Be private with the people you should be private with and be open with the people that you should be open with. So let me give you an example. When I was 18 years old, if you read the story then you’ll know what I’m talking about, after I went broke, I should have been private with all the people around me about whether or not I had money, and I should have been very public with my uncle and my bank about what happened and told them I needed help to go to school.

Being private in certain environments is exactly what you need to do. You don’t need to seek the approval of people that aren’t going to benefit you. So by seeking the approval of people who were not out for my best interests, they approved me in things that were for their best interests, but not mine. But if I had instead been private and minded my own business with everybody who was not out for my best interest, and in turn, reached out to the people who were for my best interests and were public with them, then they would have guided me to enhance and to grow my own business, which I’m using my own business as my own personal internal and external growth.

Being humble, has no need to prove the world how great they are. It’s funny, the richest people in the world, they might have Lamborghini’s, Ferrari’s, Bentley’s, they probably do, I mean, if they have enough money, they probably have three or four of them, but you never really see them in the flash.

Now, we’ll go back to a story from those 12 years. I was living at my mom’s brother’s house, so I was living in Atherton, and my uncle told me, I was talking about a diamond earring and jewelry and everything, he’s like, “Yeah, Erik, it’s real nice. It’s real nice. It’s flashy. But it’s also trashy.” Now, here’s somebody who could buyer a Ferrari whenever he wanted. He owned car dealerships, so cars and everything was nothing. However, he was trying to instill in me to be humble. “Don’t rub it in other people’s face that you have more than them.” Why would you give people a reason to be envious of you? You don’t have to. People will know how great you are by the impact you have. If you have a trashy but flashy impact, then that’s how you’re going to be remembered. But if you have a humble and great impact, then that’s how you’re going to be remembered.

We’ll use a great one, Malcolm X. Part of the reason why he was assassinated is because of envy. However, what, 40, 50, 60 years later, we still listen and learn from what he was saying, not because he was trying to prove to the world how great he was, on the contrary, he was extremely humble in everything that he did. And that’s how he’s remembered, at least in my book. He was trying to make a change. He wasn’t telling everybody how great Malcolm X was. Now, we remember him as being a great person. He wasn’t Muhammad Ali. Muhammad Ali would always tell everybody, “I’m Muhammad Ali. I float like a butterfly and I sting like a bee.” But we understand that that was a persona and it worked for him, but we don’t need to tell everybody how great we are. We can be amazing and great and be humble at the same time.

Grateful, understands great fortune can change at a dime, takes time to appreciate and self-reflect on trial and triumphs. A lot, a mouthful. Now, dealing with your own shit has a lot to do with being grateful and not just grateful for the good things in life. You have to be grateful for the things in life that you didn’t want to happen. I didn’t want my parents to die, I didn’t want to go through all these programs, but I went through them. Now, I can have a pity party about it, or I can be grateful it happened. I’m not happy. Don’t misinterpret what I’m saying by saying I’m happy my mom and dad died and I’m happy that I went through hell, because most definitely I am not. However, I made it through. When you’re climbing that mountain, and life is a mountain, when you’re climbing and you’re climbing and you’re climbing, and it’s very difficult, if you can make it to the top and you can make it to where you have peace, you need to be grateful that now you have peace.

The struggles are what you went through. Don’t forget but always remember the lessons and be grateful that you now have the lessons. Understands great fortune can change at a dime. That has a lot to do with being grateful. If you’ve had and you’ve lost, and then you have again, you watch that money and you watch your life a little different. You understand the risk a little better. You understand having a 10 to 20 to 30 to 40 year plan, as opposed to just having a plan for this afternoon, because you know the importance of being prepared for things unforeseen. Takes time to appreciate and self-reflect on trial and triumphs. This is like meditation, and it’s being honest with yourself. If you’re not honest with yourself and you don’t study your failures, you’re never get over them. You’re just going to continuously repeat the same thing that didn’t work the time before and the time before that.

So self-reflection on your trials, you’re looking for things that did not work. How did you feel? What were you thinking? Who was around you? Was it warm or was it cold outside? Were you wearing a jacket? Were you wearing a tank top? You might not think that each and every variable affects us, but it does. The more we understand about the brain, the more we’re understanding how the smallest nuances can change our opinion and change our thinking. So when you’re self-reflecting on yourself, and even when you look at your triumphs, don’t look at your triumphs as a celebration, look at it as an experiment that went correct. But then you also want to analyze your triumphs, because just because it went correct, does not mean you didn’t make mistakes. Let me use it as analogy. Let’s say you win the basketball game, you win the soccer match, you win the football game by one touchdown, one goal, one point.

You won, you triumphed, you won the championship, but if you don’t go back and look at all your mistakes and what you did in each situation that, as we remember, great fortune can change at a dime. If we don’t look at our triumphs and figure out how we can be more efficient even when we won, then we’re leaving ourselves wide open to having great fortune change at a dime. Does that make sense? So when you’re being grateful, part of being grateful is looking at how it happened, not being arrogant and thinking that you’re the greatest, because that’s the fastest, easiest way for you to lose it. You have to be grateful. One, you have to be focused on what you’re doing. You have to be private. Don’t tell everybody your business. You have to be humble so that you’re accepting new information and not trying to tell everybody how great you are, and you have to be grateful in order to understand how fast things can change, and to not only reflect when you lose, but also reflect when you win.

Because that same victory can be a loss the next time, if you’re not humble and you’re not grateful. All right, our next one is going to be fun. I’ll see you there.

Posted on May 18, 2021June 4, 2021 by erikj462 — Leave a comment

Use Em, Abuse Em & Lose Em: A Zero Sum Game

The origin of this is right after my dad died, my mom was going through a lot. The doctor’s office that my dad had helped open, I guess, didn’t support my mom as much as maybe she would have liked. Her friends followed suit, where everyone was really sad when my dad died, but then as time progressed, they had their own problems and their own life. So my mom kind of got left in the dust.

So Use Em, Abuse Em & Lose Em, she felt like her friends, when my dad was alive, used them and abused them, and then once my dad died, lost her. When everything was good, she had friends, but then when everything went bad, she had nobody. That’s where the story comes from.

This could mean Use Em, Abuse Em & Lose Em in a negative way. But the situation that my mom was in, she was preparing me for life. Because as the subtitle says, it’s a zero sum game.

In life, it is a zero sum game. There’s either a winner or a loser. It doesn’t tie. You’re not going to get a trophy if you lose, if you don’t work hard. If you just succumb to bullshit in life, then you’re going to lose them. That’s what my mom was preparing me for later. Use Em, Abuse Em & Lose Em, and be careful, and understand whether you’re going to lose or you’re going to win.

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If You’re Going To Lose: does not understand or evaluate the environment they’re in, they hesitate on opportunity, they burn vital bridges, and they allow emotions to dictate action.

Does not understand or evaluate the environment they’re in.

A person that’s prone to losing, that didn’t learn the lesson my mom learned or was trying to teach me, doesn’t understand what tools to bring to be prepared in the environment they’re headed in. To use as an analogy, it’s like being in the desert with snow gear and being in the snow with desert gear. You went into that environment without evaluating the environment that you were getting yourself into.

If you want to lose and you want to lose fast, jump into a business or jump into a relationship that you do not understand, or move to a city and act one particular way in a city where it’s not socially acceptable, and see what happens. It’s not going to turn out well for you. As a loser, the loser is going to do that. They’re not going to understand the difference in the environments that they’re in.

Perfect example. When I was in these different programs, I didn’t understand or evaluate the environment I was in when I got out of the programs and was given money. I didn’t understand that it was very difficult to make money. I did not understand that the rest of the world did not have a lot of money.

I didn’t evaluate the situation and actually ask questions like, “Well, how much money do you have in your bank account?” Because if they were like, “I have $10.” “$10 to your name? “Yes. That’s all I have.” Then maybe I would have evaluated life a little different. If they had $10, I have 300,000, we should probably not be best friends, (it would create a codependent relationship) because everything’s going to be on me. They don’t have any money. Sum the story up, I went broke. I did not understand, and I did not evaluate the environment I was in.

Hesitates on opportunity.

Woulda, coulda, shoulda. If you’re going to be a minus and you’re going to lose, you’re going to hesitate on opportunities. This doesn’t have anything to do with my history, but a great verse out of the Viking series is when Ragnar talks to his friend, the Pope or the Christian guy, and he’s teaching him how to fight. He says, “Never hesitate.” Or a better story would have been when Ragnar’s son is fighting with his uncle, and his uncle’s teaching him how to fight, and he said, “Never hesitate.” Hesitation will get you killed. It did back in the olden days when you’re fighting with swords, and it does today.

Hesitation is that quick little sense in the back of your mind that says, “Well, I don’t know.” Then you’re like, “Well, what did you say?” And you start listening to that hesitation. Then before you know it, the train has already passed. Then you look at your life and you’re like, “Well, what happened?” You hesitated. I’m not saying act impulsively, but don’t hesitate on an opportunity.

Let me think of a great opportunity. I wanted to use this house as not hesitating on an opportunity, but I’m 37, and we’re talking about when I was 10 to 22. So hesitate on opportunity.

We talked about it before, a couple chapters back, where I was discussing hesitating or not making a good decision about investing in Apple. Well, that’s hesitating on an opportunity, a great opportunity. The opportunity passed, and I’m suffering the consequences from it. I’m not a multi-multi millionaire on something I would have done years ago. But I hesitated on an opportunity, and I blew the money.

Burns vital bridges.

This is key. A person who doesn’t understand Use Em, Abuse Em & Lose Em will burn vital bridges and not even understand that they’re losing them. What do I mean by a vital bridge? A vital bridge is your life line, your life support. A person who goes out of their way to help you is a vital bridge. A vital bridge does not necessarily mean your family, because your family might not directly be trying to help you. A vital bridge is when you slap the hand that feeds you.

If someone’s trying to teach you a skill, and you just are not susceptible, and you are just hardheaded, that’s burning … Well, it’s hesitating on opportunity, right? But it’s also burning that bridge, because the person that’s trying to teach you something, if you spit in their face too many times, they’re just going to say, “To hell with it. I’m done.”

Burning a vital bridge. Throughout the time of those 12 years, mostly when I got out, I burned two major vital bridges that could have been my lifeline, and to this day, would have been grand opportunities for me to have.

First vital bridge I broke when I was younger. My friend’s mom, she had me work the Halloween party. This is in Woodside, California, so it’s around affluent people. I did not understand or evaluate the environment I was in right.

First year, I worked like a charm. Everything was great. Got a couple hundred dollars in tips. I was 19 and just going broke, or 19, 20, however, 18, I don’t remember how old I was. I was out of the program, but I went broke. I was already broke. Life was not working very well for me.

First year, I was with my girlfriend. If you read the story, then you’ll understand what I’m talking about. She went with me. Everything was a charm. She was with the kids. I was with the adults. We worked magic.

Well, year number two, me and that girlfriend, we’re not on best of terms. So I went to the party by myself. I had a problem with drinking at the time and got drunk. In that time, I was also living in a completely different environment. I was living on the other side of the freeway, where it was more rough and stuff Afro puff. And I was in an environment with a lot of rich people. Now, I got drunk and wanted to fight everybody. I Did not understand or evaluate the environment that I was in. I blew an opportunity, which is to burn a vital bridge.

Now, the other story, don’t have enough time to get into. I apologize.

Allows emotions to dictate action.

This is very dangerous. If you want to lose and you want to lose fast, allow your emotions to dictate your actions, opposed to common sense or wisdom or being patient. If you allow your emotion to dictate your action, then you are blind to what you are doing. If you are angry when you do something, when you’re no longer angry, you might regret it. If you are sad, and you make an emotional decision, you might do something that later you might regret.

Perfect example of allowing emotions to dictate my action was when I wrote the letter to my aunt. The program, put me in an emotional sense or a state where I was writing emotionally. I was allowing my emotions to write, not my mentality, not my intellect. I was allowing my emotions to write. So when I was writing, I was writing very emotionally, not just for me, but also for the other person that would be receiving my emotions. Does that make sense?

When you make actions based off of emotions, those emotions are then transformed or projected onto a different person. If you have the happy emotion, and that happy emotion dictates your action, then you’re going to be radiating happiness. But if your anger is dictating your emotions, then you’re going to be radiating anger. That’s what I’m saying. This is very important that you get in control of your emotions.

In certain situations, losing control of emotions is a good thing. Having a baby, allowing your emotions of joy to radiate is great. It fits the time and the place. However, if you’re allowing your emotions to dictate your actions in a negative manner, nothing good will come out of it. Nothing.

Emotions to dictate action. Let me think. A great story that comes where I allowed my emotions to dictate my action. We mentioned it a little bit in the book, but I’ll mention it again here. When I was in Mexico, I was doing really well. Then they took the resident leader away from me, so they took my power away from me.

I was in an argument with my counselor. I allowed my emotions to dictate my action, because I yelled and I screamed at him, and I told him it did not matter whatever he was going to do to me. I got up from our argument. I went over to the board, and I erased my number, and I dropped my number. I think I was a three and I dropped it to a two. I took my watch off. I took everything off. I took my belt off. I went to the solutions room, and sat down, and told him, “What are you going to do now?”

I allowed my emotions to dictate my actions. Not always the smartest thing that you can do, because when you’re no longer emotional, then you’re trapped in jail. But while you’re emotional, it made logical sense to go drop myself. All my progression, all the hard work that I worked for, it made sense, when I was emotional, to take it, erase it and drop it, and then put myself in punishment. It made perfect sense at the time. But when I was no longer allowing my emotion to dictate my action, where was I? Not in a good place.

That’s how, if you want to lose; don’t understand or evaluate the environment you’re in, hesitate on great opportunities, burn vital bridges, and allow emotions to dictate your actions.

If You Want To Use Em, Abuse Em & Lose Em In A Positive Manner this is what you need to do. Take time to fully understand and evaluate the environment you are in, seizes opportunity at every chance, destroys opponents and disassembles useless bridges, keeps emotions hidden, understands the power of manipulating his own feelings and emotions.

Takes time to fully understand and evaluate the environment they’re in.

We’ll go back to Aspen. That very first night, I was nervous, I was scared, but when I woke up, and I looked around, and I realized I was where? In Aspen. What time was it? At that very point in time. I was where I was, and there was nothing else I could do about it. So I had to accept where I was.

What did I do? I took the time to pay attention to my surroundings, see who was the leader of the group, watch how the group worked together, watch the staff, how they interacted with each other. I evaluated the situation or the environment that I was in. Then I was able to plan how I was going to take it over.

If you remember in the story, I didn’t take over it all the way. I made it to the second highest level. Eagle With Honors was the highest level. I made it to Eagle. But it started from paying attention to the environment that I was in, understanding it, evaluating it, and then having a plan.

If you also read the book, another circumstance where my family and I were arguing, and they said I manipulated an entire program. How did I do that? I took the time when we first got there to CEDU Accent.

I don’t like being yelled at. If I can help it, I don’t really like being in trouble. I seemed to be in trouble a lot when I was younger, but I didn’t particularly like it. So I try to avoid it when I could.

So when we first got there, and I’m hearing the yelling and the screaming, and man, just hell on earth, I took the time to understand what hell on earth was. I evaluated how the staff interacted with the kids. I watched how the kids interacted with the staff. I saw who was the staff who you needed to befriend, who was the staff to avoid at all costs. I took time to understand where I was, and then I evaluated the environment. So by the end of it, I became like the staff. So I was telling the kids where to go. I could yell at the kids.

Seizes opportunity at every chance.

Opportunity comes and goes in a blink of an eye, in a blink of an eye. Yesterday, the opportunity was here. Today, the opportunity is gone. If you understand the financial markets, then you truly understand how fast an opportunity can present itself and disappear. I’m talking milliseconds.

If you want to be in the plus category, then you have to understand the importance of being open to opportunities. You need to be able to evaluate an opportunity at a split second, and then seize it if it’s good, or reject it if it’s bad.

Now, I’m not saying act on impulse, because I understand you can be like, “Well, Erik was like, ‘I got to seize it fast. I got to evaluate fast and make an impulsive decision right this second.'” I did not say that. I’m saying you need to seize the opportunity. You need to be able to evaluate situations or environments that you’re in at a split second, yes. But I did not say impulsively. I said seize the opportunity and evaluate. Impulsively, you’re not evaluating. You haven’t trained your brain in order to recognize a situation or recognize an opportunity.

If you’re a novice, you’re not going to seize the opportunity at every chance. It’s nearly impossible. You just don’t know enough. By seizing the opportunity at every chance, you have to increase your personal intellect. The more you know, the more opportunities will present themselves to you.

If all you know is one subject … If all you know is, let’s say, farming … You’ve been a farmer since your grand pappy was a farmer, your great grand pappy was a farmer. It’s been farming in your blood since the beginning of time. You’ve been farming corn.

Now, if that’s all you know, then the only opportunities that are going to present themselves are opportunities that have to do with corn, because you’re not trained to see any different opportunity.

But if that great, great, great, great, great, great grandson started to read some books, “You know what? We can turn this corn into liquor,” by reading a couple books. Lo and behold, they turn into Jim Beam, or they turn into Jack Daniels, because they seized the opportunity. They paid attention to the news. They paid attention to what’s going on. They looked at what they had. They brainstormed, and they created something more.

They wouldn’t be able to do that if they were shut off and they did not understand that opportunities only present themselves if you are in the know. If you do not know anything, then you will not be presented with any opportunities. They only present themselves to the people who see them.

Destroys opponents and disassembles useless bridges.

When I say destroys opponents, this is more of an internal opponent. Now, there are external opponents that you need to destroy, but it’s an internal opponent, something that’s in your way, something that is not allowing you to be in that plus portion of this. It’s keeping you in the minus of Use Em, Abuse Em & Lose Em.

You keep getting used, abused and lost in your life, because you’re not destroying your opponents. I didn’t say it’s the government or it’s whatever else you want to blame. It’s your opponents internally that you need to destroy, laziness, procrastination, sloth, just repeating the 10 deadly sins. Lust, greed, whatever, name them all. I can’t think of them all. I don’t know them all.

However, you have to abide by that in destroying those. If you don’t destroy them, then they’re always going to linger. And then it’s going to bite you in the ass down the road.

Disassembles useless bridges. Now, on the last one, we were talking about a person that lives in the minus. They destroy bridges, vital bridges. Now over here on the + side, we disassemble useless bridges.

In the military, they have bridges that they can put together and then take apart and move, and put together and take apart and move, and put together and take apart and move. They’re disassembling useless bridges so that they can use that bridge somewhere else.

When they’re doing this, and what you need to do in your life is don’t destroy the bridge, because if you destroy it, then you might need to go back across it. But if it’s destroyed, there’s no way going back. If you disassemble it, you can always put it back together. But if you blow it up, it’s gone. It’s gone.

It takes a lot of energy to have to recreate a bridge that was there, that you destroyed, opposed just putting it back together. It’s called rekindling a relationship that just sizzled out.

The difference is this. When you disassemble a bridge, you just go your separate ways. The other person went their separate way. That means 10 years from now, you might rekindle and see each other, and then put that bridge back together. You might find some great opportunity. But if you burn that bridge and destroy it, then the next interaction you guys have, it won’t be there. Does that make sense?

Keeps emotions hidden, understands the power of manipulating his own feelings and emotions.

If you want to live in the minus, you allow your emotions to dictate your actions, remember? But if you want to live in this plus, you understand how to control and hide your emotions.

The importance of this is there are people in this world who will do things just to see how it’s going to affect you. If you don’t understand this, and you allow your emotions to be affected when someone is pushing your buttons, or when someone is manipulating you, then you no longer have control of yourself, and that other person is now controlling you, because you allowed your emotions to control you. But if you keep those emotions hidden, so when somebody is antagonizing you, but you don’t allow them to see it, then you are retaining the power on which they are trying to seize from you.

Now, understanding the power of manipulating yourself. Okay. How did I deal with the loss of my parents better than most? If you read the story, people hated me for it. Probably people still do. I was able to manipulate myself, my feelings and my emotions. A lot of people might say, “Well, that’s not a healthy thing to do.” Opposed to what? Breaking down? No.

See, I didn’t have the opportunity to break down. I had to move forward. I had no option. I had no allies. I was on my own. So the only way I could survive is I had to manipulate my feelings and my emotions. The way I did that is I just convinced myself my parents were gone on a trip, and I’d see them later, and I focused on something else.

The truth of manipulating yourself is, whatever’s bothering you, if it’s a breakup, if it’s your financial problems, don’t focus on the problem. You have to manipulate yourself to see that problem as a solution.

That sounds crazy. Yes, I know. So does believing in God, believing in something that you’ve never seen before. It’s kind of like faith. It’s no more ridiculous to have faith than it is to be able to manipulate your feelings and emotions in a positive manner for the betterment of yourself.

A person who lives in the plus, who understands, use Em, Abuse Em & Lose Em in a positive manner, takes time to fully understand and evaluate the environment they’re in, seizes every opportunity at every chance, destroys opponents. But you mean inner opponents, right? Our inner demons. And disassembles useless bridges.

In life, we all move forward. If a bridge is useless, disassemble it. You can always put it back together, but don’t drag a relationship on for no reason.

Keeps emotions hidden. Unless you are willing to give your power and control to somebody else, do not show them your emotions. It’s the same don’t let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. Well, don’t let other people see your emotions unless it’s something as in a wedding, a marriage, a death, something that’s extreme, where emotion is accepted, is expected. Other than that, keep your emotions hidden. Don’t tell anybody.

That’s with understanding the power of manipulating your own feelings and your own emotions. Because again, if you were paying attention to a couple chapters ago, you can only control two things. Your what? Attitude and action.

If you want to control your attitude and action, you need to understand how to manipulate your feelings and your emotions. Not persuade. It’s not about persuading. It’s manipulating. You need to shift your thinking and the way that you want it to think. I didn’t say manipulate other people. I said manipulate yourself. Shift your thinking to which is most optimal and most efficient to get whatever it is that you need to get done, and go out there and do it.

Posted on May 18, 2021June 2, 2021 by erikj462 — Leave a comment

Does It Hurt Yet

Today our topic is, Does it Hurt Yet? Keep doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result is insane. The origin of where I learned this, does it hurt yet, comes from uncle June Bug when I was living in East Palo Alto, East Menlo area after I got out of my programs. So basically about 19. He first introduced “does it hurt” to me when I was 18, but it didn’t make any sense until I was 19. Throughout the time when I was 18, I was moving about a million miles per second, spending money like it was going out of style, and uncle, June Bug used to, every time I walked right past him, he’d say, “Does it hurt yet?” I’d look at him like he was crazy, like, what are you talking about old, man? Does what hurt yet? He’s like, you’ll find out.

Go by him again, does it hurt yet? Not knowing what he was talking about. Kind of laughing and joking, not knowing the joke’s on me, right? Well, then I went broke because I was spending money like it was going out of style. And when you do that, you eventually go broke. And I was working next to him by this time. Now, six months before, I had cars, I had thousands of dollars in my pocket at all time and spending thousands of dollars a day all the time. Now I’m broke working next to him, detailing on a car and he asked me again, “Does it hurt yet?” And by that time, I understood what he was talking about. We both laughed a little bit, but it wasn’t a laugh and I’m enjoying myself. It was a laugh that I wish I had listened to him earlier.

All right, let’s get into it.

Do You Not See That Wall? This is the person I was when he was asking me, “Does it hurt yet?” I didn’t see the wall. So do you not see that wall? A know-it-all, not open to advice, a very impulsive person or people, does not play the tape out, stubborn, takes pride in their opinion, not susceptible to change, does not actively improve themselves, and never has time. All right. Now let’s get into it.

A know-at-all, not open to advice. Now, all of us have been in this situation to where we’re talking to somebody and we feel like we’re the experts, so we don’t want to listen to what anyone says. Most of the time, this happens with younger people. However, if the younger person does not learn the necessary skills to enhance their brain and start taking advice, then it could be turned into an old person that still is a know-it-all.

It could have been a know-it-all from when they were younger and still a know-it-all because they didn’t learn how to take advice, right? And what I’ve noticed is most know it alls don’t, all right? Most know it alls don’t know what they’re talking about. They might know a lot about one particular aspect of the topic being discussed. And so they will bully the conversation to make sure that everybody understands what they know about the topic, even though it might not be that much knowledge about said topic. It could be a very small little part, but since this person’s a know-it-all, he doesn’t want to listen to anybody else. He wants center of attention and he wants everybody to listen to what he’s talking about. However, somebody else could have better information than the person that knows everything, right?

So let’s bring it back to the story When I was younger. I knew everything, right? Now, let’s not forget I’ve been in programs since basically I was 12. I had never really touched any money because I was in programs. So I didn’t have any use for money. Money was great, but it didn’t mean anything. Everything was in programs. And here I am 18 years old, thinking I know everything, not listening to anyone. I was listening to people. I was listening to people that also had no money or no knowledge and wanted to spend money and have a good time. So I knew what I was doing, trust me, all the way up until the point I was broke. And it really dawned on me that I can’t just put the ATM card in and it won’t spit money out. I knew what I was doing all the way up until that point.

So when I’m discussing, do you not see that wall? I’m really talking about myself. Remember these are the 12 things that I’ve learned throughout the course of my life. Being a know-it-all, it’s not always the best idea. Being very impulsive, does not play the tape all the way out. Now, again, an impulsive person is someone who doesn’t think, right? They just, it sounds like a good idea. Let’s go. Right? Very fast. I’m only going to talk about my personal experience when I was younger, running into the wall, I was very impulsive. So if we wanted to go somewhere for the weekend or not weekend, weekend means that I was planning. If we had a conversation right now, within 15 minutes, we might be on our way for a 12-hour drive without even considering what we’re doing, right?

A very impulsive person does not play the tape out. Let me give you a perfect example through the story. An impulsive decision would be this, renting an apartment in California for six months and random mall space in Spokane, Washington for a year, not playing the tape out. If you don’t know where those two distances are, they are about a 15-hour drive, two and a half hours in the airplane, away from each other. Only an impulsive person would do something like that because he’s not playing the tape out. I’m not two people, I’m only one person. It is literally impossible for me to be in two places at once. Impulsive decisions. When you’re running into the wall, and you’re not understanding that you’re running into the wall, you’re doing the same thing over and over and over and over, over, over, over, over. You’re not playing the tape out and you’re being very impulsive.

If you don’t slow yourself down to analyze every decision that you’re about to make, then you’re going to make a bad decision. It might not look that bad in the beginning, but over the long haul, it will be a bad decision, right?

Stubborn. Takes pride in their own opinion. Why is it so important? I go through this too as well. So it’s not like I’m some special person that this doesn’t happen to, but why are we so obsessed with our opinion being correct? Just because we think something does not necessarily mean it’s correct. Understand, perception is one’s reality. However, if you’re perceiving something incorrectly, then your perception is going to be incorrect or rather your reality, if you’re perceiving something incorrectly, your reality is going to be skewed and it’s not going to be correct. Does that make sense?

So if you’re super stubborn on something and you’re not… Let me rephrase that. If you’re super stubborn and you take pride in your opinion, and what I mean by taking pride in your opinion is no one else’s opinion matters, you are stuck on stupid and there’s nothing in this world that’s going to convince you a different way. Nothing. It does not matter if there is complete logic behind someone else’s opinion, you are so stubborn that you will not allow that to be true. Majority of the time, people are going to be like, “No, no, no. That’s not me. I’m not stubborn.” All right. Okay. You don’t think you are? There are books that will teach you how to do everything. If it’s how to make more money, here’s a book right here. Yes, You Can Time the Market, stock market book.

Do you want to learn about optimizing for the internet? Right here, Optimize. Do you want to learn about juicing? Here’s a juicing book. Here’s another, oh, this is by Benjamin Graham, Warren Buffet, investor books. I’m discussing these books, because when you’re stubborn and you are only concerned with your opinion, then these books are never going to mean anything to you because your opinion is correct and no one else’s opinion matters. That’s what’s being stubborn. So if you look in a mirror and you’re like, I don’t know what your problem is, your problem could be finances, your problem could be loved life, your problem could be not talking to people, your problem could be health, if you’re not actively searching for other opinions because you’re stuck on your way of doing things, then that’s stubborn.

So if you want to learn finance and I give you a book on finance and you’re like, “Oh, I don’t read,” okay, that’s your opinion. And that’s being stubborn. And that’s taking pride in your opinion on how to acquire Knowledge, because if you don’t read, what do you do? So if it’s to lose weight because money and weight are two big things, you know not to eat sugar and fatty foods, right? But if you continuously do it, you’re being stubborn. You’re taking pride in your opinion that you know what you’re doing better than common sense. Common sense will tell you if you eat horrible food, you’re going to have horrible results. If you are not healthy and you want to be healthy, but you’re continuously eating horrible food, then you are being extremely stubborn with your opinion, and you’ll keep running into that brick wall, not for any other reason than being stubborn on your opinion on the way that you do things. All right? I think I’ve beat that horse to death.

Onto the next one

Not susceptible to change, does not actively improve themselves. This kind of goes with being stubborn. So it comes perfect, right? Not susceptible to change, does not actively improve themselves. What does “improve yourself”, mean to you? That’s a question for yourself, because improving myself is completely different than improving yourself. For me, improving myself is I want to improve not just my mind, I want to improve my body, I want to improve everything. I’m one of those weird people that wants to be perfect, right? I strive for perfection. I’m not very good at it, but that’s the main goal is to strive for perfection because I’ve ran into the wall so many times that I’ve learned to do the opposite of this entire list, which we’ll talk about in just a second.

However, at one point in time, almost all the way up until a year and a half ago, two years ago. So I’m 37 now, so up to about 35, I thought I could change. I thought I was susceptible to change, but I wasn’t. And I wasn’t actively improving myself. I was doing a lot of busy work and looking back at some of the things were helpful, some of the lessons I learned, I take advantage of now. However, I could have been walked around that wall years ago, years ago and not kept running into it, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. Right? I was not actively improving myself as what I am right now. Yeah, I would read the occasional book, I would go to the gym, but I wasn’t actively trying to improve myself. Going to the gym or reading a book was a sporadic thing. So I’d go to the gym for three, four months and then stop for two years. That’s not really actively improving myself, right? I’ve read a book and then I wouldn’t read another one for six months. It’s not actively improving yourself.

So with anything in life, if you’re not actively doing it, you’re going to forget it. All right? So if you’re trying to learn a new language, let’s say you’re trying to learn Spanish, and you’re almost fluent, and then you move to Uzbekistan and nobody speaks Spanish, so you no longer speak Spanish and you don’t speak Spanish for six months. And then you go right back into a Spanish-speaking country, it’s going to take you a little bit of time to remember what you had previously learned because you’re not actively practicing. Now, if you’re a native Spanish speaker, obviously you’re going to be like, “What are you talking about? That doesn’t make any sense.” Well, you natively know the language. I’m talking about a skill that you have learned and you’re good, but you’re not a master, right?

I can go months without driving a car, but when I get in a car, I know how to drive a car. I’ve been doing that for 20 something years, almost every single day. That’s second nature. Riding a bike, same thing. But when I was younger, I had hours and hours of practice. So with the susceptible to change, not actively improving yourself, if you don’t actively improve yourself, then you’re going to forget the things that at one point in time accomplished or achieved. Do you not see that wall? Not actively improving yourself is like having that wall right in front Of you, and having your nose straight to the wall, and being like, “No, I’m not going to get any better. No, I’m not going to get any better. No, I’m not going to get any better.” It’s putting a ceiling on your growth. If you don’t want to change, then you’re going to restrict your success and your abilities.

Never has time. I’ve heard people give me this excuse so much. I personally, I almost believe it. I believe people do not have time and this is why, they don’t want to have time. Time means that they might have to do something. As long as they don’t have time to do something, they never have to change. There’s always an excuse on why they’re going to keep running into that wall, because if you’ve taken the Six Strategies class or the 10 Minutes, then you know there is no possible way you can’t have time. Impossible. Impossible that you don’t have time. However, in a person that’s keep running into the wall, let’s give a couple examples so it can drill down into your head what I’m discussing, what I’m referring to, because it’s not just have time, it’s more or less an excuse. Because I never have time, that’s an excuse. Well, I didn’t have time. That’s an excuse.

So another excuse is I don’t have data, which is ridiculous, come on. Another excuse is it was too hard. Another excuse is it was boring. Another excuse, actually never has time is probably the best one to use. I’m just thinking in my head of the best example. I want to use someone else’s example of somebody else, but we’ll keep it on me. Here’s a perfect example. When I got out in 2000, when I was 18, I had a lot of money. I was supposed to go talk to a stock broker, investment person but I never found time. I was too busy drinking. I was too busy blowing money. I was too busy, let’s see, being irresponsible. I couldn’t find time for the responsible thing to do.

Now, let’s go back into this a little bit more. This is why “never has time” is so important. When I was in middle school (if you read “12 years of hell” you understand) at the boarding school, this is when Steve Jobs had just went back to Apple and they were revolutionizing the computer industry. They had the different color backgrounds. They’re making computers look cool. And my school was teaching us websites. It was the new wave of the future, it was a tech school. When I turned 18, A matter of fact, we’ll go even back even further. Back to Forrest Gump, That was in 94’ (or something) because there’s two things. What did he tell everybody? He said, “And this company, Apple, came around and I always liked apples. My mom always told me apples were good. So I went ahead and invested in it and wow.” That was in the 90s. I got out of programs in the early 2000.

Good movie, Forrest Gump always loved it. I can still recall that line. So there’s no way I didn’t remember it then. Then, I’d been exposed to Apple. I knew the stock market. I never found time to invest a penny in Apple, way back then. If I had invested in Apple in 2002, I could have taken $100,000, even $5,000, and it went from like $6 to $700 stock split back down to $100 to $400 stock split back down to $100, and now it’s at $120, $130. Never had time because I was too busy running into the brick walls, too busy being impulsive. I was too busy knowing everything to listen to advice. I was too stubborn in my own ways. Even though I didn’t know anything about money, in my mind, I knew everything. I was smarter than everybody else. I was not susceptible to change. I wasn’t trying to improve myself. And I never had time.

And wallah, I went broke and years later, it would have been the smartest thing in the world to do one small thing, talk to somebody and give them some money. And my life would’ve been completely different.

Let Me Go Around Or Over. Now, let’s talk about a person who’s not that, the person who sees that there’s a wall and wants to go around it or over it or through it. But the whole through it, it’s kind of stupid, the whole going through something, unless you have dynamite and going to blow it up, I get it. But the whole energy and pressure of trying to bust through something, why don’t you just go around? It’s easier. Understands the smartest person in the room perceives he knows nothing absorbing everything, open to new ideas. If it can be done more efficiently than make it so.

Makes every decision with cautious thought. Understands the body is constantly reprogramming itself. If you want something different, do something different. Understands how to create time.

Understands the smartest person in the room perceives he knows nothing. Remember, the person that keeps running into a wall, he thinks he’s the smartest person in the room and does not want to listen to anything that anyone else says. Now, what I’ve learned is when you’re quiet and you really don’t tell anybody anything about what you know, and you allow people to just talk, you’ll learn more about that person. It’s amazing.

When you don’t do the talking and you allow other people to talk, you get to find out really fast if this person is worth your time or not. But if you’re doing all the talking, you’ll never know because you haven’t given the other person time to talk. So the smartest person in the room understands he knows nothing. When you go into any environment, understand that you probably don’t know anything. If it’s a new environment, you don’t know anything about this person. You might think you do, but you know nothing about this person. So it’s smarter to listen, absorb everything. If it’s a business meeting, absorb mannerisms, how are people acting? How are people receiving information that they get? What is their body language telling you? If you’re not paying attention to all these small minute details, then you might misread something. You might miscalculate something that could cost millions, thousands, billions, whatever, hundreds. It all depends on what level you’re on.

If you’re in a relationship or a new date, and you’re doing all the talking, at the end of it, you might be like, “Oh, this was amazing. I had such a great time.” And the other person would be like, “Oh, I had such a great time.” Five years down the road and you still don’t know anything about this person, because all you’ve done is do the talking. And she’s perfectly fine with it because she never has to open up about herself. Well one day, she does something that you’re like, “What? Why’d you do that?” And she’s like, “Oh, this is normal.” But you had no idea because you were so busy about you that you forgot about the other person. If you want to go over the wall, around the wall or blow the wall up, I’m going to go with dynamite, understand and see what is actually happening? What is actually being talked about? What are people actually thinking? And the only way you can do that is to reserve yourself and not be out really trying to spew your knowledge on the world. In other words, shut the fuck up and listen.

Open to new ideas. If it can be done more efficiently than make it so. This goes a lot with, I don’t see problems, I only see solutions. So if you live in an environment where everything is a problem, if you just think in problems, then you’re always going to be stressed because everything is a stressful situation. However, if you think of everything as solutions, then everything’s just a challenge and it’s not even a problem. It’s an experiment that didn’t go how you wanted it to go, so you have to tweak a couple ingredients and then try it again. It’s very different when you see solutions opposed to problems. Open to new ideas, if it can be done more efficiently than make it so. So now that goes completely opposite of the stubborn person. Really the stubborn person or the know it all. It goes opposite of all of them. Open to new ideas is counter to being stubborn.

If you’ve been doing something, let’s say losing weight or making money, and let’s say you’ve had relative success, I’m not going to say that you’ve been terrible, so you’ve been able to have relative success. However, if someone new comes in, remember Understands the smartest person perceives he knows nothing and is willing to learn new ideas. Learn them, scan them, make sure they work for you, don’t just take every idea. With being open to new ideas, let’s say you go into a conference, a health conference and you’re talking to somebody and you’re discussing, “Well, I’m having a hard time losing weight or I’m having a hard time building my tricep.” And you see someone with some enormous triceps or beautiful shape and you go up and you ask them. And they give you pointers and you go and you ask about three or four different people, so you have a larger array of information for you to look back at later when you go home.

Then you formulate a plan off of your new information. You understood that you weren’t the smartest person. You were open to new ideas. You weren’t stubborn. And then through all that, hopefully you’ll be able to find a more efficient way of doing something. Same thing with finance. If saving money this way has been working, but if someone has a better idea for you, do your research and then adjust accordingly.

Makes every decision with cautious thought.So when I was at Cascade, so 16, maybe 17, I was in English class and they had us read this one, I think it was Benjamin Franklin something. And he was explaining treaty negotiations, with a native American, a tribe or something. And what he noticed is how… I’m going to try to paraphrase what he said.

And he’s like, well, when white people negotiate and they come up with the decision, they come up with the decision relatively fast. However, when the native Americans made a decision, they would discuss it as a group and think of the consequences and think of the, how would this affect every aspect of the tribe. And then the next day after they pondered on it, then they’d give you an answer. This shocked, (I think I could be wrong, I think it was Benjamin Franklin,) and it shocked Benjamin Franklin because it was a completely different way of negotiating than what he was used to. So when you want to go around or over or blow up the wall, you have to make every decision with cautious thought, which you can’t just willy nilly, and, “Oh, this sounds like a good idea. Let’s do it.”

You have to think of the consequence. How am I going to feel about this decision in an hour, in a week, in a day, in a month, in a year, in 10 years? Is this decision the best decision for me right now? Or is it the best decision for my future? Or is it the best decision just because I want to do it? So every decision that you make, if you want to get around, if you want to go over, any obstacle that you have in life, you have to make these decisions with cautious thought. I didn’t say with fear, I say with caution, use caution when you’re making a decision. Make sure that you make it this decision, and it’s a good decision. And if it’s not, you need to be able to cut it as fast as possible and revert to a different decision.

So if you’re going down a path, and then all of a sudden you’re seeing monsters and demons and everything, you might want to turn around and go the other way, right? You don’t want to just being stubborn and keep going to the monsters and things. When they tell you to go away, you’re like, “No, I’m going to go through, even though you’re asking me, please, don’t come through, we’re going to kill you.” And you’re like, “You know what, I don’t believe it. I’m going to do it anyways.” No, turn around and go down a different path, right? Make every decision with cautious thought, but then also have the ability to change your mind on a dime if it’s not working.

Understands the body is constantly reprogramming itself. If you want something different, do something different. Now, I don’t know the exact stats. I can’t remember. I’ve heard the numbers a few times, but the body cells regenerate itself or like rebuild itself every six months or something. So if you want to transform yourself and be able to go over obstacles in a faster rate or become, as we say, open to new ideas, it can be done more efficiently than make it so, if you want to be more efficient. If you want to just optimize your life better, then part of the way that you do this is small steps, one, read the book, Six Strategies to Conquer Life or 10 Minutes. Do it small so that you understand that you’re reprogramming yourself. A habit is just a program that your body runs every day.

So in order to change that, you need to reprogram it. The code in your mind, you need to change it. The only way that you can do that is first understand that you just got to reprogram yourself. So right now, I’m working on programming myself to wake up even earlier so that I have the maximum amount of time in my day. I’m trying different strategies. So I’m always trying different things to see how what’s best for me, because I understand that the body is constantly reprogramming itself. So if I’m going to try this strategy for a while, and if I can get it, I’m going to see how it affects me. If it doesn’t work how I want it, then I’m going to reprogram myself in a different way. So I’ve been juicing for about two to three weeks. My body is now starting to take the effects of the juicing, right? Because at first, my body probably didn’t understand what all this nutrients was. It’s never had that much nutrients ever.

So the body was probably not understanding what to do with all these nutrients and vitamins and minerals and everything. So it took a minute for it to change. But after about a month, two months, three months, again, it’s constantly reprogramming itself. So it’s doing it in a slow but steady pace. And it’s like working out. If you work out for three days, you will not see a difference. You have to work out for three months, and then you’re like, “Oh, wow, look, I look a little different.” It’s the same thing with reprogramming yourself. You got to do something consistently for a few months so that you see the after effects of the reprogramming. And then you can look back and analyze. Does that make sense? You can’t just do something for a week and think that your brain is going to be reprogrammed. If you want something different, you have to do something different consistently, consistently over and over and over until it gives your body the necessary time to reprogram.

Understands how to create time.Part of my reprogramming is to optimize my day. I’m trying to create as much time in the day as possible. Well, how do you do that? First, you have to understand how many hours can you be efficient? I know everyone’s going to be like, “Oh, I can be efficient for 12 hours.” No, you can’t. No, you can’t. For me, maybe four hours, and then I’m no longer efficient. But that’s like four hours of intense work, four or five hours, and the time will fly by. But then after my butt starts to hurt, I get antsy. I have to move around.

So my morning exercise routine is about an hour and 15 minutes. My afternoon exercise routine is about an hour, It’ll get up to about an hour and 15 minutes. So we’re looking that, but did you understand? I said in the afternoon, my afternoon routine. So in the morning time, I have a morning routine that I might relax, take a nap, do some work, kind of what I’m doing right now, then come back to the table, rewake myself back up because I work intensely, take a break, recharge my battery, work intense, take a break, recharge my battery, working intense, take a break, recharge my battery. Does it make sense? So instead of trying to do something throughout the entire day where you’re not effective, rest and relax and don’t think of anything unless it’s depending on what kind of work that you’re doing. But if you’re doing a lot of brainwork, then you need to give your brain a break.

About four hours, give it a break, another four hour, give it a break. That’s how to create time. You could be completely different than me, but you have to understand when, how, what times are you most effective? How long can you be effective? How much time do you need to recover? Once you have those, then you can create time, because you know you can maximize in your five hours, two hours, one hour, eight hours of complete optimization, maximize. Don’t count time where you’re not at 100% capability, because if you’re counting time when you’re not optimizing, you’re like at 45%, then you’re wasting time. Just because you think that you’re working, you’re not getting anything done. You’re just staring at a page or you’re dicking off, but only count the time you’re actually working.

And then after you have that number, take a break, give your brain time to wander, ponder, dream, whatever it wants to do. And then reel it back in and be like, “All right, time to work again. Let’s get down.” Pull another few hours, take a little nap or whatever, and then do it again. That’s how you create time. And I’ll see you on the next one.

Posted on May 18, 2021June 4, 2021 by erikj462 — Leave a comment

A Man Can’t Be A Man Without A Plan

The origin of this way of thinking for me came from Aspen, one of the new recruits, that’s the best way to put it, a new enlistee. He had just come and he’d say a jingle like, you can’t be a man without a plan. How can you say you’re a man if you have no plan? Now if you’re a man, then you must have a plan because only a man has a plan. If you’re not a man, I understand you have no plan. But if you think that you are a man, then you must have a plan, or you obviously have a plan. So if you kind of get what I’m saying, you could play with the words over, and over, and over, and over again.

So we would just play with the words during dinner, or after dinner we’d be sitting by the campfire and one person would be like, “Erik, do you have a plan? Then I would respond, “Obviously, I’m a man.” Then I’d shoot it off to somebody else and be like, “Joe, I heard that you’re a man. Then he’d be like, “Most definitely. Didn’t you know I have a plan?” So we would have fun doing that, and we’d go around. It’s just something that stuck in your head, so by gamifying be a man, have a plan, it got stuck in our head, over the course of just playing with that joke. Do it with yourself, do it with your friends and before you know it, it will be ingrained in your mind that a man equals a plan and a plan equals a man. So it could be woman too, but I was in a group with no girls, so it was all men. I’m not saying it’s only for men. I’m just saying in my group, it was all men, so we just … It was easier for us to just say, “If you have a plan, then I guess you’re a man.”

Living Without A Plan.

Wakes up naturally, no structure in; exercise, diet, or budget. No defined mission. No purpose in life. Does not create challenges, and impulsive behavior.

Wakes up naturally. Now you could argue, waking up naturally is healthy. However, unless that is your plan to wake up naturally for health benefits, then that’s not a very good plan because then you’re not controlling your morning. You might think you are because you’re waking up naturally, but what if waking up naturally is you’re waking up at 8:00 in the morning? Business day has already started. You’re late.

Waking up naturally, maybe on vacation that’s fine, but every morning … We’ll get to that in just a second, but you need to challenge yourself. So waking up at a specific time is beneficial for your integrity and for your discipline. Now waking up naturally, what does that mean? It means like a kid. When you were younger, I don’t know. I never really did this because I was in programs, and we had structure at all times. I’m guesstimating this is what normal kids would do. They sleep in until about 10:00 in the mornin and play video games, and really have no mission. They’re just walking around aimlessly.

Now if that is your structure that you are accustomed to, that’s a very difficult structure to break out of. So then it would mean that it’s natural for you to wake up naturally because you’ve been doing it since you were a kid and no one’s told you it’s a problem. It’s the same thing as going to bed really late as a teenager. If you go to bed at 1:00 in the morning, there’s no possible way you’re going to wake up at 7:00. You’re going to wake up at mid morning, 10:00, 11:00 in the morning, which is waking up naturally. But by doing that, you’re missing half the day. You’re missing the pivotal parts of the day to jumpstart on everybody else. Remember the saying, early bird catches the worm.

So if you want to wake up naturally, then the consequence of that is you’re going to miss the worm. While you’re waking up at 10:00 in the morning, I consider it afternoon because 10:00 in the afternoon, I’m already asleep. That’s midnight for me, but 10:00 in the morning, I’ve already started my second day. If you were paying attention to Walk With a Purpose I have two days in one, by 10:00 in the morning, I’ve already had an entire day either getting prepared for day number two of the same day, or waking up and starting day number two of the same day. So waking up naturally, if you want to be a man with a plan, that’s the first plan you need to have, is what time are you going to wake up?

No structure. We talked about that with waking up naturally, but we’ll break it down into these three different categories a little bit more, going more depth. If you do not use your muscles, you will lose them. But wait, what? Erik, you’re going to lose your muscles? No, I’m not going to lose them. Yes, you will lose them. If you do not use your muscles, you will lose your muscles. So if you do not exercise, kiss your arms, kiss your legs, kiss all your strength away because that’s what’s going to happen.

The nice, firm body you had when you were younger, if you don’t exercise, it’s gone, so you need to have a plan how to maintain your body for a while. Not just 18 to 25, and then 25 is downhill, and you turn into jello. No, that’s not a man with a plan, or a woman with a plan. I’m using man interchangeably, so then I don’t have to stop myself and say woman again. So if you are a man with a plan, then you need to have a plan to be here for a while unless you’re planning to die fast. If you’re planning to die fast, then that’s fine. Then that’s your plan. But if you’re not planning to die fast, and you’re planning to be here for a while, then you need to plan exercise.

Your diet. Now I’m not good at this. I’m terrible. I still drink a beer every now and again. Well, basically every night. I have a challenge with smoking. I drink energy drinks, so my diet is not perfect. However, I also ride the bike for 20 miles in the morning, and I run for three miles in the afternoon. I’m working out, and I’m juicing everyday adding nutrients to my body on a daily basis. So do I understand that I have work to do? Yes I do, but I am a man with a plan. I am constantly working on my diet through exercise, and through juicing, and changing different things. If you’re paying attention to one of my classes I have right now where we’re trying to find a natural energy drink, trying to solve problems that might hinder my plan of being here for a while. Does that make sense? Because I plan to be a man for a while. You get it? All right, let’s move on.

Budget. There is no possible way you can be a man without a financial plan. No way. You can pretend all you want, but without a financial plan you will falter as a man. If you can’t live within a budget, then you might as well just give up. You have to have the discipline to live inside your own budget. It’s going to sound crazy. I think I’ve said this before. I don’t know where I’ve said it, so feel free to write me an email and tell me where I said this before. Since I was younger, I have always in my mind thought of keeping my bills under $1,000 no matter what.

So when you look at my house, my house is … It’s a bigger house. It’s 3,200 square foot. It’s 400,000 with the pool, all that kind of bells and whistles. But how much do I pay a month on it? I don’t. I pay my taxes, but I paid for cash because I want my bills under $1,000 a month. Because if your bills are under $1,000 a month, then cashflow is pretty large. If you make $2,000, then you’re doubling yourself every month. Now I know you’re going to be like, “Well, Erik, I don’t have $400,000 to invest in a house.”

Do you know where I was living before here? I was living in a house I paid $3,800 for, and I lived there for three years. No, no, no, not a year, $3,800, for three years of living. I didn’t pay the taxes, so $1,000 a year for three years. I had my utilities, but that was way under $1,000. Was it the nicest house? Heavens, no. It was probably the worst house in the world, but I wasn’t concerned about the looks. I was a man with a plan. So where my head was laying wasn’t as important as my plan because guess what? I am a man.

No defined mission. No purpose in life. It’s almost self-explanatory. Maybe I need to go into this a little bit more, but I almost think that it’s self-explanatory. If you do not have a plan, you are not a man, so no defined mission. No defined mission means that you don’t have a plan. No purpose in life means that you don’t have a plan. If you don’t have a plan, then you don’t know where you’re going. If you don’t know where you’re going, then you could be going around in circles and not know. Does that make sense?

You could be going around like a dog chasing its tail and go absolutely nowhere in life. You will think that you’re moving a lot, but you will not proceed because you have no defined plan. So in turn, you are not yet a man. I don’t know. Maybe I’m thinking it’s funny, and you guys don’t see it, but you see how I’m rhyming the man and plan throughout all of this, hence, the reason why the chapter is called A Man Can’t Be a Man Without a Plan? All right.

Does not create challenges. All right, now this is a big one. A lot of people avoid things that are hard. We tend to want to do things that are easy. You don’t believe me, look at the obesity rate. The obesity rate is going up, not down. If people like to do things that are challenging, then the obesity rate would be going down, not up. Exercising, and taking care of yourself, and having structure is extremely challenging. To start. Once you get into the routine of things, things are no longer as challenging as they were when you started. It’s kind of like walking, or running, or riding a bike, or any new skill.

To think that when we start something new, it’s going to be easy would be ludicrous. Nothing in life is easy. It might be very simple. It might be very simple, not easy. Let me explain to you what I mean by it could be very simple, but not easy. Learn Chinese. Let’s say there’s a thousand characters. It’s a lot of characters. It’s very simple. Memorize all the characters and practice. That is very simple. There’s only what, two steps, three steps? Write all characters down, practice, memorize, three steps. Practice with other people, four steps. Very simple.

Is that easy? No. No, that is not easy. The characters are very complex, and then if you want to be able to draw them as well, then it’s going to take you a lot more time. It’s going to be a big challenge, but the challenge is very simple. It’s not a lot of steps. It’s very few steps, but within those steps it’s a huge challenge. So that’s what stops majority of us from living life with a plan. How to get rich, follow simple steps. Be disciplined with your money, invest wisely. Be disciplined with your time. Those are about the three major things if you want to change your world that you need. Those are very simple. It’s three things, but to practice those are great challenges.

So in order for us to develop the necessary skills to go through life with the ability to acknowledge the challenge, analyze that challenge, and find the way around, above, through, that whatever challenge it is, that’s a man with a plan, and it takes practice. If you think that you’re going to be the best problem solver on your very first problem, I hate to break it to you. Good luck. However, if you train your brain to problem solve, then every problem that comes through, it’s going to get easier.

When I say problem, I’m interchanging that with challenge. A challenge is always going to be hard, but that’s what’s so great about it. If a challenge was easy, then once you achieve the challenge, you wouldn’t feel anything. The reason why you feel something is because of the amount of work you had to put in to achieve said challenge. So if you want the feel good, you need to overcome challenges? Every time you overcome a challenge, you build your self-esteem. You build your integrity with yourself because you told yourself that you were going to do something, and you did it. Now let’s keep on going because I think I’m going a little bit too far into living without a plan.

Impulsive behavior. A person without a plan has very impulsive behavior. Don’t believe me? Go talk to somebody that’s been sitting at a house all day and is bored out of their mind. Go up to them and say, “Let’s go.” What are they going to say? Let’s go. Impulsive behavior. They don’t really care where they’re going. They’re just ready to get out of the house. They’re bored. Another one. Corona has been happening for the last year. How many people want to go on a vacation now? Impulsive behavior. They might not be able to afford it, but they got to go because we’ve been stuck in the house for over a year. Not a very logical decision if you don’t have any money, but who cares about logic? When you don’t have a plan, you’re acting impulsively. You do whatever. It doesn’t matter.

Fear of missing out. You only live once, whatever little saying you want to call it. It’s the same. A person without a plan has more impulsive behavior. If you have a problem with alcohol, start having a plan, start filling your day with other things. If you have a problem with going out, you want to stop going out. Well, have a plan, have a mission. Have a goal, have a dream. Find inspiration, and go out there and do it, and do that opposed to negative things, the things that aren’t getting you to where you want to go. It’s very simple. Keep doing the things that help and stop doing things that don’t, period.

Living With A Plan.

Wakes up before everyone else for personal time; work, exercise, meditate, or to read. A very structured life. Understands the importance of time. Is on a mission. Has the ability to put the phone down. Removes distractions. Makes sacrifices. Creates personal challenges. Understands the real competition is within. All right. We talked about a man without a plan. This is someone with a plan.

They wake up before everyone else for personal time. That is, I would have to say, one of the important things that people miss. People look at me and be like, “Well, why do you wake up so early?” Because nobody else is awake. I can’t hear noise. I can’t hear the birds. I just heard one. That’s a distraction. In the middle of the night, a bird is not even awake, so I’m not getting any distractions. So if I want to work, if I want to exercise, if I want to meditate, if I want to read, that is the most opportune time to do it. Now I understand, you’re going to be like, “Well, I like to read before I go to bed.” So do I, if I want to go to sleep. If it’s late and I need to sleep, let me open a book. By the end of that first page, I’m asleep. Now I might make it a chapter or two, depending on the day, but I know if I wake up a little groggy, go for a bike ride, wake myself up, meditate for a little bit, get some work done, I know my mind is sharper. I’m going to retain more information first thing in the morning than I am at nighttime. I have a mantra where it’s, once I’m done with the day, I just go to sleep. I’m done. What else is there to do? I don’t want to hang out. I don’t want to waste my time. I got to wake up in the morning time because that is the opportune time. That’s my secret, first thing in the morning before anyone else wakes up.

Then after everybody wakes up, 9:00 day’s over. Like right now, I’m still working, but that’s just because I like to do … I like what I’m doing. But the first part of the morning, I would say I’m probably three times more efficient when I first wake up than I am towards the end of the day. That’s the secret behind waking up early, is you’re more efficient, and there’s nobody awake, you get personal time. You get time all by herself. No one’s going to bother you.

A very structured life understands the importance of time. It’s kind of funny. We were just talking about personal time. Well, this is more like time within the day. So without a structured life, you’re giving yourself the ability to waste time. Without a schedule, you’re scheduling nothing. So if you don’t know what to do, your brain is going to figure something to do, and it’s usually, to waste time. Let me say that again. If you do not have something to do, your brain will find something to do for you and the majority of the time it is to waste time.

Don’t believe me? Be bored, what do you do? Waiting at the doctor’s office, what do you do? You pick up your phone, and you scroll Facebook, or Instagram, or you check your messages, check your email. Five minutes later, still waiting. What do you do? Check Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, check your email. Even though you know there’s a 99% chance that in the last five minutes nothing’s happened, but you still do it because you’re not doing anything else.

So your brain is trying to fill this empty space. I got to do something. I got to do something. I got to be stimulated. Where’s the phone? So then you’re stimulated. Now you’re no longer stagnant. You’re doing something now. It might not be productive, but you’re still doing something. So if you are not in a structured life, you are giving yourself the ability or the excuse, rather, to fill up your day with wasting it. When you have a structured life, and you have a very stringent schedule, you will waste less time, and you will get more done.

A person with a plan, or rather a man with a plan, is on a mission. He has the ability to put the phone down, removes distractions, makes sacrifices. So let’s go over that again because we talked about that a little bit in the structured life. But when you’re on this mission, your plan, if you’re a man, then your phone isn’t as important to you. You can put it down. You can go to the store without it because it’s no longer a communication. It’s no longer a toy. A phone for most everybody is an adult person’s toy, but now we give them to two-year-olds too, so it’s a toy all the way.

You got games. You got videos. It’s like an arcade in your hand. This is how much I know it’s an arcade in your hand, because majority of the people nowadays don’t even know what an arcade is. When I was younger, if we wanted to play a lot of video games, we had video games at home, but we only had maybe Atari or Nintendo, so I’m talking about when I was six. So we’re talking about 30 years ago, so it’s not that long ago. I’m 31, I’m getting old. We had to go to the mall and play video games there. Now, why do you got to go to the mall? You can play video game on your hands, your phone. Boop, boop, boop, boop, boop.

So a man on a mission or a man with a plan knows how to put down his toy. I know most of you are going to argue and be like, “I need my phone all day long.” Really? Because they’ve been able to survive and conduct business without a phone for, yeah, that’s right, 99.9% of human interaction, human history, human existence because we’ve only had a phone, a cell phone … I remember before a cell phone, so it hasn’t even been 37 years. So if you’ve adjusted to a world where you do not know how to live without a phone, then you need to throw it away because you’re never going to get anything done if you think that you have to have your phone around you at all times. There’s too many toys, and bells, and whistles, and fun, and distractions, and that goes on to the next part.

Removes distractions. I feel like I’ve told this story too. I don’t know when, I don’t know where. When I have a project, I turn my phone off. You might not hear from me for a week, two weeks. I will be in Erik’s world and that’s it. I don’t care if the rest of the world is on fire. The rest of the world can wait until I’m done. That’s a man with a plan. Remove distractions all the way. I know. You’re going to tell me, “I got kids. I can’t do it,” and all this other stuff. Everyone has an excuse on how they can’t do something. Rarely ever do I ever hear the excuse on how they can. I’m going to say that again.

Here’s a better one. Excuses are like assholes. Everybody has one, and nobody likes them, period. So stop giving excuses. If you’re a man with a plan, You don’t have excuses. You make sacrifices. You can’t really go more into you make sacrifices. No matter what you do in life, you have to sacrifice to live right. So Yeah, you might not be able to go to the ball game. You might not be able to go to the fancy restaurant. You might not be able to buy those ridiculously expensive shoes, or pants, or Yeezys, or whatever, $600 for a shoe that cost him maybe $5 to make, but you’re stupid enough to buy it. You get my point. You have to make sacrifices in life. You have to know that your future is affected by what you do today.

So your future is just a consequence of today, all right. I’m going to say that again. Your future is a consequence of today. We can even say tomorrow is a consequence of today, so whatever you do today, tomorrow is going to be affected. So if you don’t make the sacrifices that you need to now, then the consequence of your actions now is in the future. You’re going to have sacrifices, but it might not be the sacrifices that you want. Money’s good right now, so you’re like, “It’s always going to be good. I have plenty.” Well, talk to the NBA players that went broke. Let me ask them if they wish they would have sacrificed, and not went to the parties all the time, and saved their money. Sacrifice going out and having fun now, or you’re going to sacrifice later, and have no money, and no fun. So it’s either have fun now or have fun later. When I was younger, I wanted to have fun now. Didn’t get me anywhere. Now I want to have fun later. I’m a man with a plan.

Creates personal challenges. Understands the real competition is within. Warren Buffet, Grant Cardone, Tai Lopez, the major influencers of the world today, they all basically agree with this one point, that no one’s their competition, but themselves. That’s nearly the truth. Now of course, Kobe Bryant is my competition when it comes to basketball. He’s a giant, I’m not. That’s a huge challenge, but we’re not talking about those challenges. That’s his goldmine, but when you get to what you’re good at, your goldmine, your only competition is yourself. No one else can compete with you.

It’s the story of, if I compare myself to everybody else, then I’m only comparing myself to average. The definition of average is count everybody, everyone’s number, and then divide it by how many participants there are, and that’s your average. So if you’re looking around at everybody, and you’re basing your progression in life on everybody, and you find the average and you’re like, “Well, I’m above average.” But you’re not challenging yourself. You’re challenging Joe Smoe over there who has nothing, who has no determination, who wants to sit on the couch all day, and be a couch potato. So is that your competition? No. Your only competition is within.

So if you run a mile this year, and you can maintain running a mile every single day at 10 minutes, well now you know you can do that. Who cares what Sally Jo can do? That doesn’t matter. Sally Jo is Sally Jo. Your competition is the second year, try to run it in nine minutes, and then the third year, eight minutes. That’s your personal challenge. Or if it’s about saving money, if your goal this year is to not overspend on credit cards, who’s your competition? Yourself. Who cares what Johnny over there is doing? Is Johnny going to pay your bills? I don’t think so. Is Johnny worried about your credit score? He might be worried because he wants to know if he can outdo you. But in the end, your competition is only for yourself.

My aunt, she told me this when I was younger. This one should have been on the list too, one of the 12 things I’ve learned. She said this. She said, “Erik.” Well, she told me two things. I’ll tell you both, and then we got to cut it off. This is a great way to end it. She said, “Erik, you were born by yourself, and you’re going to die by yourself, so no one else really matters.” Now she says I take it out of context, but what I got it out of her statement was, no one else matters. It’s my life. I am responsible for me. I’m not responsible for anybody else. Now I might help somebody else, but I’m only responsible for me. If my life is not what I want it to be, I’m only responsible for me. So if life is not the life I wish to live, it’s the fault of no one else, but me. That’s one thing.

The second thing she told me, while I was at Cascade. She said, “Erik, you’re not here to make friends. Now if a friendship grows, that’s great, but that’s not why you’re here.” We’re not here to make friends. Friends are in the way. We’ve discussed what a friend is in previous chapters. A friend and making friends, if that’s your focus, to make friends, then you’re never going to focus on yourself. Your mission or your plan, if you’re a man, is to not make friends. Now if you make friends on the way, that’s fine, but your mission is to accomplish what you set out to do. So again, a man is someone who has a plan. So let me ask you, are you a man? Do you have a plan?

Posted on May 18, 2021June 4, 2021 by erikj462 — Leave a comment

All You Need Is 2 Dollars

In this chapter, “All You Need Is 2 Dollars, Don’t Overthink Things”. The origin of this lesson I learned came from Uncle June Bug when I was in East Palo Alto, East Menlo area. This is after I went broke, and I was kind of in a situation where my mind hadn’t fully grasped the concept that I had no money. However, at the same time, I would always be trying to think that you need a lot of money to do anything.

There was one time he was telling me a story. I forgot what I did or what I had said, but it sparked him to tell me the story, so All You Need Is 2 Dollars, and then he explains the story. He said, “Man, I was down on my luck, and me and your uncle,” he’s talking about another person, “We’re walking down the street and there’s a dice game. Now, all I had was $2. I went into that dice game, I started with $2, and a lucky streak happened, and I walked away with 200,” The lesson of the story, whether that happened or whether it didn’t happen is not … It doesn’t matter. What matters is the mentality that we have when we don’t have anything or when it looks like we’re out of luck, so all you need is $2, and it can change your world. Quick, little story yesterday just to kind of get it with you. It’s not just $2, it’s you don’t need a lot of money.

Yesterday, or last Monday … Today is Thursday, so not four days ago, 10 days ago, 11 days ago, I took $200 and I turned it into 1,200,but I trapped my gains by selling an option against my option, and the market kept going in the direction of my option, so it could have turned 200 into 2,000, but, I capped my gain at like a $900 profit, so I was frustrated. Then, Wednesday came and I made bad decision. Friday came, I made another bad decision. Monday came, I made another bad decision, so I’d whittled all my profits plus a little bit more.

Yesterday, which was Wednesday, I was down on my luck. I was almost about to just throw in the towel like I’m done, I can’t, because that’s Wednesday, Friday, Monday, I only trade three times a week. That’s three times in a row, I’ve just gotten my shit handed to me, for lack of better words, but then yesterday, I saw something. The reason why the last three days I lost money, remember, the Monday I had trapped myself off, so this time I was like, “I’m not going to do it,” and then the market reversed on me on Wednesday, Friday, Monday. That’s why I lost.

Usually, I’d trapped-in gains and I’d be fine, but now, I couldn’t do it, or I didn’t do it and I lost, so my emotions were all the way against me. Well, yesterday, same scenario, but this time I was down to like my last few hundred dollars in this particular account to try this particular strategy. Then, once I blow it, just like at the casino, because this is my fun money, I’ll just stop for a while. The last couple $100. Remember, all you need is $2.

That’s the whole basis of this lesson. For $115, I bought an option. It was following the criteria that I was looking for in the market, and at the end of the day, that $115 turned into $1,100. In conjunction with this lesson, All You Need Is 2 Dollars to make something, you don’t need a lot of money to change the situation. Now, that $1,000 gain is not going to change anything in my life. However, it was a huge victory, because I was down on my luck, I was mad, and I was about to give up, but that last little $2 … I mean, it was $115, mind you, but that last $2, and my luck changed, so all you need is $2 in this world.

Now, let’s get into the lesson. All right,

Overthinking: failure to start, don’t have the money, don’t have the time, the Jordan Shoes Syndrome, if I had better shoes, or if I had better shoes, computer, phone, the fantasy land, watching and emulating characters on the media and living above your means.

failure to start. If you’re thinking it’s going to cost you a million dollars to start a YouTube channel, you’re never going to start. If you don’t care … If you understand …. Let me put this in a better way. If you understand everything started not how it is today, if you understand that updates have been happening with Microsoft Word since the first Microsoft Word, the Apple computer didn’t look like it did 20 years ago.

The iPhone, if you look at the iPhone when it first came out to now, it’s completely different phones, two different functionalities. Before, you needed an iPod. What do you need an iPod for now? You don’t, right? If you have the mentality that, “Unless it’s perfect, I’m not going to start,” or, “If I don’t have the money, I’m not going to start,” “It’s too expensive,” or whatever your excuse is, then you’re not grasping what I’ve just explained.

Every last, one of those amazing tools we use on a daily basis started off, one, as an idea, two, with a whole bunch of bugs. If you’ve ever noticed … Just think of it like this. When a new product comes out, when Apple comes out with a new product, they always have updates because they don’t know how it’s going to work. In the studio or in the engineer’s closet, wherever they are, it works perfectly, but. A million people aren’t using it at one time, so it’s a different world, so if the failure to start is the fear you don’t have the money, that doesn’t matter.

Nowadays, you can literally start anything for free. Just a piece of paper and a pencil, you can start, or your phone that you probably already have, you can record because … Yeah, I’m using my computer, which remember, laptops are relatively new. When I was younger, when I was a kid, there was not a laptop. It was the black and white little square or rectangle box, or might have been green or a little color. I remember when there was color on a computer, that was amazing. Now, I have my MacBook Air. That’s what, about a pound and a half? Right? I think my Game Boy weighed about as much as this computer back in the day, so evolution and progression comes with time. No one’s going to be perfect in the beginning, so failure to start with the money. You don’t need any money to have an idea, right? You don’t need any money to write that idea on a piece of paper, so you can start without any money.

Don’t have the time. We kind of talked about this in Walk With A Purpose. You can create as much time in a day as you want. You can create it. In Walk With A Purpose we discuss how you can create two days in one. Now, that didn’t make any sense to somebody that didn’t grasp my concept, but now, let me explain.

This is three hours, four hours later when I was working on the other project. I took a nap because I knew I was going to get tired, because waking up at 2:00 in the morning, riding a bike for 20 miles, doing a little extra workout, doing my morning routine would cause me to become tired, so I wanted to be proactive, so I went ahead and took an hour to two-hour long nap, woke back up, and now I’m ready to start my day. My body feels like I just woke up because I did just wake up. However, I’ve already had a complete day, if that makes sense, so if you don’t have time, be creative and create it.

The Jordan Shoes Syndrome, I like this one. This used to work, this used to happen to me a lot. Let’s see, best way to explain this. When you’re younger, you think that if you had $150 pair of shoes, you would jump higher and run faster. You think that if you have the latest model computer, you’ll be able to get the work done that you’ve been avoiding, or if you had that better phone, you’d be able to create projects that are just unimaginable right now. That’s what I call the Jordan Shoes Syndrome, because better shoes are not going to go to the gym for you and train to make you better.

The latest Apple computer, the newest technology, whatever it is, is not going to get you to sit down in your chair and work. It just won’t happen. It’s not made to do the work for you. You still have to do the work. Having that brand new iPhone that has all the gidgets and gasmos and the latest everything is not going to make you happier.

It’s not going to make you more productive. None of that happens by having the latest edition of something. Quick story, I happened to explain this to a protege of mine, because he’s complaining that if he had better equipment, then he could accomplish as much as I do, or … These are both the same stories so I’m going to add them together, or my brother, who’s in jail right now is saying that it’s easier for me to write than for him to write. The Jordan Shoes Syndrome. “Well, if I had what you had, I’d be able to do what you do,” which is never the case.

Having a new phone or a new computer is not going to change your work ethic, right? This is what I was trying to explain to my protege in Africa. “I could send you a new computer, but you having a new computer is not going to get you to sit down and do the work. Whether we have a new computer or an old computer, it doesn’t matter. If you don’t do the work …”

“The work’s never going to get done. You have to sit down and do the work.” Right? This is the part of the overthinking it. Overthinking, is a huge barrier. I remember for myself, I remember I had the same thing.

It was always, “If I had this, I would be able to do that.” That’s the biggest hoax there is. “If I had this next indicator, I won’t lose money on the stock market.” I’d get that indicator, and I’d lose money, so obviously, that indicator wasn’t the reason I lost money. “If I got this new iPhone, I’m going to start making videos all the time.”

Well, I got a new one iPhone. I didn’t make any more videos. Matter of fact, I already remember, this is eight years ago or whenever Google bought YouTube, because I was one of the first ones, or I can’t say I was one of the first ones, but when I was there making videos and everything, it was a pain in the ass to try to figure out how to make the YouTube videos, to get them from the camera onto YouTube because the iPhone wasn’t, you couldn’t just upload it from your phone to YouTube. That one came later. I remember the first one, they had a camera that uploaded directly to YouTube. That was interesting, but at first, it wasn’t easy, but I was like, “Oh, once they have it all together, I’m going to be the first one there.”

Yeah, that was what, 12 years ago, 13 years ago, and I’m just now coming back? You see, the Jordan Shoes Syndrome, they had the technology 10 years ago, but that didn’t change me making videos, right? I just didn’t do it. The Jordan Shoes Syndrome is always thinking, “If you have this next gadget, you’re going to feel better,” or, “If I have this new blouse or t-shirt or car, or whatever, people are going to like me.”

“If I get a Ferrari, then I’m going to have all the girls,” or, “I’m going to have all the guys.” Well, that’s not necessarily true, just because you have a car doesn’t mean that you’ve changed, so make sure you don’t fall into the trap of the Jordan Shoe Syndrome.

Fantasy land, watching and imitating characters in the media.

I love to explain to people sometimes. I don’t know if the Kardashians are popular now. That was years ago. I don’t know. I don’t watch media, and I would say, “Do you know they filmed all week for 30 minutes?”

I’m going to say that one more time. They filmed all week for a 30-minute TV show. How many hours are in a week? A lot more than 30 minutes, because one hour is more than 30 minutes, correct? If we’re watching and trying to emulate characters we see on TV, then we’re only emulating the best marketable, sellable parts of this person.

TV presents people in a perfect manner. Well, they present them however media wants to present you, because Britney Spears, when she cut her hair and everything, the media presented her as a lunatic. That doesn’t necessarily mean she was a lunatic. That’s just what the media, for that point in time, the media wanted to make her look like a lunatic, so every picture that they could find or that they use, they made it look like she was a lunatic. When we try to emulate characters on media, we’re not getting the whole story.

We’re only getting whatever the media wants to give us. Does that make sense? We’re not emulating a real person, we’re emulating a fictitious representation of entertainment. I’m going to say that again. When we’re emulating characters on media, we’re emulating a fictitious personification of a fictitious character, so we’re emulating a fictitious persona because we’re not getting the whole persona of a fictitious character, because this character is not real.

It is a made-up character that they’ve made to look a certain way. If you’re a good editor on entertainment and marketing, you can take I Have A Dream speech by Martin Luther King and turn it into a hateful speech, by taking words out and moving it around and having fun with it, or you can take that same speech and you can make it a violent speech by taking words out and moving it around, so if you can do that with speech, then you can do that with somebody’s life. If all I filmed was you when you were angry, how would the world perceive you as an angry person? However, that could be the furthest thing from the truth, so when we’re watching, we’re trying to emulate characters on media, we’re emulating a fictitious character. Well, a fictitious state, which is because these people don’t exist, or a persona because the persona that we’re trying to emulate is a fake persona, scripted by the media.

Does that make sense? I know it’s kind of difficult to understand, and a fake character because the persona and the character, as I just explained, you can create a persona and a character however which way you want to cut a video. When you live in this fantasy land, you’re not getting the whole story, and then that leaves you anxious, depressed, because you can never live up to a fictitious persona, of a fictitious character living above your means, which is another part of it, so when you’re trying to live up to a fictitious persona of a fictitious character, you’re going to live above what you personally can afford. There’s only 10% of the world that has a lot of money. I think this statistic in America is like maybe 50% of America doesn’t have $10,000 in their bank account, and it might be a lot more than that. It might be like 70%, so when you’re living in this overthinking fantasy land, you’re not thinking logically.

If 50% of America has less than 10 grand, then only a small, tiny percent of people are able to live this fantasy world that the media makes it seem, like if you spend money and you do this and you believe in this, then you can achieve greatness, but achieving greatness is a very difficult thing to do, which they don’t ever really show you the struggle. They show you the after-fact. I was watching YouTube yesterday, and living above your means is, also goes in thinking that you are already where you want to be. Jeff Bezos nowadays wakes up maybe around 9:00 in the morning, so this might get your mind thinking, “Oh, well, he’s the richest man in the world. I can wake up at 9:00 in the morning as well.”

However, that’s what he’s doing now. That’s not what he was doing 20 years ago, so you have to go back to 20 years ago, and then look what he was doing then. Don’t emulate the characters that you see now, or don’t live above your means and live in the world where he is now, even though you are below where he started. Be honest with yourself, stop overthinking things, and just live in your world. Stop living in a fantasy world.

Stop having the Jordan Shoes syndrome and get out there today and start whatever it is. Go grab a piece of paper, and a pen, and start today, right now. Go ahead, do it. Onto the next one.

All You Need Is 2 Dollars. We kind of went over it a little bit, but here’s the slow approach, invest correctly and it will grow.

Search for opportunity, not money. What you are searching for causes a big difference. The FYMM, Forever Young Making Money, the six strategies, and all you need is 10 minutes. The slow approach, invest correctly and it will grow. I hate to say this, that I did not adhere to this lesson for the majority of my life.

I invested in the wrong people. I invested in the wrong opportunities, and my investments never grew. Over the last few years now, I’ve invested correctly. I’m not trying to make a million dollars tomorrow. I’m taking the turtle and the hare approach, and I’m being the turtle.

I’m taking it slow. I’m thinking about every decision that I take. I don’t just make a decision impulsively anymore. At least I try not to. I’m not perfect, but I strive for better in my life, so it’s just like a vegetable when you’re planting a seed.

Now, you can … A perfect example, outside, I bought some lettuce and I bought a tomato from Lowe’s. It was still a little cold, in Charlotte at the time and I told myself, “Do not let the tomato plant be outside because it’s going to freeze to death.” The lettuce, it’s all right, it can get colder.

Well, I fell asleep with them outside and I forgot. Lo and behold, the tomato plant died. The lettuce prospered, so I did not invest correctly with the tomato plant because it died. I did however, invest correctly with the lettuce because it thrived. Just because the two things are vegetable investments, doesn’t necessarily mean you can treat each investment the same.

When you’re investing fast and you’re not taking the slow approach, you don’t notice the small nuances that occur, right? When you’re on the back of the little packet of any seeds, it shows you where this vegetable grows the best, so if you don’t take the slow approach and invest correctly in the correct seed for the temperature that you are in, then you’re not going to get the harvest that you want. You invested on the wrong seed, so you need to invest correctly and your vegetables are going to do what you wanted them to do, grow, just like your money. If you invest ill and you’re not paying attention, you don’t know what you’re doing, then your investments are going to wither away. However, if you invest and you do your research, then your investments will grow.

Search for opportunity, not money. What you are searching for causes a big difference. This is a big one. A lot of people think only of money, not opportunity.

What I mean by that is they start on a path for money, opposed to intellectual opportunity. What I mean by intellectual opportunity is something that stimulates them mentally and physically. An opportunity that rain or shine, sleet, snow, doesn’t matter, they still want to do it. Now, you could be paid a billion dollars a year, but if it’s picking up shit out of the bottom of a porta-potty, that’s not something you’re going to jump up for every morning, but that’s what happens when you search for money and not opportunity, so if you search for money, then you’re going to get exactly what you’re looking for, right? You’re going to get paid a lot of money, but it might not be worth the money, because if you’re so focused on money, you might not get your health in order, you might sacrifice your love life, you might sacrifice Well, I said your health, but if you’re searching for an opportunity, you can’t acquire money in the process, so what you’re searching for causes a big difference. I was reading the book, Rich Dad Poor Dad when I was younger, and it was either that one or it was Guide to Investing, another one by Robert Kiyosaki. I can’t remember exactly which book this was in. He was discussing that he and his wife were in the process of building their board game, and they didn’t work because they were focused on their board game, so they sacrificed income or something to finish the board game, and the board game made a millions of dollars or whatever, but the big takeaway that I got was this, do not work for money, work for experience. If you work for money, you’re work yourself to death.

If you work for experience, you’re going to enjoy every horrible moment. Maybe not at the time, but later, because working for experience, you’re working to better yourself. Working for money, you’re only working for money. You’re working for money so you can go spend it. When you’re working for experience, you’re going to gain exactly that experience.

You’re going to gain opportunities, so maybe this first job that you have isn’t the greatest job. It’s not something that you want. Maybe not getting the most amount of money, but you’re gaining a lot of experience, so then, when you move on, now you have a larger opportunity, right? Does that make sense? If there’s two jobs, one has a better opportunity, one pays you more money, which one should you go with?

The one that has a larger opportunity for you to enhance yourself. Maybe not even grow within that company. It’s okay. That’s fine, but if you learn a skill that can catapult you to a different opportunity, then always go opportunity over money. All right.

6 Strategies & All You Need Is10 Minutes, so both of those are books and classes that I’ve written and taught. The six strategies is how to break everything down, so if you remember just a minutes ago, we were discussing … Let’s just go back, the failure to start, don’t have the money, don’t have the time. Well, in the six strategies, you’ll learn how to take a huge goal and break it into the smallest, minute challenges that you can overcome and accomplish on a daily basis to accomplish the overall goal and be able to do it in a way that you don’t even notice that you’re doing it, so it’s tricking yourself how to accomplish larger goals. If you don’t have the money, and after the six strategies, if you just follow the steps in the six strategies, I guarantee you’ll figure out how to have that money or figure out how to have more time.

All you need is 10 minutes is based off of exercising. In the beginning of the year or January 5th, I started, because I was getting out of shape, and I wanted a change in my life, so I decided I’m going to start with 10 minutes on the treadmill. I could run, but it was a challenge, but through that time, I’ve stuck with 10 minutes, and then consistently grown over time, like increasing the amount of time I’m on the treadmill over time. Now, I’m riding the bike for 20 miles in the morning, and I’m running for 30 minutes in the afternoon, right? It shows you the natural progression, from 10 minutes to 30 minutes. If you need help on either one of those, those are great resources for you to go look into. Other than that, the next one we will be discussing a man can’t be a man without a plan. Until next time.

Posted on May 18, 2021June 4, 2021 by erikj462 — Leave a comment

Walk With A Purpose

Walk with a purpose always and everywhere. The origin of this lesson comes from CEDU Ascent. Not everything that came out of this program was good. However, walk with a purpose was something we should all take a part of. So when you get to CEDU, they had this thing called walk with a purpose everywhere you went, it doesn’t matter if you were going to the potty circle, it doesn’t matter if you were going to get something to eat, it didn’t matter if you were running to the showers, it didn’t matter whatever you were doing, you had to be running. Unless it was raining, weather permitting. If it was not raining outside, the reason that you wouldn’t run in the rain, because they didn’t want you to fall or hurt yourself, or if it was snowing because it would snow out there as well or hail.

So weather permitting. If it was a nice day outside, everywhere you had to go, you had to basically trot. What they were instilling in our heads was to walk with a purpose, no matter where you go, don’t just do something just to do it, right? If you’re going to do something, get from point A to point B as fast as you can, not sprint, because you’ll just get yourself tired, or wear yourself out. But walk with a purpose meant basically run. We have a purpose to get from point A to point B and we’re going to get there. All right, let’s get into the lesson.

Walking Without A Purpose. We have walking slow, we have moving slow. Those are two different things. Not having energy, being monotonous. Same thing every week, friends are underachievers and procrastination.

Walking Slow, if you’ve ever watched somebody on a Sunday stroll, right? They literally call it a Sunday stroll where they’re not walking with a purpose. They’re strolling enjoying the nature or the fresh air, the cool brisk breeze, whatever you want to call it, that’s walking slow. Well, no, that’s actually not even walking slow because they have a purpose, right? So when you’re on a Sunday stroll, that’s still walking with a purpose because you have a purpose to take in the nature, to take in serenity to do whatever it is how that benefits you. Well, we’re talking about walking slow is somebody that has a destination, they’re going somewhere, but they’re not moving very fast, right? They’re hanging out, talking to their buddies, talking on telephone, trying to walk and video chat. Just think about that. You’re trying to video chat and walk, which you’re looking in the camera and walking forward, which doesn’t make much sense. You’re not walking with a purpose, you’re walking slow, you’re all over, you can’t really walk into a straight line, you might actually walk into something, right?

You’re not walking with a purpose at all. And so that’s basically what we’re talking about right here. Walking slow, you’re not paying attention, you’re walking as if you have all the time in the world without a care in the world. It doesn’t matter that people could be waiting for you, it doesn’t matter that the clock that you’re supposed to be working, it doesn’t matter, whatever. You’re oblivious to the world, you don’t care, it’s not your concern and that’s what walking without a purpose is walking slow.

Moving Slow. Not everybody has to move as fast as I do on certain things. Even though I myself believe I move slow at times, right? I have 11 or 12 topics I needed to discuss, in total time that should take 12 hours. No way that should take more than one day. There’s 24 hours in a day, but it tends to take longer than a day because I’m not walking with a purpose, I am moving slow. Let me break that down a little bit more. Just because it’s personal, so I want you to understand as well that this is a constant battle. This isn’t like we fixed this one time and we’re changed forever. This is something that once you become aware of it, you have to become aware and then shift and change and ask the question like, “What is not working? What do I need to do to become more efficient.” Right?

So moving slow is the same as what I’m doing right now, there’s 12 hours of total time. If it takes longer than one day, that means that I’m moving slow. Why am I moving slow? Because I have a purpose, but there’s a mental block, there’s something in my way that’s causing me to move slow, right? Maybe it’s the fear of success, maybe it’s exhaustion, maybe it’s, I don’t know, enter whatever word you would like to put right there. But that’s moving slow. If you’ve ever seen somebody, they’re dragging their feet. If you’re asking someone to get an assignment done and an assignment that could probably take 10 minutes and an hour later, you go in there and you ask them, “So where’s the assignment.” And they’re like, “Oh, I haven’t started yet.” “What have you been doing?” “Oh, I’ve been preparing.” Or, “I’ve been doing this.” Or, “I’ve been giving you some type of excuse.” That’s moving slow, right? That’s not a person that has a purpose. That’s moving slow, they’re not moving very fast.

Not having energy. The law of inertia. Once in motion, somethings tends to stay in motion. Once at rest, things tend to stay at rest. Not having any energy comes from not putting forth energy, right? So, it’s like it compounds on itself. If you have no energy behind something, right? Because when we’re talking about energy right here, we’re not just talking about, I’m energized, like the Energizer Bunny just du, du, du. No, we’re talking about like energy in anything, right? Energy as a whole, right? Kinetic energy whatever, the different types of energy. So each of us have an energy about ourselves.

Think of the snowball effect, right at the beginning, the snowball effect, I’m explaining what that is first before like, “Well, what’s that Erik? I don’t understand.” All right. So if you had a top of a hill and you have a small snowball, right? A little ball of snow and you push it down the hill, then eventually it’s going to get bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger, right? Because while it’s rolling, it’s collecting more snow. And while it’s rolling, it’s compacting and growing and compacting and growing, right?

So it’s the same thing as not having any energy. So if you can get the snowball to move, because in the beginning, before it has any energy, it’s hard to get anything started, right? So it makes sense why if before you have the purpose, you don’t have the energy. But once you start moving, there comes a point where the energy starts to grow, and then something that seemed difficult yesterday is now easy, right?

And it’s not about you learning a new skill well, it is about learning a new skill, but it’s this muscle memory in your brain. Something was uncomfortable. So you do it over and over and over and over and over then the energy behind it, it becomes faster and easier. So when I’m going through anything, we even do these classes right here. The first two or three of them are going to take forever. I don’t have energy behind it. I’m not walking with a purpose. Yes, do I have a purpose, but I’m not walking with a purpose. Now, once my mind understands the process, right? It was like, okay, in the beginning, it’s fumbling, this is new, I don’t know what to do, what are the steps? Because there’s a lot of steps in the beginning. I don’t know. Your brain’s confused, right? So it’s difficult to pinpoint where you’re going to put or focus the energy that you need, right?

And that’s why, it’s not just about energy, I ate some food and I have energy. It’s a much larger picture when I’m discussing energy, right? But once I get that snowball big and starts rolling on its own. Well then the energy that I have about myself towards this project is going to 10X itself. I’m going to have more energy. And then when I finish another one, I’m going to have even more energy and I’ll be more pumped up, right? It’s the same with running, right? Have you ever got that second wind? That’s because your mind now understands that I need to put energy towards this, right?

Being monotonous; same thing every week. If you were to eat the same breakfast, the same lunch, the same dinner, that’s not living. That’s a robot, right? It’s literally a robot, go in bed at the same time, watching the same TV. Everything is the same as it was last week. That’s not living, you don’t have a purpose. It’s monotonous, it’s going to destroy you. It’s not like it might destroy you. It’s going to destroy. It’s going to break you down little by little, and it’s going to happen at such a small speed that you’re not going to notice it. And that’s what’s scary about this, about monotonous schedules. Is you don’t notice, right? Until you do, and by the time you do notice, it’s like what happened? Right? And that happens with being in a monotonous routine. It’s just over and over and over and over, you don’t notice, right?

And part of it’s because it’s so small, like gaining weight. If you take a picture from one year before, and then one year later, you’re like, “Whoa, what happened?” But if every day you look in the mirror, you will not notice a difference. And it’s because you’re seeing the difference little by little, every single day, you’re not looking at it one month, by month, by month. You’re looking at it every single day, so your body’s shifting and adjusting in such a small manner every day you don’t notice. And that’s the same thing with having the same schedule, doing the same thing, having the same friends, reading the same type of books, watching the same YouTube, listening to the same music. You’re programming yourself to be the same, right? Inspiration comes from seeing something outside of what you usually see, right?

So if you’re in a monotonous schedule, and you don’t do anything different throughout the entire day, throughout the entire week, throughout the entire year, everything is programmed just like a robot, you’re never going to have inspiration because there’s nothing around you. There’s no stimulus to stimulate, any new receptors in your brain, because you’re not seeing anything different. It’s the same tree over here, it’s the same stoplight over here, it’s the same McDonald’s on the way to work, it’s the same Starbucks coffee. It’s the same over and over and over, at the beginning of it, you might have a huge purpose. You might be like, this is the best job I’ve ever had. This is the best thing that’s going to change my entire life. But by the end of it, you’re going to grow old and gray and tired of doing the same thing over and over. You have to stimulate yourself, you have to stimulate your brain.

Friends, remember we’re talking about walking without a purpose. Friends, underachievers, you don’t need them. I understand they might’ve been in your life since you were three, might be your best friend. Best everything, doesn’t matter. Been through it for you, been loyal, all this other kind of stuff. But when you think about it, how loyal is somebody, if they allow you to stay the same? That’s not a loyal friend, a loyal friend is somebody who yells and screams at you and wants you to do better, right? You might be like, “What do you mean, man?”

When you’re a little kid, when you’re growing up, your parents hopefully, right? I don’t know. I lost mine when I was 10, 11. But what I do remember of parents and the brief little years that I do remember of having parents, they were your guiding stone, your guiding stick rather. So if you went off course they yell at you, or discipline you in a manner, right? Now, when you get older, no I’m not saying all parents are like this, now this is the picturesque family. I don’t know. I didn’t grow up with a family. So I don’t know. But in my mind, I’m envisioning that this is the concept of parents and how it’s supposed to be, right?

Your parents guide you and protect you. And then when you become an adult, you guide yourself and protect yourself off of what your parents, consequences, or gave you consequences for, or disciplined you for, or whatever. So that you wouldn’t run into the brick wall when you get older. Now, when we look at our parents again, this is a picturesque image. We don’t look at our parents in a negative light. We look at them and we were like, “Well, thank you.” Right? But with friends, we want our friends to agree with us, which doesn’t make any sense because if you’re not doing, okay. So you have all the potential in the world to take over the world and whatever subject you like, right?

If it’s computers, you could be the best programmer. If it’s art, you could be the best artists. If it’s music, you’re the best pianist. If it’s sports, you’re the best water polo player, or basketball player, football player, soccer player. Doesn’t matter if you’re the best mathematician, you get the point, right? If you have the potential to be that, but your friend, his max potential is McDonald’s. But you guys known each other since you were two, that’s your best friend, but how much of a friend is he really if he allows you to live his life, but does not force you to live the life that you’re supposed to have? Remember you have the potential to be the greatest at whatever it is that you want to be. Your friend, greatest person in the world. Their potential is McDonald’s, it does not go any higher than McDonald’s.

You cannot argue with me that being around that friend is detrimental to your success, period. And if it’s a true friend, they’re going to tell you the truth, they’re going to tell you to get away. best scene from a movie, I just watched it yesterday. I watched the scene on YouTube. The scene comes from Good Will Hunting. It’s when Matt Damon and Ben Affleck are talking, they’re drinking a beer after work. And Matt Damon, he’s the genius he’s talking about, when we’re 50, we’re going to have kids together, live next door, be neighbors, have kids and take our kids to the ballpark, Fenway. And Ben Affleck, his friend. He’s like, “If in 20 years you are still doing this, I’m going to kill you.” And he says, “This isn’t a joke. I’m going to kill you.”

Now, Matt Damon, he looks at him, looks at him kind of crazy. Like, “What do you mean? Why would you do that?” And then Ben Affleck answers and said, “You have what none of us have. You have the ability to be the best.” I am not going to explain word by word, but the moral of the story is that he was a friend. He told his friend, he told his best friend. He said the best time of my day is for the brief 10 seconds when I walk from my car to your house. And I pray to God that you’re not there, not a goodbye nothing, just gone. That’s what I pray for every day. Now that is a friend because he’s willing to sacrifice what he wants for himself, for the betterment of someone he loves. Now, when you look at your friends, if you cannot say the same, get rid of them, you don’t need them.

Procrastination. Procrastination gets us all. I do not care who you are, how much you’ve achieved in life, how many YouTube videos you tell everybody how you are on the ball and you work for 28 straight hours every day without missing a beat, and you don’t procrastinate on anything. I don’t believe it, not one word of it, not at all. Everybody procrastinates, right? But it depends on how you procrastinate. I’m going to say that again. Every single person procrastinates, but it depends on how they procrastinate.

Now me, when I procrastinate, I’m doing a different project, right? So yesterday when I was procrastinating, I didn’t really want to create this chapter. I was like, “I don’t want to do this.” So I decided to work on a different project. So I was still moving forward, even though I was procrastinating. But most of the time people don’t move forward when they procrastinate, they just procrastinate and they want to go play a video game, go do something that does not move them forward, they just do it just because, why not?

That’s not going to get you where you want to be. That’s walking without a purpose. I’ve structured my life. I’ve structured things to where I would like to walk with a purpose. Now we’re going to go over what walking with the purpose looks like now, but just keep that in mind when you’re procrastinating, we all procrastinate, just some people have figured when they procrastinate, they work on other projects. And some people, when they procrastinate, they do nothing. Very different, but both people are procrastinating.

All right. Now let’s move forward to walking with a purpose.

Walking With The Purpose is to have a plan of action for everything being an early riser, having two work days in one focus, horse blinders on and manage time.

Have a plan of action for everything, Again, walking with a purpose. So if you’re going to go to the bathroom. What is your plan? Usually your body’s telling you got to go. You don’t just go in there, look at the toilet and be like, “What am I supposed to do with this?” You have a plan of action. Your body said, “I got to go to the bathroom and I’m going to go.” So boom, plan of action. And for the most of us at the end of it we succeed. I bring that up because that’s not how it was when we first started.

Look at a baby, a baby does not understand that plan of action. So let’s start with something we do on a daily basis each and every one of us go to the bathroom every single day. But the simple fact of us going to the bathroom how simple it is, was not how it started. We had to have a plan and we had to repeat that plan over and over and over, before it got ingrained into our minds and be like, “Okay, that’s our plan of action.” So when you’re doing anything, any kind of project that you want, walk with a purpose by having a plan of action. Now, it doesn’t necessarily go that way, how you envisioned your plan, it never goes to the T. At least maybe it doesn’t for me. Maybe I need to plan better. However, having a plan is like a skeleton, a backbone. It’s a map, it’s your treasure map.

Imagine some pirates looking for treasure. If they have no map, they’re just sailing around aimlessly. Looking for booty. But if they have a plan of action, they have a map, they have something to follow. Now on that map, it might not tell them that on this particular day, they’re going to have a hell of a storm. It doesn’t say that on the map. So they couldn’t plan for that one for it was going to happen that day. But they were prepared that there was going to be hiccups throughout the road. So they understood that, it might storm on us. So let’s go ahead and plan for that let’s plan that it might storm, let’s plan that we might not have any food, let’s plan that we might not have any water, let’s plan to go get our gold, our booty, whatever.

So their map was their bigger plan, that’s where they’re headed. But it says have a plan of action for everything. So just having the map and that’s your major plan, that’s your plan of action. But you got to plan for this, you got to plan for that, you got to think of this, you got to think of that, if you don’t think of this stuff, trust me, it’s going to happen to you in the worst time possible. Bad things never happen at a good time. Bad things always happen at a bad time.

Being an early riser. That’s just mandatory until you get to where you’re going, the early bird catches the worm. That is, I don’t care what anyone wants to argue about. And again, once you are where you want to be, do whatever you want, but there’s no way you’re going to succeed in anything in life, if you wake up after everybody, right? It’s just not going to happen. You can’t wake up after everybody expect that you’re going to get things done faster and more efficient and get more done than people that’s already been working for three or four hours, right? This isn’t possible. It is 6:22 in the morning right now. I’ve already rode the bike for an hour, rode 20 miles, did my juicing, wasted time. I’ve wasted about 30 minutes this morning, just wasted time. Went to the bathroom and went to the store got some coffee. And now I’m making this video, it’s 6:23.

If you wake up at eight, you’re never going to accomplish in a day what I accomplish, if you wake up at six, it’s only 6:23, and I have been working on this chapter for 30 minutes. So if you’d woke up at six, I’m already in the middle of something. So beginning an early riser is almost the key to being, or walking with a purpose. If you do not wake up early, there is no way you can compete against somebody who does. I know you’re going to be like am a night owl. Why? Nothing’s open, everything’s closed the day’s over. There’s no point and no benefit to being a late owl and staying up all night, opposed to being an early riser. Being an early riser, you’re waking up when a night owls on their last leg about the fall asleep.

You’re not going to succeed, you’re not going to beat me. If you’re trying to work, you’ve been up all day trying to work at one o’clock in the morning and I’m waking up at one o’clock in the morning. Who do you think is going to be more efficient? Me or you? I would have to argue, I’m going to be much more productful, or efficient and produce a hell of a lot more with a fresh brain, opposed to you who’s on your last leg, tired and groggy barely keeping your opening eyes open falling asleep. You should have gone to bed hours ago and you could be waking up right now, fresh and ready to go. So be an early riser.

Having two work days in one. I know that this doesn’t sound like, wait, how? I just explained it a little bit. I’ve already done more in my work day at 6:23 and now it’s 6:25 in the morning than most people will do in a day, right? Rode my bike, working right now. I woke up a little late, I was on the bike at about two. So I’ve been up for about four and a half hours. Did my juicing, made some videos, worked a little bit more. Now I’m doing this, even wasted a little bit of time. So I had a whole work day. By the time I’m done with this chapter, it’ll be a work day. So how can you have two of those in one day?

Well, after I write this chapter and maybe get something to eat I can take a nap, Just to recharge. And then anything that I accomplish when I rewake up, is a whole nother day. So when I go running this afternoon and I brainstorm, which is what I do in my afternoon day, is a completely different day, in my mind. you guys have 365 days, I have double that. Why? Because I wake up so early in the morning and then I take a nap. And then I wake back up, I wake back up as if it’s a brand new day.

I’m going to go over that one more time. Just in case you didn’t catch what I said. If you need to sleep eight hours in a day, why do you have to sleep eight hours in a row? What if you just slept four hours and then slept another four hours later on. You’re still sleeping eight hours in a day, you’re just doing it at a different time. You’re creating two days. Of course, maybe you need to sleep 20 hours. I don’t know, but for me, if I need to sleep eight hours, I’d rather just break it up. The second nap, after I get my good sleep before I wake up around one or two, that second one, it’s only about an hour to two hours because I don’t want to be too groggy. You don’t want to go into a deep, deep sleep. You just want to recharge. A deep sleep is really difficult to get up. But if you just recharge yourself, it’s literally like you were sleeping for a while and it’s a brand new day. How do you have two working days in one, wake up early.

Focused horse blinders on. The horse blinders. So with your horse blinders, what that means, if you’ve ever seen a horse running, they have these little blinders, so they can’t see anything. They say it’s so the horse doesn’t get scared, I’m not really sure I’m not a horse. Maybe when I’m Dr. Doolittle, I’ll talk to a horse and he’ll tell me what they really do for them. But as far as what they advertise to keep the horse focused on the race, so it doesn’t get distracted by the horse beside it.

You need to do that. If you’re going to walk with a purpose, you have to have your blinders on. Where you cannot see anything to your right, and you can’t see anything to your left. You have to be so hyper-focused on your project there are no distractions. You can’t just pick up your phone and in the middle of what you’re doing. It’s not going to work. Every time you look at the phone, every time you pick up your phone, you’re distracting yourself.

Nothing’s going to change, in the 30 minutes or one hour that you’re focused to do what you need to do, nothing’s going to change drastically. So keep those horse blinders on, stay focused. Don’t allow yourself to be distracted. What I do, I’ll turn my phone off, if I have a big project. This is not a big project, this is a medium sized project. So my time isn’t of the essence, so it’s not as difficult. But when I’m in a difficult project that I know is going to take a couple of weeks, I’ll cut everything off. I will literally shut everybody out.

And at first they didn’t quite get it, but now they are starting to understand, “He’s not taking anything personal, he’s working”. And then when I’m done working, I have a project to show, but that’s the only way I can do it. I cannot have distractions, I cannot have other people’s emotions affect my own. I do not care if you’re having a bad day, do not tell me because I don’t want your griping session to affect my day.

My day needs to focus on what I’m doing. And every time that I pick up the telephone, or every time I hear what your problem is, or every time I hear little Susie or a little Jimmy or whatever it is, or the dog bark or whatever, I am breaking my focus. And I’m opening up a horse blinder, and I’m allowing my mental focus to be diverted away from where it needs to be. And that’s not fair to myself, and that’s not fair to my family or really you guys, whatever. You have to stay hyper-focused, and the only way you can do that is by keeping the horse blinders on.

Managing time. One of the most important things, but also one of the most difficult things. How are you going to have two working days? How are you going to have a plan of action for everything? How are you going to become an early riser? All this has to do with basically one thing and it’s time. What are you doing to manage your time efficiently? There’s 24 hours in a day. I just explained to you how you could have two working days so I can accomplish twice as much as other people, something that will take a year for an overachiever to do. I will do in a half a year because I’m overachieving in one day, and then I’m having another day in that same day, when your overachievers only having one day, I’m having two.

How is this possible? Because I manage my time. Now people might look at it. Well, you don’t have any fun. Well, I’m enjoying myself I like what I’m doing. So how am I not having any fun if I’m enjoying myself? With managing your time, it’s imperative that you manage it correctly and do something that you love. Because if you need a vacation in your life, you’re obviously not doing something that you love. You can ask some friends. I was on vacation at the Hilton, beautiful on the beach. I was having a panic attack. I was the most miserable, no, I didn’t like it. Don’t get me wrong I enjoy, no, I really don’t. I think vacations are boring and they drive me out of my mind.

I don’t need a vacation. My life is a vacation. I’m doing exactly what I want to do with myself. So why do I need to go somewhere and sit and do absolutely nothing. That I cannot do, that is torture to do nothing. You want me to lay here? It’s hot. Let’s do something. Can’t do it. Vacations are boring to me. When a vacation becomes boring to you, then you know you’re doing the right thing. You’re doing what God, or whatever Allah, or Buddha, or Krishna or, Jah, or Erik Johnson. Whatever you’re praying to your people, your higher power for, if you need a vacation, you are doing the wrong thing.

If you are on a vacation and you are like, “This is miserable. Let me just get back to what I was doing.” Then you’re doing the right thing. Whatever it is in your life is your vacation. So make sure you find whatever you’re doing, because walking with a purpose, having that purpose. Is your thing. And that’s the golden covenant or whatever you want to call it the relic that the Catholics are trying to hide, or they always lose and always on a mission to find.

It’s that, that’s your purpose, whatever your purpose is, you have to guard it and you have to really live by it. Because when you live with a purpose and you have a purpose and every day, you have a plan of action to work on that purpose. Every day, you’re waking up early. Why? Because you are so excited to get to that purpose. You’re having two work days because you know that you need two days so that you can accomplish twice as much because you understand time. You’re so focused that you have the horse blinders on that nothing is going to divert you from what it is that you’re trying to accomplish your purpose, right? Once you find that purpose, then you’ll be able to manage your time. See you in the next chapter.

Category: 12 Things I Learned In Hell

Either You Do Or You Don’t

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I Hate People – People Are STUUPID

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Picking Your Own Shit

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Use Em, Abuse Em & Lose Em: A Zero Sum Game

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Does It Hurt Yet

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A Man Can’t Be A Man Without A Plan

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Walk With A Purpose

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