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.
Table Of Contents
- Live In The Here And Now
- Walk With A Purpose
- All You Need Is 2 Dollars
- A Man Can’t Be A Man Without A Plan
- Does It Hurt Yet
- Be Careful When You Are Using Someone That Person Could Be Using You
- Use Em, Abuse Em & Lose Em: A Zero Sum Game
- Picking your own shit
- I hate people – people are stuupid
- I stay ready It keeps me from having to get ready
- Be Selfish
- Either You Do Or You Don’t