Physiognomy and why you look like what you are

I remember looking up the word physiognomy a long time ago. I think I read it in a book somewhere, but the definition was, for me, one of those ‘oh thank god someone noticed this too’ type deals where it was just so relieving to have a word put to a thought I’d been having for such a long time.

You ever meet someone that everyone seems to love and when your friends ask you about them you’re like ‘hmm, yeah they’re alright.’ Secretly you’re harboring the thought that they’re not everything they’re appearing to be, the performance lines up but there’s something about them that’s off and you can’t believe that no one else sees it the way you do.

What on earth is that? A lot of us throw the word ‘vibes’ out. Their vibe is just ‘off.’ But what is a vibe, really? You definitely have a feeling in you that something’s not right, it might manifest as a kind of awkward tension, an anxiety, it becomes harder for you to stay in an open frame, you find yourself reverting to thought, you get in your head.

But what is this feeling if not an alert from the deep, a subconscious interpretation of data that’s being brought to your attention by this uncomfortable energy, the only way the depths of your nervous system knows how.

You could have noticed the darting eyes, a smile with no crinkle in the corners of the eyelids, they might be saying all the right things but they’re just not projecting it with sincerity, it sounds forced, or rehearsed, robotic.

I would struggle with this all my life. Particularly in high school, I remembered feeling bad that I didn’t like certain people. Something was just not right about them and I couldn’t put the words to it. When asked to explain myself I would reach for reasons why I didn’t jive with their personality and just ended up feeling stupid when my words were inadequate.

I didn’t socialize a whole lot in high school, at least not outside of it. Something was happening to me. I remember when I first quit soccer and stopped swimming at the end of grade six. To this day I can’t even really recall why I let go of all my hobbies and the friends associated with them. I had some tough experiences with sport, and even though I was very good, I didn’t have the drive or the wherewithal to pursue them with the same energy and enjoyment I had when I was younger.

When I think back to that time, it feels strange. There was a time when I couldn’t remember existing before football. I played it in school first, and when I was finally enrolled to play with a club I could hardly contain my excitement. It’s all I really wanted to do. But I let it go.

I let a lot of things go, and I found that I had fallen out of practice. The only socialization was that which I got at school, and I really didn’t like school. Despised might not be strong enough a word. I went to one of those schools where you do some bullshit aptitude test to get in and all your cohort is a bunch of nerds and dweebs who want to be doctors and engineers and lawyers. I don’t have anything against those professions, by the way, but I tend to find the masses that pursue them are some of the most unpleasant people to be around.

Highly competitive, rather vapid, constantly trying to keep up with who was doing what and when. I didn’t experience the conversations of the intelligentsia to be any more inspiring or interesting than the ones I had with my dumbass mates that threw blackboard dusters across the room. Intelligence was not a prerequisite for wisdom.

It was not my crowd at all, and I found myself an outsider, even when I had a big friends group, even if I was popular with girls, something about the whole thing just didn’t sit right with me. Something was off.

When I got out of school, into the work force and started jiujitsu, things began to change. You’re exposed to a lot of new people on the job and in the gym, and the kind of jobs I’ve done really brought you a mixed bag. You had single mothers, old fathers, high school drop outs, university students, drug dealers, bikies, first generation immigrants, people with teeth, people without them. You really ran the whole gambit.

If I’m being honest, I didn’t really get along with all of these people either. I hadn’t self actualized yet. I hadn’t found my charm and easy confidence, I was too bothered by what other people thought of me, too stifled by the needs of the people around me. So mostly I just watched. If something bad happened, I thought about it constantly. If something good happened, I thought about it constantly.

I picked shit apart all day, I’d have an interaction, I’d meet someone new, I’d do something stupid, and I’d ruminate on it. The internet didn’t help. At that time the internet was a haven for disenfranchised youth. I’d get into all sorts of chats and arguments with all sorts of people and well, we all know what the internet is like. Everyone’s an asshole on here and before you know it you’re one as well.

As for jiujitsu, if you train then you already know what I’m about to say. You can have the guy that sold you an ounce going to war with an officer of the law in those dinghy little sweat lodges. Lawyers in Porsche’s getting pieced up by teenagers who rolled up on e-scooters. When I first started training the sport was not the fashion statement it is now, it attracted oddballs of all kinds. It still does. There’s a touch of the ‘tism in everyone who gets on the mats and remains there, but now it’s a lot more socially acceptable. You can say that you train jiujitsu and people will generally know what you’re talking about. When I started, they just thought you did some obscure, particularly dorky form of karate.

And boy, oh, boy, did I learn about people. Something funny happens after a while. It creates a bit of conflict inside of you. In some respects, you know you shouldn’t judge a book by it’s cover, but you still do. And you’re probably mostly right. People tend to be what they look like.

Working at reception in a gym, I can tell exactly who is going to have late payments, who is just there to waste my time, who is going to talk my ear off, who is most likely to steal the equipment, who is going to be deterred by the prices, who isn’t going to show up for the second day of their trial. I even know which martial art they’ll join. I’ll know who is here for boxing, who is here for kickboxing, hell, right away I know who’s interested in jiujitsu.

But if you asked me why, I’d hardly be able to tell you. It became a kind of thing at my job. I would make a comment about somebody, my colleagues would act shocked or disagree with me, then before they knew it something would happen to confirm my initial assertions. They started listening to me after a while.

But the creepy thing is when you take that idea that people look like what they are and apply it to yourself. What the hell do people think when they look at me? Are all my tendencies, all my bad habits and character flaws on full display for a discerning eye? The answer is, yes they are.

And you know what, sometimes people are wrong. Sometimes we can associate traits with another person based on a past experience and we miss the mark. They were the exception, or we made the call with limited data. It really sucks, but there’s nothing you can do about it. We have to make these assumptions. Safety is important, and we only have so much time. You’re parsing and filtering the majority of your environment at all times. It only makes sense to extend that to the people around you.

This is when your circle starts to get smaller. Once you start noticing these traits in people, you quickly realize who you’re willing to associate with and who you’re just not convinced to roll the dice on. I’m not saying you close up and allow no room for change or serendipity, but you certainly get so much more ruthless with your time and what you will allow.

You might be one of those people who doesn’t see the world this way. You’re in shock, how could anyone be like this? Each chance encounter is an opportunity to meet someone new, to see things in a new light! But you’d be wrong.

You can’t tell me you haven’t looked at a person before and known EXACTLY what their political beliefs will be, what causes they support and what they think about various topics. In today’s climate as ideologies rip through the digital landscape with the virulence of the black plague, it has become easier than ever to spot such archetypes.

But now’s the tricky part. How do you leave enough room in there for them to surprise you? Well, that’s the art of it. As your sensitivity increases, as your skills of observation and discernment sharpen, thus must your social abilities sharpen with them. You need to learn when you can let someone in a little bit, when you must pull back and assert your boundaries, you need to learn how to approach topics with lightness and style, when the person is ready to hear you and when they’re not.

But perhaps most beautifully, you can see the positive change in someone when they make the inner transformation. I knew this lady who was in a dying relationship. I remember chatting to her at an event once and thinking how awful she looked (I know). She was young but she looked pallid, unhealthy, her face was lined, I found it slightly uncomfortable to be around her.

Soon after she broke up with her partner and started dating one of my friends. The change was almost instant. Her skin became more taut, color flushed back into her cheeks, the lines were gone and a kind of soft glow started to emanate from her face. She was happy now, I realized. A burden had lifted from her, she felt free. And it showed.

So I wonder. Do people see it in me when I’m down? Do they see the sag in my skin, the lack of light in my eyes, the dullness of my hair? Does my posture slump, my shoulders roll forward, is my inner state written in the cells of my body? How would I see me in those moments, were I seeing from the viewpoint of another? Would I glean some glimpse of the contents of my heart, based purely on what encased it?

So then too, must the inner light shine when the murky window is scrubbed by good food, good actions, good habits, good thoughts. Just as the body changes through diet and exercise, so too does it change through good choices and good circumstances. If I take the time to be happy, to be grateful and make inspired effort, thus will everything else change.

What would your physiognomy say about you, right now?



I write more on substack: https://substack.com/@nathan21?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=tueto

I think I get habits now

I wish there was a rhyme or reason to my life, seriously I do. It would be so nice to neatly assemble a chronological order of when I did what and how it turned out, showing a nice little progression as I slowly become more and more capable and more and more successful.

I listen to a lot of podcasts and read a lot of history, and these peoples lives really do seem to follow a nice trajectory. I look at their story, appearing to me as some kind of issekai progression fantasy and then turn the lens back on my own and I’m like that’s a nice escalation of events you got there mate WHY DOESN’T MINE LOOK LIKE THAT?

I’m well aware of the stupidity of comparison, but you can’t help but ask these questions, can you? Guy starts business, it fails, starts new business, it fails a bit better, starts another business, gets some success, acquires a new business, big success, does this, does that, up and up the totem pole, before you know it he’s on Modern Wisdom. You know what I mean? Beset by failures and setbacks sure, but there’s a nice kind of ascension taking place.

I look at my own life and I’m like, started jiujitsu, got pretty good, quit for a bit, started writing and learning languages. Went hard as fuck, did more work than he ever thought possible. Stopped for a bit, got a boring ass job, took a lot of acid, went back to jiu jitsu, started coaching, built a gym, sold his business, started writing again.

There’s no satisfying timeline. Like, half the parts are disjointed and disconnected from one another! Getting hyper fixated on Valheim and then starting a substack just doesn’t have the same ring to it, y’know?

That said, it’s almost certainly because I know ALL the ins and outs of my story. Every single, unpleasant, revealing detail. I’m there for all of it. The trials, the tribulations, the stubbed toes, the gastro. The entire wavelength of my mortality is on full display, my eyes only.

It’s just, it would be cool to hit the major story beats, y’know? A few more boss fights, a steady escalation of attributes leading to some major gear upgrades, maybe find the medallion key that leads me to the end game area. But nah, it’s just like, backtracking to the starting area, getting lost in a cave, doing a side quest I didn’t find on my first time through the zone.

But then, that’s life, right? You ever visit a place you grew up in and think how much it’s changed, and wonder if you’ve changed as much as the place has? It’s almost certain you have, but for some reason it always just feels like ‘you’ in there, right? It’s always just me.

But within the absurd rise and fall of my life, I’ve come to learn a few things about myself. I would go through phases of turning my nose up at productivity, imagining how truly uninteresting one would be if their entire game was just chasing the bigger prizes, the higher numbers, the world championships, the more expensive contracts. But some part of me realized I think it’s kinda cool. Then those parts of me would draw battle lines and go to war and at any one time one of those parts would be in the driver seat before getting roughed up, booted out the side door and replaced by one of the other warring factions in my head.

I started to realize I needed to harmonize. I needed to let each of them have a say at the table, try and come to a compromise where they each get something while agreeing on what they’re willing to trade off. Without congruence there can be no sustained effort.

So I want to get shit done, but I also like kicking back and staring at the clouds. If one or the other gets ignored, the inevitable collapse is pending.

I started to take stock of my day. What if I could head in a direction that encapsulated the full spectrum of my character, while also pruning back enough that I wasn’t just spinning my wheels trying to go in all directions at once?

Before you know it, you’re looking at your habitual patterns. As a general rule I am VERY low in conscientiousness and industriousness, so absurdly low that it’s amazing that I’ve even made it this far. But I’m also able to work really hard. So what gives? Why can I sometimes do it and then other times I’m utterly convinced it’s a bad idea?

And that kinda leads back to the idea of congruence. Being interested in many things causes you to chase many things, or, at the very least, start to think the new idea is more pretty and charming than the idea you come home to and get into bed with each night. I know you know what I mean.

So, if I know I’m going to find reasons not to do something, what if I make it so easy for myself to do things that it would be possible to still do it DESPITE every fiber of my being telling me that is is no longer a good thing to do and is, in fact, a complete and utter waste of my time?

This is an utterly game changing tactic. If you were to view yourself as an opponent that you must outmanoeuvre, why would you strike where you are strong? Why wouldn’t you, knowing your enemy, fall back when you know he will chase, press forward when you know he will fold, and circle around to where you know he has weak points in his defences?

I am not the kind of guy who can grab myself by the scruff of the neck and force my nose to the grindstone. At least, not all the time. So how can I make sure I do what I gotta do when I don’t want to do it?

I make it easy.

This is not groundbreaking stuff, and yet when you’re truly able to grasp it, you find that you can build god-tier kill streaks on things that you have been putting off for YEARS.

What are some examples? Believe it or not, I love jiujitsu, but I do not want to train every day. I used to force myself in and train when I didn’t want to and this has lead to multiple illnesses, injuries and general feelings of burnout. I wouldn’t wish this on anybody. So, if I don’t want to train, I just walk in through the door. I confine myself to only doing the simplest parts of the activity. Not feeling it today? I’m just going to practice some technique.

But forget jiujitsu. What about running. Not feeling it today? 5 minutes on the treadmill, that’s it. Yup. 5 minutes. No more. Don’t care what you think, don’t care what you say. I do that 5 minutes every day for a week and that’s over an hour of running that would not have been done otherwise.

And the craziest part about it is, you often times end up doing more. But when you first start out, it’s actually quite important that you DON’T do more. You just do the prescribed, ordained set of objectives you laid out for yourself and you stop right there.

Now, do that everyday. Before you know it, your body is starting to get used to the thing you are doing, it has even started identifying with it and, most mysteriously, it is beginning to enjoy it.

Why? Because you are noticing small improvements on the thing. You might not notice the improvements for a week, or a month, 6 weeks maybe. But it doesn’t even matter because you make it so easy for yourself to do that you don’t really feel put out by not having verifiable success. You just go out and get it done and then that’s it. And you start to feel good, and believe it or not, you are making improvements.

People have tried to sell you on the idea that you always need to go that extra mile. There’s a time and place for that, but going the extra mile for me often leads to injury. Going the extra mile for me often leads to a fried CNS. It’s better that you build up slow.

How can powerlifters in the lighter weight classes lift so much weight without putting on a lot of muscle? They’re training their nervous system. Not their muscles. The muscles are such a small part of the equation of lifting big weights. If you want to train your muscles directly, you need to develop a relationship with the muscle throughout the movement, then target it with a set of reps that cause it to break down, and then you eat the necessary macronutrients that can repair it for the next work out.

But I can actually lift MORE weight over time if I do LESS reps and rest MORE in between my sets. Why? Because I’m not trying to go that extra mile. I’m trying to maintain consistency. I’m trying to prolong and sustain my practice without getting hurt, overtrained, or discouraged.

If I don’t want to go the gym, what do I do? I make it easy. I drop the weight by HALF. I do less weight, and just focus on the movements. I’ll drop the sets. Maybe I’ll even shitcan an entire muscle group and just work one thing.

This is how I keep the ball rolling without ever having to beat myself up for not going to the gym. I went to the gym. I didn’t put up all-time numbers. I’m probably not going to remember this session fondly when I am a decrepit old man on the porch, but you best believe that day I went into the gym and I did what I needed to do to keep the streak alive.

We are creatures of momentum. I’ve heard it said that every action you take is a vote for who you are. If I go into the gym, even if I don’t kill every workout, I’m the kind of guy that goes to the gym.

You might say, ‘you’re also the kind of guy that goes into the gym but doesn’t kill every workout.’ But that just depends on your goals. And people have this shit all misconstrued. You’re addicted to montages and influencer content and motivational videos.

This game isn’t about going balls to the wall every moment of every day. This game is about staying in the game. You gotta keep going. You gotta stick with it. I’ve been training BJJ for 15 years now. Do you know how many people I’ve seen come and go? Do you know how many thousands of people have walked through the doors only to never be seen again?

Or what about how many people have proclaimed to me they’re gonna do this, do that, going to win this, win that, go hard for a few weeks to a month and then burn out, get injured and disappear? I’m still here.

The winner is the one who stays alive. It is not sexy, it is not cool, but it is the reality. You’re stacking daily actions over months and years. This is a game of decades. That young undefeated world champion? He has been in the gym since he was 3 years old. You think those work outs his social media team posts are what he does everyday? You don’t see the doubts, the failures, the injuries, the bad sessions, the times he gets tapped by men he is far superior to, the time he trips over, messes up a move.

There was this kid I trained with once or twice, who’s a high level competitor now, and I remember submitting him from back control with a fairly straight forward attack series. He grabbed coach right after the round ended and asked him exactly what to do in that situation. If he hadn’t come in that day, he wouldn’t have made that tiny little adjustment to his game.

This is the risk you run when you don’t show up, even if it’s just to do the bare minimum. You know yourself. Be honest with yourself. If you show up and you think today is the day to maximise your output, then send it. Let it rip and go all the way. But if it’s a day that you’re just not sure if you even want to do this anymore, then just show up.

With this frame of mind, why would you ever quit? You have just made it too damn easy for yourself.

But hey, all of this doesn’t mean a thing if I don’t continually practice what I preach and continue to develop my skillsets around the ideas I present here. But the funny thing is, I didn’t want to write this post today. I just know I have to sit down and open the draft. That’s it. No expectations. Before you know it the words are flowing like champagne.

And that’s what I learned. The trials, the failures, like Frodo and Sam stumbling around the rocks before loudly proclaiming that they’re lost, what I’ve learned is that you just have to make the conditions right for you to do something. For me, that’s making it easy.

I post more on my subtack: https://nathan21.substack.com/

Oh Lord help me I’m ranting again

I’m not a fan of habits. At least, I’m not a fan of starting habits you don’t really want to keep. I think this is why by and large I don’t find super successful people too interesting. I sometimes feel like you can pick one, be successful, or be interesting. It doesn’t really surprise me why people choose the former.

I’ve been keeping a meditation practice. (Here we fucking go, they’re talking about meditation again). I’m a week in. The goal is not to focusmaxx or achieve things or some trivial nonsense like that. It’s mostly enlightenment. That and I would like to develop a sense of equanimity when dealing with other people.

But I won’t drop this habit. I’m sure of it. I genuinely enjoy meditating. It’s nice. The way I keep ‘habits’ like this is by making it super easy for myself. I don’t commit to any contrived length of time. If I only want to meditate for five minutes I’ll do it for five minutes. I’m not going to get mad at myself. It’s just not in my nature.

Because I make shit easy for myself I tend to get ahead of 99% of people on most things that are important to me. You might like to sit for hours at a time when you meditate. How come I’m still doing it though, yet you quit? Hmm? HEHEHEHEee

With that said, the goal is to develop a bit of willpower. Even easy things can be hard sometimes. That’s modern life. You have all the resources but none of the dopamine. You have so many things that are even easier than easy, so naturally you will opt for the easiest. But that’s a great way to fuck your whole life up.

There’s a natural paradox to life, whether it be self development, mastery, skill acquisition etc. You want to get to the point where things are effortless, but first you must strive. And striving looks different to everyone. Our lives are just so different. Sometimes people get ahead of others because they fell into immaculate feedback loops where they were rewarded for adaptive behaviours early on. But time reveals all. A lot of high achievers throw their whole lives away. They can’t keep going forever. A lot of them are burnouts. A lot of them take meth.

But we all get used to things. At some point you get used to being able to visit the best brothels and airport lounges and luxury resorts. You genuinely become unable to derive the same satisfaction. Going to the Marina Bay Sands feels no different than rocking up to the Hunts Hotel. Human beings really do be like that.

I’d rather cry in a Lamborghini, says the crying loser. There’s some dweeb in an orange robe eating lentils that’s happier than you and all he owns is a pair of shoes and a set of beads.

I kicked about the idea of living in the temple for a while. At some point I realized that’s just not me. Not then, not now. Maybe later. Should I continue to develop a psychological schism between the me that enjoys the marketplace of normies chasing status and money, and the me that yearns for psychological release and eternal alignment with source? No. What if I combined the two. What if I brought them into harmony? Better yet, what if I realized they were naturally harmonious all along?

How can nature get anything wrong? Wrong is just a value judgement from my brain. My brain is just an assortment of parts bolted on top of eachother from the time my great great grandparents were eating lichen off a rock jutting from the pacific ocean. How can I trust that squishy motherfucker?

That’s why meditation rocks, it lets you see that you have an intelligent quality higher than brain function. If you don’t get this, I’m not arguing with you. You will. At some point.

I enjoy writing too. Not all the time, but you better believe that right now there’s nothing else I’d rather be doing.

People are deeply flawed, aren’t they? (<—– heyyy buddy, is that a value judgement?) I got some bad news recently and everyone is asking me about it. None of your business, dickhead! These are people I like too. Barely anyone asks ‘how are you?’ They just want to feel all busybody about the drama and suck some gossip out of it. Do they genuinely care? Why do they think it’s their place to ask? Blows my mind, truly.

I’m a lot of things. I take way too many substances on a night out, I procrastinate a lot of stuff I know I should be doing, I’m irritable, foolish, impulsive, brash, childish, selfish, ignorant. But by and large I try not to bother people and get into their personal matters.

Circling back, though, there’s nothing wrong with successful people. I’m a firm member of the peasant class, I even have the card, but I don’t think there’s any virtue in being middle class, opinionated, bad at talking to women, or making mortgage payments. I don’t think successful people are bad. We need them. Your job wouldn’t exist without them. You whinge about them so much but if they didn’t exist we’d still be rubbing sticks together for fire.

A large number of our judgements are just jealousy. Why him and not me? Why them and not us? It’s the worst energy to be around. Seriously, if you’re not going to be rich, famous, or particularly good at anything, at least be pleasant. At least be charming, or polite, hell, even funny.

Anyway.



His breathing quivered in his chest, a series of short shallow gasps.

He knew what it meant, he’d witnessed it many times. Pets, family, friends, in their last moments the body started grasping, the breaths grew shallower as the survival mechanism persisted in its hopeless quest to continue the biological experience. The white hospital walls watched with dispassionate quietude.

‘It’s happening to me’, he thought. ‘I never imagined it could happen to me.’ Then the sorrow struck. The things he never said, the things he never did, the memories he never made, one great torrent of impressions, a veritable mountain of time taken for granted and missed opportunities.

Such a shame.

‘If only I could do it again.’

He blinked. The sun was filtering through the blinds, he could hear the distant rush of morning traffic. His partner slumbered peacefully next to him, and he put a hand on her cheek as a single tear rolled down his own.

‘Such a strange dream,’ he whispered to himself. ‘May I dream it every night.’

Japanese

The bartender told me I’m handsome. She complimented me on my pink beanie. I sheepishly wave it off.

The people at the market stop to take photos with us. Everyone is so nice. I left my bag there, they returned it to me. Someone here would have stolen it. Someone stole my phone at the gym I worked at once, right out of my bag while I was teaching class. I hope they died.

Sometimes I’m afraid of what I’m changing into. I don’t like people so much anymore. I retreat from the world. Maybe I’m burnt out. Maybe I’m letting go of old paradigms or something.

But then, I liked people in Japan. They leave you alone. They don’t get all up in your business. They put you first (to a frustrating extent sometimes). They show immense gratitude when you do something for them.

Some of them give me funny looks, they think I’m an american spy, maybe. The more rural I go, the funnier the looks. They’re mostly just curious. I don’t believe in racism. I think it’s been debunked.

You can’t say anything any more without some asshole screaming at you and labelling you with a bunch of monikers. You can’t do a funny.

What do you do when your old identity crumbles and dissolves? Where do you go next? I’ve heard there’s a time delay between internal transformation and how the outside world responds to it. I’ll wait it out.

Most of my time is spent helping other people. Listening to them, being attentive to their problems. I’m not Jesus. Lord I think I can’t do it anymore.

I’m an extroverted introvert, I can laugh and dance but I long for the cave.

It always amuses me to think what other people think when they come here from my social media. It’s not that deep, bro. I know you’re like this too, by the way.

I’m not cut out for responsibility. At least, not the kind where I have to do something. I have good people skills and great discernment, I can make decisions in the heat of the moment and I’m great in a pickle, but for the love of God please do not ask me to write in a spreadsheet or organize a party. Leave that up to someone who doesn’t read fantasy novels til 3am, please.

I’m a loyal person, to a fault. You might annoy me but if I’ve got your back, I’ve got it. Sometimes I have fantasies about telling certain people to get fucked. I don’t, but in an alternate timeline where I do I’m probably happier.

I recognize people at their deepest. I understand them. It’s my biggest strength but not knowing the right way to tell them exactly what’s wrong with them and how to fix it is really quite tiresome.

If I moved to Japan I’d probably end up hating it there, too. Maybe life is about making peace with the fact that you’ll never really be content. You won’t make it and there’s no way out.

Not there yet. I should probably meditate more.

People tell me the path to God is the path to peace. I found God though, and my life has been anything but peaceful since. I think if you’ve truly found God then you better buckle up because shit is about to get real.

I’ll keep pushing. If you push hard enough you break the egg from the inside and wake up alive.


If you want anything out of your life you just have to do it and it’s so simple

Why do I keep rehashing this point? It’s for me. The way I talk to you on this platform is the way I talk to myself. It’s the same old story played out over and over again across time. I forget and I remember, I remember then I forget.

Everything you want, everything you have, it came about from pouring your time and effort into that thing. There’s really no excuses at the end of the day. It’s so hard for people to wrap their head around this. It’s so scary to admit it’s always ME.

If you want peace, you focus on cultivating peace. If you want money, you focus on money and how to stop pissing it away. If you want to master a skill, you simply spend time learning the skill.

Even if you learn badly, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter one bit. Because while you’re learning you’ll even learn how to learn. And you might be slower on the uptake than other people. Who gives a shit? You have your weaknesses and they have theirs, what else are you going to do?

Complaining and whinging is just a useless waste of time and doesn’t even make you feel better. You release the gas valve but the canister is just going to fill up again and in record time. You’re spinning your wheels for no reason.

But it’s fine, even THAT is a learning experience. One day you’ll learn that you’re spending your time on nonsense and you’ll get your act together, whether in this life or the next one.

Sometimes I have the urge to write and I just have no idea what I’m going to write down. I’ll start typing away and it will be ass, some pretentious crap or some gooey nonsense that I feel completely disconnected from. But it’s fine. You just wipe the document and start again on another one. Soon enough you’ll figure out the point you wanted to get at. Or you won’t. But you’ll try again tomorrow, and the commitment to that simple repetitive act is all you need to ensure that you’ll never run out of things to say.

I would ask why we complicate this, but I already KNOW WHY, as do you. Because life is way more interesting when it is hard. If you could just snap your fingers and be the star football player billionaire, you would get bored as shit very, very quickly. You’re not built for that. You are built to struggle and thrive on hard mode.

Just don’t forget that you’re playing a game. An endless game, which means you don’t even have to win. You can just play without stressing about outcomes. It’s like enjoying a horror movie. No matter how terrifying or stressful it gets you know it’s just a movie, it is there to be watched.

Anything that you want to do with your life, keep the very simple idea in your mind that taking one single step towards that thing is in and of itself enough. You will get there, or you won’t, but you will be so much further than if you just sit back and complain. Dreaming won’t work, manifesting is mostly bullshit, but commitment to the task is the stuff that makes legends.

And I daresay it will be enjoyable. You don’t get to wait to enjoy life, that’s not how it works. Life is happening right now, man, and this is it. I know so many people who come up to me saying their life is so hard, this is so bad, this is so tough, I’m never happy anymore, I have no joy, meanwhile I see them laugh, I see them smile, I see the way their eyes light up when they talk about their kids, or their pet, their new car. Joy is everywhere and in abundance but our mind just hyper fixates on the things that aren’t right.

You can’t be waiting on life to start. It’s already started, my friend. The clock is ticking, the needle is on the record.

And there’s the sauce. Nothing will ever be right, but you’re only going to get more of what you fixate on. Not because you manifest it, but because whatever you’re looking for you can easily find. If you want to find things to be pissed off about go right ahead, you’ll find entire treasure troves of annoying shit to get riled up about. I am particularly skilful at this when I’m driving, trust me.

But when I sit here and write, I’m humbly reminded that there’s nothing to it but to do it, and all my problems are gone when I’m locked into what I’m doing. Where are your problems? Are they in the room with us right now? The problem is just a story you keep telling yourself about the things you have to deal with that you don’t want to. Aversion. Things irritate you, they prickle you, you’d rather that they didn’t exist.

I get it, it’s human, but it’s the one thing that’s going to keep you trapped in misery for a long, long time.

Now, you can go ahead and try to rewrite the narratives in your brain about the problem, try to give it a fresh new PR spin, pretend you love it, read some Ryan Holiday and hit a stoic pose, heave a great big sigh and say ‘the obstacle is the way’. It might even work. But you could also just go ahead and start solving what problems you can solve.

Bed messy? Go pull the covers over it. Washing to do? Just throw the dirty clothes in the machine. Start learning the skill of fixing problems. Become a solution finder, a fixer upper. Every little tiny bit you do will make you feel better. It might make you feel so infinitesimally better that you won’t even notice it, but do it enough and you’ll start to sense the shifting tide.

Just be careful, cause you’ll never run out of problems. You’ll just get damn good at solving them. You might get so good that they might not even seem like problems any more. They might just feel like another part of life, another path that every man and woman must walk.

And the stuff you can’t fix? Let it go. It’s not going to change? Change your self. What other choice do you have? This is not rocket science. This is not some divine intellectual revelation. This is just straight fax. If you can’t do a damn thing about it you’re wasting your time giving it even a single second of your attention.

But if you CAN change it? Even in the smallest capacity? Go ahead and get to work. Set a timer for 2 minutes if you have to. That isn’t rocket science either. 2 minutes is a hell of a lot more than 0.

Anything you do is more than zero. (Thank you for coming to my math lecture.)

There’s something you could do about any one of your issues right now that would take the smallest commitment. I am not saying anything you haven’t heard before or thought for yourself. Start with the simplest, smallest, easiest thing you can fix and fix it. Fix it badly. Fix it SHIT. Just do it.

There you go, you will never need another blog post, youtube video, lecture, podcast or ted talk again. That alone will get you there.

Simple.

Not always easy.

But always simple.



Hating is just cope (you should hate yourself first)

I noticed that a large population of people really hate rich people. This has always somewhat baffled me. Sure, we all dislike those who take advantage of others and people with no thought of anything but themselves and their bottom line, but that’s just such a comically moustache twirling image of rich people that it’s hard to take someone seriously when they say some shit like ‘eat the rich’ or ‘tax the rich.’

I’m not pulling up the stats, I’m a creative writer, and you should be doing your own research, but I’m pretty sure rich people are the ones paying the majority of the taxes. In fact I’m certain of it. All the social funding and maintained roads and running water and sewage systems you guys love so much comes from the assholes you desperately want to hate.

But really, how often is hate really directed at the person, and not just an externalized example of our own dissatisfaction and jealousy?

If you pay attention to online discourse, anyone who bothers sticking up for the wealthy folk is derided as some kind of bootlicker, no matter how cogently or gently they offer their thoughts. The common rhetoric is that people defend rich people because they somehow one day expect to be one, which will obviously (in the haters eyes) never happen.

First of all, I wouldn’t be so sure. People who take responsibility for themselves and endeavour to take risks and work hard often do achieve success. Yet in spite of that, what is the problem with being rich? How many people sitting on the toilet on X pissing and moaning (literally ?) about rich people would want to be rich themselves. I mean, how many of them could be rich if they spent that time doing something, I don’t know, productive? Contributing? Adding ease and service to society?

So much of it comes down to naivete. I won’t do the ‘things used to be different’ dialogue today, but I really feel like we live such digital lives that we have no conception of things as they are in ‘real life.’

People whinge and moan that someone is worth 400 billion dollars or whatever, and tend to believe that the person literally has billions in their checking account, like some kind of dragon sitting atop a hoard of coins blowing smoke out its nostrils.

Like, if you took the second to google the valuation of their companies you could quickly see where that wealth is. It’s not like they’re fully liquid, throwing cash around like Drake at the club all day.

How many people buy shit they can’t afford, trying to floss on high street pretending they’re doing well while their car lease eats through their weekly paycheque? How many people are saddled with debt over some bullshit purchases they neither needed nor really wanted save for its utility in making them look like something they’re really not?

That’s the thing I don’t get about haters. Most of them never really seem to grow out of it. Always looking at what’s in the next woman’s pocket while completely ignoring all the shit they do that’s causing havoc in their life. People can’t even stomach a difference in opinion anymore. We’ve seen that full well. People getting killed over a certain viewpoint and then when you ask the haters what they said that’s so bad they’ll mumble some buzzwords and an out of context misquote from their ragebait news source.

It’s just so crazy.

We have everything we need now to live amazing lives. We have the technology, the social progress, people have never been more free, more self-determining, and yet so many spend their lives looking for ways in which they’re unfulfilled. We’re throwing it all away. Gilded by our chains. It’s almost like we can’t handle the fact that we’re supposed to be happy. We can’t be at peace. We refuse to be.

I think the only thing we should be hating on are haters. You can have critiques and criticisms, I mean disagreeing and dialoguing about it is the very fucking fabric of a functioning society and intent is everything. Are you criticizing cause you suck at life or are you making an observation because you believe it to be true and think the world could do with knowing it?

I guess I can understand the mentality, but I don’t understand why you would stay there. That’s the thing. People ask questions and arrive at certain conclusions, but once they get there they act like they’ve reached the final frontier. Like, that’s the end of the line I’ve figured it all out no need to keep looking. Its the whole smart enough to feel superior to others but not smart enough to know you’re a dummy.

People really only argue in their self interests. You become a rich person, you defend them. Or, you become a rich person and you try to be like the general pop because you want to be a hero or a martyr. It’s those weirdos born with a silver spoon in their mouth complaining about capitalism while riding on their coattails of their parents nineteen investment properties.

But then, you end up as a broke loser with a job you hate, you defend those too. You act like it’s a virtue to be an abject failure. By the way, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with these jobs. I’ve done them all. But you all know the kind of person I’m talking about. Stacking shelves and complaining about his ex wife and how the governments fucking him before pissing off 5 minutes before shift ends to sink a schooner at the pub.

That’s the hater. Avoid those people like the plague. The ‘I’m too old’ people. The ‘if I’d only started sooner.’ The ‘I’m not built for that’, ‘that must be nice’, ‘easy for you to say’ mob that never bring a moment of joy when you step into their presence and will NEVER let you be happy. The ones who will tell you about their high school football days when you tell them you bought a house or got a promotion. Ugh.

You think you have to be around people like that, think like them, act like them, because that’s all you’ve ever known. If you think it’s freeing to be rich, imagine how freeing it is to never be around people who drain you. To take responsibility for your own shit. To say what you really want to say. Now that is rich. THAT is wealthy.

You just have to do it

It doesn’t have to lead to anything. It doesn’t need to be finished. It doesn’t have to be perfect, or ground-breaking. It might never see the light of day, you may never receive praise for it, reveal it to another pair of eyes. But either way, you must do it.

You know exactly what I am talking about.

For the chance of even seeing it to fruition, the only way there is to do it. Do the thing. Make the move. Advance in the direction.

You’re thinking of the thing of which I am speaking.

The human mind is a trickster. It will run hide, spin, pirouette, perform all the manoeuvres to drag you away from the thing you should be doing. It gnaws at you when you aren’t, keeps you up when you didn’t, drives you mad when you haven’t.

You know.

A reminder. It just needs to be done. No matter how, or with what. The tools aren’t necessary. They can be upgraded. None of them are perfect. None will truly suffice. The mind will look for more. It will create more barriers, make more demands.

Do it anyway.

Why does it have to be done? Because it does. That is the end of it. You have to do it because you have to do it. There is wisdom in this. There is no more rationalization needed. The things you know you must do must be done because you know you must do them. Argue with yourself if you like, you’ll still arrive back to the same conclusion.

Avoid at your peril.

A healthy psyche is not a mystery. Food, shelter, a social outlet, and finally you doing what you know you must be doing.

I don’t know why we make it so hard. Or perhaps I do. Perhaps everything that we make hard for ourselves is simply out of fear. Fear of failure, fear of missing out, fear or falling short, fear of being bored, scared, sad, weak.

Fear is such a motivator, but you fear the wrong things. You fear the things that cannot hurt you. You fear the things that have no bearing on your happiness or peace of mind. You fear while forgetting that courage has its roots in fear. Courage is born of it, it does not exist without it. You fear while never engaging with fears glorious counterpart.

But you can develop your courage. And it is as simple as simply doing. Doing that thing which you know you should.

If you think you don’t know what it is, that too is your fear response. You know. You could sit it in silence for five minutes and ask yourself what you want and the answer will be right there.

Or you could just go ahead and do it.

Everything is Simple but Application is Hard

Every goal you have is simple. If you want to accomplish anything of any worth there is no mystery as to the steps. You start where you can, with what you have, and you continue in that fashion day after day. Now the results may vary, methods may need to be changed or updated, but ultimately any time spent working towards said goal is time spent shrinking the time horizon between you and that goal.

If you were to argue this point, I would argue that you’re only arguing because you’re not doing. I think in 99% of cases, I would be right to make this assumption. You’re obviously not going to be amazing at doing something when you first begin, and you’re not even going to be very good at trying to do it either. Your methods will be lacklustre, inefficient, you will take much more time to accomplish something than someone who is further down the path than you.

That too, is part of the process. The human mind is designed to learn. It is the reason for its evolution and its proper use as a tool. We identify with the mind too much, see ourselves only as the minds processes, incarnating into thought after thought, that we miss the fact that mind is tool. Mind is not to be taken seriously, it is there to be used.

Due to its powerful nature as a weapon of creation, it can also be turned against you. As all things that are complex and highly potent, if caution is not exercised one can harm themselves. The mind is no different. Its power is that of distraction. Why? Because mind is lazy. Mind wants to play. Mind wants to wander. Mind wants to save energy. Mind wants to protect you.

But if used for its original purpose, mind is the ultimate solution finder. Or rather, it is a solution creator. Find anything and direct your mind towards its fulfilment and mind will find a way. The issue arises when we find stupid shit to direct our mind towards. We more often direct our minds to stupid shit than that which is worthwhile.

But I say all of that to say this. Anything you have in mind as something you wish to achieve or fulfil in the future is nothing but an outcome of Now. Thus it stands to reason that if you desire anything it is only through the consistent application of the steps consistent with that desire that you will reach the destination in mind. If you cannot at least do that, there is only one possibility.

You do not want it that badly.

And that’s okay. Honestly, it really is. Not everything is for everyone. But even that revelation needs to come about through direct applied effort of asking yourself ‘what do I want out of life.’

You must become very good at asking the right questions. You must become very good at knowing thyself. That on its own is a valuable skill and time spent not doing that is time spent wandering from illusion to illusion.

Find clarity by sharpening your self understanding. Find clarity through honest introspection of who you really are and what you really want.

But don’t kid yourself. Learning a language requires studying a language. Writing a book requires writing down words on a page. Getting in shape requires doing exercise. Losing weight requires watching what you eat.

There is no trick. Once you understand that, the only thing that distinguishes you from the one which has achieved their goals is this process stretched out over time. Time is the deciding factor once one has committed and applied themselves to the process. But then, by the time you do reach your goals, you may have found that the daily ritual of pursuing them was what you had been looking for all along.

By then, the goal might not even really matter.