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[Music] I think it's time for a good old-fashioned motivational speech to pick up your spirits and to re-energize you in this process of doing self actualization work of really working on your life you know when I originally conceived actualized org I actually thought that a lot more of my episodes would be devoted to motivational types speaking and then what happened over the years is that there's just so many topics at this point I have so many hundreds of very deep technical topics that I'm covering more my topics are becoming more and more technical more nuanced they require more preparation a lot more thought more research and as I got into that you know these are the meaty topics those are good but actually you know for for most people what they really need is to get the the basic right mindset in place for how to actually just follow through and do personal development and stay on the path without falling off because one of the hardest things is falling off the path and because I'm delivering technical content a lot of times I just kind of forget to talk about the motivational aspects kind of like the vision and the hope and also some consolation for those of you who are in the trenches and are feeling stuck and are feeling like man this work is so hard and I'm not getting the results that I was expecting the results are taking more work than I expected they're taking longer than you expected yeah of course this is tough tough tough work and one of the challenge is that when you see me up here just a talking head talking about some technical topic or analyzing something of course it looks easy right in many ways the easiest part of my job is standing here before you before the camera and just spouting my mouth off that's the easiest part the hardest part is all the stuff you don't see me doing behind the scenes all the work that I do on myself and it's challenging sometimes it's really challenging sometimes I want to quit but then I remember my vision I remember why I'm really doing this I reconnect and it's that ability to reconnect or to console yourself when you're feeling down you're feeling depressed maybe you have a terrible workday maybe you were doing something then you screwed up maybe you have a big ego backlash after a nice long string of good meditation sessions or you have some big Epiphany some mystical experience then you come crashing down the next week you know that happens and that's when you get the most discouraged that's when you most want to quit so this speech is intended for those of you who have already started the journey but are still shaky for those of you who are in the trenches but maybe our feeling down and depressed and feeling oh man maybe I should quit maybe you're doubting yourself like this isn't really gonna work is the stuff Leo talking about is it just all pipe dreams and it's just for people who are not like me or maybe it's just like a probability thing where it's like yeah maybe 5% of people who watch actualize a drug will get the results and the other 95% never will because it's just a like a roll of the dice it's just a gamble it's not a gamble at all it completely depends on how you use your mind and how you think about these things which is why this speech is necessary and I hope it helps you out and I hope that next time that you get stuck which of course you will if you're not stuck right now you will be don't worry you'll be stuck many many many times on this journey because this whole journey is not some piece of your life it is your entire life the only question is do you recognize that yet for some people they start off and it's just a piece it's just a hobby but then it starts to consume your entire life then your whole life becomes it or really you just realize that that's what your life has been all along it's just that you work awake to it and now you have become and now you start to take the process into your hands and you start to do it more consciously than just accidentally the way that you were doing it before the way that your family members are doing it the way that your co-workers or your friends are doing it so here's the thing you got to really understand about this is that life is hard no matter how you slice it life is hard sometimes it's just really really hard and that's life but life is also magical it can be extraordinary with the caveat that it will never be magical or extraordinary to you if all you do in life is play video games watch TV click around on the internet hang out with your friends and go to work at McDonald's you're not gonna tap into any of the magic of life if that's the kind of life that you're trying to lead not possible you're only gonna get from life what you put into it so if you haven't been getting the thing that is making you feel passionate about life making you feel energized every time you wake up in the morning making you feel like life is magical and amazing and you're so thankful for and you're so grateful for it and you love it you see the beauty of it you see the profundity of it and it just completely blows you away if that's not your life that's because you simply haven't put in what is necessary to be put in to get that out of life this is not an accident thing this is not that some people are lucky to have that and other people are not lucky to have that no it's all about what are you putting in and you might think like what about I am putting in I'm going to work and I'm doing this and I'm doing that no you're not putting in nearly enough you have to put your whole soul into your life it's not life that's supposed to give you your soul you put your life in I mean you put your soul into your life and then your life will reflect the soul and passion and dedication and spirit that you put into it you have to infuse your life with spirit it certainly won't do that for you the way that our society is structured you have to understand is that it's extremely low consciousness it targets the most gross materialistic levels of life it can't it covers the lowest common denominator in society which is utter mediocrity with no magic to it whatsoever it's people leading lives of quiet desperation and many times loud desperation so that's what she'll get as the default if you don't do something different and the problem here is that our society has become so easy these days and you've been growing up for the last 10 20 30 years of your life sucking on society's tit you're completely disconnected from real survival you don't appreciate it at all because our society masks and hides that entire process you don't build your own shelter you don't brave the elements outdoors you don't travel using your own two feet you don't butcher your own food you don't hunt your own animals you don't grow your own crops you see you're completely disconnected from all of this all of this is just given to you in exchange what you do is you go to work at McDonald's from 9:00 to 5:00 to get all that and that might seem like that's a good bargain because you know it you could hyper specialize you can be the the hamburger flipper at McDonald's or maybe you do the french fry cooker thing and hey you know that's easy that's easy to learn you can just do that repeat every single day but then your life becomes that it becomes this mind-numbing factory work and you're completely disconnected from how that connects to actual survival you don't even realize that life is this constant process of fighting for the chance just to breathe just to just to wake up every morning this is an act of survival this is not something to be taken for granted animals who live in the wild or human beings who live in the wild they are deeply connected to nature they are deeply connected this process of survival and this is extremely important because otherwise what happens you get very soft you get very lazy and you start to just expect society to give you stuff it's the exact same problem that you see with rich kids who are the children of millionaires and billionaires and they just get giant estates the sort of Herot paris hilton's of the world and i mean she's actually become sort of successful but uh but there are many people like her who have no successful so ever because all they do is they just live off the money sucking on society's tit but see it's not just the rich kids it's the poor kids it doesn't matter if you're poor or if you're middle-class you are still completely sucking on society's tip because society is providing for your food for your shelter for your electricity for your internet for your entertainment for for almost everything for your medical care and it might seem like that's a great thing but actually see it's paradoxical and counterintuitive because the human being is a creature who actually degrades from lack of challenge and lack of work and by work here I don't mean going to McDonald's that's not real work that's that's factory work and if you're not employed by McDonald's but you're a programmer at some other company doesn't matter there's no difference between someone who works at McDonald's and earns like what 1520 thousand dollars a year on minimum wage or someone who works at a big company doing some sort of routine programmer work who might earn a hundred thousand dollars years you think that there's a difference because you earn five times more than the McDonald's guy it makes no difference you're still going and working at McDonald's it's just not called McDonald's it's called something else and it makes you thinking oh I'm doing better than McDonald's but no you're not not at all there's still no passion in your life you're not really putting any soul into your life you're not taking ownership for your own life you're disconnected from the process of survival see when you're really faced with true survival your life is on the line and everything becomes very serious all of a sudden there's no room for being lazy slacking off laying on the couch watching marathons of TV shows and cooking around on the internet there's none of that kind of life and death have a way of cutting all that kind of crap out of your life and making things very simple and very stark and then all the sudden you're you're engaged you see you got to be engaged with like that's the biggest thing that people are missing these days is that engagement because they're so complacent they're way too comfortable for their own good and I notice it happening in myself as well because as I have become more successful with my businesses and with actualised or again with with how many people I have is subscribers and all that sort of stuff and and the kind of little bit of Fame that I have whatever that might be worth and whatever kind of recognition that I get from people that I help you know that stuff it all goes to your head and then you get kind of lazy you get complacent about it you get more and more disconnected from survival what I love about entrepreneurship is that when you're starting your own small business it all depends on you it all hinges on you and it really feels like oh yeah this is a little bit of what survival is like you feel that but then again I look at most people who try to start businesses and they have no chance they have no chance of survival in business because they don't really know what it's like to survive they don't they have as much chance starting successful business as they have chance at being dropped off off into the Canadian wilderness in the tundra and living there and surviving for a month they won't be able to do it they'll die because human beings have domesticated themselves we are our own worst enemies we take lines we put them into zoos and then those lines can't hunt anymore well what do you think you are you were alive who's been put into an apartment into a little box and now you live there in your little room what's the difference being here room in a prison cell very little difference the only real difference if you think about it is that the prisoner in the prison cell he has a little bit more rules about when he can leave his room that's about it and he eats worse food than you that's about it that's really the only difference for most people that's not life that's that's prison just because you don't have jail bars across your windows doesn't mean you haven't put yourself into your own Jail of your own construction what needs to happen for you to get serious about self-actualization is that you need to take your own life back into your own hands and you need to get back in touch with that element of survival and maybe what that means for you is you actually go out and you you spent a week living in the Canadian tundra and you see what that's like or you don't need to do that maybe you start your own business or whatever maybe you don't even start your own business but at the very least you you seize control back and there's a certain kind of seriousness that comes with that it's like I'm not around with my life anymore the way I used to because when you're around with your life you're playing video games you're eating bad food you're being lazy you're just kind of like going with the flow and here you you say no I want to live a kind of life where I challenge myself even when there's no direct need for me to challenge myself I recognize that the best kind of life that I can live is one in which I'm really connected with my survival every single day so it starts there and that's a moment where you got to sit down with yourself and you really got a revaluation got to say okay I've been stuck in this rut just kind of like going through the motions of life and I'm tired of it it caused me all this suffering I'm not really satisfied yeah I'm playing these video games but they're Hollow I'm going to the movies but they're Hollow I'm doing my work but it's Hollow everything is Hollow it's not it's not what I into it life can be and then you say I'm gonna mobilize myself I know there's more to life and I know that it's gonna take some hard work to tap into that and I'm ready I'm finally ready to go and tap into that by doing the hard work that helps a lot because most people have a very wrong notion of what the good life is the good life is not what you think it is the good life is a life where you are on your edge pushing yourself challenging yourself where it's it's hard not the easy life the easy life is not the good life the easy life is the mediocre life which everybody else has and they're miserable and they don't even have a clue as to how much they're really missing they will never know because they never worked towards it they just assume that the mediocre life is all there can be because they're just going along with the herd they're going down the path of least resistance so you start to accept that the good life is actually the challenging life you start to realize the counterintuitive idea that actually the easy life is the hard life you don't want that and that actually the challenging life is gonna ultimately turn out to be the easiest and the most rewarding and that's what you want and then you bite the bullet that self-actualization is gonna be hard and that it's not some gimmick that you're doing for the next year or two to get something you wanted to just scratch some some little itch that you have but it's it's a lifelong process because that's what life is is it's a growth process it's not about enjoying comforts it's about growing it's about discovering the truth it's about becoming more conscious it's about overcoming all your inner demons and personal limitations and so what you need to do is you need to accept that and also two reminders of that so if you're already in the trenches doing this work you're meditating yourself inquiring you're working on your life purpose all this sort of stuff that I talked about great but keep reminding yourself because your mind will easily forget and it'll fall back into that old expectation of like oh well but all my friends aren't really doing anything it looks like their life is so much easier and then you'll tend to wanna like go back to that kind of life you got to remind yourself that you're working for something much bigger and that of course that's gonna require a bigger investment from you and that's okay because you realize that nothing good as possible without discipline and discipline is a huge problem because society today completely discounts discipline and in fact everything the society tries to sell you is designed to help you to avoid taking any kind of discipline for yourself everything is supposed to make your life easier such that you need no discipline whatsoever but then you become a lazy slug and that's what your life turns into and then what you got to do is you got to start to trust in the principles as you work the path as you follow through this process as you meditate as you go through your life purpose as you work on your relationships and your emotions and all this other stuff that you're working on there are some key principles that you want to write down and you want to return to over and over again when you're in your most dire need for them when you're the most depressed when you're the most hopeless you want to trust in the principle of radical open-mindedness that that will ultimately lead users something amazing in life and you want to keep opening your mind trusting that that will lead to good stuff even though you're not quite sure where am I lead and maybe sometimes it even scares you how open-minded you're becoming but you push through that anyways because you're relying on this principle your life is not lived by your whims but it's it's based on solid strategic principles which want to tell you now what I've talked about for years now across various episodes I try to introduce these different principles to you trust in the principle that exploring hundreds of diverse perspectives studying them thinking about them contemplating that this is something that will be extremely valuable for you in the long run in your life and that it will lead and open up it will lead to new opportunities that you never imagined possible it'll open new doors for you and you've got to remind us of that because as you're studying all these diverse perspectives of course you're gonna feel confused you're gonna feel conflicted you're gonna feel like you don't know which perspective is the right perspective or which one you should follow that's when you got to console yourself by telling yourself the principle at work here is gonna pull through in the end trust in truth trust in unconditional love trust in beauty trust that these things you can rely on for the rest of your life and that if you if you honestly genuinely pursue those every single day that's something truthful and loving and beautiful will come out of that that's not so far-fetched trust in the importance of existential investigation the idea that you don't just skim the surface of things but you go down to the core you try to penetrate as deeply as possible and try to really wonder what is a thing what is existence what does that try to connect your life to the most cosmically significant things that there are relative to the shallow superficial flimsy stuff trust in the principle of consciousness and awareness trust that consciousness and awareness is is one of the most important things in life and that as long as you're growing your consciousness and your awareness every single day in every single situation that something remarkable will come from that in the end you're not sure what yet but you can Intuit that something remarkable will come from that trust in life purpose and impassion trust I giving your life a sense of purpose and focus and direction at the cost of excluding other things that ultimately that will pay off for you trust in your nascent passions and grow them and slowly cultivate them and trust that if you follow your passions and you cultivate them week after week after week for years something remarkable will come from that with passion it's like priming a pump you know the first few pumps that you make they don't produce much but after you pump it Pump It pump it then it's primed and then every pump you put in it gives you some water that's how those old fashioned pumps used to work at the your great I'm father's farm see it wasn't that you pump and then you get water it's like no you pump you pump you pump you pump you pump for like 10 20 a hundred times then it's primed once it's primed then every pump gives you water that's how passion works at first you don't really have a strong passion and you start to pump and pump and pump on it and you know nothing happens so you gotta have the vision that something will happen ultimately in the same way that a pup is primed because you if you expected water at one of those old-fashioned pumps just from the first two pumps and you didn't get it well you would get despondent and depressed and you would quit and you say oh damn that thing it's a failure it's not a failure it's just that you're not thinking of it the right way building your passion for life is one of the most important things because that's ultimately what you want from life a good life is one where you're passionate about everything that you're doing and how do you get there is it by buying a bunch of stuff is it by living in a great house is it by moving to a cool city is it by having a hot girlfriend or a nice husband no of course not the passion is is what you bring to the situation it's not about what material objects give you or how they make you feel it's not about buying a fancy call fast sports car and then being passionate about having it that's not passion passion is is coming from you it's coming from the inside to the outside not from the outside to the inside pash is not something you're given by watching a movie or playing a video game passion is what you bring into your work or it's the thing you bring into the movie or the video game you're watching the movie or playing the video because you're passionate which is not how most people do it trust in the power of vision as a principle vision is incredible people think that vision all well yeah you can just sit on your couch and you can you can imagine stuff all day long but nothing's gonna happen you're not gonna become rich these sorts of people they completely misunderstand the power of vision to actually be able to sit on your couch and to visualize very clearly indefinitely what you want in your life this is a key skill and it will get you more than you can possibly imagine if you can't imagine it it's hard for you to get it so developing a strong imagination and being able to vision deliberately and clearly this is a lot harder than people think this is real work it takes real work to vision things out without vision you're not gonna get anywhere in life you're not gonna be able to self actualize because you need to be able to see that all this stuff that you're investing right now is gonna pay off later people without vision can't see that they can't keep themselves motivated and inspired through all the tough times it's when you're in your toughest moment that you need the vision the most so if you're feeling depressed if you're feeling like something in your life's not working if you feel like your life purpose is right now or if you feel like you got fired from your job and now you're feeling hopeless or you're feeling like you've been meditating and nothing is working for you go back to your vision slow yourself down go back to your original vision and make it stronger in your mind reconnect with it emotionally not just logically emot-- your vision should be so strong it can make you cry that's how strong your vision should be and if you can't hit that point you're really not visioning and you can definitely hit that point but that requires some soul-searching you have to find what is it within you that wants to connect with life at such a deep level that it can bring tears to your eyes just thinking about it just picturing it in your mind what that is for you trust in the principle of hard work good old-fashioned hard work ethic this is a super rare thing these days I see people struggling to self-actualize and complaining about lack of discipline all that that's because you have no work ethic and that's because you've been sucking on society's tit for most of your life and even if you're not rich even if your parents weren't rich you were still sucking on their tit for a good long time and this has made you lazy and soft commit to developing a strong work ethic how do you do that by working hard there's no magic solution there's nothing I can tell you that's gonna say oh yeah Leo you told me something that now is gonna make me a hard worker no you got to go work hard there's no shortcut to it you just go do it but again you need the vision to to make you want to do it you need a compelling purpose to do it you don't just work hard just for the sake of working hard that's not what I'm saying the hard work is the means to your vision there's so much work for you to do to self-actualize work meditating work visioning work planning work strategizing work at the gym work on your health work on your relationship work on your emotions journaling and taking notes and reading there's so much work there's more work than you can stuff into one lifetime when you really get serious about it but most people they're lazy they don't really want to work they will only work hard when they are forced to if that's how you think you're gonna live a good life forget it you have to develop the ability to make yourself work hard in precisely those situations when you don't have to when nobody is forcing you when there's no fire under your ass another principle you can trust in is extreme ownership I used to call this one percent responsibility but I like this phrase extreme ownership more you're taking extreme ownership of your life it's actually a phrase I gleaned from Jocko will Inc who's a ex-navy seal and a motivational speaker and writer and just overall badass human being he's all about owning your own life and very being very self-disciplined hardworking in your life and just by doing that you start to get remarkable results see most people they don't really own their lives they don't take responsibility for the food they put in their mouths the information that they take in with their eyes and their ears and they don't take ownership for their own consciousness they don't take ownership for the for the people who they surround themselves with or the place that they're living in see all these things it's it's a pain in the ass to change these things it takes work so the easy thing of course is not to change anything take the ownership for nothing and just sit there whine and and moan and criticize and just feel sorry for yourself trust in the principle of learning and reading do not underestimate how powerful learning and reading are in this entire process you need to learn more thousands of times more than what you currently know you need to read hundreds of books so get to work on that trust that something remarkable will come from that if you don't know what to do pick up a book because you can always trust that by reading a book or two every single week every single month that will move you forward trust in the principle of mastery mastery is so important the idea that you're gonna pick one thing you're gonna work on you're gonna master it in your life have something that you're mastering your life all the time and you can rely on spiral dynamics as a principle as well if you know that model I've talked about it before it's a little bit technical so I can't explain it here but if you're familiar with spiral dynamics trust that you are moving up those stages and that that's Alton like the entire map for what you're doing in your life you're moving up those stages you roughly know where you are you roughly know where you're going you roughly know what the next stage is you can also look ahead at stage yellow stage turquoise and think about what that means and what it would be like to live in those stages and then work on that here's an outline for you for all success in a nutshell it always starts with a vision a really compelling vision then once you have that there's the learning and research phase where you need to a lot of research because when you have a new bold compelling vision you're gonna know how to make it happen or even what the opportunities are so you're gonna have to go learn a lot research a lot then once that phase is complete then really the hard work phase sets in that's where you get into the trenches and you're working really hard on your vision and all the stuff that you learn and research now you're following up on all those leads and you're actually trying to actualize those and that's what most people really quit but then the next phase is building the momentum not only to have to work hard for a month or a year but you got to keep it up consistency there it's important and you build up your momentum slowly like a snowball rolling down a hill over and over and over again and it starts growing and growing and growing and the biggest enemy you're gonna face here is just quitting you're gonna be so tough to quit your mind is gonna try to trick you to quit with any conceivable rationalization or excuse everything from your health to your energy levels to your emotional system to your financial problems to your family obligations to your uncertainty and your doubt and maybe all maybe there's a better life purpose thing I shouldn't be doing this man should be doing that or maybe I should just do a little bit of this and then mix it with that and then see you're you're all over the place your focus gets diverted by all the stuff that's happening around you you got to refocus keep your eye on the ball keep building that momentum and whatever you do you don't quit and then only after a long period of doing that do you find get success that's basically how all success is made in any field whether in business or in spirituality or anything else now of course here the the really spiritual people will come in and say but Leo there's nothing to do stop chasing you're telling people to chase stuff and this is all just delusion well what I have to say to you is to go yourself because this idea that there's nothing to do and to stop chasing this is a dumbest idea that I've ever heard the most short-sighted and stupidest thing I've ever heard this idea of stop chasing there's nothing to do you're alive because there's a ton of to do every single day there's a ton of to do and these spiritual people who think there's nothing to do these are some undeveloped they're not really conscious they're not really developed they they have misunderstood spiritual teachings to rationalize their own mediocrity and any kind of spiritual attainments that they have made while they might be nice to some degree they have nowhere near maxed out the possibilities because you simply can't with that kind of lazy stupid attitude that there's nothing to do and anything that you're doing is some form of stupid chasing and some delusion that's not the case at all what I encourage you to do instead is to make your life a hero's journey take some on some risk and some adventure in your life with adventure always comes risk there's always the risk that you're going to go down the wrong road you're gonna waste your time you're gonna you're gonna do something wrong and it's gonna be a waste of your resources your your money or energy or whatever but then again it's the going on the adventure that's the fun part that's the exciting part that's what makes you feel alive and connected to life is that you are on some kind of adventure otherwise what the hell are you doing to those people who think that there's nothing to do what the hell are you doing with your life because if there's nothing to do here's what's gonna happen you're gonna sit on your couch watching TV and eating Cheetos that's what you're gonna do that's what's gonna happen you when you stop chasing and I'm not saying there aren't excesses to chasing yes there's problems with chasing you got to make sure you're chasing the right stuff you got to make sure you're chasing high-quality stuff and in the end maybe at the end of that after many many years maybe you'll actually realize that there is nothing to chase and there is nothing to do but that will only come from a lifetime of some really hard work and even then you'll realize that when you sit and you do nothing that you slowly die you slowly deteriorate you slowly uh become more and more of a slug choose to challenge yourself deliberately precisely because it's unnecessary and some people will say but Leo this is all so much work why do all this stuff after all if life is meaningless in life is purposeless and pointless why do it all because what's your alternative what are you gonna get if you don't do it you're gonna get what you have now you're gonna have a mediocre kind of life you're gonna have the worst possible life by not making this choice to accept the hero's journey you have made your choice you've made the choice of being a mediocre slug so then don't be surprised if you get depressed or if you hate your life or you see other people uh killing it in life but then you feel like you're less than them you feel like a victim don't be surprised by that because you've made your choice you've made your choice to be ordinary rather than extraordinary yes this process of the hero's journey and self actualization it will be difficult it will be a lot harder than you ever imagined but on the other hand it'll be a lot more rewarding than you ever imagined as well so the two will actually compensate for each other but yes it will be difficult and yes you will be afraid deeply afraid on this work in this path doing this work and yes you will be confused and yes you'll be frustrated and yes you will have huge setbacks at times and yes you will backslide and yes you will feel bored by doing all this hard grindy work and yes you will feel all alone in this process cuz you're the hero you're on your own journey no one's gonna provide you company and yes you will feel misunderstood and yes sometimes it will feel hopeless and completely impossible and yes sometimes you're gonna be in such a tough situation you're gonna be so depressed or you're gonna be so confused and uncertain about what to do that you will cry and in those moments you will want to quit but what you do is you go on and you push through anyways you just do it anyways you use your vision to carry you through those toughest times you use these principles that I talked about to carry you through the toughest times you remind yourself of these principles you remind yourself of this vision of why you're doing it because you want a passionate life where you're connected to life unlike everybody else and you know that the alternative is being like everybody else and that's an unacceptable alternative you'd rather die than have that alternative for you what you do is you take the survival that an animal out in the wild experience every single day that life-and-death survival that align or antelope experiences when they're hunting or being hunted and you connect that with living a passionate existence for you to survive is to be living a passionate existence you connect those together so that your life is not about just making it through the day or just eating some food but it's about being passionate about being conscious for you that's like your oxygen you need that to breathe and without that you don't want to live and you make that decision to make a decision in life is to exclude every other alternative possible so make that decision for yourself make it consciously don't just make it because I'm telling you about it sit down and contemplate the things I'm telling you so that your mind it clicks it registered it's like oh yeah what leo is saying actually makes sense and because it does make sense this is a strategy that I will that I will commit to not because he says it not because I believe them because it makes sense for me and because I can clearly see what the alternative to it is and then you can carry on through the tough times when you're in your toughest moments on the path remember that you can always double down double down even more on walking the path when you feel like quitting when you feel depressed when you feel angry when you're frustrated when you can double down even more to double down means to say I don't have a clue how I'm gonna make this work but I'm doubling down anyways because I trust in these principles I trust in my deepest intuitions that I want a passionate life and that's not something I wanted to compromise on it's not like oh yeah I'll have a passionate life if things go my way if other people let me if it happens to fall in my lap no I'm committed to a passionate life no matter what that's my number one priority and when things aren't working that means I got to work harder so I'm doubling down and I'm excited to double down to work even harder I'm willing to work hard for what I ultimately want because I know it will be worth it and so you double down you become even more serious about your principles you pull out your principles you read them you console yourself and then you get back in the game the paradox of this whole thing and of life is that life is a totally pointless game and yet it must be played with dead seriousness you must play the game as if your entire life hinges on it and yet simultaneously you must be conscious that it doesn't matter at all what the outcome is but what does matter is that you're playing the game with seriousness and yet at the same time you can joke about it and you note that it doesn't matter at all that's the paradox of living the good life stop looking for shortcuts stop looking for other people to help you stop asking other people for answers to your problems stop asking people to tell you what you want take ownership for all of that and then of course you still read and you still learn from other people and you still study perspectives and you still can listen to and get advice from people but you do not outsource the executive decision-making for your entire life that you cherish and you you relish that the most and you take complete ownership for that and then you just go to work and that's that that's all there is to it and when you're feeling stuck you console yourself and you pick yourself back up and you keep doing the work trusting in the principles and then eventually what will happen is that you will come out with such an extraordinary life that you yourself will not be able to believe it it will be too good to believe it'll be too good to communicate to anybody else and be good that you went through those lonely times all by yourself because you know what you're gonna feel a little bit lonely in the end with this amazing life your life is gonna be so amazing you're not gonna have anyone else in the world really to share the amazement with because the only other people that will know how amazing life can be is those people who have been like you and those people are so rare and so few and far between that um you'll bump into them occasionally and you'll be able to to have a mutual recognition of each other and the passion that both of you have but that will be a rare thing most people you interact with will not know about that and so you'll have to be comfortable living all by yourself knowing that you are sitting on an infinite goldmine of magic and beauty and truth and love and passion infinite intelligence is at your fingertips to be accessed all the time reality is the most amazing thing ever and you will know that but almost nobody else will and that will be both extremely satisfying and also a bit melancholy and sad because your deepest desire will be to to share that with the world to help people access this infinite goldmine that you have fortunately been able to access somehow for yourself and you will know how challenging it was and you will be able to appreciate why almost nobody does it because it's not easy work you will remember all those difficult difficult times when you were just this close to quitting you'll remember that and you'll say ah yeah of course of course now I understand I have compassion for all these people who are not able to make it work I know all their sticking points I know all their traps I know all their deepest fears and insecurities all their inner demons because I've had to fight and slay my own and I can help them in my own unique way now I can help them to figure out for themselves and we can move all of humanity forward towards ultimately getting as many people as possible to tap into this infinite goldmine which is there which is unlimited which cannot be exhausted which can be tapped by every single human being without encroaching on anybody else life is a non zero sum game which means that everybody can tap into the infinite for themselves everyone's life can be passionate and magical it's not a finite resource it's not like there's only so much passion so much magic to go around no it's infinite it's infinite it's an infinite goldmine just sitting right under your feet and the thing that will shock you the most is not that the goldmine is somewhere out there somewhere beyond the stars somewhere on top of a mountain something in some other country or in some other place or anywhere or in some other person that it was inside of you the whole time it was right here it's right here right now but that will require you going through the entire path and ultimately coming full circle that's it I'm done here please click the like button for me and come check out actualized org see all the stuff that I have for you there I have my book list my life purpose course I have the forum which is getting pretty fired up these days the forum is getting better and better all the time and my blog I'm posting a lot of stuff on my blog including exclusive videos I'm doing now more like vlog style informal videos which have some of my most profound insights actually but I consider the more minor insights so I just post them on the blog so check that out and stay tuned with me for actualized I don't work for more content in the future and especially if you're resonating with what I talked about here make sure you check out my life purpose course because that course outlines in extreme detail this entire process we've only scratched the surface of this process the course fills in all the details holds you by the hand shows you how to put all the things into place in your life the most important thing it shows you is it shows you how to reconnect with your deepest passions how to unearth that inside yourself how to find your top strengths or top values and then ground your entire life in that and every week now I get testimonials from people who have taken the course probably over 2,000 people at this point have taken the course I get testimonials from them saying how the course has changed their life has changed their trajectory a lot of young people who are in that area where they're like in high school late high school early college trying to figure out their career benefit a lot from the course because they have no idea really what they're going into for example in their going to college and they usually pick majors that aren't really right for them because they don't really thought it through they don't know how to think it through they don't have enough life experience to think that stuff through which is plessy why I made the course I made the course because I had to struggle for about ten years to figure that stuff out for myself by my own life purpose and that's what I'm using to fuel actualize that or what do you think actual I said I guess it's fueled entirely by my life purpose it could not exist otherwise the amount of work and passion that has to go into what I'm doing here could not happen otherwise but uh uh if I was really really clear about the kind of impact that I want to have in the world and what my deepest deepest passion is it's not just about being passionate it's about finding your deepest passion and that's a bit of a process and that's what I guide you through in the course so check that out and stay tuned of course as always for more you