If you want to be happy, be a loser.
Let your parents think you're stupid for not following their path.
Start the business even when your friends don't believe in you.
Study the interests that nobody else seems to care about.
Because the Western notion of success is wrong. The life you want doesn't lie on the other end of a degree, a high-paying job, a calendar full of social obligations and events, vapid relationships to hide your loneliness, buying more things, or rotting your brain with entertainment.
The eastern notion of success is also wrong. Rejecting the manifest world to discover the intricacies of your inner world is a valid pursuit. More valid than ever, but it often leads to people rejecting an entire dimension of reality, closing them off to a deeper happiness that can't be found through an isolated spirituality.
Life doesn't reduce down to only a Western doing, nor an Eastern being, but an integration of them both as becoming.
Now, "happiness" is a confusing term.
Everyone has their own interpretations and definitions for it, and frankly, there will never be a time when you can sustain a peak state of happiness. That's not how the mind works. Happiness can only exist when compared to a sad reference point. Happiness is a state of consciousness. A state is not permanent.
For that reason, let's use the term "success" and define it in a way that finally allows you to start acting toward a better life.
Subtle reminder:
The build a profitable personal brand in 30 days challenge starts in 4 days.
If you have interests, skills, or expertise you want to share with the world to build a modern career, consider enrolling.
A New Paradigm Of Success
Pursuing usefulness will make you a lot happier than pursuing happiness.
The dictionary definition of success is circular:
"A degree or measure of succeeding."
Or, "Favorable or desired outcome."
This makes sense for achieving something on the micro scale, like the tangible goal of making $1,000, since you can see that in your bank account, but what happens when we apply it to the macro scale?
When you search for further definitions of success, you get a bunch of blog articles giving you 19 definitions for success that involve something along the lines of: challenge yourself, learn, grow, always do your best, and have a place you call home.
Wow. Very wise. Much insight.
But when we dig deeper into the 4 dimensions of reality, we discover a much more useful application that transcends the shallow self-help interpretations that have plagued us for the past decade.
The four dimensions, or perspectives, of reality are:
- Internal individual (Subjective) – our emotions, thoughts, and experiences.
- External individual (Objective) – how we measure our brain or body's behavior, which often correlates with our experiences (i.e., dopamine signaling a feeling of motivation).
- Internal collective (Subjective) – the shared values, morals, or beliefs of a group. Culture is a shared mind, in a sense.
- External collective (Objective) – economic, political, and social systems that keep civilization together.
I call these "dimensions" because they each develop as a natural hierarchy of increasing complexity and depth – like the exterior quadrants moving from atoms to molecules to cells to organisms and the interior moving from egocentric to ethnocentric to worldcentric value systems.
Western thought tends to valuethe objective, scientific, and materialistic which influences the subjective – the culture we are raised in which influences our outlook on the world. We reduce the world to atoms and chase material success.
Eastern thought tends to value the opposite. Master the internal world, cultivate community, and flow with the external.
The problem with both of these is that they tend to reject the validity of either side rather than taking what is useful from all to orient our lives in a meaningful way.
If you reduce higher states of consciousness (internal individual) to simple neurotransmitters that stem from a brain composed of atoms, it is rare that you will ever experience or even register those states, let alone reach a higher baseline of development that adds a layer of peace and enjoyment to your life.
If you are conditioned to write off money, science, and the pursuit of status, the ramifications are twofold: One, you allow people less conscious than you to build the world you live in, which by your standards is "evil." Two, you are unable to solve the problems that can't be solved by letting go and meditating, which pile drive you into a further state of stress, dampening your spirituality. Material problems often can't be solved with a purely spiritual solution.
If we look to psychology,neuroscience, perennial philosophy, and the current state of modern life – covering all dimensions – we find that a potential definition for happiness is the combination of progress being made, a contribution to something greater than yourself, and the ability to manage emotional turbulence.
The dopamine from achieving goals, the fulfillment from helping others, and mastering how you respond to external triggers and internal rumination is a rather solid argument for what should be included in your life – at least for what we can fit into a sentence that sounds nice.
This poses both a problem and a question:
First, society is structured in such a way that by the time you enter adulthood, your mind is conditioned with beliefs of success. This version of success comes from getting an education to be trained into a specific role within that society until you've "done your time" and are able to stop working.
Second, how do we pursue a new version of success?
One that prevents us from looking back at our choices with regret?
The Key To Success Is Being A Useful Loser
To transform the world, we must begin with ourselves; and what is important in beginning with ourselves is the intention. The intention must be to understand ourselves and not to leave it to others to transform themselves or to bring about a modified change through revolution, either of the left or of the right.
– Krishnamurti
If you want control over your happiness, you must have control over your life.
And while full control isn't always possible, at bare minimum you must accept that you can influence how successful you are by auditing the choices you make.
The choice of all choices is to reject the path laid out for you at birth.
To act with intention. To generate goals rather than accept them. To see advice, opinions, and beliefs that others may project on you as a small piece of the map, not the territory, and definitely not the law.
But when you check the box of this life task, others will not be happy because they have not done the same. They do not have a semblance of control over their mind. They will do anything in their power to make you feel as if you are wrong, dumb, and misled. They will perceive you as a loser even when they silently yearn to join you.
1) Master Yourself
Almost nobody practices the one habit that makes all the difference:
Self-reflection.
I can suggest how to improve yourself, but nothing will ever trump an unclouded awareness of past mistakes. Because once you are aware – brutally aware – of the mistake, it doesn't happen again. The more mistakes you gain awareness of, the more you move in the direction you were meant to.
To master your individual, internal world is the foundation of how you interact with the external world at large. If you want money, you must develop yourself to be useful enough to a community, system, or organization. If you don't want to be lonely, you must do the same to find worthy friends and partners.
How do you pursue self-mastery?
You level up.
"Developmental lines" are like abilities on a skill tree in a video game.
Once you reach a certain level of experience, you can choose to add "points" to traits like intellect and stamina. Doing so unlocks more opportunities. It makes life easier by replacing shallow problems with deep.
In developmental psychology, there is a large list of lines that can be developed. Here's what AI spat out for me:
Core Lines:
- Cognitive Line – Mental reasoning, logic, and conceptual thinking
- Moral Line – Ethical reasoning and care/justice orientations
- Emotional Line – Emotional intelligence and maturity
- Spiritual Line – Spiritual intelligence and transpersonal development
- Interpersonal Line – Social skills and relationship intelligence
- Psychosexual Line – Sexual and intimate relationship development
- Self-Identity Line – Sense of self and ego development
Additional Lines:
- Aesthetic Line – Artistic appreciation and creative expression
- Somatic Line – Bodily awareness and physical intelligence
- Values Line – What individuals consider important or meaningful
- Needs Line – Hierarchy of human needs and motivations
- Worldview Line – How one sees and interprets reality
- Mathematical Line – Numerical and spatial reasoning
- Musical Line – Musical intelligence and appreciation
- Kinesthetic Line – Body-movement intelligence
There is a crucial point I want to make here, and it may sound crazy.
Many people place thinkers and gurus of the past on a pedestal. The thing is, many of them max out one line – the spiritual or contemplative line – and neglect the rest. There are various cases of teachers we regard as wise who are verifiably sexist, racist, and, on a more practical note, are so locked into whatever worldview they have that they demonize money as a necessary part of modern life.
We don't live in a single location, within a specific culture, with limited access to information anymore. We are connected to the world's knowledge and a melting pot of worldviews.
The above-average person in today's world has the potential to become more developed than any other being in history.
Do not take that for granted.
2) True Education
True education is not memorization, it's discovery.
True education occurs once you realize that when you are told what to learn, you don't learn a thing, so you take matters into your own hands and become your own teacher.
When you study the information given to you within a system, the information biases the outcome of that system. You did not create the curriculum. You did not fund the curriculum. And no matter how much you attempt to justify it, the current education system built on the foundation of industrial values has the purpose of creating useful workers. If you do not self-educate with interest as your compass, the default option is to narrow your attention on that end goal. You miss out on opportunities that are tailor-made for you.
True education is the pursuit of truth.
Truth is not found in the words uttered from someone else's mouth.
And while there is no right way to learn, you can't go wrong by following nature's compass:
- Pursue a self-generated goal (high in interest and meaning)
- Break that down into the core skills necessary to achieve it
- Break those down into the fundamentals
- Spend 40+ hours experimenting with techniques
- Note which get results for your situation, note which don't
- Reflect on your progress often, refine your goal, continue learning
Knowledge is the hypothesis, practice is the experiment, results are the data. A study of the external grounded through the internal.
You must study enough to have conviction in a guess as to what gets results, then realize that skill acquisition is actually technique stacking.
You don't "learn" PhotoShop, AI, or writing.
You have a goal. You find a technique to try, like using a writing framework or a specific way to select an object you want to mask. You see if it works for the unique context of your mind and situation.
You add the technique to your toolbox and continue on until you can create enough value to do what you want for a living.
3) Modern Belonging
Loneliness has its place.
Brief periods of isolation and focus are incredible for developing independent thought. But that does not change the fact that we are social creatures. I'd like to think it's undisputed at this point that a sense of belonging is a basic need that follows food, water, shelter, and a stable environment.
The downside of the information age is that the world is so fragmented.
Rare is it that you will find people with similar interests and goals in your physical location, because rare has it been that we can discover such interests thanks to the information we are exposed to.
Now, as enticing as it seems to desire a past generation (i.e. "I was born in the wrong generation!") that's quite literally impossible to make real. You are here. You are in this beautiful world of technology and interconnectedness. You just need to learn how to use it in a way that doesn't turn you into a drooling bag of bones hooked up to a dopamine IV.
For all of social media's downsides, it makes up for it in our ability to curate who we receive information from and form relationships with almost anyone who has an internet connection.
The solution is simple: reduce randomness.
The For You page built to grab your attention at all costs must be used sparingly to discover people who share your interests. Once they are found, connect with them. Save their feed somewhere safe. Dive deeper into what they teach.
As illustrated with self-mastery, interpersonal relationships is a developmental line. There is no quick fix to becoming someone who can talk to anyone. I'll write another letter on that at some point.
Until then, let's tie this all together.
4) Contribute To Society
You are improving yourself (individual interior).
You are pursuing truth (individual exterior).
You are cultivating community (collective interior).
All of which blend in various ways leading to a deep sense of fulfillment.
But there is one more piece. The one that everyone struggles with.
The system. The game. The corporate careers. The talked-about-way-too-much-to-the-point-of-it-becoming-annoying fact that "everyone" hates their jobs.
The "what do I do with my life?"
Let's make this almost too simple:
Find the intersection of what you care about and what others care about.
The act of creation. That's what ties everything together. Becoming valuable. Taking your mind and molding it into something worth sharing with the world. Not being assigned what to create, but choosing what to create.
But again, if we make the critical mistake of prioritizing one dimension over another, we end up a starving artist. We create to please our ego. We justify our creative desire with regurgitated ideas about being authentic and creating what you want. Again, by doing this, you are unconsciously choosing to impose more problems on yourself and relinquishing your ability to solve them.
A more worthwhile goal is to get paid for being yourself.
There are two parts to that:
- Becoming someone who is valuable enough to pay
- Understanding the desires of others to create something they care about enough to pay for
In most cases, this requires entrepreneurship.
I have no gripes with climbing the ladder until you can find a 1% job that gives you the autonomy – a documented psychological need – to create what you want.
But if you take a critical look at the world, you will see that when I say "the opportunity has never been higher," it is not just a cliche thrown around by people who don't understand your situation.
Everyone reading this has an internet connection.
Therefore, everyone reading this has the ability to put their knowledge, interests, and creations out into the world.
From there, all you need to do is refer back to the process of self-education.
The internet is a giant feedback loop.
If people don't care about what you have to offer, that is but a problem that can be identified, hypothesized, turned into an experiment, and solved.
Thank you for reading.
I hope this was insightful.
– Dan
One more thing.
If you want to try the path of entrepreneurship, the 'build a profitable personal brand in 30 days' challenge starts in 4 days.
As lame as personal branding may sound, it encapsulates everything we've discussed here: self-mastery to become valuable, self-education to have something worth saying, finding like-minded people you won't find elsewhere, and getting paid to be yourself.
Consider joining if that sounds useful.