First, understand that life unfolds in chapters.
Each chapter is a predictable sequence of 4 phases:
- Limbo – you don't know what to do or what you want.
- Vision – an image for the future forms, you act on a new path, momentum builds.
- Flow – you can't pull yourself away from the goal you're pursuing.
- Resistance – exponential progress doesn't last forever, but you don't want it to end, often to your own detriment.
But most people get stuck in the limbo phase.
Your entire life, you've been trained to follow a script.
You're used to the linear results of schools and jobs.
You're used to someone else giving you your certainty.
But when it comes to living an unconventional life (because that's the only way to get unconventional results) you interpret "feeling lost" as a bad sign. So you jump ship and return to the comfortable life that was planned for you in a system that only cares for its own benefit.
And that's probably why you're reading this.
You hate the thought of ending up like everyone else.
But that means you're on your own.
You feel like you're lost in a dense forest. You can't see anything through the trees, so you don't realize there's a path 5 yards away that leads to the top of the mountain's peak.
The worst thing you can do in this situation is nothing.
Here's how you get out:
By the way, I created an AI prompt that turns your life into a video game. You can use it to guide you through implementing this letter (it's pretty sweet).
1) How to collect vision
Your mind makes sense of the world in stories.
That's why you feel lost.
Because you don't know what story you are living out, or you're living out a story that someone else assigned to you and you can feel that misalignment in your soul.
The hardest part about taking back control of your life is collecting the right puzzle pieces until just the right amount of vision forms where you have enough clarity to act with confidence.
At first, the puzzle looks like a jumbled mess.
Your brain can't make sense of it.
You get stressed and worried which leads to a narrow and negative mind which makes it painstakingly difficult to notice new opportunities.
That's why you feel stuck.
So that's step one:
Give yourself permission to allow your life to get worse.
Weren't expecting that?
Let me explain.
The reason you feel lost, dull, or even lifeless is because you don't have a clear goal to work towards.
But you don't know what you want.
Since you feel lost and your mind is turbulent, a "clear goal" is the last thing your mind will be able to think of, and you'll often make excuses as to why that isn't the right one to pursue.
The thing is, goals don't exist in isolation.
A strong, purposeful goal is the result of the exact opposite:
A negative outcome that you will fight tooth and nail to avoid, and once you've experienced that outcome first hand, you'll do anything to not relive it.
You need a problem to solve. An enemy to attack. And when you have something to avoid, your goal increases in both gravity and clarity.
So that's where you turn your focus.
Ask yourself, "If I keep doing the same things, where will my life end up?"
Sit with that thought.
Really sit with it.
Let it consume your mind, because when it starts to take over, your mind will be hungry to learn, experiment, and grow.
2) How to change your mind
You act the way you do right now because you already have a goal.
That's how the mind works.
Your mind is a goal striving machine that perceives the world in a way that allows it to collect useful information to achieve that goal.
The thing is, you're unconscious of what goal you're pursuing, and it's ruining your life.
Aristotle believed that the final cause of a situation is the ultimate purpose or end goal for which it exists.
In Adlerian psychology, with a focus on teleology, we are not pushed by our past, but pulled by our goals. We act in a way that is beneficial toward the aim in which we're directed, as Jordan Peterson would probably put it.
In other words (and this is a mind bender for many):
You are in your current situation because you want to be, but that's unconscious to you and you probably won't believe it at first.
You feel lost, confused, or overwhelmed because it's beneficial for achieving the goal of avoiding the pain, fear, and embarrassment that comes with doing something unconventional with your life.
You have already primed your mind for change by gaining complete awareness of the negative outcome of your life.
Now, to change your mind completely, you need to immerse yourself in new sources of information to discover the puzzle pieces that lead to clarity.
Read new books.
Talk to new people.
Follow new accounts.
Visit a place you've been wanting to go.
Go on a long walk and throw on a podcast.
Take a course on a new skill to enhance your career or start a business.
Or, turn AI into your focus coach or strategic advisor using this free mini course I put out last week on how I systemize my life with AI.
It doesn't really matter what information you consume as long as it's something that has the potential to spark change.
When your mind is in a state of wanting to avoid the current trajectory of your life (the new goal), this is when true learning occurs. You will feel the dopamine spurt into your brain when you find a potential opportunity to pursue.
Within a few weeks, you should have some idea of the life you want to live.
You have a map, but now comes the territory.
3) Gamify your life
Your mind runs on a storyline.
Games are pre-constructed stories with certain mechanisms that narrow your focus and make progress enjoyable.
When you play a game, there are:
- A clear hierarchy of goals so you know how to win
- Direct feedback so you know when you are making progress
- Rules that add a sense of challenge and skill development
All of these are core components of flow psychology.
And flow is the state of optimal experience that we often crave (or become addicted to).
Social media, gaming, and entertainment companies spend billions upon billions of dollars on constructing the most addictive information that leverages these things.
What most people don't realize, however, is that you can replicate this same effect in your life.
Instead of the illusion of progress and improvement, you become someone new in the process.
Here's how to gamify your life:
1) Design the game
First, understand that most people have a mediocre definition of a goal.
A goal is an aim.
A goal is not something that you must achieve at all costs.
A goal is a lens from which to make decisions. The goals themselves are supposed to change and evolve as you become more experienced.
Most people write off the following list as something that "doesn't work" when it isn't supposed to be set in stone.
- Create a hierarchy of goals composed of an end goal, long term goals, and short term goals
- Create the rules – what are you not willing to sacrifice in your life to make progress toward the end goal? (Health, relationships, long working hours, etc)
- Use quantifiable priority tasks as feedback loops like writing 1000 words a day, reading 10 pages, or reaching out to 5 potential clients
Your life loses the spark of novelty and pattern recognition when you have a vague or unconscious story you are living out.
When you create the order your mind craves, chaos is much easier to keep at bay.
2) Create a tutorial phase
In a game, you learn by doing, not by studying endless tutorials or observing gameplay.
You can study tutorials, of course, but if you haven't even started the game then it is not learning, it is entertainment.
When you watch a tutorial after playing the game, you can spot strategies and tactics to experiment with the next time you play.
Start playing the game.
Don't worry if you aren't absolutely confident in whether it's what you want to do for the rest of your life because you figure out what you want to do by error correcting. You can't correct an error that doesn't exist.
Once you are playing (and only once you are playing) supplement your mind with education on two things:
- The fundamentals – most success is not getting distracted from these.
- Specific solutions – an intentional search for an answer once you can't make progress by your own knowledge or intuition.
The main priority tasks for your day should be learning and building for 1-2 hours at a time. These do not happen in isolation.
For those who haven't made AI a part of their life yet, this is arguably the best use case for it: to get unstuck.
If I'm creating something in Photoshop and get stuck, I can simply ask AI to teach me how to do the next step.
If I don't know why I'm stuck, I can give AI everything about the situation and ask it to identify my blindspots.
3) Stay at the edge of the unknown
In some video games, you have a mini-map.
The map is dark in places you haven't explored and visible in places you have.
This indirectly represents two things in the game: your experience and skill level.
Usually, the dark places have higher level monsters, quests, and challenges. If you were to somehow get to them as a low level, you would either be killed immediately or would spend your time outrunning people. That isn't fun.
On the flip side, if you never explore the dark places, you get bored. Again, not fun. You've done everything already. You can kill monsters with ease and don't have any more quests to do.
In reality, you get anxious when you don't know how to take on a task, or you get bored when you keep doing the same tasks.
To stay in the range of optimal experience (enjoying your life), you need to consistently cultivate your skill set and take on higher challenges.
That's where the meaningful flow of information is maximized.
That's where you feel as if you are always learning something new.
That's where your life becomes an enjoyable blur of progress – a spiritual state of clear perception where things "just feel right." The golden days.
This is also why a 9-5 job is a great stepping stone, but is often a death sentence. You learn and progress until you're stuck doing the same thing over and over again. That's not a meaningful way to live. It psychologically castrates you and bleeds into all areas of your life.
It is difficult to give advice for what to do here, but if I could suggest something:
Every week or month, slightly increase the challenge of what you do.
This does not mean adding more work.
It means treating what you do like lifting weights in the gym.
You don't jump up by 50 pounds. The most developed lifters know that adding the smallest 2.5 pound plate every one to two weeks is how they see the most progress and stay addicted.
I hope this letter was helpful.
Let me know if it was.
– Dan