Output - My Story

tags:: #output/tweet
up:: Become a Modern Master

Key Points

Brain Dump

You know what sucks about having a good job, being healthy and highly intelligent?
It doesn’t make you happy.

I’m incredibly grateful to be able today that now, I’m deeply happy with life (most of the time).

I feel worthy.
I’m energized to do great things.
I know I’ll attract great relationships.

It wasn’t always this way.

I’m still young but have come a long way.

Here’s some background on my journey. Read as little or as much as you want.

This is deeply personal stuff.

I was bullied as a child and struggled with feeling not worthy—unless I could help the people around me.

This was great because it pushed me to learn and teach. It made me a very accepting, forgiving and useful person.

My work has always been appreciated by my employers.

But I never learned to:

Whenever someone would ask my opinion, that “opinion” would mostly be informed by what I thought they would like.

I did things for others but I was so unaware of myself that I didn’t even know when it was against my true desires.

Learning to be disciplined is great, but you’ve got to consciously make this tradeoff between “I don’t want to do this right now” and “it’s required so I can reach the next level I desire.” I didn’t know if I wanted to do it right now, and I didn’t dare design my “next level.”

My relationships suffered from this. Friends never got to see my full personality—so how could they become friends with someone who doesn’t seem to have a full personality? In romantic relationships I couldn’t design a path forward and go get it, because I would defer to her. I lost creativity because I didn’t try, and we ended up just going through life as it came up to us.

I started learning. Devouring anything I could get my hands on.

Before age 18 I new about the importance of a healthy body and exercise, why Facebook is so bad for you, best practices for healthy relationships, how to become smarter, intermittent fasting, the power of gratitude and meditation, making it as an entrepreneur, eye contact, becoming a better man, building habits from small actions, GTD, flow states, minimalism,…

It’s been a long process. The notes I took back then are still inspiring. I can see how some of them are now actually a part of who I am. Others are things I still struggle with.

Reading by itself doesn’t get you anywhere—you’ve got to do the work. In fact you have to embody the work: it has to become a part of you.

But reading, hearing or seeing the right things in the right way can give you the click that you need to start going.

Keep devouring, but also implement as much as you can.

At some point this stuff becomes natural. Piece by piece.

I’m not going to pretend I’ve made it.
I’m not perfect, by far.
Neither are you—but we’re both good enough.

But I’ve learned. I always wanted to:

I’ve been blessed and cursed with an extremely high IQ, somewhere between 140 and 150.

Remembering things is easy. Finding connections across disparate subjects is easy.

I also had to learn to be patient when I knew the solution to a problem an hour before others could.

This pushed me towards a more solitary lifestyle, because only that way could I keep it intellectually challenging and move at my speed of thought.

Being extroverted didn’t help.

I always thought I was pretty bad at making friends. Sure, some people liked me, but it seemed like we didn’t go do much together. Small talk didn’t interest me—I wanted to make stuff together or have deep conversations.

Going to Mindvalley University completely changed that for me. Suddenly I got complimented on how deeply connected people felt to me. I made friends who are all into personal development, growing as a person, cheering each other on, challenging each other and seeing each other often.

So all the work over the years paid off? Learning body language, trying little challenges that made me feel and appear more confident, meditating for years and years, knowing how to return to my kindness and gratitude.

Remember you’re making progress right now. Tell yourself you still believe in yourself. You might not realize it, but slowly you’re changing the way your brain is wired.

For me, being “gifted” came with a constant worry that I’m not doing enough for this world. That there’s more potential in me and I’m doing everyone around me a disservice because I’m not growing fast enough, not giving enough, not being enough.

It’s hard to accept compliments when you feel like you could be giving more.

I still struggle with acknowledging what I’ve achieved.

It has led me far but robbed me from awareness.

It also held me back.
Feeling like you’re not being or doing enough steals confidence.
Stops you from asking. For a favor, for a raise, for help.

I felt like shrinking while all I wanted was to flourish.

Over time I realized that I’m a pretty good person (look at all the effort I put out to be one), so I gave myself permission to start learning to love myself.

Learning to love yourself for who you are is a process.

Write kind words to yourself and read them every day. Try to really feel them.

Ask yourself the right guiding questions to help you realize your good side.

Go to personal development events because that’s where others are who see the beauty inside of you.

Flourishing requires three things for me:

Without awareness you have no chance of listening to yourself. We constantly fill our brains with more while all we want is quiet and peace.

Intuition is an odd thing. I was afraid I’d never get in touch with it, but all that really matters is asking it things and listening to it. You have to—regularly, consciously—stop and try to feel what’s coming from inside of you. It’s always there, trying to get to you, but most of us never get to a quiet place and try to feel for it.

Once you believe you have intuition and you listen to it, the puzzle pieces just start finding their place.

You trust what you’re doing, which gives a deep, immense confidence.

Saying “no” becomes easier,
asking for help becomes easier,
accepting your limits becomes easier.

Constant growth is a requirement for me. I always want to learn something new, try something new, talk with someone interesting—anything.

I used to be hungry and foolish, but too hungry.

I had to learn to accept my “slow” progress by realizing that:

Knowing this hunger for more will never go away allowed me to release the fear of not doing enough.

I trust that I’ll try.

And if I’m always trying, I’ll always move as quickly as I can.

For the longest time I didn’t feel like a true man. I wanted to be one. I wanted to get the girls and feel this amazing masculine energy.

At the same time I kept hearing stories from female friends about guys who crossed their boundaries and made them do things they didn’t like.

I will never be that guy.
But together with my other insecurities, this prevented me from taking initiative at all.

I wouldn’t dare approach or get close to a girl out of fear for rejection or worse, her appearing to allow it but afterwards regretting it and me becoming that guy.

That’s what led me to studying pick-up, body language, seduction, red pill.

I wouldn’t say I overcame this, but this realization got me far:

I’m honestly very good at reading people. In group I tend to be the first one to notice something’s off, and I can make it explicit and talk about it.

I’m extremely respectful of others.

So knowing that, the chances of me crossing a girl’s boundaries is close to zero.

The process now is returning to my intuition to know when to take the next step in seduction. I blocked it off so hard before.