you need to be extreme if you want your life to change

disappear for 3-6 months and focus on 4 habits

I remember my birthday weekend of 2021 vividly.

My business was starting to do very well. I was at the tail end of cutting down weight (after gaining 20-30 pounds during COVID). I was in the middle of the first draft of my first book.

Leading up to my birthday, it felt like every weekend there was an event that I "couldn't miss."

Concerts. Hangouts with friends. That kind of stuff. Normal life.

And I was making great progress, taking a little break wouldn't hurt.

So I went out. I drank. Stayed up late. Went off my diet. And as you'd guess, everything I had made progress on didn't only stall, it went downhill fast (thanks entropy).

It would take about 4-5 days for my mental and physical energy levels to recover. And by that time, there was another event to attend. I couldn't think straight for my book or business, and the fitness habits became more difficult to maintain.

It was painful, but that pain wasn't excruciating just yet.

For months prior, my friend group and I had plans to go to Seattle for my birthday.

I was already tired of not making progress, but it was my birthday. Why wouldn't I let loose and have a little fun? It seemed like I found a way to justify each poor decision I made once I was put in the environment to do so.

After a weekend of waking up late, making zero progress on anything, and being away from home, I was done.

I was so fucking mad at myself.

Because when you have goals that are the most important thing in your world, they shine a light on everything you're doing wrong. The most painful thing in the world is watching those goals fade into the background as they're replaced by goals of shallow pleasure.

The second I got back home, I disappeared.

I responded to no one. I became unavailable. Every invitation in any form was an automatic no. Every single action I took felt seamless. I wanted to be disciplined. It gave me joy. My mind returned. My body returned. My life returned.

My entire world changed in an instant.

But why?

1) Being extreme changes your brain

"Neurons that fire together, wire together."

That's Hebb's Law, a famous saying that summarizes a neuropsychological theory related to neuroplasticity.

Neuroplasticity, as you may know, is your brain's ability to rewire itself by forming new neural connections throughout life. Your brain isn't fixed and rigid. It's a dynamic network that can adapt, learn, and change based on your experiences, thoughts, and actions.

Being extreme about changing your life helps quicken this process.

People scream about how "consistency is key," which is true due to repetition reinforcing neural pathways through consistent effort, but we can take it a step further.

Novelty and challenge stimulate neuroplasticity even more.

So, when you flip the switch and pursue a goal with all your might, you put your brain in an environment that quickly adapts and helps that become your new standard.

2) Intensity and obsession create a neurochemical cocktail

Most people fall into a rut because they seek extrinsic motivators.

But when you're obsessed in the context of this discussion, you are fueled by intrinsic motivators.

Each of which stack onto and strengthen each other in a way that sustains some degree of flow (optimal experience, or one of the most enjoyable states of mind):

• Curiosity – The desire to explore the unknown, learn how to change, and fill knowledge gaps. Results in good dopamine from novelty and norepinephrine, which heightens attention, preparing you to learn.

• Passion – An intense enthusiasm is built for the path that allows you to change your life. Results in more good dopamine and norepinephrine.

• Purpose – The feeling that your actions contribute to something larger than yourself. Achieving goals results in more dopamine which reinforces behavior. Serotonin stems from significance and belonging. Oxytocin stems from connection.

• Autonomy – The desire to direct your own life and work. To control your choices, actions, and environment. Results in yet again more dopamine and a reduction in cortisol (the stress from feeling put in a box), allowing for creative decision making.

• Mastery – The process of learning and growing is its own reward. Results in sustainable good dopamine that keeps you in the game.

You will understand how all of these come into play when we talk about how to spend the next 6 months when you have the undeniable desire to change.

3) Your mind filters reality based on what you are obsessed with

The man who conceives himself to be a "failure-type person" will find some way to fail, in spite of all his good intentions, or his willpower, even if opportunity is literally dumped in his lap. The person who conceives himself to be a victim of injustice, one "who was meant to suffer," will invariably find circumstances to verify his opinions.

– Maxwell Maltz

Our mind is wired for survival.

But the interesting thing about being human is that we don't only try to protect and reproduce the information in our DNA like animals, we attempt to protect and reproduce the information in our consciousness.

That is, we feel threatened when our body, or our identity, is threatened.

On the negative end, we notice information that reinforces our beliefs and worldview, often leading to us lashing out at those who question our religious or political beliefs. Our identity feels threatened, and the brain's stress response sends that signal, so we feel the need to "survive."

On the positive end, when you are identified with the goal you are obsessed with, you notice opportunities in your environment to reinforce that higher version you are becoming. Since your identity is higher, it attempts to survive at that level, leading to you collecting knowledge and taking action to do so.

Since our ancestors lived in a scarce environment, when they noticed something that helped them sustain their survival, like berries on a bush or wood for fire, dopamine would spurt into their brain and heighten their attention.

If we look to cybernetics and apply that to the psyche (the mind / soul), we can see that our mind has some form of homing mechanism toward our goals. Our mind accepts information that helps it and rejects information that doesn't. You are steered toward your goals without much effort.

In summary, if you are obsessed with a goal, the universe will conspire in your favor by giving you the resources to achieve it.

Evolution Creates Order From Disorder

The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that all natural processes move towards a state of greater disorder with time.

In other words, entropy increases with time, and entropy is the measure of messiness, disorder, or randomness in a system.

This has led to the concepts of "the arrow of time," irreversibility, and determinism.

That time is irreversible and heading toward increasing entropy.

However, that's not the full picture. The universe isn't heading toward a dead end where the world ends in fire. Quite the opposite actually.

In his book, The End of Uncertainty, Ilya Prigogine makes the argument that this "arrow of time" is not just an illusion, but a fundamental feature of reality itself. When a system is pushed far enough away from equilibrium, it can become unstable.

Here's the key point: This instability can lead to a spontaneous emergence of new, complex, ordered patterns called "dissipative structures."

Think of a large amount of water flowing out of a faucet. As it goes down the drain, it reaches a point of becoming a beautiful whirlpool. That is order from chaos.

For the nerds out there, let's take this a bit deeper.

I enjoy mapping big picture patterns with practical applications because they tend to be as close to truth as you can theoretically find without getting locked into some method or paradigm.

When we think about the universe in a general way, we can see that it is composed of whole-parts.

Not just parts. Not just wholes. Whole-parts. Every thing is both a whole in itself and a part of another whole. All the way up and all the way down.

An atom is a whole and a part of a molecule.

A molecule is a whole and a part of a cell.

A cell a part of an organism.

An organism a part of an environment.

Letter → word → sentence → paragraph

Matter → life → mind → soul → spirit

Foraging → horticultural → agrarian → industrial → informational societies

Infinite nested hierarchies with infinite interconnected linking.

Pick literally anything you can see, hear, touch, taste, smell, or think and you will realize this.

Now, these whole-parts have various tenets which describe their characteristics and behavior, like their fundamental capacities for agency (self-preservation), communion (self-adaptation), self-transcendence, and self-dissolution. If you want to learn more about the tenets I would recommend reading A Brief History of Everything by Ken Wilber. It's one of my favorite books along with Integral Psychology which is blowing my mind right now.

There's one characteristic of these whole-parts I want to focus on which ties into Prigogine's argument:

Evolution creates order from chaos.

As matter progressed, life emerged. As life progressed, mind emerged.

As anything becomes more developed or complex, a new whole emerges with the structure that contains the complex parts.

Bare with me as I attempt to tie this all together.

When you take the concept of entropy and apply in to the psyche, you get psychic entropy.

In other words, the mind tends toward disorder, randomness, chaos, etc.

In your personal life, when you reach the point of feeling lost, or like your life is falling into chaos, you are presented with an opportunity for a higher version of yourself to emerge.

As illustrated in my story of getting fed up with my lack of progress on my birthday, you need to reach the crossroads of dissonance and insight.

Once you get enough of a taste of where you are, you will begin to feel like you're being ripped in half.

One lower part of you wants to stay the same.

One higher part of you wants to change.

As you lean toward the higher, you are met by insight.

The tipping point that pushes you into the extreme.

Disappear For 3-6 Months & Focus On 4 Habits

New knowledge comes when you simply bear in mind what you need to know. Keep holding the problem in mind, and it will yield. The history of human beings is certainly a testament to that fact. An individual runs into a problem, and simply obsesses about that problem until he or she solves it… It might take a week, a month, a year, a decade, a century, or a millennium, but the Kosmos appears to be such that solutions are always forthcoming.

– Ken Wilber

Monk mode.

I'm sure you're familiar with it.

It's a concept often talked about in the self-improvement space for more than a decade now, but recently it's become a bastardized version of its former self due to its normalization. Everyone has talked about it, and since everyone knows about it, it's often reduced to the shallow definition of "cut everyone off and make more money."

We're not going to do that.

In fact, we're not even going to follow what the original meaning of monk mode is.

When the horse-drawn plow was invented, free men didn't have to spend as much time hunting for food as there was an abundance of it. This allowed them (for the first time in history) to pursue specialized interests such as writing, mathematics, empire building, and for our discussion, contemplation – to ponder their own existence.

People soon began to realize that the divine wasn't "out there" or "up there" with the mythic gods, it was "in here." Soon after came the Axial period where revolutionary spiritual and philosophical ideas emerged across multiple civilizations. Socrates in Ancient Greece, Gautama Buddha in India, Lao Tzu in China.

This breakthrough in spirituality specifically was "purely Ascending."

Ascending spirituality, or asceticism, is a view that pins the manifest world as evil. Since the kingdom of Heaven is "in here" and not "out there," money, sex, food, and pleasure were demonized.

True monk mode is just this. A period dedicated to the ascending path and self-realization.

The thing is, most non-dogmatic individuals realize that spirituality is only one piece of the puzzle. It's very important, but reducing the solution to all of your problems to contemplation is just as bad as reducing the same to atoms, money, or just parts.

Instead, we're going to disappear for a period of intensity toward a better life.

A period where you obsess over a problem until it's solved. And in this case, our problem is that we want to change the entirety of our life.

We need a holistic monk mode, if you will.

This comes in two parts: defense and offense.

Defense – Removing Distractions

Focus does not only apply to work.

Distractions are not only notifications that pull you away from work.

The entire point of "disappearing" is to create a glitch in the matrix. To change your identity overnight. To rid yourself of the crabs and parasites that pull you down and drain you of the energy that must be dedicated to the choices that create a better future.

For the sake of being extreme, it's easier to change everything at once than it is to change one thing at a time.

Rip the band-aid off.

Stop responding to people who only take and never give.

Any invitation that pulls you away from your goals should be an automatic and firm "no."

Every bad habit that does not serve you stops tomorrow, no exceptions.

It is an incredible feeling to choose your own limitations.

To be free of that which splits your focus from the highest good you can do.

Menial distractions – like thoughts, worries, hunger, or work related visual clutter – will be solved in the next steps and as you commit to the path. A sign of pure commitment is that distractions don't even have a chance to register in your attention.

Offense – 4 Focus Habits

A good life stems from the pursuit of the good, the true, and the beautiful.

The pursuit of truth.

The good is intersubjective truth, what is good for humanity or community – doing what's right.

The true is objective truth, found in scientific study (science derives data, data is experience, experience is physical, mental, and spiritual) – learning and understanding how things really are. A process.

The beautiful is subjective truth, the realm of aesthetics – noticing and creating beauty around you.

When we apply this pursuit to our own personal life rather than social change or some other systemic problem, our attention is turned toward our daily habits.

There are many variations of habits you can adopt that check these boxes, but I want to provide a clear and simple suggestion.

Here's what you're going to disappear and do every day for the next 6 months.

One project.

One book.

One meditation.

One workout.

1) One project

Work is a necessary part of life that brings contrast to rest and leisure.

But most people work at jobs they hate, thus they throw the baby out with the bath water hoping that they will never have to work again. This is a delusion. You will not be happy in a state of perpetual vacation and rest. On top of that, the average person's view of rest is self-destruction in the form of pleasure to numb the pain of a life working toward the goals others assigned to you.

Choose one project that acts as a building block for the life you want to live.

This can be anything.

A creative project that leads to independent work.

A portfolio project that leads to a change in career.

Most of the time, and considering the state of AI, I recommend at least trying entrepreneurship in some form, as you cannot be replaced if you are the adaptive high-agency individual who dodges the replacing.

Because you are attempting to bring the good, the true, and the beautiful into your work. You can't control that when someone assigns you the work.

Your work, and the project that moves you toward that work, is a representation of the good. Entrepreneurship is the art of solving problems in other people’s lives. It is how you contribute to a small community of people by fulfilling a role that improves their lives. If you can bake in the true by building solutions based on direct experience and the beautiful by expressing the depths of your personality, you're on the right path.

One hour of deep work a day on a project that can change your professional life.

Put it on your calendar.

Work that doesn’t feel like work is the intersection of what the world needs (the good), what you have experience with (the true), and what you deeply care about (the beautiful).

Work, when done right, is synonymous with life.

It is the central pillar of everything else you do.

2) One book

You're bound to finish one book long before the 6 months.

You can read more, but saying "2 books" would take away from the fun of making everything start with "one."

If you want to change your life, you need the knowledge to do so.

You need education that schools can't, or didn't, provide.

You need to immerse your mind in the thoughts of those who have lived the life you want to live.

This is simple enough.

One book.

30 minutes a day.

Learning something new just because you're curious is a prime representation of the true.

And, as you'll find, the simple act of exploration brings novel ideas which lead to progress.

3) One meditation

Work can be beautiful and spiritual, but it is not a full replacement for a habit that maintains your connection with reality.

By meditation, I do not mean sitting in a dark room and letting thoughts pass, although that is one incredibly viable route.

Meditation, for all I'm concerned, is a way of life.

A way of perceiving the world through a lens of wonder and gratitude, noticing the amazing things all around you that tend to be glanced over when we are stressed and narrow minded.

The purpose of meditation in this sense is to notice depth.

To escape the trap of shallow living.

For at least 10 minutes a day, attempt to notice reality in detail through your senses.

Go on a walk and only focus on the feeling of your feet on the ground.

Stare at a tree and notice the intricate detail that you've never noticed before.

Listen deeply when having a conversation with a loved one. Don't just notice words. Notice tone, expression, everything.

Stare at your hand for 10 minutes straight (yes, I'm serious) and let your mind wander deeper into the detail.

Feel the water on your hands while doing dishes. Feel everything you touch for once in your life. Listen to the sound of silence or cars in the distance. Pick apart the intricate smell of even the most boring food.

Don't overcomplicate this.

4) One workout

No man has the right to be an amateur in the matter of physical training. It is a shame for a man to grow old without seeing the beauty and strength of which his body is capable.

– Socrates

Back to the topic of reality being composed of whole-parts:

One other major tenet is that the destruction of the lower is self-destructive for the higher.

If we destroy Earth, humans are destroyed with it.

If a cancer cell invades the organism, it becomes sick.

If you remove a sentence from a paragraph, it tends to lose its sense.

You live in your body.

It should be considered your full time job to learn about it, train it, and treat it with respect, because anything else is literal suicide.

Not only that, but a lack of health shoots its impact upward into the creative ability of your mind, the quality of your work, and the depth of connections in your relationships. It's all connected.

Commit to one workout.

Whatever you feel most pulled to do.

Find a running program, weight lifting program, pilates routine, whatever it may be.

The point is to pay mind to the body that allows you to be here every single day.

4 simple habits can radically change your life.

4 simple habits can align you with the good, the true, the beautiful.

4 simple habits can lead to higher states of enjoyment through curiosity, passion, purpose, autonomy, and mastery.

Get sick of being sick.

Give yourself permission to be extreme.

Disappear, and come back unrecognizable.

– Dan

On June 16th, the build a profitable personal brand in 30 days challenge starts.

If you want to learn about the path of modern entrepreneurship, turn your interests into the foundation of a fulfilling business, and have a guided project to work on for 30-60 minutes for the next 30 days, consider enrolling here.

If you're not ready yet, consider reading last weeks letter on personal branding to see why it changed my life.