I’ve been following your work as a subscriber, and I’d like to share some honest feedback. I write this with respect, but also with the intention of being direct, because while your writing is engaging, I also find it deeply problematic.
What strikes me most is the number of logical and rhetorical flaws in your discourse. You present your framework as a path to higher consciousness, but in reality it reads more like a marketing strategy wrapped in pop philosophy.
You’re not a psychologist or a behavioral scientist. You’re, first and foremost, an expert in marketing — and it shows. You’re very good at selling a narrative of transformation, but there is little scientific rigor behind it. You oversimplify extremely complex processes — identity, survival, change — into catchy formulas. That’s not pedagogy, that’s reductionism. You rely on strong metaphors (“the house that rots,” “error as a compass”), which are rhetorically effective, but they don’t reflect a deep or accurate understanding of how the human mind actually works.
Another major issue is that you completely ignore structural factors that shape people’s lives. Your message seems directed at a very specific audience: privileged white men, who don’t have to deal with systemic racism, gender violence, or poverty. For them, your method works as an ego booster — telling them the only thing missing is optimization and self-reprogramming. But for people who live with real, material inequalities, this narrative is insulting, because it erases their reality. In fact, it ends up reproducing those very structures, by blaming the individual for their pain instead of questioning the systems that create it.
Your emphasis on hyper-optimization is also troubling. Life is not meant to be a continuous performance laboratory. Turning every mistake, every decision, every experience into material for “hacks” creates a toxic mindset of endless self-blame and insufficiency.
And finally, your claim that “transcending ideology” is the path to freedom is, frankly, misleading. Lack of ideology is not consciousness — it is often unconsciousness. And it is contradictory to denounce ideology while promoting what is, in fact, a very clear ideology: extreme neoliberalism. Radical individualism, the idea that success or failure depends entirely on the subject, the erasure of social conditions, and the promise of salvation through optimization — these are not neutral ideas. They are an ideology of their own.
So what at first looked like an inspiring framework ends up being, in my view, a machine to reproduce neoliberal logic under the guise of spirituality and self-development. That is not only disappointing, but potentially harmful.
I don’t write this to “win an argument,” but to dispel an illusion. Because your style is seductive, but what many people need is not more limitless optimization — it’s a sense of collective responsibility, critical awareness, and a way of living that is not measured only in terms of performance.
That's not it... You don't get it yet. Though I'd like to see how Dan would dispel it. You're right that denouncing ideology is ideology, but that's obvious and what value does this truism offer? I can counter that I see the message as "don't even treat my (the Dan's) ideology as the one and only". What is left for those who live with material inequalities though? Their future is only in their hands, sad as it may be. If you genuinely worry about the poor, help them. It may as well be your goal, then.
Thanks again for the thoughtful engagement. I want to add one more point, and be even more direct about what worries me in Dan’s rhetoric. I don’t think Dan needs to “relax” — I think he needs to come down to earth. Walk a little in the real world outside the glass-walled office.
Pleasure is often a privilege. Not everyone can “optimize” themselves into comfort because survival is immediate: people need to eat, to pay rent, to manage trauma. Some people keep working despite PTSD. Some are excluded from work because of race, nationality, gender identity, or other structural barriers. Telling them “create your own way of living” or implying they simply haven’t evolved enough to understand your blueprint is elitist and ultimately sectarian.
When the answer to hardship becomes: “you didn’t do the inner work” or “you haven’t reached my level of consciousness,” what you get is not compassion but dismissal. That dismissal protects a worldview where responsibility is individual and systemic causes disappear. It becomes a way to avoid collective responsibility — to pretend that structural injustice can be solved by better habits alone. That is dangerous and, frankly, insulting.
If you tell someone with severe disability or chronic exclusion that they should just “build their own life” as if that were a neutral or universally available option, you aren’t helping — you are gaslighting. You are making their reality a moral failure. You are saying: if you suffer, it is because you failed to optimize. That is not empathy; it is neoliberal vanity dressed as spiritual guidance.
So yes: Dan’s ideas may function as an “opener” for some. But please let’s be honest about who those “some” are, and about the cost of sweeping structural realities under a rug of inspirational rhetoric. If we are serious about expanding consciousness, it must include political and collective responsibility, not only individualized performance hacks. Otherwise we are simply polishing the surface of privilege and calling it awakening.
Classic Stage Green. Those who know what I mean will get what I am saying. I don't care to debate in a Substack comment section. That amounts to just as much change as your comment did.
I just want to say this: to help others, you first need to help yourself. If you take a step back and think about everyone in the world, you'll see it's impossible to connect with everyone at every level and be fully understood. There was a time when I didn't vibe with Dan at all, but I chose not to listen to or read him. People should focus on what helps them grow and follow that path. Everyone is free to create what they think will help others, including you. You can start your own journey of helping those you think need your help. Those facing such challenges are waiting for people who understand them! Honestly, we all have some emotional, mental, or physical struggles. It's up to us to seek help, even if we think others should reach out first.
So what if it helps privileged white men? It does not harm anyone else. He is not asking to worship a continuous performance laboratory, just how to make one to use as a tool whenever convenient, and to be put away when not needed. He probably did not intended to insulting those suffering from inequalities
Very interesting and robust perspective, Ouroboros.
I do feel that Dan’s work touches people differently depending on where they are in their cycle. If you haven’t done the work, this might read like an opener and an idea that’s less scary. 6 months is something someone can commit to. If you have done the work, we know it’s not possible to move this quickly and I think of it like an interesting perspective piece.
It becomes just an interesting narrative and idea to help awaken more people.
I’m not sure anything Dan recommends is expected to be more than an opener.
Initially I was inspired by Dan’s energy and ‘insight’ yet I fear no matter how much his hyper-optimisation might lead to ‘success’ it will almost always be never enough to actually enjoy the life we have.
I’d recommend Dan relax a little.
For an alternate take on living, and seeing life for what it really is, he could read Jikisai Minami’s ‘It's Okay Not to Look for the Meaning of Life: A Zen Monk's Guide to Living Stress-Free One Day at a Time’.
In the grand tapestry of human aspiration, Dan Koe's missive on metamorphosis over a mere six moons beckons like a siren's call, promising transcendence through disciplined mastery and the shedding of survival-bound identities. Yet, herein lies a profound irony, one that echoes the stoic musings of Epictetus on the chains of perception: Koe himself posits that a staggering 80 to 90 percent - nay, even 99 percent by the tender age of 25 - are ensnared in mediocrity's web, perceiving but a sliver of reality and operating at consciousness levels too lowly to shatter their autopilot existence.
If such multitudes are indeed condemned to this inertial fate, resistant to the very pain of change that Koe prescribes as necessary, then his eloquent blueprint for reinvention becomes a gilded key dangled before locked souls who, by his own decree, lack the hands to grasp it. What, then, is the purpose of this proclamation if not a cruel tease, illuminating paths for an elite few while consigning the vast chorus of readers to the shadows of their unyielding selves?
Philosophically, this paradox invites a Socratic scrutiny of agency and elitism, reminiscent of Nietzsche's übermensch ideal, where only the resolute few ascend beyond the herd's complacency. Koe's framework, while cloaked in motivational fervor, subtly reinforces a deterministic despair: if the majority are biologically and psychologically wired for stagnation, as his survival strategies suggest, then exhortations to "master anything, fast" ring hollow, fostering not empowerment but a quiet resignation.
In this light, the true mastery may lie not in rapid transformation, but in humbly acknowledging the shared human frailty - perhaps urging a collective awakening rather than a solitary sprint toward enlightenment, lest the message dissolve into an echo chamber for the already evolved, leaving the rest to ponder their immutable lot in life's indifferent arena.
Dan you’re the fucking man!…I’ve been eating up your content: newsletters and YouTube, for some years now…your insight and perspective is UPPER ECHELON brother!…
What I find powerful here is the reminder that survival isn’t just physical it shapes our ideas, identities, even the frameworks we defend like life itself. You describe it well: our egos protect beliefs the same way a body protects breath.
But I pause at the promise of “mastery in six months.” Can we really reprogram something as deep as survival on a timeline? In hospitals, in high-class-hotel-kitchens, I’ve seen how stubborn those patterns are. People don’t just swap survival strategies like apps on a phone. Often, they cling to them until collapse forces change.
So maybe the real challenge isn’t speed, but honesty. What are we willing to let die so that something new can live? Because without that, mastery is just another costume over the same old fear.
And if survival really is the root of all human behavior then isn’t the obsession with “hacking it” just another way of proving we’re still afraid to face death? ;)
Superb article. Psycho Cybernetics is a wonderful book that touches on many of these ideas. You can 'idea-branch' certain books and re-read them yearly to emphasize similar frameworks.
Atomic Habits + The Courage To Be Disliked + Psycho Cybernetics are kind of thematically similar to reinforce similar ideas, from different angles.
Building trust in oneself is always more sustainable than having faith in oneself. But that takes time and effort people are often not willing to invest.
The ego—our non-physical identity—functions with a singular obsession: preserving the status quo. It doesn’t care if your current state is painful or limiting; it only cares that it continues. To the ego, change feels like death. That’s why the moment you attempt something new, resistance appears in the form of procrastination, doubt, rationalization, or clinging to affiliations and labels.
This is why most people remain trapped in cycles of sameness. The ego interprets growth not as progress but as threat, and it deploys every defense mechanism it can to maintain life as it is. To transcend that resistance, you have to see it clearly: your ego isn’t protecting you, it’s protecting itself.
We sleep on delayed gratification but it teaches a lot. Celebrating the small wins is cool but building on it and working towards bigger goals helps you to obtain skills you didn’t think of achieving. 🔑
Loved this perspective , being awakened isn't fun but it takes so much time and thinking with awareness.
It's tough but it's worth it
Where it's a big word
Like being enlighten or attain something beyond the senses.
Facing your own conditioning while figuring things out that's a different level of dealing with overwhelming programming we've been getting it without an after thought.
It will take real courage for someone to look within.
“Mass regression during stress: When people face stressful events (via a one of catastrophe or cyclical events like elections or tax season), they regress to lower levels of consciousness, becoming reactive and resorting to black-and-white thinking and ideological attachment.”
Hi Dan,
I’ve been following your work as a subscriber, and I’d like to share some honest feedback. I write this with respect, but also with the intention of being direct, because while your writing is engaging, I also find it deeply problematic.
What strikes me most is the number of logical and rhetorical flaws in your discourse. You present your framework as a path to higher consciousness, but in reality it reads more like a marketing strategy wrapped in pop philosophy.
You’re not a psychologist or a behavioral scientist. You’re, first and foremost, an expert in marketing — and it shows. You’re very good at selling a narrative of transformation, but there is little scientific rigor behind it. You oversimplify extremely complex processes — identity, survival, change — into catchy formulas. That’s not pedagogy, that’s reductionism. You rely on strong metaphors (“the house that rots,” “error as a compass”), which are rhetorically effective, but they don’t reflect a deep or accurate understanding of how the human mind actually works.
Another major issue is that you completely ignore structural factors that shape people’s lives. Your message seems directed at a very specific audience: privileged white men, who don’t have to deal with systemic racism, gender violence, or poverty. For them, your method works as an ego booster — telling them the only thing missing is optimization and self-reprogramming. But for people who live with real, material inequalities, this narrative is insulting, because it erases their reality. In fact, it ends up reproducing those very structures, by blaming the individual for their pain instead of questioning the systems that create it.
Your emphasis on hyper-optimization is also troubling. Life is not meant to be a continuous performance laboratory. Turning every mistake, every decision, every experience into material for “hacks” creates a toxic mindset of endless self-blame and insufficiency.
And finally, your claim that “transcending ideology” is the path to freedom is, frankly, misleading. Lack of ideology is not consciousness — it is often unconsciousness. And it is contradictory to denounce ideology while promoting what is, in fact, a very clear ideology: extreme neoliberalism. Radical individualism, the idea that success or failure depends entirely on the subject, the erasure of social conditions, and the promise of salvation through optimization — these are not neutral ideas. They are an ideology of their own.
So what at first looked like an inspiring framework ends up being, in my view, a machine to reproduce neoliberal logic under the guise of spirituality and self-development. That is not only disappointing, but potentially harmful.
I don’t write this to “win an argument,” but to dispel an illusion. Because your style is seductive, but what many people need is not more limitless optimization — it’s a sense of collective responsibility, critical awareness, and a way of living that is not measured only in terms of performance.
Yeah but your not going to change "structural inequalities". You can only change yourself.
I mean, don't you see that this is just a blueprint. Plug in your own values and goals. Create your own way of living.
That's not it... You don't get it yet. Though I'd like to see how Dan would dispel it. You're right that denouncing ideology is ideology, but that's obvious and what value does this truism offer? I can counter that I see the message as "don't even treat my (the Dan's) ideology as the one and only". What is left for those who live with material inequalities though? Their future is only in their hands, sad as it may be. If you genuinely worry about the poor, help them. It may as well be your goal, then.
Hi all,
Thanks again for the thoughtful engagement. I want to add one more point, and be even more direct about what worries me in Dan’s rhetoric. I don’t think Dan needs to “relax” — I think he needs to come down to earth. Walk a little in the real world outside the glass-walled office.
Pleasure is often a privilege. Not everyone can “optimize” themselves into comfort because survival is immediate: people need to eat, to pay rent, to manage trauma. Some people keep working despite PTSD. Some are excluded from work because of race, nationality, gender identity, or other structural barriers. Telling them “create your own way of living” or implying they simply haven’t evolved enough to understand your blueprint is elitist and ultimately sectarian.
When the answer to hardship becomes: “you didn’t do the inner work” or “you haven’t reached my level of consciousness,” what you get is not compassion but dismissal. That dismissal protects a worldview where responsibility is individual and systemic causes disappear. It becomes a way to avoid collective responsibility — to pretend that structural injustice can be solved by better habits alone. That is dangerous and, frankly, insulting.
If you tell someone with severe disability or chronic exclusion that they should just “build their own life” as if that were a neutral or universally available option, you aren’t helping — you are gaslighting. You are making their reality a moral failure. You are saying: if you suffer, it is because you failed to optimize. That is not empathy; it is neoliberal vanity dressed as spiritual guidance.
So yes: Dan’s ideas may function as an “opener” for some. But please let’s be honest about who those “some” are, and about the cost of sweeping structural realities under a rug of inspirational rhetoric. If we are serious about expanding consciousness, it must include political and collective responsibility, not only individualized performance hacks. Otherwise we are simply polishing the surface of privilege and calling it awakening.
Classic Stage Green. Those who know what I mean will get what I am saying. I don't care to debate in a Substack comment section. That amounts to just as much change as your comment did.
I just want to say this: to help others, you first need to help yourself. If you take a step back and think about everyone in the world, you'll see it's impossible to connect with everyone at every level and be fully understood. There was a time when I didn't vibe with Dan at all, but I chose not to listen to or read him. People should focus on what helps them grow and follow that path. Everyone is free to create what they think will help others, including you. You can start your own journey of helping those you think need your help. Those facing such challenges are waiting for people who understand them! Honestly, we all have some emotional, mental, or physical struggles. It's up to us to seek help, even if we think others should reach out first.
So what if it helps privileged white men? It does not harm anyone else. He is not asking to worship a continuous performance laboratory, just how to make one to use as a tool whenever convenient, and to be put away when not needed. He probably did not intended to insulting those suffering from inequalities
Oh I just the em dash.. your a slop merchant.
Noticed it too
Very interesting and robust perspective, Ouroboros.
I do feel that Dan’s work touches people differently depending on where they are in their cycle. If you haven’t done the work, this might read like an opener and an idea that’s less scary. 6 months is something someone can commit to. If you have done the work, we know it’s not possible to move this quickly and I think of it like an interesting perspective piece.
It becomes just an interesting narrative and idea to help awaken more people.
I’m not sure anything Dan recommends is expected to be more than an opener.
Respectfully disagree…almost completely.
Spot on Ouroboros!
Initially I was inspired by Dan’s energy and ‘insight’ yet I fear no matter how much his hyper-optimisation might lead to ‘success’ it will almost always be never enough to actually enjoy the life we have.
I’d recommend Dan relax a little.
For an alternate take on living, and seeing life for what it really is, he could read Jikisai Minami’s ‘It's Okay Not to Look for the Meaning of Life: A Zen Monk's Guide to Living Stress-Free One Day at a Time’.
I honestly need to learn how to write something so long and still make it interesting
In the grand tapestry of human aspiration, Dan Koe's missive on metamorphosis over a mere six moons beckons like a siren's call, promising transcendence through disciplined mastery and the shedding of survival-bound identities. Yet, herein lies a profound irony, one that echoes the stoic musings of Epictetus on the chains of perception: Koe himself posits that a staggering 80 to 90 percent - nay, even 99 percent by the tender age of 25 - are ensnared in mediocrity's web, perceiving but a sliver of reality and operating at consciousness levels too lowly to shatter their autopilot existence.
If such multitudes are indeed condemned to this inertial fate, resistant to the very pain of change that Koe prescribes as necessary, then his eloquent blueprint for reinvention becomes a gilded key dangled before locked souls who, by his own decree, lack the hands to grasp it. What, then, is the purpose of this proclamation if not a cruel tease, illuminating paths for an elite few while consigning the vast chorus of readers to the shadows of their unyielding selves?
Philosophically, this paradox invites a Socratic scrutiny of agency and elitism, reminiscent of Nietzsche's übermensch ideal, where only the resolute few ascend beyond the herd's complacency. Koe's framework, while cloaked in motivational fervor, subtly reinforces a deterministic despair: if the majority are biologically and psychologically wired for stagnation, as his survival strategies suggest, then exhortations to "master anything, fast" ring hollow, fostering not empowerment but a quiet resignation.
In this light, the true mastery may lie not in rapid transformation, but in humbly acknowledging the shared human frailty - perhaps urging a collective awakening rather than a solitary sprint toward enlightenment, lest the message dissolve into an echo chamber for the already evolved, leaving the rest to ponder their immutable lot in life's indifferent arena.
Superbly written.
Dan you’re the fucking man!…I’ve been eating up your content: newsletters and YouTube, for some years now…your insight and perspective is UPPER ECHELON brother!…
What I find powerful here is the reminder that survival isn’t just physical it shapes our ideas, identities, even the frameworks we defend like life itself. You describe it well: our egos protect beliefs the same way a body protects breath.
But I pause at the promise of “mastery in six months.” Can we really reprogram something as deep as survival on a timeline? In hospitals, in high-class-hotel-kitchens, I’ve seen how stubborn those patterns are. People don’t just swap survival strategies like apps on a phone. Often, they cling to them until collapse forces change.
So maybe the real challenge isn’t speed, but honesty. What are we willing to let die so that something new can live? Because without that, mastery is just another costume over the same old fear.
And if survival really is the root of all human behavior then isn’t the obsession with “hacking it” just another way of proving we’re still afraid to face death? ;)
I have nothing to say, other than "thank you." 🙏
Thank you Dan Koe, writing this down and implementing.
Superb article. Psycho Cybernetics is a wonderful book that touches on many of these ideas. You can 'idea-branch' certain books and re-read them yearly to emphasize similar frameworks.
Atomic Habits + The Courage To Be Disliked + Psycho Cybernetics are kind of thematically similar to reinforce similar ideas, from different angles.
Building trust in oneself is always more sustainable than having faith in oneself. But that takes time and effort people are often not willing to invest.
This is inspiring me to set up a challenge for myself in 6 months… 🤔
The ego—our non-physical identity—functions with a singular obsession: preserving the status quo. It doesn’t care if your current state is painful or limiting; it only cares that it continues. To the ego, change feels like death. That’s why the moment you attempt something new, resistance appears in the form of procrastination, doubt, rationalization, or clinging to affiliations and labels.
This is why most people remain trapped in cycles of sameness. The ego interprets growth not as progress but as threat, and it deploys every defense mechanism it can to maintain life as it is. To transcend that resistance, you have to see it clearly: your ego isn’t protecting you, it’s protecting itself.
I had this exact sentiment about assignment of rules.
We sleep on delayed gratification but it teaches a lot. Celebrating the small wins is cool but building on it and working towards bigger goals helps you to obtain skills you didn’t think of achieving. 🔑
Thank you very much, you just gave me the Solution I have been looking for.
Thanks.
Loved this perspective , being awakened isn't fun but it takes so much time and thinking with awareness.
It's tough but it's worth it
Where it's a big word
Like being enlighten or attain something beyond the senses.
Facing your own conditioning while figuring things out that's a different level of dealing with overwhelming programming we've been getting it without an after thought.
It will take real courage for someone to look within.
Even if its dark even if its hard.
But yes why not that's why we call it a journey.
Especially love this part:
“Mass regression during stress: When people face stressful events (via a one of catastrophe or cyclical events like elections or tax season), they regress to lower levels of consciousness, becoming reactive and resorting to black-and-white thinking and ideological attachment.”
Really well written!