Effective Mindset is mostly about exemplifying the following core values:
Common Sense
Determination
Competence
Discipline
Capability
Capacity
Honesty
Humility
High Standards
Emotional Intelligence
Manifesting and Commanding Respect
While most of the aforementioned traits and qualities are challenging to accomplish, every one of those compliments and benefits all others.
And just as important as those positive values, is avoiding the negative ones.
One key negative trait, often disguised as two, is the Inner Bitch and the little bitch.
Why do I say those are the same thing? Because one cannot exist without the other.
Your Inner Bitch can only take over your logical thinking and common sense when you’re acting like a little bitch. Same goes the other way around. When you listen to the Inner Bitch for a bit too long, when you let it get inside your head and take over, you start acting irrationally, emotionally. No one likes those kind of people.
Not being a little bitch is definitely one of the most fundamental components of getting your shit together. You cannot act like a bitch. There is no excuse.
If we’re even going to have a conversation about what Effective Mindset stands for, you need to completely abandon the idea of bitching or feeling sorry for yourself.
When I say, “You need to keep the Inner Bitch in check”, here’s what I mean:
That inner voice in your head is very unlikely to disappear all of a sudden.
Instead of hoping for it to go away someday, instead, acknowledge it - understand where it came from and why it’s there in the first place: to keep you insecure, dumb, miserable, weak, mediocre, lost. There’s a good reason why I say, “Keep it in check”.
Inner Bitch is a powerful force. It feeds on your fear of it. It’s at a disadvantage when you’re aware of it and keep your guard up, not letting it land any significant punches.
When you acknowledge its existence and keep it in check, that’s when the Inner Bitch loses its power over you. Imagine a very complicated, problematic woman who lives inside your head. She has all the good looks and bad habits, and she knows exactly which buttons to push to get the worst out of you. She knows how to tempt you into doing dumb shit, she knows how to talk you into staying in bed until noon, and she knows exactly what takeaway junk food to order for an evening in front of the TV.
She knows your favorite beer, she always reminds you to get a pack of cigarettes when you’re going out for a few drinks in a pub. And when your drinking buddies are away, it’s the Inner Bitch who keeps you company. She’s always there, always up to no good.
Don’t get me wrong. Everyone needs to unwind sometimes. Alcohol just happens to be an extremely dangerous, unpredictable drug. It’s deadly. It switches off your brain.
One minute you don’t feel anything, next minute you’re feeling great, then suddenly, you have no idea what the fuck is going on and you black out. And when that happens, no one knows what comes next. You might accidentally kill or permanently injure someone, you might get yourself killed, your whole life can turn upside-down in one unfortunate night, just because you had one shot of vodka too many.
You might wake up in a jail cell, or in a hospital. You never know what will happen.
No one can control a blackout. If that ever happens, the best thing you could possibly do is go to sleep as soon as possible. Sleep through the blackout. Wake up hungover, maybe throw up a bunch of times, think your decisions through, and get it together.
Feeling like shit? Good. You earned it. Now you have time to reflect on your actions.
The way you feel when hungover is a clear indicator from your system that drinking so much alcohol is a very unhealthy idea, both for the mind and the physical body.
Inner Bitch feeds on that feeling, too. Except, the Inner Bitch wants you to give in.
It wants you to have another drink, to balance up. It wants you to keep drinking.
It’s not interested in facing any obstacles. It prefers the easier option of escaping.
Bear in mind that as much as the Inner Bitch is always around to talk you into procrastination or foolery, you won’t find it helpful when you’re trying to fix things.
Inner Bitch is like cancer. It feeds on junk food, eats away at you until you’re done.
When you find discipline, determination, humility, the Inner Bitch starts showing its true colors, fully exposing itself as your enemy, not a friend you once thought it was.
And once you acknowledge it, as long as you remain focused and continue to keep it in check, it will eventually lose all of its advantage over you. It will become so weak that whenever it tries to remind you that it’s still there, you’ll just laugh it off.
Don’t get fooled, though. It’s a trick that the Inner Bitch uses to regain its advantage.
Because if you ignore it for too long, you can get sloppy in your decision-making.
That’s when it attacks - when you’re at your most vulnerable.
If successful, it can do untold amount of damage. That’s why some people get back to drinking, even after they already managed to ruin their livelihoods with alcohol.
The reason I use alcohol as example is simple: it’s the most popular drug in the world.
Its deadliness is often shrugged off and understated. It’s extremely easy to overdose it.
And there are many utterly evil reasons why it’s legal and so widely advertised.
The Matrix regularly uses alcohol to keep people dumb, dazed, ineffective, reckless, and dangerous to others. The more chaos and disorder, the better for the Matrix.
The more we fight each other, the less we think, the easier it is for the Illuminati to control the masses. They want us disconnected from purpose, senseless, entertained and amused by other intoxicated fools around us.
Those in charge of the Matrix are well aware of how much we like to get fucked up.
They know how many of us crave that Friday evening soon as the new week begins.
I couldn’t count how many times I heard someone at work say on a Monday morning, “Only five days until Friday…”, or “Can’t wait until the weekend”.
Wait until the weekend, so that you could once again go out and get fucked up with a bunch of degenerates who couldn’t think of anything better to do?
Wow, what a brilliant fuckin’ idea. Losers.
It’s one thing to have a drink every now and then, or to have a beer or two with dinner, and it’s a whole other thing to get shit-faced every weekend.
I can tell from my own experience how easy it is to jump off the wagon and see entire months fly by so fast that it feels like just a few blurry days.
In the early April of this year, I was going through a slight nervous breakdown following past few months of unsuccessful attempts to generate decent income.
Add to that a few other personal issues, combined with family affairs and friends who also needed my help and whom I wasn’t able to support as much as I should, all that combined pushed me to a point where I could feel my frustration growing by the day.
Until that one day in April, when I said, “Fuck it, I’m gonna have a drink”.
So I went to an off-licence store, got one tiny (5cl) bottle of Absolut vodka, two large cans of sugar-free Red Bull, and I went home. At home, I had some beer in the fridge, and the rest was easy: I grabbed a glass and a bottle of beer, turned on some music, rolled up a joint, then I smoked it, finished the first beer, went back to the kitchen to grab another, got back to my room, sat at my desk, opened the tiny bottle of vodka, smelled it (what an awful smell, especially after years of abstinence), I then poured half of it into the glass, added some Red Bull, and five minutes later I was already feeling good and pouring myself another one. Those two little drinks were all I needed to wake up the following morning and go straight to that off-licence store for another two of those tiny bottles. I had those, then I went to another store to get some beer and groceries, and that day I felt even better.
The following day, I bought a 20cl bottle of Absolut and six large bottles of Heineken, and I stuck with this combination for the next week or two. If you asked me for my favorite way to get fucked up on booze, it’s exactly that: 20cl vodka, two large cans of sugar-free Red Bull, five or six Heinekens, plus some takeaway food - pizza, burgers, fried chicken - at that point, I’m not too bothered whether it’s McDonald’s or a steak.
And just as if that combination wasn’t bad enough, after about two weeks of that degeneracy, I started doubling down on vodka. All of a sudden, I’m drinking two 20cl bottles a day, first one usually gone by noon, and the second gets me through the day along with ice-cold Heineken. As long as I remember to eat something before I drink too much booze, take my supplements, do a few push-ups, and drink plenty of water before sleep, I can wake up pretty much without a hangover. And that’s even worse, because it encourages me to keep going, while a decent hangover usually discourages me from drinking at least for a while. It’s common knowledge that alcohol helps treat hangover, but that one beer that’s supposed to make you feel a little better can easily turn into a whole new day of drinking, because suddenly, you start feeling better and in a short amount of time you’re in a great mood again and hangover is just a memory, quickly fading away with each drink.
In my case, it took two months of drinking every day until last weekend, when I finally got so fucked up that I ended up throwing up all night, at which point I said to myself, “Alright, that’s enough for now”.
Two months of drinking and having a good time. Months of progress in the gym and trying to eat clean, all gone down the drain. Thousands of pounds. Possibly a lot more in a number of dumb choices and missed opportunities.
All that so I could “unwind”, relax a bit and instead of dealing with never-ending stress, have some good time for a change, and finally get a good night’s sleep.
Just because I kept myself in check just about enough to function and give or take stick with my routine, doesn’t make things any better for me.
A “functioning alcoholic” is a person who gave up the fight with the Inner Bitch and instead decided to go for a compromise, establish common ground with the enemy.
“I’m going to make sure that I get everything done, whilst still allowing myself a few drinks.”
It’s nowhere near as deteriorating as just drinking one’s life away and procrastinating, but it’s also nowhere near as good as staying sober and disciplined, occupied with healthy habits and activities, striving to be useful and helpful to oneself and others.
That is a lot more freedom than the illusion of freedom that alcohol offers: to be able to get through the day without the need to constantly feel intoxicated.
To feel good sober. I understand that many people just aren’t interested in sobriety.
And I’m OK with that. Let’s just call it what it is: altering reality, and escaping from it.
All that “good time” comes at a price. Not everyone can handle it.
I knew people who are no longer around because they kept playing the deadly game of alcohol or other drugs to a point where they ran out of luck and lost their lives to it.
Either depression killed them, or they succumbed to some debilitating physical illness.
There’s no way to find out, but I believe that if you could ask them now whether they regret flushing their lives down the drain, most of them would admit they regret it.
That’s why it’s important to take action as soon as you catch yourself slipping.
Don’t wait for the Inner Bitch to let you know that you’ve gone over the top. It won’t.
You’re doing exactly what it wants you to, so why the fuck would it?
It will encourage you to keep going. And that’s when you need to regain control.
Now, let’s talk about NPCs and mediocrity.
Some people are just dumb, and there’s little you can do about that.
And most of those who aren’t just basic NPCs in this crazy video game called “Life”, most of those who have the inner voice, they hear the wrong message.
They listen to the Inner Bitch instead of something or someone who will inspire them to take action and strive to be their very best at anything they do.
You need to do whatever you gotta do, absolutely regardless of how you feel.
Don’t feel like doing it? Fine, you can fuck off, then. Someone else will do it.
And he or she will get paid for it. This is just one of many things low and mediocre performers have in common: they don’t seem to understand the connection between output and reward, just as they don’t seem to understand the value of time.
It has to be the case, otherwise nowhere near as many people would agree to work for national minimum wage. It is only possible in a declining, procrastinating society, focused on entertainment and consumerism, too disadvantaged by life to make any wiser choices than to take the easy road.
If you choose to be a mediocre, procrastinating piece of shit, that’s your problem.
I don’t care. I won’t feel sorry for you. If you choose mediocrity over determination and self-development, then poverty is nothing more than a natural course of action.
Don’t expect to be paid big bucks for a shit job. No one appreciates mediocrity.
No one will ever respect you for being mediocre. And that’s on you.
One thing I won’t tolerate, though, is other people’s mediocrity getting in my way.
I perform regardless of my feelings. When something needs to be done, I get it done.
Are there fuck-ups? Absolutely, yes. And whenever I fuck up, I reflect on it thoroughly and I keep moving forward. I draw conclusions and I move on from processing mode back to action mode. I then apply the lessons learned from those experiences to my decision-making moving forward. If it works next time, great. If it doesn’t work, then I adjust accordingly, and so on - until it works. It’s much better to always try your best than to do the bare minimum and not care about the big picture.
Because when you do the absolute minimum you need to do in order to get paid, you might end up in a situation where you’re slowing other people down.
In most cases, a team that operates at a minimal input from each member, would vastly decrease the likelihood of a decent outcome.
When a team of ten consists mostly of high performers and there’s only three or four mediocres, plus one truly sloppy person, usually that team will still be able to deliver, because the high performers will raise the bar for mediocres by encouraging them to work harder and get on their level, and there’s even a chance that one sloppy fuck will also get inspired by now better-performing mediocres to put in a little bit more effort.
Also, in a team where high performers are the majority, everyone is more likely to help other team members, exactly because they can see the big picture.
So a team of five high performers, plus four average performers, plus one dumb fuck, has a high chance of delivering very decent results.
It’s a slightly different story in a situation where there are only two high performers and the rest of the team is at best mediocre, if not straight-up sloppy and useless.
In this scenario, the high performers will do their best to pull through the dark times, maybe they’ll manage to get the business out of the deepest shit, but soon as there’s noticeable progress, yet most of the team performs without improvement, those two high performers will figure out a way to exit the business most efficiently, and they will leave it for the mediocres to handle. And then, whether the business survives depends entirely on the owner. Entrust the future of it with those who so far couldn’t deliver expected results? Or hire new high performers to save it?
Either decision can end up being a hefty investment. Professionals charge more for increased chances of success, while average workers can be much cheaper to hire, although there’s a chance their performance will cost the business more on a long run.
That said, there’s rarely any guarantee that a professional will deliver expected results.
High performers suffer from the Inner Bitch probably just as often as average folks do.
It comes down to how you approach it, how you deal with it, whether you let it take control over your decision-making, or acknowledge it’s out there and keep it in check.
I do what I can to feel good every single day. Just so I don’t have to worry about it.
This is why I exercise and write everyday. It helps me keep the Inner Bitch in check.
So that I don’t have to react to feelings as they come. I prefer to stay ahead of feelings.
The best way to get ahead is to take action. And the best way to take action - especially if you’re unsure where to start - is to work out.
If you’re in a bad shape, then it’s a no-brainer. And if you’re in a good shape, then you already know it to be true, which is why you continue to do it.
Because you want to maintain your physique, or even get in a better shape.
You definitely don’t want to end up a fat, deteriorating slob whose life passed him by.
Why would you ever disrespect yourself like that? You can do so much better.
And that’s how I see it. Some people always have an excuse, where others always try to find a way to deal with things. Discipline or the Inner Bitch? Think it through wisely.
Made the wrong choice? Don’t dwell on it. Adjust accordingly and keep going.