Mindset Development #4: Feelings

Emotions come and go. That's why they shouldn't determine the outcome.

“I used to try to set a high score in a game nobody else was playing.” - Sam Tripoli

If you asked me to sum up the first decade of what was supposed to be my adulthood, I couldn’t think of a better way to describe that ten-year-long escape from ownership of all the trauma and darkness in my life.

It’s not like I wasn’t aware of it - I just wanted to finally have a good time for a change.
There was always some superficial excuse along the lines of, “I’ve gone through enough fucked-up shit already, so now I should just chill out and enjoy life for a moment.”

It was a lie, and one that I kept telling myself for way too long.
Instead of confronting my problems, I was trying to escape them, always believing that someday I could just build my life from scratch and forget the past, except a few people by whom I still need to do right. Take care of them, write everything else off.
It’s easy to justify such a mindset when life is so hard and absent of any comfort.
It seems easier to just start over.

Bullshit. Just because it seems less difficult, doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do.

It may seem harmless at first glance, but when repeated enough, this lie can put your entire future in jeopardy. Not only will it slow you down and make you procrastinate, it will also discourage you from taking on challenges and instead seek easy outcomes, so that whenever you actually need to do something, you’re more likely to fuck it up.
Because taking easy paths usually yields some results, and that’s good enough for you.
You accepted mediocrity and decided to set the bar on that level, since it “worked”.
Just because it worked, doesn’t mean it couldn’t work better had you dedicated more effort towards it. Most high performers don’t have a secret formula for great results, they just outwork others in terms of determination, dedication, attention to detail.

The following may seem obvious to most people, yet only a few apply these principles to their thinking and decision-making:
Taking the path of least resistance won’t give you capacity for high performance.
In fact, the exact opposite principle applies to most of all meaningful aspects of life.
The more energy and effort you invest in becoming good and competent at something, the more likely your actions are to result in a sound outcome.
The more energy and focus you put into executing a task to the best of your ability, the more likely you are to achieve better results.

These are two objective facts, documented countless times throughout history.
High performers understand the structural connection between immediate sacrifice and long-term reward. One example I use most of the time: getting in shape.
Anyone who has ever spent a day in a gym or performing any kind of physical exercise knows that one day is not going to produce any visible results. It took me two years of working out almost every day, eating mostly animal-based food, not drinking alcohol, to gain noticeable results of putting my body through tedious, repetitive discomfort, and another year of even heavier workouts to notice massive improvement in results.

I then succumbed to a tempting voice of the Inner Bitch, and within just two months of drinking beer and vodka, I got back to a physique from a few months before.
It took the following two weeks of sobriety and consistent workouts to regain some of that hard-earned growth - and it will take a few more weeks until I’m back in shape.
That’s how easy it is to damage something that took months - or years - of hard work and determination to build. It’s also why you should never rest on your laurels.
It’s much more difficult to build anything of value, than to destroy something of value.

Once built, however, it is much easier to maintain something in good condition, or to work on its improvement, than it is to neglect something and then have to start again from square one. This applies to physical and mental health as much as it applies to skills, connections, information - it’s much better to get ahead and remain disciplined and focused to stay there, than to gain advantage only to get sloppy, caught off guard, fall behind, and then struggle to keep up from a disadvantaged position.

Compromising priorities and standards for the sake of immediate convenience or comfort is never a good idea. It is far better to suffer temporarily and then enjoy the results of your hard work, than not to do enough now and then have to suffer later, with not only the backlog of postponed work needlessly pushed towards deadline, but also with addition of whatever the future holds.

Same goes for prioritizing on what is most urgent, what is most important, what is the amount of time needed to complete each task on a checklist.
If there is something on your plate that can be done reasonably quickly, it’s better to get it done and out of the way, than to queue it up with all other things you have to do.
“Yeah, yeah, I know, I was gonna do (whatever the task) today. I’ll get around to it tomorrow.”
Then the next day, something else happens, so once again you decide to postpone it until tomorrow, then again - and suddenly, you’re out of time.
If something can be done quickly, get it done and move on to more demanding tasks.

Being inefficient in terms of prioritizing is still much better than procrastinating.
Maybe you weren’t able to figure out the most efficient way to handle your workload, perhaps you could’ve spent a bit more time working on a better strategy, but at least you got things done, whereas if you were just postponing things till tomorrow, nothing would get done and you’d end up stressed out and overwhelmed by the amount of shit you now need to deal with. And the deeper you go, the more challenging you’ll find trying to climb back on the surface, never mind climb up any higher than that.

Most people on the bottom of the ladder never find out how high they could climb.
They don’t put themselves in scenarios that would test the limits of their character and thus build their capacity to handle a challenging situation.
They’re discouraged by society in the form of other mediocre NPCs, because most of the middle class is terrified of a perspective of downgrading to an entry-level-income lifestyle, and that is for a reason: because to survive on low income these days is much tougher than it was thirty or forty years ago.

Back in the nineties, an average NPC could buy a house in a decent neighborhood for an equivalent of three, maybe four years of his or her annual salary.
These days, an average NPC would have to work twenty-five years, never pay any tax, save every penny, and maybe, he or she could then afford to purchase a two-bedroom apartment in a beehive-like complex of eco buildings, or a small house in a suburban neighborhood on the outskirts of town.
So that’s an absolutely unrealistic scenario. Let’s now imagine a more realistic one:

An NPC named Joe Shmoe works at a large corporation and makes £52k a year.
After tax, insurance, and pension deductions, his net income is £750 per week.
In 2023, with his income of £52k a year, Joe is in the 10% of highest earners in the UK, according to various reports that can be found on the internet.
Joe’s credit score is too low to afford him a mortgage, so he has to rent a place.
Joe lives in a one-bedroom apartment and his rent, including bills, is £250 per week.
That leaves Joe with £500, which most would consider a decent amount of money, except Joe has a credit card maxed out at £10k, because he went on holidays and bought some Christmas gifts, so that’s £50 going out of his paycheck every week.
Joe is also repaying a loan for some dental work, that’s another £75 a week.
Add to that a phone contract at £75 per month, plus all the monthly subscriptions - Prime, Netflix, Spotify, Xbox - along with gym membership, car and home insurance, health insurance, clothes, barber, groceries, nights out - and the next thing you know, Joe’s £750 is gone by Thursday, or maybe there’s a small fifty left to save up.
And because it’s 2023, Joe is much more likely to hear from friends and family in need than he would just a few years ago, before the economy collapsed.

And that’s Joe Shmoe the “middle-class” guy. Now imagine national minimum wage, where an entry-level NPC named Jim brings home £350 for forty hours of his labor.
Jim can’t afford a place like the one Joe rents, so his financial situation forces him to rent a room in a shared house. Jim’s rent is £130 per week, so he’s left with £220.
Jim also can’t afford a car, so he has to use public transport or walk.
Jim has a Netflix subscription, but he doesn’t have health insurance or an iPhone.
Those things are out of Jim’s reach. Jim can’t afford the same shoes that Joe can.
Jim can’t afford a ribeye steak or sushi, so he goes to McDonald’s more often than Joe.
Jim likes to have a drink on a weekend, so he goes out to his favorite pub a lot to get fucked up with his buddies and forget about hardships of life.

In this story, Joe and Jim are both miserable NPCs, dominated by the system into mediocrity and constant fear of losing everything they managed to acquire through hard work and keeping their heads down, never standing up to the “authority”.
Their integrity is compromised to a point where they follow instructions even if those are detrimental to their own well-being. They’re afraid to question or deny any order, because they’re so scared of consequences that they never even look into what those consequences might be. Oftentimes, those are vastly exaggerated in a person’s head, especially in case of NPCs who already find basic functioning difficult enough.
What the fuck do you expect? That they will suddenly start thinking?
That’s not going to happen. They do not possess the capacity to think that thoroughly.

Joe and Jim are also too tired and worn-out to invest energy and time into developing and putting in action a plan of climbing up or escaping the system.
They find it easier, more entertaining, and convenient, to have a drink in the evening, than to sit at their desk in front of a computer and try to figure out a way to get ahead.
The system provides them with video games, movies, YouTube videos, social media, fast food, weed, alcohol and other drugs, plus two days a week to get fucked up in whatever way they choose. It’s all accessible and affordable enough to get hooked on, and it’s one of a very few things that make Joe and Jim feel good on an average day.
Because Joe and Jim act on their feelings. They both gravitate towards things that make them feel good, rather than things that require effort and determination.

Joe is just about “comfortable” on the surface, while Jim is barely scratching it, often ending up in a situation where he needs to borrow money from friends on a Tuesday to get him through the week, until Friday when the loop of struggle starts a new cycle.

Truth is, neither Joe or Jim could handle a real emergency if one emerged in their lives at this point. Neither have any serious amount of money saved for a rainy day.
Neither could support a family member or a friend in overcoming serious hardship.
Neither have the financial freedom of being able to tell their boss to go fuck himself, walk out and never look back, pack a bag of clothes, a few grand in various currencies, and fuck off somewhere nice to unwind for a month, rethink the plan, and get to it.

Joe might seem to be living a more convenient life than Jim, but all it takes to abruptly end Joe’s career is one bad day at the office, and everything goes out the window.
If he gets fired, Joe has a month, maybe two, to get back on track with income, or else he’s fucked. If he can’t find a job in two months, he will have to give up the lease on his car, and in the next few months also on his apartment, which means moving to a room in a shared house similar to the one Jim lives in.
That’s how easy it is nowadays to lose everything you worked for - all you have to do is say something that pisses someone off, and you no longer have a job.

That’s why most people never stick their head out, never question “authority”, and obediently follow orders - because they cannot afford to stand up for themselves.
In 2023, neither Joe with his £52k a year, nor Jim with his £21k, could afford a house after spending their entire lives working for the system.

The Matrix assigns you an identification number, installs basic program in your brain, trains you into fitting a specific role in the system, and then exploits you for labor and tax revenue, while corporations and society push consumerism on you in order to keep you entertained and distracted from true meaning. Don’t ask any questions.
Here’s your TV and a console with an endless choice of video games and movies, here’s your shiny smartphone with social media, here’s a bucket of hot wings and beer, so watch your movie, play your games, eat your “food”, and shut the fuck up.

Morality and personality are valued extremely low at the bottom of the foodchain, just as human life is very cheap at the top.

Climbing up is difficult enough for those already on a fair income, including the now almost-extinct middle class, bullied into compliance through fear of getting fired.
Most of those people never stick their head out because they know how damaging the consequences of a Matrix attack can be to their career, and thus, also their livelihoods.
Besides, default programming of the system is powerful. It is ingrained in our brains from earliest years for a reason. A brain in the early stages of development is the one most susceptible to manipulation. Because a young kid who doesn’t yet have all the morals and qualities instilled by his or her parents, is least likely to question morality of the government programming.

Remember, the system that exists today wasn’t built to teach us how to think.
It wasn’t built to make us question things the authority doesn’t want us to question.
The system that currently runs the world was built for very different reasons:
To program us into becoming thoughtless cogs in a corporate machine, farm animals, trained to provide labor in exchange for money, vast portion of which the government then extorts from us in the form of taxes under threat of violence.

The system offers many advantages sold and labeled as “convenience”.
Nowadays, you don’t have to cook, you don’t even need to go to the kitchen to grab a leaflet with your favorite pizzeria’s phone number from the fridge door.
All you need to do is pick up your smartphone and order food via an app.
Half an hour or so later, a drives knocks on your door with your favorite takeaway.
If you work remotely, you barely, if ever, need to leave the house anymore, given that most large stores deliver groceries straight to your door.
Everything “smart”, your TV, fridge, vacuum cleaner, thermostat, air conditioning, everything connected via wi-fi to make your life as convenient as possible.
At what cost? Most fundamentally, at the cost of your freedom and health.

Almost everything you consume is fake. You eat fake “food”, watch bullshit news and movies on TV, waste time watching fake people on social media, spend fake money.
Everything these days is designed to enslave and kill you slowly.

First, the government and corporations violate and limit your privacy.
Next, they impose limitations on your ability to function in society as an individual.
Should your attempts to become rich ever contradict the preconceived expectations of the system, your movements on the grid become vastly limited and inconvenient.
The grid is the infrastructure of the Matrix. It’s the basic platform on which all the fundamental systems operate: banking, finance, energy, corporations, fast food chains, shops, every business and organization.

The system is intentionally built in a way that tempts young people to fuck things up.
There’s so much distraction, so much fun to be had, all the drugs to experiment with, all the hot girls and idiots on social media, all the impulses attacking your senses with endless content, 24/7 - and it never stops. It never slows down for a moment.

Soon as you log in, you’re sucked in. Soon as you start watching that show on Netflix, you’re in for the entire season, then twenty bottles of beer and four pizzas later, you realize it’s Monday 3:00am, you watched the entire show, and you have three hours left to sleep until you have to wake up and get back to your deadbeat job. What a shit life.

When you’re young, you often hear other people say, “Life is short, so have as much fun as you can in your twenties, don’t take life too seriously, because it’s all downhill from there.”
Some will justify it with “Money doesn’t make you happy”, but just because a bunch of shitheads use that cliché as an excuse for their procrastination, doesn’t make it true.

Money absolutely makes you happy, in a way that it takes away most of the problems you’d otherwise have to deal with if you were broke.
Money buys you other people’s time, one of the most precious resources.
I can say this as a guy who hasn’t gotten anywhere near a millionaire status yet, but who previously managed to get into the top 10% of earners.
That by no means makes me a successful person, as this year I generated less income than in either of the past three years. Does that mean I should lower my standards and get a job at McDonald’s? Or should I keep trying to secure another high-level job?
I wouldn’t have to choose between either of these two options if money was no object.
I could create more opportunities for others to work for me and become wealthy.

That’s what money is for: to pay for other people’s time.
You pay people so they could do things for you, create or provide something that you can’t (or won’t) get by yourself. Food, services, material things, experiences, anything.

You could spend your twenties having fun, chasing girls, drinking, working shit jobs, or you could try and make something of yourself, and enjoy your thirties and forties by paying other people to deal with any chores and inconveniences on your behalf.
Imagine how much time you’d have to focus on your interests and self-development if you could afford to pay someone to cook for you, take care of housekeeping, groceries.
The more money you have, the more work you can outsource to others.

Depending on your decisions, your twenties will either pave the way for your success, or end up a total waste of time and potential, which happens way too often these days.
As technology keeps progressing beyond belief - to a point where I now think that AI will replace most of the hospitality and corporate workforce in the coming years - Western society is declining and becoming dangerously ignorant, arrogant, and stupid.
Choices you make in your twenties determine standards for your thirties and forties.
I’m speaking from my own experience here. I had to learn it all the hard way. I had to hit the rock bottom to finally snap the fuck out of it and start getting my shit together.

Twenties might seem like the best time to party, drink, smoke weed, play video games, and hang out with other stoners. But all those things are like fast food and donuts:
they make you feel good in a moment, they stimulate specific chemicals in your brain that make you experience instant comfort, so you don’t even bother to think about the crash that comes as a consequence of your body having to digest all that poison.

Wasting time with losers is equally detrimental to your goals and mental wellbeing.
Because instead of inspiring you, they will hold you down; they will tell you that
“It’s OK to be average; there’s nothing wrong with the way you are; obesity is body-positive” and any other empty lie to make you feel better about being a mediocre piece of shit.

Taking inspiration from high performers and trying to inspire others is vastly more powerful and productive, even if you don’t yield immediate results - the most obvious benefit is that when you set the bar high enough, you are left with no choice but to operate on a higher level - which forces you to expect more of yourself and others.

Some things can only be achieved when you set the bar so high that most people won’t be able to reach it. Some things are reserved exclusively for peak performers.
They aren’t necessarily the most intelligent people, they don’t necessarily have the best professional credentials, but there are a few things they all have in common:
they outwork everyone else, they think ahead, and they usually make good decisions.
Those are the people who drive cars more expensive than average Joe Shmoe’s house, wear expensive Swiss watches, fly on private jets, and do whatever the fuck they want, rarely having to deal with NPCs. Procrastinators despise high performers because their manifestation of success makes those poor fucks reflect on their own mediocrity, and that’s the last thing any mediocre slob wants to do - face the truth about themself and invest all the energy and determination it takes to change for the better.
Because it doesn’t feel good. Because it’s uncomfortable and full of sacrifices.

There’s nothing entertaining or exciting about self-improvement.
It’s frustrating, exhausting, humiliating, and it takes more time and patience than most people are willing to invest. That’s why there’s so many poor, procrastinating, obese and unhealthy people, blissfully unaware of the damage they do to their bodies by ingesting all that ultra-processed poison they call “food”. Most of what they eat has very little in common with genuine food, which results in extremely unhealthy bodies.

Also, because their workout regimen is non-existent, they do nothing to compensate for their unhealthy diet, which altogether significantly affects their life span and the overall quality of their life. It’s disappointing to see how many people choose to live that way because of instant convenience. On the other hand, these days it’s impossible not to know about all the health consequences of junk food and lack of exercise.
That’s why I have very little sympathy or pity for anyone who looks like shit and treats his or her body like a recycling bin. Ribeye and a workout, or McDonald’s and Netflix?
The choice is yours, and so are the results that will follow. It’s on you.

I decided to no longer tolerate any bullshit. I’m only interested in setting goals way out of my comfort zone, and working through the Matrix on materializing those goals.
Most people’s opinions are about as relevant to me as their feelings and emotions - they change absolutely nothing when it comes to things I do and accomplish.
I do what I need to do regardless of how I feel. Feelings and emotions are unreliable.
I exercise everyday with complete disregard for all that sweet talk coming from the Inner Bitch, always trying to convince me to snooze for another hour or two.
I stay away from junk food regardless of how much I want to eat a pizza and top it off with a pint of Häagen-Dazs in front of a TV show. I have better things to do.

There’s nothing attractive about being a loser. And a very few losers will ever admit it.
But it’s true. Don’t be a fuckin’ loser. You think you work hard? You can work harder.
You think you’re smart? Listen more, talk a little less. You think you know enough?
That’s your ego leading your thought process. Remember to keep it in check.

Food these days is so unhealthy and so cheap that many poor people die of obesity.
Truth is, most people could easily afford food of much better quality if only they chose to abstain from other meaningless garbage - booze, drugs, gambling, TV, nights out.

Assholes will spend a hundred bucks on drinks, another hundred on weed and coke, then a small fifty on a pizza as they’re hanging over the next day, then two days later they have fifty bucks left on their card to buy a week’s worth of groceries.
And they will tell you that they “can’t afford” better food. Bitch, shut the fuck up.

Same goes for people on minimum wage who do nothing to change their situation.
When you’re that poor and you don’t do whatever you can to get out of it, eventually you will end up with no one but yourself to blame for being a loser.
When I was on minimum wage, I felt like shit. I hated every moment of being poor.
I remember being paid three hundred pounds for forty hours of hard physical work.
It happened more times than I could count - too many. It was absolutely humiliating.

I was twenty-seven when I looked at myself in the mirror and realized how absolutely unfuckable I have become. It was 2018, and it turned out to be the most sobering year of my life. I left myself with no choice but to become the epitome of what I preached.
That’s also when the idea of Effective Mindset was born. It took me another year or so to start recording the podcast. And in order to do that, I had to disregard my feelings.

These factors alone disqualify most people. No immediate reward - not interested.
Determining which side you’re on is a good start. Mediocrity or high performance?

NPCs almost never break free from the system. It’s the high performers who do.
They’re the ones who escaped the Matrix. Their objective is to stay ahead of the game rather than participate in it. They operate on the grid, but they don’t play by the same rules as ordinary folks. They’re in it for different reasons, higher stakes and rewards.

It’s not for everyone. But so isn’t an Aston Martin. Most people would like one, but almost no one is willing to do what it takes, with enough determination, to afford one.
When you ask those people who say they “would like one” why aren’t they doing anything to get one, every one of them would come up with some bullshit excuse, i.e.
“There are more important things in life than money” or “I’m not trying to impress anyone” or something equally moronic. They’re just lazy. You don’t have to be one of them.

Setting the bar high leaves no space for procrastination.
Keep your emotions and feelings in check. Do what’s right, not what’s “expected”.
Make your family name mean something. Make your ancestors proud.