How to re-program yourself for a happier life in 6 months

How to re-program yourself for a happier life in 6 months

Adult complacency and societal programming have taught us to avoid pain. It’s time to leverage it.

This is the most generic quote that everyone has heard. It couldn’t be more true.

The first thing we do when we enter this world is cry—being ripped out of our comfort cocoon.

Teeth cause pain as they grow so that babies can eat.

Learning to walk requires us to fall.

Discipline is pain when our parents guide and raise us.

Muscle fibres tear to grow.

Being placed in a school system and forced to learn and work is pain.

Learning to drive is pain, facing other vehicles on the road at high speeds.

Falling in love and having your heart broken is pain.

Graduating from school and joining the workforce is pain.

We’ve endured physical and emotional pain since birth to move forward, to learn and grow.

The first 18 years of our life are a journey of pain and growth. We’re faced with challenges, and we overcome them.

We have a purpose, meaning, a reason to live and something to work for.

These challenges motivate us to keep going; with every challenge, there is a victory; through pain we experience gain.

Every gain is a positive step towards self-improvement and good mental health. The reward system boosts our mood.

Yet this learning starts to slow down as we become adults, enter a more routine life, and leave the pain of parental discipline.

Suddenly there’s less feedback, there’s no external pressure for us to learn and grow.

Have we reached our peak growth potential at 18/21?

We have decades of life ahead of us, are we suddenly mature enough to endure life, is there no more growing to do?

No, most people don’t think or realise this. We’re free. Free of control, free to make our own decisions and navigate away from pain.

Who wants to suffer?

Who wants to endure pain, when we can entertain ourselves with Netflix in the comfort of our homes?

Why put yourself through hard work when you can enjoy a social life, hang out with friends and party?

Society says as soon as you are an adult, you’ve reached the highest level. Where else is there to go?

If childhood is a journey towards adulthood, then what is adulthood a journey towards? Death?

The first 20 years of your life shape you into a being that needs to survive for atleast another 60 years.

So you’re an adult now, you’ve started to live your own life your way, you’ve got a job and a social life.

Now, we can cruise along in life, living on autopilot until we die.

It sounds morbid, but it’s the reality.

We don’t need to grow any more. We’ve hit the highest level.

That’s the picture that society paints.

Now go and work for another 50 years in a system that rewards you for building someone else’s dream.

Commute daily, sit in a comfortable chair and interact with a machine for several hours. Don’t forget to engage in office banter to keep you sane.

Enjoy the commute home and be happy that the day is over and you can relax. Slip into your comfortable clothes and drown out your thoughts with entertainment.

Eat delicious food, indulge in snacks, and then go to bed.

Repeat this for several years.

Dreams you had as a kid and a teenager linger in the back of your mind, and you’re met with thoughts like “would have been great to pursue that creative idea”.

“It’s too late now,” you tell yourself. “I’m too old”.

“I don’t know how.” “I don’t have enough resources.” “I’m afraid to fail”.

You’re already on a pathway that society helped you set, your lifestyle is set. You’re swimming with the tide of life, you’re heading in a direction that’s comfortable.

You’ll retire with an ok income.

Years pass by, and life hasn’t changed too much, you’ve travelled a bit and moved house, but that’s okay, you tell yourself that you’re comfortable.

You scroll Instagram from time to time, you enjoy watching other people live the dream lifestyle you want.

You see people living a great life doing the creative dream you had as a teen.

You tell yourself that you’re happy with your life, you’re comfortable and you have a good job.

“It’s too hard,” you tell yourself when looking at someone living their dream life. You want that lifestyle but “I can’t get there”, “I’m too old”.

All these self-limiting thoughts start crowing your mind.

On goes life, and on goes the cycle of you telling yourself you can’t live a better, more fulfilling life. “It’s too hard” is permanently tattooed on your brain.

Imagine if a baby thought, “It’s too hard” when trying to walk.

Imagine if a child said, “I’m comfortable” when not wanting to ride a bike.

Imagine if a teen said “I’m too old” when wanting to learn guitar.

Sounds ridiculous, right?

Well, it sounds ridiculous when you tell yourself these things now.

What happened? A baby doesn’t think walking is too hard.

No, babies are determined; they are motivated to grow. They see other people walking around and think “I want that lifestyle”, “I want to do that”.

They endure the pain of hard work and get to their goal over time.

Why has that stopped in adult life?

Well, because adulthood is the highest level according to society. No more growing to do; you’ve made it.

Bullshit.

You just sat stagnant, not growing for too long and got comfortable. You conditioned yourself to; not endure pain, not be determined and not level up any further.

You avoided pain. You avoided gain.

If you want your dream lifestyle, go and get it.

If you want to get healthy, go and get it

If you want to learn Piano, go and get it.

So what now?

You have probably experienced feelings of depression and anxiety more than once in your adult life.

You want a better life, you don’t want anxiety, you don’t want depression. There must be more to life.

You’ve been riding this current downstream with the rest of society, but it’s not taking you to your dream destination.

Do you want to be happier? Do you want more out of life? Do you want to be healthier?

It’s time to swim against the tide and swim out to the island you want.

If you want to start carving out the dream life and life the big aspirations you have, you must first accept it will be painful.

But not impossible.

You need to believe that:

1. You are not too old

2. You can live any life you want

3. You have the skills to take you there

You can think, you can write, and you can build. These are the bare minimum skills required to go anywhere in life.

If you want to live a life that’s different to the societal programmed version we currently live in; do things differently to other people.

I created the Consume, Philosophise, Create framework that you can use to condition yourself to think, behave and act differently.

Following this framework will change the way you see the world give you clarity and help you build towards the goals you have.

Consume

It starts with education. Consuming good content.

Stop scrolling on social media. Stop distracting yourself with entertainment. Turn those habits into education habits.

Start with YouTube for videos on “how to make money online”.

Let’s face it, money is a resource; you just need to find ways of not trading your time for it.

Don’t look for get-rich-quick schemes, just educate yourself on all the different possibilities there are.

Don’t try to implement any of them yet, update your worldview on what is possible.

Over time you’ll start to find things you enjoy, methods of making money that resonate with you.

You can start with anything here; it doesn’t have to be money-focused. Maybe you want to “get fit in 30 days” Search that and educate yourself.

Right now, I’m working on content creation and audience building on Twitter.

My plan is to provide valuable self-improvement tips through bite-size tweets, and weekly newsletters (you’re reading it) and educating people on how to create content.

Once I have a decent-sized audience, I will start offering coaching services and courses on how I got there.

This is a proven strategy, and it has worked for plenty of other creators.

It’s a system of education, writing, creating and helping people who are a few steps behind.

If I’m purchasing from creators who are a few steps ahead and I sell to people a few steps behind, we are in a constant flow of upgrading our knowledge and teaching.

I’ve managed to get 200 followers within a month of implementing the system I’m using, by the end of the year, it will be a few thousand followers.

Anyway that is just one idea I am following. I will keep sharing updates on how that is going here.

But like I said, there are many other ways, this method doesn’t work for everyone.

Consume good content, and educate yourself on ways to live a good life.

Philosophize

(The spelling of philosophize hurts me every time; being Australian and using British English, it should be spelt “Philosophise” but I know most of my audience is American. You’re welcome!)

The act of philosophizing is a mixture of thinking and writing. Combining all these processes deepens and expands your knowledge of everything. Things you’ve learned, observed and experienced.

You become a deeper thinker and a more knowledgeable person.

The process I take is:

Writing:

1. Stream of consciousness journaling in the morning, just emptying out all the random thoughts I have in my morning or evening. I also write about my goals, dreams and aspirations.

2. Writing out your negative thoughts and emotions helps you to process them and get rid of them. I only do this when I’m experiencing these sensations.

3. Journaling, in the evening before bed I reflect on the day and write out anything that stands out, anything I learned or observed. I also ask myself this question: “What could I have done better today?”

4. Newsletter writing. Forcing myself to release a newsletter every week forces me to process my ideas and then expand on them. I learn a lot in the process.

Thinking

Turn off all distractions and sit in silence for at least 10 minutes per day.

1. Asking yourself questions and challenging assumptions you have about certain beliefs or ideas. Why do you think that way? Why do you have that opinion on someone? Why do you think it’s not possible? Why do you think you’re too old?

2. Reflecting. Sitting down and away from distractions, explore your thoughts; what comes up? Think about past situations and process them; what happened? Think about the future and what pathway you’re on; where am I going? Use your imagination to dream.

3. Process the information you’ve learned. Try to understand any new ideas or concepts you’ve learned. Think about how you can apply them to your life.

We could go much deeper on this topic and process, but these are the basic things I follow daily.

Create

Creating is the act of building and sharing.

You’re creating something from your perspective and knowledge.

In the context of building your dream life, this can look like building towards your life goals.

Through the Consuming and Philosophizing process, you should have established some goals.

Create a plan for yourself, write out your goals and then break them down into smaller actionable items that you can do on a daily basis to get there.

This may look like daily routine things you can work towards. It could be listing out the big ideas you have and then with those in mind you can leveage the world around you to move closer to those goals.

Everyone is different; we have different approaches. What works for me is creating daily routines that “move the needle” closer to my goals.

This is the routine I follow to create Twitter content and write Newsletters

• 30 min daily writing newsletter

• 30 min daily Tweet scheduling, 3x per day

• 30 min daily reading or audiobook listening

• 30 min daily Twitter engaging, 20–30 accounts per day

This process takes time to create, and you will update it as you go, but start with the least amount of steps to bring you closer to the goals you have.

Following this routine, I’ve gained 240 followers in a month.

I aim to get to 10k followers by the end of the year. I have a long way to go and must update my strategy. But the needle is moving, and it’s very motivating.

I’m working on what I’m passionate about; I’m doing something creative and if I’m consistent, it will lead me to my desired lifestyle.

This is my commitment to myself and you, the reader, my friends.

Summary

To create your dream lifestyle, you need to experience pain. The pain of realising life is average. The pain of resisting the flow of society. The pain of leaving comfort and the pain of grinding.

The good news is once you start experiencing pain, your threshold increases, and it’s easier to keep moving in the direction you want.

Keep using the Consume, Philosophise, Create framework. Stay consistent for 6 months, and you’ll be a new person.

Consume — good content, educate yourself to get to where you want

Philosophise — think, process and write out what it is you want and how you’ll get there

Create — get to action, create goals and action plans and start sharing

Start now. Open Google and search for that hobby you want to try. Look up ways to make money online. Research how to grow on social media.

As always, if you have questions, I would love to hear them. I read and respond to all replies, so don’t be shy!

Thank you friends.