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Inspirational people often have commonalities. Finding them makes it easier to become a happier, more productive person. If  the same advice is given by countless people at the top of their fields, it’s usually incredibly useful. There are so many self help gurus nowadays that it’s hard to tell who makes sense, and who is spinning bullshit narratives for personal profit. Apparently, the repeat audience of most leaders like this are the same average people who endlessly fail to improve themselves. So a lot of advice from those whose job it is to give it seems useless. However, some life coaches do give helpful suggestions. You can look at plenty of first hand accounts of people who have drastically upgraded their lives with them.

 

 

There are many motivational people, but three of them stand out to me. They’re very different, but some of their beneficial advice is the same. One of them is a dead Japanese warrior, the other is an ex-Navy SEAL, and the third is a self help coach. But one particular recommendation that all three of them have mentioned is phenomenally helpful.

 

The dead Japanese warrior who I’m referring to is Miyamoto Musashi. He was a samurai in the late 1500s and early 1600s, and is famous for his book called The Book of Five Rings. It’s all about his life philosophy. Musashi was known for being a phenomenally skilled swordsman, and he fought with two swords. He claimed to have killed more than 60 people in duels, and he never lost, but he didn’t fit the stereotype of warriors. This samurai encouraged balance in all areas of life. Other than being an expert in combat, he was an excellent poet and proponent of pursuits like poetry and gardening. While he killed many men, he didn’t go around looking for battles, and he would sometimes give his opponents the advantage. Musashi apparently at least once used nothing more than a stick to fight a man with a sword, and still won. He cultivated and recommended self defence training, but wanted to avoid conflict. His life philosophy appeared to centre around pragmatism and balance.

 

 

The former Navy SEAL who I’m talking about is Jocko Willink. He was in charge of one of the SEAL teams who fought in the Iraq war, and he is now an entrepreneur and author. Willink has a podcast that is simply called Jocko Podcast, in which he reads excerpts from books describing first hand accounts of war, and interviews veterans. He also discusses issues like battle, leadership, and productivity. Similar subjects are analyzed in his books, including Extreme Ownership, with another ex-SEAL named Lief Babin, the Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual, and the Way of the Warrior Kid. That last one is designed to help children become mentally and physically stronger through hard work. Jocko frequently discusses the importance of discipline, self improvement, and humility, which you can tell from his book titles. The idea behind his Discipline Equals Freedom mantra is this: If you consistently cultivate discipline, it can dramatically improve you, which allows the freedom to slack off every once in a while, without guilt. Extreme ownership is about personal responsibility, avoiding blaming others for your problems, and taking control of setbacks to use them to your advantage. The two ways that Willink encourages self improvement the most is through learning and exercise. This is because the healthier and smarter you are, the better you’ll do at almost everything.

 

 

The self help coach who I’m referring to is Tony Robbins. Most people have probably heard about him. He’s one of the most famous motivational speakers and life coaches in the world. Robbins has written many books and often hosts seminars. While I disagree with some of what he does and says, a lot of his advice seems extremely useful. He encourages similar virtues as Musashi and Willink, including balance, humility, discipline, and physical and mental development. Robbins also promotes compassion, honesty, self reflection, and has many useful tactics for productivity and becoming happier.

 

 

So what’s the one common piece of advice between all three of these people? Take Action. Pursue knowledge that helps you improve yourself. Like I said earlier, a large quantity of recommendations from self help gurus seems useless, but taking action is very pragmatic. People can wax philosophically all day long about ways to think about improving emotions and productivity. However, a lot of this is just noise, and it’s better to give people actionable advice; simple tactics than anyone can immediately use to change their lives for the better.

 

 

I like pursuing knowledge for its own sake, and I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with that. I don’t believe that Musashi, Willink, or Robbins would say that learning just to know more is a bad idea either. But I understand the importance of pragmatic advice. It’s easy to read tons of books about meditation and to-do lists, but never implement these tools into your life. This is why one recommendation of all three of these people is to do things that help you, instead of researching them to death without ever taking action. So if you think that following a new diet, working out, and reading more books will improve your life, just try them. You can tweak the details along the way. You don’t need to scour your library or book store for what seem like the best ideas in nutrition, exercise, and speed-reading. Just find any book, workout program, and diet that are better than what you’re already using. If you make mistakes, you can fix them, while likely having done less damage than you would have if you hadn’t taken action.

 

 

People are different of course, but this is sometimes a problem for me. I want to learn so much about an idea before I implement it that I stagnate while waiting to improve. It’s not’s good to rush some decisions. But if the only consequences will be upgrading your body and intelligence less than you would have before discovering more accurate information, then taking action is better. This is one of many reasons that I like Miyamoto Musashi, Jocko Willink, and Tony Robbins. They don’t want to waste people’s time with bullshit advice. They want to give you pragmatic tools that you can immediately use to transform your life. So the next time you’re planning on researching diets, meditation, and exercise for half a year, and reading dozens of books, don’t waste your time. You can learn just as much, but if you start improving right now, you can make adjustments along the way. This will lead to a hell of a lot more positive change overall. Don’t become an expert on useful advice before you implement it. Just take action!

 

 

 

Public remorse about the recent death of Chester Bennington, the lead singer of Linkin Park, made me think about the subject of suicide. He killed himself, and it seems like there have been a fair number of other celebrities who have recently done the same thing. These include Chris Cornell, the lead singer of Audioslave, this year, and Robin Williams, the famous actor, a few years ago. The deaths might only appear to be frequent because famous people are in the public eye, so everyone hears about their tragedies. A far smaller number of us become aware of the average person who commits suicide.

 

 

Regardless of why we pay more attention to celebrities, their success makes it feel more alarming when they take their own lives. I think that this is because we forget that famous people are still human like the rest of us. So even if we know it rationally, we often imagine their lives as utopian. How can someone at the top of the world feel so depressed that they kill themselves? If even celebrities can’t handle the pressures of every day life, what hope do the rest of us normal humans have?

 

 

Again, I think we should always remember that celebrities are people too. They’re not gods, so they have the same problems as the rest of us unworthy peasants. Fame and success don’t immunize you against depression, and make everything awesome all the time. In some ways, maybe they can contribute to making you feel worse. Look at the rampant drug problems of almost every rock star you can think of, plus actors who also recently died. They include Phillip Seymor Hoffman, who was in movies like Capote, and Charlie Wilson’s war, and Carrie Fisher, know for playing Princess Leia in Star Wars. Hoffman had problems with heroin, and Fisher apparently had cocaine and heroin in her system when she died. Clearly, you can be adored by the world, but it doesn’t necessarily make you happy. Since these people were human, they got depressed. Like all of us have the potential to do, they are some of the few who let it get to them so much that they committed suicide, or died of drug overdoses.

 

 

 

Before I go on, I want to make it clear that I think that sometimes, people should be allowed to die prematurely. I agree with euthanasia, which is doctor-assisted suicide. That’s because if you have a terminal illness that causes you endless excruciating pain, like cancer, I can understand wanting to die to end your suffering. If you can’t go to the bathroom by yourself or maintain personal hygiene, you wallow in agony all day, and you’re going to die soon anyway, it’s kinder to let a doctor euthanize you, in my opinion.

 

 

That being said, I think that we can learn from the suicides of famous people. If you’re not suffering daily from a terminal disease, don’t kill yourself. Celebrities doing so shows us that the problems we all deal with can get to anyone. They can get so daunting that even those who many of us view as better than ourselves can succumb to suicidal depression. Their deaths demonstrate that they are people too, and they don’t have special powers that make them always happy. Like all human beings, whether you’re an actor, musician, lawyer, cashier, athlete, artist, entrepreneur, model, or garbage man, some have problems dealing with depression. Your job or career doesn’t necessarily have any impact on this. Money and fame don’t automatically make you happy, and they sure as fuck don’t solve anyone’s emotional issues.

 

 

Everyone gets depressed at some point, even the happiest hippies in the world. It’s part of being a person. Generally, we don’t let it get so bad we stop seeing the point of living. We deal with it and carry on with lives, or at least it appears that way. Most people probably don’t talk about it when they feel emotionally terrible, especially men, because it can make us seem weak. I would be willing to bet a large sum of money that the majority of human beings at least contemplate suicide at some point. But you have to deal with it somehow, so you don’t cause unimaginable hardship to everyone who loves you. That’s what happens when someone kills themselves, and it’s why it’s often selfish. You think that life is so hard that it seems better to die, and you don’t consider the people who will get hurt by your death. I know this because I’ve thought about suicide before.

 

 

So why shouldn’t you kill yourself? I think that this is an important question, even though you won’t read or hear about it from self-help gurus or books. Broad, counterintuitive questions are crucial in my opinion. Thinking about why you shouldn’t do something bad can be better than asking why you should do something good. If you ask why you shouldn’t eat M&Ms for every meal, that can be more effective than considering why you should eat meat and salad. That’s because learning about all the negative health effects of processed sugar can scare you into eating more healthily. This can work better than researching the “virtues” of vegetables and protein. When I’ve seriously considered suicide, I’ve asked myself the same questions and come to the same conclusions as Tim Ferris. He’s a self improvement expert, who has discussed this subject on his podcast, and in his book, Tools of Titans.

 

 

When I decided to live, it was for basically the same reasons as Tim Ferriss. I had gone through a difficult time, which helped me identify with his challenges. Almost everyone goes through them. He had relationship problems. So did I. He was having trouble with school and felt like he would never amount to anything. So did I. He didn’t see the point in trying anything because he thought he would just fail, and resented the burden he felt like he was to his family and friends. So did I. Basic every day tasks like brushing his teeth and taking showers seemed daunting because depression can be so crippling. I felt the same way. He seriously considered killing himself, and thought in detail about how he would do it. So did I.

 

 

This is why I chose to live: I thought about how selfish suicide is. I don’t think that anything happens to anyone after they die, but even if you’re religious, you subject your family and friends to undeserved suffering if you take your own life. You remove yourself from the world, and take away every future opportunity for anyone to interact with you in any way. Think about how that might affect your loved ones. They could resent your decision, and they would have every right to feel that way. If you kill yourself, that means that you didn’t think that anyone in your life could talk you out of it. How would that make someone feel, knowing that you thought that death was better than listening to them?

 

 

You take away any future experience if you commit suicide. Sure, you’ll never feel depressed, angry, or insecure again. But you’ll also never laugh, smile, feel happy, love, or make others laugh, smile, or feel happiness or love ever again. You might think that no one cares about you, and that you make no contributions to the world. However, even the biggest assholes occasionally bring joy to someone’s life. Sure, from a nihilistic and even scientific perspective, nothing and no one matter. But if we didn’t choose to delude ourselves, we wouldn’t get out of bed in the morning. Even serial killers make a positive difference in someone’s life.

 

 

 

 

 

It’s important to always remember that things will improve. Yes, sometimes life sucks a fat hairy dick. No one can expect it to always be awesome. Our emotions fluctuate wildly between happiness and depression. But the one good thing about life feeling as bad as it can possibly get is that it will get better. If you’re at the bottom of a well, you have to climb out of it. You’ll fall down a hell of a lot more of them, and you’ll have to climb out of those too. But sometimes, life can get so amazing that you feel like you’re surrounded by unicorns and rainbows. Obstacles are made to be overcome. Most experiences are in the middle of the spectrum, but we should always remember that when life sucks a fat hairy dick, it will eventually lead to unicorns and rainbows.

 

A good memory is a superpower because the more knowledge you possess, the more easily you can navigate the mental arts, and the world in general. Many people seem to think that a good memory is genetic, and that you can’t improve your natural ability. However, as with any cognitive or physical skill, the more you train it, the better it becomes.

I learned valuable information from the book called The Talent Code, which is about improving athletic ability: Getting better at any skill is all about myelinating the synapses associated with it in your brain. I’m not a neuroscientist, but apparently, myelinating a synapse means strengthening a series of neuronal connections. So the synapse associated with remembering specific information, or swinging a tennis racket with perfect technique, can be myelinated through focused practice. Spending more time on that swing, or reading the tidbit you want to memorize, builds stronger foundations in the neuronal pathways associated with these actions. When the synapses are strong enough, they become intuitive, which means that you can improve even more. This is because you can access that memory, or perfectly swing that racket, without thinking about it.

Once you understand this, the question becomes: How should I do this for the best results? Knowing that your memory can be greatly improved is all well and good, but rote memorization doesn’t seem like the best method. That’s one of the main problems with the traditional education system. Just reading a sentence over and over again is one of the hardest ways to commit it to long term memory. That might work if you’re really interested in the information and/or are about to be tested on it, but you might forget it right after the exam. You can learn more efficiently when you are emotionally invested. This is why you have to trick yourself into liking math if you hate it, but want to get better at it. Hunter Maats and Katie O’Brien talk about this in their book called The Straight-A Conspiracy.

You can increase your chances of remembering information if you connect it to a story, something bizarre, or an imagined physical location. Great thinkers figured this out a long time ago, which resulted in the idea of the memory palace. Writing didn’t always exist. So before scribes, and long before the printing press, philosophers and storytellers had to memorize entire speeches and stories. Our memories have become a lot worse with continuous advancements in information storage, like books, and the internet. Homer, if he existed, recited The Odyssey and The Iliad many times before they were ever written down. But people like him were not superhuman. They used a tool that everyone has access to, because all you need is your brain.

The ancient Greeks and Romans used the memory palace, so it is an old, simple technique that still applies to the world today. A Greek poet named Simonides of Ceo apparently invented it. When he attended a banquet, he was talking with a few friends outside when the building collapsed. The bodies were too damaged to identify, but Simonides is said to have remembered everyone who was there, based on where they sat. The skill of remembering something based on location became known as the method of loci, or the memory palace.

So how do you build a memory palace? You use your imagination. The idea behind it is that remembering information requires having a place to store it. So you can either construct any physical location in your head, or use a real place associated with strong memories. You can build a castle in your mind as your own place for knowledge, but you would have to remember the details of it to store anything there. So it seems easier to use a real place.

I got out of the practice of using my memory palace, but when I went there regularly, it was my Grandma’s house from when I was growing up. Another idea behind the method of loci is mimicking the process of creating pathways in your brain. These are stronger when you make them bizarre. So when I used my memory palace to memorize my credit card number, this is what I did: I imagined walking into my Grandma’s house, and seeing Yoda next to the coffee table in front of the couch. He picked up my credit card from the table, and recited my number to me in his Yoda voice. This works so well because it’s as if you are storing a memory in a physical location. The pathways in your brain are strengthened when you rehearse how you get to the knowledge. This worked so well for me that I started storing information in files on the bookshelf of my Grandma’s office. I ran out of space in the rest of the house. I can still remember some knowledge from my memory palace, even though I haven’t visited it in a long time.

I first heard about this technique from Sherlock, the new BBC show based on the Sherlcok Holmes books, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Geniuses are my heroes, and Sherlock uses a memory palace on the show to help him remember all sorts of obscure information for solving crimes. This includes mundane knowledge like different types of soil and fabrics. Hannibal Lecter also has one on the newer show called Hannibal, which is part of why he’s a genius psychopath.

Fortunately, you don’t have to be a fictional super-genius detective or serial killer to use a memory palace. Anyone can do it! Even someone like me, who probably has an inherently bad memory, can appear to have a good one if I improve it enough. Thinking about this technique recently has inspired me to start using it again. Everyone can benefit from being able to store any important or interesting knowledge. So why not build a memory palace today? You can start populating it with more information than you might even think is possible. The more bizarre the pathways are that you create, the better. So the only limit to an excellent memory is your imagination. The memory palace is a mixed mental artist’s secret weapon.

I have a profound envy for geniuses. I always wish that I was as smart as characters on T. V. shows, like House or Sherlock. Whenever I watch them, I often say that I want to be so incredibly smart, even if it makes me an antisocial asshole, like those characters.

But the more I think about it, the more I realize that I wouldn’t want to pay the price of being a depressed drug addict for the reward of profound intelligence. I’m obsessed with getting smarter, but even though I’m talking about fiction, it seems like geniuses are inexorably flawed.

I finally read the original Sherlock Holmes stories recently. I love them because Sir Arthur Conan Doyle constructs cases so complex that I have to read the narratives at least twice to understand them. I also like the fact that even in the 1800s, when the stories were written, Sherlock is a drug addict, who loves cocaine, tobacco, and opium.

These are aspects that have been copied and expanded on in the recent iteration of the show, called Sherlock, starring Benedict Cumberbatch, and Martin Freeman. The former played Alan Turing in The Imitation Game, Julian Assange in The Fifth Estate, Doctor Strange in the movie with the same name, and the voice of Smaug, the dragon in the Hobbit movies, among many other roles. Freeman played Bilbo Baggins in the Hobbit movies, and had parts in several other films. I love the phenomenally complex plots in the episodes, some of which are only loosely based on the original stories. But what I enjoy more about the show than the stories is the way in which the characters have been expanded. We gradually learn a lot more about the psychology of Sherlock and John Watson, and the former’s history. Also, the roles of people like Moriarty, Sherlock’s super-genius arch enemy, Mycroft Holmes, who is Sherlock’s brother, Mary, who becomes John’s wife, and Molly Hooper, the coroner, are much larger than what Conan Doyle wrote.

Without revealing too much, one aspect that I like the most about the newest season of Sherlock is that he becomes so addicted to drugs that he comes very close to death. Without discussing his motivations for this, I appreciate this portrayal because it shows that even geniuses can be fundamentally flawed. One of the themes carried over from the stories is that Holmes is a junkie who solves crimes as an alternative to getting high.

Another aspect of the new season of the show that I love is that it reveals the flaws of emotionless rationality. Mrs. Hudson, who is Sherlock’s landlord, calls Mycroft an idiot for trying to be all about reason, with no emotion. This is in spite of the fact that on the show, he is portrayed as even more intelligent than Sherlock. Mrs. Hudson points this out because Mycroft can’t see the obvious emotional problems that Sherlock is having. Hudson also highlights the fact that Sherlock claims to be rational, but he is actually emotional. He shoots his wall with a gun when he’s mad, and pieces of paper explaining cases he can’t solve get stabbed with a knife. Another character highlights the blind spots Sherlock has due to emotionally detaching from cases so he can use his cold, powerful reason. Whenever emotional context is applied to someone he cares about or trusts, he blindly accepts claims without question. To me, this underscores the fact that none of us are as emotionless as we think we are, or might want to be.

We can learn a lot from fiction, but some excellent examples of the misconceptions of genius in real people are Einstein, Mozart, and Picasso. Neither I, nor anyone else, knows what these admirable figures were actually like, and I don’t know much about the history of any of them. But I heard the other day that the reason we know Einstein’s name is more due to his persistence than his genius. He almost certainly was extremely intelligent. But maybe his dedication to solving scientific problems, doing calculations, and telling people about his results were what gained him fame. Perhaps Einstein’s persistence in this pursuit is much more of the reason for his association with intelligence than his actual abilities. If he had come up with so many monumental scientific theories and not told anyone about them, then maybe no one would have heard of him today.

This also applies to Mozart and Picasso. It is highlighted by Bryan Callen and Hunter Maats in their podcast called Mixed Mental Arts. The podcast brings a wide variety of smart people together to discuss and teach others about interesting and controversial ideas. On one of the episodes, Maats and Callen were talking about how geniuses like Picasso and Mozart were not simply magical unicorns to whom no one could imagine measuring up. They were just persistent. It seems highly likely that they had a large degree of natural ability, but the volume of work they produced is what lifted them to the status of mastery. It was more quantity than quality that caused us to worship their talents. That doesn’t mean that any idiot with a crayon could paint like Picasso if they just do it a thousand times. They wouldn’t do as well without that genetic skill. But this cliche is true to a certain extent: Practice makes perfect. I don’t think perfection is possible, but a ton of practice can make you really good at almost anything.

Mozart and Picasso apparently produced hundreds and hundreds of pieces of work that everyone, including themselves, hated. This blew my mind! It seems obvious in retrospect, but it made me think about how mastery is more of a process than an innate ability. So I think that for artists, or anyone who wants to get good at anything, you just have to practice a lot. It makes me think about what Malcolm Gladwell said in his book called The Tipping Point about how it takes 10 000 hours to achieve mastery. That number has been refuted by some scientists and others, but I think the principle is true. This is that you have to practice something a hell of a lot to gain a high level of skill in it. Who knows? It it weren’t for their persistence, maybe we would never have heard of geniuses like Picasso and Mozart.

It’s easy to look at geniuses like unicorns with magic powers, but they are human, just like the rest of us. People who are really skilled in one domain might be completely dysfunctional in others. Is it worth being a genius if the cost is being a junkie asshole with no friends? My answer to that question used to be yes, but it has changed, now that I am learning about the importance of emotion, and don’t put characters like Sherlock Holmes up on a pedestal. (Well, maybe just a tiny pedestal.) I also understand better than I used to that an enormous factor in achieving mastery, and being seen as a genius, is persistence. So whenever you feel like such a dumb failure that you’re part of a less evolved species than geniuses, remember this: Geniuses can be dysfunctional and miserable, and even Mozart and Picasso did a lot of work that everyone hated. Geniuses are not superhuman. They are flawed human beings, just like the rest of us.

by Andrew Meintzer

Almost everyone in my home town of Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada recently underwent disastrous wildfires. The largest scale of destruction in the entire history of our province has coincided with the mandatory evacuation of the city. I consider myself among the lucky people because I so far have a home to go back to, and I found a place to stay within the same night of the carnage, along with my parents, pets, and most treasured possessions.

A large amount of residents have not been so fortunate. I have friends whose houses have burnt to the ground. As of now, 80% of the homes in the area of Beacon Hill are completely demolished, and other sections of town have been engulfed in walls of flame but suffered less damage. My own neighborhood of Thickwood, along with Timberlea, has so far seen only minimal conflagrations, but the wreathes of fire are expected to worsen as I write these words.

Due to the extreme traffic congestion of evacuating over 60 000 people, minutes of driving turned into hours, and many ran out of gas and had to camp out in the middle of highways over night. Those routes to the oilsands camps North of town, as well as the ones leading South to Edmonton, the nearest major city, were so gridlocked that travel times doubled for some, and tripled or quadrupled for most.

It was a surreal experience. I had trouble believing that the danger was so serious. No one was expecting fire warnings to lead to a full scale evacuation. At first, news reports were sensationalized, and some people were getting overzealous and panicking. However, it turned out that their caution was entirely warranted. By the time we left the neighborhood of Thickwood, we could see mountains of smoke from the nearest fire in the area of Wood Buffalo. Ash was beginning to rain down, and the sun turned red from the haze.

We drove along the roads and highways in and out of the cities, seeing police blocking off roads and directing traffic, and people camping out in their cars on the side of the roads from running out of gas. One of my friends saw flames leap across the highway, as if in some form of supernatural attack. Another sent me a video of a water bomber dropping water on the mutating miasma mere hundreds of feet from where he was stuck in traffic, with little effect. He also showed me a picture of fires licking the edges of the highway down which he was driving, quickly swallowing the surrounding trees. Watching seas of people scrambling around and fleeing from chaos, seeing reports of gas stations exploding, and hearing at least three actual emergency broadcasts, a small part of me was losing the battle against my persistent calmness under pressure. I was reminded of every apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic movie and T. V. show. The Walking Dead, 2012, Dawn of Dead; any work of art in which society collapses and descends into chaos. It would have been easy to become fixated on the darkness of this tragedy, and many were.

But there was one light that shone defiantly through the enveloping blackness of these events. As a person who sometimes finds it easy to be pessimistic about humanity, I was repeatedly overwhelmed by the unadulterated altruism of friends and complete strangers alike. One drove me to my home, which was not yet in the evacuation areas, even though he should have been packing, because his was. Some family friends lent us their truck to use to escape danger. My Dad’s boss and coworkers bent over backwards to find us a place to stay for the night, yet still failed due to the influx of people seeking safety, which clogged the roads. After driving around for hours, only to be turned away repeatedly, one man who had never met us before saw that we were a family with two pets seeking refuge, and that my Mom is disabled, and gave us his room, even though that was against the rules of the camp. He also gave us the book he was reading, and slept in his truck for the night. His name is Fred, and none of us will ever forget him. The next day, one random stranger brought my Mom coffee, another gave us food, and everyone we came across was endlessly helpful; assisting us with carrying  luggage and our dog, and ensuring we were fed, as my Mom is diabetic. We then were able to move to the camp where my Dad works, and get two adjoining rooms so my exhausted mother could lie down immediately, I wouldn’t have to sleep on a floor, and our pets wouldn’t be so cooped up. Then, three more men who had never met us before, and were there for work, voluntarily helped us carry our pets and treasured possessions to our rooms.

The way that people have reacted throughout this experience has really helped to put life in perspective for me. Their behaviour could easily have swung in the opposite direction. They could have been selfish, and focused only on the preservation of themselves and their immediate families, which is often what happens in movies and T.V. shows. But that is not how the majority of people seem to react when disaster truly strikes. They are working together to ensure that everyone gets what they need, and no one is left empty handed. It takes a lot to give me hope, but my experience in this chaos has. To me, it shows that even though a large number of people can sometimes appear to be selfish, dumb, and materialistic, when the shit hits the fan, we can by and large be relied upon to be decent, and help to ensure the survival of everyone in need. I think that the colloquialism, “Empathy rarely extends beyond our line of sight,” is often true. But when pure danger strikes under extreme circumstances, the average person can be relied upon to do what is good and just. This seems like as pertinent evidence as any of humanity’s innate moral compass. We don’t all have the same view of what is right and wrong, but the majority of us know when it is more important to be selfless rather than selfish. This is how altruism can shine through the darkness of tragedy.

 

 

Learning doesn’t have to be a chore, filled with mindless tedium and rote memorization. It can be fun, and much easier than conventional wisdom would claim. Malcolm Gladwell is the famous author of many excellent books, including Outliers, and the Tipping Point. He said that it takes 10 000 hours to achieve mastery in a vocation or career. Proponents of lifestyle design and efficiency such as Tim Ferriss would argue that this is not necessarily the case. He is the author of the 4 Hour Workweek, the 4 Hour Body, and the 4 Hour Chef, which is about meta-learning.

For a lot of people, there is a stigma attached to acquiring knowledge. This is partially related to different personality types, but it is mostly because the vast majority of education systems are massively ineffective and dull. There are some countries and teachers who stand out by engaging in different methods, but they are the exception to the norm. Most of us quickly grow to associate learning with being forced to remember a lot of uninteresting information that we will quickly forget. This is due to schools prioritizing taking tests over encouraging enthusiastic views of teaching. In elementary schools, kids are assigned homework to practice the same skills they are apathetic toward over and over again. They are also tested on their knowledge of way more information than is necessary. This problem can be exacerbated in post-secondary institutions, where tests matter even more.

This flawed goal of education causes innumerable global problems. It results in people having less opportunities, being unproductive members of society, and making poorly informed decisions. When we have limited employment options, we’ll probably spend a massive percentage of time working in jobs that make us miserable. Such common time wasters also make us suffer from a severe lack of accomplishment. This could even lead to a life of crime for disadvantaged classes who happened to be born into suffocating circumstances. A lot of us are forced to devote our lives to a system that barely serves us, in hopes of making enough money to survive. If we are unmotivated, and don’t take the time to learn enough information before making choices, we can get into the habit of blissful ignorance. It results in us engaging in countless actions that cause us harm, sometimes without even being cognizant of the consequences. We could eat unhealthy diets and be sedentary, which can lead to chronic health problems, and shorter lives of poorer quality. We could vote for politicians with whom we disagree about almost everything because they belong to our favorite party, and we didn’t bother researching their positions. This can cause laws and other public changes to occur that might be detrimental to societal progress. In some cases, we are completely oblivious to them.

There is a more efficient and exciting way to learn. It can take significantly less than 10 000 hours to achieve mastery, and a tiny fraction of that if the goal is the limited proficiency that many of us seek. More effective methods allow us to become experts in 2 years instead of 10, and award us with practical knowledge in any topic or skill in days, weeks, or at the most, months, instead of years or decades. We just have to start looking at learning in a different way.

The primary mindset that Tim Ferriss encourages with regard to learning includes focusing on fundamentals, looking at problems in unconventional ways, and setting clearly defined goals. He talks about the 80/20 principle in relation to focusing on the fundamentals, which advocates for the minimum effective dose. When looking at a skill or subject to learn, or a problem to solve, we should think about what 20% of actions we can take that will get 80% of the results. We often do a lot of unnecessary things in combination with those that serve us a lot better. In most areas of life, including learning, there are frequently foundational guidelines and practices that elicit more benefits than anything else. If we want to learn a new language, we can do do so much more quickly by learning the grammar structure of it, and working up from there. If we want to get in shape, a few fundamental exercises like deadlifts, squats, and kettle bell swings will get us more bang for our buck than doing hour long crossfit workouts 4 times a week. If we want to learn to play the guitar, there are a handful of chords that will allow us to easily play every AC/DC and Rolling Stones song, and every pop song. It may take a while before we’re playing Stairway to Heaven, but we can make a lot of progress in a very short period of time. No building stands up without its foundations, so looking for these in anything we want to learn about will serve us well.

Looking at problems in unconventional ways can also help us a lot more than standard methods. Outliers who succeeded in spite of disadvantages can teach us more than those who flourished because they did everything the hard way. If everyone does something in a particular manner, it has likely been a while since someone questioned whether there are more efficient practices. Athletes or academics who have to navigate around inherent setbacks tend to find creative solutions to problems that require less work. They might do deadlifts and sprints while everyone else is going for 5 mile jogs, or only read the first and last page of each chapter of a textbook while everyone else memorizes every word. One excellent way that Tim Ferriss demonstrates this principle in his book called The 4 Hour Body is an anecdote of a 114 pound high school athlete. She got better at sprints than her counterparts by doing nothing more than deadlifts to her knees thrice a week. This got her maximum deadlift to 405 pounds, and made her faster than her opponents with a fraction of the work.

Setting clearly defined goals is another great way to cut learning curves. We often start new hobbies or interests with unnecessarily broad intentions. What do you want to learn about playing guitar? Just how to play it? What do you want to learn about Spanish? Just how to speak it in general? We can make a lot more progress by breaking large tasks into smaller chunks, and taking them one specific step at a time. Learning Jujitsu can seem incredibly daunting if we have no martial arts experience, especially if we are out of shape. However, if we focus on each class we go to, and put the larger goal of becoming at least mildly proficient in the backs of our minds, it can help us improve at a faster rate. When we start the class, we can think about nothing other than the moves we will learn that day. Once we have mastered those, which could take a long time, we can progress to the next set.

Creating incentives to force us to complete our clearly defined goals is also a good idea. One example that Tim Ferriss has used in his books is giving a friend money to donate to a hated group, like the Neo-Nazis, if we fail to reach a goal. Another is sending a friend a picture of yourself in your underwear that they have permission to publicize if you don’t lose a certain amount of weight by a particular deadline. Setting clear goals is all well and good, but it doesn’t matter how specific they are if we fail to meet them. Extreme incentives motivate us to be phenomenally focused on making accomplishments.

This brings us to meta learning, which is essentially learning on a higher level than average. It is the ability to chunk bits of information together, so that remembering one aspect of a concept or skill connects it to several other components in our minds. Meta learning builds neuronal connections, increasing associative knowledge. It allows us to connect disparate details more efficiently. In the book called The Art of Learning, by Josh Waitzkin, the former world chess champion explains meta learning. He discusses how he and other chess players use it to chunk series of moves together, which makes them able to act more quickly. They can think five or more moves ahead of what is currently happening, allowing them to consider the consequences of their actions in microseconds instead of seconds. That is why people like Josh Waitzkin can accomplish feats like playing several chess games simultaneously. They are all connected in his head, and he often automatically knows what moves to make without understanding the reasons behind them. In the book, he talks about how he used these methods to also become a world champion in Tai Chi Push Hands, the martial arts version of the movement practice. He then used the same tactics with Jujitsu, allowing him to achieve a black belt in an incredibly short time frame. Other people in various professions regularly engage in meta learning. Fire fighters sometimes know how to escape a burning building without being able to see or hear properly. Cops and soldiers can tell when a suspect or combatant is about to shoot before any movement occurs.

The benefits of meta learning are prodigious. We can all get into the habit of focusing on the fundamentals when starting a new skill or field of study, looking at problems in unconventional ways, and setting clearly defined goals, along with incentives to help us achieve them. This can aid us in chunking different subsets of information together, and accelerating understanding. The more we engage in supercharged learning curves, the more time we can save, and the more we can achieve. Once we become learning machines, we can all live vastly more productive and fulfilling lives.

 

Human beings can climb Mount Everest, run a marathon in -20 degrees Celsius, run a marathon in a desert with no water, (all in done in shorts) hang off a ledge with one finger for 25 seconds, stay in a tank full of ice for over an hour, and swim for 50 meters (164 feet) under solid ice, finding the hole to get out in spite of frozen retinas. These sound like the feats of a superhero, or some crazy guru making false claims, but they are real. An actual person has made these accomplishments, and he doesn’t think he’s special. He claims that anyone can do what he did!

His name is Wim Hof, and he’s from the Netherlands. Normally, ideas are more interesting to write about and discuss than people, but in this case, a person is the best thing to talk about in order to convey the sheer power of human adaptability. Wim’s story is not unusual. Like many of us, he had been searching for fulfillment through many religions and philosophies, finding nothing that truly spoke to him, and stuck. One day, walking down the street, he felt drawn to the cold water in a partially frozen river. He had a sudden inexplicable urge to jump in, so he did. After getting out, he felt so amazing that he kept going for an unbelievably freezing swim every day, and figured out that if he used certain breathing techniques, he could spend an incredibly long time in the water, without feeling cold!

Wim tried to spread the word about the phenomenal benefits of his breathing techniques, and spending time in freezing cold water, but for a long time, hardly anyone listened. This is understandable. If some guy is going around telling people to regularly expose themselves to water so cold they would run the risk of hypothermia, or even death, most people would think that guy is crazy. Even if he suggests special breathing techniques to help with the process. This was especially true over 20 years ago, when scientists had no proof of his claims.

When Wim Hof’s wife died from Cancer, he understandably felt indescribable despair. Eventually, with the encouragement of his children, he resolved to try harder to spread the word about his methods. He wanted to help people, and he wanted to reduce the amount of suffering in the world. Ironically, his wife’s death led to more widespread acceptance of his practices. He began to garner the attention of scientists, because he wanted to prove that his claims were valid, and more people started following his methods.

At the same time, research was being done on cold thermogenesis, and we know some amazing information about it today. Scientists have confirmed that for most people, it’s beneficial for the human body to be subjected to extreme temperatures, whether they be hot or cold. Extreme heat, like that of a sauna, has recently been shown to reduce all cause mortality in people without abnormal health conditions. It releases heat shock proteins, which cause all kinds of long term health benefits. On the opposite end of the spectrum, severe cold exposure can result in a plethora of similar physical rewards. I’ve written about these benefits at least a few times before. It does things like burn fat, increase hypertrophy, (muscle growth) enhance glutathione production, (the body’s most potent antioxidant) and naturally release norepinephrine and endorphins.

Wim had a variety of tests done on him by scientists in the Netherlands. He had blood taken while in a tank full of ice, and they discovered that he could actually raise his body temperature under those conditions! They also injected his extracted blood with endotoxin, and found that it showed 100% immunity! His immune system was so strong that he was unaffected by it! There are other studies still being done on him to figure out how he can accomplish some of his feats.

Wim has been tested outside of the laboratory, too. He got the world record for longest ice bath, at 1 hour, 38 minutes, and 48 seconds. His other records and feats include ascending Mount Kilimanjaro in shorts in 2 days, climbing Mount Everest in shorts, but failing to reach the top due to an injury, and running a marathon in Namib Desert in shorts with no water, under the supervision of a doctor. He also set the new ice endurance world record at 1 hour, 52 minutes, and 42 seconds,  and ran a marathon in Finland in shorts in temperatures of -20 degrees Celsius, in 5 hours and 25 minutes.

The Iceman, as many people have called him, is not some anomaly only believed in by fringe scientists. Studies have confirmed some of his claims, and they are continuously being done on him. It has now been proven through many people who follow his methods that he is not special. They have practiced his breathing techniques, cold water immersion, yoga, and other methods, with similar results. He has garnered the attention of people like Joe Rogan, podcaster, comedian, and U.F.C. commentator, Tim Ferriss, author, blogger, podcaster, entrepreneur, and polymath, and even respected scientists and exercise experts like Dr. Rhonda patrick, and Kelly Starrett. Dr. Patrick also does podcasts, and has done laboratory studies in fields such as exercise, nutrition, biology, biochemistry, and microbiology. Kelly Starrett is a movement mechanics specialist, and has deep knowledge of mobility. A Vice documentary has also been done on the Iceman.

Wim Hof’s mission is coming closer to fruition every day. He wants people the world over to be happier, healthier, and stronger. He truly believes he can teach people to reduce depression, enhance immunity, improve physical performance, and dramatically upgrade overall functioning of their bodies and minds. Seeing all the suffering in the world, he remembers the tragic loss of his wife, and wants to help humanity reach a higher pinnacle of existence. The Iceman truly believes in this lofty ambition. He’s not some false guru looking to coerce groupies into having sex with him, or giving him all their money. He just wants to make the world a better place. Maybe some of his goals are naive, and perhaps he will not see as much success as he wants to. But he can hope, and ignite an unstoppable conflagration of ambition within all of us. That’s all any of us can do, really. We all get depressed sometimes, and feel like the world is a crushing black virus, but people like Wim Hof can help us see the light. He can encourage us to realize that we can all dramatically improve ourselves, and try to make the world a better place very day.

 

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The road less traveled is not easy  to traverse. When inspirational speakers talk about following our dreams, they often suggest that since they became successful, anyone can. These people aren’t delusional, but maybe a lot of them have forgotten how difficult is was for them to get where they are.

One thing that not many successful people stress is how phenomenally difficult following your passion can be. No matter what alternative path in life we choose, whether it’s as an artist, musician, writer, skateboarder, surfer, weightlifter, skydiver, or anything else, it’s going to be a challenge. It’s going to be harder than anything we’ve done in our entire lives. It’s going to be like slaying a dragon.

When walking along the road less traveled, we will experience a lot of failure. We’ll fall 500 times before perfecting that skateboarding trick, get injured dozens of times before squatting 500 pounds,  or get rejected thousands of times before earning money as an artist, writer, or musician. People don’t tell us this at the outset. Maybe that’s because taking alternate paths in life is so rare that it’s difficult to find mentors who can tell us how challenging it will be. Perhaps it’s because people in the tops of their fields want us to learn the way they did, so we can come to understand the value of failure.

People in regular careers don’t seem to understand the will to reject traditional paths to success. Even those of us following these paths don’t grasp the magnitude of casting aside common jobs in hopes of greater success later on. People pursue normal careers because they provide security. If we try to be professional athletes or artists, there is no guarantee of success, and if we do get it, we’re almost guaranteed to fail miserably innumerable times first. Taking one massive risk doesn’t mean the road to the endgame is going to be freshly paved and painted.

To become successful in careers that have phenomenally high failure rates, tireless determination is essential. We won’t make it if we spiral into despair every time we fail. If we want to achieve our dreams, we have to be willing to try a lot of different methods, many of them will not work at all. Making it as a painter or a surfer is not a science, so there are a lot of things that will work like magic for many people, but will cause others to crash and burn. We have to figure out what works best for us, and this requires a lot of trials and tribulations.

We have to be like warriors fighting dragons if we want to achieve success in non-traditional career paths. The unshakable fortitude of heroes is a requirement. As Bruce Wayne’s Dad said to him in the film, Batman Begins, “Why do we fall, Bruce? So we can learn to pick ourselves back up.”

Think about instances in books and movies when warriors slay dragons. Almost always highly proficient in using a wide variety of tools and methods to accomplish their ultimate goal, they have often spent years perfecting their skills. One tiny mistake can lead to instant death.

One aspect of this journey that is less interesting, and often not shown, is all the failure that led to perfection. The hero didn’t start off instantly being able to shoot a bow with perfect accuracy and speed, swing a sword hard and fast enough to take out multiple opponents, or block and dodge at the perfect time to avoid being killed. Everyone has to start somewhere. We have to learn how to properly hold and aim a sword or bow before attacking with it. We must figure out how to anticipate an enemy’s movements before we can dodge and block them correctly. This all takes an unbelievable amount of work. How much did someone who can bench press 500 pounds start off with? The empty bar, just like everyone else. And it took a long time to get from 45 pounds to 500.

If we want to slay the dragon, we have to start with small goals, and fail miserably thousands of times until we achieve those, and set larger ones. After hurting our fingers a lot, we’ll learn how to line up a shot with a bow. Once we’ve learned how to balance a sword in our hands, we’ll figure out how to swing it. This process will continue until we master all aspects of our weapons and skills.

There will be far too many times when we hold an arrow incorrectly, and it shoots wildly off to the side. We will swing our sword to the left instead of the right, and get hurt. We will miss an opponent’s parry, or be too slow to block, and fall into the mud. Inevitably, we will feel like giving up. We’ll start to no longer see the point of all the hard work. We will want to lie there in the mud, wallowing in defeat.

But then we will remember our ultimate goal. We have to be impenetrably resilient. We have to slay that dragon, and save all the terrorized villagers. Fear can kill us in life-or-death situations. So we will block the incoming blow from our enemy, kill them, stand up, and go to fight the beast.

As we enter the dragon’s lair, we will remember our training, and stay focused. This is the final test, and there is no turning back. We will ignore our fear, and trudge forward into the enveloping blackness. When we see the fire-breathing behemoth, we will do exactly what needs to be done at the right moments. We will act automatically. First, we will shoot at it, then dodge it’s fire, and strike with our sword after it lunges. Continuing in this fashion until the beast is close to death, we will then run along the ledge encircling it, and jump onto its head, thrusting our sword down for one final, fatal blow.

Then we can bask in our achievement, thinking of all the torture we went through to get here. It has all finally paid off. We kept training, kept improving, in spite of seemingly endless failure. We executed our plan almost perfectly, and we survived the ultimate test. We are not unscathed. Plenty of scratches, bruises, and strains line our body. But we can now rest, and recharge before thinking of our next goal that seems insurmountable to most people. We have, at long last, slayed the dragon.

 

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What is flow? It’s that mindset we get into when we’re so absorbed in what we’re doing that our surroundings vanish. We’re so focused on the task at hand that we stop questioning ourselves, stop thinking about mistakes we’ve made in the past, and trials and tribulations we have to face in the near future. We become fully absorbed in the present moment, experience time dilation, and  achieve more than we ever thought was possible. We pick that bar off the ground 3 more times than we thought we were going to. We read 10 pages of a book in half the time we expected. We write twice as many pages, phenomenally quickly, and have to do almost no editing. We figure out the problem that’s been nagging at us about our business we’re building, or our rocky relationships.

There’s an amazing book on the subject of flow, called The Rise of Superman. It has that title for a good reason. When we access flow states, our productivity and efficiency rises to seemingly superhuman levels. Our skill  and intuition increase exponentially. Steven Kotler, head of the Flow Genome Project, along with Jamie Wheal, have discovered through decades of research that flow is a common trend in top performers in every field. In the book, they lay out how flow has helped athletes achieve goals that everyone believed were impossible, such as Tony Hawk completing the first 900, which is 2 and a half spins. Jazz musicians and freestyle rappers are commonly in flow states. So are writers, artists, scientists, CEOs; anyone can access this mindset. Action-adventure sports athletes are just the easiest examples, because their accomplishments are so meteoric and visual. Freeclimbing, or rock climbing with no ropes, is almost impossible if you’re not completely tuned into the moment. So is parachute skiing or snowboarding, in which people get dropped onto a mountain, ski or snowboard off a cliff, and parachute to safety like James Bond. Some athletes even do this twice a row, parachuting from the first cliff to a second one, snowboarding or skiing off it, and pulling the second chute. Real people actually do this!

When we’re in the zone, our brains our in transient hypofrontality. This means that our prefrontal cortex is temporarily slowed down, which is responsible for self-editing. We question ourselves less, allowing us to intuitively know which step to take next, leading to exponential expertise. This is how master chess players can know which is the correct move to make, without having to explain the reason. It’s how a surfer can feel when the exact moment is that they have to ride that wave. It’s how a powerlifter can squat a thousand pounds without thinking about technique, or how a sculpter can create a sculpture without thinking about each piece they take away from the start. Flow is a shortcut to mastery.

Flow states can potentially cut your learning curve in half! In a study using flow to help train military snipers faster, it was found that novice learners could become expert snipers in half the time it normally takes, if they were in flow while training.

This has phenomenal implications. People working on the Flow Genome Project have been researching how to engineer flow states. In order to do that, we have to take into account that it isn’t just transient hypofrontality that we desire. We need every component. MRI and FMRI technology have determined that our brains need to be doing specific things to be in flow. Other than transient hypofrontality, our brains need to be in alpha. There are four main brain states; alpha, beta, theta, and delta. If you’re thinking a lot, and you’re working really hard on a problem, your brain is probably in beta. Alpha is kind of in the middle in terms of brainwave activity. Your mind isn’t on hyperdrive, but it isn’t asleep either. When your brain is in alpha, you get intense feelings of concentration and creativity. You’re relaxed, but still highly focused, and you’re open to new ideas and free of judgement, due to transient hypofrontality.

There are a few key ways to engineer flow states, that release certain chemicals in the brain. The main psychological components of flow are intense focus, risk, altruism, dissolving the ego, and a sense of control. We need to take on a challenge that isn’t too extreme, but still difficult enough to require deep concentration. We need to stop questioning ourselves about the problem, and look at it objectively. This will allow us to control the variables intuitively, and move quickly from one step to the next. Being kind to others actually helps with flow states too.

The neurochemicals that are released during flow are dopamine, norepinephrine, anandamide, endorphins, and serotonin. Risk can release norepinephrine, intense focus can release dopamine, dissolving the ego can release anandamide and endorphins, and altruism can release serotonin. These are potent neurochemicals, and it’s why people can get addicted to flow states. If you took a drug cocktail to put you in the zone, you would use cocaine for the dopamine release, speed for norepinephrine, marijuana for anandamide, heroin for endorphins, and ecstasy for serotonin. That combination would probably put you in the hospital.

So if we want to access flow naturally, how can we do it? Well a fairly easy way is to do moderate intensity exercise for 20 minutes to get us focused, and then meditate for 10 or 20 minutes to get relaxed and dissolve our ego. But if you want to cheat and take shortcuts, and have a better chance of accessing flow, there are other ways that will almost certainly not harm you. As Steven Kotler said, “The quickest and easiest way to enter flow is a 20 minute run, then a cup of coffee, then marijuana.” I’m sure he’s not advocating doing it this way all the time, but those are the facts.

Do you want to cut your learning curve? Do you want to progress faster in your goals than you even thought was possible? Then it’s time to start cultivating flow states. Scientists are learning more and more all the time about flow triggers. The more time we spend in flow, the greater obstacles we will transcend. Use it as the most valuable tool we have for improving our success in life. I’ll join you there, in the zone.

 

 

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Human potential is nearly limitless.

Look at Steven Hawking. He got A.L.S., but that didn’t stop him from continuing to be one of the most groundbreaking scientists of all time, making Earth-shattering discoveries about black holes and quantum gravity.

Think about the numerous rappers who pulled themselves out of abject poverty, such as Jay-Z, and 50 cent. Now, they write and recite poems for a living.

Another perfect example of the sheer power of human potential is Nelson Mandella. He was wrongfully imprisoned for openly questioning authority, for 27 years! Even that didn’t stop him from achieving his goals. When he got out, he led the fight that ended apartheid!

There are countless fundamentally inspirational people from whom we can learn how to see our dreams come to fruition. You don’t feel like looking up biographies and dissecting their methods for success? Then look for the answer in books.

Other than being phenomenally entertaining, books are profound sources of inspiration, and valuable tools. They teach you how to learn a new skill, and provide you with endless cascading waves of ambition.

One particularly amazing book is called The Art of Learning, which was written by Josh Waitzkin. He’s the chess prodigy that the movie entitled Searching for Bobby Fischer was based on. His book deconstructs his process for constant improvement in chess, and explains how he applied it to accelerated learning in martial arts. He details how his chess strategies helped him understand the foundational concepts of Tai-Chi, followed by Jiu-Jitsu. National and international Tai-Chi Push Hands champion, and a black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, are now on his list of accomplishments.

A book that taught me the principles of archery is called Zen in the Art of Archery. After reading that, I understood how to analyze the act of firing a bow, and how to recognize when my form needs improvement. This book stressed the importance of the right mindset more than anything else.

The Limitless pill exists! (Oh yeah, let’s not forget that the movie was inspired by a book.) It’s called Tireless Determination.

You have the tools and information you need to become so good at your passion that it seems like you are on the Limitless pill! All you have to do once you figure out what your dreams are is find the right process.

After you discover it, you just have to follow those steps over and over again, until you reach your goals. As the Taoist philosopher, Lao Tzu, said, “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

Complete failure cannot even be a distinct possibility in your head. However, you will almost certainly have to wade through a murky, treacherous swamp of minor defeats to get to the rewarding shores of your dreams.

Take the Limitless Pill! Strap in, buckle up, and launch the precision rocket that is your unrealized potential into the stratosphere. I know it’s risky. I know that stepping out of your comfort zone is terrifying. But after you press that button, you will feel rejuvenated, and you’ll wonder why you didn’t possess the audacity to chase your dreams in the first place.

 

 

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