How to Be Cross Eyed
Thriving Despite Your Physical Imperfection— a mémoire and lifehacking manifesto
There's that moment when you meet a new person, and you can tell that they are just a bit disoriented by your weirdness. You feel that familiar little pang of embarrassment and shame because you know how weird you must look to them. You're physically imperfect. So am I. I know that moment as well as you do…
But you don't have to be cross eyed (or have a conspicuous physical imperfection) to enjoy this book. Really thriving requires an uncommon set of barely legal biohacking tools, social dynamics strategies from the fringes of polite society, and rapid mindset-transformation technologies, which this lifehacking manifesto delves into deeply.
This book is especially for that one or two percent of the population that has a glaring physical defect, which I fall into. I'm cross-eyed with Strabismus, which you can see below. If you're reading this, perhaps you are too.
There are certainly people out there with more conspicuous physical imperfections who have it worse than I do. However, the eyes are the windows to the soul; they are a part of nearly every important human interaction. Not having normal eyes has been a disadvantage that I've needed to develop a specific set of skills and life strategies to overcome.
I was talking to my lovely fiancée about this book, and she asked me if the purpose of the book was to help the self-esteem of people with physical imperfections.
Not really.
This book is more about the lifehacks that I've employed over the past 15 years; strategies, methods, and tools that work to help you overcome the challenge of a physical imperfection and thrive. These things will likely improve your self-esteem, but they will also work if you have low self-esteem, or no self-esteem (or too much self-esteem - as I'm sometimes accused of having!) Self-esteem is not my focus; there are better books on self-esteem. My focus is on what works.
This is not your typical self-help book…
I don’t share my life on social media just to show off — actually, I hate our pop culture of digital narcissism and pixel-powered jealousy — I share because anyone can write anything online. Sharing photos and vlogs of my awesome life is just the best way of proving that my lifehacking philosophy actually works!
I've had a pretty interesting life. I've dated a politician's daughter in Medellin, Colombia. I hung out with spies in Kyiv, Ukraine. I've almost died underwater twice. I participated in a bank robbery, and I lost my virginity to a spy (yes, really!) From getting into high-speed car chases to being deported from South American countries to representing the US Presidential candidate Donald J. Trump, I've found the happiness I didn't give a damn about and realized my dream of becoming an adventuring philosopher.
I may sound like quite the pompous pontificator, but I'll offer no apologies, because storytelling is the best way to impart the unconventional mindset that saved me from mediocrity and the biohacks that let me defy my selfish genes.
If you're bored with the tired problem>generalization>platitude>strategy formula that most self-help books follow, you'll enjoy this memoir of adventures, failures, and unexpected successes across three continents. I'll share some powerful tools for transformation - biohacking, flow state, an optimistic red pill mindset, and smart drugs - with which I've managed to pack several lifetimes' worth of peak experiences into a single decade.
I'm not a theorist in the business of making generalizations. The tactics and tools presented here are for rigorous practitioners, ethical hedonists, and open-minded self-experimenters.
This book is free
This book will always be free to anyone who it could help. Downloadable versions of it can be found here. I’ve also produced audio versions of the chapters you can download and listen to while you’re commuting, at the gym, or wherever.
If you want to thank me for it, you can buy it.
In fact, if you think it might help you, I’d encourage you to buy it. There’s this phenomenon of sunk cost motivation; if you pay for something (even if it’s not very expensive), you’re much more likely to follow through, take action, and actually improve your life.
Digital book
With a lot of digital books, the formatting seems to be a total afterthought. I've almost totally given up on reading ebooks because they are often in this crappy PDF format. I have to open them in a clunky PDF reader, sit at my computer, and scroll down the screen as I read. It's far from the sublimely pleasurable experience of settling down with a book and flipping the pages. For that reason, I've properly formatted this book into EPUB so you can read it on any device or tablet. I recommend the Google Play Books app.
Do yourself a big favor: If you’re reading the digital edition, use white text on a black background, which you can enable in settings if you’re reading at night.
From chapter 5: The Secret Lives of Alpha Males. Easier on the eyes, right?
Read it online
You can find the chapters of this book as media-rich articles with photos, videos, and additional links to resources through here on LimitlessMindset.com. And I've republished the chapters as articles here on my Substack; I suggest reading using their app for Android or IOS - this is one app that's worth taking 30 seconds to download. This is a very cleanly designed app that's a pleasure to read on; no annoying notifications, or distracting social networking features, and it has a white text on black background night mode that you should enable in settings.
Audio book
I have a face for radio and a voice for radio, so I have recorded and produced an audio version of this book for your listening pleasure which you can download here but I’d also encourage you to subscribe to the How to Be Cross Eyed podcast feed on the Castbox app. This is the best app for listening to audio programs; it’s free (and commercial-free!) and even remembers where you left off so you can resume.
Audio audiobook will also be available soon on Spotify and other audiobook platforms.
Print book
Coming soon...
Resources
Instant download of Ebook (epub/mobi) + Audiobook (MP3s)
- Book
- eBook (Kindle/ePub/PDF)
- Audio Program
Photos
Videos
Editor review
In my opinion, as a person who's been in a very long term relationship with good literature and reading... this book is very well written! Jonathan's light, easy style, his self irony and not to mention- sometimes dark sense of humor have taken me on a journey and have made me devour page after page, engrossing my senses and leaving me in anticipation for more after each chapter.
This book is not just the story of a cross eyed boy who used a bunch of lifehacks to become your average American, who ate junk food and drank soda in front of his TV. It is the story of a cross eyed boy who was strong enough on the inside to overcome his insecurity, fears and inner demons by applying genuine intelligence, faith and rationality and eventually finding his own path to self-actualization, despite his physical imperfection!
Initially, Jonathan talks about himself as a dorky teenager, who loved books, martial arts and going to church but who had no social skills and didn't even know how to ask a girl out... Now I'm pretty sure that a lot of people have been in his shoes at some point in their lives, especially if they don't consider themselves good-looking enough such as Ben Affleck or Kate Backinsale...moreover, people who have ever been ostrasized for their faces or bodies. Well, this book is solid proof that success is completely achievable, no matter what you look like on the outside! Many people (mostly guys) dream of having wild sex lives and eventually finding true love but they do just nothing to make it happen. If you read these chapters you will realize that if you are one of them you can totally do it! Despite being cross eyed, at 33 years old Jonathan has achieved much more than a lot of guys with no physical imperfection. We learn that he's had a life full of all kinds of risk and adventure, he has friends all over the world who are always happy to keep in touch with him, clients who respect him for his hard work and the passion he puts in it, and after all...he has earned the love and devotion of a woman who (from what I have read so far, including her own words) apparently has fallen for who this guy is and it sounds like she's finally found her “Ben Affleck”. Well, I'd say that she's one very lucky girl to have won over such a guy...
To summarize, I highly recommend this book to everyone having the courage to come out of their shell and/or become a better version of themselves. Hey, Jonathan Roseland did it. You can do it too! ;) Do not hesitate- buy, it's worth much more than you think!
User reviews
I bought this book then sat on it for weeks so I could read it on my holiday and I thoroughly enjoyed it, a real page turner it kept me engaged and scribbling notes all the way through.
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