Personal Growth

In the film Inception, a team of espionage agents is highly compensated by multinationals to manipulate people through their dreams.

Lucid Dreaming is the closest thing outside of the silver screen to this. It's not hyperbole when I say that lucid dreaming can and will make your REM sleeping hours the most vividly exciting part of your day.

A few examples of my vivid and memorable experiences...

Aristotle said...

"I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is over self."

For most of history, true mastery of self-control and willpower was regarded as a mythological act or feat of accomplishment that could only be reached by individuals who were more than human.  Today, we are exceedingly lucky to live in a time when attitudes have matured, and the science of biology has quantified the factors that determine the degree of self-control we have and practice. This article will present some cutting-edge biohacking techniques along with some rare philosophical mindsets for significantly increasing your willpower, focus, and ability to resist addictive behaviors.

You’ve been sold sweet lies by the mainstream personal growth pop culture.

That you should “just be yourself.” That you should “go with the flow” of life more. That you can “manifest” the life you want via positive thinking. That you should “be kind to yourself” no matter what. That obsessive self-improvement feeds an inherent psychological defect somewhere in the murky depths of your being. That you should do less to get what you want.
These lies are comforting, and perhaps they work for some people. But not for me, and they probably won’t help you.
Those peddling them, for profit, or just because they are popular, underestimate just how detrimental a physical imperfection can be (we’ll explore this more in chapter 2). Doesn’t it seem that these bland platitudes often come from people - authors, influencers, gurus - who are conventionally attractive (or were for decades of their lives)? They are almost certainly also underestimating the significant advantage of being good-looking while misattributing their success to personal growth principles that appeal to the natural human bent toward laziness.
If you, like me, were cursed with a conspicuous physical imperfection, you must lifehack relentlessly. You need the underground, unconventional, barely legal, ride-the-ethical-edge shortcuts to what you want. If you’re not occasionally called a “control freak,” you’re underestimating the amount of agency you need to bring to bear in life. And when you’re called that, just do what I do: smirk.
You need to bring sharper tools to the project of architecting a beautiful life.

Yes, I’m wearing an eye patch now. And it’s finally time I told THE TRUTH about why my eye is… like that.

It begins with my mother.
After college, she took a solo Euro trip -- the kind of spiritually expansive journey you go on before seed oils ruin everything. She ends up in Crete. She is big into hiking, sunlight exposure, and keeping her circadian rhythm synced with Mediterranean daylight cycles. Just really living her best proto-biohacker life!
She goes hiking along the coast. There were caves. Of course, there were caves. And in one, there was this big opening in the roof where the sunlight streamed in like something out of a perfume commercial. She stood there, basking in the moment, contemplating her future -- so full of mystery and adventure...

The relentless seeker of wisdom and knowledge is sometimes rewarded with a "Satori experience" - a powerfully transformative moment of TOTAL spiritual clarity about your life and what you are in the world to do. In the past, I was skeptical of such things, but no longer because this happened to me this year. It was pretty mindblowing, and while I'm still processing it, I'm ready to talk about it. But in describing this, I prefer to use the Greek word Anakainōsis, which means a renewal, renovation, or complete change for the better. I like this word more, I'll tell you why a little later...

I was reading this entrepreneurship book, 10x Is Easier Than 2x, about exponential growth hacking in business and life. And I was getting really uncomfortable as I read it because it was calling out all the things I've been doing wrong with Limitless Mindset. All the ways I'd been limiting myself and the good I could do for you. It showed me how small I've been thinking. I've long prided myself on being a rule-breaker, a dissident, and an innovator, but this book showed me how I'm falling far short of my potential because mostly I'm unoriginal in my endeavors. This book reminded me that I must find what I can do uniquely well that virtually no one else on Earth is doing.

Over the past decade, I’ve followed a handful of podcasters and public thinkers whose work genuinely shaped me...

• They sharpened my thinking.
• They introduced tools I implemented.
• They accelerated my personal growth.

But something has changed. I’ll see a new episode drop. I’ll click. I’ll listen. And by the end, nothing new; just remixing, repackaging, and reiteration.

• Ideas I’ve already metabolized.
• Tactics I’ve already implemented.
• Wisdom that has already been digested.

I'm tremendously tempted to start internet drama by calling out a few of them, but I'm genuinely grateful to them, so instead I'll try to surmise why this is happening...

The story of how I met the disciple of the most hated man in the world is illustrative of how to (NOT) spend money on personal development...

I had just arrived in an exotic, new (to me) city...

I knew nobody there. I started by requesting to join the local Real Social Dynamics' wingman Facebook group. As I've explained elsewhere, my lifehack for forming intimate relationships fast is devoting my socializing time to high-affinity groups with deeply shared values; RSD-trained pickup artists are actually one of the best such groups. In the Facebook group, a cool-looking local guy had posted that he was offering free introductory pickup artist boot camps, which is infield dating coaching. I've never taken a boot camp, but have always been interested. If I had several thousand dollars just burning a hole in my pocket, I would do a boot camp.

He had posted a couple of indicators that he knew what he was doing, and it was a novel application of the freemium model, so I thought, why not? What do I have to lose? 
I contacted him and made what I thought was a generous offer of buying him dinner, and then we could go out at night and do the free coaching.
If he turned out to be an effective coach, I might purchase one of his coaching packages. If he sucked, then at least I would have explored the city a bit and had a stimulating conversation over a succulent meal.

The Internet is making everyone stupid, and that's a good thing!

The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains is a book that dramatically changed how I view the Internet. You don't need to read this book because the title says it all - your suspicions are correct, the Internet is NOT very good for our minds.

While everyone else is hoping that 2026 will be a better year than those earlier this decade, I suggest that you think more about 2031...

And I know what you might be thinking…