Still I’m just taking steps.
Exploring this magical journey wherever it leads.
I never set out to do this work in the world, let alone to build programs on the brain or reality constructing.
Certainly not to focus on the future of our species.
Beginning this work 22 years ago I MERELY wanted to know how you live the life you TRULY want.
It seemed like the most obvious thing to me.
So I just started taking steps.
Down the rabbit hole
See, this is ALL that got me started on these topics.
I didn’t get it anymore.
Since I “woke up” in high school and creating your best life became my obsession it had seemed obvious.
Work hard in school.
Get the best job you can.
Do your best work.
Keep creating your best life.
Simple, right?
It all made sense, until it didn’t.
Even Goldman?
Even at Goldman Sachs people hate their job?
Many don’t want to be here?
WTF?
This was my observation right at the beginning, in analyst training.
Before they’d even started many were counting down—LITERALLY, in Excel—the number of days until their program ended.
It didn’t make sense to me.
Years later when I was helping manage the business I’d encourage them to leave.
Greatest opportunity
See, I’d worked in factories, KFC and dozens of such jobs growing up.
Of course many people didn’t want to be in these jobs either.
But this was Goldman Sachs.
It was the greatest place I thought you could be.
Over time some of the shine wore off.
And the layoffs changed everything for me.
Only a few years earlier I thought I was a “lifer,” on track living my dream.
Now I wondered, is it time to explore leaving?
No clue
Back then I had no clue what to do.
Before this I’d done the “right” things.
And it had enormously served me.
It landed me the best job I could get coming out of university.
Enormously catapulted me in life.
Yet it had also only landed me where I was asking these questions.
“What do you TRULY want?” I asked non-stop in those early years.
That’s how blessed we are, btw.
You have so much opportunity and choice that one can lose sights of the forest and trees.
Take a step
Back then all this was so hard for me.
It wasn’t just that I didn’t know what I wanted in my career and life.
LITERALLY I had no clue how to figure it out.
It felt like there was no-one I could talk to who actually got it, other than my colleagues who you can’t REALLY talk to about these things.
For a few months I didn’t know what to do.
But, then, somehow, I got lucky, my brain made a new connection.
It basically led me to see that if you don’t know what to do, just do anything different.
Mix it up by doing different things, and spending time with different people and see what you learn, became a theme for me.
And that’s when I cracked open my first self-help book.
Searching for what?
No idea.
I didn’t know what I was hoping to find.
I’d never even thought about any of that stuff.
Yet, still, I was out of answers, so I turned somewhere new and different.
Quickly I began seeing new ways of thinking and “going after it.”
And you begin developing a new toolkit.
Before this I was a hammer.
It wasn’t hard for me to hammer through goals.
Yet I saw there’s a lot more you can do with a bigger and better toolkit.
And there was something else I started to see.
The brain
Back then I didn’t know anything about the brain or mindset.
See, this is where I was deeply cynical about personal development.
I didn’t realize it was about evolving; still thought it was about achieving.
And I’d achieved my most ambitious goals never for one second thinking about topics of mindset or even goals for that matter.
In high school I decided my goal was the best grades I could get and I “simply” worked all the time to achieve.
University and Goldman were the same.
With just a hammer you can drive a long nail.
So, all those topics of mindset or top performance or whatever seemed loser to me.
Yet, still, there was something in it that kept triggering VERY deep in me.
Just how deep it would take some 16 more years of taking steps to see.
“Dream,” yet?
You see, I had been so good at pounding through goals but where had it landed me?
In all truth, a very, very long way from where I started in life.
Just being more grateful for this had been a huge “Layer 1 Filler” for me, a concept we’ll go into in The Simulation—Level 1.
Yet, still, I was unwilling to give up on my dream so I had to keep exploring—
Is this TRULY the life as a kid you dreamed?
Even if it had been, was I thinking and feeling as you’re supposed to when you’re TRULY living your dream?
What is it like to be TRULY living your dream?
Didn’t know.
I had to keep exploring.
Keep stepping
You never know where your steps might lead.
Some of your grandest discoveries can come when you don’t know what you’re seeking.
Often in life, when you don’t know exactly what you want, it can feel easier to stay stuck.
When just about any step can lead you to your grandest destination.
While you’re on this magical journey living your dream.