What do we get for pursuing perfectionism to its fullest extent? What do we receive in return for caring about our perfectionistic urges?

Peace.

This is why we bother fulfilling those urges that fall under the category of making everything in our work perfect.

If you keep getting impulses and urges and you repress, suppress, fight, resist, or inhibit these impulses or urges, you will no longer get them as much in the future.

This is what it means to be depressed. Not just sadness, but lack of will or desire to do anything worthwhile, even though you know you’d derive immense pleasure from that activity or thing.

That desire when normally generated, it gets the form of an urge or impulse that needs to be fulfilled, and if that impulse or urge is not fulfilled, followed, or chased, the desire disappears altogether, along with the possibility, willingness, or ability to have any desire of the same thing, or anything else in the world again in the future. In other words, it crushes your motivation or interest in anything that brings you pleasure or any positive effect in your life.

Now not one thing is going to make you depressed beyond help. But if you keep ignoring your desires and fighting your impulses, and whenever you want something, you give up on getting, doing, or having it, you are on the pathway that ultimately leads to major depression. This is how anhedonia develops slowly. By not caring about your urges and impulses, and by never fulfilling, following, or listening to any of your impulses, urges, or desires, until you no longer give a damn anymore, about anything there is in the world. Indifference in this case is not wisdom, but lack of humanity. This is not you being in control of your mind. This is you no longer being alive anymore. This is not enlightenment or mindfulness. This is not expanded awareness or consciousness, this is brain failure, just like there is heart failure, liver failure, Renal Failure, …etc. In other words, your brain is no longer performing its natural or normal functions. This is not just the absence of unessential happiness, this is the lack of the ability to make your brain work and function, even at the minimal level. This is non-functioning. Everything will become a chore. A dreaded activity that you have to get through to avoid criticism by society for not doing stuff expected from normal human beings that have basic levels of feeling. They think you have no emotions. They don’t know that you don’t have the energy to exercise your brain and body and generate those emotions.

Listening to your impulses is not a radical recommendation by an eccentric individual like me. It is basic entry level advice to develop, maintain, grow, and increase your intelligence and creativity. It is the only way you’ll manage to awaken your inner true and authentic self.

This is not a call to abuse people unchecked. This is a call to stop abusing yourself.

The algorithm is not what you think. You are not being tested for how good your post is by how many people from those of whom the post was sent to loved it.

Even if 100 percent of your followers positively reacted to your post, the algorithm will still do nothing about it just because the number of people who reacted to your post is still too low.

The algorithm is not trying to determine whether or not your post is good. The algorithm is trying to determine whether or not it is safe for them to send such post to other people.

The algorithm doesn’t care about the quality of your posts. It just doesn’t want people to get bored prematurely by showing them high quality posts with low engagement.

Think of it like breaking news. You are on the platform to catch up on what is going on in the world to feel less alone or isolated. They tell you what’s happening in the world.

Now the Twitter slogan is starting to make sense. Clearly an epic conversation that took place between two random people on the street is not breaking news.

How do they determine that? Engagement! If something is getting massive or insane engagement, it’s the center of attention at the moment. It’s what people decided deserves the spot light.

I know some people don’t care about what Gary Vaynerchuck has to say. The guy is boring as fuck and is clearly a snake oil salesman. But you have to check him out because this is where the attention is right now. You check out Gary Vaynerchuck because his posts are breaking news. This is what people didn’t hate at the moment. Do something similar. This is the market. This is not my opinion of Gary, this is what I know goes in the minds of the majority of the people who visit his comments section daily to say shit like I needed this today. Even Gary doesn’t respond to all comments not because he doesn’t have time, but because he’s not interested in fake or induced love. Or shall I say, he can’t stand fake news.

The bottom line is this: You are not being tested or evaluated by the algorithm through determining the percentage of the people who engaged heavily with your posts. Even if one hundred percent of the people exposed to your post reacted positively to it, the algorithm will still say meh, we’re not gonna show your post to other people. We’re going to hit the breaks on your post just because the amount (like in kilogrammes) of engagement it got still did not cross the threshold below which we don’t care about or touch your post, and above which, the algorithm will start making its moves.

The algorithm will not push your post any further, aside from what reach hashtags might give you, unless your post hits a certain level of engagement per unit time.

That is why even if the entirety of that engagement came from outside the home feed of your followers or those who are not following you yet, and also not from the explore, …etc. It would still make your post rank high in the algorithm, even though the algorithm never did technically test it on people by showing it to a random sample after the other. For example, if all the engagement came from sharing your post in your story, or just told people to go engage with your latest post through a live stream you did on YouTube, or through a tweet without a link to your post.

Succumbing to being a perfectionist is the only way to go.

You cannot hope to discover your true nature or uncover your authentic self without succumbing to your innate perfectionistic nature unchecked.

You either suppress yourself in the name of making progress and the notion that we all suck and no one is really perfect, which is also known as induced self weakening, or unleash your strength and let go of putting yourself down any further.

You can’t have it both ways.

You can’t be your true self without being a perfectionist. At least in case you’re creative or extraordinary already.

Attacking your own perfectionistic tendencies is only another way of describing attacking your true and authentic full self, because society told you so, by demonizing beauty and celebrating the very destruction of your nature.

Don’t let a society of give uppers and let goers change who you are.

They picked the least favorable candidate amongst the democratic presidential candidates in 2019 to be their Vice President. The least, at least after Tulsi Gabbard exposed her during that famous debate. This is not the opinion of the republican voting base, but that of democrats.

She was highly unpopular and unfavorable among democratic voters, albeit with the republican ones. And they still picked her. And they dare accuse Trump and his fan base of being the divisive ones. Of being against the will of the people or majority of voters.

The establishment democrats, like Nancy Pelosi, and her centrist ilk, kicked Bernie Sanders out of the primaries, in defiance of what the majority of the democratic voting base back then was so enthusiastic about to the level of feeling like Bernie Sanders winning the primaries will take care of all their life’s problems. It would’ve been a dream come true for them.

But the establishment democrats had to wake their democratic voting base from that spiritual and beautiful dream, into a nightmare where Joe Biden is the presidential nominee, and his Vice President will be Kamala Harris.

And if we don’t vote for that horrible ticket, we would then be dismissed as haters, bigoted, racist, childish, selfish, socialists, fascists, or outright idiots.

Damned if we do, damned if we don’t. If we vote for Trump we would be characterized as anti science, trans-phobic, fascist, you name it. It is either submit to the will and narrow choices presented by the insanely corrupt and treasonous establishment democrats, or be called names.

Who is the fascist dictator who has the least concern for the will of the people on either of the democratic and republican sides in this scenario? Who doesn’t give a damn what the people think?

This is a hill I’m willing to die upon.

I will stop at nothing to figure out that algorithm. What really works, and what doesn’t.

The level I am at right now is on par with that of Vanessa Lau.

Legendary.

As I keep learning, the hope for all people who are struggling to break through dramatically increases every step of the way. Every passing moment.

I’m for the very first time ever, starting to enjoy the journey.

If you do not love losing, you lost.

I recommend fucking up on purpose, so that everything you do from that point onward will be considered upside. Will be a staggering success in comparison.

The words of Gary Vaynerchuk vibrating in my mind.

Bring it on Instagram. Game is on!

The solution is right in front of you, but whenever you try to implement it, you get resistance. The debate shouldn’t be about whether or not you should do it. Instead, it should be about whether or not this thing is a solution that might help or make a difference.

If you detect that something is a solution that might help, do it right away without questioning whether or not it is a good idea to actually implement that solution right this second.

If you’re too fatigued to do that or follow through, then you should rest until fully recovered and until you’re ready for more.

If it’s not fatigue that’s holding you back, then stop trying to convince yourself that this is what you should do right now, because there’s always something else that could be done right now that could qualify as a better or an equally good idea as the one in question right now.

When you are low on reward, you will have a hard time getting yourself to do what you know is best for you.

Don’t fight this battle.

Don’t engage. (Golden rule for Twitter by the way, when it comes to responding to other people’s comments on your tweets or tweet replies, but you should always engage heavily with other people’s tweets, and retweets with comments).

Jump right away until you are rewarded enough to have the luxury of decision making and weighing in options.

Does it help? Is it progress?

Then do it immediately.

Don’t question it. As if you have no willpower. As if you have loss of inhibition.

“Do it!” – Chancellor Palpatine

Build momentum for the day first, and then we can talk.

Understand and acknowledge your situation, and start working from there, without undermining your background story, or why everything is way more difficult for you or for someone in your situation. As I always love to say, get out of the bad situation as soon as possible, before it eats you alive.

Someone who has been running a fitness gym for a decade and has trained a fuckload of people in real life has thought of a brilliant strategy that is perfect for losing weight. It hit her in a moment of epiphany. Wow. This is why they always gain back the weight they’ve lost. I’m gonna package that in a pristine looking course or program that also includes simple training techniques that would increase or maintain their physical fitness that they can do indoors without workout equipment. Also along with a bunch of diet and nutrition advice and recommendations that have nothing to do with weight loss. I’m not that popular on social media but I already have my 100 true fans everywhere, who really believe in me like I’m Jesus because they’ve worked with me in real life and got massive positive results after that. I’m also thinking about making a course about how to package your knowledge and expertise into a bestseller course, because it seems to be super easy and fun. And everybody can do it. Right?

RIGHT??

And while I’m at it, I’ll consider making a course on how to crush it on Instagram and market your business. Another one for common mistakes that hold you back from making as much money as you deserve from your business. Another one for how to beat the algorithm on YouTube and make it to the top faster than even the one and only James Jani.

After all, it’s all about mindset. That’s how all my dreams seem to be effortlessly coming true. Okay here’s another course about limiting beliefs and making money. Or shall I call it: limiting beliefs holding you back from the life of financial freedom that you truly deserve.

Wonderful.

And while I’m at it, I’ll talk about how capitalism doesn’t work for everyone, in order to score some virtue signaling points that will make me sleep better at night.

Oh sleep! Let’s make a course about that!

Meanwhile, you just barely escaped an abusive relationship alive, and have no idea where to start. You listened to Gary Vaynerchuk jumping on stage telling you that the only thing that is going to remain is personal brand. Everything else is just a commodity. What? Are you going to do it better than the person sitting next to you?

Get the fuck outta here.

So you focus on showing the world your awesome personality while providing massive value for free. You feel you are getting nowhere. Gary is still telling you that you need to be patient. It took him 4 years to get awareness. I spoke to the whole world for four fucking years and no one was listening, says Gary. No body cared. No body listened. No body knew who the fuck I am. And it wasn’t because I didn’t know what I was doing. It’s because it normally takes time. Yeah, but what about those who have tremendous engagement and are at 10 thousand followers on Instagram despite them having started the journey just 2 months ago?

You have plenty of time on your hands. People don’t understand that they have so much time. You still have plenty of years ahead of you to live. It’s all about the journey. I want to buy the Jets in 25 years, and that makes people freak out and hate me, because they only understand instant gratification. The day I buy the Jets is going to be the worst day of my life. It’s not about the destination. It’s about the journey.

Sounds cool and entertaining on paper, right?

But it has nothing to do with what real life actually looks like, right?

In order to be able to keep going, there has to be some kind of return for your efforts at some point, or else it will be just another form of not just pure labor, but torture.

You have a five year gap in your CV or resume, and you have no explanation for it. Plus, you suck when it comes to your skills and qualifications. You have no idea what to do, and you can’t imagine your life without having made that leap of faith of switching careers five years ago.

Due to the new pandemic situation, your stance about getting a job could be summed up in this statement: Fuhgedaboudit! (Forget about it!)

No excuse, everybody is telling you. Stay positive. It’s all your fault. Patterns of thinking. Negativity. That is your problem. No one understands. Not just no one wants to understand. No one can understand. It’s not just that the world has conspired against you. It’s that the entire world has decided to become brainwashed all at the same time, even though every group has decided to be brainwashed by a different type of propaganda. Some tell you God has a plan for you. Some tell you yeah it’s a because of corporate greed and their take over of our politicians that has lead to governmental corruption that is making the rich people get richer, whereas the poor and middle class people are just getting poorer. And that my friend is because capitalism doesn’t work. No! You screamed internally. Capitalism is what’s responsible for everything there is that is good and right in our lives! What is wrong with you people!

Then you turn to the so called self-help world, and they all tell you: but honey your mindset is so negative. You are the embodiment of everything that is wrong when it comes to mindset and thinking patterns. You need to learn how to crush your innate mechanisms of and capacity for detection and perception of reality. Detachment from reality and distortion of the real world and facts are so sexy and erotic at the moment. It’s like being raped and feeling good about it. Why are you complaining.

You keep running around in this horror movie with no where to go.

Meditation! You think. That is what I’m missing! I need to calm down.

They tell you your thoughts are not real or are not part of who you are. You are the person sitting behind them observing all this crazy talk taking place without doing anything about it. Without interacting. But I tend to become more depressed the more I meditate! It becomes clearer to me that there is just no way out!

Then you find a not giving a damn anymore tribes that tell you drop your expectations and lower your standards and you’ll be happy as fuck in no time.

Don’t care about anything and you will be okay!

Unbelievable!

Have you guys tried to live for a second in the past, or were you all born as full adults during the pandemic?

What happened to you?

Have you all sold your souls to the devil to make money? Or for a couple more likes on social media?

Why am I alone?

Am I the only sane person in this world?

Okay, no problem.

I’m gonna just sweep all of the above under the rug, and pretend it doesn’t exist.

I’m going to focus.

It is clear from the above demonstrated scenario that there is a tiny slim chance that you are more likely to be slightly more overwhelmed compared to other people or influencers who are making all this shit look easy.

Do what you can. No one is going to cry for you if you crash and burn. No one is going to attend your funeral. Not even your digital funeral. People have no emotions or soul these days. Humanity is dead.

It’s not your fault that somehow, for some reason, you’re the only one who is still alive.

Instagram is a unique platform when it comes to what it allows you to create or post on it. The fact that a platform affects what you can or want to create should not be undermined. The difference between platforms that allows you to attach or add an image to your post and Instagram is that the latter does not let you post without a picture, unless it’s a video post. The audience always expects pictures. No one expects text only, or audio only. So you have no option but to post what you want to say in a picture form that comes before any elaborative text that accompanies it in the caption, and the audience are expecting that as well. All of them are expecting that from you on this platform. And this is what they want, because if that is not exactly what they want, they will go elsewhere. The same could be said about YouTube for example when it comes to video, just like Instagram is the place to be when it comes to pictures. Another fact is, Instagram values pictures. They care about that. They are not just a picture sharing app. They are like Netflix when it comes to movies. They want the movie to be high definition. They don’t give you the latest avengers movie in low quality or bad resolution. It’s full high definition or bust. Unless it is you who asked for the lower quality. So Instagram value pictures by loving them so much they would never settle for pictures that are low quality. And they are not hiding their emotions about it. They are telling you that you cannot promote your entire post if the quality of the picture is not perfect, not of maximum quality, or not high definition enough. And they don’t allow you to promote reels videos because guess what? They are all low definition because they are taken quickly by your cell phone. Also they are doing the natural promotion of reels videos by boosting them beyond reason already. Let’s get back to pictures. The platform deranks your post and suppresses it in the algorithm if the picture is of low quality. Why am I telling you this? It’s because there’s a certain direction or trend that Instagram wants you to take when you deal with them. You do not just share every day life random photos on it. At least not anymore. That was in the past. Just like Facebook was all about friends from high school when it first started. Instagram is now a visually engaging platform. They don’t want you to post random pictures of your every day casual life. They want you to contribute to making their platform a visual art gallery. Every post should be a masterpiece. That is why they’ve taken the organic reach away from the average user. They don’t want that to be spread around like it’s all there is. They want a certain feeling to come to you when you open their app. That is how they will stand out and be unique. That is how they will teach you that no one can compete with them at meeting a certain need you have. The need for visual cleaning of the clutter in your head. Or Visual refreshment. How to not feel stuck in your empty life. How to not feel trapped, with the only way out being to watch an entire movie. Now you can do it within a few seconds. Five minutes. And you’ll feel not trapped in an endless loop of repetition. Where you can’t stand doing anything in your real life because everything is the same. The same activities are being repeated over and over again. You have to brush your teeth every day. You take a shower in the same bathroom every day. This is driving you insane. That is why Instagram is addictive, because it provides you with an instant escape from the repetitive visual activities of your boring to death life. Your daily routines are killing you. And these activities are essential. The only way you can get through them without being miserable is to have your mind already fantasizing about imagery that you’ve been recently exposed to that make you do the daily routine or repetitive tasks of your day without actually being there. If you are not part of those who make sure the platform stays the place to be when it comes to fulfilling that washing, cleaning, or refreshing aspect or process that is highly essential in our lives, the platform will derank you, suppress you, shadow ban you, unless you get insane engagement that is high enough for them to ignore the fact that you suck, because at least you are keeping people on their platform longer or for quite some time. The point is: keep that in mind. If you have some teaching to do, do it in a carousel post so that the words are not on an empty background like in the caption, but are beautifully written on a captivating and spectacular background image. This is why the algorithm favors carousel posts, because whatever that people are reading now is written on a beautiful image which would make them feel good enough for them to want to come back more often in the future to learn again this way. You want that beauty again. That is why you spend way more time on Instagram than any other social media platform. That is why you hate LinkedIn although it might be better for your business. Now you understand why.

Contribute to making Instagram beautiful, and visually captivating and rewarding again, and you will rise to the top over there in no time.

The problem with posting several times a day is decreased engagement and people deciding to unfollow you because they’ve had enough of you for a lifetime because you showed up twice in a row in their feed.

However, if you’re still building your page and bombarded with new ideas that can’t wait or shouldn’t be flushed down the toilet, you’re good to go. You have my permission to post more than once a day on Instagram.

I repeat: the 100 pieces of content a day recommended by Gary Vaynerchuk is not for Instagram. It works well on Twitter, TikTok, LinkedIn, Facebook, perhaps even YouTube, but not Instagram, for several technical reasons.

The frequency that works best at the moment is once every other day.

If you feel creative, don’t hold yourself back.

But if you’re just pushing yourself anyway to grow or get more followers, don’t post. Wait until you have something terrific to say or shut the fuck up. Frequency on Instagram is discouraged. Only push yourself if it has been 2 days since your last post. Then you just gotta show up and say something.

Don’t waste your time.

Remember: Keeping your creativity sharp is of utmost priority. Even if it comes at the expense of growth speed. Holding yourself from posting when you have something to say crushes your creativity rapidly, if you have any. All I was saying is that you shouldn’t just post more in the hopes of that being the surefire strategy when it comes to grow on Instagram, even if you have nothing worthwhile to say. If you have something great, by all means, don’t suppress it for any reason whatsoever.

You think you have what it takes?

I had no choice but to throw away 400 pages of my own first book.

You heard that right. 400.

It was like that scene in the lord of the rings when they were torturing Smegol and he had no choice but to cry: Shire! Baggins!

Every single second.

It took me 15 years to write this stuff.

It cannot be published.

Not because my publisher said no. It was self published.

It was my own humble subjective opinion that these paragraphs objectively didn’t belong to any of my published or to be published in the future books.

It wasn’t because of the quality of the presentation. That could be edited. I surpassed everyone when I was 25, so it wasn’t that my writing style sucked back then, because as long as this might take, it still could be edited.

What was discarded was stuff that I highly disagreed with in terms of accuracy. I no longer think these things to be true. I disagreed with my old self.

What was left is stuff that passed the test.

Stuff that I cannot disagree with in a million years.

Imagine how exceptional the quality of that could be.

Anyway, the point was, that wasn’t easy.

And I would do it again. No regrets whatsoever.

I cry when I think about my book for more than 5 seconds.

Not recalling the journey and the good old days when I was working on it. All the excitement. All the uncertainty. Feeling lost. Feeling like I’m dying all the time. Locked in prison with the only way out being writing a masterpiece.

No. None of the above. I don’t give a fuck about the journey. I hated it. It was worse a million times than hell could ever be.

I’m glad all this is over.

I cry because I can’t believe that something like this exists.

Reading randomly in it for 5 seconds or a minute takes you to a whole different plane of existence.

I worked hard. And the results paid off.

It sold zero copies so far. Still I feel more successful than Gary Vaynerchuk just because I am its author.

And it’s just the first in its book series. Introductory. Just a warm up.

It’s the only reason I love myself. It was the only reason I bothered to continue living. If I ever got a chance to live in the first place.

I love me. Because I love that book. Because I am this book. This book is me.

I am a writer not because society told me so, but because I think I am. And that, my friend, for me, is more than enough.