Rules are meant to be broken if they slow you down. Don’t tell me that this is a paradox because this in and of itself is also a rule.

You don’t have to honor or follow the habit. You need to reach or get to a rewarding and valuable outcome that makes a difference. This is where ignoring the method comes into play.

Methods are there to make your life easier, not to push you around in arbitrary directions for your own good whether they make sense or not, or whether you feel like it or not. You will not get to a worthy outcome or anything worthwhile in terms of how you feel or accomplishing a desired external result or goal if you submit to the habit, method, ritual, or way that gets or could get you there instead of focusing on or caring about the outcome or end result more. Screw it’s about the journey. It’s not. It’s all about outcomes. The battle was waged because they wanted to instill into you the notion that you shouldn’t do what you hate for the money. But instead follow your passion. That is understandable. But when it comes to fulfillment, happiness, and well-being, only reward makes the difference, counts, or matters.

The point is, habits are not here to relieve you of the burden of having to make decisions because that is too much energy consuming. They are here because this is how it was done before. It’s just the way it is. This is how this activity was carried out last time. They don’t care. It doesn’t have to be efficient. They don’t have to be the best way to do something. They are just there to say: we weren’t stupid last time. We were right, because we exist. It’s like life that wants to protect itself. Habits are not a power. They are anti power and anti intelligence. They are not here to make your life easier. They are there to make your life a living hell. Everything horrible in your life could be traced back to habit. Everything good could be traced back to wanting to do something with disregard to your habits. It’s the routine that is killing you. Sucking the life out of you, day after day, leaving nothing behind.

This doesn’t mean that the purpose of your life is to keep doing different things every day, and not form any kind of habitual behavior, perform any recurring activities, or do anything on a regular basis. You need to exercise every day. Period. What I’m criticizing here is not behavioral habit. It’s neurological habits.

Remember when they told you that your sadness is just recurring negative thought patterns? As in a habit of focusing on what makes you feel bad, jumping from one thought to the next, where the nature of the new thought is based upon the nature of the previous one, and since the initial thought was dark, sad, or negative, it triggered a series of thoughts of similar nature or mood? Clearly that kind of habit could be distinguished from taking a shower every day, which is not something I would ever advise you against.

Don’t be a prisoner of your own habits, methods, rituals, or ways. They are useless. They just slow you down. What matters is the end result that makes a difference. Get there by any means necessary.

It doesn’t matter how you brush your teeth. What matters is that you got the process of brushing your teeth over with, one way or the other.

Being creative doesn’t mean you get ideas without doing anything. It means that when you’re given the conditions to create, you do wonders and you always end up amazing yourself.

You should try to write even if you have nothing new to write about. Just sit and try to write something. As opposed to only attempting to write when you have something to say that needs to be captured in written word because it’s too valuable to dismiss as just another pointless thought that crossed your mind while taking a shower or walking down the street.

You don’t write because you have discovered something worth writing only. You write in order to discover new things while writing or trying to write. You come up with ideas, thoughts, and things to write as you write, during the writing process or session, and not only before embarking on the process of writing.

Do not expect ideas to come to you when you are away from the place that you instantly can or are supposed to write them in.

Do not try to sit down and think of something to write. Open the place where you’re supposed to write in, and start thinking about what to write when you can instantly start writing down whatever that comes to mind right away without any kind of delay whatsoever.

You are allowed to post more than once a day. Just don’t do that thinking this is a good strategy to increase the number of your followers. If you’re suffering from mental health issues due to posting less, then by all means don’t post less. You can post multiple times a day all you want.

Not everything has to be about business or work. Sometimes you need to do something with disregard to the consequences because it’s better for your mental health. You want to talk to your audience and the stories are not enough for that.

In this case, screw the algorithm or the growth of vanity metrics.

You come first.

If you have something to say, don’t suppress it.

Remember, we’re not on social media to do business. We’re here because we want to talk to an audience directly. Some people just can’t live without that. Screw the money!

Just as we write books because we love books, not because it’s a good idea to make money.

Don’t pander to the system. Pander to your happiness.

Not even the smallest of tasks should be left floating through your brain.

Every single task that you wanna do should be captured and written down somewhere external to your brain.

Your brain was designed to create ideas, not to hold them.

Never compromise your standards in the name of practicality.

There’s nothing more important than your happiness.

If you are one of those who are crushing it with Reels or on TikTok right now or since 2020, and you think this is why you’re winning, you seem to be ignoring one factor that helped you. Truly. I’m not saying it’s luck at all. But it’s not reels only. It’s your exceptional talent and awesome personality and vibe. Please don’t take that for granted. You are unique. To understand this further, it is fascinating to note that I get more engagement with picture posts than with reels. Way more. If reels were so special, I wouldn’t be getting 10% engagement on them, even though everybody wants me to show up more often on video.

(To clarify context, this was from a response I gave Monique from Rise with Reels on Instagram on one of her posts).

Quadruple down on what you’re good at.

The details of every step of what you do might not be enjoyable or a source of pleasure for you, but still, make sure that the overall career of yours is something that you’re truly passionate about. Again, even if there are moments during it that make you hate yourself.

You don’t have to love the entire process. Just that this is the type of career that you’d prefer over anything else in the world, and you’d even want to do it even if you cannot monetize it.

Just because it’s not sun shine and bunnies every step of the way doesn’t mean that this is not the career of choice for you, or that you don’t love or are not truly passionate about this type of career. If you weren’t, even the easy days would feel like torture or hell. You wouldn’t be able to tolerate anything about its entirety. You’d be trying to convince yourself that you should just keep doing it despite hating everything about it just for the money. It will be like hating your spouse or resenting them but staying just for the kids. You will end up waiting for time to pass quickly without you feeling it took long to pass every day or every moment you spend on this type of work so that you can get the next paycheck or earn money from this boring task, project, or business model.

Be flexible enough to be able to lower your standards when that becomes necessary.

Sometimes it makes sense to lower your standards to be able to decrease your stress levels by telling yourself it’s okay to aspire for nothing at the moment but to survive.

If you always have insane ambition you’ll not be able to chill and not stress yourself out while trying to take it easy and have fun for a while.

Still this isn’t about demonizing working all the time, or recommending giving up on your big goals, in order to avoid burnout. You just don’t have to think about work or your goals all the time, even when you’re trying to rest. You cannot accomplish that objective if you insisted upon considering lowering your standards even when you’re trying to chill for a while to be one of the deadly sins. You really have to not give a damn about your work, your goals, the betterment of the quality of your life, or success at all in order to be able to fully embrace a resting session.

Stop attacking yourself.

Think in terms of: I should add this or that to my work or creative output, instead of subtracting from them.

When you expand your work, your mind, including your mood and mental state, expands.

And when you eliminate, you tend to shrink, even in terms of feeling good.

Stop canceling stuff.

There are privileged people who have it all even if they do nothing at all all the time.

I bet you’re not one of them.

Please don’t ever think that less is more.

There’s no emptiness in you or void that you’re trying to fill.

Everything the establishment says is wrong with you is actually what’s right with you.

You need to work and be super productive to feel sane, to not be miserable, to just be normal.

Ain’t no shame in that.

Keep working every day until fatigued.

Yeah, but that’s a recipe for burnout, isn’t it?

No. Because you seem to not notice the disclaimer I’ve put up here. Until fatigued.

If you are fatigued, you shouldn’t work. Even if you woke up like that. Even if you were like that for days on end.

All I wanna say is that, they don’t really care about us.

Do you know that if you followed a bunch of steps, they might work because you did something rather than nothing?

I understand that in my world, doing nothing is doing something. Not from a linguistic, logical, or philosophical standpoint, but from a neurological or biological perspective.

Still taking action will more likely lead to something or some positive outcome just because it wasn’t nothing. You took action. You will get an outcome. You did nothing, you’ll end up being exactly where you are.

What’s happening here is that people begin with the assumption first, then they walk or work back to prove that whatever that took place beforehand is how you got there.

We begin by the conclusion, and we fill in the blanks of how we got here through wishful thinking.

I want it to be true, and so it is.

That pattern of thought seems to be consistent, whether or not you’re religious.

You manufacture a bunch of steps, none of them has any effect, and claim that they are responsible for your success.

No one is going to find out, because all those who disagree have been consistently failing since ever.

Please, please, stop claiming that you succeeded because of your strategy.

I am crying more than anyone could handle.

The pain is so severe no living human can tolerate or put up with, and you call me a negative person.

I don’t control my thoughts. I have limiting beliefs. I’m not doing the right thing. I have a bad mindset. I am not taking responsibility for my life. I’m playing the victim.

You have no idea what you’re talking about. And you have no idea what I’m going through.

Anything works for you because you have no problems and you never suffered your whole life.

And still you complain every step of the way and cry help, burnout!

At least I’m trying, even though I’m always getting nothing in return.

Please, wipe out your smuggish smile off of your face. I’m not gonna buy your course.

Everybody is acting like they’re trying to help, where in reality all they do is sell us emptiness and prey upon people like us only to make money. They really don’t care about anything except getting your attention and making money.