Meditations
2024
If you want stories, play annihilation games.
If you want peace, play wisdom games.
Praise comes from crowds;
Love comes from individuals.
Do not mistake the delicious for the nutritious.
Do not mistake the loud for the wise.
Do not mistake the bright for the beautiful.
Do not mistake the unshaken for the secure.
Forgiveness doesn’t require you to invite the snake that bit you into your home.
Peace comes from accepting a snake is a snake.
Youth is defined by inexperience.
Don’t be embarrassed -- embrace it.
Better to listen to one teacher than all teachers.
The responsibility of the student
is to choose teachers wisely.
Disobey your parents without forgetting them.
You tarnish the family name when you forget your actions exist beyond a vacuum.
A chanting crowd should serve as an alarm bell.
Your sarcastic friend is your most insecure friend.
Identity is the architect of a mind.
It constructs the walls and waterways of one’s thinking.
It allows what comes in and out.
Take note of what you identify with,
And Study what limitations it promotes of you.
Identities that reward you for relishing in your weaknesses are poison.
Identities that fertilize overcoming are medicine.
Choose your identities purposefully.
But, first, you must realize this is a choice.
If you Embrace your ignorance, you change your life.
Be wary of the girl whose drug is attention,
and the boy whose drug is ego.
They are the same creature,
blinded from themselves.
Task-based work will condition your mind to think of itself as a cog in a machine.
Sales-based work will show you how to go from 1 to 10, but never 0 to 1.
Creation-based work will show you steps 0 to 1, but never 1 to 10.
Entrepreneurship will force you to learn steps 0 to 10.
System-design will generate an engine that completes step 0 to 10 for you, without lifting a finger of your own.
Build a system, earn your freedom.
Become God.
The creator's work is 0 to 1.
The seller's work is 1 to 10.
The laborer's work is moving 1 from A to B.
The entrepreneur's work is 0 to 100,
the creator and laborer and seller, in one,
until his work becomes finding replacements of himself and his various forms.
The system designer's work is none.
In becoming God, he frees himself.
To quiet the mind, channel the mind.
Before you complain about the internet,
change what you digital view.
Ask for advice while retaining the ability to ignore it.
Watch and study the games at play in your social circles.
Pinpoint which games reward wisdom and which games reward self-annihilation.
The laborer moves 1 around the map. The laborer moves 1 around the map.
To reject a label, simply call it another.
To argue “X is not called Y” inherently requires the use of Y.
Measure threats in degrees.
Mitigating one risk does nothing if it exacerbates a second and/or third-degree risk.
The need to reject status-quo thinking
is an orthodoxy in itself.
Diversification is the antidote to volatility.
How to Save Yourself:
The cure for self-loathing is reinvention.
The basis of reinvention is plasticity.
Plasticity is accessed via repetition and habit.
Habit and repetition require work.
Love work to love yourself.
To prevent catastrophe, measure the slope of your behavior,
not the point where you’re currently positioned.
Beliefs are revealed through actions,
Because actions are choices based on beliefs.
If success does not require goodness,
And success is valued more than goodness,
One will sacrifice goodness in pursuit of success.
Therefore, to heal,
To become good once again,
One must relocate to an environment that values goodness over success.
One must realign the incentives structure around him.