Screw the Road to Success, Get on the Highway

Many people on LinkedIn and around the world will tell you there are no shortcuts to success. I completely disagree. Now, obviously, I’m not talking about cheating people, trying to skip over critical lessons, faking it till you make it, not putting in the effort, etc.

For example:

When I was in College I was on the road to success. Eating disgusting cheap food at my cafeteria. Going to class, studying, and then after either watching Netflix all day or going to parties and getting hammered. Applying to internships when my college told me to do so and just doing what I was told. Reading books I was assigned and the minimal amount of work possible in and outside of the classroom.

Why? Not because I didn’t want more but because I thought I HAD to do this for my age, position, level of experience...that’s a load of crap that my identity believed was true.

This the standard road everyone takes and it might get you to where you want to go but maybe after 10-30 years of doing ordinary stuff everybody does without thinking. Now, sometimes you might wanna get on the road to success if you want to take your time. It takes longer but it’s very much less high paced and high stressed in some aspects.

Here are 5 ways to get on a sustainable highway!

I don’t mean to bring any judgement into this conversation. Everyone is exactly where they’re supposed to be. If I didn’t do what I did for the first part of my life I wouldn’t be where I am today. However, some of you have been on that road and know there’s something greater but haven’t accessed your potential yet.

1. Prioritize Life-long Fundamentals

Depending on the circles you hang out in whether you’re in college or you’re a 40 year old VC, you might have heard the fallacy that your health should be #2. It’s either you’re young and don’t worry about your health because you can get by eating ramen noodles and peanut butter & jelly sandwiches (my least favorite advice from Gary Vee) OR work is more important than what you put in your mouth because that doesn’t really impact anything in your life until you’re 80 years old at the hospital.

WRONG.

Just for a second forget the implications regarding chronic illness, longevity around health. What you do with your health in terms of your nutrition, exercise, sleep, stress, relationships impacts you NOW, not later, even if you’re not conscious of the benefits or negatives.

2. Learn from Smarter People Daily

It’s hard to figure everything out by yourself. Today, I’m fortunate enough to have many people around me on the regular who lift me up and teach me what I need to know to get to where I want to be in my life. It didn’t start off like that. Way back when all I had were podcasts I remember listening to the Tim Ferriss Show and the Joe Rogan Experience and getting access to ideas I’ve never heard before in my life. Eventually, after acting on them I completely changed my life.

That would have never happened if I wasn’t searching for more.

That would have never happened if I said hey I’m just a 18 year old and I’ll learn these things later down the road when I learn them.

That would have never happened if I thought I was smarter than everyone.

Books, articles, podcasts, and other forms of powerful media essentially give you the ability to upgrade your software. Whether it’s Warren Buffet or Bill Gates you can literally spend $10 and download a new brain and learn from their past failures, regrets, experiences, etc.

Why do you think I host a podcast? Of course it’s awesome to have an audience but I mostly do it out of selfish reasons to build connections with people I normally would never have like Patrick Bet-David or the Co-Founder of Netflix.

3. Stop Doing What Most People Are Doing

Everyone breathes....

But most people don’t breathe the “right way” and are unconscious about how much your breath can impact your life and can be used in a variety of ways to change your state of consciousness.

Obviously, there are exceptions to this rule but what I’ve learned is if you look at what most people are doing either for your age, city, religion, you should do the exact opposite. Why? Just look at their results and decide for yourself.

Today we thankfully live in the age of empowered interconnected information via the internet which can greatly help someone if they use it in the right way. However, it also enables for echo-chambers or groups of people to get together and complain about the same thing and victimize themselves and not move forward in life and just tweet about it all day.

4. If You Can’t Go Farther, Go Deeper

Jay Shetty said this once at a keynote and it really enabled me to put language around a perspective I’ve always had. So many entrepreneurs are trying to slam the brick wall forward everyday with brute force, and sometimes you need to do that.

However, personally for me every single one of my outer successes in life have not come from me continuously trying to do the same thing again and again. Rather stopping and pausing for a moment and going deeper within my self and doing the work on the internal, and then seeing an external reflection come about.

Most people are either too much in the external world OR in the internal world and are focusing too much on what I call spiritual materialism via abusing powerful forces like meditation, yoga, energy too much.

You need to do both.

5. Respect Technology, It’s What Moves Humanity Forward

There are so many people who out of good intentions disrespect technology, and in turn don’t use it. If you do not use the best most modern form of technology you will lose. What most people don’t understand is that they think technology is something separate than humanity. I personally believe that tech is man made evolution and has been in a co-evolving feedback loop ever since our existence, and to ignore it is to ignore ourselves.

Technology is created to save time and is essential in getting on the highway. Now, depending on how it’s used just like any other powerful tool it can distract you and take you on detours that waste your time.

I’m not saying that technology will solve all of our problems and bring us into a utopia. But, exponential technologies are going to completely change the way we live and bring us into a new generation of existence where our current problems have been elevated to the point where we don’t think about them anymore.

Ignore technology at your own peril. Just ask Blockbuster :) and what we’re going to see happen over the next 20 years. In fact I just interviewed Steven Kotler & Peter Diamandis for their upcoming book The Future is Faster Than You Think and they said we will experience 20,000 years of change over the next 100 in this century!

My Upcoming Book - Screw Being Shy 

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