practical examples

Be more of a producer than a consumer
Today, we live in an extremely materialistic world, where we are programed to be a subconsciously obedient consumer from a young age onwards. You’re exposed to a few hundred marketing messages on average each day, and most advertisers try to convince you to buy things you don’t need to impress people you don’t like with hard-earned money from a job you may even not like.

But there’s more than that. Productivity has risen dramatically in the past two decades. An average worker creates more value than ever. Nevertheless, wages aren’t going up, they are remaining steady or even decreasing. All of the benefit (or extra profit, if you want) goes to employers or business owners. That’s why rich people are getting richer, and poor people are getting poorer.

It’s true that an average inhabitant of the world can afford more and more material things. The material abundance has never been as high as it is today. But the profoundly sad truth is that the material status isn’t improving because wages and productivity are higher, but because it’s much easier to access debt. People enslave themselves to debt more and more, just to afford another thing they probably don’t even need.

Being an obedient consumer

There are many reasons and motivators why you should buy something new. Because you get the instant good feeling of gratification, because you deserve it since you work hard, because you’ll feel a little bit better about yourself or other people will notice you more, because a new thing will bring short-lived excitement into your life, and so on.

It’s so easy to spend money. Your hard earned money is just an electronic figure. Your fastest connection to that figure is a piece of plastic; doesn’t even feel like a real money. Just some numbers. You see something you like. You just swipe your plastic and you feel a little better for whatever reason.

You don’t have enough of your own money? No problem. You have a few more decades to live and you’re going to work hard, for sure, and earn some money. Lenders know that, and they want a piece of your future earnings. That’s why it’s so easy to borrow money and just buy something you want. With a single signature.

A big screen TV you can’t actually afford. A fancy nice car. A big modern home. Dozens of shoes and coats and other clothes. Vacations you haven’t taken for so long and you definitely deserve. A big expensive latte. Restaurants and drinks and parties. There are so many options to spend money, and it doesn’t matter whether you actually have it or not.

You can swipe credit cards and take more and more debt until reality kicks in. The easier road sooner becomes hard. The good short-lived feeling of owning something new becomes a long-term catastrophe; because debt means slavery. Possessions you cannot afford destroy your freedom and your potential, and sooner or later your health and relationships as well, because of all the stress. The more things you buy that you cannot really afford, the longer your jail sentence is, the more enslaved you are.

One of the problems is that things are rarely as they seem. Maybe your neighbor has a bigger house than you, drives an expensive car, wears expensive clothes, has a nice motorbike and I don’t know what else, but in reality, he may be an enslaved person working a job he hates just to pay the debt he owes. The material things are just his short escape from reality.

Having material things in life doesn’t really mean neither wealth nor happiness. Almost anyone can go to a bank for a consumer loan to buy a few fancy things and enslave their own future. But sooner or later, you don’t own things anymore. They own you. Your freedom goes away, your happiness goes away, and all you do is work hard to pay off the debt. Everybody earned money except you. Remember: if you don’t know who the fool in the room is, you’re probably that fool.

The easiest way people see for getting out of a financial hole is by earning more money. But sooner or later, they realize that more money is rarely a solution for poor financial management. You just can’t buy more financial discipline. That’s why most lottery winners go broke soon after winning the money. You must financially discipline yourself, no matter how much you earn. Because money follows management.

Don’t try to only look rich, work hard and be disciplined to really become rich. Buying stuff on credit means slavery. Living a modest and frugal life and not spending money like crazy, especially not by taking debt, means freedom. You have more choices and more choices mean more freedom. You have more options to pursue your dreams and the things you really want in life.

The opposite is also true. The hard road becomes much easier with time. If you save money, you’ll become a winner sooner or later. Because a free cash flow will allow you to become an investor, a business owner or lender. Cash in your bank account will give you more options and possibilities.

Being an innovative producer

The large majority of people are consumers. Most of them afford their lifestyle by taking debt. They enslave themselves and limit their options. But logically, this planet has another type of people – the ones who are selling the products to this majority. These are the people with a completely different mindset. They’re called producers. They’re driven by the force to innovate, to produce to solve problems and to create beautiful shiny products and services that provide value.

Every one of us has the capacity to innovate, create something new, provide value and produce different products and services. Every one of us has a much greater potential than to just go to work, take debt and spend money as the easiest way to escape reality and its challenges. Not everyone is made to become an entrepreneur, but you can also become an investor, sole proprietor, freelancer, you can produce and sell stuff in your free time, partner up etc. There are numerous ways of becoming a producer.

You can break free from being only a consumer by becoming a producer as well. The sooner you switch sides, the sooner life becomes easier. You get more ideas, you see more opportunities, you’re more immune to all the advertising messages, and even more importantly: the will to create and contribute awakens in you. Switching from a consumer to a producer mindset can be one of the greatest things you do in life. First you produce and provide value, which makes you rich, and then you consume. Producers get rich and consumers go poor. That’s a fact.

Think about providing value to the world. See yourself as an innovator, entrepreneur, businessperson, visionary, creator and producer of added value. See yourself as an investor and business owner. Instead of spending money, invest money, save money and produce.

You can even take being a producer to a totally new level. If you have a consumer mindset, you only think about what you’ll buy for your spouse on Valentine’s Day. Producers prefer to think about what they can sell on Valentine’s Day. They see millions of spenders who just want to buy stuff as proof of their love.

Consumers buy things in shopping centers, producers sell them. Consumers buy products on TV, producers sell them. Consumers borrow money to buy stuff, producers lend money. Consumers buy things for every holiday and special occasion, producers see special occasions as opportunities to sell things to needy people.

Think about all the needs people have. Think about how you can provide value to the world. Think about how you can solve problems for people. Think about all the business ideas you have; and if you don’t have them, brainstorm. Think about your dreams and talents, and how you can monetize them. Think like a producer and a creator of value.

“You look at the world, when you buy a sandwich or a beer; you are a consumer where you trade money for a certain type of good. I think money is fundamentally an exchange of value. So, how can you be the guy that produces the value so that people can use that to give you the money? When you see that way, then you kinda see the matrix. That’s the biggest switch you probably have to make.” Terry Lin, Baller Leather, Your Own Way Out Interview

Changing from a consumer to a producer mindset

Changing your mindset from being a consumer to being a producer is not an easy job, but it can be done. Here are some tricks that are going to help you change perspective.

Whenever you want to be an obedient consumer, do the following:
- Whatever you buy, multiply the price by ten. That’s the actual cost of your purchase. If you were to invest that money, that is approximately how much money you’d make in twenty-five years with an average return on your investment.
- Everything you buy doesn’t only cost money. It also costs you your freedom, your space in life, your future and the number of your choices. See how you’re enslaving yourself with every purchase, especially if you’re buying things on debt.
- Whenever you get a paycheck, Pay yourself first. Have a savings account and put some money aside for your future. See it as part of your expenditures and consumption. Feel instant gratification when you save money. Whenever you see your neighbor’s fancy car and feel bad, look at your savings account and it’ll make you feel better instantly.
- For bigger purchases, wait two to three months, don’t make impulsive decisions, especially not for big purchases. If you still need the new thing, maybe you should buy it, but rather not. Time will curb your consumption desires.
- Rather than buying things you won’t use in a few weeks’ time and that only start collecting dust, live a minimalistic life. Remove all waste from your life.
- If you really have problems controlling your expenditures, find a spouse with better money management habits than you. It will be a good influence on you and you’ll be able to save much more money.
Tricks to acquiring a producer mindset:
- Become a smarter consumer, educate yourself, compare prices, understand taxes and the monetary system, read financial statements, become financially educated. Try to see everything you buy as a business deal with room to negotiate.
- Read investing and business books, as this will motivate you to save more and to produce more value for the world; besides learning new things.
- Spend more time with investors and producers. Join business or investor clubs, make new friends, and go to conferences.
- Invest in yourself, unless you don’t think you’re a good investment. But you are. Leveling up your skills, upgrading you mindset and having a better life strategy is the best investment you can make.
- Have a long-term approach. It takes years to change your mindset, to learn new skills and to really become a producer and then produce something of real value. The good news is that you only have to be right once with the right product (to get rich), but you can’t just switch sides, it’s not that easy. You must learn about the markets, you must develop new skills, expand your social network, and so on. The learning curve is long and takes a lot of effort, years of hard work, but it’s worth it. Not only because of a better earning potential, but also because of the feeling that you created something and contributed to the world.
- Start creating something small and try to sell it. Maybe you can start with selling things you don’t need at home. Try to identify small opportunities for making some money. Make your first dollar, then ten dollars and continue like that.
- Go to the Arab part of the world and practice bargaining and negotiating. Most people feel uncomfortable negotiating and getting the best possible price. If you can’t do it, partner up with someone who can.
- Make sure your spouse understands your goals and supports them. If you try to save, invest and produce, and your spouse only wants to spend and consume, things will not work out very well. Besides investing into yourself (you), your spouse is the most important choice you make in your life.
- Think about what else you consume that’s unnecessary, like news, TV, unhealthy food etc. Try to see your time and energy as precious resources you can either waste or invest wisely.
- Try to think about how to create products with real value. If you want long-term success, you need to create value that people really need and respect. Try to build products you’d proudly put your name on. Don’t try to just to make a quick buck or scam people.
My friend Robert Rolih wrote two reports that are great if you are new to investing:

That’s also what I do. I’m not rich (yet) but my material status is improving every year. I drive an average car (which I even downgraded a few years ago) and I live in a small but cute flat I can afford. I spend as little as possible on clothes. I don’t buy any unnecessary stuff. I try to live as minimalistic of a life as possible.

I have a spouse who knows how to save money and she motivates me to spend even less. She is a really good influence when it comes to money. My major expenditures are investments into myself (books, seminars, MOOCs…), healthy food, technology and sports. All that I see more as investments than costs.

Seven years ago, I wasn’t even close to being careful with my money, because of my false mindset. That’s changing for the better every year; especially by reading books and socializing with the right people, and it feels so much better. Still, I’m not obsessed with money and I value relationships and doing good much more than financial benefit.

I see myself much more as a producer than a consumer. I produce things I’m good at, things like writing articles, doing workshops, managing complex projects and delivering consulting work. I’m just in the process of switching from producing value for the local to the global market, while my plan is to also create some products so I can progress from only trading my time for money to also having some passive and portfolio income.

It may take me the next decade to really do it, but I have no problem investing into the process and trusting it. Despite all that, I really enjoy what I’m doing. It’s not only about the final event, the path alone pretty much has the same value and importance.
When your ego blocks your progress
One day, I had to make a withdrawal on an ATM. I entered my PIN and the wrong PIN message appeared on the screen. I entered the same PIN, same message. I got a little pissed off and entered the same PIN the third time. The ATM took my card and I had to go to the bank the next day to get it back. Immediately after entering the wrong number for the last time, I remembered that my card had been renewed a few days ago and my PIN had also been changed.

Here’s another story. I got a creative idea for acquiring traffic by using paid channels for this blog. It should have attracted a lot of visitors for a good price. I executed the idea, but it didn’t drive even nearly as much traffic as expected. So I threw in even more money. “It has to work, it’s such a good idea,” I thought to myself. It still didn’t work, so I threw in even more money. After the third investment with no return, I admitted to myself that the idea was, at the end of the day, not that good.

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results,” as the famous quote goes. But it’s really easy to say that. In both cases, I was so sure of myself, I was 100 % confident that I knew what I’m doing. There was no other option. Even after getting the first feedback showing me that something is not working, my ego overshadowed the facts. I was repeating the same thing and expecting different results.

It’s good to feel alive, but it can also be painful

First of all, wrong assumptions are the mother of all fuckups. That’s why the idea of the Agile and Lean life is not to make big risky bets based only on your assumptions, but to start with small experiments that show you the right way through validated learning. You minimize the risk as much as possible by making small steps and gathering feedback from your environment as soon as possible.

Starting to follow the agile and lean strategy is quite a big mental leap. You don’t fall in love with your idea, person or anything else, and blindly follow it hoping that you’ll get lucky. You see everything you do in life as an experiment that will lead you to the outcome you want. You start small, you test everything and you stay as agile and flexible as possible. You know what you want to experience but you have no assumptions on how it will manifest. You let tests and experiments lead the way.

The problem with staying lean and agile is that it’s extremely boring and difficult. Taking risks, having an idea, falling in love, being right, having a strong opinion… All this brings excitement into your life, makes you feel good about yourself and feel worthy. It’s fuel for your ego. But if you’re wrong and blindly follow your ego, disappointments may come sooner or later; and usually they do. All the highs become deep lows.

Thus a much better strategy is to wait for an opportunity where the risk is low, but there are a great possibilities for a big gain. To do that, you need a different approach. You need knowledge, patience, stamina, insights, to be surrounded with the right people etc. To gain all that, you need to scientifically test, experiment, learn, understand and be committed to real progress while staying flexible. You have to do all the boring and hard stuff day by day. You have to admit to yourself that you were wrong almost after every experiment.

Never let your ego block your progress

The first big challenge for your ego is changing how you act in life. You should switch from acting out of your ego, meaning your assumptions, beliefs and convictions, to acting out of feedback that you regularly gather from your environment by performing experiments. It’s the best way to stay flexible.

The second challenge is facing the results when data disprove your ego assumptions. The feedback you get from your environment is different from what you expected. It hurts. It seems impossible. It lowers your feeling of self-worth. You don’t feel so smart anymore.

You entered the wrong PIN. Period. The campaign is not delivering any results. Period. She does not share your feelings. Period.

It’s hard to face the fact that you’re wrong. It’s so hard to admit that the objective reality is different from your subjective reality, just because your subjective reality feels so real. That’s why you build illusions in your head. You also have a tendency to finish things that you begin. For example, you usually watch a movie until the end, even if it’s bad. Those are all reasons why you want to persist at things that don’t work. It’s hard to stop doing something that you’re so sure of and on top of that you want to finish what you have started. That’s why you need the search mode in your life – to start small, to gather feedback from day one, to fail fast and stop doing things that are not working.

Here are some additional tips on how to deal with your ego:
- Make sure you see validated learning as progress. Make sure learning feeds your ego, simply because you’re following a superior life strategy, you are gathering insights how to live a better life, more suitable for you, independent of your interpretation of the world.
- Don’t get stuck in analysis-paralysis. Just write down experiments you’ll make and start gathering feedback from your environment.
- Always question everything. Follow your curiosity more than your ego. Don’t ever let your ego prevent you from learning something new.
- Have a system for when to persist at something and when to stop and try new things. Make sure you follow your system, and that your ego and your emotions don’t distract you.
When to persist

The tough question is when to persist and when to admit to yourself that something isn’t working and you should leave it behind. It’s more art than science, but there are some indicators that can help you identify what the optimal thing to do is.

In lean start-up, there is a rule that you don’t fall in love with your business idea, but you become passionate about finding the right solution for the problem your business idea is solving. By experimenting and gaining customer insight, you may find out that your idea was not that good, but you may also find a much better solution to the problem. You have a vision, you’re passionate about the problem to fix, but you stay totally flexible about how to fix it. It’s the same in your personal life.
- Don’t fall in love with the idea that you’ll meet one person who will stay with you forever, be loyal to you no matter what, and everything will be perfect all the time; like in Hollywood movies. Fall in love with the idea that you’ll have honest and loving relationships with superior communication and extra contribution. The right people will come into your life.
- Don’t fall in love with the idea of having a magazine cover body in three months. Fall in love with the idea that your body is a temple you must take care of. A temple that needs healthy food to function, regular stretching and exercising, and so on. Fall in love with the idea that you’ll take care of your body, and stay flexible about what it needs and when.
- Don’t fall in love with the idea of an ideally paid job. Fall in love with an industry you really know you can contribute to, fall in love with the idea of developing your competences to the full and providing as much value as possible to the market. Stay flexible about how things will manifest. Maybe you can contribute much more value by being an entrepreneur or a freelancer.
It goes the same for all other areas of life.

Another rule in lean startup is to make a pivot when each additional experiment leads to less progress. In such a case, you hit a local maximum. Pivot refers to a fundamental change in your business strategy. You change direction but you stay grounded in your vision and learned facts.

After knowing that and applying it to your personal life, there really is no more dilemma of when to persist at something and when not. It’s not about letting something go, but about redefining your strategy based on what you’ve you learned along the way. You still follow your heart, your vision, the things you want to experience in life, you just take different steps, manifesting it in a different way. You should fall in love with what you want to experience in life, not how it should manifest. Then there is no question of whether you should persist or not, just what your next step is.

Here are some examples of that kind of thinking and their healthier alternatives:
- The relationship didn’t work out, I’m never going to find the right partner. And I was so in love. I don’t want to fall in love anymore.
- I had a great experience with a person, but we aren’t the right fit. I tried many things to improve the relationship, but everything led to the same result – fighting. Still, I’m grateful for the experience and I’ve learned that it’s not acceptable for me if my intimate partner smokes. It just bothers me too much and I become passive aggressive. I am keeping my heart open and my love capacity full for the next person I’ll spend a part of my life with. After my sadness of breaking up passes, I’m going to start making new acquaintances.
- I’ll never find a job I really love. I sent so many applications, but I didn’t get any interviews. I guess I have to send out another fifty.
- Sending out CVs doesn’t work. But I know I’m really good at marketing. I’m going to read one book about marketing each week, I’m going to go to all marketing meetups. I’m going to start a blog about marketing, I will send personalized creative presentations of myself and my skills to a few companies I really want to work for.
But if you don’t stay flexible and you let your ego ground you in your subjective reality, you have a great chance of becoming a zombie and living a zombie life – where being a zombie means you invest a lot of energy into something with no or little progress. You get more and more depressed after each CV you send out. You hope that your partner will magically change, just because you’re in love. On the one hand, there is no growth and progress, and on the other, you’re consuming your resources and draining your energy. But that is a big waste of your precious life.
Expectations, standards and assumptions
For a long time, the difference between expectations, standards and assumptions was quite confusing to me. On the one hand, great expectations lead to big disappointments, but on the other, if you don’t aim big you can’t win big. It took me quite some time to figure things out. Read more in this blog post why you should have no expectations in life, but also high standards and always be testing your assumptions.

Expectations

Big expectations really do lead towards big disappointments. That’s why you should be as lean and agile as possible. You can’t have control over people and situations, you can only have control over yourself (and even control over yourself is sometimes very limited). That means that things will definitely go into a different direction than you expect, the only question is when.
- People of whom you expect the least may disappoint you
- Situations where you expect the biggest benefits may turn out to be big disappointments
- You will expect life to reward you, just because you exist, and you may be disappointed once again
- Gurus will teach you how to live, you’ll follow their wisdom and may be disappointed, before finally figuring out that you must find your own way towards success and happiness.
The power you have is within you, not in controlling the outer world. Rather than having big expectations, you should stay flexible. You should be aware of your desires, goals and things you want to experience in life, and fight for them, but have no expectations when and how this will happen. You should have your endgame in mind, but don’t have any expectations for when and how you’ll get there; because you will bump into obstacles and dead-end roads where least expected.

You make a plan, but your plan will stop working after the first contact with reality. You should still have a plan, but adapt it regularly, based on the feedback you’re getting from your environment, based on the experiments you make (more about that later).

And the best way to manage your expectations is to live in the present moment more. Trust the process of getting to the desired event, trust yourself more and regularly reflect to make the necessary adjustments.

If you have expectations to marry someone and live happily ever after right after the first date, there’s a very high probability that you’ll be disappointed. But if you trust the process of dating until you find the best person and then investing all of yourself into keeping a good relationship, the magical relationship experience you desire in life may happen; or it may not, but the probability is much higher.

Why we are unhappy – The expectation gap

Don’t expect that life will reward you. Life owes you nothing. Life rewards those who master its rules. Life rewards those who invest and trust the process leading to the event they desire. So have no expectations at all, but rather have a superior but very flexible life strategy and give your best in every single moment. Who knows where life will lead you and what your path will be. Enjoy the trip as much as possible.

Let go of any expectations towards people and situations, and life won’t disappoint you anymore. Expectations equal predicting future based on your desires (how you want thing to happen) and you simply can’t predict the future.

Standards

Having no expectations towards life doesn’t mean that you just give up and don’t fight for your goals. It only means that you stay flexible and regularly adapt based on what’s happening in your environment. It simply means that you aren’t cocky, don’t see yourself as a big visionary, knowing what and how things will happen (you expecting something means predicting future based on your desires). Because you simply can’t. The world has become too complex, turbulent and changes too fast. As the philosophy of the lean startup goes: you have to give up the notion that you can accurately describe the past, accurately predict the future and manufacture it. All you can do is to have a deep understanding of how the world works.

But on the other hand, you need high standards in life. You must not be a perfectionist, which is one of the cognitive distortions, but you need to have high standards for yourself and others. You have to improve, you have to fight and struggle, you need passions in life, you need to see and feel your progress and personal evolution. You must never take things for granted and you must never stop trying.

In order to raise your standards in the long run, you have to do an identity shift. First, you do a few linear improvements until your identity shifts, and that leads to rapid improvements in your life. You see yourself differently and so your standards are higher; then you set them even higher.
- You will take much better care of your health if you see yourself as an athlete
- You will take much better care of your money if you see yourself as an investor
- You will take much better care of your career if you see yourself as a businessperson
- You will be a much better partner if you see yourself as a valuable and giving person
- You will be much happier if you also see enjoying life as one of the purposes of living
- You will take much better care of your skills if you know your strengths and see yourself as a competent person with a growth mind-set
You have to constantly raise the bar, you have to constantly improve, try to achieve your peak performance. You must become the best possible version of yourself in this life. You must never settle.

Assumptions

You should have no expectations towards life and other people. You should have high standards and then set the standards even higher by improving yourself constantly. You should start with an endgame in mind, you should raise your standards and improve yourself to achieve your endgame more easily, but as mentioned before, you should also be aware that the road to your endgame will be much different from what you expect.

The reason for that are your assumptions. We know two types of realities. One is the objective reality that isn’t accessible to any living being. The objective reality is how things really are in the world. The second reality is your subjective reality. The subjective reality is your own interpretation of the world.

There are many errors in your subjective reality. Your senses have a limited capacity for capturing information, your brains have a limited ability for processing information, everyone has many cognitive distortions and other errors on the subjective reality map, for example generalization, framing and other biases. Here is a long list of cognitive biases.

Don’t assume anything. Test everything and who knows where life will take you.

Assumptions

Errors in your subjective map of the world lead to wrong assumptions. And wrong assumptions are the mother of all fuckups. You assume something will happen, but it doesn’t. You take action, but you get a different reaction than expected. That’s because the objective world is different from your subjective representation and individual interpretation. Because of this gap, expecting anything leads to a very high probability of disappointment.

Of course the more experience you have in life, the better assumptions and assumption-based decisions you can make. Life experiences lead to making better decisions, but you get life experiences from making bad decisions. Your subjective map of the world gets closer to objective reality with experiences. But no matter how experienced you get in life, there are always errors in your subjective interpretation of reality. The fast-changing world contributes to that even more. Even if you could reach objective reality in a certain moment, an error would occur the next second. Because the world is constantly changing.

That’s why you need to constantly keep testing your assumptions. You have to see life as a playground, where you have to test what works and what doesn’t. Based on your findings, you have to constantly adjust your strategy and actions. That’s why the search mode is so important. Don’t just assume, experiment and validate. Then take action.
- Have no expectations towards life and people, stay flexible in how you will achieve your endgame.
- Have high standards towards yourself and others, and constantly improve, as that will help you to become the best version of yourself and achieve your endgame more easily.
- In order to find the right way that leads to your desired endgame, don’t act based on your assumptions, but do experiments and test. Validate your assumptions and constantly adjust your life strategy based on validated learning and the feedback you’re getting from your environment.
Do not judge – observe, notice and learn
We would all like the world to be more similar to us. Because that would make it much easier to live in. The more your personal values are aligned with your environment, the better you fit in somewhere. The more your values are aligned with the values the world is currently respecting, the better off you should be, assuming you don’t face any other tough situations, like strong cognitive distortions.

Let me give you an example. If you strongly believe in nationality and borders, it probably irritates you that both are becoming less and less important due to globalization. There’s a difference between your values and the values of your environment, and that causes friction. On the other hand, you may be a technology enthusiast and love the general priority given to technological advancement. Your personal values are aligned with what the markets respect. It’s the same with political and economic systems, global trends and other environmental factors. Since the world is becoming flat, all people can feel the global influence of values changing.

But another important trend is also occurring. The world is becoming more and more diverse and interconnected. That’s a big benefit you should take advantage of. As the world becomes more tolerant and one big global market place, you can easily find communities with the same values as you. You aren’t alone or in a minority anymore. All you have to do is connect yourself online.

Being able to connect with people sharing the same values as you without immigrating is a big advantage you should deeply respect. Even more: you should encourage diversity and let other people be who they are and connect with people and societies they most fit into. Variety is the spice of life, diversity makes life interesting. If you don’t see it that way, shifting your thinking in that kind of way will strongly enrich your life.

From judging to observing, noticing and learning

People are very forgiving towards themselves and judge others so quickly. It helps us feel our own importance as well as protects our values. Quickly judging others is how we try to shape the world to be more in line with our values.

You can do a simple test. If you stand firmly for something, you can easily find people who will brutally criticize you publicly and even more cowards who will do it anonymously on the internet. Just look at the comments on anything published online.

There’s nothing wrong with discussion, arguments and debates. There’s nothing wrong with showing data and describing the objective reality as closely as possible. But the fastest progress comes out of constructive debates, merging different views and out-of-the box experiences. Variety also allows people to live in different communities the way they want to, the way they want to experience the world.

You can benefit from that in many ways. As Scott Fitzgerald nicely said: “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” It’s the best way to learn, improve, innovate and expand your thinking horizon. Remember that in 1000 years, science will probably prove that almost everything we believe now is wrong, even though it’s currently scientifically proven.

If you don’t agree with someone and start judging, you put your ego before learning something new. When you judge someone else, you judge yourself and thus you limit your thinking horizon. You see the world as black and white. Someone is wrong and you’re right. It’s called “all or nothing” thinking and it’s one of the most frequent cognitive distortions.

Perceiving personality types embrace that kind of thinking more easily than judging types. But even if you’re a judging type of person, which you probably are if you’re extremely organized, you benefit a lot from going from only a judging personality to also observing and learning from different perspectives.

Here are some ideas for developing observing and learning abilities alongside the judging mindset.
- Let go of your ego. Never put your ego before learning something new, trying new things, understanding different views and expanding your horizons. It’s how you become a wiser, more aware and enlightened human being. Understanding different views and values makes you a richer person internally. You’ll be able to connect with more people and have more loving connections. Stop judging and start observing how people think, what they believe in and value, and why. Rather than feeling defensive or offensive, ask yourself why, five times if necessary.
- Practice empathy. Judging most often means deciding what’s right and what’s wrong according to your own opinion, following a subconscious autopilot. But your opinion is a subjective reality and probably far removed from the objective one. In fact, no one understands objective reality, but the more angles we understand, the closer we are. Instead of quickly judging, walk a mile in the shoes of a person with a different view. Ask yourself why, try to think, feel and understand the different angles; and stay respectful.
- Tolerance. Tolerance is one of the most important values of progress. If you want to improve in life, you have to be tolerant, you have to be open-minded, try new things, experiment, and accept failure. You can’t be tolerant towards trying and implementing new things if you’ve already firmly decided on everything. To build tolerance, you have to trust yourself more and you have to see that your values and beliefs are not threatened if someone else sees things differently. Disagreement isn’t being intolerant; but not respecting other people with different views is.
- Positive energies. Brutally judging is what divides people and spreads hate. If we subjectively see something as entirely good and something else as entirely bad, there must be a fight between good and bad. But in reality, nothing is entirely good and bad, except pure evil. There are no black and whites, only different shades of gray. Don’t curse the dark, light a candle. Spread positive energies and be a role model for empathy, tolerance, love and integration. We judge because we’re afraid. If we’re loved, we don’t have to be afraid of anything. Love is the first thing that bridges differences.
- Staying flexible. Being agile means being flexible and adaptable. The more fixed you are in your thinking and the bigger your fixed expectations towards life, the bigger the potential for your disappointments is. The world is definitely different from what you wish it would be. So you have to see it as a playground, a place with endless possibilities where you can put your life together as you want. You have to stay flexible to find your best fits, try new things and adapt, especially if the world is going in different directions than your current values. You only have one life, you don’t want to spend it bitter and angry and grumpy, just because you aren’t flexible in your thinking.
- Data before rhetoric. Despite different opinions, there are things (systems, ideas etc.) that work better than others in a specific situation and in a specific environment. Every social circle needs an optimal structure for progress. But again, it’s not about judging, it’s not about arguing and fighting, but about scientifically proven facts. Always put data before rhetoric.
Your mind is like a parachute; it only works when it is open.

Don’t tolerate evil, be a hero

Being tolerant doesn’t mean simply agreeing with everything. It’s about respecting people and having a fair, objective, and permissive attitude toward opinions, beliefs, and practices that differ from your own. It’s about an opportunity to expand your thinking horizon and let diversity of life exist, and enjoy it to the full.

But no matter how tolerant and respectful and loving you are, there is evil in all of us. And that’s one thing you shouldn’t tolerate. You should understand it, you should be aware of it, you should study it, but you should never tolerate evil behavior. It can especially come out in three types of situations.
- The first one is in all the people who were raised or born in hostile environments, like war, abusive families etc. A lack of love and healthy environment in the first few years of upbringing leaves a lot of psychological damage. People like this need professional help.
- The second one is finding yourself in a system or a situation that brings out the evil in you. Once again this means situations like war, gangs, poverty etc. Situations that put people in fear for their own existence and fear of their needs not being met, wake up evil fighting spirits. They bring out the desire for dominance in order to gain safety and resources.
- The third type are systems that aren’t transparent and where people think they’ll easily get away with hurting others. In situations like that, people’s desire to overpower others prevails. Evil prevails. Look at what anonymity on the internet does. That’s why we need more transparent environments, with an adequate reward and reintegration system.
The more evil is tolerated, the more it grows and the stronger it becomes. So you shouldn’t tolerate hostile and harmful behavior in any community. Starting in your home, the company you work for and other societies you belong to.

And secondly, we should all strive to build a better global system that will have zero tolerance towards evil and harmful behavior. Never get so tolerant that you tolerate intolerance.

As Philip Zimbardo suggests in his study of evil: “You must refocus away from evil to understand heroes. Heroism is when ordinary people do extraordinary deeds in certain situations. The very same situation that can inflame the hostile imagination, in those who become perpetrators, can also inspire the heroic imagination in others. Heroes are ordinary people whose social actions are extraordinary. The key to heroism is two things. You’ve got to act when other people are passive and you have to act socio-centrically, not egocentrically.”

Five things you can do to spread tolerance:
- Act out of desire for prestige, not dominance.
- Be tolerant, loving and respectful of people and diversity. Go home and love your family, love yourself and others.
- Fight for a cause that matters to you, but fight as a peaceful warrior.
- Don’t approve of evil acts and behavior. Report, inform, and don’t only mind your own business.
- Contribute to transparency and integrity of the society. We’re going in the right direction, we’re living in the most peaceful times in history, we just have to keep up the trend, but be faster in rooting out poverty, domestic violence and other similar situations.
Do not judge. Observe, notice and learn.
How people fuck up their lives

There are generally two ways how people fuck up their lives. Don’t get me wrong, I know that many people living in poverty without access to education don’t have options and are forced to do terrible things that don’t bring any good to them and others. But there are also many adults who have all the options and possibilities in the world and still end up fucking up their own lives or lives of people around them. It’s hard to answer why, but it’s very easy to see how.

The first way is making one big wrong decision. You marry the wrong person. You take a big bribe. You drive drunk or tired. You cheat. You have a kid when you aren’t ready yet – materially or emotionally. You don’t exercise at all. You rob a bank. One big wrong decision can completely turn your life around, and make a mess out of it. So you should consider all big decisions very carefully and think about the long-term effect that they will have on your life.

The second way to fuck up your life is regularly making small wrong decisions. They’re called habits. You spend more than you earn. You drink alcohol every day. You stuff yourself with fast food daily. You don’t kiss and hug your spouse. You play Solitaire during working hours. You watch TV instead of reading. You go to a job you hate day by day. Small wrong daily choices accumulate until a crisis occurs. What you choose today has an impact forever.

In both cases, the worst you can do is avoid the problem even once it’s obvious that you’ve made wrong decisions or are still making them. When you make wrong decisions, decisions that don’t lead towards your progress, improvement and positive (purer) energy, life will kick your butt sooner or later. You get close to bankruptcy. You fall ill or get injured. You’re on the way to divorce. You get fired. You get caught in the act. Once more, the worst thing you can do is to avoid your problems.

For sure nobody can make good decisions only. After all, good decisions come from experience, and experience comes from bad decisions. But you have to kill the monster (problem) while it’s still small. If you run a mile away from your problems, they’ll only get worse and they’ll be harder to solve. Don’t stick your head in the sand and hope that the problems will go away. Even if they do, it will only be temporary, life will kick you again sooner or later, this time even harder.

That’s how people really fuck up their lives. They wait, feeling powerless and like a victim, until it’s too late. Enough courage and a superior strategy with immediate action are the best things you can do to solve your problems when they occur. You have to make a series of good big and small decisions that prevail over the bad decisions you were making in the past.

A very important fact you should also be aware of is that this works the other way around as well. You succeed in life because you make some really good big decisions and/or a series of small right decisions. You marry a person that really supports you and empowers you. You find the right job you can shine in. You exercise regularly. You save and invest. You put your integrity above everything else. To make good big and small decisions in life, you need a long-term view and you have to be very clear about what you want in life; you have to fight for it.

Make the right decisions, no matter how big or small they are. And when you know you’ve fucked up, don’t run away from your problems: the sooner you tackle them, the more control you have over the damage. Face it or you’ll lose by default. Now make as many right decisions as possible.
Morning and evening habits and rituals
You make hundreds upon hundreds of smaller and bigger decisions about your life and your future every day. A lot of those decisions are more or less the same every day. They’re called habits and we are creatures of habits. Our habits are what defines us most, especially in the long term; because they accumulate.

There are actually two ways of succeeding in your life or messing it up:
- You make one big right or wrong decision (for example what you study, who you marry, the friends you choose, the markets you operate in, etc.)
- You make right or wrong small decisions each day (for example you go for healthy or junk food, how much money you spend, do you watch TV or prefer to read etc.). Let’s now focus on these small decisions you make every day, called habits.
Positive habits, like brushing our teeth regularly, exercising, reading, trying new things, analysing ourselves, etc. lead to our constant improvement and evolution, and thus increase our capacity for productivity, creativity, longevity, income and so on. On the other hand, a lack of positive habits or negative habits like smoking, drinking, clinging to anger or depression, watching TV and so on, decrease our capacity to create, truly enjoy life and contribute.

Don’t get me wrong, we all need to relax and release some tension from time to time, just let it go. That isn’t a habit, that’s perfectly normal and it leads to better long-term performance. For example, resting and doing “nothing” one day per week makes other six days of the week much more productive, especially in the long run. We all need to give ourselves a break from time to time.

The problem is a lack of daily positive habits, since for some people they don’t even exist at all. Not doing things that improve your body, mind, emotions and spirit on a daily basis means going back, not forward. It means throwing away your potentials. It means lagging behind and making your position worse. When you take a very passive approach to living in that kind of way, life kicks your butt from time to time – you know, you lose a job, you break up etc. – but it’s usually not enough to really change. It’s just a reminder that you constantly have to struggle, fight and push yourself.

As already mentioned, positive daily habits accumulate through time. You become a little bit better every day and in the long run, it makes a huge difference. With a new positive habit, you can become a completely new person in a few years. With a new positive habit, you can upgrade your body, mind, emotions and spirit in the long run, and that’s what really leads to a better performance and happiness.

Of course the big challenge is developing a new positive habit. It’s usually true that motivation gets you started and habit keeps you going. That’s why you first need a strong why and then follow the process through which you also develop new habits.

Nevertheless, developing habits really is very hard, so let’s look at a few tricks for developing a new habit. Before we even begin with the tricks, remember that you can’t implement too many changes in your life at once; and habit is change. Thus you should implement one new healthy habit at a time. One positive change usually represents an early win and that will motivate you to implement even more new habits. For example, when exercising gives you the first results, you will automatically also be more motivated to eat a healthier diet.

But now, let’s look at the tricks. Every habit starts with a reminder, a trigger. After the trigger, the routine starts, your subconscious autopilot. At the end, there is the reward. The reward brings you pleasure; but the key question is what kind of a pleasure you’re focusing on. There’s usually a conflict between short-term gratification (immediate pleasure) and achieving long-term goals (true pleasure). If you change focus from the former to the latter, your life will change dramatically.

Source: The Power of Habit. James Clear

Here are three tricks you should do:

The first one is having a “why” that’s so strong it puts instant gratification to shame. Your long-term pleasures must dominate your short-term appetites. You have to see instant gratification as pain, and following your true goals as pleasure. Let me give you an example.

Let’s say that you want to eat a really unhealthy meal and it’s right in front of you. You can get instant gratification from eating it. It smells so good, it tastes excellent and your cravings are strong. The short-term reward you get from eating a fast-food meal is immediate. The pain of getting fat and getting a medical condition is somewhere in the future. And when we’re hungry, our brain couldn’t care less about our long-term goals and our future.

Now let’s turn things around a little bit.

Let’s say your goal is to train your body and become really fit. You’ve found the sports you like and the diet your body best responds to in the search mode, you’ve decided to follow and trust the process; and the process doesn’t include eating fast food.

You have a greasy, unhealthy meal in front of you. With your goals and process in mind, that meal should represent pure pain for you, not pleasure. You should see how not eating that meal is a reward for you and eating it is a big misery. By having a strong enough “why” (why you want to become fit, in this case), that should be easy. But you’re still hungry… and that’s how we come to the second trick.

The best way to develop a new positive habit is by exchanging a bad habit for a new, positive one. Every time a trigger comes into play, decide for a new routine, have a new personal reward system in mind. That’s the best way to develop a new healthy habit.

Every time a hamburger is put in front of you, just nod your head, and order a super healthy meal; eat a carrot or a banana or whatever. Every time someone turns on the TV, go read a book. Every time someone orders an alcoholic drink, order yourself a smoothie or a lemonade. Every time you want to buy an expensive latte, put the money in your piggybank instead. Every time you want to buy yourself a new fancy car you don’t need, go study investments you’re going to make.

The third trick are the cues, triggers. There are two points every day in your life that work great as triggers for your healthy habits. It’s when you wake up and before you go to sleep. Throughout the day, we’re all usually extremely busy, running from one activity to a meeting to another task and so on. Your phone keeps ringing, your inbox is filling up and you face many unexpected events. Daily challenges slowly take away your capacity for discipline and cognitive abilities. It’s quite hard to follow any new serious habit during the day (well, it can be done, for example if you have a no-interruptions day, but it’s harder to do something new).

But before 9am and after 9pm, everything is quiet and peaceful. They are the two time blocks of a few hours that you can really dedicate to yourself and your long-term goals. It’s even better if you connect the trigger of your routine for waking up and going to sleep with a healthy habit. Then you’ll definitely be a winner in the long run.

Your own personal rituals

Your morning and evening habits should be more than just habits. They should be your personal rituals, something, you never miss, no matter what. Your personal rituals for keeping inner peace, focus, personal development, life planning, health and happiness.

The best thing you can do in life is to first take care of yourself, and your personal rituals are the best way to do it. Because rituals are something divine and nothing should come in the way you of performing your rituals. You should put yourself first. Because if you’re happy, people around you will also be happy.
- You can call your morning rituals the kick-off routine and
- You can call your evening rituals your shut-down routine
Make sure you have visual aids that remind you and help you stick to your morning and evening rituals. Have a Kanban board, a checklist or whatever works best for you. Another very important thing is to have zero distractions when taking time to carry out your morning and evening routine.

Last but not least, your willpower is the strongest in the morning. That’s why your morning routine can be a little bit more demanding, and your evening routine should be more about relaxation and reflection and calming down.

Since your willpower is the strongest in the morning, you should also plan to do your most complex and difficult tasks right after your morning routine.

Ideas for morning rituals or kick-off routine

Here are some ideas for the best morning rituals you can introduce into your life:
- Be grateful for a new day and reinforce positive emotions, read a positive quote or two
- Brush your teeth
- Drink a glass of water first (with some lemon if that works for you)
- Meditate for 10 minutes or more
- Exercise or stretch if you don’t have time to exercise
- Eat a healthy breakfast
- Take a shower or a bath (end of the kick-off routine)
- Daily stand-up meeting for planning
Ideas for evening rituals or shut-down routine

And here are some ideas for the best evening rituals you can introduce into your life:
- Have an alarm on your phone to trigger your shut-down routine (9pm for example)
- Meditate or do yoga
- Read, read and, one more time, read (but not on electronic devices, exception being an e-reader); if you read right before going to sleep, read something lighter and not too intellectually demanding
- Reflect on your day
- Visualize your goals
- Take a shower or a bath (end of the shut-down routine)
- Be grateful for the day you had
You first make your habits and then your habits make you

Never forget that you first make your habits and then your habits make you. Your personal culture (values, beliefs, habits…) eats your strategy and goals for breakfast. An important part of your personal culture are also rituals. The more positive rituals you have in your life (in quantity and quality) the better; because you only have two options:
- You either take good care of yourself or you neglect yourself
- You either burn more calories than you consume in a day or not
- You either spend less than you earn or you’re probably accumulating debt
- You either improve and evolve, or you lag behind and waste your potentials
- You either go up or out
Make sure you have daily positive rituals in your life, as they will accumulate through time and lead to the things you want to experience in life. Having strong rituals is an important part of trusting and following the process that will lead you to your goal, your endgame. Strong rituals in your daily life are what prayers are to every religion; they are a must so you can stick to the process more easily.