Ingratitude are insidious poisons of the mind. They only focus on what's wrong not what is right.

This causes you to be defective of what's really happening. A positive event will be viewed negatively solely because you are unable to appreciate the present.

Adopting a wider perspective is the key to understanding why you are miserable right now.

Inside your head are 2 voices fighting.

"I'll do it tomorrow" ,"I'm sick of living like this"

The first wants you to be comfortable and weak. The latter wants to grow and is sick of living the same day same life repetitively.

If you're tired of being stuck in the same rut, living the same day over and over the same way—this is for you

The White and Black Wolf: Yin and Yang Concept

Here's a simple question: If I make a black and white wolf fight - who do you think will win?

The answer is the one you feed.

You see—inside you there are 2 wolves.

For the sake of simplicity let's name the white wolf the higher voice and the black wolf the lower voice.

The lower voice aka the "lower self" wants is to always keep you safe. However it comes at the cost of growth and progress. It wants to keep you alive and secure unintentionally by doing so makes you make weak decisions and actions in order to stick what it knows became exploring is dangerous.

I've talked about this before in the letter: Why You Hate Yourself (And How to Change That)

The lower self is what you call the fearful attitude. It seeks security over adventure. It nags and is noisy when you're about to do something you've never been exposed to. It keeps whining when you have to do the hard work saying to yourself "just one more hour of scrolling" or "I'll do it later/tomorrow"

The higher voice is a calling for challenge and meaning. It constantly gives you doubts—in order to push you to tackle challenges by calling you a pussy or loser in your mind to make you take action. The voice that isn't so satisfied quickly is the higher voice speaking.

Plenty of people fall for the lower voice and disregard the higher voice. No they are unable to listen to the higher voice because of how painful it is. The more they avoid the more miserable they become.

Why is that? Because of ego and it's effect on being self centered.

How EGO works

What happens when someone become arrogant?

• They get into trouble.

• They take too much responsibility and they can't handle it.

• They keep messing up because their skills are not up to the challenge.

There is nothing more dangerous than letting your ego run wild without having the humility to balance it.

To have ego without accomplishments is arrogance.

To have ego with the skill and credibility to back it up is called confidence.

In order for you to flourish in life—you must understand the key to growth is self-discipline and brutal honestly.

When you keep lying to yourself about your state and how low you've become—you're only delaying the problem and making it worse over time.

This is why humility is a must when it comes to growing. You are humble enough to admit you are not good enough with the effort of putting in the work to become enough.

Plenty of people have ego without anything to back it up. Because of this— they disallow themselves to acknowledge beginners tactics telling themselves they deserve more even though it's clear they won't last.

That is why I preach the bare minimum tactic.

Think of the analogy of games. When you start playing a game you start at level 1. You don't have anything. You don't own any equipment.

But you know what you can do to level up and farm. You can kill goblins to get exp. After killing 10 goblins you level up.

The same goes to discipline. You have to start from the bottom and start using the bare minimum tactic.

The difference is clarity of direction. In games we have quests and side quests to do. In real life we have to figure it out ourselves.

This is why courses work as well. Because it's laid out properly. There are clear guidance and challenges to work.

The world does not revolve around you. What happened and what you experienced is not the general truth but a subjective experience that isn't tied to many. Stop generalizing.

If you quit after trying out meditation for 3 days - it's not because meditation doesn't work - it's because you were to weak to properly hold on long enough for at least 2 weeks or you did it too hard at first (1hr meditation sessions even though you can't stay still for 3 minutes. Rookie mistake).

You can only see what works once you've gathered data and have verified it through effort.

To make assumptions without having proof is being stupid.

The Brain is Like a Broken Record

Remember the many times you've tried something again and again but it didn't work out?

Or when you thought you just needed more time but in the end it didn't work out?

It's simple. The brain likes to think in terms of familiarity and patterns it's used to. It denies what's wrong, the miss steps and the anomalies.

When you've been doing something for a period of time—your brain becomes attached to that way of functioning. Your body adapts—your mind knows the pattern. So it sticks to what it knows.

Thus when a problems arises or comes the hidden walls of conformity suddenly appears. It wants you to stick to what it knows even though it's not working.

We are wired to rely on what we know and discard what we don't. The reasoning is simple. Patterns.

We love patterns that we are familiar with. Then we discard patterns that we have no knowledge about or think it's just some kind of a fluke.

I also get into rut sometimes especially when I burn out. The only make or break factor is understanding routine and consistency. Even when I would waste time around the afternoon so long as I continue doing the most important stuff during the day— I can consistently do what I have to do because it keeps the momentum going. The biggest task is something you have to do first thing in the morning—because it's the one that consumes the largest energy—once it's done the easier tasks will consume less energy and you'll have the mental strength to finish them.

This is why don't trust your brain. You should let go of all the excuses you have when you learn something new and implement it first. The idea that you are better than the person giving advice even though you've been trying for years is flawed.

The humility to accept you don't know what to do and to follow someone else advice is the key to getting out of a rut. Like this letter.

Now let's focus on the most important factor of getting out of a rut.

How To Be More Motivated

A lot of people shit on motivation saying discipline is better—however before discipline there must be a trigger to taking action and that's called "motivation".

1) Cultivate The Right Mindset

Something I notice with a lot of people is they are their worst enemies. They blame themselves the most - shit on their achievements the most - undermines their credibility and accomplishments the most.

A mind that holds you back is a slow poison. You don't feel it right now but after 3 months or a year later you'll see the effects in your body and mind.

Having the right mindset is simple. Simply understand optimism and the growth mindset

You have to be optimistic enough to believe in yourself that you can achieve your goal without any proof. And you have to build the growth mindset with the reminder that everything won't go according to the way you planned it to be.

Having the right mindset is simple. You just have to flip your narrative and perspective

• “Why isn't it working?” → “I'm not good enough yet so I have to keep practicing”

• “I wish I never did that” → “I will learn from this and never do that mistake again”

• “I failed again” → “I have to figure out a way to make this work”

• “I hope that” → “I will take action instead of hoping”

Having the right mindset is basically "NEVER GIVING UP" no matter what happens. And having an optimistic outlook in life even if your mind doesn't believe it's true but continues to believe in yourself that you can do it.

An oxymoron where your subconscious knows you can't do it but you on a conscious level you force yourself to believe you can which will later it come true.

With enough exposure you can believe anything no matter how false.

2) Vision: He who has a ‘why’ for which to live can bear with almost any ‘how’."— Friedrich Nietzsche

Finding meaning in life is simple: Understand why you're going all through the trouble of getting rich or whatever your goal is.

My answer is simple. I will give back my parents on how they raised me properly. I will give them a house where they can comfortably live. I will become financially stable to make sure my family doesn't struggle to live in this inflated economy.

And to do that I have to give and create value to the world. Using the lessons I've learnt - I will convey this to other young men who was once lost like me.

• A meaningful goal

• A meaningful reason

• A meaningful work

Is what makes life worth living. A vision to achieve is one of life's greatest joy.

The more reason you have to do something—the more you will have to force motivation to come.

3) Expect Problems. Expect Setbacks.

The thing with common mindset is—it only see's the positive and the good things only.

It always rejects and denies the negative and want to avoid problems at all costs. This causes misery and brain rot to fester.

The more you avoid what's holding you back the more it will weight on your mind aka "stress".

Diamonds come from pressure. In order for you to grow and create more motivation—you must handle setbacks and realize it's there to make you strong not weak.

The other thing with motivation is it comes from expectation and the other is from problems you've solved.

When you finish something important when you thought you couldn't or didn't have the skills to do—you will feel more motivated as a result and that will lead to confidence.

Having proof in your memories that you can do it after all the nagging by your brain you can't is exhilarating

4) Don't Count Streaks

The easiest way to lose consistency is to tie your self-esteem to a number.

Measuring how much you've shown up not how much you've progressed is a formula for misery.

It's easy to look at the negative side rather than the positive. That's why breaking streaks hurt a lot as if your very being is tearing apart.

An identity built on streaks is weak.

The more you focus on streaks the less motivation you will have. And when you break the streak—you will continue breaking the streak since you've already broken it.

• "Just one more"

• "I'll do it 3x today since I broke it then I'll start again tomorrow"

A good example is no fap. A lot of men build their identity on no fap streaks and even have it in their discord bio's.

What they don't understand the goal isn't the number itself but the progress that comes along with it.

Don't get me wrong no fap is good. However semen retention is greater.

Rather than counting—a simple way to be more motivated from your efforts is to compare. Look at how you were 1 year ago and look at you now.

• How many workout have you done this year that you didn't do last year?

• How many pages have you read this year that you didn't do last year?

• How many times did you do something you were scared to do this year that you didn't do last year?

Instead of looking at days or weeks look at the bigger picture. Think in terms of years. Long term planning is more stronger than short term goals because it gives you direction.

This is hard to answer especially if you don't practice mindfulness. However no matter how small there should be progress. If there isn't any then you should start today. Not tomorrow.

Action Step: Putting this all together.

• Eat the frog Tactic- Your day should start with the hardest task to do. That's because your body has most energy and motivation to do early in the morning. When you first do the easier tasks your energy will be burned and when it's time to do the big work—you will be left exhausted. The 1 thing that moves the other things must be prioritized. The biggest task that is the most important should be done first. For example mine is writing my newsletter. Then using that to write reddit posts (which is easier). Then dissecting my ideas (which is even easier and takes less time). You get the point. Do the hardest thing first thing in the morning not the easiest.

• Destroy bad influence- A rut comes from influence. The feeling that you can't do anything anymore. The feeling that you should just stay miserable. And this is bad because most people never try to break this. Instead they just keep on staying the same not because they want to but because they listen to sad songs—read terrible news etc… What you do affects your emotions involuntarily so learn to break it. Sad songs are bad because you're already sad and your even making your life sadder. What's more painful is listening to depressing music. This one can even make you depressed not because you are depressed but because the music itself is depressing. AVOID AT ALL COSTS.

• Use emotions- You can either become so angry at yourself that you force your growth to happen like what they call the villain arc when you go through a break up—even though it's cringe emotions are fuels. Whatever you have inside you must be used or it'll eat you inside.

• Stop trusting your brain- Do you know why you keep failing? It's simple—it's because you keep listening to that brain of yours. When it tells you to scroll you scroll, when it tells you to watch porn you watch porn. when it tells you to fap you fap—STOP and fight back. Learn to disengage and fight this lizard brain. This brain of yours have been making your life miserable. And it will continue do so unless you make the change and start fighting what it says. Trust my lessons. Trust the advice that works. This one is something most people will never do and they'll wonder and grow old resenting the world because their dreams didn't come true.

Being stuck in a rut is understanding it's your unrealistic expectations of yourself trying to win even though you clearly know you can't do it yet. Which makes you neglect beginner practice that could've made you stronger.

That's all for today.

I hope this letter was helpful. See you next time.

-Noat

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PS: What did you like the most about todays letter? Let me know. I’m eager to hear from your responses.