Scare yourself into the version you admire.

This was written in stream of consciousness.

I recently started approaching every single stranger I found interesting. Coming from a door-to-door sales background, this was very nerve wracking, but also very familiar to me. After doing this now for about 3 weeks fairly consistently, I saw that it was completely changing who I was right before my eyes. When you approach strangers, and do it often, your mind begins to slow down in social situations. Instead of it moving rapidly, only thinking about yourself, your able to now focus on the other person. It’s great, because people don’t want to be impressed, they want to feel seen, heard, and understood, and you can’t do that effectively if you are focused on yourself.

I’ve been writing less and making more video content on Instagram. Even though I only have about 864 followers there, I have 140,000 views in the last 30 days on reels. The power of social media is real, and you don’t need to be anywhere near famous to feel it. Start creating, posting, writing, recording, whatever it is that you do, more. And do it all the time. In the car, on a walk, random moments. Record yourself for no reason. As soon you get the idea jot it down. Create this way, and you’ll not only feel amazing, but you’ll have so much awareness of yourself and the world around you.

Creating is not something you do to become famous, gain validation, or make money. It’s something you do to understand yourself on a deeper level, as well as the world around you.

I started doing street interviews, filming other people on camera. I thought this would be a lot more nerve wracking than it was, because the main people I approach are my age group surprisingly, or unsurprisingly, a lot of them do want to be filmed.

Script writing. I’ve been working on my own short film, and I’m currently on my fourth draft working with another professional writer who also happens to be my acting coach. This has helped me become A TON more creative. I didn’t realize how difficult it was to write like we speak. To write good dialogue. No matter how great the acting is, if the dialogue or script is terrible the actors can do nothing with it. And so challenging myself to find more interesting ways to say the exact thing that I want to, but indirectly, has been a real difficulty, but also massively rewarding. I learned that suggestions, metaphors, and stories connect much better with humans than direct commentary. (I’m a hypocrite right now just basically being direct telling you what to do, but that’s because I feel a bit lazy right now lol, and I also believe Substack is a place where people come to receive and give ideas to each other about what’s working in each other’s lives, so the directness is appreciated on this platform. )

Acting. Acting is an art form where you learn how to be more genuine, not learn how to lie contrary to popular belief. An actor’s jump is to channel his or hers emotion into the character, have empathy and connect with the character in a very deep way. Human beings are way too smart to be fooled by a liar. Even when we don’t do anything, or don’t know exactly what the person is hiding or lying about, we feel it in our body. We know something is up, even if we choose to ignore it. Acting is about channeling your emotions, and using their power, rather than suppressing, or judging them.

I’ve limited my scrolling basically to non-existence. My consumption of social media, tv, and movies basically to non-existence. Maybe that will change in the future, but I feel pretty good right now. It helps me be way more present, focused, and clear on what I’m doing currently. Living in the moment is truly addicting, but it’s hard to do when you lack focus from scrolling too much or other high dopamine activities that require zero work.

I eat what I consider to be a clean and healthy diet, and workout 2-3x per week with a trainer. These were two things that I swore I would never do for the longest time. #1, I thought a clean and healthy diet didn’t matter for me, because I had a fast metabolism and could never put on any real significant weight. But eating clean isn’t for looks, although it helps with that, it’s for your mental health and acuity. I’ve never been sharper, or clearer in my life. “Working out with a trainer is just you paying for an overrated accountability partner.” FALSE. This was the stupidest thing I ever told myself, because I didn’t understand that by working with a good trainer, they not only help you do the exercises, but they get you 50-100x per lift what you would have otherwise by yourself. The actual way that you lift, and specific instructions coming from a trainer make a massive difference. And the scary thing is you realize you’ve been lifting wrong your whole life, and that you are leaving massive amounts of potential on the table.

I don’t sell anymore. I provide value and attract. I continued my door to door sales career recently, starting back up my window cleaning company. And I’m actually loving it now. And the reason is because I’m no longer selling. I simply have a conversation and offer a service to people, and if they need it, they decide to buy it. People don’t want to be sold, they just want to buy what they need. This type of energy, and mindset shift has taken away the anxiety for me, and allowed to become more magnetic than I would have been otherwise. I realize sales is a removal process, not an addition process. The more you do, the less you sell. The less you do…you get the point. Because when you simply give people the information they are looking for, nothing more, nothing less, and are calm and certain in what you are providing to them, it makes it fairly easy for them to make a decision. Either yes, or no. And that’s what sales is, it’s not guiding someone to yes, it’s just guiding someone to the decision that’s best for them.

P.S.

I wrote this all in stream of consciousness, not stopping but only for a moment a couple times to move the mouse and scroll down as I continued typing. I have not edited anything, and I haven’t even looked back even on what I wrote. I simply sat down and wrote this in about 45 straight minutes. I’m not sure if everything I wrote down was coherent, or complete gibberish. Let me know if you all want to see more of this type of writing. Or…

if it sucks lol.