“You need to list your problems and then start to solve them!” – Bad Guru

Most of the problems people spend time trying to solve are not their real problems. A guy wanting to sell beach balls that doesn’t sell many may think he needs to learn marketing better, or to develop a better beach ball. That doesn’t matter if he’s selling beach balls in Alaska. His problem is his environment, NOT all the other things. People do this with many parts of their life.

You can’t get the answer to a problem if you don’t know what the real problem is. – Truthcake

Finding the cause of the problem helps find the real problem. Because you can’t get a solution to that real problem until you know what the cause of that problem was.

Most of us that work hard are solving the wrong problem. – Truthcake

If the problem is, “My husband doesn’t buy all the groceries I tell him to buy,” A bad solution might be to create a checklist based on the idea that the problem was “forgetfulness.” But if you found out the cause of that problem was that he didn’t have enough time in the day, then you’d realize what the real problem was (eg being overwhelmed) and solve for that instead (eg helping free up his time).

When’s the last time you were solving a problem and then realized the solution didn’t help anything because it solved for the wrong problem.

When people reach out to try to be kind, they’re not doing you the favor. They’re doing themselves the favor and you’re also a benefactor. Take kindness from friends and strangers as opposed to saying “no thanks, it’s ok,” or “I don’t need the help,” or whatever.

Brighten your own day by brightening theirs – Truth Cake

When’s the last time you rejected someone’s offer of kindness to try to not be a burden on them, only to realize that acceptance would have been even a better outcome for both of you?

“Think about what you’re passionate about and do that!” – Bad guru.

“You need to soul search to find your passion!” – Even worse guru.

Bad gurus don’t understand that normal people aren’t passionate about anything, so they don’t know what to pursue, and then it makes them feel like they just need to soul search and meditate to find it. But they still end up never finding it.

“Passion is systematically created, either by accident OR intentionally.” – Truth cake

Passion is created via 2 things.

One is progress. Passion comes from progress. But progress doesn’t create passion. Meaning that you must be getting better in some way with an activity to be passionate about it. However, you could improve at ditch digging and you may not become passionate about it. But whatever the task is that someone is passionate about, they’re always progressing in some way.

The second thing is a fulfilled need. That progress you have with your passion has a result that meets human beings basic needs, which is that it’s something that:

Makes you money, allows you to grow, feel excited, feel certain / safe, feel significant / unique, feel love, or contribute to a cause / group.

Most people never feel any passion because they never stick with something long enough to get good at it to start getting a need met (like money, or contribution). Secondly, when you don’t stick with something you don’t feel any progress. And you need both things, you need to progress, and you need that need to be met.

You will become passionate about bookkeeping if it means you start getting rich with it, cool people think you’re the best at it and really appreciate it, and you get better and better at finding ways to cut people’s taxes that no one else knows about. You will be passionate about building houses if you’re always learning ways to be faster and better, you’re making a ton of cash, and people love you for getting their dream home built under your watch.

PASSION IS A CHOICE. But now you know the 2 things to you need to make that choice.

How much time have you wasted thinking you just needed to be more in tune to know what your passion is, meanwhile, you needed to just make a choice on what to be passionate about?

“Think positively!” – Bad guru.

“If you can’t see the negative in everything, you’re screwed.” – Truth Cake.

People make decisions by listing pros and cons. But beyond the surface, every ‘pro’ is a ‘con’ in some way. And every ‘con,’ is a ‘pro’ in an other way. Many times people want to see the good in something that on the surface seems bad. This is helpful, but blinds you from reality if you can’t also see the negative in positive things happening.

Win the lottery? Now you’re spoiled and won’t ever have the pride of having overcome financial adversity.
Get dumped by the love of your life? Now you can find joy in other things.
Get a raise at work? Now you can afford drugs that destroy you.

The goal here isn’t to become some Zen monk that doesn’t see negative or positive, but just “what is.” But the goal is to exercise the ability to see that a pro might be a con, and a con might be a pro, this allows you to make decisions more clearly, especially if you’ve been in the habit of brainwashing yourself to only see positive things in your life by “seeing the good” in everything. Seeing the good in everything is a valuable skill, but so is seeing the bad in everything as well.

By seeing the negative in the positive, you can better prepare to maximize the positive potential. – Truth Cake.

What’s something that you thought was massively good but you later realized was bad, and perhaps you could have seen that more clearly if you looked at both the good AND bad in everything?

“You need to increase your discipline!” – Bad guru.

“Discipline is for losers. Not needing discipline is for winners.” – Truth Cake

Getting yourself into situations and environments where discipline isn’t required is the only long term solution. If your job, spouse, etc is wearing you down all day and you realize you don’t have the “discipline” to work on your side-hustle, it’s because you’ve already been worn down and have no willpower left.

Not needing discipline doesn’t mean everything is easy. It means that you’re in an environment where it’s either far easier to do the right thing, or it’s simply not a choice. Bryan Johnson, the anti-aging guru, doesn’t think about what he wants to eat, nor does he give himself any option on what to do. He’s set up his diet, and it’s no longer a negotiable thing for him in the day. Bryan’s diet may be ‘hard’ to follow, but it exhausts none of his willpower, making him seem disciplined.

An example is someone that wants to stop doing drugs may find it very hard to do so if they’re hanging around friends doing drugs. Bad gurus will say the addict just needs “more discipline,” but I say they will find it far easier to stop doing drugs if they stop hanging around their drug addicted friends.

What’s something you struggled with doing that suddenly became easy to do when you changed your situation?

“Everything will work out in the end! Trust the universe!” – Bad Guru.

Everything may NOT work out in the end. – Truth Cake.

There’s 2 pieces of reality when it comes to this advice.

1. It’ll make you feel better to just think that it’ll be fine in the end. Sometimes, when people were ultra desperate and they knew things wouldn’t work out by the end of their life, the leaned on religion to make them feel like it’ll work out AFTER their dead. What this advice does is MAKE YOU FEEL BETTER about a BAD SITUATION.
2. It’ll make you feel WORSE to think it WON’T be fine in the end. But it can spur to try to change things as much as you can to make it better as quickly as possible.

It’s better to feel good because you’re in a situation that warrants feeling good, vs feeling good because you think that your bad situation today will magically be better tomorrow. – Truth cake

Therefore, make a conscious choice on whether to lie to yourself or not with bad advice.

You can decide whether to tell yourself it’ll be alright in the end if it’s something TOTALLY out of your control. And if you CAN control things, don’t lie to yourself. It won’t be better unless you make it better.

Strive for feeling better because your situation is awesome, as opposed to feeling better because you think problems will magically solve themselves.

Thankfully, just TRYING to fix things, regardless of whether you suceed or not, is enough to trigger happiness. So don’t let the fear of failure stop you from trying.

You can feel happier simply trying to make your situation better. – Truth cake

What’s something you’ve been telling yourself will work out in the end, that’s in your control, and that you’re doing nothing to change your current sitaution?

Certainty is often craved and when it’s found, it’s just an illusion. If you’re certain aliens don’t exist, or certain that 9/11 was an inside job, or certain about anything regarding covid, or certain about anything for that matter, you’re simply not thinking.

Certainty is an illusion. – Truth cake.

The good news to that is that you’ve lived with a lack of certainty your entire life and you’re still alive. So there’s nothing to be afraid of. Secondly, dealing with probabilities, instead of researching for an eternity to be ‘certain,’ allows you to make far better and realistic decisions. And thirdly, all of the things you were ‘certain’ wouldn’t work, may actually have some chance of working after all and this keeps your mind open.

Look for probabilities, not certainties. – Truth cake.