“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.

“Come listen to my seminar!” – Random bad guru.

I hear people speaking at seminars always struggling with the idea of trying to figure out what would be valuable they could talk about that can fit into a 30-60 minute presentation. They realize that’s not enough time to even scratch the surface with attaining the skills that matter. So they pick subjects that do matter at least a bit, can be crammed into that short period, and are forced to ignore topics that require hundreds of hours to get good at.

Could you imagine if doctors played the same stupid seminar game entrepreneurs do? Need to learn how to perform surgery? If surgeons were like entrepreneurs, they’d have some ‘mastermind’ where you can “Show up for a 60 minute presentation how to be the best surgeon in your field!”

“Seminars give presenters just enough time to make us good enough to be dangerous.” – Truth cake

It’s not the presenter’s fault. People won’t show up for a 600 hour mastermind unless it’s called “college.” So everyone runs around with a superficial understanding of a lot of things when they really just need to pop open the books and go into the deep work state that’s required to get good at something.

When’s the last time you realized you got more out of a boring, in-depth book than you did from that weekend seminar in terms of attaining deep competency and knowledge?

“Sit down and really think about what you want, make a plan and then achieve your goals!” – Random bad guru.

The reason you see how many super rich people miserable is because they thought that was what they wanted but it turns out it wasn’t as good as they thought it’d be. The reality is “thinking about what you want” is a waste of time. It’s like going to a buffet and you’ve never had any of the types of food available before, sitting there and “thinking about it” isn’t going to get you a better idea of what you want.

“In order to figure out what you want, you have to try it first.” – Truth cake.

You’d test drive a car. You’d do a walk-thru in a house before you bought it. You’d try a sample of that beer before you bought a keg of it. But yet when it comes to goals, gurus think you don’t need to try anything out and you can just magically know what you want by “thinking” alone.

It’s nonsense.

Instead, try stuff out as quickly as out can, and then start to refine what you want based on experience, and THEN you can add the ‘thinking’ component to figure out what you liked about an experience, didn’t like, and so on to figure out if you have a goal worth pursuing.

When’s the last time you achieved a goal only to realize it wasn’t what you wanted, and you should have tried to spend some time getting a ‘sample’ of that goal before you invested so much energy into that goal?