The people around you are holding you back

Why you need to spend most of your time alone on the path towards Mastery

Greetings from LaGrange, Georgia, USA 🤠

What do you think you could accomplish if you had 2 weeks completely for yourself? Surrounded by people that are just as ambitious as you are?

And what if, during that time, you also didn’t need to worry about cooking, cleaning, or anything except whatever YOU wanted to do?

I just spent 2 weeks doing just that. I came with the intention of going deep on learning iOS development while everyone around me was learning to build web apps.

I’m leaving feeling like I made 2 months of progress in 2 weeks.

Nothing like fresh air and greenery to help you work 14 hour days

Here are some insights while they’re fresh and top-of-mind.

You should semi-frequently change your environment

Stagnant energy keeps you in a loop and more susceptible to repeating the same behaviors and patterns.

Have you ever driven home from work and wondered how you got there? This type of unconscious behavior happens all the time, multiple times per day. How scary is that? To suddenly lose control like that?

This happens because you’re used to performing a set routine that makes you unconscious in order to preserve mental energy. You don’t need to be fully conscious when your body knows the routine very well. This seems like your body trying to do you a favor. It’s not.

When you’re in an unfamiliar environment, everything is novel. You have no choice but to be more conscious of your actions and behaviors. You have no idea what could happen, and you’re on high alert as a self-preservation mechanism.

Anecdotally, this is also when I personally feel the most alive.

Making friends

Understanding this, I’ve realized that if I want to make the most amount of progress in the shortest amount of time, I should simply change my environment by going to a different city for a while.

“If you don’t like how things are, change it. You’re not a tree!” — Jim Rohn

Being in a small town in Georgia—where there’s greenery everywhere, little pollution, eating mostly local produce—is a random environment change that has helped me forge good habits while neglecting bad ones.

The last couple of years have been filled with constant environment changes. And it has been the period with the most exponential amount of growth for me. Coincidence? I think not.

Work around people with similar goals

For those of us that are blessed to have a partner, family, and friends that love and care about us, we are also burdened with their attachment.

If you’re a high-performing individual, you can accomplish a lot in a short amount of time. This means you are most likely the person that your friends and family come to when they need help or advice. And if you’re a good person, you actually enjoy this.

You fall into the trap of having to help everyone else. The trap of having friends that you enjoy spending time with. The trap of trying to keep a balanced life.

Being balanced makes you just like everyone else. That should be a repulsive thought if you want to be extraordinary.

Do what you love and you’ll work every day of your life.

That was not a typo.

A couple times this year I’ve gone to WeWork with some friends to just grind for the weekend. These were some of the most productive times I’ve ever had. But it’s more than that. The feeling of obsession. And seeing your friends obsess for hours as well…

It’s a magical feeling. Intoxicating, even.

You want to be around people like that as much as you can. They inspire you to do great work.

This retreat was those WeWork hack nights on steroids.

Instead of my default environment where I am only on the path with 2 of my friends, I’ve felt a sense of deep, mutual understanding without having to say it.

Nine guys with the same archetype had to fly in from different locations around the world to meet each other. That is how uncommon it is to spend time with people like you.

We have all read the same books. Follow the same people. And have formed similar latticeworks that guide our principles. Independently, we have reached similar conclusions on how to live and what we want out of life.

We are all working towards the same thing. Becoming full-stack entrepreneurs that can code, design, and sell anything.

The peer pressure you feel to keep going because you don’t want to be the guy taking a half-day. Doing push-ups on the hour, every hour. Debating how to organize your data structures and why. From 9am to 2am with exercise, lunch, and dinner breaks in between… we worked alone, together. I wish I could live like that for a whole year.

Working out how to best structure my database tables

It wasn’t exhausting working that much. Working on yourself and your projects gives you unlimited energy.

This type of immersion is what it takes to make massive progress in a short time period. A couple hours a week here and there working on yourself will work over a long enough period of time. But I’m about to turn 30 next year and have not experienced a large enough financial event. My intuition was correct many time throughout my 20s but I was too scared to go the final rounds. I left a lot of money on the table.

I have no choice but to turn up the heat now. To take on more risk, more accountability, more responsibility.

Being around your tribe, eating healthy, and exercising continuously helps to keep you going. Knowing others are also in massive pain helps you feel less alone. And yet…

You have to struggle alone

Optimizing for happiness is a meme that is destroying the West and emasculating men.

What you should optimize for is suffering. Or at least, high-quality suffering.

A good life is a hard life. — Oswald Spengler

I am grateful for every challenge that I’ve faced throughout my life. Throughout Camp I hit many mental roadblocks. Am I smart enough to learn this? To work through this problem? Why isn’t this making any sense?

Working through these thoughts little by little and feeling a sense of accomplishment, taking a small step forward every time, is a feeling shared by every other serious learner out there.

You cannot fully appreciate life’s pleasures without feeling the pains.

The book that showed me the path many years ago

Alas, you must do this alone. Of course, you can learn from others and ingest opinions to help you map out the path ahead. But in the end, only you can put in the work. No one else can or should do it for you.

Lessons learned through your own struggle earn a higher level respect in your mind. The scars you’re left with are a reminder of your triumphs over your weaker self.

Only recently have I truly started leaning into the pain. My biggest regret is wishing I would have started sooner.

You only have one life. Don’t waste it wishing you would have tried harder. I promise you the pain is worth it.

Until next time.

- Jonathan