9 Ways to Unf*ck Yourself. That's It.

You definitely don't want to miss this life-changing bucket of freezing cold water.

Sep 14, 2021

My life was one giant fu*k up. I wasted most of my youth which I can never get back. That’s why I’m here to help you avoid that nightmare in the hope I can win back some of the life joojoo I pissed down the toilet.

This article is for those who need a shake-up. Those of you who feel like life is mediocre or boring. And those who don’t know what to do or feel stuck.

Let’s not waste any more time. Strap on your parachute amigo. 1-2-3 … here we go, it’s unf*ck time.

Make fear your best friend. Add it to your to-do list like this.

A lot of my life has died because of fear. Needles, love games, and aeroplanes have stopped me from doing so much.

The best life hack I ever found and implemented by sheer accident is a fear list. I wrote down every fear I had. Then I scheduled an event in my calendar to tackle each one.

The more exposure I got to each fear, the easier it was to overcome them one by one. Most people do the opposite. They run away from fear and think that will serve them well in life. It doesn’t.

Fear is normal. Avoiding fear is standard. Leveraging fear to your advantage is bizarre. The trick with a fear list is to have a success list. Every time you win against a fear you record it on your success list.

Then when you face fear next time you prepare by looking at your success list. The success list gives you evidence against yourself to help defeat the lies in your brain that scream “you can’t do this.”

You can do whatever you want. Fear tells you the difficulty level. The more complex problems you solve the more you grow. The more you grow the better your life gets.

Don’t be an ass kisser

I saw this one for most of my corporate career. Monkeys in suits sucking up to the bosses so they could get some tiny bonus of like $1000 at the end of the year. They would spend their day saying stuff they didn’t mean. Then during social events after work they would then state the opposite was true of whatever they said in a meeting.

One guy said we should all do sales training. He agreed with the dumb department head that we should read off scripts when we talk to customers. So we became robots in cheap suits that said cringeworthy phrases like “is there anything else I can help you with today?”

At the pub on a Friday he’d say “god that sales training is so stupid.” Those of us who knew his sins just shook our heads. All of that corporate acting to get the approval of some boss who doesn’t give a f*ck about them.

You can’t please everyone. You can’t even please 80% of people. Forget trying to. Be yourself. Speak your truth. Silence the lies that destroy your life behind closed doors. This magical place of being yourself is where opportunity lies.

Get second, third, and fourth opinions

Recently, my hearing got messed up. The silence of nighttime has been replaced by a high-pitched noise. I went and saw the specialist. “Sorry we can’t help you Mr Tim.”

What a dick.

Not even a single test and it cost me $230! Luckily I didn’t stop there. I got more than four other opinions. Sure it cost me some cashola. But it’s worth it. I found a specialist who actually earned his hourly fee. He put me onto a new treatment for my condition. Then another specialist found a new device that helps people like me hear again.

If you accept the first answer of an expert you screw yourself over.

Half the time these experts have made so much money that wasting their time to help you is simply too much effort. So they copy and paste the generic reply based on research from a decade ago and swipe your credit card for the pleasure of it.

Speak to more than one expert to get a multi-dimensional solution that includes new technologies.

The paradox of opinions

There’s a paradoxical side to this one. I’ve seen many writers, for example, seek too many opinions.

They spend their entire life talking to experts and looking for a shortcut. The whole time the answer is right in front of them: practice writing daily and learn from the feedback your words generate.

Don’t forget about doing the work and tracking your results as a way to know what to do next. Personal experience is better than opinions.

Don’t defend your bad choices

A buddy of mine loves crypto. He got all excited when I told him about Bitcoin and Ethereum. Then what did he do? He bought some unknown cryptocurrency called Litecoin. I explained to him that nobody really uses Litecoin anymore.

He could have decided to look at the evidence and make a different choice based on new information. Nope. He’s going to hold onto the Litecoin that is worth nothing because he can’t stand being wrong.

Don’t do this. If you make a bad investment then cash your money out and put it into a new investment. Some call it the “Sunk Cost Fallacy.” I’m a simple man. I call it stupidity. Accept new evidence. (Not financial advice).

“Don’t waste your days working on one thing but always thinking about another.”

Stephen from Success Theory on Twitter said this. Many people screw up their lives by doing a job they hate while spending large parts of the day thinking about what they’d rather be doing.

If there’s something you’d rather be doing then go do it right now. Don’t wait. Downgrade your lifestyle and sell your possessions if you have to. Just don’t waste your life away. If I told you that you’d be dead tomorrow, you’d find a way to go do whatever it is you think about all day at work right now, wouldn’t you?

Life is too short to be spending the present moment in a dreamland.

Say no to a lot of meetings

Many of my work colleagues work late nights and on the weekend. It makes me want to scratch out my eyeballs.

The reason they do it isn’t because they want to. It’s because they sit on useless Zoom calls each day to tick a box, like a kid who needs to attend school to avoid their parents getting a phone call.

Your life will be screwed if your most precious resource – time – is stolen from you. Start being a little more ruthless. Use the magic of exaggeration.

“Sorry Jimbo, don’t think I can be at your 4pm as I’m drowning in work.”
“Rog, would it be okay if I sit this one out as I’ve got a bunch of customer calls to make?”
“I don’t have much to add to this meeting, team. Can I email you a few helpful points and then you can call me if you need anything else?”

Less meetings equals time. Time equals freedom. Time is what you can buy back with money.

See a meeting as a $1000 expense on your credit card, then your brain will be rewired to push back more, so you can have free time at home and to spend with family.

Listen to my deceased grandparents

My grandparents on both sides tried to tell me this. They each died with unresolved conflicts and things they always wanted to do but didn’t. All four of them hardly even left Australia to see the world. They stayed grounded and barely went out the front door.

They never got to see what an Egyptian pyramid looks like. They didn’t go to the Amalfi coast to see the beauty of a deep blue ocean. They didn’t walk through the rice paddies of Vietnam.

That’s no way to live. Don’t die with regrets. Don’t die with anything left in the tank.

There’s an easy measure: spend every dollar you have before you die. Money left to future generations is a burden. Let them work for their own money so they understand the value of it.

Imperfect destroys perfect

The circumstances are never right to do anything.

When I decided to write online it was a terrible time. I worked long hours in a bank and was recovering from severe mental illness. I could have waited until I became a manager. I could have waited for the darkness of my mind to pass. Nope.

Unless you start you never will.

Writers tell me all the time that they haven’t released a book yet because they’re not ready. What they don’t understand is an imperfect book on Amazon will teach you the skills you need to write a fabulous book in the future that sells millions of copies. How many writers become JK Rowling of Harry Potter fame after their first book? Less than one percent.

Perfection builds a moat around your life that destroys any chance you have of success. Imperfection builds skills.

Quit spewing negativity on social media

Critics are a waste of oxygen. One day we will ship them to Mars as crash test dummies.

The time spent on social media being negative could be spent doing something productive. It’s easy to be a critic of an idea. It’s easy to succumb to the delicious temptation of your ego and the desire to be right.

I have a different metric I use. How many posts did I publish online versus how many replies did I write on social media? If I find I’m spending my day leaving comments all over the internet then I know my life is headed for a plane crash.

Negativity is a toxic venom that is spewed online by undisciplined people. Be compassionate and empathetic with people you don’t agree with. Try to see life from their point of view, even if it’s hard to imagine. Spend your days in the shoes of others. Then you will see that some of what you were brought up to believe is bullsh*t.

Deep thinking is far more helpful than shallow negativity.

Takeaway

Whatever you’ve been putting off, go do it. Whatever you thought you knew, question it. Whoever you’re trying to please, don’t. Whatever you’re afraid of, don’t be anymore.

Live life for right now. Pretend there is no future. Abolish regrets. Let passion guide you. Evaluate choices with how much energy they give you or take away.

One life is all you get. Nothing to lose. A lot to gain.

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