If The Average Person Broke Society's Rules For 6 Months, They'd Become Wealthy & Escape Being Average

The rules you must break to live a life of freedom

Image Credit: “There Will Be Blood” movie/Miramax

I became a millionaire at 31.

The inflection point was when I started intentionally breaking society’s rules about how I should live my life.

This quote from Oscar Wilde triggered an avalanche of emotion in me:

"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their life a mimicry, their passions a quotation."

I chose a banking career because I thought society would see me as successful. All it did was lead me to an identity crisis. I realized I’d inherited a career from a bunch of random sources instead of designing a career I could be proud of.

Even people’s passions are mostly for show.

My neighbor Joe plays golf. He tries to convince me he likes it but I’m just not buying it. My former boss cycles on the weekend, but when I question him like a hostage negotiator would, I find out he only does it to get more business leads for his 9-5 job.

Even people’s ideas aren’t their own.

They’re programmed with a bunch of “this happened in history so you should do that” and vice versa. Or the consensus is this flag equals good so trust me, m’kay?

Not okay, Jan. This is how we’ve become a society of circus monkeys. As the popular Dance Monkey song goes, “"Dance for me, dance for me, dance for me, oh-oh.”

Stop giving lap dances to get dirty money like a stripper acting out someone else’s fantasy, and start breaking rules so you become a giant weirdo.

Here are the rules you must break to escape the hell of average.

See a recession and use it to become a millionaire

Right now the world is collapsing.

My investment portfolio dropped by multiple 6 figures recently. Wars are breaking out. There’s political uncertainty in the U.S. The holy grail of jobs, big tech employers, are axing people like they’re Hannibal Lecter on Halloween with zero f*cks given.

But this potential recession and huge stock market crash is my favorite time in history. In the bat virus crash of March 2020, I made life-changing money. I’ll do the same again this time.

Not because I’m smart, but because of an uncommon way of thinking.

All the best opportunities are found in the middle of chaos. When people are afraid they do stupid sh*t.

They temporarily forget their beliefs, rules, patience, and willpower. If you can keep your head screwed on you can get people to give you things they normally wouldn’t.

• Buy businesses for cheap.

• Invest in your favorite stock for 30% off.

• Find employees and freelancers for below their market price.

• Get a discount on a consultant you were going to hire anyway.

Society’s rule is when everyone is panicking, you should too. To escape being average you must learn that fear is a huge opportunity.

Expect bad times. Plan for them. Then make a fortune when the sky falls in and people think Japan will become a state of America.

Turn scepticism into inspiration

It’s natural to be skeptical.

“This won’t work” you might say. We have a bias for seeing the worst of every industry and opportunity. Frauds and get-rich-quick gurus stick in our mind better (partly because they’re more attention-grabbing and entertaining). Makes sense.

I became wealthier when I started asking myself these two questions:

“What if the opportunities I’m too skeptical about are actually the paths I should be taking? What if the answer to the life of freedom I want is right in front of my big, pointy witch nose and dumbo ears?”

That’s how I found Tony Robbins. I rolled up to his seminar and hated it.

I felt stupid, like a fraud.

But a stranger from a bank told me to stick around, and if I did, he’d buy me lunch. So I stayed. After I got over the filthiness of dirty dancing to Black Eyed Peas songs with a room full of crazies, and Tony Robbins walked out, the new path revealed itself.

The skepticism I felt at 9 AM turned into inspiration at 12 AM, when Tony wouldn’t shut up and kept challenging every one of my beliefs into the early morning.

Take what you’re skeptical about and dare to f*cking explore it. You’ll probably find that’s where your potential is found.

Fail at university

University doesn’t teach people critical thinking.

You’re taught by professors who’ve mostly never done “the thing” to inherit ideas from wikipedia & adopt them as your own while memorizing answers for the next exam.

The biggest losers in my network are those who’ve gone too hard into the intellectual field than they should have. Smart people trying to outsmart other smart people while making stupid decisions and never earning enough money to experience real freedom.

I hope my 1 year old daughter fails university one day.

I’d prefer she learned through what life has to teach, and that can only come from rejection and failures – not overthinking and perfectionism.

Choose to be an owner instead of a beggar

Beggars don’t get to choose.

• “Please Mr University will you let me into your prestigious elitist club if I suck you off and ask enough times?”

• “Please boss man can I have a promotion and get a pay rise? I’ve been so loyal to you. I’m in my 10th year. Is now my time?”

• “Please government can you ease inflation and help lower the cost of living for me? I’m bleeding over here. I need you. God save the queen.”

• “Please bank can I borrow some money to start a business and make my kid’s believe in me? I’ll give you my house as security in case the business fails.”

Beggars have to ask.

They operate in the Permission Economy, where everything requires a middleman to believe in you and bless your children. Except they don’t give you what you want unless they have an unfair incentive to do so. BAM!

Owners think differently.

When they’re an employee they still call themselves a one-person business with a single customer. After hours they work on a side hustle that they have full creative control over.

When work gets hard they take ownership. They don’t say “sorry mam, that’s not my department” like an NPC (non-player character) in a video game that can’t think for themselves.

You either own or get owned. Act like an owner, even if you’re not one yet, and you’ll eventually own a tiny online empire.

Something deep in the human heart breaks at the thought of a life of mediocrity – C.S. Lewis

Disappoint your parents until they cry

Lily Zhang is a four-time Olympian.

She says her Asian parents are still disappointed in her. After all this time they still want her to quit sport and focus on her studies. They just don’t get it.

Thankfully, Lilly ignored her parents. She’s fine to disappoint them. But a lot of society doesn’t do this. People love to “join the family business” or become an engineer like they’re dad was so they can feel closer to their parents.

I have a high school friend. His dad owns a large oil company many of you have heard of. He joined the family business and failed. His parents funded the construction of an art gallery for him to manage. He failed at that too and just smoked pot every day.

Finally they gave up on him.

He had to find his own way in life and stop getting handouts. So he moved to Bali and found his calling. He’s wildly successful in the spiritual niche and runs meditations. That’s what he’s always wanted to do.

If you want to escape the hell of average, you must tread your own path.

Social approval is the enemy of clear thinking – Naval Ravikant

Piss on the culture war

You heard me soldier.

The culture war is a distraction. Whether someone marches in the street with a leather strap spanking another human or not is meaningless. The point of these culture wars is to make you outraged so you’ll join a cause that further distracts you.

When you start to listen to the leaders in these culture wars they make no sense. One day they’re angry about Alzheimer's and the next day they’re saying selling smack should be legal as long as dealers are approved by the government.

They make no sense because they’re out of their minds.

They follow a cause they didn’t start as a way to virtue signal. What they’re quietly saying is “I’m hurting and in a lot of pain so please notice me. I’ll do anything. I’m dressing crazy or saying insane things so you must notice me.”

The more degenerate these culture war leaders become, the more people don’t understand them and ignore their ideas.

This makes them even more outraged, so they have to do even more stupid things. It’s a vicious cycle that leads them to a life of hell, or in some cases, to take their life.

Your job is to dedicate your life to your cause and not get distracted with nonsense.

"Always stick to what makes you weird, odd, strange, different. That’s your source of power.”

(Robert Greene)

Most people take their weirdness and hide it.

They’re afraid if their friends, family, or colleagues see how weird they truly are that they’ll run in the opposite direction. That’s not true.

The parts that make you weird are your superpower. They’re what people remember. Being different is easier than being better. Most of the modern world is built on who can ethically get attention for their ideas and capitalize on it.

An average person feels like they’re living someone else’s life.

A weird person who embraces their oddness feels like they’re designing their life and living a life of freedom.

Your goal is to transcend from Person A to Person B. Because Person B is unignorable & will eventually make more money, thanks to their ability to attract people to their ideas. Distribution online through digital media is the future of the global economy.

Weirdness is how you harness it.

What if the rules are all B.S?

The generations who came before you want you to think and act a certain way so they can hold onto their power. It also helps them feel like what they’ve built still matters.

The old worldviews create nostalgia for past generations. It feels good, especially right before they’re about to enter the cemetery.

It’s why “go to school, get a degree, get a good job, keep your head down, and retire at 65” is still popular advice most people follow.

But following the obvious rules is never a good idea.

It’s how you face enormous competition and beg middlemen for opportunities. Worst of all, the old world was based on lottery thinking.

You ask permission enough times and maybe you get a lucky break. The fact 99.9% of people don’t get lucky breaks doesn’t matter. The rule makers will share stories of outliers who did win in this limited view of the world.

• “Look, Bob became CEO after working here 30 years. So can you.”

• “Justin Bieber got discovered playing music on the street. So can you.”

• “JK Rowling pitched 999 book publishers and eventually one said yes. So can you.”

What they don’t tell you, though, is odds are you’ll never become an outlier.

Following the rules only leads to conventional paths that require luck and lottery thinking. Breaking society’s rules is how you create your own luck, build distribution, ethically get attention, and create income sources most can only dream of.

Think this through. Choose carefully.

Tell me if you believe in following the rules and why in the comments below.

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