Nine Addictions You Must Break to Live Your Best Life (And Give the Middle Finger to Mediocrity)

#5 – Parasite Culture

Image Credit: Midjourney

We’re all heroin addicts in one area of life.

The internet cleverly amplifies our addictions and often makes them worse. That’s why it pays to be aware of the most destructive addictions and have a backup plan.

My biggest addiction right now is sugar. I know it’s poison and it even contributes to the onset of conditions like Alzheimer's. Yet after a big day of work, I’m losing the battle. I will win the sugar war but it’s going to need a new approach.

Let’s analyze the worst addictions we must all break to live our best life.

"Addiction results from a desire to escape pain, not to seek pleasure.

Once you realize there’s more pleasure in quitting, it’s easy to break free.” – John David

Taking zero risks

When you don’t take risks, you face the biggest risk of all: mediocrity.

You’ll operate on survival mode if you let this addiction run your life. Everything worth doing carries some level of risk. The strategy isn’t to avoid risk but to know the risk. It’s to accept there are risks and cap the downside.

When I worked in banking I learned this lesson. We’d give out all sorts of loans to all sorts of people.

About 2% of them went bad, the other 98% all got paid back with interest (big profits).

The bank’s strategy was to assess risk and re-evaluate annually. If a loan was going bad they’d recall the debt.

If a company went bankrupt they’d accept there was a hidden risk and write off the debt. This clever approach is one I adopted. Risk runs the world – embrace it.

If you don’t take a risk, you’ll be living the same boring life forever, wondering, “Is this all there is?”

What you’re missing out on lies on the other side of taking a risk.

Do this

Take more calculated risks and increase your luck surface area.

Wanting something for nothing

Capitalism and modern marketing created this addiction.

To get you addicted to consumerism and buying stuff you don’t need, businesses have convinced you of the lie you can get something for nothing.

This discount culture has led to religious business days such as Black Friday. It’s easy to get hooked on this idea.

It’s easy to ask a business “What are you giving me for free?”As my 104 year old grandma used to say, “There’s no such thing as a free lunch, Timothy.”

Stop expecting free sh*t. It’s ruining your life.

Your psychology is being hijacked, impregnated, and manipulated. Asking for discounts is even worse and it’s highly offensive. It’s a great way to ruin a relationship that could solve a big problem in your life.

Imagine if I said to one of my favorite people, Tony Robbins, “Hey big guy, can you reduce your coaching fee from $100K an hour down to $0.99?” There’s a good chance I’d be blocked, muted, and ghosted for life.

Do this

Focus on value, not cost. Focus on outcomes. Focus on using money to solve problems and pay attention to the ROI.

Device disabilities

I created the term “device disability.” (Please send my Oscar trophy to my wife.)

Phones, laptops, and tablets are crippling us. We’ve outsourced our thinking to a device that’s run by corporations that are able to exploit it for profit.

Walk down the street. Look at all the phone zombies. People spend more time looking at their phones than they do looking at their family’s faces. The phone is designed to be addictive. It has alarm clocks for other people’s priorities known as notifications.

If you follow the sheep and let your phone run your life, you’ll be easy to manipulate. The addiction can become so powerful you’ll lose hours of your life to the metaverse and not even realize it.

It may not seem like a big deal. Everyone does it.

But if you let your phone dominate your life for long enough the world will look different. Nothing will look as pretty as it does on your phone screen.

No one will be as perfect as the influencers who preach to you through LinkedIn. No one’s body will ever be as sexy enough as the models on Instagram.

Do this

Spend time without the phone. Limit usage. Keep your phone away from family time. Carry a digital camera with you for family photos instead of a phone. Or buy a dumb phone that can only take phone calls and has no apps.

Worshipping the luxury life

On social media we all have amazing lives.

People think I’m a happy son of a gun with a perfect one year old daughter, booming business, clean Honda Civic, freedom, and endless trips to Bali.

It may look like that from the outside but it’s all a lie.

I’m far from perfect. This year has been one of the hardest of my life. I often compare myself to people who have a life I’ll probably never earn. I sometimes wonder why I don’t make a million dollars a day, given the internet connects me to billions of people.

(Should be possible, right? Right?)

Because I write about money it’s easy to think I don’t have enough. There can always be more. I don’t love luxury items but I do love using money to do good. In some ways this is its own addiction because you can never do enough good in the world.

There’s always someone else to help.

I look at what some of my creator friends do in Africa, and they look nobler and wiser than Nelson Mandela. I’m not even close to their level of enlightenment.

Here’s the thing: the brain dump you just read is threaded with comparison syndrome. When we fall for the lie of perfection and luxury we start to compare what we have and who we are to some fictitious character we’ll never be.

Do this

Stop comparing your life to someone’s manufactured life online.

There are more Hollywood actors in your circle of influence than you realize. They pose as thought leaders when really they are thought destroyers, because they make you want a life you’ll never have.

Life isn’t a competitive bro sport. It’s a journey defined by guaranteed tragedy such as death and sickness. Stop getting fooled. Imperfection is the real beauty.

Parasite culture

I’m on fire today. This is another invention of mine. Thank you, thank you.

*Takes a bow*

Parasite culture is the trifecta of being addicted to negativity, the news, and politics. It forces you to descend into this Hunger Games mode where you become obsessed with the new worst thing today. The new emergency. The new urgent cry for help.

This turns you into a parasite. You feed off negativity. And you spread that negativity like a virus to stay alive.

Do this

News and politics aren’t reality. Negativity is mostly a waste of time. There’s always something to be outraged by. 2024 is gonna be fun. Two impeached US presidents. Who’s worse? Who’s better? It’s all a circus.

Instead, be outraged by your life and where you could be if you focused more and got stuff done.

No one who got consumed by the news and politics ever became successful.

Trading your obsessions for a job

I spoke to a father of four by email yesterday.

He told me he didn’t want to write because he was comfortable. He doesn’t love his job. In fact he doesn’t care about it. He sees no problem with this though.

He has 1-2 obsessions but he just pushes them to the back of his mind and tries to forget about them. They may reappear during his retirement (if he can ever afford to retire) but for now they’ve vanished.

When I pushed him hard enough, he finally admitted he had enormous regrets. The job has just papered over the cracks and now those fractures are looking like the after effects of an earthquake.

See what I mean?

There’s only so long you can BS yourself. A job is fine for some time, but if it’s all you ever do, you’re leaving a lot of opportunities on the table.

Regrets hurt worse than rejection or failure.

Do this

Work on your obsession before work.

Notice how I didn’t say after work? That’s because after work you’ll have less energy. Use the highest energy part of the day – 6 AM - 9 AM – to work on your selfishness project, your obsession.

Drowning in comfort

If you really want to numb the pain and feel nothing, this time in history is a bonanza.

Here are your options:

• Load up on prescription meds

• Watch back-to-back TV shows

• Get addicted to a video game (GTA 5 anyone?)

• Jump on endless Zoom calls inside the metaverse

• Join a digital religion like Bitcoin or Dogecoin

• Indulge in some junk food because you’ve earned it

• While you’re at it, take a load off and load up on alcohol

• Feel sorry for yourself, too, and join a bunch of Twitter crazies in the comments

There really is a buffet of great options if you don’t want to experience life. All of these things can wrap you in a bubble of comfort and allow you to live in a wall-to-wall pillow-covered bedroom inside some concrete jungle.

None of this will seem weird either. Why? Everyone’s doing it. Comfort is the norm because society simultaneously feels harder to understand than ever before.

And the societal commentators – the mainstream media – can’t wait to push you toward the comfort options, so they can monetize you with ads and glorified 90s infomercials camouflaged as “educational content.”

Do this

Find a group of people who don’t live in comfort.

As dumb as it sounds, anything fitness-related is usually a good start. No one at my gym, for example, is interested in a comfortable set of bicep curls. They’re all looking to grow, so they can’t wait to feel the pain that leads to growth. Another option is to join a mastermind.

The lesson here is your comfort level rises or falls based on the people you spend the most time with. Be intentional with who you spend time with. I hang out with people who chase pain (but I’m f*cking crazy so you do you).

Waiting for the orga$mic “right time”

One big addiction people have is they’ve made the future their crack.

They can’t get enough of someday, one day, not today. The future just has such high s3x appeal to them.

They get to take all the responsibility of now and just piss it off to the future. They outsource it to a fake person who shares the same name as them but lives in another time. It’s almost intergalactic.

I watched this movie recently recommended by Tim Ferriss called “Past Lives.” It’s about an impossible love affair that never happens.

The two main characters agree that they can only exist together in another life, and that perhaps they were lovers in a past life. This woo-woo idea isn’t much different to the someday ma$turbators.

They’re like Homer Simpson when he got trapped in some alternate reality halfway between real life and a new dimension.

The future isn’t reality. There is no someday.

Do this

Focus on today.

If a decision needs to be made then it’s either today or never. Not right now means “not a priority.” And if it isn’t a priority then it’s an opportunity that should be nuked and forgotten about so it doesn’t become a tempting distraction.

Never trust people who say someday. They’re liars playing liar’s poker.

Saving money

Wait, what?

Yepppppp. Saving money is a hidden addiction too. The threat of some emergency can hold us back. We can hoard money out of fear and not realize it.

The problem with the addiction of saving money – that’s the gospel of traditional money education – is that it holds us back.

Saving money is defensive. Investing money is offensive.

If all you do is save money, then taxes and inflation will gladly rob you of your hard-earned cash. Saving is how you lose. It’s based on a scarcity mindset.

A growth mindset is the opposite. It’s where you take the resource of money and use it to make more money and amplify the resources at your disposal.

Do this

Invest more money than you save. Save money by investing in inflation-proof hard assets (not financial advice).

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