Smart Ways to Unf*ck Your Life and Reclaim Your Personal Freedom
“The world will ask you who you are, and if you don't know, the world will tell you."
Life is full of f*ckery.
Every day some stranger is trying to get in your pants and fondle around. It’s the nature of the internet.
Don’t even get me started on conventional work. Or the modern full-time job that running a family with kids becomes. Without even doing anything wrong, you can quickly lose all your personal freedom.
You can become shackled overnight to a life you don’t want.
Then trying to break free becomes harder than it looks. Getting tied to a job I didn’t want with a girlfriend I didn’t want nearly ruined me.
By accident I got out alive.
Now I know that you can intentionally unf*ck your life and get back your personal freedom if you dare to try some (or all) of these things.
Modern slavery only works because of this…
If you read nothing else I say then read this point. Glue it to your forehead.
The only way 99% of people continue to get trapped by modern slavery is because they don’t know what they want in life.
Famous psychiatrist Carl Jung nails it:
“The world will ask you who you are, and if you don't know, the world will tell you."
The default path is one of no freedom.
It’s where you get told what to do, have to ask for permission, and get trapped by fixed mindsets that want to suppress your imagination and creativity for their selfish benefit.
When you know what you want, it’s easier to get it.
When slave drivers try to force their views on you, you can just let them know that’s not how you operate. It’s easier to negotiate at a job too.
A job is a way to duct-tape together your life until you can earn money on your own.
To use a job as a bridge to freedom you have to know exactly what you want and how you’ll make money in the future.
Then you simply choose a career based on what supports your future freedom. Here’s the checklist I used:
Is the job piss-easy?
Can I work no more than 4 hours a day and get away with it?
Is my boss gullible? Will he/she fall for my fake status updates?
Can I sell these 9-5 skills as an information product later on?
Does any of what I learn at work support my freedom goal? In my case, yes it did. I got to learn about IT/finance for free.
(As you can see, no f*cks given.)
How do you find out what you want in life?
Write down what you 100% don’t want. Then look at your google search history for clues on what you give a damn about.
Don’t let stupid little labels limit you
Society loves labels.
Average people want to get placed in little boxes and get shipped to the North Pole to be sorted by some Santa Claus in a red clown suit.
Labels limit us. They’re a form of secret oppression.
We all have one label we don’t like. Mine is entrepreneurship. Technically I own an online business and make money on the internet, so I qualify.
But the thought of being a qualified entrepreneur scares me.
I don’t have an MBA.
I don’t know business inside and out.
I don’t have much clue about accounting or balance sheets or any of that jazz.
If I had let the entrepreneur label define me, I’d never have quit my job to write online full-time.
I see it with people who run communities too. They call themselves a not-for-profit. They want their intentions to be seen as pure and validated by a business Jesus.
But the label “not-for-profit” sounds horrendous. Most of us think of them as old school and are reminded of an organization like World Vision. Not-for-profits aren’t noble at all. Many rich people use them as vehicles for tax avoidance.
Stop falling for labels as if they somehow make you special.
Fixed mindsets worship labels. The truth is anyone can become anything. There are no boundaries.
Run away from being a corporate robot
A friend asked me for help.
They want to start an online business and asked me to review everything they’ve built. I found myself throwing up in my mouth within 5 minutes. The corporate mind virus was present on everything they did.
Here’s what it looks like:
Big plans
Strategies
PowerPoint decks
Lots of buzzwords and sounding smart
Spend a huge amount of money and hope
Hire 200 people to help (or try to get them for free)
Build a personal brand with a flawless story and profile
Spend more time working on the logo than on the product
Have some far-fetched BS mission that doesn’t sound believable
Just freaking stop.
The real world doesn’t work like this. The corporate way of doing things is dying. It’s too bloody slow. It doesn’t take into account technology and the ability to collect data.
When you show off your corporate skills you look like a knob.
No one has a wet dream over products and services anymore.
What now sells on the internet are grass-level communities that stand for one thing.
They’re called Minimum Viable Communities.
The idea is you recruit a bunch of people around a topic with social media content, then let them decide what they want to be sold. It’s the opposite of getting marketing experts to brainwash people with ads.
Leave the corporate world at work. Learn the online world.
Pro tip: get good at creating simple dot point lists in the notes app of your phone, instead of putting together stupid PowerPoint decks. Dot points are faster and clearer.
Quit overthinking
Smart people often can’t unf*ck their lives because they’ve made everything so damn complicated. When you try unpack the bullsh*t it’s near-impossible.
The path to freedom and money is simple.
You have limited energy and f*cks to give, so spend them wisely and don’t try to do everything and be a somebody to everybody. It’s just too hard, man.
Fear causes overthinking.
Instead of do what scares the crap out of us, we numb the pain, blocking the path forward with useless complication.
“I need this before I can do this.”
No you don’t. You need to become a master of simplifying. How can you do less? What’s one big thing you can focus all your free time on?
Only take action if you have this
Data.
Too many people screw up their lives by thinking they know everything. They become closet fortune-tellers who rely on hope and hippie vibes to make decisions.
No one freaking knows the answer. Data tells you.
If I want to start a new idea, I test it with social media.
If I want to sell a new product, I ask my community if they want it.
If I want to know the best finance book of the last 5 years, I run a LinkedIn poll.
The reason we don’t follow data is because our big fat egos get in the way and rely on “experience” and unqualified experts, like the local butcher, to tell us what we should do in life. Hint: the butcher doesn’t know much else other than how to cut up a pig.
Opinions are like a**holes. Everyone has one.
Following data makes you look smart. And you’ll get traction faster. Do it.
Adopt auto-forgiveness
There’s a guy on social media with a massive audience that hates me.
I got mad at him when I saw him dissing me. He lived rent-free in my head for like 5 years. Then I figured out I was better off using auto-forgiveness.
He wronged me, sure. He doesn’t like me, sure. What’s the benefit to me? Zero.
So I just forgave the bastard.
I told a friend who knows him that I’m okay to forgive him whenever he’s ready. No hard feelings. He went through a hard time in life and I became his punching bag. Fair enough.
Forgiveness sets the mind free.
I don’t want to be kept awake anymore having fake conversations with him in my head. I’m sure he doesn’t either.
I once saw a Youtube video of a Muslim man whose son was murdered by a redneck.
On the day of sentencing he forgave the murderer and offered to visit him for the rest of his life. He even gave him money and helped him find a job later in life.
That’s true badassery. That’s what personal freedom looks like.
Don’t get stuck on what’s wrong and right. We all do dumb stuff when we’re drunk or suffering. Just forgive and move on. I call it easy mode.
Making money is a must
Some people act as if they’re above money.
Like they don’t need it. They’re just fine. They have enough or they’ve accepted being poor. It’s a ridiculous way to live. We all need money. We all could do with more so we can fix our problems … and transcend to fixing other people’s problems.
I see people romanticize over money and it pisses me off. They masturbate over strategies or blame the market.
The market is the market.
It doesn’t care whether you make money. It just knows valuable and not valuable. If your skills don’t make money that’s on you. The good news is it’s easy to fix.
Upgrade your skills. Download new information from ChatGPT into your brain. Defrag your mind with meditation.
The problem with the internet is there’s too much money and not enough time to take advantage of all the opportunities. That’s a brilliant problem for us all to have.
Find free people and steal from them
I wasn’t always free to do whatever I want.
And I had no clue how to escape the prison I lived in. What changed is I accidentally got around free people.
I hung out with them. I watched them do Zoom calls. I saw how they wrote. I copied their productivity strategies. And I shamelessly stole their connections.
Alex Hormozi says it best:
Friends are like tenants that occupy space in your mental building.
If one isn’t paying rent, give them a notice period, then you gotta evict them to make room for a better one that will.
Stop being romantic. Steal from people like me who’ve figured this stuff out. Take what you can see on the outside and experiment with it.
Dare to become a life gambler
Make a few small bets.
Take off the safety pants and walk metaphorically down the street naked. Let it all hang out. Do what seems crazy. Take what everyone else does and do the opposite.
Let yourself be exploited. Ask for things you don’t deserve. Try stuff on and see what you can get away with. Do something as simple as asking the cafe for a free coffee.
Because if you live risk-free forever, all you’ll be left with at the end of your life is a bunch of “what ifs.” It’s better to take a few risks and have the bad ones lead to regrets, and the good ones lead to happiness.
Personal freedom is found in the uncomfortable places 99% of people avoid out of fear of failure, rejection, and embarrassment.
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I am in my early 60's after 20 years in one of the major technology companies and you are singing my song. It was a soul sucking experience and all I can say is better late than never. Here is to flying off a cliff into freedom. I have a friend in Europe in the exact same situation...maybe that is my community. Learning how to fly no matter how old you are :)
This really hits home Tim. I find myself 56 years old in a high paying but toxic job that makes me mentally sick and has me on multiple meds for anxiety & stress. I sorta talked my way into it and probably wasn’t fully qualified for this level but I am doing a good job but my boss rules out of fear and I have major imposter syndrome. I know my time is limited as I don’t think I will hit the aggressive goals they have. I keep thinking it will get easier and to just hold on… don’t quit, make them fire you. It has me wondering if it is me being weak or is it the job? Not in a good place and in constant fear which is giving me daily panic attacks. If I had to do it over agin, I would tell my younger self to not chase the money, title, things that make you “appear” successful to others… but truly devote your energy into things that energize you. I feel trapped, exhausted and afraid to change but know I need to or I will not survive and thrive. The fear of not being ok for retirement is terrible. I should do something simple like being a handyman - so I can do and not think so much.