You Need to Hang out with the Mad Ones If You Want to Be Successful

We don’t need more information to figure out our lives. We need more emotion. We need to feel something because 99% of society is numb to everything.

Image credit-Midjourney

There’s nothing better than someone who is bat sh*t crazy.

In 1997, Apple founder Steve Jobs released an ad campaign that would change history. I was studying sound engineering during this era. Everyone around me went from using PCs to Macs because of this ad. Using a Mac was cool again.

Steve Jobs wrote that the crazy ones are the people who change history. They’re unignorable. They don’t give a f*ck what people think. Without them, humans wouldn’t progress and creativity would die.

We need the mad ones. I’m mad. Those of you reading this Substack are mad.

Each of us is doing big things. We’re thinking bigger than those stuck on the hamster wheel of life.

Writer Zach Pogrob expanded on this idea further. He says we need to spend more time around the mad ones. That has been true for my life too.

Here’s what it means to be a “mad one.”

Become obsessed with the impossible

The mad ones make the impossible, possible.

Not in a grandiose, look at me, look at me, kind of way. No. But in a quiet way that allows them to overcome common challenges the average person is destroyed by.

The impossible is where your potential lies. It’s not about reaching a specific outcome, but aiming big enough that even if you fail, you’re further ahead than if you’d never gone on the quest.

I’m trying to get 100,000 people to start writing online. It’s an impossible task. But even if I fall short the impact it can have is huge. What if only 10,000 people start?

Well, that’s still a lot. And they’ll each inspire a new generation of people to write. So even if I don’t hit my target, the laws of the universe can still help me indirectly achieve the same results.

You just get more money, fulfillment, and dopamine when you dare to go bigger.

Play life like a video game

The mad ones treat each stage of life like a level in a video game.

They play the game on hard mode because it’s where all the rewards are found and there’s almost zero competition. The mad ones don’t think about dying in a video game. No. They just keep playing the game. They live as if they have unlimited lives.

Fear doesn’t exist in video games. You’re controlling an avatar that’s outside of yourself. Whatever you think the avatar can do, it does.

The mad ones adopt this gamified life to their human avatar. It’s as if the laws of the universe don’t apply and there are no roadblocks in the way.

Life feels limitless. Time feels unlimited.

Create don’t doubt

The mad ones are creators.

Not in a bullsh*t Creator Economy way but in an everyday kind of way. They wake up and they create. They’re building businesses, movements, portfolios of content that’ll outlive them, and families.

They don’t stay stuck in fear and wait until the time is right to create something because they know the time is never right. The job will always be there sucking away the precious hours of the day.

The mad ones force themselves to create. They create during their lunch break if they must. I used to create between 6am and 9am before I started my painful banking job.

The act of creation is like oxygen once you discover it.

You no longer wanna be a sheep building other people’s creations for eternity. It’s a spiritual endeavour to create. It’s deeply personal.

It’s bigger than the idea of reincarnation or the afterlife.

But to truly create you must not doubt yourself. You must believe you can create something bigger than yourself. It’s less about ego and more about creating a ripple effect in the world.

People sometimes ask me why I’m obsessed with the idea of online writing. Well, it’s not about me anymore. I’ve achieved everything I wanted to achieve in writing. I don’t want fame or billions of dollars. So my life has shifted of late into a new role.

It’s now my job to create the next generation of creators. It’s my time to pay it forward and give the gift that was given to me to other mad ones.

It’s hard to describe this feeling. It comes from a place of no-mind. One day you wake up and realize you’re getting old and have grey hairs everywhere.

You can get mad by the aging process, or you can become a mad one and do something with your wisdom. I chose the latter. Having a kid compounded that feeling.

So many people are lost.

The mad ones like us help people find what they were put on this planet to do.

Have a contrarian view of the world

The standard worldview involves adopting what is politically correct.

But if you break down political correctness, culture wars, and “doing the right thing” you find it’s full of bad ideas. It’s often a form of control. It’s trying to force people to think a certain way so they’re easier to manipulate.

The masses fall for these lies because they don’t question their worldview. They just hear something on the news or social media and assume the fact-checkers are good little angels who want the best for them.

Facts are piss-easy to distort.

A good salesman (a.k.a politician) can make any genocide look like it’s an act of good. The mad ones have a contrarian view of the world.

Our worldview is loosely duct-taped together between a variety of ideas.

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I come from a religious background but I’m not religious.

But many of my friends growing up were Muslim so I’ve been to lots of mosques. My last 9-5 job was at an Indian company where I fell in love with the culture.

My daughter is half Chinese and I have deep roots in the Asian way of life, which I’ve always admired since visiting Japan. All of these experiences give me a back-the-front worldview.

I’m supposed to be a rich white guy from a privileged country like Australia. On the outside that’s what people think until they meet me. Then I tell them the stories of being poor and losing everything. Or of growing up in a neighborhood almost as dangerous as Compton in California.

I’m Aussie but I don’t love my country anymore.

We’ve lost our way. We’ve lost our heritage and our way of life has been destroyed because of the flock of millionaires who’ve raped and pillaged our land.

I stay for my family. But I feel cultureless. I feel like I don’t belong to any country anymore. It’s a weird feeling and some days it hurts.

Us mad ones are deceiving. People misjudge us and we love it. We get high off the fact we’re completely f*cking misunderstood.

Get excited by risks as if you’re Houdini

The mad ones love risks.

They don’t gamble or guess but they do take calculated risks. They sit on the knife’s edge of deep research and not overthinking every decision.

Risks excite them because they lead to growth. Risk is a new opportunity. It’s a new path. It’s a chance to be humbled again.

Never reaching rock bottom is a huge missed opportunity.

Us mad ones love rock bottom. We don’t stay there. We get back up off the muddy floor, wipe the blood off our face, and start again.

We’ve started again so many times, it feels like second nature. Each time is different. Not better but different. We can even begin to crave this feeling. A feeling where you’re in a dark place and no one knows what you’re going through.

I saw a video today of a guy in New York who’d broken up with his girlfriend. He was doing 26.2 mile runs in the middle of the night. It was surreal to watch. He filmed the whole thing. Complete silence. Nobody on the street.

I’ve been that mad many times. When I didn’t want to live anymore I had nothing to lose. I’d walk around the neighborhood late at night with Tony Robbins audio tapes blasting in my ears.

Friends and family thought I was having a mental breakdown.

But really, I was going completely mad. I never went sane again. I’ve stayed mad and used it as a driving force in my life.

Going mad equals unlimited motivation you can’t describe.

Be driven by emotion

The mad ones use emotion as motion.

Today I was on a celebration call for my writing challenge. One lady started crying because of what writing for 28 days did to her. Tears began to waterfall out of my eyes.

I just felt so emotional to see someone discover this level of madness. To see what it does to a person. It’s so damn inspiring. Yet I hid it. I said nothing. I don’t think any of the people on the call saw my tears.

The mad ones are driven by emotion because that’s all there is. It’s more powerful than a mediocre gut feeling. Emotion tells us who we should spend time with and what goals we should chase.

We don’t need more information to figure out our lives. We need more emotion. We need to feel something because 99% of society is numb to everything.

They can see a gunman shoot up a school full of children and not feel the urge to tell those in power that giving guns to everyone is a bad idea. Or they can see countless people destroyed by the medical system and not speak up.

The mad ones have a screw loose. They see injustice and start speaking loudly. They find a voice they didn’t know they had, even if they’re quiet or introverted.

That’s what the madness does. It takes over the mind and makes us do things we’d never thought we’d do.

“In a mad world, the mad are the only sane ones left.”

(Zach Pogrob)

Read that quote ten times.

As the world goes more and more mad, if you’re not one of the mad ones then something is wrong. Insanity is being normal. It’s watching elections and thinking they’re somehow normal or even helpful.

You go mad because you realize how dangerous it is to be normal.

If you want to go even madder, it pays to hang out with other mad people. Their madness will rob off on you. Being mad is a form of energy that becomes an uncontrollable driving force.

Go mad. Let insane ideas swirl in your brain. Dare to be crazy and change the world in some small way. There’s nothing else. That’s why we’re put on this Earth.

Tell me in the comments section below whether you believe in the idea of mad ones and why.

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