Drinking is awesome. Even better when you pair it with some cocaine and great friends.
Instagram reels.
TV series.
Movies.
Music.
Hinge.
They’re all so much f*cking fun. So good, in fact, that you can literally fill your entire life with them and have a whale of a time 24/7.
Except it’s not a whale of a time, is it?
Because soon they don’t hit like they used to. And as your dopamine receptors get more & more fried, what was previously escapable through endless debauchery and distraction comes bubbling to the surface.
The begging and pleading of your soul. The lingering feeling of discontent that stalks you around every corner. The gnawing feeling like you’re inflicting potentially irreversible harm on your life and psyche.
You begin to feel it. And it hurts.
And now you’ve acknowledged it’s existence—even for a split second—you can no longer ignore it.
So now you’re at a crossroads.
Lean in. Let it come bubbling to the surface. Feel the weight of the time you’ve wasted and the damage you’ve inflicted on yourself. And decide to take a new course of action.
Or you up the ante. More stimulation. Bigger dopamine hits. Something new and fresh and exciting to push it back to the dark recesses of your mind. Tucked away in the box labelled, ‘to be dealt with, at some point, maybe’.
It shouldn’t be a surprise to discover that most people opt for the latter.
They’re in too deep. It’s all they know. It’s all everyone they know knows. A new course of action would make them an outcast. Their friends would mock their feeble attempt at “self improvement,” just waiting for the day when they fold and return to their “real self”.
‘It’s useless,’ they think.
‘And besides, this life isn’t so bad. There are moments of happiness. I make good money. I have fun. And I like Instagram reels and watching TV! I don’t know what I was so worked up over. I think I’ll have a beer and watch the game.’
BOOM.
That’s all it took.
A few sweet nothings whispered by the devil on their shoulder and once again they relinquish their dreams, hopes and ambitions for achieving anything more than a normal life.
Such is the curse of our modern world. It numbs your real self under a thousand layers of artificial sedation, then tricks you into believing all your thoughts are true, all your impulses are justified, and the sedated version of you is the real you.
So what’s the truth? Who are you at your core? What do you actually want?
In my experience there are 2 paths to discovering the answers—one is easy and immediate, the other takes time and can be excruciatingly painful.
Let’s start with the easy way, which is inversion.
Stop asking “what do I want?” and “who am I?” and flip them.
“What do I NOT want? In both my day to day life and my future?”
“Who do I KNOW that i’m not?”
Write them out. Start answering. The truth will flow easily (the answers are already swimming in your mind, aren’t they?)
The second, more effective, but more painful method of extracting the honest truth about who you are and what you want is simple:
Remove everything.
TV and movies.
Social media scrolling.
Friends and family.
Alcohol and drugs.
Get rid of it all, sit with yourself in silence, allow boredom to course through your neurons like an electric shock.
Not for an hour. Not even for one day. Go a whole week. A whole month. Accept that everything else is taking a backseat during this time, because your whole life is at stake and nothing is more important.
The longer you go, the quieter the noise of distraction will get and the louder your intuition and spirit will become.
You’ll remember your dreams and ambitions. You’ll feel your potential, viscerally. The days will feel longer and the value of time will be reinstated in your psyche.
And you’ll mourn. Like Theoden waking from a cursed sleep, you’ll look back and see you were living in a daydream. You’ll lament how much life you’ve squandered. How many moments you were physically present yet mentally absent for. Where you could be right now if you’d put a stop to this madness sooner.
You’ll begin to wonder why you ever cared about beer and cocaine. About 30 second reels and cheap TV series. About the lives of so many strangers.
And your rage will become resolve. A solemn vow never to fall asleep at the wheel again. Never to lose this clarity of mind and strength of spirit that you gave up everything to rediscover.
And then you re-enter the world. You rejoin civilisation with your higher level of thinking and the now the real game begins.
Because clarity in isolation is easy. Discipline in the absence of temptation is easy. An extreme lifestyle away from the masses is easy.
But can you hold on when temptations are everywhere? Can you face a crowd of 1000s and tell them with a straight face, “yes, you’re all wrong”? Can you hold onto a higher level of thinking in an environment that tries to strip you of your individuality and numb you to the cold reality of your problems?
Because that’s what makes it real.
And it’s the hardest thing in the world. But what other choice do you have?
You can’t submit to being like everyone else. You know too much. You’ve seen and experienced too much of who you are and what you’re capable of to ever forget.
The comfortable life you once knew is dead, never to rise.
Now you have 2 binary choices:
Throw in the towel and live with your misery
Fight with everything you have to live the life you KNOW you’re meant for in a world that seduces your worst impulses at every corner
If you don’t choose, the choice will be made for you.
Your only option is to fight. Accept that pleasure is meaningless, and that there’s value in suffering. Realise that what you’d most like to do in any given moment is never the thing that will bring you long term happiness and fulfilment. Focus every ounce of your energy towards becoming someone you can respect and be proud of.
You will not win every battle, but you will never give up.
You may fall back into old patterns, but you will never stop fighting.
You may lose people and even parts of yourself that you love, but what you’ll find on the other side is so much better than you can even imagine.
This is the war being waged for your spirit and soul.
A slow degradation of the human experience into something cheap and meaningless.
Take this as a sign to rediscover what you’ve lost. Reclaim the ambitions and dreams that are your birthright. The strength endowed unto you by nature.
You are so much more powerful than you think.
Turn the world off and remember.
— JW