3 years ago I was a chronically online malnourished looking 18-year-old my life was merely watching other people live theirs online while I just sat in isolation this year I have lived in five different countries spoken at conferences done book signings gone paragliding seen more sites and met more friends than the previous 3 years combined and it's only June but there are still millions of stationary young people they want to move out to meet someone to stop missing out on life and they just don't know where to start so they get flooded with self-improvement YouTubers paid courses and paid communities this is not one of those videos modern self-improvement ideology is primarily just how to raise your status advice repackaged as holistic self-improvement and so it misses important aspects of both the details and the big picture they all Tred to give you the road map but it is their destination this video isn't going to give you a road map because then it wouldn't be your road map it's going to give you a compass that points to your Northeast rather than mine anyway this is all to say that your life tastes like cardboard and you want to squeeze some more juice out of it the good news is that you're capable of much more than you realize but where should you start small you start [Music] [Music] small firstly think of yourself as a dynamical system you are not a machine it's why life looks a lot more like a parabola than just a a linear line anyway what is a dynamical system as an example you have a forest with foxes and rabbits if the foxes eat all of the rabbits then they won't be so many rabbits and the foxes won't have a reason to go to the forest but now there's not many foxes in the forest which is a good reason for the rabbits to go there so the rabbits move in but now there's loads of rabbits which is a great reason for foxes to come back and so the foxes you can see how they have a dynamic relationship to each other you must think of yourself similarly there are many aspects of yourself your behavior your personality your character your envir ironment your habits your values and they all form a dynamical system so no wonder it's really hard to figure out where to start but there is one aspect of self from which any progress made will amplify progress made in all other areas your character put it bluntly your character is what fills in all the holes left by your personality defects but how do we improve our character well it said that all of man's problems stem from the fact that he can't sit alone with himself in a room for 30 minutes so if we want to get started by improving our character let's start there sitting alone with your thoughts I can already feel everybody clicking off the video just bear with me I don't mean merely daydreaming thinking about your problems I mean self authentication what is self- authentication well it's my proposed alternative to Modern self-improvement which shouldn't even really be called that it should just be called status Improvement at this point it's ridiculous self-authentication has three meanings one enhancing the authentic by removing the [ __ ] two becoming the author of your own character development and three taking back Authority over your own actions self- authentication is not a to-do list it's not a predefined list of certain actions you need to take in order to achieve a predefined end goal jacked Rich famous it's a way of navigating the world that immunizes you against your own [ __ ] and the [ __ ] of the people around you so that you don't merely achieve goals but actually move in the right direction as well PS when I say [ __ ] I mean self-deception falsity and unnecessary noise so how does self-authentication work well you know how in video games your character has skill trees like strength intelligence agility Etc well life isn't so different to that and self authentication is defined as the process of developing these following three skill trees knowhow mind States and character traits and to do that by pulling each of the following three levers introspection web of practices and superordinate Truth realization I'll explain all three of these in a couple of minutes but the three levers all hit the three stages of growth cultivation integration and actualization cultivation is where you initially cultivate dormant potential that's sat within yourself integration is then when you integrate what you cultivated into your material life and actualization happens when it's so deeply ingrained into the way that you act that it is the actual You by far the greatest wrongs are inflicted on self the weight of our opinions now dictated by wealth the position or my passion placed on both shoulders I will speak for the ones who see hope but hope so let's start with the first skill tree knowhow knowhow is stuff like knowing how to fight how to flirt how to conversate how to think how to articulate what you think how to act on your thoughts how to predict the behavior of things how to predict the behavior of people all of the how-tos and to develop this skill tree we apply our three levers let's look at level number one introspection introspection itself is a scale and how good you are at it is directly proportional to how much you make yourself subordinate to truth Discovery you're probably starting to see what I mean when I say that you're dynamical system as well like each ability affects the others and when you make truth the most important thing you become much less susceptible to your own [ __ ] and self-deception so you get more self- authentication per introspective minute so to speak more bang for your buck and nothing will motivate you to develop your knowhow more than being honest about how much you don't actually know how to do for instance to get better at Muay Thai I had to realize that I didn't know how to fight realize as in discover but also as in make real it's always possible to keep a comfortable arms length from all of the uncomfortable truths but self authentication calls you to embody those truths to make them real to realize them not to shroud them in gym progress and Calvin Klein underwear I felt sorry for guys packed into gyms trying to look like how Calvin Klein or Tommy Hilfiger said they should that what a man looks like self-improvement is masturbation now self-destruction which brings me to lever to a web of practices this is the most important lever to pull for developing your knowhow because the brain has two main systems of memory declarative and procedural procedural memory knowing how to breathe how to drive a car how to tie your shoelaces and declarative memory remembering facts and events so if you want to improve your social skills which be included in your knowhow skill tree then you have to actually go and socialize and be more social you can't just watch Charisma on command in your bedroom for 4 hours that's an entire enely different memory system and you will never learn to socialize by memorizing a bunch of facts about body language no matter how accurate those facts are another example if you want to know how to be more honest then you have to actually get used to the discomfort of telling the truth which brings me to that third Lev superordinate truth Discovery what do I mean by superordinate well so long as you are using truth to become yourself it will be subordinate to yourself in the service of yourself and will become Laden with [ __ ] as soon as it points out anything that doesn't mesh with your preconceived identity that you're trying to build for yourself this can soon lead to narcissism I've seen with many of the self-improvement gurus who post some real cringe on Main if you want to truly improve you must engage with the truth not with [ __ ] and to do that effectively you must use yourself to acquire more truth not use the truth to acquire more of yourself this is a sacrifice of sorts you're kind of sacrificing yourself to the truth but a sacrifice to the highest good no less and one that flips your agent Arena relationship around personally I found this one lever this this one lever to be the foundation of all of my self authentication more on agent Arena relationships in the video link in description by the way so what happens when you improve your knowhow skill tree to put it simply you become a more effective agent of whatever goal it is that you have the second skill to develop is your mind States we just discussed a perfect example of Mind States using truth to acquire more of yourself is one state of mind and using yourself to acquire more truth is another state of mind another example of one of the most [ __ ] Laden mind states of the modern world is the victim mindset but all of these can be fixed how well let's start with level one introspection if you take that idea of Truth in the service of you versus you in the service of Truth and let it marinate in your mind and really look at it from different angles get a feel for the texture of it and what it would mean if it was true and what it would mean if it wasn't and what it would say about you and how you would feel about that and why you would feel that way then you're pulling the introspection lever and I don't just mean repeating those words in your head I mean genuinely thinking it with the meaning under the words this is one of the highest leverage levers for mind States because simply put it's hard to untangle a web of [ __ ] unless you look at it Lev Two web of practices say you're in a victim State of Mind a good practice to include into your uh web of practices is to victimize other people joking joking joking a good practice is to literally just get good at something it's much harder to feel like a victim when you're actively winning at a really hard hobby like piano or martial arts of course you'll suck for a while but it will be real friction and in the absence of real friction the mind will conjure its own AKA victim mindset so if your mind is flooding you with fake hard then get some real hard in your life pause level three superordinate truth Discovery it might be pleasant to adopt the mindset that the reason you can't get laid is because we live in a social dystopia and the sexual Marketplace is all [ __ ] and blah blah blah blah blah but the power follows the blame finger if you blame those things you give them power and maybe it's not even true maybe you just haven't included approaching girls in your web of practices maybe you don't even have a web of practices maybe you don't do anything or maybe you've been punching way above your weight class because your ego is still grasping of who you'd like to be rather than who you are a symptom of subordinating the truth to yourself if you are genuinely subordinate to truth then you will find out the reason and only then can you start actually fixing it and finally character traits this is one of the most important it ties the other two together but first we need to differentiate personality from character personality is just your predispositions it describes how you're likely to react in response to various situations and stimuli so it can be measured by personality tests like the big five and it's generally a product of your nature and nurture but character goes deeper it relates to the values and the virtues that you embody as you practice honesty you become more virtuous and so the quality of your character goes up as you recognize the importance of Truth you you love it more or value it more and so the quality of your character goes up it all contributes to the quality of your character if you have for instance an addictive personality to offset the dangers of that you have to develop a disciplined character but between introspection mind a web of practices body and subordinating yourself to the truth Spirit the quality of your character will gradually improve and then what not only will you become a better person rather than just an improved self but you're also orienting yourself towards the stoic principles of what you can control rather than what you can't by definition this will make you more effective in whatever Endeavor you undertake so that briefly summarizes self-authentication as an alternative to Modern self-improvement but you might be thinking at this point what should you include into your web of practices ideally practices that help all three skill trees if I was a modern self-improvement guy then I would just tell you to brush your teeth more go to the gym and wank less blah blah blah but you've already heard all of that and you probably enjoy hearing it as well because it gives you an Avenue to improve yourself without having to confront the immediate problems that are unique to you and your current situation you know what your most immediate problems to solve maybe you have an addiction maybe you have crushing social anxiety maybe you don't call your parents enough and so it's damaging your relationship maybe there's some tough conversations that you need to have that you're avoiding maybe your diet is atrocious or your information diet is even worse whatever it is start there and if you don't know where there is for you it's probably where you least want it to be or where you least want to look for it it's easy to fall into the Trap of being immensely dissatisfied and uncomfortable with your current situation and then think the solution is to get jacked and Rich before you've even solved your raging alcohol addiction cuz to solve that you'd have to look at it which is very uncomfortable you'd rather just be an arms length away from that at all times while allowing the pattern to continually harming the background another example of why subordinating yourself to the truth is so important foundational rather to solve getting rich you get to think about being rich all day which is much more fun how's that working out for you anyway when it comes to what practices should I include I can't answer that for you psych yes I can there's three main practices that I think everybody should include and while it is true that you should probably include things that are tailor made to your immediate problems that you're facing uh I think everybody benefits from these three for self- authentication the first non-negotiable practice is meditation meditation will serve every single skill tree that you have even the ones that I haven't mentioned in this self authentication thing but it will make you much better at the self Authentication a stuff too the best way that I've heard meditation described comes from a guy called John BVI he's a cognitive scientist and he says that you look at reality through yourself in a similar way to how you'd look at the world through your glasses they're the means by which you perceive everything and he says meditation is the equivalent of just taking off the glasses looking at them inspecting them so you can clean them and work out the Kinks so that when you put them back on everything is much clearer and it doesn't matter if you miss a few days don't fall into the Trap of I did 5 days and then I fell off so [ __ ] it I give up don't do that just do it as high frequency as you can if that means you missed 2 days you could sit around feeling sorry for yourself and like oh my God I suck I can't even do this one thing or you could just do it three times in one day and then you've evened out your frequency it's just a frequency thing do it as frequently as you can the more frequently you do it the more results you'll get so be relentless in your commitment to actualizing meditation as one of those things that you just do sponsor me Nike the second non-negotiable is something that's physically hard gym martial arts running tennis it doesn't matter but you have to include something physically challenging into your web of practices this will help you make progress in your knowhow your mind States and your character traits immensely once you have meditation and something physically hard there's one more non-negotiable self-destruction self-destructive impulse cannot be removed it must be integrated and there's no better way to integrate it than to make a practice out of intentionally coming across as more weird than you actually are in Social scenarios at least once a day so every day do something embarrassing in public on purpose it could be as intense as asking for your coffee for free or pretending to mistake a stranger for someone that you know or it could be as simple as making slightly prolonged eye contact with a stranger whatever it is it has to be weird or embarrassing approaching girls doesn't count while that's a great practice to include as well it's not weird get used to intentionally being more weird than you actually are to divorce yourself from the tyranny of your own identity everything in your mind wants you to be as confident and normal as you can be you know the voice in your head that says don't be weird don't be weird don't be weird yeah that's the part of you that prevents Confidence from cultivating if you want to do self authentication properly then you have to gain Authority back over that part of yourself and that's a knowhow thing so you have to get used to actually doing it I know that everything in your body right now is telling you that this is a terrible idea you're above it and you don't need it and why should you make yourself out to be more weird than you actually are that's the [ __ ] stuff that I was talking about earlier you can start small but start with something even if it's as simple as asking someone to repeat themselves twice even though you heard them just fine both times and then just incrementally progress towards more and more uncomfortable acts not at anyone else's actual expense of course break Conformity codes not marel codes don't go stealing people's seats on the bus just for self-improvement point being you must get used to social discomfort the part of you that wants to prevent you from doing that is overreaching it's telling you there's danger there and there's not danger there and the only way you'll find it out is by actually going there but besides that the ball is very much much in your court the practices I've included will make you better at getting to wherever it is that you need to go on your personal road map they will help you improve the quality and efficacy of your compass some other good practices to include are writing having hard conversation prayer taii reading creating or basically just about any sport that gets you into the Flow State like surfing or parkour whatever the practices are that you choose to include in your web make sure that they improve your character your mind state or your knowhow not your status that's a byproduct by orienting yourself towards things that you can actually control rather than compulsively chasing external solutions to internal problems you'll slowly grow into the type of person capable of making those changes to your external conditions you have to walk before you can run so stop thinking uncertainties and buying blueprints to success from people who have never met you online get used to listening to your internal compass and the more self- authentication you do the more accurate your internal Compass will become the more effective you'll be at following it and the more accurately you'll begin to orient yourself in the world and when you do that things start to fall into place not just material success although that does happen but things like meaning and purpose as well you can't get those by doing noap and taking C Showers they can only come from metanoia a deep change in one's psyche or perspective on the world and that can't come from words and thoughts alone Behavior perspectives and feelings need to change as well by definition it's said that it's easier to act your way into a new way of thinking than it is to think your way into a new way of acting and while that quote lacks some Nuance that I tried to recover in the self- authentication approach I think generally it contains a hell of a lot of Truth at least a lot more truth than the idea that if you just get jacked and chase money then you'll solve all your problems you'll still be lost so [ __ ] modern self-improvement self- authentication is the new solution I recommend you give it a go I credit it with taking me from being someone who didn't want to get out of bed in the morning to someone who leaps at the opportunity and all that material success stuff sort of came as a byproduct not the other way around I don't know or just turn yourself into a unidimensional status hungry attempt to fill the cracks in the dry wall of insecurity up to you it [ __ ] works for me those who can hear me I say do not despair the misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress the hate of men will pass and dictators die and the power they took from the people will return to the people and so long as men die Liberty will never perish don't give yourselves to these unnatural men machine men with machine minds and machine Hearts you are not machines you are not cattle you are men you the people have the power to make this life free and beautiful to make this life a wonderful Adventure let us use that power this is all you and right oh my love all through this Iron Sky