Good morning, afternoon, evening or night to you dear reader

2024 was a crazy, exciting and for me a whole different avenue; I swapped careers / jobs twice, I tried so many new activities (wake boarding, new events, meetups, boxing, muay thai, climbing, chess, writing on X and newsletters) and the biggest change was having an immense character shift and incredible levels of growth as a human being.

This growth consisted majorly of a mental shift, a shift towards more positive thoughts; to being an overall more effective human being. To having better relationships and a higher understanding of myself, others and the world.

I’m now objectively the happiest I’ve ever been in life and I’m going to keep getting better.

That’s in part due to my way of looking at discomfort.

I embraced discomfort and absolutely smashed my comfort zone this year, many times I broke discomfort and pushed past what I thought was possible for myself.

This resulted in new opportunities, unlocked levels of confidence and just pure pride in myself; boosting my ability to get anything I want in life.

Anyway thats enough about me for now.

This article is the first part of a two part collection of my greatest lessons I learnt in 2024

These 3 lessons as they have done for me will transform your way of thinking that will result in a more fulfilling and successful life.

Lesson 1: Vices

What I’m about to share with you is a darker take on why you aren’t where you want to be in life.

We all have our vices, our coping habits that we use and rely on; that we know are bad habits and we want to quit them.

But times are tough and these habits are super easy to fall into with the common justification of “How am I going to cope with X If I dont do Y bad habit?“ Some examples are porn, alcohol, smoking, junk food / overindulging, drugs and video games. 

We also think that if we quit these habits, life will magically get better and all your dreams / goals will instantly be accomplished.

I’m here to say two things about this:

1. Your directing your attention to the wrong subject

2. Your dreams won’t automatically be accomplished

Most people choose to hyper focus on the addiction (how many days on nofap?) which forces your brain to make that bad habit seem as if it’s the biggest problem in your life.

Since you now spend all your time thinking about the bad habit, you lose focus of what's actually important.

What should you actually focus on then?

Well think of it like this, is your dream life going to be achieved by spending all your time thinking about quitting porn? Or would it be achieved by doing the work, the actual work, the steps we need to take to get closer to what we actually want?

Our dream lives will be achieved by doing the work; you want a girlfriend? Talk to and ask a girl out. You want a 10k/month business? Help solve a problem and get better at solving the problem. You want to be in shape? Workout and control your calorie intake. 

This is now where it gets a little bit darker, buckle in.

Humans are scarily good at justifying things to themselves especially when it’s in line with a certain self image they have.

We can’t act out of accordance with that self image we have of ourselves, unless we become aware of and direct high amounts of effort to it.

What your likely doing with the addictions is using them as justifications as to why you can’t win or succeed in a certain aspect.

To say that because of X habit I can’t do Y.

“If only I didn’t watch porn I’d be successful” or “I’ll succeed if I can go 90 days on nofap“

This is a coping mechanism you're using to escape from your true feelings; those are feelings of failure, of being afraid of success, power, influence.

There is a deeper reason behind your actions; fear and that’s the real reason it's so hard to quit the habit.

If you didn’t watch porn you’d have no excuse not to be successful. Then you would have to face yourself and quite possibly have the realisation porn wasn’t the issue. 

The issue was you; you weren’t capable of being successful

This possible reality terrifies you and therefore coping mechanisms are created.

But who can blame you, facing yourself and the fear of failure can honestly be pretty terrifying. Who likes to be a failure or even worse be known by all as a failure? No one. 

Though you must not let this absolve you of any personal responsibility.

Here is an example of the cycle it creates:

“Ï need to quit fapping otherwise I won’t be able to build a business,” 

Your brain is then hyper focused on not fapping 24/7.

Then unfortunately when you fail / relapse; you will use it as a vice / excuse to not do the work that will actually build your business. 

It's become a constant drain on your energy, will power and soul.

But what's actually going on deeper down is you're basically forcing yourself to fap because it gives you the excuse to not act on your dreams and if you fail; it will give you an out. 

It turns “I failed to build my business because I wasn’t capable“

Into “If I was able to go on nofap, I would’ve built an amazing business!“

Your living in denial because your afraid.

Additionally, you have beliefs around the habit and success as a whole

You have the belief that you can’t be successful while having these addictions, yet again it’s just an excuse. 

“I never built a business because of X habit” or “I’m to old to start Y“.

I will at one point make a newsletter dedicated to belief systems and how absolutely imperative they are to your life. (make sure to sign up to my newsletter to receive it when it comes out!)

But for now just know just like self image, you can’t act out of accordance with your belief systems. If you believe you can’t build a business, you won’t.

Anyways, for now here is a personal story.

I fell victim to the trap of blaming my addictions as well, so do not worry you're not alone in this at all.

My bad addiction was over indulging in junk or even good food to the point where my brain wasn’t properly capable of getting the work done. 

Then I would use the excuse of, I can’t work because I’m not at full clarity right now. 

Then that cascades into the reason of “Oh yeah I would’ve built a 10k/month business if only I wasn’t such a glutton”

Deeper down I was just scared of success, scared of change in my life and scared of failure.

Yes I was scared of both success and failure; weird how motivation in human works isn’t it?

What I should have done (now currently doing) is even if I over eat, do the work anyway even if I don’t feel like it and my body is coping; just do it. 

Trust me, your mind is capable of breaking out of this cycle, you're not a victim of your own body / mind.  

Your not a victim - say that to yourself and truly believe it.

Now to fix this cycle I want you to take action. I want you to put your focus on completing your lever action tasks that need to get done regardless of how you feel and regardless of if you just jerked off, overate or whatever your vice is; just get it done. 

Then with time it becomes much easier, as it has for me.

It’s hardest now because you have so much fear and negative emotion built up from skipping your tasks, the more work you do, the easier it will be to quit your addiction.

There's a good analogy I like from PathOfMen_  that explains this well. The addiction is like having an open wound while fighting on the battlefield. 

You don’t have time to worry about the injury, the enemy is coming. Stop the bleeding and get back to fighting. 

Most of you are sitting there trying to fully heal the wound before getting back in the fight. You must keep moving forward regardless of injury.

So stop being hyper focused on the injury (addiction) and smash on through to win the battle (do the work).  

Do the work regardless of how you feel or if you engaged in your bad habit or not. 

Remember that small wins stacked daily is what will get you out of a rut and get you feeling like the man again. 1% better everyday compounded is 365% in a year, win the day and you will win in life.

Key Points:

• Habits and addictions often become excuses to avoid confronting deeper fears of failure or success.

• Keep doing the work, no matter what, and small daily wins will compound into real success.

• People often obsess over quitting the habit, ignoring what really matters—doing the work that leads to progress.

Lesson 2: Goal Seeking Mechanism

Humans are inherently goal seeking. 

I learnt this idea from Psycho Cybernetics and the Courage To Be Disliked. We have an internal mechanism that pushes us toward goals, whether we’re fully aware of them or not.

This lesson will expand on ideas presented in lesson 1. 

From Courage To Be Disliked. Adlerian Psychology is a branch of psychology, a way of thinking, a new way of life.

It presents a way to live life that may be a bit more difficult but ultimately much more fulfilling and leads to more happiness.

Anyways in this context, Adlerian Psychology suggests that all human behavior is purposeful and driven by subjective goals. Even if the real purpose is subconscious and unknown to you, your actions set out to achieve an outcome dependent on those goals. 

For example, if someone avoids social interactions, the goal might not be to escape discomfort but to avoid potential rejection or maintain a safe self-image that they’ve always held of themselves.

Unlike traditional psychological perspectives that attribute current behaviours to past experiences (cause-and-effect thinking), Adlerian Psychology focuses on teleology - the idea that behaviours are guided by current goals.

A lot of people will out right refuse this notion as to them it just sounds absurd. Like the general consensus of cause and effect makes much more intuitive sense, for example people act like X because Y happened to them. 

This way of thinking means the present actions are not determined by the past but are oriented towards achieving a future objective. 

I know it can get a bit difficult to visualise or tangibly see, there will be lots of physical examples later. Bare with me.

I choose to be in line with this way of thinking as opposed to cause + effect thinking because you give up alot of the power to external events.

If you believe something happened to cause you to be a certain way and “that’s just the way it is because of X event". It gives all the power to the event and you are far less likely to be able to change a negative behaviour or character trait.

I love the idea that we are infinitely malleable and can actually change, I’ve also proved this in my own life. 

I’ve gone from being extremely shy and anxious around people to being able to be outgoing and talk to everyone at parties. The ability to change is a key belief I have and you should adopt the same. 

Adler introduced the concept of “Fictional Finalism”, which basically means we have imagined life goals or ideals that guide our behaviour. These goals may not reflect current reality but act as a compass for our decision-making. 

For instance, someone may work tirelessly because of a fictional belief that achieving wealth will earn them love or respect. 

Some examples:

Avoidance: A student might say, "I can’t study because I’m not smart," but the real goal is avoiding the possibility of failure.

Conflict: A person might instigate arguments, not out of anger, but to achieve a goal of gaining control or avoiding vulnerability.

Procrastination: Delay can serve the goal of avoiding risk or responsibility, under the guise of "I’m just not ready yet."

Adlerian psychology emphasizes the power of choice. Once people become aware of their underlying goals, they can consciously decide to change them.

Personally this revelation was massive to me, I had been doing a lot of actions in my life. Just to maintain a certain self-image. 

Next is the goal-seeking mechanism from Psycho-Cybernetics by Dr. Maxwell Maltz, its the idea that the human being works like a self-guided missile. A missile that always make tiny micro adjustments in the air until they deem they are on the correct path. He likens the mind to a servo-mechanism (a self-correcting system) that uses goals to guide behaviour. 

Once you set a goal, consciously or subconsciously your mind organizes thoughts, behaviors and actions to move you towards it. 

This mechanism relies on feedback (success or failure signals) to adjust course and improve accuracy, much like a guided missile recalibrates with constant micro feedback to hit its target.

Success Mechanism: When you focus on positive goals and visualize success, your mind uses creative thinking, problem-solving, and action-oriented behaviors to steer you toward achieving that goal.

Failure Mechanism: When you focus on fear, doubt, or negative outcomes, the mechanism still works but guides you toward failure instead.

To make full use of your goal seeking mechanism:

• Define the Target Clearly: Just as a missile needs coordinates, your mind needs a clear, specific goal. Ambiguity confuses the mechanism.

• Trust the System: Once the goal is set, trust your subconscious to work on the problem, even without conscious effort.

• Accept Feedback and Adjust: Mistakes and failures are part of the process. Use them as feedback to refine your approach, not as reasons to quit.

• Focus on the Present: The mechanism operates in real time. Focus on the task at hand rather than worrying about future outcomes.

Your mind can’t distinguish between vividly imagined success and actual experience. By visualizing your goal in detail, you “program” the goal-seeking mechanism with a template to work from.

This is like setting coordinates in a GPS—it needs a destination to start working effectively.

The self-image is the control center of the mechanism. If your self-image aligns with the goal (e.g "I am capable of achieving this"), the mechanism works effectively.

If your self-image conflicts with the goal (e.g., "I'm not good enough"), it creates resistance and disrupts the process. 

Imagine your trying to improve at public speaking:

• You imagine and visualise giving a successful presentation

• You then refine your speech after receiving constructive criticism

• You then become a confident speaker who captivates audiences.

Combine the positive self-talk / visualising with feedback, iterating on regularly.

Doing this will make your goal-seeking mechanism unconsciously work on becoming better at public speaking. Now instead of a spiral downwards, you have a spiral upwards. You become better, you have better experiences with public speaking, reinforcing your belief systems, you have more positive self-talk reinforcing the actions you take, you then enjoy and see yourself actually getting better… See how powerful this is?

Heres some opposite scenarios for you to munch on.

Fear Of Rejection:

Scenario: Someone imagines rejection when asking someone out, playing out in their mind; the worst-case scenarios over and over and over. 

Outcome: They never ask, and their imagined fear becomes reality—no positive relationship forms.

Negative Self-Talk in Fitness:

Scenario: Someone wants to lose weight but constantly thinks, “I’ll never stick to a diet or working outs too hard”

Outcome: Their belief reinforces poor eating habits, and they stay stuck.

Student Fixated On Failure:

Scenario: A student is terrified of failing an exam and keeps imagining doing poorly.

Outcome: Their focus on failure causes anxiety and self-sabotage during the test

This also ties heavily in to beliefs yet again.

I’m going to be a bit vulnerable with you now, back when I worked in retail a few years back. I believed I was a friendly, sociable guy thats liked by everyone.

But in reality I was just scared of rejection and being disliked by others.

So now in turn I will act in this mindset and I cannot act out of accordance with these beliefs and my goal is now “be liked by everyone”. This caused me to lack any assertiveness as I believed being assertive would lead to conflict and conflict is the worst thing that can ever happen, as that will lead to a problem with my interpersonal relations.

I lived in fear of being disliked and so many of my actions and thoughts were guided by the premise “If I do X, will Y view me more positively?” 

It’s actually quite absurd how much power and how much of my happiness was dependent on others.

The human mind is so hard wired for adaptation that this “normal“ is so hard to break out of

Unless a massive realisation or massive shift in your thinking occurs, you’ll never even realise it.

Now for another example from me

There was one task I know I had to do, the highest leverage task towards growing my business. I knew that if I did this task I would move closer towards my goal.

But deep down I was scared of success, scared of failure, scared of trying and failing, so my goal seeking mechanism was then like “Yo I gotchu, don’t even worry!”

It then manifested distractions, thoughts of playing video games, thoughts of doing literally anything else, to go eat food, even to work on something less important instead.

This then basically put me in the great mindset of “haha, can’t fail if I don’t try”.

I fortunately broke this cycle, all I did was become self-aware, notice my behaviours and do the task I’m procrastinating against (lesson 3 helps with this). Additionally I visualised a few scenarios playing out in my mind, scenarios where my distraction pops up instead of partaking in the distraction, I do the work.

Beliefs, the unconscious, the goal seeking mechanism, adlerian psychology. For me it all ties together the threads of “why we engage in X behaviour” or why we do the things we do.

That's because we have a belief system, our unconscious and a goal driving our every action.

Honestly, were basically led around like sheep to our future by our unconscious mind that and in reality so many of our actions; we think are guided by our own thoughts in reality are not directly your own.

That we do not have as much power as we thought we did. 

The real goal you have in many scenarios is to not fail or some other negative emotion that your avoiding. You will then create and manifest different problems to help achieve this goal, this could be in the form of you drinking instead of getting work done. 

See how this ties in to lesson 1 now?

Also your brain can manifest ideas like “Oh playing video games right now would be awesome!” or ideas of comfort “You’ve been so disciplined the last few days, take a day off!” there are many ways your brain will manifest this true goal, try to become conscious of when this happens. 

You know how much power our thoughts and our self-image holds over us?

It’s again, quite absurd. Negative thoughts and a negative self-image is realistically just you engaging in self-sabotaging behaviour. Constantly thinking “I’m not good enough to do X” or “I’m not the type of person that can get X” becomes self fulfilling prophecies and can make you spiral downwards.

Together with your thoughts and prior experiences, no wonder some people spiral into a depression and feel like they can’t control anything.

Imagine someone wanting to get a girlfriend, they’ve only had negative experiences and now that they’ve only had negative experiences, they start to have negative self-talk (“Girls will never like me or I’m not attractive enough for a girlfriend”) and hold the image of themselves that they are not someone who is capable of having a girlfriend.

Now your brain begins to spiral to the point where they can’t talk to girls and unless they develop self-awareness or make a deep change in their thinking, they will forever fail with girls. 

Shift Perspective: Rather than asking, "Why am I like this?" ask, "What goal does this behavior serve?" This reframes the problem as actionable rather than insurmountable.

You can change! We are infinitely malleable and are not pre defined by our childhood. Yes there are causes and effects. Yes there is childhood trauma and belief systems that are negatively effecting you. But if you choose to give it power, you will lose all power. You must never consider yourself a victim. It’s a choice at the end of the day, one you must be willing to make.

If only X hadn’t happen, I could of been Y. No, never and I absolutely mean never say this statement. This is also a manifestation of your goal seeking mechanism, your real goal is being scared of achieving Y, so you use X as a way to cope.

Key Points:

• Our behavior is driven by both conscious and subconscious goals, shaped by beliefs, fears, and desires. These goals guide our actions, whether we're fully aware of them or not.

• Adler’s psychology suggests that all behaviors are purposeful, directed by current goals rather than past experiences. We often have "fictional" life goals that influence our actions, even if they're not grounded in reality.

• Our mind functions like a self-guided missile, constantly adjusting to feedback. Focusing on positive goals drives creative problem-solving, while negative focus leads to failure. Clear goals, self-awareness, and feedback are key to success.

• Our self-image and beliefs about ourselves drive our behaviors. Negative self-talk and limiting beliefs create self-sabotage and prevent growth. By shifting our perspective, embracing change, and trusting our power to choose, we can break negative cycles and achieve our goals.

Lesson 3: Self Improvement Reframe

A common misconception about self improvement that most people don’t actually realise is that a massive chunk of it is honestly just self masterbatory in nature and don’t actually do anything tangible except give you the illusion your improving.

With this simple sentence, given you internalise and fully believe in it, it will bring you much more results than basically everything else you can learn in the self improvement space.

You will be much more likely to achieve your goals (never guarantee anything as nothing in life is guaranteed).

My single greatest lesson for achieving the goals and getting what you want out of life?

• Take constant action regardless of how you feel 

Let me say that again and act like I’m screaming this sentence at you because I am:

• Take constant action regardless of how you feel

The automatic part of your brain likely said one of three things:

“It can’t be that simple”

“Wow do the work; what revolutionary advice”

Or it manifested some objection / doubt statement. 

You then likely disregarded and wrote off the lesson without critically thinking.

Your not to blame though, your brain is extremely automatic; hence why in my opinion we barely have free will. (Thats a topic for another time) 

A common objection to this is

"But what if I don't know what action to take?"

Okay lets flip this question, how do you know what the correct action to take is? Maybe research? A course? Someone just straight up tells me? 

No, you take action, get feedback if it's working, fail and then iterate on. 

How do scientists develop and explore the unknown? 

The scientific method (Don’t worry, this does apply. I’m not wasting your time) 

There are generally 4 steps to it.

1. Hypothesis (Your initial thoughts on what actions to take to achieve a set goal)

2. Experiment (Take action)

3. Feedback (Acquire feedback to see if the action works)

4. Iterate (Iterate on, add, takeaway or if it works, don’t change anything)

If you follow this cycle, you can learn any skill or achieve any goal. Given enough time and you actually keep doing the inputs without giving up. 

The basis of everything though is action, nothing can result purely from thinking about it.  

Ok cool, taking action is important; you know that already but why?

Well with consistent work regardless of how you feel you create new experiences, improve your self image and actually embody this new character that you're trying to be.

You then create new beliefs that you're the type of person that does the work without regards for how you feel, now you're more likely to do it; now you're more likely to achieve a goal because everything is starting to compound. 

You start building momentum and It actually spirals upward instead of the typical downwards spiral.

Everyone feels negative emotions when trying to do the work, hence why procrastination is such a common issue. Its only natural.

It’s because by very definition we are trying to destroy our old selves and move towards a future self who has what we want. 

Our body then fights like hell to return to comfort by manifesting negative emotions (Feelings of doubt, fear, distractions etc). 

Like just in the field of losing weight, how many people give in to their own brains negative thoughts. 

“I’m not capable of losing weight” 

“This program doesn’t work for me”

“I’m wasting my time”

“I’ll never be able to stick to a diet”

Negative self-talk is such a massive problem, all humans at one point or another suffer from it. But we do have a choice, we can either listen to it and spiral downwards or say “fuck you” and do the opposite our bodies telling us to. 

What negative self-talk does is useless, counterproductive and just becomes self fulfilling prophecies;  you will act in accordance with what you just said. If you say you’ll never be able to stick to a diet, your chances of not being able to stick to your diet skyrockets.

While taking constant action regardless of how you feel is the only way to win, doing a few of these will result in it being much easier. 

Literally right now whilst writing this the thought popped up into my head “What am I doing, this is such a waste of time!”

You know how I’m going to respond to that?

Continue to write

I don’t feel like writing, my brains telling me I’m wasting time yet I’m going to continue. Part of my brain and my body is against me right now and I’m going to continue. 

This will remove feelings of doubt and replace it with positive feelings; as I did the work regardless of how I felt. Moving my character towards someone who is likely to do this again in the future as I’ve already done it.

The solution is simple

Do it regardless of how you feel

This is why I added the “Regardless of how you feel” to my lesson. If you were to give in at the slightest resistance and stop when your body tells you to. 

Nothing would ever change

You must understand growth is painful, learn to fall in love with the pain 

Here is a practical example

What's my best advice for getting better with girls?

Some people will say X manipulation technique or Y pickup line.

You know what works though?

Talk to 200 girls and constantly learn from your mistakes.

As a result you get:

• High volume of experience

• Experience begets confidence

• Re affirms your self image as someone who’s good with and can talk to lots of girls

Remember that negative self talk and doubt you were feeling? 

It’s gone. 

Humans adapt very quickly, if you expose yourself to certain stimuli enough times; your brain and body will adapt. It will be a regular occurrence for you and those negative emotions will stop manifesting.

There is no substitute for pure raw action 

Sorry if it's not what you wanted to hear. 

Key Points:

• The key to achieving goals is to take constant action, regardless of how you feel. Procrastination and negative self-talk are natural, but pushing through them is what leads to progress and success.

• Destroy your current self in favor of a new self who achieves everything you want, all by consistently doing the work when you don’t feel like it.

ACTION STEPS:

I’m going to finish this article off with some actions steps for you that you can implement today.

1. Whatever you’ve been procrastinating on, do it right now. RIGHT NOW. Be the type of person that doesn’t procrastinate. You will feel resistance to it, but that doesn’t matter. Do the work regardless of how you feel. You got this.

2. Journal and think critically about your habits and addictions. The ones that you know are bad, you want to quit but you haven’t. What deep down are you running away from?

3. Subscribe to my newsletter (Yes, you must subscribe its imperative; trust me)

I learned so much this year and I’ve shared with you today my most valuable lessons, I hope you internalise them and use them to improve upon your life.

That’s me done yapping for now lol

Thank you for reading and have an awesome day - Jacob