Whomever you are, American or not you’re likely familiar with the concept of the American dream. A home, two cars, two kids, an RV or a boat. Both, if you’re lucky.
Some people imagine the American dream as a home with a white picket fence. This nearly always includes a job in an office, working for a company with total loyalty and devotion. After thirty years of service they send you on your way with a retirement plan and a gold watch.
This isn’t true.
This is an false idea, an attachment that does not exist.
This is what people want to see. This is an illusion, eaten up by the masses from marketing experts in expensive suits. People don’t want to see the truth. What they want to see is their own thoughts projected on the world.
There is no American Dream.
Dreams are for those who sleep. Want truth? American hustle. It is the only way. Other cultures enjoy their leisure time. They don’t build powerful empires. The reason why America is strong is the hustle. Nothing else.
It’s human nature to have empty hopes and attachments. Your brain is an expert at protecting you from truth you don’t want to know. It’s a defense mechanism you see, from causing psychological trauma.
Your brain cares about survival. Nothing else.
Your brain doesn’t want what’s best for you, your brain wants to be safe in the present moment. It’s not thinking about tomorrow, since tomorrow is an illusion none of us can say will come or not.
Step outside your home and in moments you are engulfed in chaos. Cars speeding by, planes overhead, existing on a rock covered in salt water spinning in space. This is our reality, yet what we see isn’t so.
Realizing what we are, what is actually happening is too much for us to process. So it’s blocked out from the mind.
Our minds are a complex network of attachments. These attachments serve a purpose to protect us from going completely insane. Stepping back and looking at the world from another angle is a skill.
Even the American dream has attachments. The entire narrative above requires an investment, it requires a collar. This collar will never be removed. It’s not an accessory, it’s a shackle. A job is an entry into servitude.
The American dream would not live without debt.
Buying a house used to be a immediate value exchange. Now it’s almost always accompanied with a mortgage. You could go as far as saying the American dream, is the mortgage dream.
All of this is an illusion, one big lie. A trick to make you attached to items like a home, or a boat. A trick to make you attached to narratives like the American dream.
Some attachments are good for you. They aren’t marketed like the bad ones though. Good attachments make you money, increase the value of you. This does not correlate to a financial gain to interested parties like banks, the auto industry, the mortgage industry.
Life is more beautiful when you can live unattached. Nothing owns you. To put into the words of Tyler Durden from fight club:
“What you own eventually begins to own you.”
Your soul wants you to be free. You were put here on earth for a reason. To create, not to consume. When you buy a car and make payments, you don’t own you car. Your bank does. At anytime they can take back what they own. Same thing with a home with a mortgage.
Don’t fall disillusioned to this fool’s gold. The more debt, the more attachments you have, the more vulnerable and weak you become. Durability is important. Excessive debt creates fragility and dependence upon the system.
Think of yourself as a castle. You want your defense to be sturdy, a broad wall to protect you from all who may oppose. The more debt and attachments you have the weaker you become.
The more attachments you have:
- The more your enemies have to use against you.
- The more you in-debt yourself to an employer, to a master.
- The more time you spend maintaining objects, instead of creating your life’s work.
- The less time you have to enjoy on this earth.
True freedom is to live unattached.
Attachments to be cautious of
Ideas
If you took a day to brainstorm ideas for a new business, you could have hundreds in a single day. A hundred ideas means nothing.
What matters, is how you execute the idea.
You could have an idea to build the first hotel on Mars. Fantastic, no one has done this before, you have no competition.
That is, Until you begin to execute it.
How would you start? How do we get to mars? Where are the building supplies? How do we get oxygen?
Ideas mean nothing. You must have a realistic plan within your skills, or near the edge of them. It’s fine to learn while working on a new project. Execute based on what you already know.
The best advice for investing is to invest in what you know. This is your edge. You execute plans that you have a specialization in.
Becoming attached to an idea is an easy way to kill your business. Emotions do not belong in any business. You could go as far to say that emotions don’t belong anywhere. The reason for this is you look at your product or service as something you want, instead of whether or not it’s what your customers want, the people who give you money.
You may think it’s a genius idea to create a video rental store, since your favorite memory as a child was going to see the newest blockbuster every week.
This is a classic example of an attachment to an idea instead of the execution. Emotions are at play here. When you break it down it’s a terrible idea. Technology has made video stores obsolete, and it’s too early to attract customers looking for that video rental nostalgia.
Jobs
Many are attached to their jobs. It gives them a phony sense of purpose. They feel like their jobs and companies care about them because your job is what’s putting food on the table. Your job is another attachment.
The moment you’re no longer producing, no longer useful to your company you’re gone. Your family loves you even if you aren’t productive.
If a company paid you your worth, they wouldn’t make any money. A sales job for example. You sell over 250k a month. How much do you make? that depends on the position, but it’s not 250k.
The reason companies make money is because they can use people as a tool to make money for the company. You are their tool. Their resource. The moment you can’t produce, you aren’t wanted. Yet many people feel a sense of loyalty to a company who isn’t loyal to them.
The only person you must be loyal to is yourself. Then your family and your friends who are loyal to you. If you’re offered a better paying job, take it. A company would do the same thing given an employee with your same skills who would work for less. This is the entire process of outsourcing. Americans used to be the ones on call lines until it was found out you could do the exact same overseas for almost nothing.
In order to grow, to live a life of healthy attachment you must not be attached to your specific job, but you can be attached to your career. They certainly aren’t attached to you, and will remove you the moment they find a better deal or you cease to provide.
friends
If you’re still hanging out with the same people from grade school, doing the same thing, talking about the same topics, you’re friends may be holding you back.
You’re attached to them because they’re comfortable. It’s what you know. Overt comfort can keep you from expanding your skills and walking further.
You must be in a place of constant growth.
If you’re doing the same thing with the same people from ten years ago, they may be allowing you to stay stagnant. They may be an anchor keeping you in a life of mediocrity. true friends demand the most from you. They push you out of your comfort zone, they demand you perform for them. For the gang.
Like the Spartans if you can’t lift your shield, you won’t fight in the ranks. Never let a friend in your company if they can’t lift their shield. You decide what these qualities may be. But remember to bring up the younger generation and teach them proper inspiration.
Set your qualifiers. Live by them.
At the end of every year conduct a full performance review of yourself. Treat yourself like a corporation would treat you: An asset or a liability.
Was last year an a success for you? How did you improve, how did you decline? Analyze every part of your life. You do not want to be dealing with the same problems from last year. New year, new problems.
What you must attach to
Be attached to yourself.
You are in total control of very little in the world. You do have total control over your actions, and your thoughts. That’s why it’s so important to use a breathing method to stay conscious and grounded.
In order to prosper you must be in total control of your mind. This power, this gift is available to everyone. No excuse you make will be valid. The best way to become grounded is to start in the morning. Only the most successful people use a morning routine.
Whatever it takes for you to take 100% control of your mind do it. Breathing methods work, medication may work for you. Again, it doesn’t matter what you do to get to your goals. What matters is that you get there.
Be attached to your mission
A man without a mission is a lost child wandering the world without a family. Your mission is your compass, your purpose and your calling.
Once you find your mission, give every part of you to it. No one can tell you what this mission is. You must spend time in mediation, even during your morning routine. Time alone in silence is the best way to find a mission.
Everything around you is fighting for your attention.
Fight back. Or better, become adept at blocking out noise.
A mission has many benefits:
- A sense of purpose
- Confidence
- Having “your thing”
- A legend to make you immortal
What is your purpose? If you don’t know it, that’s fine.Find it as soon as possible, but don’t make the mistake of lying to yourself just to have one. No mission is better than a fake one.
Be Attached To Your Education
The more you learn, the more you earn. So you should be learning all the time. What choices do you have with your life?
- Work
- Learn
- entertainment
Work is what makes you money, and gives you purpose. Education provides a groundwork for your work, and quenches your creative thirst. It also makes you much more interesting.
Entertainment gives you none of that. It gives you no value, it teaches you nothing, it makes you boring. Entertainment is okay but should be used as a reward once you’ve exhausted working and learning and your brain no longer works; you will know when you have hit this place because you begin making mistakes where you wouldn’t before with a full energy bar.
Work will make you better all around.
Work gives you better quality friends who make you look better and push you farther. While on the path you will meet others on the same or similar path who will allow you to move farther.
With leisure there is no accomplishment or meaning. Again, leisure is fine once you have exhausted your capacities for work and learn.
Aim to sit among the greatest individuals in the realm of your chosen mission.
Become attached o your goals on the path
In order to be successful you must attach yourself to your goals. Whatever it may be that is your current goal, let it overwhelm you and dominate your mind. Your thoughts should not be filled with drama, with what happened in the past, with what someone said; that is all noise. Your mind should be focused entirely on your active goals and the path. That is what you day dream of. Control and aim your daydreams to the path.
In order to be spectacular, you cannot be “normal”. It’s impossible to make wild changes in the world when you behave like everyone else. YOUR normal is not fitting in. Fitting in is hell on Earth. You need to adopt your normal which will only be understood by others on the same path as you. Those who blend in will look the same, the masses, while you will look and think the same–or similar–with others on the same path as yourself.
Treat your goals like a newborn child. Never let them out of your sight or mind. You must feed and nurture them constantly for them to grow. This will exist for the rest of your life.
There is never an end to improvement. Once you accomplish a goal, you move onto the next. Goals will give you all the confidence in the world.
If you’re new to goal setting, it’s okay to start small. Momentum will be your ally in your newfound love of accomplishment.
Becoming attached to your goals requires them to be realistic. While you may want to be president of the United states, you won’t be able to if you’re still in college.
You begin with a small accomplishment, then stack upon it with a goal in the same field. Next, try a different field and begin adding new skills, while adding depth to the ones you already know.
Once you begin setting goals anything that does not end in glory or accomplishment will lose it’s appeal. The thrill of accomplishment is like any other, and lasts forever.