The years you have are a privilege. You are wasting them away on addiction, uselessness, lethargy and waste. You are guilty of one sin. The mother of all sins. Inattention. You don't pay attention to the only thing you have, Your life. When this catches up, it wont be pleasant.
You should have no problem being the “bad guy” in someone’s story when they try to undercut you. If they disrespect you, exploit you, or don’t value you, cut them off. They’ve shown you who they are. Believe it. You’re not here to convince someone you’re worth more. Let them go. You don’t owe access to people who don’t value it.
The biggest ick isn’t just someone who lies. It’s someone who lies to themselves. A flip flopper, fantasy addict, emotional con artist. A validation addict & emotionally unavailable love bomber who performs closeness but has no real anchor inside.
viciously destroy/rip off any form of learned helplessness from your being
it will stick to you like a fucking parasite. Grab, rip off, squash. You are no longer helpless. You are now in control.
“It seems, in fact, as though the second half of a man's life is made up of nothing, but the habits he has accumulated during the first half.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky
IQ maxxing is very simple when you have the right habits:
1) think through what you need to do that day, so you act intentionally
2) do one cognitively hard thing daily: coding, math, writing, building, or whatever is tied to your real goals
3) build things with feedback loops and let reality correct you
4) write every day to force yourself to articulate thoughts precisely
5) read smart minds, then reflect and write instead of just consuming
6) make predictions + review them. it trains calibration instead of hindsight
7) protect your attention, exercise, and sleep properly
it's mostly about designing your life around your brain getting constant reps + feedback.
you get smarter by thinking, being wrong, and iterating.
Hyper self-awareness will kill you, à la David Foster Wallace, Ludwig Boltzmann and Anthony Bourdain.
Add a pinch of faith and amor fati to your intelligence, and you will be king, à la Steve Jobs, Bob Dylan and Marcus Aurelius.