This is the first installment of my Secret Plan for you, so you can be self-employed. I want you to own your own life.

By being self-employed (as a solo entrepreneur or starting a business) you have put yourself in the driver’s seat of life. You are in control, but not only of the economic results.

You will find that the mindset you develop will enhance every other aspect of your life: friendship, family, and your own inner peace. It’s like physical fitness. Going from a couch potato to a runner will create a ripple effect in your life far beyond your cardio fitness and that roll of fat around your belly.

This is my experience, and I want it to be yours, too.

I fully realize that few of the people who read this will follow this path. That’s OK. This path is not for you. But go find your own Path.

Step 1. Read books and never stop for the rest of your life

The first step is to read. Start reading, and never stop.

10 pages each day

Here is an easy way, a method that I learned from 75hard.com.

Read 10 pages a day. Audiobooks do not count. I listen to audiobooks but I don’t count that as reading. I will frequently buy a book in its paper and Kindle versions, but Kindle does not count.

The only thing that counts is reading a paper book. Ten pages a day. No matter what.

You will be astonished at how many books you can read if you follow this strategy.

“But what if I don’t have a book with me that I can read?” I already hear Mr. Yeahbut coming up with pre-planned excuses.

Answer: I have a book in my car. I have a book in my backpack. I have a book in my office. And, for fuck’s sake, I can buy a book somewhere.

If I am absolutely marooned on a desert island and cut off from the Civilization of Paper, I will read a Kindle book on my phone for 20 minutes. It doesn’t count towards my 10 pages a day, but I’m keeping the momentum going. I’m keeping the habit warmed up and rolling. And I restart the counter on my 10 pages a day habit the next day.

Meta mindset detour

If you come up with a pre-planned excuse in your head — a reason why you in particular will not be able to Get It Done, recognize the thought for what it is. Your brain is creating a pre-planned excuse to make you a failure. To be a loser. You won’t stick it out long enough to be a winner.

This is an important meta lesson and that’s why I’m telling it to you right here. I’m taking a detour from talking about reading in order to tattoo an idea on your brain.

Your brain, when confronted with a seemingly impossible objective (read 10 pages a day, every day, until and including the day you die), will immediately create ideas for why you in particular cannot achieve that objective.

You will see this reaction when you are 10 years into running a successful business. You will have an idea. You will immediately hear all of the reasons in your head why the idea won’t work.

Here is your response to your own brain when it tells you why your objective is impossible and it’s futile to pursue it. Say these words to your brain:

“That’s a thought.“

Then realize there are many, many, many, many, many alternate thoughts you can have.

Write down the objections your brain throws at you—the conditions or factors that make it impossible for you to achieve anything. The reasons why you should just sit on your dead ass and eat Cheetos.

These are not walls. These are the gates through which you must pass to get where you want to go.

Your brain is giving you the map to your destination. Your brain is giving your the operating manual for the vehicle that will take you places.

That’s the end of my meta mindset detour. Every time you find a reason to not do . . . take a determined action to do.

Summary:

1. “That’s a thought; there are other thoughts” is an appropriate and sufficient response to every instance of self-generated negative, loser, doomloop self-talk. All of a sudden you realize there are infinite alternatives to utter disaster. Your brain is not always your helper, at least on its first effort. But when pressed it will serve you loyally.
2. “Gates, not walls.” Those doomloop thoughts, those seemingly intelligent and helpful ideas your brain is telling you to prevent seemingly inevitable disaster? They are path markers to take you to the gates you need to pass through on the way to victory.

Practice hint: say “That’s a thought” to yourself with the right emphasis and intonation. Play with this. It’s fun! See how you can convey different meanings to yourself.

Which books?

Again, I take a cue from Andy Frisella and 75hard.com.

Read nonfiction. Self-help, self-improvement, skill-building books. Books about mindset, about marketing.

Specific advice: read everything that Seth Godin has ever written. That’s a good starting point.

Chris said something that I want to save here, because I want to remember it:

It occurred to me that most people—me included—are less than 4 months of hard work away from getting everything they want.

Weight
Finances
Business

all can be largely fixed with 4 months of focus.

Start with the simplest task. Do it every day. Again and again. Do it until you’re bored to tears and then keep doing it for years.

It is easy to do. This is where losers live.

It is hard to keep doing. This is where winners live.

Being able to admit you aren’t good enough at something instead of making excuses for failure is a super power.

https://mobile.twitter.com/Benaskren/status/1473893881989238785

I want to add a bit of clarification here. Don’t use this to excuse your laziness. “I am not skilled/strong enough to do X.” “No, asshole, you are just too fucking lazy to give a fuck at attempting X.”

So maybe I agree with this Tweet but am giving you a caution about where that limit actually is.

The effort you put in . . . builds you. So seek your true limit. Give a fuck. Give it everything you have.

Default to “I am lazy” (rather than “I am unskilled”) in your self-analysis and you won’t fall for this error. It’s like lifting weights to failure in order to find your true physical limits. anything short of that is a mental limit.

• When I broke my ankle climbing on Tahquitz. I was leading. Couldn’t pass the crux even after four efforts or so. Had to pendulum off to another wall to find another route. I found my limit.
• Canoeing in the Minnesota/Ontario waterways. I struggled carrying the heavy aluminum canoe across the portages and until I literally fell, physically spent, on a slippery path. When I got up I could not hoist the canoe above my head. I found my limit.

Anything short of that would have been a mental limit. In the first instance the pendulum resulted in a broken ankle. In the second, it resulted in a temporary ego-hit (I had to ask for help) and a deeper understanding of myself.

So. Maybe the superpower would have been to pick a route within my capabilities. Or follow rather than lead the crux pitch. But having committed, I went to the limit. No regrets.

Twenty-five years later, I found my physical limit, then asked for help and a different assignment for what to carry across the portages. This time, no regrets . . . and a bit of enlightenment.

Also, one final thing. The two examples from my own life are examples where I did it right. There are countless other situations where I was lazy or afraid and quit something well within my reach. I’m no shining star in this department.

But I remember the successes and use them as fuel. “You did it before. You can do it again.” The failures, I don’t bank those memories unless the memories provide building blocks for a better me today.

“There is but one choice: to rise to the task of the age. Very soon, only too soon, your country will stand in need of not just exceptional men but of great men. Find them in your souls. Find them in your hearts. Find them in the depths of your country.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

I have a secret dream. Well, have I have blurted it out a few times to people in my business.

But did I truly, deeply believe I could do it? No. It was hope. Aspiration. It sounded good to say out loud.

Until this moment I thought it was unobtainable or would take decades to accomplish, if I could indeed do it.

False.

People no smarter than me are playing that game now. And frankly many people with modest skills are thriving in this arena.

There are prodigious talents playing the game, too. So it’s no pushover to make this happen.

But I can do it.

And today I figured out how. That’s when the switch flipped.

I give myself five years of fucking hard work and applied rigorous honesty: to myself and to the people around me.

Let’s fucking do this.

REMINDME: December 31, 2026.

“Sometimes there are those days where you just don’t want to fucking grind. On those days, just tune in to me because I guaran-fucking-tee you no matter what science is saying, sports physios, coaches, meteorologists, doctors and anybody else out there who talks about what we should be doing, I am going to be out there doing and grinding regardless. So on your days off, tune in to somebody else.”

” . . . I am going to be out there doing and grinding regardless.”

My earlier post today, in which I played the Pity Party Game, is fast receding in the rear view mirror, along with the Pity Party Mindset. Even though I am not David Goggins, I am out there and grinding.

• Today I was out at 5 a.m. on my twice-daily walk. And you know what? My foot is healing and I think I will be able to start running again soon.

• Today at work, I am swinging the hammer and getting shit done.

Go me.

Today I feel it.

Trudging. Endless trudging until I die. Even the exercise: out the door at 5:00 a.m. for a 45 minute walk. Am I going to be on this life treadmill forever?

I’m the ox pulling the wagon. At work, at home, everywhere.

My wife asks, “You’re not yourself. What’s going on?”

I’m tired, motherfucker. Tired of being treated like the fucking human Google. Tired of being asked for ideas, direction, fixing the details. Tired of being asked for money, tired of being asked to absorb all the risk, bring clarity where there will always be terminal uncertainty.

Tired of being looked at to provide motivation. Learn, motherfucker. The Kingdom of God is within. Bootstrap yourself. There is no other way.

Just so.

The Kingdom of God is within. This doomloop mindset is my self-created dilemma.

Time to re-engineer my life. “Your past is your future—unless you change.”

It’s time to act, and not to whine. (But it sure felt good to whine just now. And it actually had a therapeutic effect: I can see that all of these situations are self-created.)

People at work who treat me as The Human Google will get the kinder, gentler version of “Let Me Google That For You” and a tutorial in how to do that—but not the answer they’re looking for. Let’s start there.