Most people think we're in a simulation. Maybe we live in a black hole.

We very well might be. Who knows for a fact?

Going back and forth on a topic of no immediate results doesn't give any immediate information you can take to solve your problems. So this one is going to be more actionable than usual.

Of late, most people feel that, whether because of AI, saturation, market shifts, politics, the external reasons are near infinity. But they all have one common reason behind them.

One BIG PROBLEM. Taking control of your life when the outside current seems too strong to hold on for stability. Having the willpower to "live" for you and your loved ones. Having the guts to follow your own intuition, your own willpower.

But here's the real problem → most people haven't been tested for it, until now.

They haven't been tested on their resolve to live and think for themselves.

The thing is, most of the world today is built on a system that has been around and shaped by those who have never lived and seen what you are living through.

You are living in a world with vastly different rules than the people who are running it now.

Your inner reality may be your own, but your outside may very well not be. Partly because you've not decided what yours is going to look like. The ones "in power" are deciding for you.

But hope is never lost, because —

"Life, uh, finds a way"

​

You could say you've been sold a "false bill of goods".

But that's the best news you could digest — that you've been sold a lie, and may be living one.

You don't need to plan, overanalyze, strategize every bit of your existence to be "awake".

But, from time to time, you need an earthquake event. Something that shifts around the furniture in your mental space.

It may be as simple as seeing how that picture on the wall of a beautiful life is someone else's - not yours. You realized it because the earthquake moved it out of place. And you stop to fix its position, realign it, or maybe take it down entirely.

The thing is, most people let it be. They're living in an Inception-level dream 2-3 levels down. Where they're afraid to wake up. Afraid to face reality, so they build up layers upon layers of reality-soothing dreams or reality-replacing layers.

You vs them: Pick your fight

Most people are in a rat race or worse, an automated life, despite being aware of the very same.

Why exactly? They lacked the long-term perspective or the long-term thinking to avoid falling into short-term games and gratification traps.

The attitude to continue doing so, and not doing anything about their situation, shows up when you're forced to pause or reconsider your path.

And this pause isn't a sigh of relief. It's the silence before the storm.

→ 'Well, what else can I do?'

→ 'I don't know where to start'

→ 'I don't know if I should be doing this'

→ 'There's such a long road and I just don't have the time'

→ 'I need results NOW'

→ 'I need clients NOW'

Once every now and then, an industrial/market or life earthquake shakes things up for you.

A job loss, losing all your clients, and maybe if you consider, losing your entire identity to a cultural shift or an industrial shift.

It's hard adjusting to a new reality, especially if you've not trained YOURSELF for the non-stop shifts. The winds are constantly changing, and you don't know which way to swing. Because you grew up/trained, or survived/thrived in the environment by being a straight arrow.

So is the key to be flexible or straight through it all?

The answer is acclimatization. You don't train for it; it needs you to respond, listen, and adjust as winds change. This kind of breakdown isn't something you plan for, since you can't see it coming.

No one can teach you how to acclimatize, but you can learn grit, survival, and the necessary skills needed to survive, and even better, thrive, thanks to this skill.

You need a fight. I'm not advocating for putting yourself further into a fight-or-flight state, but something different entirely.

Here's an example: to start with, most people may be facing at the time of this writing. Even though it seems like an evergreen problem, it's amplified now:

• Hit by the slap of reality that AI is "threatening" their jobs or "livelihood" or "purpose" or "where to get clients"?
• PICK THE FIGHT: That you will build leverage, assets, figure a way out of being commoditized, so you become "irreplaceable". You pick a fight with the past version of you that needed the comfort of "the pain of not doing your own thing."

You pick the fight to not fit into the same old box, and grow out of it by figuring out the reps you need to perform to break that box and grow out of it.

The 10-year test of a waking dream

One of the best ways to last in some economies is to grow a thick skin, but be flexible enough to survive harsh winds. Most people don't do this because they don't have a bigger life goal they execute week to week, sustained over months, then years.

You may have read the quote - "If it doesn't matter in 5 years, stop worrying about it today."

Most creators, businesses, and people stuck in survival mode can't plan, or even consider planning their lives because they're living a hamster life.

Paycheck → Paycheck

Client → Client

Job → Job

Stuck running without thinking about where they're going. And breaking down your reality in this step can shift everything in or against you.

Change is never easy, nor is it noticeable in the short term externally.

But over a long time, you can see it with extreme clarity.

If my job won't take care of me if I fell sick tomorrow → Why bother working in a corpo or for someone who could care less and sees you as a resource?

If my content doesn't help me grow and move others forward → Why bother creating something that doesn't give you goosebumps or an emotional reaction while doing so?

The secret is to care for something and be dynamic enough to go along the route.

If your vision today won't move you forward, why bother focusing on it today?

As a person, your character is going to grow with pain, exposure to new ideas, and chipping away manually at what "makes" you. The thing is, the world will always try to wipe out anyone who doesn't fit.

Creatives who can't fight for what they love? You're going to get what you choose.

Developers who think their job is merely writing lines of code? If you're not solving and innovating, aka putting in the work for creation? Others would get the signal and "replace" you.

Because you defy the definition of "replace". You already hold space, so it can't be filled in. It's your space, and no one else's to fill in, and I mean this in the least egotistical way possible.

You're going to get precisely what signal you send out, and whether it's a signal of changing your reality or being blind to it is entirely in your hands.

The AI survival test: Slippin' Jimmy

One of the main worries on anyone's mind today in any working capacity is how AI may take over their "job" , "passion", or anything they care for. Anything they trained for years, emulated in seconds?

The solution isn't non-stop re-skilling but a concept called "mixed mastery". (Talk about this soon.)

And the best way to move forward on this path is to be you. Get paid to be you, and create, work, and do things your way.

Because if you don't do it your way, you can catch the highway to corpo or structured hell that is full of what everyone's trying to do already!

One can crowd a path already created, but not walk one how you do it, how you see it, because, like life, it's your world.

In "Better Call Saul", James McGill (Jimmy/Saul) slipped into shady and manipulative tactics to get the end results his clients or he wanted.

No matter the cost, he got them or himself through his "methods".

But his "nature" couldn't be kept under wraps. He had to be the no-good projection of what his brother thought him to be. Because every time he wanted to change, he would be shown the reality that he was a "no-good" lawyer, who used skeevy tactics to get things.

But his nature was drilled/imbibed into his personality, whether through external projection or his own brain, that he couldn't resist it.

No matter what he did, by default, by nature, he chose skeevy methods. Irrespective of who he hurt or how he was perceived.

Now this was a skeevy example, but the point is, if something weird happened, the people victimized or closest to him knew already it was Jimmy.

No matter what, his methods and ways of living left a mark on everyone around him.

That's the entire point, with AI, it's easier to stand out and be yourself, so first, your own network can see through the BS of homogenized reality that others seem to be faking online.

You are the answer to your problems

Create content you WANT TO create. Dare I say, you NEED to create.

You need to solve your OWN problems of taking care of your NEEDS.

You need to create PRODUCTS that make you want to work toward a meaningful goal and an asset library you're proud of!

You can do anything you want to, because you're now starting from scratch, and if you don't learn the lesson now, it's going to come wearing thick boxing gloves to put you down later.

Even then, YOU WILL be able to solve your problems, and maybe some people do need to see their lessons occurring once, twice, maybe even thrice before they learn it. To never repeat the behavior that led to your problematic state again.

Yes, it's harder to solve your own problems because of your blind spots. That's why it's better to find someone who is undergoing the same problems as you, and solve them together, and help each other grow!

You see exactly where you're messing up, and since you'll be working to solve problems that are very similar to yours, you're less likely to be judgmental and more likely to be growth buddies.

Because when you help solve someone else's problems, you're seeing exactly where you might be lying to yourself, see your own patterns and behaviors, and get rid of the illusion that you're doing everything perfectly right.

There's a reason you need friends, and growth buddies, and if this isn't the case for finding a more aligned group of people around you instead of an AI avatar, there's nothing else to be said.

See you Sunday with a bunch of updates as I'm nearing my launch window, and trying to beat perfectionism and fear of not doing enough!

Ankit | Mark. It. | Make it | Market!