I was listening to a talk the other day, and had a major epiphany. It was given by a man who had made over $100 million in sales online, and the entire talk was about one thing: returning to the fundamentals.
Throughout your life, you will go through periods of expansion and contraction; periods of growth and recovery; periods of experimentation and stabilization. Throughout these periods, you must always remember one thing.
The fundamentals are key. Whenever you are having a problem in any area of your life, be it health, wealth, love, or happiness, it is almost always due to a lack of respect towards the fundamentals.
In fact, this concept is so damn important I’m going to be writing an epic five part post on it. So, without further ado, here’s part one.
The “Fundamentals”
First off, what are these elusive fundamentals? What are these fundamentals that I speak of? In short, they’re the basic, most simple principles behind any skill set.
For basketball, it’s dribbling, passing, and shooting layups. For making money, it’s product, placement, pricing, and promotion. For women, it’s having a strong masculine frame, good demonstration of higher value, and positive emotions.
These fundamentals are responsible for almost all of your success, but funny enough they don’t get the respect they deserve. Everyone’s always looking for some bigger and better thing, some shiny new trick…but it’s the fundamentals that really matter.
Are you a fucking cleaner? You’d better be. Cleaners understand that perfecting your craft is all about grinding it in and out, with consistency. It’s about adhering to these fundamentals, learning from these fundamentals, and when in doubt, always RETURNING to these fundamentals.
Practice Consistency
True success is achieved by simply following the fundamentals for any substantial period of time. You cannot follow the fundamentals for only a few weeks and expect success, no more than you can expect the laws of nature to turn upside down.
One fundamental is consistency. It doesn’t matter what you want to achieve—whether it be making a million dollars, building a shredded physique, or dating a beautiful model. You must be consistent. You must practice, day in and day out, otherwise you will not make progress.
You cannot expect to get jacked by simply working out for a few weeks. Building a shredded physique, and getting six pack abs takes time. Some people will try to sell you instant solutions (see: Six Pack Secrets) and other gimmicks, but the truth is that success takes time.
This is why one of the most important fundamentals is CONSISTENCY. Even if you do climb the mountain of success, it’s covered in mud—and without continual struggle, you will slowly slip back down. You must always be consistent in your efforts, for the laws of entropy will always be consistent in theirs.
Seek Clarity
Another one of the fundamentals is that you must seek clarity. It’s funny how people spend their whole lives chasing “money” or “happiness” and yet when asked to define these things they cannot even muster up a single sentence.
You must know what you want, and be absolutely razor sharp in your specificity. You must know EXACTLY what you want, otherwise how will you ever get it? If you want to “make more money” then specify how much. $15,000 a month? $20,000 a month? $1,000,000 a year? Seek clarity.
If you want to be happy, then visualize your ideal life. What does it look like? Take note of EXACTLY where you’re living, what you do for work, how you spend your day, when you wake up, who you’re dating, and every other detail. Seeking clarity is the only way to truly achieve what you want.
Think about it—how can you ever achieve something if you don’t know what it is you’re aiming for? How can a marksman hit a target if he is blind? How can a traveler reach his destination, if he doesn’t even know what it is? First determine your destination, then create a plan, then execute. This is the key to get whatever you want from life.
Learn From The Masters
For so long, I was so stubborn. I refused to REALLY learn from the masters. I would keep my eyes on the latest, shiniest object—and what do you know? I had piss poor results to show for it. If you’re going to achieve what you want in life, you MUST learn from others who have been there.
How did you learn to speak? Did you just “follow your heart” and “do what your gut tells you”? Of course not. You learned how to speak by observing your parents. You listened to their every word, even if unconsciously, and eventually picked up your language.
You must take this approach to everything else. Do you want to find true love? Then seek out someone who has, and model what he’s doing. Do you want to be in Herculean shape? Then seek out someone who is, and do what he’s doing. The true path to understanding is simple—the execution is hard.
Sometimes, you will have to diverge from what the masters say. This is the job of youth. The masters, while they are filled with experience, are relics of the past—their experience is from their past. Sometimes the times change, and sometimes your approach must change as well. Other times, they don’t. Even so, learn from the masters.
Always Return to Ground Zero
There have been so many times in my life when I’ve been stuck at a crossroads. I was angry that I didn’t know what to do, because it seemed like I’d exhausted all my options. I hadn’t, however. More often than not, the problem was simple: I was lacking in my execution of the fundamentals.
Let’s take happiness, for example. So many people wonder why they “just can’t be happy.” They say that all they want is to “be happy,” but do they really? Chances are, they do not. Happiness, true happiness, is quite simple when you really look at it. Here’s all you need:
- Something to do
- Someone to love
- Something to hope for
Beyond that, you really don’t need much else. Just take care of your body and actively practice positive thinking. Seek out things you enjoy. Practice love and affection in your closest relationships. If you don’t have any, build them. Create a future that you long for, and that you look forward to.
Yet, how many people actually do this? Not many. Most people complaining about a “lack of happiness” sit around and watch Netflix all day. Is it any wonder why they’re not happy? It takes effort to be happy, and you can have it if you simply put in the effort, too.
Violating the Fundamentals
I will discuss these fundamentals in further detail when I come out with parts 2-5 of this post, but let’s take a look at what happens when you violate them. Anytime you ignore the fundamentals, or worse yet, act in direct contradiction to them, you will get burned. It is inevitable.
When I first started out trading the markets, I was a foolish kid with no experience. In fact, I was too smart for my own good. Through following some fundamentals, I was able to turn $1,000 into eventually over $35,000. I was ecstatic. I recall making 300% within a week from one crypto trade.
All of the seasoned traders I knew were happy for me, but they cautioned me to use risk management. “Don’t go all in on a single trade,” they’d say. “You don’t want to risk too much,” they’d tell me. Bah! What did they know? I was on cloud nine, making thousands of dollars a day working from home.
But then, boom—it hit me, and my world came crumbling down like a ton of bricks. I lost tens of thousands of dollars in a matter of a couple of weeks, and I was destroyed. It turns out that this “stupid advice” I was given was actually anything but. When you ignore the fundamentals, you get burned.
Getting Lost in Gimmicks
One thing I often see with students is that they get lost in the sauce. They get so damn focused on theory and techniques, that they forget the underlying principles which are responsible for 99% of their success. This is extremely common in the dating marketplace.
Guys worry and fret about memorizing hundreds of line, learning about the nuances of female psychology, and reading hundreds of pickup books before they actually take action. Again though, what are the fundamentals that will cause most of your success with women?
- Develop a strong, masculine vibe (this will instantly 10x your attractiveness to women)
- Be confident, learn the basics of passing shit tests
- Take massive action
That’s it. Everything else you can learn as you go. You don’t need to have a PhD in female psychology to get laid a few times—in fact, the best PUA’s aren’t even PUA’s. They’re just naturally confident, social, upbeat dudes. It’s literally that simple, but as the Buddha said, we insist on complicating things.
The Elusive Fundamentals
I have eluded to some of these fundamentals, and even discussed a couple of them, but it is my aim to create a full list here. No doubt there are more, that I have not discovered, but this is no matter. These fundamentals have been 99% responsible for all of my success.
- Be Consistent
- Seek Clarity (Set Clear Goals)
- Focus on What’s Relevant, Ignore What is Not
- Learn From Mentors
- Double Down on the High ROI Points (Pareto’s Principle)
- Take Massive Action
- Utilize The Slight Edge (The Kaizen Way)
You must be consistent in what you do, otherwise you will not get far. You must constantly seek clarity in what you do, otherwise you will not get from A to B. You must focus on what’s relevant, and ignore what is not. You must learn from others, so that you do not make the same mistakes.
You must double down on what’s working, and STOP doing what’s not. You must utilize the slight edge and make slight 1% improvements each and every day. Last, and perhaps most important, you must take MASSIVE ACTION. Without massive action, nothing is possible and nothing will change.
Summary
Before I go, I’d like to leave you with a quick exercise. First, list out everything you’ve been procrastinating on. Go ahead, seriously—do this. Trust me, it will be worth it. Okay, have you got your list all laid out? Now, I want you to go through each item, and cross off the ones that are a waste of time.
Yep, that’s right. Anything on that list that won’t bring you significant improvement, cross it off. Everything else? Start doing it right now. This is the “massive action” component of the fundamentals, and it’s EXTREMELY important. Stop putting things off, because you can only do so for so long.
Taking action is by far the integral component to every single fundamental. It doesn’t matter how much “theory” you have, if you don’t put it into action. This is the Law of Use. Without taking massive action, endless theories will poison your mind. I’ve seen it happen, and it’s very, very ugly.
I hope that you all enjoyed the article, and gained something from it. I’ll be putting out parts 2, 3, 4, and 5 over the next month, so be sure to sign up for the email list and stay tuned. If you have any questions, just let me know down below—and as always, I’ll see you guys next time around.
