Lifestyle Cycling

Change your environment, change your life

Gm Gents. I spent the last 3 years living the 4-hour work week in Mexico.

1.5 years building a business, systems, and lifestyle that would enable me to surf, spearfish, and ride dirtbikes all day. 1.5 years living it.

And that’s great. I thoroughly enjoyed my time as a beach bum. And I will return to beach bumming it sooner rather than later.

But like everything, lifestyles need to be cycled. You should not be the same person you were 6 months ago. Let alone a year. The more drastically you change your environment, the more drastically you change yourself.

Beach bum season ran its course. I was getting antsy to build again. Compete, conquer, accomplish. High DHT activities.

So I moved back to the USA

Each country carries with it a unique energy and culture. And no nation has more ambitious energy than America. One week in the States and I’ve already 4x’d my workload.

With this increase in workload comes the need to up-skill. My high-performance skills have atrophied since leaving the startup world and moving to the beach.

But its like riding a bike. Once you build high-performance habits they stay with you forever. You just gotta shake off the dust.

Cycle Everything, Especially Lifestyles

I have completely rewired my habits in a matter of weeks. I’ve reawakened the high-performance intellectual weaponry that laid dormant while I played Tarzan in my Mexican jungle village.

Remember: Life is meant to be cycled. Who you are in this season of life will be drastically different than the next. And that’s the point.

We are dynamic creatures. Highly adaptive. Adaptations only occur in the presence of change. Deliberately pursue the opposite of whatever your status quo is. This is how you unlock new versions of yourself:

• Typically introverted? Commit to a season of being hypersocial

• Addicted to routine? Commit to a season of spontaneity

• Night owl? Commit to a season of waking up early

• High carb? Commit to a season of low carb

• Weightlifter? Commit to a season of running

The timeline is irrelevant. Switch it up for a day, a week, a month, an actual season. Just get good at switching it up. Everybody talks about metabolic flexibility but nobody talks about cognitive flexibility.

NEW ENVIRONMENTS FORCE US TO ADAPT. You will never know who you could become until you expose yourself to new habits, routines, and lifestyles.

It all Starts with Self-Awareness

“To know thyself is the beginning of wisdom - Socrates” - Noah Ryan

Avoid the false consensus effect. Don’t assume that what works for others works for you. The more a-typical you are, the less typical advice will apply to you.

You must commit to knowing yourself:

• Strengths

• Weaknesses

• Motivations

• Behavioral patterns

• Values

• Beliefs

You do this by pondering. Spending time with yourself and observing your behavior. Journal, meditate, take mushrooms. Do whatever you have to do to garner self-awareness.

If you don’t have a sense of self you’ll capitulate to the thoughts of others.

Making Environment Change Feasible

The greater the environment change, the greater the personal change. Find ways to make yourself uncomfortable. Its easier to slip in new behaviors, habits & activities this way.

Understand The Law of Association. Your identity and behavior is cognitively tied to your surroundings.

• You associate your couch with video games

• You associate your desk with work

• You associate your daily commute with music

It is hard to change who you are when your environment stays the same because your entire environment reminds you of your old behaviors. Your friends remind you of the old you, your apartment reminds you of your old behaviors.

You break this by wiping the slate clean. Move somewhere new, spend time with new people, change your routine, take a different route to work. Get a haircut. Change your fashion. Grow a mustache & mullet (my personal favorite)

Push for drastic change. If you can’t do that start with what you can. Rearrange your house. Work from a coffee shop. Make some new friends.

When your life variables are stable, your brain is stuck in conservation mode. Conserve resources, maintain homeostasis. Your needs are met so change is bad

Exposing yourself to new environments, opens your brain up to exploration mode: Identify threats & opportunities, explore, acquire new resources.

This is hardwired. Its how our paleolithic ancestors migrated to new biomes (jungle to plains, plains to coast etc.) New environments require new behaviors

Start Here

I’ll leave you with this. Become a better observer. Identify what motivates you. Speculate how your brain operates differently than your peers.

Then start experimenting. Treat your life like a science experiment. Make hypotheses and self-experiment

Learn how to entertain the ideas of others without forming an opinion on them. Question your beliefs.

Creating your ideal life is easier than you think. All it requires are 3 things:

• Self-awareness

• Creativity

• Testicular fortitude

The self-awareness to know what you want

The creativity to create a plan

The Testicular fortitude to execute on it

Godspeed