One thing we have realized over the years is that the vast majority of the population (see regular people) think one-dimensionally. We had a joke tweet stating there is no such thing as a successful person with an unattractive wife. Immediately, we got low quality responses citing “Mark Zuckerberg” as a counter example. This of course proved our point. They admit that she is not attractive but then say he is a good example. This of course defeats the entire argument. Why? How can you view someone as successful if you’d never choose his life partner? As we said, one dimensional. To prevent one-dimensional thinking we’ll provide several ways to decrease any form of jealousy/resentment in the future. Once we think about life in multiple dimensions you’ll also pick up on the “sub-conscious” mind of your peers.
Thinking in Multiple Dimensions
Multi-Dimensions Gets Rid of Jealousy: Most people have jealousy/resentment but never look at the whole picture. If you take a single person, using Zuckerberg again, people will envy his life. We on the other hand have absolutely no interest in ever being him. No. This is not a “hater” post since he is living his own life. If he got to billions of dollars and wants to continue down his current path. good on him. It’s not for us. Jealousy gets erased once you look at life multi-dimension-ally. If you look at a single dimension we can guarantee you’ll find someone who is superior to you in at least one aspect of life after meeting less than five people. Instead, ask yourself “would i really want to take everything the person has?”.
A good way to see if people understand this topic is to see if they would trade places with Warren Buffet. Mark Zuckerberg is a harder example since most people cannot comprehend being unable to change his personal life (remember when you trade you also take their personality and future life choices). If we use Warren Buffet we can see if the person gets the picture. No one reading this (unless there is someone in their 80s reading this) would ever considering trading their lives for his. Sure he has billions upon billions of dollars. But. He is 80+ after all. Would you trade places with Buffet? No. You’re going to be gone in short order.
Multi-Dimensions Create Role Models: Now lets say you do find someone you would trade with. As a basic example lets create an imaginary guy exactly the same age as you with more money, better fitness, better looking girlfriends, low stress levels and a fun personality. Instead of being jealous, what is the natural reaction? Befriend the person. In our souls we know that the people we spend time with end up being similar to ourselves. This is why attractive people generally hang out with attractive people. Fit people generally have fit friends… so on and so forth. By looking at things multi-dimension-ally you’ll weed out your frequent contact list extremely quickly. The people on the list should have a similar value chain as you. Otherwise you’re surrounding yourself with people you don’t want to become.
Taking a step back, we find that this makes it impossible to be jealous of other people. In just four paragraphs we have eradicated all forms of jealousy. If you find yourself being jealous of someone then we suggest looking at it multi-dimension-ally first. Just because someone is good at Item A doesn’t mean they are any good at the rest (basic herd mentality automatically assumes an expert in Topic A is an expert in Topic B… Even if unrelated – Lord knows we would never ask a 100lbs overweight billionaire for fitness advice). The second step is to then ask why you’re jealous. If someone really has a life you want, then you should actively find ways to spend more *free* time with them. After all, they have what you want and you’re willingly admitting it. Hating on them isn’t going to help!
Multi-Dimensions Allows for Diversification: Now that we’ve gotten rid of all jealousy, it is also time to kill the hating part as well! On a personal note we don’t hate anyone. Seriously, we don’t. If we don’t enjoy someone’s company, we go dead silent and simply ignore. Hating the person just gives them more attention and burns valuable time. This simple point will save hours of time. When you dislike someone, remember that the easiest way to get them out of your life is by ignoring them. It really is that simple. Then if you run into them in the future, since you haven’t had to waste your time with them for the past year or so, you’ll be able to put up with the short interaction.
Now comes the fun part. While we want to completely ignore people we don’t jive with, we can use the multi-dimensional strategy to help us choose “leaders”. Leader is just a cheesy word for someone better than another person at a certain task. As a basic example when you think about sports, you automatically assume the best player on the team needs to be the “leader”. Lets apply the same logic to parts of your life. If you want to get in shape, you should find someone with a physique that you’re working towards. If the guy is not bright and can’t do much else but work out… that’s fine! Just make sure you follow his ideas on working out. Similarly, if a guy is making 4x what you’re making per year, that is also fantastic. If he has an overbearing wife that you’d never talk to in a million years… Just don’t bring it up. Follow that money making advice and use it to your personal advantage.
Before moving on we have a critical note to write here. Under no circumstances do you offer help to the person you’re taking advice from. This is counter intuitive but works much better. Most people have the logical assumption of “well he is not good with women so i should help him there”. Absolutely not. People have large egos. If a guy is better at making money than you are and you’re asking him for advice… He will never listen to your dating tips. This is because he already thinks he is better than you at everything. This doesn’t make logical sense since it should be clear based on your lifestyles but it is reality. People are extremely invested into their egos so never give advice unless asked. This is a serious warning and if this rule is broken don’t be surprised if that workout partner/business partner etc suddenly drops off the face of the planet.
Multi-Dimensions Help With “Life Math”: Life math is nothing more than deciding where you want to be in 5, 10, 15 years or so. There is no way to plan 10 years perfectly. But. You can take a framework and use it to decide where you need to be. As a simple example, maybe you’re interested in having a family. Maybe you want to be single forever. Maybe you only want to work 20 hours a week. Maybe you want to party hard for a few years. Maybe you want to a take year off to travel the world. So on and so forth.
Multi-dimensional looks are extremely valuable with the internet. Now that you have no hatred and no jealousy after reading this post, you can look forward to the future. Find someone who is 10 years older than you and is currently living a life you want to live. Seriously. They do exist and it is possible to meet them. Most are just too lazy to look. Once you find them you can then map out a rough idea of how they got there, what went wrong and what they would do differently. A simple example is “quitting work”. Many years ago we used to believe in “retirement” where you hit your number at age 35-40 and simply did nothing forever. We were dead wrong there. Every single person we met that was over the age of 40 and “retired” said the same thing. You’ll get tired of drinking and partying within 3 months. They were right. This simple adjustment changes the way you map out where you want to be from where you currently sit today.
Take a look at an example. If you find a guy you admire that is 10 years older than you (meaning you’d love to be in their shoes in 10 years), ask them what they would do differently. This can range from money to life experiences. If you’re already on the path financially maybe it ends up being related to travel. We have no doubt they will have several recommendations for you. It is not possible to go through life and live for 10 years straight with no mistakes. Mistakes are always made, you just need to find the right person to admit to a few of them.
For fun, the most common one we hear from people these days is “fitness”. Most older people let themselves go in the 30-40 age range and it becomes increasingly difficult to “get it back”. With this in mind, have a good idea of how your health regimen will evolve as you age and your metabolism slows down. To cap this all off, one guy had an interesting one which was the following: “I wish I upgraded my gym and took Yoga earlier”. Why? He now meets all of his current girlfriends at the gym/yoga studios after battling some muscle tension for years (two birds one stone, double entendre).
Multi-Dimensions Give You Flexibility: As mentioned above, 5-year and 10-year plans rarely go accordingly for every single thing a person is trying to achieve. Going from $0 in the bank to 1) a million dollars, 2) great social circle, 3) tip top fitness and 4) freedom to travel takes a good amount of time (we estimate 10 years as achievable). The good news is that you can make adjustments. Generally speaking, when you’re looking to pad your net-worth… freedom or fitness typically take a hit. When someone tries to increase their social skills, this usually hurts the fitness line the most. If someone tries to increase fitness, their social life takes a slight step back. So on and so forth. So if you end up getting to year five and miss slightly on two of the “big four” don’t sweat it, the multi-dimensional outlook gives you a better holistic view on how you’ve progressed.
For what it is worth we have found that the last item is actually the hardest of the four. While money gets the lime light, it is actually freedom that is much more rare. In fact, many people with money are not free at all. They could make half a million dollars a year and not save much if they have kids to feed and live in an expensive city (yes it is possible, just look at the rents and add in three more people to support!).
Multi-Dimensions Make it Difficult to Trade Places: Putting the Multi-dimensional pieces together, the key item here is remembering that you must live with that person’s choices. All of them. This is hard to do mentally since your average person only sees the surface. If someone decides to trade places with Warren Buffet then they also get to live for ~10 years. Similarly, if someone idolizes a guy worth $100M+ that is out of shape and lives a personal life that is in shambles… He too gets to live with all of those decisions with no ability to change them (you’re forced to make all the decisions that person would make). Once we can put this lens on you’ll find that there are maybe 0.01% of people you’re interested in trading places with. These people are guys you look up to. So you wouldn’t dislike them in the first place.
The Amazing Long-term Benefits of Multiple Dimensions
Before listing all of them there is one downside. People will attempt to “bring you down” by comparing you on a single item every single time they run into you. This is how passive aggressive people work since they’ve only beaten one of the five rigged games in life. Get used to it. The options are the same: 1) smile, nod and agree and 2) put them in their place by amplifying. As many of you know we prefer the first option since it kills the conversation. The amplification part makes people feel much more uncomfortable because only a secure person would admit another man/woman is better than them in a specific task. Try both, they both work. Pro-Tip:extremely insecure and passive aggressive people will usually try to put you in the one situation in which you would lose to them over and over again. If they have horrible social skills and are old they will do their best to put you into a room with old people to call you an “entitled young guy”. If they are good at science then they would attempt to compare you to them in that topic only. It is the only thing they have so they have to highlight it to feel better about themselves.
Easier to Plan: Multiple dimensions allow you to plan a lot better. If you’re focused on a single piece of life you’ll likely go down the wrong path. Besides, who wants to be a deca-millionaire with type II diabetes? Who wants to have fame and money but live less than thirty years? Who wants to date beautiful women only to lose it all and live like a bum smoking marijuana at age thirty five? So on and so forth. Multiple dimensions help you find real people you look up to. We’re not going to tell anyone how to live, if you’ve found this blog you’re likely in agreement with some of the points but not all of them. The key here is making sure you develop the correct well rounded personality that you always wanted. In short, success is defined by what you want not what you’re told to want. We have an ingrained belief of what success is and yet we’d unlikely want any of it (not interested in fame, not interested in a house in suburbia and most certainly not interested in “settling down” at the standard age of 30).
Easier to Walk Away: There is no reason to keep in contact with the same people for a long period of time just because there is “history” there. The reason why many successful people have friends for over 10 years is they are quick to identify people on the same path. The path to success in their eyes. While a few will likely make it with you, the vast majority will come and go. It isn’t even a big deal. If someone does extremely well and moves onto bigger and better things, shake their hand and say good luck! If you don’t burn their time, they will happily help you in the future anyway. Just don’t be a burden on people who make a leap. The same applies backward. If you make a big leap, as long as no one is sucking up your time, you should be happy to respond. While “walk away” has a negative connotation, you could also replace this with “pruning” a rose garden. In order to make sure you have high quality you have to maintain the rose garden. If one of the “buds” spring up and have improved dramatically, you let it grow and it’s back into the garden.
Significant Emotional Control: You will see a 100% improvement in emotional control if these items are taken seriously. Why? If it becomes difficult to be jealous or hateful towards someone… why would you be emotionally rattled? You wouldn’t be! Emotional control is a fascinating topic because a lot of people confuse introversion with emotional control. Just because someone doesn’t act out verbally, they will act out in terms of body language and behavior. Emotional control is your ability to remain in the same state despite the surroundings. This is why we put so much more value into “clutch” players in sports and into “calm take downs” in an argument. In fact these things are so valued by simply talking slowly and calmly you can be more convincing even if you’re incorrect (important negotiation tip there).
Easier to Improve! That is right. Since your view of life will be less one dimensional, you can improve your life quickly. If you only focus on one item it is unlikely that you’ll see significant strides in a few months. It could be fitness, social life, money, etc. Enter any topic and if you only have one item you’re interested in it is much more likely that you’ll hit the “wall”. Each wall will take a longer amount of time to break down so it is best to see improvements in other areas of life beyond this. We can’t even count how many people focus on single course of action and end up losing it all. Focusing on money is probably the most common where chasing an extra $1M when you’re already worth $10M defeats the purpose of money in the first place. This is particularly true when you don’t have anything you thought the money would bring. And with that we’re done, perhaps 1% of the world will understand the point of this post (we’re being generous)!
