This will be shorter than usual (we’re in a good mood so creating an ad hoc post). Taking a break from the usual money making advice, we’ll take look at enjoying vices/the seven deadly sins. It is certainly possible to participate without ruining your life. In fact, we think it is almost necessary. No one wants to be stressed out all of the time thinking about every move they make. Just think about the extreme dieters who look old despite eating healthy: hint stress is the worst thing you can add to your body over long periods of time.
The Seven Deadly Sins
#1 Pride: This is also known as “self-overestimation”. Essentially pride is only bad when you cannot follow through on your skills/abilities. Naturally, we think pride is actually useful for making money and living a good life. If you get to the point where you are actually in the top 1% (or better) in your field, you *should* be boisterous and louder than usual. Being humble does not work in most situations because it is not marketable. Just think of Elon Musk or pro-athletes, attention is a good thing as it builds your personal brand. So the first one is easy, you should have a lot of pride only to the point that you can back it up.
As a word of caution, your average person doesn’t have much to be proud of so it is better to keep building up skills. Also, it only pays to be loud when you are competing against someone close to your level. If you’re attempting to be proud/boisterous in front of regular people, you’re coming off as too competitive. In these situation, simply smile and nod to their comments and move on. Many people make the mistake of always being loud. This doesn’t work well because you’re essentially giving off negative energy.
#2 Greed: This is the second deadly sin. Despite the name of this blog we’re not that interested in greed in the real sense. Greed means you really focus on making money just to have more money. We beat this one to death and people who simply read the name of the blog won’t even read this paragraph. Greed is probably the worst of all the sins because people who suffer from it really ruin their lives. They date women we wouldn’t talk to. They are out of shape. They have no friends. They live shorter lives. They are passive aggressive (weak). They have no outside interests. So on and so forth.
Unsurprisingly for the long-time readers, we actually despise greed. Greed along with gluttony are the only two we would avoid. The key is remember when you’ve crossed the line. Easy answer though. You’ve crossed the line when you will no longer use the money. If your number is $10M, $100M or a billion it does not matter. Once you realize your life wouldn’t change when you add a few points to it… Time to stop. You only get one chance at life and if you’re interested in making a bank account go up a few digits, that’s just as bad as a video game player sitting in an arcade to beat his own high score on a game he beat 20 years ago.
#3 Lust: This is a common vice for rich people (typically in the form of sugar babies). We have no problem going down this route to be honest. As long as you’re not breaking the law and putting yourself in jail, you’re good to go in our eyes. What we never understood is why people go with the same woman over and over again. If you really want to participate in transactional relationships, it’s a lot smarter to have them occur once. This prevents the person from trapping your in a situation you don’t want to be in. It also prevents you from developing a traceable relationships with this person. We’d actually recommend people to go down the one-night only path.
Think about it in terms of your reputation. If you do this once and a while, no one is going to figure it out. Also. People won’t care. Once you start doing this with the same person, it could leak into your actual life. If a person had a family we don’t even want to know how they would talk themselves out of it. You can draw a parallel to President Trump. Sure maybe he had a one time fling with a porn star, but does anyone really care? No. If he spent his time with her for years while acting as president, then people would likely care a lot more.
#4 Envy: We actually don’t suffer from this vice. If someone has what we want it is much more likely a friend. Being envious just reduces your chance of obtaining something. Similar to money. People who distain rich people rarely get rich since it is a psychological barrier. Besides. When you think of Envy in terms of a person’s whole life… it gets much much much harder to be envious. Sure you may want Warren Buffet’s money, but we wouldn’t want to be him or live his life (he is old and we wouldn’t be interested in his lifestyle at all).
#5 Gluttony: Unacceptable. We despise people who are unable to make care of their own bodies. They got a chance at life and decide to trash their only body. We take it further and would happily vote for higher taxation and higher insurance costs on people who do this. They end up costing more money as well (IE. being in shape costs less money than being out of shape due to future health costs). Under no circumstances is it “okay” to let your body go down the drain. If you gain a few pounds due to stress that’s acceptable (still trying to make it), taking it to the point where you’re officially overweight = time to slam the brakes.
#6 Wrath: This is a tough one. When it comes to wrath you should only strike if needed and make sure there is no chance for a come back. There are times where you will be forced into a situation where you must fight and you should fight as hard as possible. Our only comment is to make sure the person does not get a chance to fight a second time. It is best to choose your fights when they are one time in nature. Notice this is similar to the Lust section! Any time you must go through an immense fight and take someone out (competitor, getting someone out of your way), makes sure you won’t be in the same situation later. We think these one time events are rare, but a common one would be employment for people who are still working in a career (fight for your life to keep your employment if needed during layoffs, don’t pull any punches there).
#7 Sloth: Good old downtime. Ideally you have a lot of sloth in your life! That’s right, sloth is an okay vice/sin to have assuming you’ve earned it. Most people reward themselves far too much. But. There are times when you should be rewarded with a day off. Anyone who ends up succeeding will earn a period of sloth. Also. These same people won’t stay in the same state forever. They bet bored, get back to working on a project and then go back to a sloth state once they achieved something new. Since we’re only interested in successful people, sloth is not a major sin to worry about. For regular people it is probably the biggest sin as they spend time relaxing when nothing has been accomplished yet.
Participating in the Seven Sins
With the sins out of the way we’ll recap: we’re perfectly fine with – Lust, Pride, Wrath and Sloth depending on the situation. Greed is only okay until you have made it and we’re not interested at all in participating in Gluttony/Envy. Funny enough if you’re successful by a truly inclusive definition of success, you won’t be overweight or envious of people.
Most Hedonism is Around Lust: At the end of the day, most hedonism surrounds lust. Men don’t talk about traveling to destinations with unattractive women. They spend a lot more time searching for beautiful people to spend their time with. Since we know this is reality, we have nothing negative to say about lust activities that don’t damage your life/reputation. If you’re going to go to strip clubs in vegas, sign up for seeking arrangements or go to other paid for lust activities, we really don’t see a problem with it. The one caveat here is you should be “good to go” on the social side. If someone is desperately trying to figure out how to get girls (something solved by mid 20s unless a failure at life), they have no right to involve themselves in these activities. They are damaging their social skills. Therefore insert any activity dealing with lust and we’re going to say go for it. Just remember. If it ends up on social media or impacts your family you’ve really messed up and have a problem.
Drugs/Alcohol: Again we’re fine with all of them. Except maybe heroine and things of that nature. If you’re going to use hard drugs once and a while we really doubt it’ll mess up your life. In fact, you can do them and be successful. And. You can avoid drugs your whole life and also be successful. We’ve tried a wide array of them over the years and have moved on (don’t use any anymore). Maybe once and a while you’ll fly out to California (since it’s legal) light up a joint and have a relaxing day at the beach. This isn’t going to hurt your life in anyway. Similar to lust activities, as long as you don’t damage your health seriously (like Avicii), you can do as much as you like. Our guess is you’ll get bored of them and only use them to give out at parties to other people.
Pride is Really Trolling: Trolling is essentially a form of showing superiority on a topic. We are naturally positive on trolls. Just focus your trolling on people who will lift your perceived value. Trolling a regular person is a waste of time because their life has already ended. No need to troll a regular person since it would be similar to telling a 50 year old who made the wrong decisions that he/she is a failure. No point. You just look bad and nothing is gained since you’re interacting with a regular joe in the first place. If you see an opportunity to troll someone who is going to elevate your perceived value you should be going ALL IN. Pick your battles wisely.
Combining the Sins: A common invitation you’ll get is to parties with a lot of “friends for hire” at the event. We’d say you’ll be shocked but that’s a lie. Once you succeed you’ll realize that a lot of wealthy people do this and won’t be shocked when you’re invited to such events. Feel free to go just don’t have your photo taken (a good general rule for life anyway). Many rich people realize the same thing. They want to have a good time with good looking people… They just don’t want their personal lives to be involved at all. So. A common one will be a one or two week vacation where nothing is done and you’re simply hanging out with a few friends and several paid for friends for the week. As a side note, we don’t recommend bottle service if you’re going to throw one of these types of parties. It always ends up being significantly more expensive than it is worth. If you’re going to do it, go to a location and set it up outside of clubs/bar scenes.
A Week of Nothing: In just a few paragraphs, we’ve already covered the major sins and despite what people believe there is only so much you can participate in. Even if you were to go down the lust route on a weekly basis and use drugs on a weekly basis, you’ll eventually get bored of it or see your health take a hit. So another common move is to go on a a week or so trip to do almost nothing. This means your food is all made for you, you order up several massages and you spend your day on the beach chilling in the sun. Generally, this type of week is what women dream of and call ‘being pampered” a phrase you’ll hear over and over and over again if you decide to date a gold digger for a few months (yes gold diggers are better to date than regular people since a real gold digger should be extremely attractive – otherwise we wouldn’t consider them gold diggers, they would be imposters).
Status Items: We’re not sure why but many rich people get their rocks off by having tons of watches or cars. As you know we’re not really big into either. Cars guarantee you’re going to have a run in with the cops and cost tens of thousands of dollars a year. Watches are simply boring to us and we’d prefer buying an expensive suit and shoes versus a watch. The one item we will note is that either will give you a lot more access to temporarily date gold diggers. From what we’ve seen a watch is a bit better since you can use it more frequently and a Patek is only going to be noticed by a true gold digger while something like a rolex is going to be noticed by the masses.
Answering Some of the Questions We Ignored
Since we’re basically admitting to being ok with drugs, lust an any hedonic activity that doesn’t hurt your life long-term we’re going to answer some of the redundant questions we continue to get. (yes, another amazing weekend so we’re addressing items we already answered!)
A “Mentor”: A mentor is just some guy wasting his time helping someone. So a real mentor is someone you actually want to become that you don’t bother much. Meaning 30 minutes for maybe 1 time every 4-6 months. Anyone who thinks there are people who “grab someone and take them under their wings” are delusional. This is only the case if the guy is earning an ROI by doing it. If he was successful he wouldn’t waste large amounts of time on something that doesn’t add value to his life. Hint: if you want to see if someone will succeed, see if he asks for a partner. These guys never make it.
Home Ownership: As usual only buy if you’re going to stay in the city for at least 10 years. If under 30 you shouldn’t know where you’re going to be in 10 years so you shouldn’t own.
Trophies??? Not sure how this came up but trophies aren’t really interesting, if you wanted to succeed at something the medal/trophy doesn’t mean much and usually means more to your parents so give it to them so they are proud (this applies to diplomas as well).
Performance and Hardcore drugs: We’ve already covered it here, using hardcore drugs a few times in your life won’t do much. Performance enhancing drugs we’re also fine with assuming you’ve hired a private doctor. If you’re going to inject items into your body without a pro… you’re probably not going to do your body any favors and we disagree with the decision.
Artificial Intelligence: We’ve answered this hundreds of times. AI is already here and things like digital advertising jobs will go away. Yes we mean a Zero. In fact if you’re not using AI for ads these days you’re probably very far behind and need to catch up. In the future it’ll replace the vast majority of job that are paid by the hour. Why? If people can pay by the hour they can easily see how much value it adds. Since it’s a commodity it can be automated.
Losing a Lot of Money: We’re not sure and will have to think about it. Unless you do something ridiculously irresponsible it is almost impossible to lose a “lot of money”. If you’re down 50% on one asset class, you should have accounted for this when putting on the position. If everything goes down by 40-50% then that’s great. Everyone else is in the same boat. So on a relative basis you’re essentially the same.
Removing Bad Habits: Again. We are the worst people on earth to ask about this stuff. If someone needs a step by step to improve their life, they should go to a Tony Robbins seminar or some sort of pick me up seminar. There they will find other losers to hang out with and talk about their problems. If someone wants to fix their life, all the answers to major questions are available for free on the internet. So we don’t bother addressing this topic. A bad habit is just misplaced priorities. Which we can’t change for anyone.
Our View on Humans: Generally, our view is that people want to feel important. This is why they want attention, status items, to feel better than other people etc. Naturally ,the solution is to do the opposite. Since most humans are unhappy it is likely because they think they are important/deserve attention. One you realize that practically no one is remembered (even CEOs of billion dollar companies), you’ll come to the conclusion that being alive is the best gift you could get. Avoid people who want attention (anyone who wants fame would immediately be blacklisted in our own phones) and move on. Enjoy your life because you only get to live this rollercoaster of fun once.
Finding Another “Inspiration”: Most people don’t succeed so they seek motivation. Motivation is therefore the biggest market and we don’t address it. If someone has succeeded they will go through a period of time where they are looking for the next task. Our answer is simple, wait. Keep reading and learning about things you are interested in and within 12 months or so you’ll get a new idea or project to work on. Asking for inspiration or seeking it out doesn’t work. Never has, never will.
Hope you enjoyed this adhoc post and had a wonderful weekend! Another day has passed and another day closer to death, hopefully you enjoyed the day!
