Most people spend their lives trapped.
Dreaming of purpose but never finding it.

They end up a slave to the program.

Achieving the goals set out for them by their:

• Parents

• Friends

• Teachers

• Culture

• Boss

They become copies of everyone and everything that came before them.
Never having an original thought or creating anything meaningful.

Because they never learned to see.

How to see what’s actually happening.
To question their reality.
To think beyond the defaults handed to them.

But there are a select few that do.
And the ones who do it at the highest level?

We call them genius.

It’s not about talent or intelligence.

It’s about originality.

They dare to do something original by stepping outside of expectations.
Radically unafraid to create their own way and reject the defaults most people cling to for safety.

I’ve always been the type of person who valued creativity over most things.
I wanted to make something truly unique and valuable to the world.
I’ve performed, made music, art, and design.

But it wasn’t until life forced me to take a step back from that creativity and channel it elsewhere into thinking, building frameworks, solving problems, creating ideas, that I learned how to actually think for myself.

That’s when I saw what I was really capable of.

In the last letter ‘How to learn anything 10x faster (Strategic Obsession)’ I showed you how to learn any skillset in strategic bursts of obsessive focus.

This week I want to show you why your top priority should be leveraging those skills to create a original meaningful work.

Then I’ll give you a system to do that.

But first why should you care about being original at all?

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Meaning is made not discovered

I’ve been seeing a lot people writing about purpose lately.

There’s so much “how to discover your purpose” content out there.
Yet this still seems to be a major issue for most people.

There’s a reason for that.

Because purpose isn’t something waiting to be found.

It’s waiting to be created.

“Our world is built on fictions. They’re all around us: nations, corporations and religion were invented in the human imagination”

— Yuval Noah Harari ‘Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind’

In the letter ‘How to get what you want out of life.’ I mentioned the book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind.

But I want to talk about it again because it’s a foundational concept that affects your whole life.

Yuval talks about how homo sapiens became the dominant species and out-survived other human species like Neanderthals because we’re capable of imagination.

We can create things in our minds that don’t actually exist in physical reality.
Like countries, laws, societies.
Those things are ideas we create.

We imagine them, agree they exist, and then play along with those imaginary rules.

These ideas are so deeply embedded in us that it’s strange think of them this way.
They feel like real forces that have an effect on us.
They dictate how we live our lives.
They create purpose.
They create meaning.

Meaning we follow and live out on a daily basis.

You spend your twenties anxious because you think you need to make $100k by 30 or you’re a failure.
That’s a fiction.
An arbitrary number based on expectations that are themselves made up.
Yet you’ll sacrifice your health, relationships, and sanity chasing it.

When you don’t question the fictions handed to you as a kid you end up living a default life.

A character in a video game.

Imagine a game where you play the whole thing without ever improving your base skills or weapons.

If you ever get to the end the final boss will be impossible to defeat.

That’s what happens to most people.

They accept their default life and never move past level 1 thinking.
They learn but they never discover how to apply what they learn in their own way.
They hit 18 become “adults” and struggle to find meaning.
They keep repeating the same concepts, values, and stories that everyone around them has and wonder why their life never improves.

This is why originality is crucial.

You can’t live a meaningful life until you create your own original meaning.

The same goes for meaningful creative work.

But how do you create original meaning?

How do you think for yourself when you’ve spent your whole life absorbing everyone else’s ideas?

It’s not what you know. It’s what you think about it.

Everyone you consider a genius has one thing in common and it’s not intelligence.

It’s that they could see what others couldn’t.

Einstein didn’t have access to information that no one else had.
He was able to connect the dots in ways that others weren’t able to.

Tarantino wrote scripts with the same words and inspiration available to everyone else.
But the way he connected those words and inspiration was what created something no one else could.

What sets you apart is never what you know.

It’s what you see.

We live in an age where all information is readily available to everyone.

That means the highest leverage skill is no longer intelligence, it’s become:

• Knowing what to know

• Perspective

• Creating across disciplines and domains

• Synthesizing skills and knowledge in new ways

That’s why learning alone is never enough.

It’s about how you apply that knowledge over time that matters.

Take Dan Harmon for example.

He created the show Community and co-created the cartoon Rick and Morty.
He’s considered a creative genius for his meta-commentary, character depth, and innovative narrative structures.

Harmon doesn’t just tell stories.
He uses story as a vehicle for philosophy, psychology, synthesizing genres, science, and commentary on the craft of storytelling itself.

Community is a show about a study group at Greendale Community College.

A seemingly basic and boring premise that he turns it into a deeply entertaining and complex narrative, blending genres and seemingly unrelated concepts.

In one episode the study group turns the school cafeteria into a Scorsese style mafia plot.
In another an innocent dinner party turns into a reality bending lesson in quantum physics and the multiverse theory.
Even one where a school wide paintball game transforms into a sci-fi, spaghetti western, 80’s action, crossover trilogy.

Harmon uses systems like his famous Story Circle Framework to synthesize his various influences and inspirations into original creations.

Meticulously designing characters, narratives and world building.

He doesn’t just follow templates he creates his own meaning by taking existing templates and combining, remixing, and reimagining them.

Harmon is just one example.

Virgil Abloh did this with fashion and architecture.
Naval does it with technology and philosophy.
You see this across every domain.

The ones considered genius don’t just break rules, they redefine them by seeing beyond them.

Genius then isn’t some talent exclusive to the chosen few.

It’s a skill you develop.

Here’s how to develop it.

Design Mindset

All problems are design problems.

Everything you do is design.

Writers design content using words.
Musicians design songs using sounds.
Teachers design understanding using questions.

Design is the process of selecting and arranging elements to achieve a goal.

That can describe almost everything you do in life.

When you make breakfast you design it.
You design relationships by deciding what and when you’ll share parts of your life with someone else.

Design is so deeply ingrained in your life you don’t even know you’re doing it.

Mostly because the domain of design is very exclusive.
It’s treated as sacred and rare.
A skill that’s supposed to take years to even understand.

That’s a lie.

You are a designer.

Understanding this is how you start to see the world is ways that others can’t.

You start to see the templates of reality for what they are and shape it in ways you never knew possible.

Here’s how it works.

1. Goals

Everything you do is based is some sort of goal.

If you’re writing a newsletter, the goal isn’t writing, it’s creating a newsletter.

Writing is just an element of the design.

If you’re building a brand, the goal isn’t content, it’s a clear reputation and identity over time.

Content is just an element of the design.

The point is your goal requires certain elements and skills to achieve it.

Once you set a goal you set in motion a process.
The process of achieving that goal.

That process is design.

You start to think of:

• Actions to take

• Skills you need

• Materials and tools required

• Time and effort needed

• People to collaborate with

These are all design elements.
They are things you combine to execute your design and achieve your goal.

2. Drop your assumptions

Assume you know nothing about how to achieve your goal.

Most people do things without ever questioning the purpose behind them.
That’s why they live overwhelmed and anxious lives.
They do things because they assume they’re supposed to.

Never questioning if there are other possibilities for their life.

Other ways to achieve their goals that they never even considered.

Here’s what separates genius from everyone else.

There’s no rules.

There’s no one way to achieve any goal.

And originality is impossible until you embrace this fact.

Your assumptions about how things are supposed to be is what’s blocking you from getting what you want out of life.

You assume in order to make money you need to work hard.
Hard work then becomes an element of your design.

It’s no longer optional.

Now no matter how you go about making money it will always require hard work.
You’re closed off to all the design possibilities that don’t require hard work.

There are ways to make money that are easy.

Dropping your assumptions opens your mind to possibilities.

When you stop assuming that shoes are made for feet you start thinking about what else they could be.

Could they be a door stop, a decoration, a glove, a vase?

That’s why geniuses are constantly thinking across domains.

Because the most original solutions are counterintuitive.

Einstein didn’t solve physics problems with physics solutions.
He solved physics problems with philosophy.

Virgil Abloh didn’t innovate the world of fashion by being the best fashion designer.
He did it by applying the rules of architecture to fashion and streetwear to luxury.

The same things true for everything you know about your life.

The most original solution will come from seeing how one domain applies to every other domain.

3. Return to Zero

Design is about achieving a result and serving a function or purpose in the most effective way possible.

Every element of your design should be serving a purpose.

The reason you do something should be obvious.
If it isn’t you need to stop and figure out why you’re doing it.

If it’s not helping it’s hurting.

That means:

• Your goal needs to be clear because your goal determines your design

• You need to start with zero assumptions about how your goal can be achieved

• You need to think about how every element effects the whole design

All your actions have a result.
And most of your problems come from not knowing why you do what you do.

Returning to zero means you stop and you question your actions.

You think about how every element of your design is effecting your results.

Think about:

• The actions you’re taking

• The skills you’re using

• People you’re working with

• Your strategy, materials, and tools

You strip everything away mid process and you consider if each element is still serving your goal.

You may have started making content because it was an opportunity to make a living expressing yourself.
But now you spend every day stressed and anxious about what to post, whether your being authentic, and if people will like what you have to share.

That’s the opposite of the goal you were hoping to achieve.

What elements aren’t serving the goal?

Are you posting too often and it’s causing overwhelm, damaging the quality of your content?
Not talking about your genuine interests leading you to feel inauthentic and lacking ideas?
Measuring views more than genuine engagement or growth so you chase trends and abandon your own voice?

You need to think in systems because everything connects.

When you change one element, the entire design shifts.

If you post less you won’t be overwhelmed.
You’ll increase your content quality.

You measure engagement instead of just views.
You’ll see people resonating with your interests and you’ll feel more authentic.
You feel less anxious and trust your voice instead of just chasing trends.

Original work comes when you see how everything connects.

How one piece of your design effects the entire outcome of your goal.

The Takeaway

Genius isn’t about knowing more it’s about seeing more.
It’s not intelligence.

It’s originality.

What you know doesn’t matter if you can’t use it to get what you want out of life.
And you can only do that if you use your knowledge in original ways because your life is unique.

Your goals are unique and you don’t achieve them by accident.

You achieve them by design.

This framework changed how I see everything.
If it shifts something for you DM me or leave a comment.

Let’s talk.

‘Til next time.

Don’t betray yourself.

You won’t get what you want by mistake.

You’ll get it by design.

— Edamame Dufflebag

Here’s some resources to think with a design mindset and go deeper on your own time:

They either spend their lives:

1. Pulled in so many directions they never focus long enough to build anything meaningful.

2. So consumed by one domain it defines them entirely. They miss the potential fulfillment life has to offer.

Both paths lead to regret.

But that’s the fate most of us are given.

In school they teach you 10 subjects at once.
Scattering your finite attention and expecting you to remember it all.
Stuffing your brain with mostly useless facts.
Never explaining how those facts actually apply to your daily life.

You then enter college and the work force and they expect you to do the opposite. Pick one career at 18 years old that you’ll have forever.
If you don’t you’ll end up an outcast.
Working a fast food job at 50 being looked down on by your classmates who chose a path.

There’s a reason the creator economy is built on selling courses.
It’s exploiting a broken education system.

But that’s how society works.
It’s based in isolated extremes.
Never combining perspectives to gain a more holistic view of reality.

That’s the third path.

The one nobody talks about.

Not scattered learning with no clear focus.
Not unbroken tunnel vision.

Strategic Obsession.

A repeatable framework for learning anything.

A 60 day cycle of complete immersion in no more than 3 skills.

You obsess, build, and apply what you learn.

After 60 days, you rest, integrate, then pick your next skillset and repeat.

I discovered this system by accident when I was rebuilding my life.

Now I use it on repeat.

Obsessing over copywriting and content for 2 months.
Then pivoting to philosophy and business.
Then back to branding.

Each 60 day cycle builds a new skill or deepens an existing one.
This is how I turned my life around after hitting rock bottom, how I built the skills necessary to start my own business and over time how I started working with my first clients.

Resources:

At the end of the letter I provide a prompt to create your own Strategic Obsession Cycle.

First I’ll show you why it works and then I’ll show you how.

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You never learned how to learn

Learning is a skill.

You’re conditioned to believe that in all parts of your life there is some big secret. Some hidden answer that when you find it it will all make sense.
Your problems will disappear.

This is the reason you end up lost in tutorial hell.
Never making any real progress.
Because searching for that one bit of information that makes it all work is addictive. You scatter your attention.
Learning 7 different things at a time hoping you’ll find the answer in one of them.
The endless search convinces your brain that you’re making progress.

That you’re one step closer to the solution.

But you’re not.

Here’s the real secret.

The answers are everywhere.

They’ve been staring you in the face.
The brightest minds in human history have uncovered many of the truths of the universe.
There are infinite YouTube videos about every topic that exists.
AI can teach you about any subject or help you learn any skill.

If you want to learn a language, get rich, or start a personal brand the answers you need are available.

The problem isn’t finding the answers.

The real problem is you don’t know how to see them.

Strategic Obsession is a system for learning how to learn.

How to:

• Recognize good advice from bad

• Retain knowledge that actually matters

• Know what to learn and when

• Build a skill stack that makes you irreplaceable

Here’s how it works:

Strategic Obsession

This is a framework based on 3 principles.

1. Creation

2. Collection

3. Immersion

The 60 day timeframe is just an example to give you a starting point.

60 days is ideal but these principles can be applied to 2 weeks, 3 weeks, 90 days, whatever you want.
Experiment and find what works for you.

This system works for a few reasons.

It’s meant to be intense:

Intensity increases neuroplasticity resulting in a higher retention of new skills.

It’s meant to be lived:

This isn’t a study guide, it’s an action plan.
What you learn will be immediately applied in real life.
Giving immediate feedback so you know what knowledge works and what doesn’t. What you need to know next becomes obvious so you never get stuck on what to learn.

It’s identity based immersion:

This isn’t 60 days of cramming.
You’re not studying for a test.
You are immersing yourself in new knowledge to the point that you identify with it. You’re not retaining, you’re becoming.

It’s a cycle:

This isn’t forever.
You get in the arena, you learn as much as possible, you rest.
After your 60 days you ramp down the intensity allowing for integration.
You’re then able to start a new cycle with a set of new skills and repeat.
You return to skills over time.
Constant learning of the same domain leaves no space to integrate new knowledge. You wouldn’t work out 2 hours a day and never take any rest days.
You’d end up in the hospital.
Your brain works the same way.

Once you go through the principles check out the prompt at the end to start your first Strategic Obsession Cycle.

Let’s begin.

Creation

“The purpose of knowledge is action, not knowledge”
— Aristotle

Goals

You’re going to build a project.

Start today.

Start with clarity.

Pick a goal.

Anything you learn should be learned for a reason.
Don’t pick skills or topics that sound impressive.

Build around a meaningful goal that requires you to learn the relevant skills to accomplish it.

You don’t accomplish anything in life until you know what you want.
That’s the reason most people can’t pay attention to one thing for more than 10 minutes.
They haven’t set a clear goal to direct their focus.

For example:

Instead of learning Japanese because you think it would make you more interesting.
You set a goal of traveling to Japan in 60 days and being able to hold basic conversations without a translator.
This sets immediate stakes.
You have a vision in mind and a timeline to make it happen.

This is structure and direction.

You don’t waste time learning skills irrelevant to your goal.

You start with learning conversation, not grammar or writing.
Because your goal is to hold basic conversations not write a blog in Japanese.

Without this structure your learning is directionless theory.

This is the leverage you need to actually retain new knowledge and skills.

Once you set a goal and test it in reality it becomes progress.

The point isn’t to accomplish the goal in 60 days.
That won’t always be possible.
The point is to create structure, direction, and intensity.

Write this down.

• Your goal

• Your 1-3 skills

• Your timeline

Your goal should be:

• Meaningful - You actually care about the outcome

• Uncomfortable - It pushes your current capacity

• Multi-skill - Requires learning 2-3 things simultaneously

The right goal naturally creates intensity.

It forces your brain to create new neural pathways.

If it requires too little effort there’s no challenge.
The information won’t register as useful.

If it requires too much effort you’ll become overwhelmed.
Which will lead to avoidance and burnout.

Projects

Start building.

Your project can be anything that has real world results or feedback.

This can be:

• Content/newsletter about your learning

• A business

• A community to discuss

• Something tangible (art, music, website)

Start doing the thing in whatever way you can.

If you’re learning photoshop, don’t start with tutorials.
Start by editing a photo.

If you’re building a brand, don’t start with your logo.
Start by making your first post.

This is the most important part of this process.

When you start you’re going to hit a wall.
This will tell you exactly what to learn next because you’re directly affected by the outcome of what you know.

Without a project you end up collecting information randomly, not knowing how it actually applies in reality.
Eventually discarding half of it when you actually start and realize what you really need.

Once you have your goal and start your project you can start applying the next principle in Strategic Obsession, Collection.

Collection

There is no one answer.

The answers you need are specific to you and your situation.
That’s one of the benefits of a project.
You need to develop a unique perspective that applies to your circumstances.

If you read my letter 'How to create content that spreads itself' then you’re familiar with the concept of consciousness transfer.

This is where someone else’s perspective collides with your own.
You absorb what they know and elevate your own consciousness.

You learn 10x faster by collecting the perspectives of others who have already accomplished similar goals.
Every experts knowledge is just one piece of a larger truth.
By learning from those who already have years of experience and specific knowledge you learn much faster.

Don’t look for information.
Look for perspectives that hold the information you’ll need.

Just like you picked skills based on a goal.
You learn information based on perspectives.

Take pieces of their strategies and knowledge that work for you and discard the rest.

True intelligence comes from combining multiple perspectives on reality and finding the truth in all of them.

Keeping what works and developing your own way.

Collect as many perspectives on how to achieve your goal as possible.

• Watch YouTube videos

• Podcasts

• Read books

• Talk to AI

Find as many methods, mental models, frameworks, systems as you can.

Write them down.

Create a database.

You’ll naturally gravitate towards certain people, methods, systems etc.

But don’t overlook perspectives that don’t attract you at first.

All perspectives hold some form of truth.

Discard what doesn’t work or resonate.

What’s left becomes your training ground to develop your own unique perspective.

That’s when you can start applying the next principle in Strategic Obsession, Immersion.

Immersion

This is what really separates Strategic Obsession from other frameworks.

Complete immersion.

Take your perspectives, frameworks, methods, mental models, systems.

Start immersing yourself on a daily basis.

This can look like:

• Reading while you make coffee

• Listening to podcasts and audio books while you do chores and commute to work

• Do 1 hour of deep work first thing in the morning

The point is that it should be done consistently throughout your day.

Don’t try to retain everything at this point.

Immersion isn’t about effort it’s about frequency.
How much you’re exposed to what you’re trying to learn.

This is where you’ll want to quit.

Nothing will make sense at first.
Concepts will be confusing, the process will be difficult.
The confusion you feel is your subconscious sorting information.

This is where you have to trust the process more than your conscious mind.
Your brain processes information on two levels.
Conscious and subconscious.

In ‘Thinking Fast and Slow’ by Daniel Kahneman he describes these as System 1 and System 2.

System 1 operates automatically and quickly, with little or no effort and no sense of voluntary control.

System 2 allocates attention to the effortful mental activities that demand it, including complex computations. The operations of System 2 are often associated with the subjective experience of agency, choice, and concentration.

Immersion trains system 1, the automatic, subconscious system.

Immersion does two things simultaneously:

First:

It builds pattern recognition without conscious effort.

Second:

It reshapes your identity at the subconscious level.

The second one is more important.

The key to learning anything deeply in a short amount of time is actually identifying with what you’re learning.
Being consistently exposed to new information changes your association with it.

Instead of identifying as someone who’s trying to learn branding.

You start to identify with branding itself through constant exposure and application to a project.

The goal isn’t to rewire what you know.

It’s to rewire who you are.

When you identify as the thing you’re learning, retention is automatic.
You don’t have to force yourself to remember it.

You are it.

Your brain starts to see it as necessary for survival.
You begin making connections in your everyday life that relate to your skills.
You see solutions for your project everywhere.

That’s the shift from student to practitioner.

That’s when learning accelerates exponentially.

When things start to click it becomes a feedback loop.

Your project shows you what skills matter and what to learn next.

Immersion embeds the information in your subconscious so you see the solutions your project primed you for.

Strategic Obsession Prompt

Subscribe to receive the prompt and start your own Strategic Obsession cycle today.
The prompt will help you determine your Goal, Skills, and Timeline.
It will also give you resources and suggestions for your Creation, Collection, and Immersion based on your specific goals.
If you’re already subscribed you should have received a separate email with the prompt.

The Takeaway

Strategic Obsession is how you learn 10x faster and more effectively.

After your 60 days, ramp down your intensity for 2 weeks.

Rest.

Then start again with new skills or repeat the same set to deepen further.
It’s a feedback loop of intense immersion and building.
Creating more progress in 60 days then you would make in 6 months of scattered focus.
Each cycle compounds.

The copywriting sharpens your philosophy.
The philosophy deepens your branding.
The branding gives meaning and structure to it all.

This is how you build an irreplaceable skill stack.
Over time you see how all your skills intertwine and you build your own unique perspective.

DM me.
Let’s talk.
What’s your first Strategic Obsession cycle going to be?
What skills are you developing?

‘Til next time.

Don’t betray yourself.
Don’t scatter.
Don’t tunnel vision.

Strategically obsess.

Become irreplaceable.

— Edamame Dufflebag

I’ve been working on a letter about Strategic Obsession for this week but it’s not ready.

I want it to be as valuable as possible for you and if I rush it it won’t hit the mark.

It deserves another few days of work.

Instead I wanted to talk about a couple concepts that changed my life.

Things that fundamentally shifted my understanding of reality and my ability to get what I want and live a fulfilling life.

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1. All things are one thing

A couple years ago I was dealing with severe burnout, health issues, and a list of personal problems like deaths in my family, and close friends cutting me off for situations I wasn’t a part of.

I left my day job due to these issues coming to a breaking point.

I spent every day on the couch watching Netflix and rotting away.

After a lot of suffering and some reflection I realized I had to make a change.

That lead me to a few books.

Rick Rubin’s ‘The Creative Act’ was the first.

If you haven’t read it it’s a book about how there’s an underlying creative force in the universe and when you create something you are tapping into that infinite source of creativity.

This lead me to more spiritual books like ‘I: Reality and Subjectivity’ by David R. Hawkins.

These books brought my awareness to the underlying patterns of reality.

When you pay close attention you will recognize that all things are individual expressions of one thing.

The coffee mug on your desk and the YouTuber in the video you just watched are actually the same thing pretending to be different things.

There are theories in quantum physics that support this idea but my goal in this letter isn’t to convince you of anything.

It’s to open your mind to concepts that will change your life.

You have to do the rest.

There are things that you can only confirm through experience and this idea is one of them.

But if you consider this long enough you’ll see the interconnected nature of all things.

You’ll realize you have the power to affect the entire universe with your actions because you’re not separate from anything else, it’s impossible to be separate.

Everything you do affects the whole.

2. Language literally creates your reality

We experience life through defining things.

I am this and you are that.
A chair is a chair so it’s not a table.

If we couldn’t define things we would have no way of separating between good and bad, useful and useless.

Language is a container for definition.

The word chair has nothing to do with the actual object.
It’s just a sound we chose to define the object.

So instead of saying “let me sit on this four legged wooden construction.”

We say “let me sit on this chair.”

Here’s where things get interesting.

The chair wasn’t a chair until you called it one.

Before that it was just an object.

A collection of atoms floating in space.

If you had no understanding of what a chair was, say you’re an alien who has no legs and lays on the ground like a snake.
A chair would just be a thing with no clear meaning.
It could be anything to you.
But once you call it a chair you experience it as a chair.

Now it’s for sitting.

This is how your whole life works.

The way you define money determines how you experience money.
The way you define love determines how you experience love.

You can change your experience of life by changing how you choose to define or interpret it.

This isn’t magic.

It’s not like you can say this chair is now an elephant and make that true.

Your brain still knows it’s a chair.

But you can start to realize that most of what you experience isn’t based in what actually happens.

It’s based in how you define it and interpret those definitions.

Over time, your definitions become less rigid.

You start experiencing reality as it is, not as you’ve labeled it.

The Takeaway

These two concepts changed my whole life.

They are foundational to your experience.

If you think about these long enough they can create meaningful transformation.

If you want more letters like this—deep, conceptual, existential—let me know.

DM me.

Let’s talk.

Strategic Obsession next week.

‘Til then.

Don’t betray yourself.

All things are one thing.

— Edamame Dufflebag

There’s thousands of accounts that you’ve liked online that you’ll never think about again.

Because 90% of creators get one thing wrong.

They think their content is about them.

They think it’s about who they are, what they know, or what they do.

It’s not.

Their ideas don’t stick because they don’t change you.

Their worldview doesn’t combine with yours in an effort to elevate your consciousness.

Bringing you closer to your goals and highest potential.

Most creators share information.
And that’s why most of them are ignored.

The ones that leave a meaningful impact transfer consciousness.

Think about any influential creator.

You’ll realize that you don’t remember the tips they gave you.
You remember their worldview.
How they think about life.

Their perspective collided with yours and upgraded your understanding of your own life and reality.

Mastering this skill is the only way to create impactful work.
Work that spreads on its own because people don’t just like your ideas, they adopt them as theirs and share them with the world.

Last week I introduced the concept of consciousness transfer in “The death of skill (and what comes next).”

Read it here

This week, I’m showing you exactly how to use it.

What people actually want

In order to transfer consciousness you first have to understand the psychology behind why it works.

People are predictable.

Individuals may not be, but humans in general are.
We follow certain patterns and rarely have the awareness required to break out of them.

Here’s why that’s important.

Most people think they want money, love, and a good physique.
But what they really want is security, certainty, and connection.

• Money is security in disguise

• A good physique provides certainty of health, safety, power and status

• Love is just the deepest form of connection

This is how everything is.

Everything we want in life can be distilled into a list of basic human desires.

“Man admires and often tries to exaggerate whatever characteristics nature may have given him.”
— Charles Darwin

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The point is this.

We’re all trying to solve the same problems.

The monk and the billionaire want the same thing they just go through different routes to get it.

When someone watches or reads your content, they’re not just there to hear your thoughts.
They’re there to solve their problems.
Your job is to help them go from one state to the next.

State 1:

Being the person who has the problem

State 2:

Being the person who solves the problem

Here’s how to use consciousness transfer to do that and leave an impact on your audience.

Transformation through transfer of consciousness

When you consume content you’re not hearing words you’re absorbing consciousness.

This newsletter is a piece of my consciousness.

It’s colliding with yours and you’re absorbing whatever you resonate with and believe will solve your problems or help you live a better life.

That’s the power of consciousness transfer.

My goal is not to tell you what I think.

It’s to show you why what I think matters to you.

Your perspective is a collection of all the things you believe about life.

All the ways you’ve solved the existential problems we all face.

Your content transfers that perspective.
When someone consumes it, they’re not just learning your methods, they’re absorbing how you see the problems.

That’s what sticks.

Understanding yourself is the key to understanding your audience.
What you want is the same thing that they want.

If you have problems with:

• Money

• Health

• Business

• Relationships

• Spirituality

So do they.

Your unique perspective (or consciousness) is how you solve these problems.

You will solve your money problems differently than someone else would.
You solve them by building an audience.

Someone else solves it by climbing the corporate ladder.

Same problem, different consciousness.

The key to making impactful content is showing the person who climbs the corporate ladder why your solution of building an audience is important to them.

That’s how your consciousness transfers.

You create a bridge.

If you don’t show them why it would be beneficial to them your perspectives will bounce off each other.

It’s not about saying “building an audience is the best way to make money.”

It’s about saying “building an audience is how you build a strong network, resume, and portfolio.”

This is a language the person climbing the corporate ladder understands.
Your perspectives will be more aligned and they will start to absorb how you view the world.
Their perspective shifts and they start to adopt your vision, leading them to the same interests you have and investing deeper in your worldview.

This is just one example to paint a picture of what it means to transfer consciousness.

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Here’s how to actually use this to create your content.

1. The Toolkit

You start by collecting consciousness.

You need to curate your own perspective by collecting the perspectives of others.

Then you keep what works for you and create your own way.

You’re going to solve your own problems by gathering as many perspectives as possible.

Consume:

• Books

• Podcasts

• Interviews

• Music

• Art

• Movies

• Shows

Let them absorb into your own consciousness.

Collect ideas, beliefs, tactics, mental models, skills, and abilities.

Stress test them against your own reality.

Don’t just write them down actually put them into action and see what works for you.
Document your process.
Keep what works and delete the rest.

After testing so many avenues and taking pieces from each you start to create your own unique solution or perspective on solving the problem.

This is how you differentiate yourself.

You build content around how you think, not just what you think.

2. The Target

Once you have your own unique worldview you have to understand how people will actually adopt it for themselves.

Most creators make the mistake of niching down.

That’s why they’re forgotten.

They pick very specific topics to talk about so they can target a certain audience of people.

The problem is that it only attracts people who are already interested in that topic.

They’re missing the point.
Your goal isn’t to teach people about a topic they’re already interested in.

They can go to ChatGPT for that.

Your goal is to share how you see the world because that’s what transforms people.

They don’t need to be interested in your niche to care about it.

You can show them why they should care about it.

That’s what they remember.
They don’t remember you for a video about “My Morning Routine.”

They remember you for a video about “How I Stopped Wasting Time and Started Building Something That Matters.”

Same video but one speaks to more people.

Here’s the point.

You want to start with broad problems that everyone faces:

• Money

• Health

• Relationships

• Meaning

Then show them your specific perspective on how to solve those problems.

This is how you build an audience of people who care about how you think not what you know.
This teaches people who are 2 steps behind you.
It shows your expertise and foundational knowledge to people on your level.

3. The Transfer

Now that you understand how to meet people where they are (universal problems), you need to understand how to guide them into your worldview (specific solutions).

This is where your pillars come in.

Your pillars are the specific ways you solve those universal problems.

They’re not random topics.

They’re the lens through which you see everything.

They come from the systems and solutions you developed by curating your consciousness.

For example:

My 3 pillars are branding, creative direction, and self-development.

These are things I discovered solving my own problems and gathering different perspectives to create my own.

I wrote a newsletter recently titled

“How to get what you want out of life.”

That’s a universal problem.

But the newsletter’s actually about how to create a personal brand as a self-development tool.

You use that tool to become the person who gets what you want out of life.

Read it here

Notice the pattern:

• Universal problem

• My unique perspective on it

• My specific solution related to my pillars

Pick 3-5 topics that you’re interested in the most.

Things you can talk about endlessly.

Things you discovered while curating your consciousness and exploring your own solutions to problems.

These become the lens that you view universal problems through.

This is how you’ll help your audience go from:

State 1:

Being the person who has the problem

to

State 2:

Being the person who solves the problem

The Takeaway

If you want to create ideas that spread themselves you don’t transfer ideas.

You transfer consciousness.

You curate your own unique worldview.

Show people why it matters to them using universal problems.

And transfer your worldview to combine with theirs and improve their lives using your perspective.

DM me your biggest takeaway from this.

Let’s talk.

‘Til next time.

Don’t Betray Yourself.

Curate your consciousness, solve your problems, transfer the solutions to the world.

— Edamame Dufflebag

The safe route is simple.
Four years, one degree, retire after forty years of work.
Society’s golden ticket.
The education system.
You’re convinced that once you put in some effort the rest of your life will take care of itself.
Marriage, kids, promotions, vacations.
The good life is guaranteed.
This is the path that most people take.
In a world where conformity’s well rewarded, perspective means nothing.
Why develop your own point of view?
There’s no sense in a risking a sure thing. But the tables have turned.

You spent 4 years and $100k on a degree to get a job that ChatGPT can do in half the time.
Companies are replacing employees with $20/month AI subscriptions.
Even the creator economy, a safe haven for those who didn’t want the traditional route, is being taken over.
AI didn’t level the playing field.
It made the playing field irrelevant.
New creators pop up daily flooding feeds with AI generated content.
Same scripts, captions, and strategies.
They’ve outsourced their creativity to a chatbot hoping to get rich off a prompt. Destroying their own potential in the process.
But AI doesn’t have a point of view.
It pulls from the same pool of information for everyone.
That’s the flaw but it’s also your opportunity.

I’m going to show you why your point of view is the ultimate leverage and how to use it to create work that lasts while everyone else chases the next AI tool.

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Perspective is all you have

Humans are wired for problem solving.
We subconsciously process millions of internal and external stimuli every second.
Scanning our environments for danger and potential rewards.
Even as you read this your brain is on alert.
Quietly scanning your surroundings for any potential threats and sifting through these words for any bit of information that might solve your problems.

Unlike our ancestors who survived mainly in the physical plane of existence.
Fighting bears, chasing deer, and surviving the dangers of their climate.
We survive mainly on the mental and spiritual planes.
Fighting political battles, chasing an income, and surviving the dangers of social media consumption.
Here’s how this relates to your perspective and how you’ll use it to create meaningful work with or without AI.

Your perspective is your filter for reality.
It determines the problems you see and in turn try to solve.
Your perspective is made up of all your experiences, thoughts, beliefs and interests. This is how you interpret your reality.
That’s why when you see a giant block of marble you see a piece of stone.
But when Michelangelo saw a block of marble he saw the statue David.
You haven’t been exposed to the same type of knowledge, experience, or beliefs that he was.

The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts.
― Marcus Aurelius

The marble registered in your mind as just another part of your environment.
He saw the marble as a problem to solve.

Our lives are shaped by the problems we see.
It determines the games we decide to play in life.
Musician, nurse, entrepreneur.
It also determines what we create and how we create it.
Different artists have different styles because they have unique perspectives.
Everything that passes through their mind into reality goes through this filter of perspective.
And that’s the problem with AI.

It doesn’t have a perspective.
When you ask ChatGPT “what do you think about this idea for my podcast on enlightenment?”
It doesn’t send it through a unique perspective.
No lived experience.
No specific knowledge shaped by years in a particular domain.
No beliefs formed through failures and breakthroughs.
It doesn’t think about it at all.
It pattern matches, synthesizes, and contextualizes what ever words you said.
Combining related words to create an answer that seems relevant to what you asked.
It gives universal supportive answers unless told otherwise.
That’s why you see the same AI captions all over Instagram.
It’s giving everyone similar answers.
Unless you prompt it with your unique perspective.
You have to transfer your consciousness from you to it.
This is how you create unique meaningful work that impacts the lives of others.
You learn to transfer your consciousness to others in a way that benefits their lives. This is how originality actually happens.

Originality through transfer of consciousness

Young architects can change the world by not building buildings.
— Virgil Abloh

When you read a book you’re not just reading the authors words.
You’re adopting their point of view.
They’re transferring a part of their consciousness to yours.
You internalize whatever resonates with you the most and make it a part of your own perspective until it’s challenged by a new one.

Your individual perspective is constantly interacting with the perspectives of others.
That’s why you resonate deeply with certain creators and bounce off others.
If their perspective is too far from yours, there’s no bridge.
No transfer.
No adoption of their ideas into your worldview.

Understanding this concept is the key to:

• Creating original work by curating your perspective intentionally

• Building your audience based on your perspective

• Making your work impossible to commoditize (even by AI)

• Creating work that actually changes people’s lives

You can’t commoditize consciousness.
But you can curate it, refine it, and transfer it.
So how do you actually do this?
How do you curate and deploy your perspective to create work that stands out?

1. Curate your inputs

Your perspective is shaped by what you consume.
The media, relationships, beliefs, environments and thoughts you surround yourself with.
That’s why most people feel uncreative, unfulfilled, overwhelmed, and anxious.
Because they’re mindlessly consuming whatever society and algorithms feed them and it slowly shapes their consciousness in a way they never intended.
This leaves them accepting paths in life that don’t benefit them.
They benefit the goals of others.
The ones shaping their consciousness.

That’s why curating your inputs intentionally is so important.
What you consume becomes what you create.
You don’t just want to create original work.
You want to create meaningful work.
Work that impacts and benefits the lives of others.
This is the most effective way to build a loyal audience, monetize your perspective, and leave a dent in the universe.

First solve your problems.

You probably already have been but now you’re going to solve your problems to create work that changes your life and the lives of others.
Whatever problems you face in life.
Whether it be money, relationships, health, spiritual, creative problems.
Start improving them and as you go document the things that impact you.
Read books, listen to podcasts, buy courses (or find free ones).
Make it your mission to find your own unique way to live a good life.
You can watch cartoons, scroll social media, binge watch movies.
But do it as research not mindless consumption.
There’s lessons in everything you see.
The universe is holistic and there are patterns everywhere you look.

Along the way you will discover:

• People

• Books

• Movies

• Shows

• Systems

• Frameworks

• Ideas

• Inspirations

That shape your consciousness.
This is your unique perspective.
All the things that make you you.
Inside these things are your hidden values and aspirations.

Write down a list right now of things that have impacted your life and shaped who you are.

1. What were you obsessed with between ages 5–17?
   (Anything that was impactful to you. TV shows, hobbies, games, art styles, music videos, toys, sports, niche interests.)

2. Who are your biggest inspirations?
   (Name as many people, or even fictional characters, you can think of that have inspired you deeply. Those who have changed the way you think and see the world, art, life or yourself)

3. What are you obsessed with right now?
   (Anything that’s impactful to you now. Domains of work, TV shows, hobbies, games, ideas, philosophies, music videos, sports, niche interests.)

This is the beginning of your Brand DNA Map.
As you continue to improve your life continue adding to your map.
This is a guide for conscious consumption of content that is authentic to you.
It’s a creative archive filled with references for content ideas, camera angles, colour palettes, aesthetic tones and themes, typography, writing styles, values, and philosophies.
This is how you gain a deeper understanding of yourself and weaponize your perspective to start separating your work from others.

Here’s the template for my Brand DNA Map (hit duplicate in the top right corner) if you want structure and guidance.
It also includes a prompt to turn your map into a Brand Blueprint.

2. Transferring Your Consciousness

Your Brand DNA Map is a snapshot of your consciousness.
Now comes the important part.
Transferring that consciousness to others through your work.
This is how you’ll start creating meaningful work that can’t be commoditized.

Every great leader, artist, or brand has a higher purpose.

Apple:

Apple’s goal wasn’t to sell phones, it was to ‘Think Different’.

Virgil Abloh:

Virgil’s goal wasn’t to make clothes, it was to create open source design that empowered other creatives.

Dan Koe:

Dan’s goal isn’t to give you harsh life advice, it’s to help you become future proof.

The product is the vessel. The perspective is what transfers.

Your vision becomes your content’s guiding principle.
Every piece should move your audience toward that same vision.
Imagine the highest version of yourself.
The one who has all the skills, knowledge, and confidence you want.
As you solve your problems and get closer to this goal you create content that helps others do the same.
You transfer your vision of what a good life means to them.
You show them why it matters and how it can help their life just like it helped yours.

Every piece of content you make should be embedded with your taste, beliefs, thoughts, ideas and values.
As you learn new things that improve your life use that as content.
Teach or be an example of those things for others.
Your perspective will collide with theirs and over time the ones who resonate will adopt your perspective.
This is how you build a loyal audience who has a deep connection with your work and helps transfer your consciousness from one person to the next.
Leaving a lasting impact on the world.

The Takeaway

AI commoditized skill.
But it can’t replicate consciousness.
This is your leverage.
As others chase the next best AI tool, you’ll be creating meaningful work.
Transferring your consciousness to your audience for impact.
Prompting AI with your unique perspective for speed.
The one thing you have that no one else will ever have access to is your perspective.
Treat it like it’s the most valuable thing you have.
Because in the age of AI, it is.

Start your Brand DNA Map today.
DM me and share what you discovered about your perspective.
I want to see what meaningful work you’ll create.
’Til next time.
Don’t Betray Yourself.
Curate your inputs, and control your own consciousness to leave an impact on the world.

— Edamame Dufflebag

Someone once asked Naval.
“How do you make more friends?”
He replied.
“Become someone people want to be friends with”.

It really couldn’t be more simple.
Or more complicated.
But the truth always contains both sides of the coin.

We all want comfort, status, community, wealth.
You grow up as a kid looking up to your idols.
Athletes, artists, entrepreneurs, thought leaders.
Your older siblings, your parents.
They seem to have the confidence that comes with having everything you’ve ever wanted.
They’ve got it all figured out. And when you grow up you will too.

But soon enough you realize that’s not their reality.
Most of those people are actually miserable.
Still endlessly searching for the life they’ve always wanted.
Settling for a life they don’t really want.
Or worse have no idea what they wanted in the first place.
They never explored their endless potential deeply enough to know the depths of what life has to offer them.

This is the trap we’re all fated to.
Accepting a life shaped by society’s expectations.
Or living an unfulfilled but comfortable life that’s only half of our potential.

Unless you take control of your life and learn to become.
Become the type of person who gets what they want.

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How to get what you want out of life.

I’ve always felt I was meant for more.
Meant to bring some sort of value to the world.
Like I had something to give that no one else could.
I think deep down we all feel that way. And it’s true.

My whole life I’ve seemed to have this cycle where things will go really well for a couple years and then go horribly for the next few.
I kind of just learned to expect it but for some reason I always thought things would get better one day and just stay that way.
Obviously that’s wishful thinking.
After my most recent set of shitty years (2021-2023) I decided to make a change.
I decided to figure out why things were so bad for me and how I could get what I wanted.

The following is a list of principles and steps that I’ve discovered through studying successful people and applying those lessons to my life through trial, error and iteration.
And I started getting what I want.

Here’s how to get what you want.

1. Curiosity killed the cat (but made the man rich)

The foundation of knowledge is curiosity.
If you’re not curious about how to get more out of life you’ll just accept whatever you’re given and wonder why things never worked out.
This is what gets most people.
And for most of my life, until recently, what got me.
They think they’re going to live their lives the way they are and one day, someone or something will hit them in the face and their dreams will come true.
Their life will do a 180 and they’ll know how to get rich, find a partner, build a business, be at peace.

Nothing in the universe works that way. All things change through process:

• Plants grow through photosynthesis

• Businesses grow through marketing, sales and distribution

• Babies learn through repetition and immersion

The process of becoming the person that gets what they want takes change.
It doesn’t happen from a singular event.

If you want peace of mind you have to be curious about peace.
Study meditation, spirituality, philosophy.
Test what you learn, see if it works for you, keep what works and delete the rest.
This is the process of acquiring knowledge and skills, then iterating on them.

Getting what you want out of life starts with curiosity.
To get what you want you have to know what you want.

Living a life you hate isn’t the worst thing you could do.
The worst thing you could do is live a life you never questioned long enough to discover you hate it in the first place.
You have to start questioning everything in your life.
Just like a 3 year old who endlessly asks “why?” even when you’ve given them every answer you have.
Because what is possible for your life comes from what you know is possible.
Get curious about why you don’t have what you want and then get curious about what skills you need to get it.

2. How to know what you want

Awareness + Focus = Attention

Everything you experience in this life happens within your attention.
If you’re not focused on it, for you, it’s effectively not real.
What you give your attention to determines your life.
It’s how you build skills, interests, relationships, projects, everything.

When you get curious about something you pay attention to it.
Pay attention long enough and it eventually becomes part of your life and identity.
Things you focus on grow.
You focus on your relationship long enough and you go from friends to partners to married.
You focus on your physique long enough you go from skinny to jacked.
You get the point.

When you don’t consciously use your curiosity and attention to benefit your own life, it will slowly be taken over by the interests of others.
You give hours of attention to what your boss wants, a few more to your friends and family.
Then just general life, cooking, cleaning etc.
Whatever’s left most people waste on binge watching TV because they’re too exhausted to focus on something that would contribute to their goals.
This is how life gets away from you, by accepting your defaults and not being conscious of where your attention goes.

Our attention is constantly being hijacked.

• Social media

• Netflix

• YouTube

• Responsibilities

It’s all taking up the most valuable resource you have. And there’s only so much of it.

The mind craves order.
That’s why Netflix and doom-scrolling are stealing peoples lives.
They are structured games for consciousness to play.
Your life is made up of thousands of these games.
Reading, playing video games, hanging out with friends.

The games you play the most become part of your identity.
I’m a reader, I’m a gamer, I’m social.
But when Netflix, doom-scrolling and being a people pleaser start to take up most of your attention, you become someone you never meant to be.
You end up anxious, overwhelmed and lost. But that’s exactly where you start.

“All I want to know is where I’m going to die, so I’ll never go there.”

— Charlie Munger

The easiest way to figure out what you want is to know what you don’t want.
It’s called inversion thinking.

Start a list and add:

• Activities that you do but don’t know why you do them (ex. spending time with people you don’t really like)

• Things/people in your life that leave you frustrated, anxious, overwhelmed etc.

• Anything you do out of obligation and not interest

• Picture the worst life you could end up living and write it down

This is your anti-vision.
It’s everything you don’t want out of life.
These are the games taking up your attention that could be given to things that would build the life you want.
Once you have this you have direction.
Start replacing the things on this list with your genuine interests and vision of your dream life.
Next to every item of your list write something you could replace it with.

This is where you start to discover what you want.
But it’s not just about writing lists and creating vision boards.
You have to have skin in the game.
Life is lived in the arena.
So how do we take our vision and turn it into a life?

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3. Skin in the game

Purpose is created not discovered.
The universe doesn’t come with an assigned meaning.
But that doesn’t leave it meaningless.

In the book Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari he talks about how Humans became the dominant species because they’re the only animal capable of imagination.
We’re the only creature that creates ideas of myths, fairytales, and things that don’t exist.
This is how society was formed.
We imagined stories about laws, cultures and religions.
This is gave us structure and meaning beyond lions eating us and the winter leaving us frozen.
It gave us a reason to escape the lions, and help each other survive the winter.
That’s how the game of mankind was formed.
And it’s one you’re playing right now.

You get what you want out of life by deciding what’s meaningful to you.
You use your curiosity to discover new possibilities.
You use your attention to focus on those possibilities and see what they have in store. Then you imagine structured games that make them real in your life.
Games that give you reasons to grow, take risks, and connect with others.
Then you experiment to test your skills, knowledge, and ability.
Once you’ve developed enough awareness of what’s working for you and what’s not you repeat the cycle.

If you want to get rich, you don’t sit around waiting for money to fall in you lap.
To get something you’ve never had you have to become someone you’ve never been. The current version of you isn’t incapable of having wealth.
You just lack the relevant knowledge, skills, and experience to make more money than you are right now.

Here’s the process of becoming the person that gets what you want:

Get curious

In this example, if you want to make more money you have to get curious about why you may not be making the money you want.

Is it a problem with opportunity to move up at your job? Do you lack the skill to apply to higher paying jobs? Are you in a situation where you were never taught how to make money for yourself?

This was the case for me. I had skills in music production but lacked the knowledge and confidence to apply to a studio or network and build a business for myself online.

Explore your situation, everyone’s different. Then you get curious about what you’d need to learn to make more. What skills would you need? What types of people would you need know?

Skin in the game

Now use your attention to create a project (game) that gets you what you want:

1. Goals

Set a large goal. Big enough to make you a little uncomfortable. For example $10,000 a month. For most people that’s a lot of money.
Then break your large goal into smaller goals.
Instead of $10,000. Start with $100 or even $10.
Whatever you think would be easy or at least doable. It should be a challenge but not overwhelming.
As soon as you do that your mind should start flooding with ideas of how to make $10 dollars.
It becomes a game.
How do I get what I want?
You won’t be able to make $10,000 immediately.
The point is to give you a long term focus.
Because becoming who you want will take time and sustained attention.
Not days.
Real change takes months at least.

2. Seek new knowledge

Start following accounts that teach you what you want to know.
Get engaged in the community online.
Watch tutorials, buy a course, read a book, ask someone on social media.
Start seeking how you’ll achieve your goal.
What you’ll need to know.
What you don’t know.
And what you’ll need to do.
New habits, beliefs, behaviours, connections etc.

3. Experiment in public

Life doesn’t happen in a vacuum.
You need to build your project in public.
Start posting about what you’re doing.
Don’t get lost in tutorials, and endless learning.
Knowledge without action is useless.
The ability to act on what you know and get what you want defines intelligence.
If you don’t act on what you’re learning it’s pointless.
Once you act you learn how valuable your knowledge really is and that gives you direction on what to learn next.
Building in public holds you accountable.
It gives you reason to learn more and improve.
It connects you with a community of people who have the same goals.
It creates the path from who you are to who you’ll become.
Don’t just imagine doing something new.
Start doing something new.
Learn as you go, one step at a time.
Documenting your journey helps you build a personal brand.
It becomes your resume, portfolio, progress tracker, network and school.

The Takeaway

This is how I’ve turned my life around.
I’ve improved my health, intelligence, physique, peace of mind, finances and relationships.
You can do this with every area of your life.
You don’t have to do it all publicly but you should do some of it publicly.
The opportunities it could bring into your life are endless.
To improve your health:
Make a game of diets and exercise.
To improve your spirit:
Meditation and faith.
To improve your creativity:
Video editing, painting, singing, content creation.

Anything in your life will improve and grow if your curious, focused and create a structure of learning, building and improving your abilities.

DM me.

How are you going to start becoming the person who gets what you want?
I’d love to follow your journey.

‘Til next time.
Get curious, pay attention and get some skin in the game.
Don’t betray yourself by wasting your potential.
Question your defaults and become who you want to be.

— Edamame Dufflebag

That’s why most people accept lives they don’t want.

They either end up endlessly dreaming of someday.

Or resenting everyone and everything, and blaming their circumstances.

That’s what makes imposter syndrome so dangerous, it gives you every reason to submit to a ‘safe’ but unfulfilling life.

High agency and self belief is a common trait among the most successful people.

They don’t fold under the pressure of what others think.

They make decisions based on their own worldview and trust their instincts.

Doubt doesn’t determine them.

Imposter syndrome isn’t something to submit to but navigate consciously.

But when you grow up in a system that values safety, conformity, practicality over self expression and trust in unquestioned knowledge.

It’s so easy to give in.

Standing on the risk of your own decisions becomes very shaky ground.

It takes courage.

But here’s the thing.

Courage is a copout.

If you need courage to believe in yourself, you never really did.

It’s not about you.

It’s about how you relate to your environment.

Imposter syndrome isn’t proof you’re a fraud.

It’s proof you’re judging yourself through a broken context.

It’s impossible to believe in yourself when the weight of everyone else’s experience and opinion are more valid than your own.

Courage won’t save you.

Clarity, consistency and context will.

Let’s look at how imposter syndrome starts and then I’ll show you how to escape it.

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We judge the content of our lives.

Judgment rules our life.

It’s a tool for survival, that’s how we evolved.

If we can’t judge what foods are safe vs. poisonous we’ll never eat anything out of fear.

Or we’ll eat the wrong thing and die.

We’re judging everything all the time.

You judge:

• Your best friend as someone who’s funny, encouraging and fun to be around.

• Your job as an unavoidable responsibility.

• The sushi spot down the street as your girlfriends favorite place to eat.

• Bears, guns, tornados and the enemy as dangers to be avoided.

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This is how we know what’s safe, where we belong and what we like.

But we also judge ourselves:

• I am a reader.

• I’m awkward.

• I believe in justice, discipline and that the original Ninja Turtles movies are a perfect trilogy.

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This is how our identity is formed.

Through judgement.

But judgement is a double edged sword.

If you’re not using it consciously it will destroy you.

This is how people waste their entire lives.

By being dictated by other peoples judgement.

Escaping imposter syndrome isn’t about judging yourself less or just not caring what others think.

It’s about changing your relationship with judgement.

For example take Virgil Abloh.

He was trained as an architect, not a fashion designer.

When he entered the industry, critics dismissed him as an outsider, he wasn’t a “real” designer.

He used that judgement as fuel.

He built Off-White, redefined the line between streetwear and luxury, and eventually became Artistic Director of Louis Vuitton Menswear.

Successful people aren’t immune to insecurity, they just realize that not all judgements are valid or accurate and then act anyway.

Imposter syndrome is a result of a judgement system that turns on you.

Lacking self esteem and agency in your own decisions is the quickest way to never accomplish anything meaningful.

If judgement’s the cause how do we take control of our judgement, our lives and create meaningful work?

Perspective = Context

We’re constantly filtering our reality through our unique perspective.

All the experiences, beliefs, and knowledge we’ve encountered.

That’s how we decide how to judge things.

Based on the context we’ve been exposed to throughout our lives.

If you’re drowning in debt money’s a prison.

If you’re rich money’s a tool for freedom, leverage and opportunity.

Money didn’t change, the perspective did.

If you’ve never trained the gym is pain, failure, and potential embarrassment.

If you’re a bodybuilder it’s empowerment, strength, and community.

The gym didn’t change the perspective did.

You see the pattern here.

When the perspective changes the judgement changes.

What we experience isn’t based on what we see but how we see it.

Identifying as an awkward person isn’t a bad thing.

Look at Nathan Fielder.

He’s built an entire career with multiple critically acclaimed shows from being awkward.

But if you see being awkward as weird and uncomfortable.

You’ll judge yourself as weird and uncomfortable.

This will change how you behave.

You’ll avoid parties, social settings, job and business opportunities, creative expression.

This is how perspective and judgement start to dictate your life and reality.

This is imposter syndrome in action.

You make a judgment about yourself based on your context of what successful people look like.

And decide your not them, you’re a fraud.

Here’s the truth in reality you have no idea what a successful person looks like.

No one does.

How to escape imposter syndrome

1. Content vs Context

I discovered this concept in a David R. Hawkins book.

I believe it was ‘I, Reality and Subjectivity’.

It changed my life, my view on myself and the universe.

Over time I went from valuing everyone else’s opinion over mine.

And waiting for my life to happen but never making it happen for myself.

To starting over with my content and brand, building from my own worldview, beliefs and interests.

Not following trends but creating my own way as the foundation of my one person business.

If you focus on this concept long enough it will destroy your imposter syndrome.

Here’s the idea.

Content

This is anything you focus on.

In this example, we’ll use a can of beans.

Context

Everything else.

So everything that exists other than our can of beans.

To understand the true nature of our can of beans you have to understand its entire context.

This includes everything that happened to bring this can of beans into existence since the beginning of time.

And everything that will happen in the infinite future because of its existence.

You’d have to know where the beans were harvested, where the metal from the can was mined, how the mine was formed, how the workers in the factory shaped the metal into the can.

Even what each worker ate for breakfast in order to make it to work on time.

If they didn’t the factory wouldn’t open and the can couldn’t be made.

This can go on and on forever.

Your context shapes your perspective which shapes your judgement.

The point is, in order to truly understand something we need full context.

But that’s not how it works, we judge everything, ourselves and others through our own limited context.

Based on our very specific life, experiences, beliefs etc.

You’ve only experienced .00001% of reality but you use that to interpret 100% of it.

You judge the can of beans based off your experience and knowledge of beans.

Every successful person you look up to you only see through what you know about them.

You know the polished, successful, curated version.

You don’t know the years of struggle, doubt, failure, and work that built them into who they are now.

Their success is a result of everything in their life, their entire context, which you’ll never understand.

You do this with everything and everyone, including yourself.

You judge yourself from your current context, but not your future context.

The version of you who’s building the business isn’t the version who has built it.

Current context:

• You’re filled with doubt, shame, insecurity

• You don’t know what you’re doing

• Surrounded by others success

• Don’t have enough experience to have proof of your abilities

• You feel like a fraud

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Future context:

• Has confidence in their skills and abilities

• Has experience and a stack of proof

• Knows taking risks is how you get ahead

• Realizes doubt isn’t a sign to stop but a sign you’re extending you comfort zone

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Imposter syndrome happens in-between these two stages.

It comes from having to bridge the gap of becoming someone new.

When you start you don’t have enough evidence to identify as someone who knows what they’re doing.

It doesn’t mean you’re a fraud it means you have work to do.

Success happens in stages.

The Success Loop:

1. Learn

2. Develop skill

3. Complete projects to stack proof

Each time you complete the loop you develop more skill and stack more proof of your success.

As you progress, take risks and your skills and abilities grow turn into someone who identifies with that success.

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2. Zoom Out

If you are constantly suffering from self doubt and criticism.

And avoid taking risks and growing because you’re unsure.

It’s not because you’re incapable, it’s because your context is broken.

You have to change your context to change your judgement.

If your life is filled with people, experiences, thoughts and beliefs that make you feel:

• Frustrated

• Trapped

• Misunderstood

• Insecure

That’s a limiting context.

That dictates what’s possible in your life.

It will control what opportunities you see, how you feel about yourself and how you see others.

In order to escape imposter syndrome you need to fill your life with examples of:

• Success you want to have

• Skills you want to acquire

• Beliefs you want to adopt

• Knowledge and experience that increases your sense of possibility

You do that by consuming the right media, changing your environment and meeting new people.

Learn about new cultures, lifestyles, skills, creative domains.

Get a wider view of what life could be.

You’ll never have a new path if you can’t see a new path.

3. Consume on purpose

To build a new worldview because that’s what we’re doing here.

We’re creating a new understanding of what it means to be successful.

You have to create a new understanding of the world and the possibility it holds.

Here’s how you start changing your context and stop feeling like a fraud.

Choose 5 people you admire the most (This can be more than 5 that’s just a start):

Make these people who have success in their field and lives you want to emulate.

Create lists of their content, this can be books, movies/shows, interviews, lectures, music.

The more the better, start consuming from this list regularly, learn what makes these people impactful to you.

Whatever you admire about them says something about you.

It’s either a trait, skill, or characteristic you already have or one you want.

This is evidence that you’re more successful than you believe, you’re more like them than you think.

The more you surround yourself with them the more you’ll start to identify with these traits.

Use AI:

Start a new chat with this list of people ask:

• Here are 5 people that I admire (insert here): Notice patterns between these people, what kinds of skills, traits and principles do these people exhibit and what does that say about what I want out of life?

• What specific skills should I learn to build that kind of life?

• What should I surround myself with to build that kind of life?

• What should I avoid or cut from my life and surroundings to build that kind of life?

This will give you a map for building a life that supports your goals and success.

Surround yourself with media, people, habits, environments, ideas and beliefs that serve the life you want to build.

The Takeaway

Imposter syndrome’s not evidence you’re a fraud.

It’s evidence that your context is limited and your perspective is broken.

When you start to fix what you know, surround yourself with and believe.

You’ll realize success isn’t something you achieve but a process you’re always in the middle of.

DM let me know what kind of work you do, what your goals are and how your context will help you get there.

We can talk about the journey of success.

CONNECTION.

COMMUNITY.

‘Til next time.

— Edamame Dufflebag

It's the reason you'll never have one worth protecting.

Obscurity isn’t safety, it’s wasted potential.

You want to be the best version of yourself, at least I hope you do.

You want the money, relationship, community, security, confidence, peace of mind.

But the path is unclear.

Finding your way seems like something everybody but you is able to do.

People who know half as much as you have secure incomes and stress free lives just from posting consistently.

Everyone you see online has a life of freedom, options, and comfort.

And every day life just seems to pass you by.

The vision of who you know you could be slowly slipping away.

To realize your potential, you need an outlet for your potential.

One that builds:

• Money

• Relationships

• Knowledge

• Self expression

• Mental and physical health

Your dreams will die if you keep them locked in your mind.

Building a personal brand isn't about marketing or getting views.

It's about giving your potential a place to live and grow in the world.

Creating a public space where your ideas, skills, and perspective can develop and find their community.

I’m going to show you why building a personal brand is the only option if you want to live a truly fulfilling life, how it’s affected mine, and how it will change yours.

Side note:

I share a system near the end of this newsletter for how to build a meaningful personal brand.

Every section of this newsletter is an example of the principles in that system.

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You already have a brand

Your brand is what people think when they think about you. — Chris Do

That idea changed everything for me.

After years of chasing success, I was burned out and ready to quit content and music entirely.

If my brand is what people think about me, what are they thinking?

I had been shamelessly self promoting for years, rarely ever making it about my audience.

About how who I was could help them.

I was focused on ‘success’, on the outcome, on getting what I wanted.

Humbled and a bit ashamed, I couldn’t unsee what I saw.

Everything became about being someone worth supporting.

Not “how do I make it?”

But “how do I become someone worthy of making it?”

The most successful people, are successful because of who they are, not what they do.

If your brand is what people think about you.

Then your brand is your public identity.

People are already thinking something about you.

None of us can avoid it.

This isn’t a bad thing.

But if you’re not building your identity on purpose you’re missing opportunities.

You could even be hurting your own potential.

We live in a digital age.

Half your life is lived digitally.

Our culture lives on the internet.

Personal brand is the new resume, portfolio, reputation, social proof, community membership.

If you’re not involved you’re missing out on half your potential.

If you’re only consuming online, rather than creating and bringing value.

You’re being influenced and shaped, rather than evolving and improving.

Escaping the herd

The minute we choose to measure something, we are essentially choosing to aspire to it. — Youngme Moon Different: Escaping the Competitive Herd

Most people cringe at the thought of having a personal brand.

They hear content creator and think “Creators are superficial attention seekers”.

That’s why most creators fail.

People have confused attention with success.

This creates an environment where everybody’s chasing attention and copying whoever gets the most of it.

It’s called competitive convergence.

Competitive Convergence: When you compete with someone or aspire to have their success. You start to behave more like them.

Who you become is a result of what you chase.

Chase views, you’ll do whatever gets the easiest views.

Because it’s not about how you get them it’s about if you get them.

That’s why people resent most creators because they resort to manipulation and superficial tactics to steal our attention.

They lack substance and actual value that rewards their audiences attention.

Focusing on the process (why you get views).

Is more important than focusing on the outcome (if you get views).

Here’s what outcome focused personal brands look like:

• Picks whatever niche is most popular

• Relies on trends and tactics

• Lack a real value offer solely monetizes their views

• Has no coherent worldview or values

• Their content is surface level relying on attention and engagement hacks to boost their metrics

Here’s what process focused personal brands look like:

• Creating and sharing your own worldview and values

• Niche based off genuine passion and interests

• Sharing your thoughts, beliefs, ideas and skills to find a community that relates

• Improving peoples lives through your specific knowledge and value offer

• Self development through testing and growing your own ideas and skills in public

• Relying on quality and substance of content to engage and build their audience
  
  

Being process focused gives you a system for improving your own and others lives.

Because what creates a loyal audience is being someone worthy of attention.

You do that by becoming the highest version of yourself.

Being an example for others and offering them a path to better themselves.

Reaching your full potential

Here’s a process focused system for building a personal brand that helps you become the highest version of yourself.

The version that develops the skills, values and worldview necessary to grow and serve the right audience.

Think of your life and personal brand in two stages.

Inputs and Outputs.

Inputs:

What you use to learn new things, build new habits and characteristics.

ex. Books, Podcasts, Shows, Movies and People that you admire and inspire you

Outputs:

What you use to test and solidify these things in your life and reality.

ex. Writing, Speaking, Networking, Creating, Building things that use the new skills, habits and characteristics you’re building

1. Inputs

Choose your focus

Your life is a project for realizing your potential.

Your brand is your outlet for that potential.

Your life consists of 5 non-negotiable areas.

• Body

• Mind

• Community

• Business

• Spirit

You need to be building these all the time.

These things come with life, they can’t and shouldn’t be avoided.

The things you learn improving these areas also fuel your content.

But there’s also areas you get to choose.

Interests:

No matter what they are, music, stoicism, Japanese design philosophy, 90’s cartoons.

If you don’t already know what you love your mission is to discover it.

You have a unique perspective and it’s hidden in your interests.

If you want help discovering and curating your influences download the Living Source Library.

It’s a free notion template, but what it really is, is a creative system for archiving, consuming and curating your biggest influences and building your brand and creative work.

Which is what comes next.

Curate and Consume

Your interests fuel your brand and the person you’re becoming.

It’s where you’ll acquire all your new skills, habits, characteristics.

And where all your content will come from.

Find people, books, shows, podcasts, activities that relate to your interests.

These should be content and people you admire for a deeper reason than just pure entertainment.

They embody values, traits, aesthetics or characteristics you admire.

Create a list of these people and content (or add them to your Living Source Library).

This is your personal creative archive.

Consume this content daily.

The goal is to learn, study and absorb content that relates to who you are and who you want to be.

You do this by immersing yourself in your influences and interests.

You become whatever you consume the most.

This is how babies learn to speak.

You don’t teach them how you just expose them to language enough and they eventually absorb it.

When applied to your reality all your interests can connect and improve multiple areas of your life.

That’s where Outputs come in.

2. Outputs

Skin in the Game

You learn and become by doing, not thinking and watching.

You’re going to start putting yourself out there and talk about your interests online.

You talk about everything, your specific interests but also how you’ve improved other areas of your life like body, mind, community business, spirit.

Pick a platform, whether it’s video (ex. Instagram), audio (ex. Podcast) or writing (ex. Substack/X).

Start posting using these methods, whichever ones appeal to you.

Teaching:

Teach other people what you’re learning and what’s helping you grow.

This can be related to anything, your specific interests, creative, spiritual, business growth, etc.

Teaching others helps you truly understand what you’ve learned, it forces you to think about whether what you know is true and useful.

Entertain through Creative Expression:

Whether you make music, paint, design, take techniques and styles from your influences and make your own version.

Take what you consumed and create for yourself, this is how you learn and evolve.

Inspire through Action:

Take action on your influences.

If you’re inspired by Video game design but don’t design games.

Actually design a video game and document your process on social media.

You’ll develop a new skill, gain deeper appreciation for influences, start a potential business, show others they can take action and build something themselves.

The Medici Effect

True originality comes from the spaces in between ideas.

There are underlying principles that connect everything in life.

All domains relate to each other, you just have to be able to see how.

Pay attention to themes that tie your list of interests and influences together.

You’ll notice patterns between them all.

When you can start to connect those dots you start to make truly meaningful work.

Frans Johansson calls this the Medici Effect.

When you step into an intersection of fields, disciplines or cultures, you can combine existing concepts into a large number of extraordinary new ideas. — Frans Johansson The Medici Effect

A personal brand is your map, system and outlet for your full potential.

Putting yourself and your ideas out there is how you reach it.

Don’t miss the opportunity to create something only you can create.

And become the version of you, you didn’t even know could exist.

The world will benefit from what you have to offer.

Strive to be your highest self.

Share it with others.

Thanks for reading.

DM me and share what you thought.

We can discuss these ideas together.

CONNECTION.

COMMUNITY.

‘Til next time.

— Edamame Dufflebag

The world is choosing them for you.

And if the world is choosing them for you.

You’ll never feel truly authentic.

As someone looking to create something meaningful.

I know you’re tired of all the performance.

Every piece of content you see is someone who’s:

• Real

• Unique

• Has it all figured out

But it feels less like they’re being authentic.

And more like they’re trying to prove they are.

It’s that feeling you get.

When someone won’t stop talking about how honest they are.

It just feels like they’re lying.

And that’s the problem.

It’s not just that other creators are faking it.

You start questioning yourself.

Do I look like that?

Is my content performative?

Is this even original or real, or am I just saying what everyone else is?

This is what happened to me.

I was making music and content because I wanted the success that I saw others had.

And it led me to doing the same thing everyone else was and eventually burning out and losing myself.

Today authenticity is necessary but it feels like it’s harder than ever to find it.

It’s even become hard to know what being authentic feels like.

We’re creatures of habit.

What we consume, our media, environment, social circle, daily habits.

It shapes who we are subconsciously, none of us can avoid it.

You’re being programmed 24/7.

And the truth is, if you’re not the one doing the programming.

Authenticity is impossible.

Here’s how to take control of your life and creative work in a way that makes authenticity inevitable.

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The Agency and Awareness Issue.

You have to realize that what you already know and what you’re already doing is actually an impediment to your full potential. — Naval Ravikant

Here’s the truth that no one sees.

The world doesn’t have an authenticity problem.

The world has an agency problem.

It’s impossible to be yourself, if you never chose who you are.

It’s the reason you’re fed up with self improvement ‘be yourself’ content.

Because it’s not about you, it’s about how you can be more like them.

But what’s right for you is something you find for yourself.

Choosing who you are comes from two things.

Agency and awareness.

To really understand how to be authentic you have to understand how to choose who you are.

If you don’t you’ll always end up feeling like a copy of someone else.

Authenticity = Agency + Awareness

Identity.

Your identity or ego exists to keep you safe.

It’s like a sandbox for your consciousness to play in.

It says I’m this kind of person.

I’m from Toronto.

I make content and I love coffee.

I like listening to Clairo and Pierre Bourne.

That becomes who you are.

A collection of beliefs, habits, ideas, preferences, experiences.

But beneath it lies untapped potential.

The potential to adapt and become a higher version of yourself.

The version that’s sure of their choices.

The one who’s no longer swayed by the advice of so called experts who have all the answers but never lead you to your own.

The self and awareness.

In spiritual teachings like those of Ramana Maharshi, Mooji, J. Krishnamurti and others.

The goal is to transcend this sense of identity and find ’the self’.

The self is who you are before you are anything.

It’s the underlying awareness that is beneath all the ‘things’ you ‘are’.

So if you say ‘I’m from Toronto’

Ramana would say ‘Who is the one who knows they’re from Toronto?’

If you were to drop all the things you identify with what would be left is pure awareness.

Awareness helps you see what you chose and what was chosen for you.

The more awareness you have, the more agency you’re capable of.

They come hand in hand.

If you’re not aware that you only started making productivity content because it was trending.

You’ll never see doing it as something that’s causing you stress, burn out, and existential crisis.

But I don’t want you to abandon your identity.

I want you to use awareness to question and choose it consciously.

Because your authenticity isn't found in following your intuition, or trusting your gut, or listening to your inner voice.

It’s about learning what that even means through relentless awareness and questioning your own choices.

That’s where agency come in.

Identity before choice.

Your identity starts to form before you can read.

You unconsciously absorb your parents, friends, and cultures worldview.

It becomes the foundation of who you are.

Most people grow up in environments where:

• Standing out

• Thinking for yourself

• Choosing your own path

Are labeled as dangerous, unreliable or strange.

We’re punished for speaking our minds, talking back, going against the grain.

This becomes our default.

It's why you second-guess every creative decision.

You're trying to express authenticity through someone else's value system.

One you accepted before you knew you had a choice to create your own.

You’re still unconsciously accepting it through:

• The content you consume

• The people you compare yourself to

• The expectations you put on yourself but never question

Here’s how you escape the endless imposter syndrome that keeps you stuck, insecure and exhausted.

You create your own world view.

You curate your own influences.

You use your awareness and agency to pick what shapes who you are.

The Law of Chosen Identity

Authenticity is not discovered it’s chosen.
Awareness reveals what shaped you. Agency decides what you keep.

True authenticity doesn’t come from being who you are.

It comes from choosing who you are.

That’s where influence becomes your greatest tool.

Influence as output.

Everything that you learn is like your just accruing someone else’s DNA — Virgil Abloh

Your perspective is the most unique thing you have.

But if you don’t shape it intentionally you’ll always end up feeling like a fraud.

Those who use agency to shape themselves are the ones remembered as authentic.

People like Virgil, Tyler the Creator, Naval, Andre 3000.

They’re unique not because they simply reject the norm.

It’s because they choose their own way and the norm becomes irrelevant.

The Source Code System.

Your identity is your source code.

The foundation of everything you create.

You need to choose your own Source Code to be authentic.

You need a curated system of influences that actually represent what you value, believe, and feel.

I used to make content and music with the goal of ‘making it’.

So I repeated what I saw working for others.

If it worked for someone else, it would work for me.

But that’s not identity, that’s submission.

The content I made felt detached, like it lacked gravity.

I burned out trying to find my way.

That’s when I took a step back and found a system that worked for me.

The Living Source Library.

I designed this system for conscious authentic creation.

To create content, art, brand and develop ideas based in my own influences and inspirations.

As well as consciously consume rather than doom scrolling and being a slave to my environment.

I’m going to show you how to create your own, how it works, and how implement this system in your life and creative work.

If you want guidance and structure you can download my template for free just hit subscribe below and you’ll get your template in an email.

It comes with an AI prompt that creates your own Creative Clarity Blueprint with your:

• Content pillars

• Brand voice and aesthetics

• Audience avatar

• Brand positioning

Based on your own unique influences.

It also has a tutorial video that walks you through everything.

If not here’s how to create your own.

1. Awareness.

Write down a list based off these three questions.

• What did you love from the ages of 5-17?

• What are you obsessed with or love now?

• Who are your biggest influences?

Add as many as you can think of that feel true to you.

Don’t add ones that you like because someone else does.

This is who you are

This is your creative source code.

It holds the keys to your creative identity.

It’s a map that leads to all your values, aesthetics, preferences, choices.

This is how you gain awareness of who you actually are without distractions.

You need to question it if you want to be authentic.

Take a look at what you do and what you enjoy and ask yourself why you like it.

Is it because you chose it or just because it’s all you know?

If you can’t find a reason for why you like something you probably don’t actually like it.

It’s just your default.

2. Connections.

Now you have a map for content, creative decisions, creating your own unique worldview.

Your library will reveals themes.

You’ll see just how much you like comedy over action movies.

Things like this jump out at you.

But as you look deeper you start to see more specifics.

I really like under dogs, what does that say about me?

If a theme keeps showing up that’s a reflection of who you are.

To make this more concrete and show you how valuable this system can be.

Over the next 7 days I want you to only consume things from your library.

Start to write down connections you notice between your different influences.

These connections are a map of your values and aesthetics.

As you get familiar with your list you’ll start to see how seemingly unrelated influences connect.

That’s where the real power comes from.

For example:

My reference earlier to Tyler the Creator and Naval.

Most people wouldn’t see a connection between the two but I see many.

• Their refusal to be boxed in.

• Their commitment to finding their own way.

• Their ability to use influences from many things to create something new.

And you can see how that relates to what I’m talking about.

What I value, embody and want to be more like.

I share that in my writing and it’s authentic to who I am.

It comes straight from my Living Source Library.

Being able to make these connections separates what you create from the endless noise online.

Because originality and authenticity come from the intersections of your unique influences.

And that’s where synthesis becomes crucial.

3. Synthesis.

Originality comes from the spaces between existing ideas.

It comes from combining things in an unexpected way.

This is how you make it your own and create work that feels authentic.

By synthesizing ideas others don’t.

Your Living Source Library is a road map of your worldview.

No one but you has this.

It’s what you should be referencing for all your creative decisions.

Here’s something you can try so you see how powerful this tool can be:

Start your next creative project using 5 specific influences from your library.

Use these 5 influences to create the different elements of your project.

For example if your 5 influences were:

• Ed, Edd and Eddy

• Pulp Fiction

• Dumb and Dumber

• Rick Rubin

• Nathan Fielder

The elements you use could be:

• Colour pallet (The bold lines and washed out colours from Ed, Edd and Eddy)

• Camera angle (The low angle trunk shot from Pulp Fiction )

• Idea (A video inspired by Rick Rubin about embracing the creative process)

• Theme or Mood (The deadpan humour from Nathan for You)

Mix and match ideas and inspirations as much as you can.

Use camera angles from Pulp Fiction and Dumb and Dumber.

Use colours from Ed, Edd and Eddy and Pulp Fiction.

Use creative ideas from Rick Rubin and comedic ideas from Nathan Fielder.

The more you combine different domains, ideas and techniques the more your own unique voice and worldview starts to emerge.

The Takeaway

This is how you start to develop and discover your own voice.

You use awareness and agency to find your true authenticity.

Don’t just be who you are, choose who you are.

This is how you escape the noise of all the recycled performative content.

Choose for yourself.

Trust yourself.

DM me and let me know what influences are in your Living Source Library.

The more we inspire each other the more we realize our full potential.

CONNECTION.

COMMUNITY.

‘Til next time.

— Edamame Dufflebag

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You’ve been lied to.

Most people struggle their whole lives.

Striving for more freedom.

More money, more love, more options.

Never realizing more is why they’re miserable.

We live in the era of never enough.

We’re no longer starved for choice.

The internet gave you the world.

Type a prompt, create infinite content.

Start a business overnight, build a following, relationships, change lives.

You have more potential.

More power.

More possibility than ever.

Freedom’s inevitable.

But it doesn’t feel like liberation.

It feels like a prison.

You have more than you need but we’re never satisfied.

Somehow it’s not enough.

It’s never enough.

Everyone has access to everything and everyone else.

You should be happier than ever.

But you’re not.

Here’s what no one tells you.

Choices are killing you.

Freedom is keeping you stuck.

We live our lives with endless options.

But we never actually decide.

When you can do everything, you never do anything.

You never stay with one thing long enough to know if it’s for you.

You feel like you don’t know who you are.

But you’ll never find your voice if you don’t know how to decide.

Decide who you are.

Decide what you love.

Decide what you want and where you’re going.

You think you’re procrastinating.

You feel like you’re behind.

But you’re not lazy or unfocused.

You just haven’t committed.

It’s called the paradox of choice.

The more options you have the harder it is to commit.

“Learning to choose is hard. Learning to choose well is harder. And learning to choose well in a world of unlimited possibilities is harder still, perhaps too hard.”

― Barry Schwartz, The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less

Constraints create clarity.

Constraints create conviction.

Constraints create connections.

Most people never succeed because they think they can shortcut commitment.

They think choosing one thing means cutting off everything else.

But the moment you choose is when the options become endless.

Research shows people who commit to fewer goals achieve more.

Because focus compounds effort.

When you decide to start a business you’re mind is flooded with ideas about business.

When you act on those ideas you see their results.

This gives you more ideas about:

• What to do next

• What you did wrong

• How you could do more

• How you could do better

Most people wait years before starting.

Years before creating.

Years before building their business.

Years before asking someone out.

Because thinking about it feels safe.

It feels like there’s no risk involved.

But thinking is dangerous.

Because thinking isn’t doing.

But it feels just like it.

Decision fatigue sets in.

The longer we put it off.

The longer it’s real in our minds.

But never in reality.

If we decide.

If we make a move, we may fail.

We lose possibility.

But decisions come with stakes.

No risk means no reward.

No risk, no reality.

“Knowledge that does not bear a risk cannot be called knowledge.”

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Skin in the Game

This is why the people who take risks.

Even small ones.

Learn faster, grow faster, and build resilience.

Failure teaches you things safety never will.

If you can’t:

• Lose it

• Destroy it

• Fail at it

• Feel stupid about it

It’s either not real or you’re not trying hard enough.

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Creativity comes from constraints.

All progress comes from constraint.

Before the telephone, talking to anyone outside of your town was a difficult task.

That was the constraint that created the telephone.

When you define your problems and what matters to you, you start to see solutions everywhere.

Artists, entrepreneurs, and inventors all know this.

The tighter the box, the more creative the solution.

Life is born through decision.

Through action.

Nothing happens if nothing happens.

Here’s what 90% people get wrong.

Most people believe knowing something comes from thinking about it.

But the highest form of knowledge is becoming.

Knowing comes from doing.

Thinking ≠ Knowing

Doing = Knowing

The point of knowledge is action.

When you decide to do something you get to see how it lives.

How it actually works in reality.

A blind person can understand the concept of colour and never see it.

But if they saw it, you’d say they learned something new.

Because now they have the knowledge of experience.

Not just what they’ve been told.

Once you decide.

Once you experience it, it becomes real.

You have a foundation to make more decisions.

One choice leads to more choice.

One act leads to infinite possibilities.

This is the foundation for true creativity.

And if creativity comes from constraint, then so does identity.

To create the life you want, decide who you are.

If you don’t decide:

• Who you want to be

• Where you want to go

• What you want out of life

• What matters to you

You’ll never be fulfilled.

And when it feels like you have infinite options, deciding feels impossible.

You need structure.

You need a system for making choices.

One that leads you to a more fulfilled life.

One that tests your decisions and knowledge, in reality not theory.

You need the right constraints that force you into becoming exactly who want to be.

To embody the identity that acts, not thinks.

That builds, not plans.

That evolves and succeeds.

That shows others an example of what living a good life means.

That’s what most people miss.

Constraints don’t just make creativity possible.

They make identity possible.

If you never decide you can never become.

And the best tool for constraint in today’s world?

A world where you can:

• Reach millions with a single post

• Build meaningful communities

• Create entirely new forms of income

A brand.

Branding is essentially your public identity.

It’s what people think when they think about you.

When you create a brand and make content it forces you to make decisions.

It forces you to think about who you are and what you think.

When you create products and services it forces you to bring value.

Which forces you to think about and decide what’s valuable to you.

You have to decide what you want to say.

Because you are sharing it with the world.

Brand = Identity Under Constraint

A personal brand isn’t just for marketing, it’s for you.

All acts are acts of expression.

Everything you do is communicating who you are.

When you have a conversation you’re communicating through more than just words.

Through:

• Eye contact or lack of

• Through body language

• Through tone

This happens in everything you do.

The content you make, the things you write, the art you create.

It’s all communication.

Creating a brand gives you a system of communication.

One that connects you to the world by being who you are.

One that can make you a living through expressing yourself.

When I decided to focus on building a brand it changed my life.

It changed my perception of myself.

I had to choose what I wanted.

Which made me really think about what I thought about life.

About business, relationships, meaning, purpose.

I started analyzing my own thoughts more.

Is this something I’d be proud to say in my content?

Do I believe this enough to share it?

Do I know this enough to show others the way?

If I built this product would it be valuable?

What do I find valuable?

It became self discovery, self expression, self improvement.

All through what I call:

The Constraint Loop Principle.

This is a principle you can apply to almost anything in life to make better decisions.

To create a better life, brand, relationships, business.

1. Decide

2. Act

3. Analyze

4. Iterate

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1. Decide

Make a choice and get in motion.

Don’t sit in the middle.

If you don’t know what to do just move.

“Action cures fear.”

— David J. Schwartz, The Magic of Thinking Big

If thinking about it is causing you anxiety or overwhelm,

You need to make a choice and just get in motion.

When you act it allows you to eliminate your options.

Instead of endlessly comparing, considering, thinking.

You get to know what it feels like and then decide if it’s for you.

Decision isn’t death.

It doesn’t mean your life is over.

Decisions aren’t permanent even though they can feel that way.

Yes, some decisions may have real repercussions but that’s how you learn.

That’s how you grow and become.

Failing is better than doing nothing.

Nothing results in nothing.

Failure results in data and experience.

You only fear failure because you lack momentum.

When you’re in motion, and you can see beyond right now,

Failure is simply part of the process.

A step on the path, not the death of your dreams.

No risk, No reality.

2. Act

Once you decide, you have to actually do.

Act on your decision.

Life is lived in the arena.

Get in there, do your job.

“You can’t be in the conversation and not make conversation.”

— Virgil Abloh lecture at Columbia GSAPP

This is how you gain information.

You become the person who knows what to do and where to go next by doing.

You gain the knowledge of experience.

You understand the nuances of life and different disciplines by being a part of them.

This is how you become the person who:

• Starts the business

• Builds the brand

• Builds relationships

• Knows who you they are

This knowledge cannot be gained by watching, studying or thinking.

Reading a map is very different from navigating a city.

Knowing where the finish line is, is very different from running the race.

The most powerful habit is doing.

Bias towards action.

This is how you gain momentum.

One act leads to the next.

Action is the door to possibility, not theory.

3. Analyze

Thought is useless on it’s own.

So is action.

But when you pair them it leads to a fulfilled life.

That’s the path to solving any problem.

Once you act, you need to analyze your experience.

How did it make you feel?

Did it result in what you hoped it would?

If not do you still feel motivated, inspired, fulfilled by your choice?

You have to think about how it benefited you.

Don’t do things because you were told it was the way.

Consider if it’s actually beneficial for you.

And don’t dip your toe in and think you know everything.

Give your decisions breathing room.

They need time to reveal real information.

“Failure need not be permanent in a world in which all evils are due to lack of knowledge.”

—  David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity

Failure is a tool for growth.

The process of becoming who you are is never ending.

Analyzing your failure and success is how you learn who you are.

What you like and what’s meaningful for you.

You can’t know what you truly want if you don’t also know it’s opposite.

• Love without hate is meaningless

• Wealth without poverty is pointless

• Success without failure doesn’t exist

This cannot be avoided.

If you don’t know both, you don’t truly know.

4. Iterate

Once you’re in motion.

It’s about deciding what works, what doesn’t, and trying again.

It’s not about getting it right.

Iterate.

Try a new angle, new perspective.

Explore all your options.

This is how you live creatively and create your own unique worldview.

Start with the basics.

Then experiment.

Connect ideas from different domains and disciplines.

The idea that a brand is the best self development tool—

Came from combining ideas from spirituality, branding and design.

I was going through a hard time in life.

Health issues, deaths in the family, best friends ghosting me.

This lead me to spirituality.

Through spirituality I learned:

• About identity and the ego

• How overidentifying with things leads to suffering

• How your identity is just a concept and it can be molded to live a happier life

Personal branding taught me brand is a public identity.

It’s what people think you.

Then I learned about design mindset from Virgil Abloh.

How everything has a purpose and needs a reason to exist.

I combined those concepts to use personal branding as a tool for:

• Self expression

• Designing my identity

• Becoming the person who lives the life I want

“The idea is not to do something new, it’s to do something more personal.”

— Virgil Abloh

Don’t just do anything.

Do your own thing.

It’s how you create meaning in your life.

Iteration compounds and let’s you see how different things connect.

And eventually you learn that everything connects.

This is how you live a fulfilling life and bring real value to others.

By taking what you learn and making it personal.

Making it your own.

And letting other people see if it works for them too.

When you run through this loop enough times.

You start stacking proof.

Your decisions compound, your actions create results.

Your analysis deepens your self-awareness.

Your iterations make you unstoppable.

It’s a system for becoming.

The Takeaway

The world has never been more confused.

We have more options.

But more options come with more noise.

More doubt.

More indecision.

But it’s also never been easier to discover who you are.

If you want to live a life of meaning.

One that’s fulfilling and your own.

You need to decide.

Set your constraints and test your reality.

Build something that holds you accountable.

That connects you to others and expands your possibilities.

Building a brand is how you discover yourself.

Express yourself.

And solidify meaning in your life.

In next weeks YouTube video for this newsletter.

I’ll show you the system I created to track my influences, design my identity and create my brand.

It’s called The Living Source Library.

It will be a free tool you can download.

DM me and share the decisions that are reshaping your life.

The more we decide together, the more we design the future.

COMMUNITY.

CONNECTION.

‘Til next time.

— Edamame Dufflebag

The answer to all your problems.

At least that’s what we’re told.

Without it you’re meaningless.

With it you’ll never fail.

As a creator, you see it everywhere.

Endless new accounts.

Same promise, same noise.

Another ‘hook formula.’

Another ‘30-day plan.’

Another ‘boost engagement’ hack.

New face, same fix.

Where do you end up?

Forgotten.

Lost in the scroll.

Why try at all?

It’s been done.

Standing out?

Knowing your purpose?

Why you matter?

It all feels impossible.

And, worse, pointless.

So you’re left endlessly searching for answers.

But what if the answer isn’t an answer—but a question?

Here’s the truth.

Answers are overrated.

Doom scrolling for the next solution to our problems has never been easier.

Answers are everywhere.

But you’ll always get the wrong answers—

When you ask the wrong question.

I wasted years of my life chasing my goals through everyone else’s lens.

Endlessly spinning my wheels doing things because they were the “answer”.

Never stopping to think that I might be asking the wrong questions.

That’s when I watched some lectures by Virgil Abloh.

Virgil once said:

“An output for me has to have a reason to exist… Every output, does it need to exist? It’s okay to say no in that context.”

This one insight changed my whole life.

Virgil taught me to think about life as a design problem.

Not ‘what’s the answer?’

But ‘why should this exist at all?’

Do I need this part in the video?

Is this thought helping me become who I want to be?

Do I actually like this, or do I like it because other people do?

Why do anything at all?

I began to question all my actions.

Why was I making music?

Why was I making content?

As a creative it’s so easy to feel like we have to have endless output.

If we’re not posting daily we’re forgotten.

But there’s something worse than being forgotten.

Being known for something you don’t even believe in.

Why do anything at all?

Everything serves a purpose.

And all actions have a result.

When I applied this lens to my creative work, everything became clear.

My choices became my own.

My voice became unique.

My actions aligned with my goals.

Not everyone else’s.

Most people fail because their actions aren’t aligned to their desired results.

The worst part is they have no clue.

If you can’t answer why your content or brand should exist—

It shouldn’t.

If you don’t know why you’re doing something—

You should stop.

Because it’s most likely because someone else told you you should do it.

The best brands know why they exist.

They know what they make and who they help.

Their goal isn’t to ‘get views’.

It’s to bring value to their audience.

Because in the long term that’s what brings in the right views.

And builds the right audience.

When you design something.

The first thing you start with is nothing and a goal.

You have a goal and you have to turn nothing into something that achieves the goal.

So the first thing you need to decide is what’s my goal?

Why am I making this thing?

And when it comes to your brand, content and life you should be doing the same.

Don’t ask: ‘How do I gain more followers?’

Ask: ‘Why should anyone follow me at all?’

Don’t ask: ‘What should I post today?’

Ask: ‘Does this video even need to exist?’

Don’t ask: ‘How many views did it get?’

Ask: ‘Did the video give the value it was meant to give?’

Brand = Identity

A brand is your public identity.

Good brands know who they are and show up that way consistently.

The best brands design their output to achieve their goals.

You wouldn’t buy from Nike if they sold shoes one week and hotdogs the next.

Good brands build trust through consistency.

It’s not about views it’s about letting your audience know—

This is who I am, this is how I can help, this is why you should care.

Then you show up that way consistently over a long period of time.

That’s how you build trust and create something meaningful that improves peoples lives.

Good branding is knowing who you are.

Here’s how you do it:

The Existence Framework

This is a creative framework that can be applied to your brand, content or anything else when it come to creation and creativity.

1. Define

Why does this exist?

What problem does it solve by existing?

Who is it for?

You need to define your goals and your purpose.

This will give you direction.

Nothing exists in a vacuum, everything has a place, value and purpose in the right context.

Good brands are clearly defined and know who they are, what they do and who it serves.

So where is your place and who are you here to help.

2. Distill

Once you define your reason to exist you give it structure.

This is where your brand identity takes shape.

You need to determine your 4V Brand Structure:

• Values: What’s important to you and what you want to express and share with the world

• Voice: How you’re going to show up in your content and in person. Energy, tone, style of communication

• Visuals: The visual representation of your values and voice, how your content looks aesthetically.

• Vehicles: Your products and services (paid and free). How you deliver value to your audience.

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3. Design

Now you take your 4V Brand Structure and use it as a guide to design your world.

This is how you’ll create your content, products and culture.

Good brands create cohesive environments through their message, content, communication, products.

It all tells the same story and lives in the same world.

Everything you do says something and you want it all to have the same voice.

4. Deliver

Put it out.

Show up.

Consistently.

You need to be delivering value and putting yourself out there over and over again.

Branding is about building trust.

You build trust through consistency.

Consistency in presence but also in how you show up.

Ship, iterate, repeat.

Put the thing out, get feedback, revise, improve and do it again.

You get better through doing it.

Your audience trusts you when they know they can rely on you to show up when you say you will, and be who you say you are.

The Takeaway.

Purpose isn’t the answer.

Purpose is the question.

If you ask better questions you’ll get better answers.

Don’t accept things at face value.

Try it and question it.

Question everything and determine if it’s right and true for you.

If it isn’t it’s useless and it’ll hurt you in the long run.

Think for yourself.

Your voice and perspective are your most valuable assets.

That’s where your value is.

DM me if you want help asking better questions and finding the best answers for you.

COMMUNITY.

CONNECTION.

‘Til next time.

- Edamame Dufflebag