This E-mail is part of a 3-part series where I send out previously archived newsletters. This message is not complete & I am not reviewing it. I was not able to send it weeks or months ago, so this is all that remains. Proceed at your own risk!

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I’ve currently been hanging out in Sofia, Bulgaria for a couple of weeks now and have been completely disorganized.

Between Bulgaria’s famous rakia, amazing friends, and amazing hikes I’ve had some time to reflect on life. If you want it all, you need something to hold it all together. Here’s the secret ingredient:

Habits/Routine

Health, wealth, love, and happiness (spirituality) are deemed to be the “core 4” for ultimate life fulfillment. I would agree on that. Achieving all four of these items is another story.

It seems that everywhere I go, someone usually has 1 of the pillars, is working on another, and is disregarding the other one “until later.”

For example you’ll meet the obsessive businessman focusing solely on wealth, with an already decent health, that completely neglects their friends, family, and relationships.

Another archetype is the cool party guy that is always going to events and doing things, with an okay health, but is completely poor because he has no time for business or education (or he spends all his money on drinks).

Who Am I?

In 2016 I was the social businessman focused solely on wealth, with an OKAY social life, and totally neglecting my health. I did try to keep health in mind, but I had subconsciously given up on some health complications I was having.

Right now I’m focused primarily on health, my wealth is great already, and my social life is my second priority. Simply put I’m focused on: health -> love/friends/fun -> wealth. My wealth situation is “actualized” for the time being, or rather at a level of acceptance. I’ve future ambitions, but pushing forward on wealth creation is just plain stupid with my other areas of life requiring work.

I’ve found some avenues to fix my health issues, which were exacerbated by a snowboarding accident, and it’s taking some time but I’m considerably better than I was 6 months ago. I’d love to keep making more money, it’s easily my strong suit, and everyday it’s a struggle to not accept a new business offer or open a new store.

My biggest problem now is that a social life is also quite important to me- it helps with health, and otherwise I’m so bored I want to start making money. Either that or I end up playing video games- something I promised myself I wouldn’t do in the magical city of Sofia, Bulgaria.

Parties here go ALL NIGHT LONG. There is no 2AM fluff here. There are no ID checks (or a drinking age really). Going out at night is easily the best way to make more friends and have hilarious adventures. Unfortunately, poor sleep hurts the health.

I may experiment with a “night schedule” by placing tin foil on my windows so I can black-out my room and sleep 0330 – 1130 or something like that. There’s just something about waking up with the sun that feels right though, and if I commit to a morning schedule, it means I can’t go out once. One late night and my sleep is fucked for weeks.

If you’ve any experience with sleep experimentation, hit reply now and let’s talk- I’ll help you with something!

The Purpose: You Want It All

People are so focused with health, wealth, or love that they often neglect the key ingredient that mixes these things together: routine and habits. Traveling the world makes this particularly hard, however I’m not an expert on that because before I traveled to Europe I didn’t exactly have a proper routine to fit into here. I’ve heard that if you’ve a super solid routine that it improves jet lag recovery drastically.

Eventually your willpower will run out. That’s not pessimistic or unrealistic. That’s reality, otherwise you’d be so rich & healthy you’d fly out to meet me in Bulgaria tomorrow. You know it, I know it, so stop watching motivational videos and “you can do it” fluff. You need a subconscious system of handling success because you can only consciously handle so much.

You need a routine to accomplish all three items. You can really only focus on one, with a minor focus on the other, and maintenance on the third (or neglect if you haven’t actualized one already). In my situation I’m focusing on improving health, barely improving my social life, and leaving my wealth on “maintenance mode.”

One way you can do this is by applying the 80/20 principle, which is that 20% of efforts yield 80% of rewards & 80% of efforts yield 20% of rewards. Hustle hard in your business to build it up, and once you’re making your desired income level, find a way to reduce your hours and work intensity so you can focus on other things.

Once you’ve eliminated all the fluff, you need to get the remaining items into as much of a routine as possible. The goal is to make the activity “unconscious.” You shouldn’t be able to do it asleep, but it should be like driving for an experienced driver: sometimes you don’t even remember how you arrived at your destination!

One at a time, win the war, not the battle

You must focus on one at a time as well. I’ve made too many mistakes by trying to have it all NOW. You essentially overload your brain with too many new tasks, and so it shuts down and accomplishes nothing.

What I am doing now is setting my daily goals with the month in mind. Rather than every night writing a “to-do” for the next day, I think of who I’d like to be at the end of the month. I then write down “to-do’s” on a sheet of paper across the entire month.

Rather than cramming in lots of to-do’s and chores and goals into a day, I allow myself to handle it slowly. This is so key here. Too often you see people crush life for 3-5 days as they “have it all,” and then they relapse into previous patterns + habits and lose it all.

If you’re coming from a place of disorganization and exhaustion too, then know that next month isn’t going to change: you’re going to feel just as shitty. Work with your fatigue, not against it. Allow yourself to derp, splurge, or fuck up here or there.

Will you actually be happier?

Now onto the philosophical side: I’ve been wondering about this. I’m not an expert and can’t say anything with complete certainty, but here is my personal experience of the world so far:

I think that in regards to health – wealth – love there is a certain “base limit” which has to be achieved for you to be happy. Any less and you’re kidding yourself. This “base limit” is not high either. In wealth for example it could be making just enough to pay all of the bills steadily, and save a few hundred dollars per month. You’re not rich, perhaps not even free yet, but it’s at a certain level of acceptance.

Also by “acceptance” I don’t mean in that you stop or give up. Acceptance means that you can be satisfied with it, but still desire more. You can do so from a place of abundance and relaxation rather than a need to fix it. Don’t the new-age quacks tell you otherwise: you can be happy going from “satisfied” to “extremely financially abundant + rich.”

Once you hit your base limits for health, wealth, and love, then you have no more excuses to be unhappy or obsessively continue on one of the paths. It’s an endless rabbit hole. For me for example I find myself sometimes compulsively focusing on wealth-creation even when I vowed to myself that I should not grow the business. There is no limit to your wealth, health, or love.

I have to focus on my health before I can continue growing my business. Once I have the other two down to a “base limit,” I’ll have no more excuses for dissatisfaction. Again, this doesn’t mean that you’re giving up. I’m satisfied with my wealth because it’s above the “base limit,” but I’d still love to grow it. The point is once you’re at your base limit, you should continue growing/improving, but not from a place of scarcity or neediness (ie. needing more income to validate your self-esteem issues).

If you do experience unhappiness still, it means you have to literally focus on “happiness.” This is the spiritual aspect- meditation, presence, awareness, etc. By neglecting this point you may find yourself in an endless trap of always searching for more money, the better relationship, or the best health optimization.

But hey, keep in mind I haven’t hit my “base limit” on all three yet. So take this shit with a grain of salt, and don’t quote me on anything! This is just a theory, based off of personal observation + experience.

Personal Life

I’m currently in Sofia, Bulgaria, and I’m itching to surf. I’m feeling that after my time’s up here I should either go to a beach and surf 24/7, or I should move to Berlin, Germany.

We’ll see what happens as my health improves. As much as I love Europe, I think I’ll probably end up on a beach surfing somewhere as soon as my health comes back. Sometimes I walk down the street and realize I’m not even feeling any pain! But then that realization draws out a bit of pain (damn you stupid brain).

I went for my first jog since December 2016 a few days ago, and it was amazing. It was during the first snow too so it was quite a magical experience. It was short, but it still felt great to be back on the road kicking dirt.

My primary issue in life is in figuring out my social situation here and balancing that out with health, while actively avoiding wealth creation. It’s clear that my strong suit is in making money, and when I allow myself to let loose again I’ll probably hit some mind-blowing numbers. I already know “how to do it.”

Like I wrote earlier, the sleep situation is an issue. The deeper issue is the fact that I haven’t connected deeply with anyone here yet. I think that because I’ve allowed myself a couple too many drinks, and allowed my sleep to fall off, I’ve been a bit more down (also negatively impacting my social life).

Friends are so key to fulfillment and it all kinda feels pointless because I’ll be leaving in 1-2 months anyways. I’ve the power to literally fly out tomorrow to anywhere in the world and take no financial hit too, which amplifies the loneliness.

My main focus is in getting a schedule or routine of sorts that helps set me up for success. I’m spending wayyy too much time in a derp state accomplishing nothing. I could easily focus on health AND friends/relationships, but I’m too much in a habit mess to successfully get anything done.

All that being said, I can’t be hard on myself because trying to adjust to too many things at once causes you to win nothing. I’ve the TIME to succeed in health AND relationships, but the fatigue to succeed in one while maintaining or slightly advancing the other.

Who knows, I won’t go any deeper into this. It’s just about playing the game one step at a time, and I know that once I have my health back to “pain-free” mode I’ll be so much more able to enjoy all the fruits of life.

One step at a time, I’m focusing on the war, not the battles…

It was a long one but I hope you enjoyed it. I’ve been too disorganized to set aside time to write. This weekend I might make a travel BLOG (I own soo many domains LOL). We’ll see, no promises. 🙂