Energy is Passion (Original)
how to be high energy and what stops you
WSPArchive: We have been a bit slower with the posts than usual, namely due to extra workload and also writing this one. Hopefully no one minds - we did leave you with a 40-minute read last time.
State of the World
Before we start today’s post, we urge you to ponder - what is the average person like today?
Trick question - the answer is always “bad enough to warrant us doing the absolute opposite”:
WSP usually focuses on how bad people are, but we haven’t seen them touch on the aspect of energy.
All in all, the stats are something like:
90% of people are (in order of likelihood):
low energy
unhappy
outright miserable
(btw out of the 10% that are good energy, you only share interests with at most 0.5%. If you find a friend/significant other that fit these criteria - you better value them)
This is self-explanatory, as people who have energy are always happier. Energy and happiness are correlated, which is why our post is titled energy is passion.
Today, we will go over what makes most people unhappy and what you can do to fight the herd’s pull.
In general, the point is that today’s adults walk into responsibilities that bring them down without thinking about it.
They develop relationships, friendships and careers they don’t really enjoy - and then they take debt to live a life that caters to the aforementioned 3 - effectively locking the deal.
Due to sunken cost bias, lack of imagination, outright defeatism and probably some others reasons - they never end up shedding these mistakes off.
It’s fine to make a mistake. It’s not fine to linger with it.
To make it worse, all of these issues are literally man-made. Nobody forced them to live life the way they are living it. We live in the most prosperous times:
Yet somehow, social hypnosis makes you think it’s:
“normal” to be low energy.
“normal” to be unhappy.
“normal” to not jump out of bed.
“normal” to need alcohol and a Friday to have fun.
Normality is 100% losers. Always do the opposite.
Why Be Successful?
When you break it down, the main reason you want to be successful is:
to be happy
(Sensitive topic. We will avoid the risk of this becoming a bullshit philosophical post.)
This happiness then comes from the fulfillment that comes with success, as well as all the other spoils (dopamine, women, ego, etc.)
All of these are types of passions.
Men are passionate about women. (as paradoxically gay as it sounds)
Men are passionate about being superior to others. (who is the bigger alpha)
Humans are passionate about simple primal dopamine rewards like good food, traveling, and stimulants.
This should be an obvious reminder to you. Nothing wrong with any of this - just laying the groundwork.
What is Success?
The rule is simple:
if you’re gaining passion in life, you’re winning
if you’re losing passion in life, you’re losing
This is easier said than done.
We have a Certified Bull Classic (shoutout craftsman) archive that very well denotes what being truly rich is:
In essence, it’s:
money to afford an elite lifestyle
i.e. it matters only as much so as to unblock you from living how you want to.
physical health
important because without health you cannot keep passion.
relationships (friends, dating)
you cannot be passionate without fulfilling primal social desires.
mental health (being happy, enjoying what you have)
you can have the aforementioned 3) and still be miserable. This is arguably the worst place to be, but also the easiest to fix.
The archive focuses mostly on 1, 2) and 3, but it frequently mentions the need for 4). Today, we will talk about 4).
But first, we have to get the obvious out of the way:
Physical Health
if you don’t have health, you are done.
Yes, this is repeated every 3rd archive or so. That’s normal - it is the most important so it bears repeating until you die.
In case you were unconvinced, the basic premise is:
you can’t be happy unless you’re healthy
Try enjoying life when you’re fat. You have no energy. You’re lazy. You’d rather spend the day on the couch doomscrolling through IG/Twitter consuming semi-educational and/or triggering content.
Now pair this with being old. It only becomes worse.
To truly enjoy life, you need to be fit at some basic level.
You also need to be as young as possible, but obviously, we can’t control that much. (apart from getting rich as fast as possible)
Health Misconception
The metric to track is not muscle or body fat - it’s mitochondria function (energy levels) and inflammation.
Of course, that’s hard to measure.
It usually always goes hand-in-hand with the former (muscles). But. Not always.
It’s entirely possible to be sub-7% body fat and full of muscle, yet still be incredibly unhealthy. Look no further than your average bodybuilder.
Don’t get us started on the sudden onslaught of heart attacks in athletes in the last few years after the vaccine was deployed. You can always see well-looking people die suddenly. Hint: that means they’re unhealthy - one way or another.
We won’t act like experts that can break it down, but we can explain the obvious:
Biology isn’t simple - body type isn’t the only thing that determines health.
stress levels
type of food and quality
environmental pollutants / endocrine disruptors
circadian rhythm, sleep time
etc.
All affect your health.
It all generally falls under the inflammation umbrella. Most unhealthy things increase your inflammation and sustain it at high levels (chronic inflammation).
Living a good, long life fundamentally requires healthy habits that reduce all of the unhealthy ones that the average man is plagued by.
The archive talks about your peak years in life starting after ~27. Since compounding only gets better with age, you can assume that life should only get better from thereon after.
Assuming your health/energy-levels don’t decline faster than the compounding’s growth.
Therefore - it’s in your best interest to be the healthiest, most high-energy 50+-year-old you can be.
Even if it sounds like something you don’t care about today since you’re just 20, any brain of a 10yr+ (that’s when they’ve mostly developed logic) will be able to realize that the sum of all fun experiences is greater than any single peak.
Otherwise - may as well take the largest loan you can, get high on the most drugs you can find and have one wild night to end it all.
Mental Satisfaction
Now that we’ve made the point about physical health - there’s the mental too.
We won’t call it mental health because that’s the most gay term that exists in 2023.
Basically said - you have to feel good in your mind too.
You have to be happy with what you’re doing and the life you’re living.
This is a complex topic that has plenty of woo-woo writing on it. But it boils down to two things:
creating a life you like
changing your mind to like your current life
These are opposing points. But. Both are required.
Why?
Simple. You will never achieve 1).
time: it takes years/decades to create your perfect life. That means there’s a huge delta until you could be happy if following just 1) - that would be the stupidest thing you could accept.
your mind changes faster than your life. You may like X today, but your brain will change massively as you develop as a human. You are guaranteed to through dozens of different interests and points of view in life (including cycling back to old ones).
hedonic adjustment: you get used to what you have pretty much instantly. The moment you get what you desire, your brain will come up with the next thing.
Therefore, you need to find enjoyment in the current circumstance.
But you can’t go fully the way of 2) either.
it’s most probably impossible to do. You cannot override primal desires.
even if you could - it’s not worth it.
the people who claim to achieve this are your usual woo-woo drug addicts that don’t seem like they live in this world. Really. Find a person who is so extremely into “mindfulness” while disregarding any personal development. None of them look like they’re alive.
If you truly disagree with the 3 bullet points here - you shouldn’t be reading this blog. Go live off of photosynthesis and prove us wrong.
Concluding this section - you need to work on creating a life you love while also working on accepting the current circumstance and finding fulfillment in everything - the little wins, insignificant events, serendipity, the short breaks, etc.
Money
You also need freedom.
You may be incredibly healthy and in a good state of mind all the time - but if you’re forced to wake up at 7, get ready and commute until 9, clean toilets from 9 to 5, commute back until 6, do chores, go to bed - you’re going to be facing an uphill battle with happiness.
Money can be seen as “lifestyle tokens” that allow you to freely live in ways that would otherwise be impossible.
Build a cash flow and net worth.
Do NOT make it the end goal.
The archive focuses on advice in relation to money but always hammers you with the fact that life is so much more.
Creating Energy through Passion
OK, we’ve cleared all the basics. We are ready to get into the meat of this original post.
We begin with a question:
Why do 5 year olds have so much energy?
…
Really. Think about it and answer below as a comment so as to capture your thoughts. It’s fine to be wrong.
…
Hint: it’s not because they’re “young”
…
It’s not because they inherently have a lot of energy either.
If you’re athletic enough, you have more cardio than a 5-year-old. You should be able to run for longer periods than them.
Ever tried to get a 5-year-old to do something it doesn’t want to?
Of course. 5-year-olds do have energy, fast recovery, and are lightweight. These things help. (nowadays’ kids are absurdly fat though)
But. The main reason is not that. 20-year-olds also have good energy and fast recovery. Why don’t they have nearly as much energy as 5-year-olds?
Passion
It all boils down to passion.
As we said - there are 4 things that define being rich and mental health is one of them.
Being passionate about your life and the things you’re doing is the #1 sign of health in that area!
5 year olds
5-year-olds have so much energy because they’re extremely passionate about the world around them.
They’re so happy to be alive that they can’t wait to just run and start the day.
You can never get them to sleep, because they want to experience more of life and do not want to end the day.
You’ve surely experienced something similar as an adult when staying up late working on some project, traveling, talking to a friend, etc.
Kids simply have that endless energy all the time because they’re excitable all the time. This excitement comes we believe two things:
novelty: everything is “new” to them. It’s easier to be passionate about the world when it’s your first time experiencing it, versus your 40th year of it.
You can see how novelty fades from kids too - as they grow up, they move on to new toys and ways of play because the old ones have become boring..
no negative beliefs: ego and self-consciousness don’t properly develop until you’re a teen. Little kids DO NOT care about what the world thinks of them, which extends to not having any negative beliefs about themselves but more importantly - doing whatever they want.
This is literally what WSP say too:
You will never meet an unhappy person who wakes up and works towards the things he truly wants.
This is no different than being a kid. They wake up and say this is what I want and they do what they can to get it.
Adults
Now, contrast this to your average adult.
no novelty: predictable, boring life
stuck in it due to bills & mortgage.
career work is the furthest thing away from novelty you can think of - it’s literally you doing the same thing 5 days in a row, including a 1-2hr/day commute
This is also one of the large reasons why time seems to move fast & blur together for these people (Managing the Passing of Time (September 4, 2018))
lots of negative beliefs: loser, yet super high ego
requires them to defend everything they do and their brain to think of ways to appear better & block things that risk making them feel bad.
double think everything - want to keep the act of “somebody of high value”.
basically, the act of living like someone you’re not is a massive burden on both your brain and any potential action you can take during your day.
the worst example is those who believe that being happy isn’t “cool”. Exists in plenty of places - esp. “macho men”.
low energy: aging + degrading physical health from lack of upkeep
bad diet
no exercise
unhealthy habits from having to cope with their bad existence
all mean their energy levels are actually noticeably dropping each year.
social reinforcement: surround themselves with the exact same type of people
no way to see the light - can never improve out of it.
would not even feel comfortable being any other way - other people will bring them down, they’d be lonely, etc.
How can you expect anything else but a Netflix-watching, 9-5 working and $40k earning slob?
You
Forget them. Know what’s worse?
Even if YOU don’t have most of these drawbacks - let’s say you follow the blog and have your own businesses where you are always faced with new stuff, have developed a decent social circle of non-average friends, keep relatively healthy, have good inner-game, etc.
We bet $100k you cannot go out in the street right now and frolic like a carefree kid for 2 hours straight.
The ego stops you. You’ll embarrass yourself. What will people think?
The ego stops all of us from being high-energy and happy-go-lucky to the fullest possible extent.
This is biologically normal - you do not want to look outright crazy in any social environment - so you’re wired to follow the herd to some acceptable extent.
Unfortunately, this is just a negative side-effect of an extremely unhealthy society. If everybody was thriving in their life, society would look much different.
As a fun thought experiment, try to imagine what the world would really look like if everybody around you was you. What if everyone was 5-year-old you?
Back to reality. The point is simple. Even if you’re better off than 99% of people - society is degenerate and due to our nature - we all go down with the ship to a degree.
Know what’s again worse?
What do you expect happens once you stop exercising this excitement muscle?
Your ability to be excited and to have energy ATROPHIES.
Basically - we are all headed down a path where our excitement levels drop with age and experience. This is the result of:
less novelty - you’ve done more so less is as exciting
aging & general wear & tear - energy levels inevitably drop
social expectations & reinforcement - it’s “normal” to be slower when you’re 50
We’re still happy and fulfilled, but the high is not like before.
This is a large reason why adults take caffeine, cocaine, and other kinds of stimulants. They artificially re-ignite this forgotten sense of being.
The same applies with relation to these stimulants in that your ability to have a high without them atrophies.
Steps to Attain Passion
This has been a bit too philosophical and problem-underlining (read: bitchy) for a WSPArchive post. Let’s get practical. We don’t have the answers, but we can suggest the following:
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