yo!

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Before we begin,

This is DISRUPT’s first post.
I made this newsletter as a way to share my thoughts, ideas, philosophy and learnings as I journey through the infinite game of life.
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Hopefully you’ll learn something :)

Enjoy!

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The 5 Intrinsic Drivers

There are 5 intrinsic drivers that you should leverage to make effective and meaningful progress in your life.

• Curiosity
• Passion
• Purpose
• Autonomy
• Mastery

Learn to use them, master them, and you’ll begin to live a purposeful life.

On Curiosity
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Curiosity is the reason we seek to learn.
It’s why we are driven to seek knowledge.
Following our curiosities and diving into them is when work becomes play.

Dopamine is commonly and incorrectly seen as a modern day enemy. It is not. Dopamine is a natural occurrence in our body. When we do something that contributes to our survival, we get a tiny dose of dopamine. It’s been that way for millions of years. It’s only now with modern day commodities and unhealthy addictions that dopamine is seen as an enemy.

Instead, you must intentionally leverage dopamine. It’s a tool that you can use.
So, follow your curiosities.

Ideas begin with curiosity. It is the origin of innovation.
If humans did not have the ability to be curious, innovation wouldn’t exist.

How can we learn and create if we don’t wonder what lies beyond what we know?

So, What excites you? What are you interested in?

Dive deep into your curiosities.

• If you’re curious about coding, build your own website.
• If you’re curious about space, build your own telescope
• If you’re curious about sports, begin playing a sport

Eventually you’ll find domains of interest that you genuinely enjoy and that are worth spending your time in.

On Passion

When you’ve found what you genuinely enjoy, you’ve found vessels where passion can arise from.

Take a good look at your curiosities.
Find the intersections between each one.
​How do they already connect? How can they possibly connect and overlap?

Let’s say I’m interested in content creation and fitness.
Some possible intersections can be writing articles to teach people how to get fit or making a youtube channel, to capture how I train my body to be more fit.

You get to choose.

When you identify an intersection between your curiosities, you then set a goal to make progress within it.

The goal you set must be a challenging goal that’ll move you towards your ideal life. Otherwise, it’d be too easy and would not be meaningful.

You set a goal that gets you out your comfort zone and has you willingly walking into the unknown.

• This will eliminate boredom and will create potential for mastery.

You set a goal that’ll enable you to move towards your ideal life.

• This will give your goal meaning and purpose

Then you dedicate your time to making your goal, reality.

You must create a system that is conducive towards your goal.
Reverse engineer it.
Break the process down into smaller steps and identify how you’re going to accomplish that goal.

Creating a well rounded system that will give you the results you desire will need experimentation and iteration.
It is a process of trial and error, nothing will be perfect at first.
So don’t expect it to be.
Instead, embrace the wonderful adventure.

Just begin. Cultivate a bias towards action.

You’ll eventually, begin to develop an increasing sense of passion which can turn into purpose as you’ll continue to challenge yourself and see progress leading to mastery.

At this point, you must tame your curiosity. Otherwise you might fall into what many call, the shiny object syndrome​.​
What you need to do is to commit.

By any means, don’t extinguish your sense of curiosity
Give yourself autonomy.
Stay curious within the system you’ve created.

On Purpose

As you work towards a goal that is both challenging and meaningful through a domain that you’re genuinely interested in, you will begin to find purpose.

Purpose is our reason for being.
Without a good and clear purpose, you will not know where to go or who to be.
With a good and clear purpose, you’ve found something that is worth fighting for.
You’ll have clarity on the direction you want to follow and will discard any opinion that deviates from that purpose because that purpose is meaningful to you.

To turn your passion into purpose, find problems you can solve or find interesting possibilities that you can make reality.

Using the example from earlier, if I’m passionate about content creation and fitness, a problem I could focus on is a lack of healthy living in modern day society.
I could tackle this by educating people through writing. An interesting possibility could be teaching others how to become and stay fit through a youtube channel.
This would allow me to keep developing my fitness levels and improving my skills as a content creator giving my passions a solid purpose.

Giving your passion a real world purpose will give you a reason for being who you are and a reason to keep doing what you already do.

On Autonomy

You may have noticed a desire to be in charge of your own life and make your own choices.
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If you aren’t aware, this is the desire for autonomy.

Within the system that you’ve created that is conducive to your goals, you must give yourself autonomy. You give yourself the ability to make choices within your system.

You don’t want absolute control or absolute freedom.
Absolute control is too restrictive.
Absolute freedom is too chaotic.

You want to give yourself the ability to choose within a system that is conducive towards your goal.

• Let yourself be curious
• Let creativity flow
• Create something that you find interesting

All while being guided by the system you’ve created that is conducive towards your goal.

This way, you continue to channel your curious nature within the domain you’ve chosen and you’ll be able to keep momentum going.

On Mastery

As you keep going and progressing on your goal, given that you created the proper system to make progress, you’ll begin to see small improvements over time.
You’ll see that you’re mastering multiple aspects of the domain that you chose.

Keep taking the steps toward your goal. Continue to challenge yourself. Continue to walk into the unknown.

Under a proper system, you’ll begin to see improvement and you’ll build momentum. You’ll want to keep going. You wont want to stop.

You’ll experience the pleasure of self-mastery.

You’ll begin to increasingly love what you’re working on which will build onto your sense of purpose and passion.

Here’s how I personally applied this.

I used to play soccer a shit ton. When I was 15, soccer began to play a bigger role in ma life and I’d find myself going out to practice daily by the time I turned 16.

Though I’d play soccer for multiple hours every day, I realized that I wasn’t exactly physically fit for soccer. I’d notice at times that I lacked the speed or strength required to be a good soccer player.

So I was curious!
​I wanted to see how I’d improve if I began to specifically work on my physical fitness.

So I did some basic research and took action.

1. I started drills to improve my speed, power, and explosiveness.
2. I started a weight routine to improve my leg strength.
3. I started doing extra cardio.
4. I joined my schools track team.

This took a high degree of experimentation.
I wasn’t sure how sore or tired I’d be after these workouts.
I wasn’t sure if they would really yield much results.
I was concerned that spending time on this would be degrading to developing the technical skill I needed with an actual soccer ball.

Eventually, I’d begin to see results. I saw improvements in my athletic performance and my physical appearance as well.

I began to develop a sense of passion as I began to feel the effect of mastery over my physical performance and myself as well. I was doing things I never thought that would be possible for me.

I would give myself autonomy. I would choose how I would structure my workouts and what workouts I’d do.

Unfortunately, I got injured and I couldn’t play soccer.
Well shit now what?
I still had this sense of passion when improving my athletic performance.
I wanted to continue seeing improvement.

I began to be curious about purely long distance running.
I figured this would intersect with my desire in seeing improvement in my athletic performance.
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So I did some basic research and took action

1. I started running daily
2. I joined a summer track team
3. I joined my schools cross country team

I saw results. I saw improvements in my 1600m, 3200m, and 5k races.
This form of mastery continued on my passion for improving my athletic performance.

I also embody this through the projects I work on.
If you weren’t aware, I’m currently attempting to design a conceptual solar sail that will one day enable us to visit the Alpha Centauri system and explore deeper space.
I’m curious on exploring the unknown regions of space and space technology.
So I leverage my curiosity and work on a project which increases my passion along with my knowledge bringing me a sense of mastery.
I have autonomy as I have the ability to choose how I go about building my project.

I’m leveraging these intrinsic drivers right now as I write this newsletter.
I’m curious on learning about myself, improving my personal philosophy, and optimizing my performance as an athlete and a builder specifically through mental fitness.
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I leverage this curiosity and I self-educate. I aim to learn new life concepts, philosophies, and neuro-hacking methods in order to improve my mindset.
I have a sense of passion as I’m deeply interested in these topics and I know that I will begin to see mastery. I have autonomy as I can choose what I learn and what I write about. I developed a sense of purpose as I have a desire to educate y’all and see you guys prosper as well.

So,

You must leverage these 5 intrinsic drivers for a better life.

• Curiosity
• Passion
• Purpose
• Autonomy
• Mastery

Act now.

Until next time 👋 - vxnuaj

P.S.
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Remember this quote ~ “in a world of finite games, choose to play the infinite games”

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