When you read a headline like "A study finds..." or "Scientists..." prepare for propaganda. You can safely ignore it.

The worst thing that can happen to a boy is easy life.

“Do you like running? Do you like lifting? Learning? Communicating?” “I don’t like it, but I do it anyway.” These are all the wrong questions. What does it even mean to like something or not? Have you ever thought about it? Usually, we like something we are used to doing — something that is comfortable, doesn’t require much time or energy, and gives us pleasure hormones. And we dislike something new — whatever brings discomfort, pain, and requires a lot of effort. Do you see the problem? Everything we usually like makes us weaker and mediocre. The things we dislike, on the other hand, often make us stronger and force progress. But why is our evolutionary compass so ineffective? It was very effective when it was tuned. In the past, the most important things were conserving energy, surviving, and reproducing. These are the things our pleasure system is tuned to seek. Uncertainty, energy expenditure, and pain were deadly. Comfort, food, and sex were life-preserving. But times have changed. If you don’t upgrade your old mental software, you will end up mediocre and miserable. So the question should never be “Do I like it?” It should be “Am I progressing?” — Warrior's Path

In the past, the environment was creating enough discomfort to enforce progress and hold us in a great effective state. Nowadays, it's only up to you. If you don't seek discomfort daily, you will rot from inside. It's like turning off your immunity.

STORIES BUILD WORLDS

When I compare women to deer and men to lions, women become enraged. "So you are implying that men are better than women?" I am not implying that, for sure. Are lions better than deer? No. They are not better. They are different and they have different evolutionary goals. Are lions stronger? Absolutely yes. Are men stronger than women? Of course they are, don't be delusional. Men are like lions, they need to be powerful to create and defend their worlds. Women, on the other hand, are like deer, they can travel around and eat grass freely on the lands lions control. And deer will never understand how can lions eat meat, the same way women can never understand what men need to do to thrive. And as a woman, you probably get even angrier reading what I write, and that's ok. You do your stuff, we will do ours.

Her goal is to seduce you and destroy you. This is how nature screens for greatness. If you submit, she discards you. But if you are impossible to distract, if you are locked into your purpose, you will conquer your world.

How you perceive yourself determines which battles you choose to fight. When you walk in the park and a random dog starts barking, you don’t start running away, defending yourself, or fighting it. It’s below your league — this is how you perceive yourself. If a person starts insulting you, that’s a higher league, and if you see yourself playing there, you will start fighting. When you explore the world enough, when you’ve had a chance to play in all leagues — fighting dogs, arguing with random people, competing with rivals, doing serious business — your mind may open to a bigger question. Maybe you weren’t born to compete with dogs or people for resources, to argue or prove anything to anyone. Maybe the universe has a problem and it needs your help. Maybe you are the only person capable of finding the solution — the truth. — Warrior's Path

You don't need to fight animals if you are the zookeeper.

When you are hungry, you need to decide exactly what food you want to eat, and the sequence of events — the plan — will appear in your mind. You wake up, put on some clothes, go out, walk to the exact store where what you want is available, take it, pay, return home, cook it, and eat. It is very important not to get distracted in the process. There are countless random events around, countless people with random opinions, countless rules and distractions. If you allow yourself to be distracted, the entire plan may be sabotaged. This is true for everything in life. Never lose control of your life. You are the driver — it is your duty to be focused and driven. — Warrior's Path

The entire history of life on Earth shows that every single organism was forced to evolve in order to survive and reproduce. This is how we got here. But then consciousness evolved, and everything changed. Look at sheep on a farm — they are not forced to evolve. They don’t need to become better to survive and reproduce. In fact, they need to become weaker. And this is the case with humans too. We hijacked evolution itself. We turned it backward. And this will lead to extinction. Nothing can break the laws of the universe, and anything that doesn’t progress will disappear. But it doesn’t have to be this way. You have a choice — you can choose which force is driving your life. If it’s comfort, there is no future waiting for you. But if it’s progress, you are executing the grand purpose of the universe itself, and you will be given everything. Choose your next thoughts and actions carefully, as they may be your last. — Warrior's Path

Why are we fighting demons? What are we trying to defend or take away from them? What do they want? Take an angry dog, for example. What does it want? To kill you? No. To take anything from you? No. What is it then? The dog looks at you and doesn’t understand your intentions. Your energy isn’t clear. Your movements are random. You don’t communicate good intentions calmly, and the dog is afraid, so it tries to defend itself. The exact same thing happens with people. Most of the time, we fight others for reasons we don’t even understand. It’s not resources or power most of the time. It’s a strange feeling that pushes us to become aggressive. It is the dog inside that tries to defend itself for reasons it doesn’t even understand. What about our inner demons? It is the exact same issue. We fight ourselves because we don’t have a clue what we are doing. We don’t have direction, a plan, or an understanding of who we are and what we want. It’s a mess, and every part tries to defend itself the same way the dog does. But there is a solution. Decision. When you have decided who you are and where you are headed, your energy becomes directed, not random anymore. You become calmer, and the world can see your intentions. This is when the angry dogs stop barking. This is when you stop fighting yourself, your demons, and anyone else. And if there is anyone crazy enough to try to fight YOU — a conscious, determined man — they will be ignored into irrelevance. You don’t have time for random distractions — you are on a mission. — Warrior’s Path

THE ALLEGORY OF THE CAVE is a philosophical story written by Plato around 380 BCE in his work The Republic. It illustrates his ideas about human perception, knowledge, and enlightenment, showing how people can be trapped in ignorance, mistaking appearances for reality, and how curiosity and reason can lead one to understand the true nature of the world. Plato’s Allegory of the Cave describes people chained inside a cave, forced to look at shadows on a wall. They believe these shadows are reality because that’s all they’ve ever known. When one person breaks free and leaves the cave, he sees the real world and understands that the shadows were illusions. When he returns to tell the others, they mock him and resist the truth, because it threatens their familiar beliefs. The allegory is about ignorance vs knowledge, comfort vs truth, and why most people defend illusions and attack those who see deeper. It was written 24 centuries ago and perfectly describes ignorance of the masses even today. But you can always escape this prison. You only need curiosity and a little bit of bravery.

IS LEARNING GOOD OR BAD? There are two fundamentally different types of learning — constructive and destructive. The first one is supported by pleasure. It feels easy, light, and entertaining. You watch videos, read posts, listen to podcasts, and your brain gets stimulated. It feels like learning, but it’s not. It’s mental masturbation. You are not building anything — you are just rubbing your brain in a comfortable way to get a small dose of pleasure. Like petting a cat. Nice, calming, pointless. This type of “learning” never creates competence. It doesn’t change how you act, what you can do, or what results you get. It only makes you feel informed while keeping you weak and delusional. Over time, it trains you to avoid difficulty and crave stimulation. That is destructive learning. The second type of learning is enforced by pain. You need something in real life. A result. A skill. Power. Money. Control. So you go and try to get it — and immediately you hit resistance. You fail. You feel stupid. You feel frustrated. Nothing works. That pain forces you to think. To analyze. To adapt. To act differently. You don’t learn because it’s fun — you learn because you must. Every mistake hurts. Every failure exposes your incompetence. And the more pain you feel, the harder your brain is forced to work. This pressure creates real understanding. Real skill. Real growth. When you finally get it — when the thing that used to hurt no longer does — that’s learning. You didn’t consume information. You transformed yourself. Pleasure-based learning weakens you. Pain-based learning builds you. One feels good. The other makes you effective. — Warrior's Path

When there is a problem, the body starts telling you about it. If you listen carefully, you can find the cause and fix it. But if you don't listen — and what’s even worse, numb the symptoms — it will quickly escalate and start destroying everything piece by piece.

When I was a child, I didn't understand how the world works. I was looking to my parents for clues, as they were behaving confidently and it seemed that they understood it. But then I started to become more curious and ask more and more questions. That is when I understood that they don’t actually understand anything. And the more questions I was asking, the more it became obvious that no one understands anything. People are just believing in stories and following routines. It seems like a zombieland, if you look closely. Then the Internet became available, and I got the possibility to feed my infinite curiosity. There is actual understanding, but it is hidden behind countless delusions, lies, and noise. If you are curious enough and if you don't stop asking questions, you will eventually find the truth. The moment you stop asking questions will be the moment your indoctrination will continue. Never stop learning. Never stop asking questions. Never believe anything. — Warrior's Path

If you want to become successful, you need to replace the word discipline in your mindset with purpose. The problem with discipline, which prevents mediocre people from achieving success, is that they call things they hate doing but do anyway — discipline. “But successful people talk about discipline all the time.” Exactly. But they mean a completely different thing. For them, discipline is purpose, it’s obsession. For you, it is enforcement and resistance. You can’t achieve success by fighting yourself and resisting your nature. But you can start loving the idea of your best self so much that you become obsessed with everything that leads you there. This is what successful people do. This is what’s effective. And this is what you can do as well. — Warrior's Path

You don’t stop living your life when you become old. You become old when you stop living your life. I know 35-year-old guys who are so tired that they don’t do anything. I know 75-year-old men who live their best lives and continue exploring the world and pushing the limits of what is possible. It is not about age, but about mindset. You decide how old you actually are. Mangan is 70.

When you start building a business, before it becomes successful and profitable, you need to invest time and energy into it. The same applies to yourself. If you invest time and effort into improving yourself, you will build your abilities, and it will lead to success — better communication, higher efficiency, more energy, and better ideas. You will reach a completely different level and achieve results that lead to success.

When ignorant monkeys “attack” you and you feel bad about it, remember: they could have agreed with you.