The simple process I used to unf*ck my life in just 12 months​

read time 14 minutes

Listen, I know a thing or two about fucking up your life…

There was a time not so long ago where I was forced to live in the back of a 13-passenger van that I bought for like $1,200 off CraigsList ‘cause my fiance decided she’d had enough of my shit and kicked me to the curb.

I was broke, alone, and had zero clue what to do next…

But one thing was absolutely crystal clear to me:

I really needed to figure out how to unfuck my life.

If any of that resonates with you, then stick around, ‘cause I’m gonna break down what I did to get out of that van, make my first million dollars, and fundamentally change the trajectory of my life:

First up, we need:

The journey starts with a simple decision:

You can either be the victim…

Or you can be the hero…

But you can’t be both.

So you’d better choose wisely.

Now, most people unconsciously choose to be the victim of their story.

They blame the world and everybody around them as the reason for why they aren’t where they want to be in life.

And you know what? In a lot of cases, these people are right… it’s not their fault their lives are completely fucked up.

A lot of people are born into a shitty situation and they’ve got the deck completely stacked against them from the very beginning…

That sucks, it’s not fair, and you’re perfectly within your rights to feel screwed over…

But guess what?

The universe doesn’t care how you feel… it cares what you do.

And the first thing you MUST do to unfuck your life is to accept full and complete responsibility for your situation.

Which isn’t to say it’s your fault…

Fault, afterall, is past tense and results from choices that have already been made (some of which might have been made entirely outside of your control).

Responsibility, on the other hand, is all about the present and the decisions you’re making in this very moment to move your life forward.

And this is important, because here’s the harsh truth:

Nobody is coming to save you.

Which means you’re gonna have to do it yourself.

Accepting that it’s YOUR responsibility to go out and fight the dragon (regardless of where that dragon ultimately came from), is the first step in turning your life around.

But this is just the beginning…

Next, we’ve gotta get clear about where we’re actually trying to go… and to do that, we need to:

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2. Disengage Autopilot

Most people are simply going through the motions.

They’re following the path their parents or society laid out for them when they were just a little kid and like good little soldiers, they just keep marching forward, one foot after another…

Never really stopping to wonder:

Is this what I really want?

I personally know this path really well… I walked it for 28 years…

But there was a problem.. Part of me, deep down inside, knew I didn’t want the things that that path was leading towards.

And so I never fully committed. Never played all-out, because at the end of the day, I was playing a game that I didn’t even want to WIN.

Now, if I’m being completely honest, the way I describe this makes it sound like I made an active decision to half-ass it.

But that’s not quite what happened…

The truth is a bit more depressing…

See, part of me DID want to win the game, but the sad reality is that no matter how hard I tried in school or at work, I just didn’t have what it took to succeed in those environments.

And for a long time, instead of taking responsibility for my failure, I just blamed my ADHD as the reason why I couldn’t focus…as the reason why I couldn’t show up consistently… or hold myself accountable.

This led to my life getting well and truly fucked up, so not a great strategy all-told.

Here’s the better strategy:

Only play games you WANT to win and CAN win.

I got lucky and stumbled into this strategy when a buddy came to me while I was living in that van and suggested we start a business.

Now, up to that point I was not even remotely entrepreneurial… I never had a lemonade stand and certainly wasn’t the kid plucking flowers from the neighbor’s yard and then selling it back to them.

So when my buddy floated this idea to me, it was like discovering a whole new world… a whole new game…

And it opened my eyes to another reality:

That is:

WE get to pick which games we play.

Not only that… but we’re the ones making up the rules of that game… we get to decide what winning and losing looks like.

Success, therefore, can literally look however you want it to look, but most people have just never stopped to define what winning and losing looks like to them, and instead, they just move towards the goals society has told them they should want.

If you want to unfuck your life, you’ve first got to get clear on what an unfucked life looks like.

So in this step we’re going to Turn Off the Autopilot and get clear about what we’re actually aiming for. What’s the target?

Because as Lewis Carroll said:

“If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.”

In particular, there are three areas of life we need to know where we’re going: Health, Wealth, and Relationships.

For example:

What does winning the health game look like to you? Is it hitting a certain weight, or looking a particular way, or is it just waking up every morning feeling energized and ready to tackle the day?

When it comes to Wealth, how much do you actually want or need? Now, on this one most people just pick a big number (like $50M) and say, yeah, that sounds good… but usually that number isn’t actually anchored to anything.

So, instead of just picking a number out of the blue, the better method is to work backwards from your ideal life and then work out the math on how much you would actually need to sustain that lifestyle.

Whenever I’ve done this exercise with people, they are shocked to realize they need FAR less than they initially thought.

So here’s your first bit of homework:

Grab a notebook and spend a few hours brainstorming your perfect unfucked life.

Write it down and get crystal clear on what it looks like.

Now, once you know where you’re actually trying to go, it’s time to take action… and because I’m a fan of starting with the lowest hanging fruit, the first thing we’re gonna do is the easiest:

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3. Optimize Your Environment

The quickest way to change your life is by changing your environment.

In particular, there are two types of environment you probably need to tweak:

Your Physical Environment and your Social Environment.

Let’s start by overhauling our physical environment.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I’ve always found a lot of truth in the phrase that a “messy desk equals a messy mind.”

I’ve noticed over the years that the chaos of my surroundings has strong implications for the chaos I feel within.

So this might sound like a stupid simple first step, but it’s effective:

To unfuck your life, start by cleaning your room.

Seriously… I’m not joking.

To this day, whenever I’m feeling stressed, anxious, or bordering on overwhelm… I just take a bit of time and clean up my office or living space.

Not only is this a simple way to reset my zen, but it’s an easy win that creates a bit of momentum which I can use to snowball into the next activity.

But listen, cleaning is only gonna get you so far, because if you’re anything like I was, then the BIGGER problem is that your environment almost seems like it was designed intentionally to fuck up your life.

You’ve got the big screen television in your bedroom connected to the PS5 or Netflix… Your fridge is full of junk food and beer. Your gym is on the other side of town and your workout equipment is currently being used to hang up laundry.

If you want to move your life in the right direction, you have to make it harder to make the easy decision than it is to make the hard decision.

For instance, you could make it so hard to grab the beer that you just say, screw it, and drink water instead.

Make it so hard to watch Netflix that you decide just to read a book instead.

Make it so hard to spend money on Amazon that you decide to just make do with what you got and save the money.

The thing is, most of us have optimized our environments so that the easy choices are EVEN EASIER.

And the problem with that is as Jerzy Gregorek pointed out:

Easy Choices, Hard Life. Hard Choices, Easy Life.

So again, our goal in optimizing our environment is to design it so that making the hard decision, the ones that are gonna move us towards our greatest selves, is easier to make than the easy decision which is usually just chasing cheap dopamine.

There are three spaces in particular worth optimizing:

1. The Bedroom
2. The Kitchen
3. The Workspace

Go through each of these rooms and ask:

What is its primary purpose?

If it’s the bedroom, that’s sleeping.

The kitchen, for eating.

The workspace, for working.

Then optimize for that ideal outcome by removing everything that doesn’t contribute towards that primary purpose.

Get the television out of the bedroom, get the junk food out of the kitchen, and get anything not contributing to THE WORK out of your workspace.

Boom, you’ve now made it that much more likely you’re gonna actually use those spaces for what they’re designed for.

But this is the easy bit… now it’s time for the hard part.

Listen, nobody said unfucking your life would be easy, and this next part is probably gonna be the hardest of all.

It’s time to Optimize Your Social Environment.

I’ve said it so many times now that I’m starting to feel like a broken record, but:

You are the average of the five people you hang out with the most.

Hang out with unhealthy people who drink too much and have money problems.. Then you’ll probably become an unhealthy person who drinks too much and has money problems.

The quickest way to turn your life around is to surround yourself with people who are where you want to be doing the things you want to do.

Upgrading your network is the quickest and simplest cheat code for success that I’ve found…

But the reason most people won’t do it is because it’s hard.

After-all, these are your friends (and in many cases your family). You love these people, right?

A very harsh reality I had to come to terms with a few years ago is that just because somebody loves you, doesn’t mean they have your best interests in mind.

And hell, even if they DO have your best interests in mind, they STILL might not be helping you on your journey of unfucking your life.

As they say: the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Now, I’m not saying you need to cut these people out of your life entirely…(in a lot of cases, that’s probably exactly what needs to happen), but I get it…

You love your mom… and even though she often makes snide remarks that make you feel like shit about your life choices, you don’t want to kick her to the curb…

Well, fine… maybe just dial back how often you hang out.

Instead of getting together with the boys three nights a week, maybe only go out with them once every other week…

Then, use your newly freed up time to hang with people who pull you in the direction of your best self.

Again, I know, this part is easier said than done, but if you want to achieve greatness, stop surrounding yourself with people who tolerate your mediocrity.

This is the quickest way I’ve found to put your life on the fast track to unfucked.

Alright, now that you’ve optimized your external environment, it’s time to change your internal environment.

To do this, you need to learn how to:

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4. Master Your Physiology

Confucius said it best:

“The healthy man wants 1,000 things. A sick man only wants one.”

It’s so easy to take for granted the miracle that is your body.

It’s a marvel of evolutionary engineering that most of us don’t spend much time thinking about when things are going well.

But, as soon as something goes wrong, and we’re laid up with the sniffles or we snap a tendon playing Pickleball, well, suddenly our broken body is ALL we can care about.

NOW we’re willing to do whatever it takes to get back to normal… we’ll try experimental procedures and we pray to gods we don’t even believe in if we think there’s even a sliver of a chance it might help.

But here’s the sad truth you might not even realize: If your life is currently fucked, there’s a very high probability your body is also fucked.

Your idea of what it means to feel normal right now is probably wildly skewed.

At least, it was for me…

See, I just took for granted that I should be sore and achy every morning when I wake up… that I needed that cup of coffee to jump start the system and clear the brain fog… that of course I’m a little sluggish in the afternoon after eating lunch…and that it’s only natural for my energy levels to dip in the evening.

Truth is, my body was in a constant state of distress… but since I was so used to that distress, I never questioned it and therefore never thought to try and fix it.

Okay, so if you want to unfuck your life (or at minimum just feel better in that beautiful body you’ve been given), then there’s three things you’ve got to get dialed in…

I call these your 3 Levers of Energy:

1. Nutrition
2. Sleep
3. Exercise

Here’s a few thoughts on each:

Nutrition

Okay, so I am a human garbage disposal.

And I never really thought this was a problem because I’ve been an athlete my entire life and consistently float between 6-10% body fat.

But the most profound effects of nutrition (especially if you’ve got ADHD like me), are completely invisible.

This was proven to me a couple years back when my personal trainer had me cut three things out of my diet:

1. Gluten
2. Sugar
3. Alcohol

Within two weeks, I shit you not, I felt like Bradley Cooper in Limitless.

I could see music and taste sound.

My mind was clear, focused, and razor sharp for the first time in… in maybe ever.

It was like stepping out of a perpetual Brain Fog.

Turns out, there’s a lot of research that suggests gluten, in particular, amplifies many of the symptoms of ADHD.

Now, I hate saying this, because it instantly turns me into that guy, but it turns out I’m Gluten Intolerant.

Seriously, saying that outloud causes a part of me to die a little, but it’s true.

I’m not going to pretend getting your nutrition dialed in is easy, but it’s 100% worth it.

Here’s 3 easy steps to get started:

1. Stop drinking alcohol.

Period. It’s poison. You don’t need it. Cut it out.

2. Reduce sugar intake.

Again, easier said than done, because sugar is everywhere, but at minimum cut out the blatantly overprocessed and overly-sugary treats.

3. Cut out inflammatory foods.

I think Inflammation is going to become the new health buzzword over the next decade as people come to realize just how impactful this is on their health.

Some examples of foods known to cause inflammation are red meats, dairy, refined grains, sweetened drinks, and fried food.

Cut these out of your diet and I think you’ll notice a pretty stark improvement.

Alright, the second lever of energy is:

Sleep

If you’re feeling tired, overwhelmed, easily stressed, distracted, unfocused and scattered, then you probably need to get your sleep sorted out.

Here’s the truth:

Most of us are chronically sleep deprived.

Which is a massive problem, because there’s a ton of research showing sleep deprivation is linked to a slew of chronic health problems such as heart disease, kidney disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, stroke, obesity, and depression.

This is really serious stuff, guys. So don’t take it lightly.

Here’s three things that have helped me dial in my sleep:

1. Go to bed at the same time every night
2. Make sure your bedroom is nice and crispy (humans sleep better in the cold)
3. And make sure your bedroom is dark… like dark-dark. For this, I wear a sleeping mask.

Alright, now for our third lever of energy:

Exercise

The human body seems to defy physics in a few interesting ways.

One such way is in how expending energy acts as a catalyst for creating MORE energy.

Have you ever noticed how energized and amazing you feel after a good workout?

Well, we could chalk that up to endorphins, but the truth is there’s a lot going on inside your body after a hard workout…

Things that generate better mental clarity, more energy, and feelings of happiness.

Now, I don’t know about you, but when my life was feeling especially fucked, mental clarity, energy, and feelings of happiness were in short supply.

Which is why I encourage you, regardless of how fucked things are in your life right now, to prioritize exercising for at least 30 minutes every single day.

Now, there are thousands of workout plans out there, but there’s no need to overcomplicate this. Your only goal at this point is to Lift Heavy Stuff and Get Out of Breath.

Do those two things everyday for 6 months and your life is going to be dramatically improved.

But absolutely none of what we’ve covered in this video so far is going to matter if you can’t master this last step, which is to:

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5. Maintain Positive Inertia

If I had to choose just one reason why my life had reached the top of Mount Fucked it’s probably because I was really great at starting projects, but really bad at finishing them.

As a result, I wasted tons of time and energy spinning my wheels in the mud… and because it was taking so long for those wheels to find traction, I’d eventually get bored or disheartened or get excited about a new, even better idea… and then I’d jump ship only to discover the same exact problem.

I did this for years… and at the end of it all, I really had nothing to show for all my efforts besides a whole lot of frustration and disappointment.

I was, as it turns out, a great goal-setter, but a terrible goal-getter.

It took me a really long time to figure this out and I had to pay my tuition at the school of hard knocks out of my own pocket, so listen up because what I’m about to share with you cost me a whole lot of heartache to learn.

There’s no reason why you should have to pay the same cost.

So here it is:

If you want to unfuck your life, you need to learn how to transform motivation into momentum which you then sustain through discipline long enough to start seeing results.

The key ingredient to unfucking your life is Discipline.

Now, I’m not gonna sugar coat this… developing self-discipline is easily the hardest thing I’ve ever done. But you can’t win the war for your greatness if you don’t first win this battle.

So, the next step on your journey is to check out this video called Learning this about DISCIPLINE changed my life.

In that video, I walk through a 6-step process for developing self-discipline and share a framework for overcoming procrastination on demand so you never struggle to turn motivation into momentum.

Now, go check that video out and until next time…

Stay Hyperfocused, My Friend.

AV

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