One of my favorite things about being an Internet entrepreneur is the fact that I can have a sunbath, listen to my favorite podcasts and make money in the same time.
What do you care you might ask?
Well, a couple days ago, I was in a similar situation as the one described above, and I was listening to my favorite podcast of eofire.com with David Wood. Among other interesting stuff, at some point, David said about a moment he had, when he started to consider himself responsible for every aspect of his life and how this change essentially altered his whole life.
His phrase resonated a hundred percent with me. It reminded me of the time I had the same a-h-a moment. It reminded me of the time I decided I alone was responsible for the fate of my life and nobody else. It was the moment I decided I wanted to be great, not average, not normal, but excellent.
It was what I call, the singularity moment.
My goal with today’s article is to try to make you understand how important that is and how to use it in order to change your life for the better.
The Singularity Moment
There is a handful of definitions about the singularity moment. According to physics, singularity is:
In the centre of a black hole is a gravitational singularity, a one-dimensional point which contains infinite mass in an infinitely small space, where gravity becomes infinite and space-time curves infinitely, and where the laws of physics as we know them cease to operate.
But why the hell did I made this connection to my a-h-a moment?
Because according to my point of view, the day you take responsibility for everything in your life, this is the day when you create your one-dimensional point that contains infinite mass [your mental power] in an infinitely small space [your brain], and where the laws of physics [what social conditioning wants you to believe] cease to operate.
Confused? Stay with me for a while. I’ll take it from the start with a little story.
A couple of years ago, I was struggling quite a lot with my life. All three pillars of life were suffering quite a lot. My last girlfriend had dumped me (and I was calling her names for doing so), my health status was average (I was blaming my bad genes about that), and my career had hit an all time low (it was government’s fault this time for the increased unemployment rates).
Notice a pattern here?
For everything bad in my life, it was somebody else’s fault.
No matter what the misfortune was, I was a real master at blaming some other person, my bad luck, the universe, the weather, the government and the stray dogs in my neighborhood.
It was too easy to blame somebody else. It took no effort. It made me feel good. Having no responsibility at all made things a lot easier since nothing essentially was under my power.
Were taxes going up? Fucking government!
My girlfriend dumped me? She’s a slut!
Did I catch a cold again? Bad genes!
And the list goes on and on…forever.
I bet, if you take a retrospective approach about your life up to now, you’ll be able to come up with a gazillion other paradigms of yourselves doing the exact same thing.
Paradoxically enough, having such a behavior is not your fault (not entirely at least). I’ve said it many times before, and I’m gonna repeat it once more. Up to a certain age, most of us, swallow the blue pill of social conditioning, that ruins as for good.
Luckily some of us wake up at some point, stand up, take full responsibility and change our lives for the best.
That’s what happened to me at that day.
It’s always your fault
If I had to make a list of all the auto-thoughts I have inside my head – these are the automatic thoughts I make when something unexpected happens to me, and it works as a defense mechanism – the “It’s always my fault” thought would be the most important, life-saving and liberating one.
To be more precise, after all these years exercising it, it’s now a core belief for me, not a simple thought anymore.
The reasoning behind this is simple. It makes you feel POWERFUL.
This single belief alone, that no matter what the cause, it’s always YOUR responsibility, could literally transform you, from an average chump to a superhero.
If you truly make yourselves believe it, you will possess superpower you’d never thought would be possible.
Back to my story then.
When I first heard about this principle, I tried to implement it step by step in my life as well. In the beginning, it looked really intimidating and out of place.
How in the name of God, could I ever blame myself for the taxes or the gas that went up? Or how is it my fault that I caught a cold again?
Well, the tricky part before you’ll reach your singularity point is to be able to “see” all the direct or indirect connections between the event and your responsibility.
For starters, let’s all accept that for everything good or bad that happens to you, you’re 100% responsible for it. Nobody else, no other person, luck, divine intervention, nothing. You and you alone are responsible for everything.
Having this conversation with some people, I always get the classic comment, “is it my fault if I get hit by lightning” or “what if the plane I am on crashes”?
I can answer with two ways. But because I respect you greatly, I’ll give you the honest (serious) response here.
Who gives a fuck about these events? These events are so rare that the only reason someone would bring up this question is for the sole purpose of a vain argument. Although I can think of many more such extreme examples, that a mishap isn’t technically your responsibility, satisfying this endless and reasonless argument is beyond the scope of this post (and this blog).
So let’s go back to reality.
Why is taxes going up your responsibility?
Like every other highly complicated and mental issue in life, your singularity moment is, above all, a matter of perspective.
What I mean by that, is that unless you really WANT to take the full responsibility, nothing on this earth can make you do it. By the time you’ll do so, though, I can guarantee you, you’ll feel totally free. You’ll feel that you’re really an unstoppable force of nature and that nothing can be an obstacle in your way.
Have you seen any rich people worry so much about taxes or cursing the government about it? I don’t believe so. Wanna know why? Because despite the fact that the have to pay a lot of money for taxes, they make way more than that, and they live a super awesome life.
On the other hand, average Joe who only makes like $3.000 per month, he has to pay almost half of that to the government for various reasons (taxes, social security, etc) and consequently he has to live with what’s left of that.
It only makes sense if he struggles while he’s trying to live with a few crumbs per month.
The reason why the rising taxes is totally your responsibility is because you’re not making enough money!
There it is, I said it.
The reason you catch a cold too often is because your lifestyle sucks.
The reason your girlfriend or your boyfriend has left you is because you’re not valuable enough.
The reason you live in a shitty tiny apartment in a filthy town isn’t the greedy government, it is your incapability of making more money so that you can move to a better place.
Exactly this is the kind of belief I have tried to apply to my life up till now and I can assure you, it works wonders.
So, to end it once and for all. This is a list of things that bother me during my whole day.
- I have to eat non-organic meat and vegetables because at the moment I can’t afford it.
- I have a hard time concentrating doing my job because every hour I got a gypsy vendor outside my window selling all kinds of shit.
- I don’t like my house because it’s small (no swimming pool either).
- I don’t like my neighbors because they have a scarcity mentality.
- I don’t travel as much as I want.
- I don’t own a Ferrari (yet).
- Amazon gets on my nerves because every now and then, they change something in their platform causing my income to dive or to jump.
- My girlfriend gets mad at me for some (strictly evolutionary) reasons.
- I cannot send my mother for a trip in her dream place.
- Gas and taxes always go up.
- When the last huge storm happened, my house flooded.
- blah blah blah
I could go on and on and on like forever, but more examples won’t make it any better.
What I want you to understand is this:
No matter what happens, it’s always your responsibility not to let this happen again.
By taking full responsibility (and action), you can sooner or later virtually eliminate 99.9% of the things that bother you. Period.
I know it sounds like a lot of work, but it’s true. I’ve tried it all. There’s no other way around it.
Health
By taking full responsibility for your body and your mind and by improving your lifestyle, you can eliminate most chances of getting sick (yes even cancers and all kinds of stuff that can kill you).
Even if you could only change what you eat, from complete rubbish like pizzas and burgers to organic meats and vegetables, you could eliminate the majority of times you get sick so easily.
It’s very easy to blame God, bad luck, or bad genes when something bad happens to our health. The hard thing is to be proactive, live a healthy life where you are careful of what you eat, where you live, what kind of air you breathe and what kind of water you drink.
It’s pretty stupid (and useless) to blame your genes or your luck if you get cancer at some point in your life isn’t it?
If you think your city is polluted, move. If you think you should improve your nutrition, do it. If you think smoking is bad, fucking quit. No money? Your responsibility. Read and learn how to make more of it. It’s not that difficult.
So instead of being a crybaby and praying to God in order to keep me healthy, what I prefer to do is, try to maximize my chances of living a healthy life, in every way I can.
At least, in the odd event, I will get cancer at some point in my life, I will think to myself, I did everything I could to live the best life possible. There was nothing else I could have done. Fuck it 🙂
Relationships
By taking full responsibility for your relationships by studying and learning the human nature and by improving your social skills, you can eliminate almost all chances of having bad quality relationships with people.
By learning how to be charismatic you can maintain your rapport with almost everybody even at times when the other party drives you crazy. Remember, it is YOU that you are supposed to know how human nature operates. It is you that you are supposed to control your emotions and make your relationships work.
It is you that you’re responsible for being the higher person and understand what your mother/father/sister/friend feels and thinks at any given point. Take for granted that other people are average. They don’t possess any of the “magic powers” you have.
So, the next time your girlfriend yells at you, you should know why she does that (the real reason, not what she tells you). Claim all responsibility, learn how women or men think and what they want, and fucking give it to them if you want. But for the love of God, please stop complaining and accusing them for not being understanding and for being wrong.
No matter what the situation is, you are the only one who’s responsible. Not because of the actual event that took place, but because you’re supposed to be the proactive one (not letting this happen in the first place), or even if it did happen, again you’re the one who should be in a position to make things better.
Wealth
I might be a bit biased about it, but I strongly believe that by taking full responsibility about your wealth, you’ll be able to eliminate virtually 99.99999% of all evil in (your) world.
Again, crashing planes and lightnings aside, I would really like to challenge you and make you come up with a “reasonable” problem money can’t solve.
If you take my list above for example, almost all of them could simply be eliminated if my net worth was higher.
Again, to make it clear, your financial status is…you guessed it, YOUR responsibility only. It’s not your mother’s fault for being poor, you can’t blame the government, you can’t blame the high taxation or the unemployment levels, luck even has nothing to do with it.
Being poor or average is your responsibility only.
Like very eloquently Bill Gates has said:
If you are born poor it’s not your mistake. But if you die poor it is your mistake.
And I totally agree with that.
As Thomas Stanley states in his famous book “The Millionaire Next Door” and contrary to general misconception, about 80% of millionaires are first generation rich. That means they didn’t inherit their fortune. They created it.
So, the next time you hear about some rich guy that lives a nice lifestyle, don’t think, he’s lucky to have a rich dad. Chances are he made his wealth himself.
Instead of whining about high taxation, my old car that always breaks down, or my next door old lady that is bitching about everything all the time, I have decided that I am responsible of all this, and it’s my duty to make it right.
Is there a way to talk the prime minister into keeping the taxes low? Don’t think so.
Is there a way to “convince” my car not to break down? LOL.
Is there a way to change the mindset of the old lady next door? Hell no.
Is there a way to make the gypsy salesmen magically disappear? I am no magician you know.
So where it boils down to is this. What is the singular move that could eliminate all these (and a thousand more) troublesome issues from my life?
Simple. Raise my net worth.
So, how to apply this principle to your everyday life. Let me illustrate with a simple quiz.
Let’s suppose that your boss is treating you very crappy. What do you do?
A. Blame him for being a heartless pig and pity yourself because you cannot do anything about it. Continue living your miserable life.
B. Take full responsibility, blame yourself for being in this dire situation, take strength from that very fact, learn how to start and grow your own business and finally live a better life on your own terms.
If you answered B, then well done. A nice and prosperous life is ahead of you.
As a final comment, take a moment and think:
Is there any chance that some white angel flies by and gives me 10 million dollars? Maybe this same angel could make all the people around me smart, positive and knowledgeable? Finally, could this angel make me not get sick ever again?
I wouldn’t bet on that. So what’s left then?
Name this moment your singularity moment by stop being passive, by start being active (and proactive) and by genuinely decide that your fate and your destiny is solely in your hands!
- Stop blaming others
- Start taking full responsibility
- Make things happen
- Embrace greatness
Sounds like a plan?
