Taking the Red Pill: Part II

Now that we’ve laid the foundation of self-image, relationships, and work, let’s talk about how those help lead to health, prosperity, and significance.

Health

Consider that you are stressed at work. What do you use to take the edge off, or to numb yourself? Your drug of choice could be sugar, alcohol, or gambling. Whatever it is, the goal of having good health is to get you to the point that your stress is so manageable that you don’t have to numb yourself constantly to keep going every day. That way, you can experience life without the worry of crashing.

The unhealthy thing about numbing the lows is that it also clips the highs. My whole goal is to get people to experience life so that they can actually enjoy the highs.

The next part of the Red Pill model is prosperity, which is what everyone wants to get to immediately. The reason that prosperity doesn’t come before your health, is that if you don’t have your health, you will spend all your prosperity trying to get it. And if you forgo your health for the sake of prosperity, eventually you’ll have to spend a lot of your wealth to get back your health because you didn’t take care of yourself along the way. And the fact is that having your health allows you to work at a peak performance level. To work and enjoy life at its pinnacle, you have to take care of your health.

Prosperity

What does prosperity mean to you? Prosperity is usually portrayed as having lots of money or assets, and buying lots of stuff. Prosperity can include those things, but I believe that prosperity is there so that you can have abundance. You have overflow and out of that overflow, you can find or create your significance. After all, the only real success is having a positive impact on the lives of other people. After you have your basic needs met, all we’re looking for is self-transcendence. People get so lost in trying to buy things to make themselves feel better. No one enjoys prosperity itself. You have to enjoy prosperity by sharing it in a way that makes an impact.

Prosperity is not just money, but it is also your time, talents, relationships, and sense of control. For example, if you are giving up all of your time to earn your money, then you’re not wealthy. Wealth is the ability to have and be in control of your choices! It’s about being able to allocate the resources that you have to the things and people that matter most to you. If you are working 80 hours a week, then are you free? Are you truly prosperous if you have $8 million in the bank but are not able to make time for a dinner or a birthday party or ball game? Whether or not those things are important to you, they are likely important to the people around you, and you’ll be more prosperous if you can share your prosperity with those you love. Ask yourself what prosperity means to you, and use that metric to reframe how you want to enjoy and share it.

Significance

How do you figure out your significance? It’s a big question, right? Ask yourself: If you could solve any problem in the world, what would it be? If you can answer that question, then it will lead you to what your significance is.

Finding your significance is always personal. For me, the problem I see is suffering. I am so sick and tired of seeing people do work that they are not passionate about simply because it pays well. I used to be that guy. I was fortunate enough to break six figures four years out of college, and I thought that it was enough that I could keep going. I thought that getting the bigger house and all that stuff was going to make it work for me, but it didn’t.

After I left corporate America and made the transition to doing the work that I wanted, I found that I enjoy educating others so that they don’t have to put up with work that doesn’t matter to them. Through my Multifamily Kickstart course, I teach people about how to invest in multifamily apartments. They can do something that they love while accelerating wealth and improving communities. For me, this is where significance comes into play in my work.

Take a moment to think about what you want to change. What is your significance? It’s okay if it is self-serving because what is significant to you will help you be a better person and help others, which in turn will help them help others.

Bringing it all together

If you find it hard to look yourself in the eye when you look in the mirror, then you need to take the Red Pill. If you’re not surrounded by people who are providing you with as much as you’re giving them, then you need to attract the right people by taking the Red Pill. If your work is making it so that you have to self-medicate every single day, then you need to take the Red Pill and start taking care of your health. If you want to enjoy the prosperity that you have, then take the Red Pill. If you aren’t living a life of significance, or don’t even know where to begin, then you need to take the Red Pill so that you can work towards a meaningful life.