Dear friend,

I wanna give you my secrets in terms of how I get a lot of shit done, how I have earned $200,000+ USD a year (credit to Cindy), how we saved over $150,000+, how I deadlift over 400 pounds, and how I was able to conquer all of my fears.

Disclaimer: this is only advice for my 16 year old or 18 year old self. Please don’t listen to any of this advice, because it won’t work for you.

I repeat, don’t listen to me.

Okay let’s begin.

I. Shitload of coffee

Okay I’m sorry Eric, this is a sad truth. You need to drink a lot of coffee to do a lot of shit. Drinking a lot of espresso, and black coffee, and cold brew fucks up your sleep. It creates bags under your eyes. You get irritable, tired, and exhausted at random times during the day. You fall asleep during family dinners at the local restaurants. You pass out from exhaustion at 9pm, and you wake up at 4:30am.

Espresso with no sugar or cream is the best. You wake up, take an icy cold shower, and have a shot of espresso. Then you’re ready to go.

You do your best work at coffee shops, because you need external stimulation. You need to be around other humans. Your idea of hell is being trapped in a silent room, by yourself, that is totally quiet, and dark.

To you, drinking coffee is a ritual. You love the fresh smell of the light roast arabica beans in the morning from your $25 Costco Capresso coffee grinder, and from your $2 Capresso espresso machine that Cindy’s mom got from a local garage sale. It does the job.

At Starbucks, all the coffee sucks, except blonde roast or cold brew.

At hipster coffee shops, you prefer espresso, straight up. All killer no filler.

You drink a lot of coffee to let your creativity flow. You have a shot of espresso before you hit the gym. You try to cut off your caffeine intake by around noon or 3pm, or you feel like you’re going to die. For real.

To be frank, you’re probably just one step below a cocaine addiction. But fuck it, you get a lot of writing and shit done. For the greater good.

II. No phone

Remember when you were 21 years old, fresh outta college, and you contemplated whether you should get a smartphone or not? You saw everyone else who became a slave to it; all these fools living in an Apple prison.

You eventually got a HTC EVO 4G, and you became a slave to it. You then did a commercial for Samsung for the Note II, and got inducted into the Samsung white glove program. You got a bunch of free phones (the s3, 5, 6, 7 edge, note 3, 4, 5), but you felt like a slave. You secretly wanted an iPhone to harness your inner Steve Jobs fanboy. But alas, you didn’t want to stop getting free shit. Because you were afraid of not getting free stuff anymore. But thank God you got dropped from the program.

You met your friends Natalie and Stoichyo (sp?) in Hanoi, and found out they only had one smartphone and laptop between both of them. You believed in them, and wanted to see them make and create dope shit. You gave Stoiycyo your late 2015 MacBook Pro, maxed out 3ghz+ i7 processor, 16gb ram, 512 gb hard drive, that you bought $2700 brand new. You gave Cindy your old S7 edge, and Cindy gave her s6 to Natalie.

While you’re writing these lines you don’t own a laptop or smartphone. You’re typing this on IA writer on your old iPad Air. You find out you get a lot of shit done on it.

You discover the life hack that Kanye West knew a long time ago:

The best life hack: not owning a phone.

To me, not owning a phone means that you’re a self centered, entitled, privileged, selfish, asshole. But it also means that you can create more, because you have fewer distractions.

If you went to school today as an elementary school student or kindergartener, your teachers would say you have ADD. You can’t concentrate. But you know yourself, you just get distracted easily.

To focus, you just need to cut out distractions.

Your phone was your biggest distraction.

You always dicked around in the App Store, looking for new apps or games to download. You’re always downloading new books to your kindle app. You’re always trying to optimize your phone, and customize it. You’re spending too much time on the verge looking at new phones that are coming out, and you think that if you bought a new phone, you would be more creative, innovative, and happier. You know this is b.s.

Now you don’t got a phone no more, you can focus. No more distractions. You are in a fucking creative zone. You have no more friction. You’re like a Lamborghini, cutting through the wind, going 500 miles an hour. You have no drag or friction.

III. No email

You always thought email was stupid. But yet you used it, because society told you to. You always hated it.

Now you’re like fuck it, no more email. No more email. I repeat, no more email.

You’ll probably use email a little, here and there. But for the most part, fuck email. To me, it is the biggest distraction from me as an artist who wants to create.

I feel super guilty for not replying to the 700 emails in my inbox. But I can still go to sleep at night, knowing that I am creating empowering information that will help the greater good.

IV. You are DEADPOOL.

You are the marvel superhero (or anti-hero) DEADPOOL.

You are like Wolverine, your muscles, limbs, and sinews regenerate after being cut off.

You have insane mental fortitude, you have undergone psychological torture for years on end as a child, now your mind and soul is solid like adamantine steel.

You don’t take yourself too seriously. You like to joke around. You’re a cynic, mixed with positive stoic and Christian. You aspire to follow in the footsteps of Jesus, but this time with diamond-studded mail armor, and a blade of alacrity or lightsaber by your side.

When people try to fuck you up, imagine like someone chopping off your arm, and you feeling the inferno scorching your nerves. But even though you feel the pain, it will regrow.

Someone insults you, someone tries to tear you down, or destroy you– imagine yourself in the torture chamber laughing and saying:

More, more!

And when shit gets tough, you might have to slowly slice off your own hand, to have the rest of your body survive.

V. Deadlift

To become a deadlift beast it is easy; just add 2.5-5 pounds to your deadlift, once a week. Do it for ten years. Then you will deadlift 405+.

You were once a fat kid at age 12. You hated it. At age 12 you put rocks in your backpack, and started to run around Bayside, Queens. Your mom bought you a 15 pound dumbbell, you did curls. You then held both 15 pound dumbbells in one hand (30 pounds) and curled and pressed that.

You endeavored to become a beast. To become Sting from WCW. Ray Mysterio Jr. Spider-Man. Iron man. You idolized super heros. You wanted to become one.

When you deadlift, you jam out to Kanye West’s “Yeezus” album. You imagine yourself with your black leather jacket, studded with iron spikes. You feel fucking badass, and in the gym, you have no limits. Just you, and the cold iron steel.

When you deadlift, you are pushing the earth from below you. You are fighting gravity, but breaking free from gravity. When you are trying to fully extend you feel your hamstrings trembling, and your whole body trembling. But when you fully extend, and throw that motherfucking weight back on the floor, you know:

I have no limits. Only self-imposed limits.

You see deadlifting and powerlifting like your Zen meditation, except more badass.

VI. Cindy is always right.

Your new motto:

Ciar (Cindy is always right).

You are really bad with money. The only way you became rich was you gave all the money to Cindy, and if you wanted to spend anything more than $300, you needed permission from Cindy. She prevented you from buying a lot of stupid shit.

Your new rule: you cannot buy anything more than $4 without permission from Cindy. That is enough for a cup of coffee and a tip.

By not having money, you are back in broke college student mode. You have to innovate, and be more creative. It also reminds you that the rest of the world, 99,99% are living in poverty, less than $2 a day. So you cannot complain.

You can feed yourself just on water, coffee, and egg snacks (6-8 eggs every night, before you sleep, at around 10pm).

Pride yourself on your Spartan lifestyle.

VII. How to get rich.

Easy: barbell theory (thanks Nassim Taleb).

Give away your stuff for free, or charge a lot of money for it. Barbell; embrace both extremes.

In life, either don’t own a car, or own a Lamborghini.

In photography, use a cheap digital camera (iPhone or Ricoh GR) and an expensive film Leica MP (black paint).

When you traveled in Paris with Cindy at age 20, you either had super cheap meals (cup noodles with fresh Rotisserie chicken from streets of Paris, or an “expensive” Orange Canard Duck meal).

So for your YouTube videos, keep it free without ads. If someone wants you to shoot a commercial, charge $250,000 USD.

Free information on this blog, but charge $5,000 USD+ for workshops.

Free advice to high schoolers, college students, and college graduates– but charge $5,000 USD an hour for your consulting fees.

Either masturbate without audio visual stimulation or have sex, don’t do the “middle” (watch porn and masturbate).

Either be 100% sober (no alcohol, no weed, drugs) or get 100% fucked up (like your bachelor party, with shots of Patron and smoking a few joints and throwing up blood later that night).

With money, live like a broke ass college student, or wild out by going hard as a motherfucker (ham) by buying some ignorant and materialistic shit.

Harness the Apollonian and Dionysian, both extremes. The rational man and the untamable wild animal in me.

Only read Seneca, Nietzsche, Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, Epicurus, Musonius Rufus, Nassim Taleb, Diogenes, Socrates, or Jesus — or perhaps Kanye West and Kim Kardashian gossip.

Either whole ass your attention or no attention. Either give someone your 100% attention (laptop and iPad closed and headphones off), or be 100% focused on your creative work. No middle ground of answering emails on your phone while pushing your kid on the swings.

So to be rich,

Charge a lot of money (expensive) or give it away for free.

To save a lot of money,

Get an economical partner, and don’t allow yourself to buy anything more than $4 with their permission.

VIII. Anti-fear

You have anti-fear, meaning, you have the opposite of fear.

Fear means:

To be paralyzed from action because of predicting that you will die.

The opposite of fear (anti-fear) means:

To be empowered to action because knowing that you will die.

Okay perhaps it isn’t a good definition. But I’m working on it.

Anyways, “Memento Mori” is my life motto. Because when I die at age forty, I want my life story to be great. I want my life story to relate with the common man. To know that I must live with a plan to empower others, my brothers and sisters. To not creatively wither from the haters, whose hearts are doom and gloom without hope– broken elevators.

So for me, I know I’m gonna die. And I wanna die, not yet, but one day. So dear God, I pray, for me to never waste another day. To be alive, happy, joyful, gay. To stay focused don my life’s purpose, to not be purchased by consumerist greed, but to feed my creative soul. And to empower the whole wide world.

Introduction

There is no conclusions in life, only beginnings, so friend, don’t give up, just keep hustling and keep on winning.

Keep on grinning in the face of fear. Peer into the deep abyss, hold the hands of your miss and kiss, her sweet face, and know your place in the universe.

Keep spreading positive words, verses in cursive.

Be strong,
Eric