Everyone wants to be an original thinker, and I did too.
I remember when I was a teenager, I would watch Jordan Peterson lectures and Alan Watts lectures, and I would just listen to them in awe at the way that they articulated their points.
Why couldn't I do the same?
Was I not smart enough?
Was I not old enough yet?
No matter how much information I burned through in books or absorbed from lectures, it never seemed to help.
I had all of the thoughts in my head, but when it came time to articulate them, it all came out just a jumbled mess of half -baked ideas that you couldn't even understand after all of the stuttering.
And when I first started writing, I would often just stare at the blank page waiting for ideas to come to my head.
And since none would come to my head, then the negative thoughts would start to flood in about how I'm not meant to be a writer or how I'm not meant to actually write this thing or how I could be doing something better with my time.
I didn't have a structure to help frame my thoughts like we're going to learn about soon.
And because of that, I had no idea what I was writing or what I was writing about.
But I had some idea that I felt I needed to share with the world.
So if you fall into that camp, you have an idea, you have a thought in your head that you want to articulate better, then this video will help you.
Now, the problem in my eyes is that in schools, they don't teach you how to think.
You learn how to memorize.
You learn how to rewrite things in your own words.
And as kids, we kind of know deep down that this is silly.
We don't want to do it.
And so we put in the minimum effort it takes to get good grades unless you're an A -plus student, which most of us weren't.
I was actually. But in college, I was not.
I failed and dropped out.
And that's just the thing.
That's not how the real world works.
You aren't rewarded for thinking someone else's thoughts.
Now, I've been a writer for almost five years, not an academic writer, no English degree.
I'm just a guy that decided to put his thoughts out on the internet, and some people seem to like it.
So I have a few tips I can share.
These aren't going to be academic lessons or English lessons.
These are just going to be potentially philosophical lessons for how to become an original thinker, because that's what you need to become if you want to be a better writer or creator or speaker, or simply want to be respected for your mind, not your body like influencers or your labor or physical effort
for certain types of jobs, which isn't bad, but you can't rely on that for the rest of your life.
Your body declines potentially a lot faster than your mind does.
But the thing is, sometimes the secret to being original is not being original at all.
first we need to learn how to form our own opinion because if we can't form our own opinion then we have nothing to write about you don't have any if you can't form your own opinion the second part of this video on the five ways to think originally they aren't going to do anything for you so I want
to start with this tweet of mine to set things off your audience doesn't want information they want your perspective on information.
Ten people can share the same idea.
Only one will say it in a way that changes minds.
Many of you are writers, creators, or just creatives in general, and whenever I share this opinion of mine of your audience wanting your perspective on information, it helps a lot of people think things through.
So I have a little thought exercise for you before we go any further, because as a writer or creative, you always think like, this isn't original from me.
Like I feel like I'm just writing the same thing that's already been written or putting out the same music or whatever it may be that's already been put out.
But seriously, step back for a second and use your own awareness, your self -awareness.
The power of self -awareness in marketing in business is the most powerful marketing strategy of all.
Think of who you follow.
You follow 100, 200, 300, 400 people.
Out of those people, how many people one talk about the same topics and two, have you heard the same idea from articulated in a different way from their own point of view?
Do you see those two things and be like, oh, this guy copied this guy or do you see each of them as their own unique opinion?
So the point there is what's stopping you from doing that?
And if it's just, oh, I can't think of a unique opinion or a unique perspective, then I have a solution for you in the second part of this video.
But for now, understand this.
You You don't have your own opinion because your survival is dependent on agreeing with others' opinions.
That takes a bit to unpack so just think about this for a second.
You needed approval if you didn't want to be cast out of the tribe.
You absorb the values of the environment you were raised in because you need them to survive.
Now this can get very messy very quick because if your parents are set on you getting a degree, even if it's not the best decision for you, you will be pressured into being a good little student.
If you don't, you may lose your parents' approval if they aren't open -minded.
Now, let's take a more dangerous example.
If your parents are racist and narrow -minded, they won't approve of you if you don't adopt that same racism, and you're just too young to know better from worse.
In that scenario, they're much more likely to kick you out of the house or stop supporting you.
And the mind is unforgiving in this manner because once your worldview forms, then it starts to solidify.
And once it solidifies, it becomes very rigid and hard to break out of that thing.
And you don't even notice it's there.
You don't think you are these negative things until you zoom out and open your mind to actually seeing those.
And then you can overcome them, but not before.
Even worse, your mind starts to solidify more and harden because because you are seeking confirmation of those values and beliefs from the tribe that you find yourself in.
Now, one last example, which is an even more dangerous one.
If you were raised in a Christian environment and tried to go to an underdeveloped part of the world, your beliefs could literally get you jailed or killed.
It doesn't matter how true your beliefs are or how wrong the other ones are in this case.
So I use Christian as an example there, but you can exchange that for anything.
And even if you aren't jailed or killed, there are still bad things that can happen to you.
Think of all the people that come over to America and they're instantly judged and demonized and other things.
I'm not saying I have a solution for this.
I'm just pointing out the obvious here.
I'm not trying to sway anyone in any specific way around this thing, but it's quite obvious that some people come over and then they're viewed bad upon and then they don't have any opportunities so they can't do anything and they can't find their circle and survive well.
So that makes sense.
But what does this have to do with being an original thinker?
Simple. You haven't been thinking independently for your entire life.
So the first step in a solution to this is becoming a skeptic.
And to become a skeptic, you need to step into the mental gym.
Original thinking is difficult work.
That's why many people don't do it.
In today's world, it's even more difficult.
You don't just absorb the values, beliefs, identity, and worldview that your parents installed into you.
You absorb the ideas of the hundreds of thousands of people you are exposed to on the internet over the course of a few months.
Just because you don't live with your parents or go to school anymore doesn't mean you don't want approval and acceptance.
You've just swapped tribes with the one you found in school, online, or other social circles.
You still want to be approved, but this time it's by the digital group you belong to.
But the thing with this, this need for approval and conforming to survive in specific environments, it's necessary up to a certain point until you're on your own.
But at that point, that's not how you do anything great.
You have to rewire your mind.
If you as a person right now do not have a moment in your life where you have stepped back, thought, deconstructed your beliefs, realized how wrong you were, no matter how right you think you were, and started to fundamentally change the beliefs that your mind operates on, then you have work to do.
Unless you have gone through that moment, you know that moment.
If you can't identify that moment in your life, you need to hit that moment.
If you want to do anything great, you need to step out of the nice cozy home your mind has adapted to and step into the mental gym.
But when you first step into the gym, it's daunting.
You don't want to go.
You're afraid of embarrassing yourself.
You're threatening the current structure of your mind that allows you to survive, unless that group you belong to encourages you to step in the gym.
The first step to becoming an original thinker is to reject any prior belief, ideology, value, or idea because when you absorb them, you didn't question them.
I don't care how right you think they are.
If you didn't think them through from scratch, you can only assume they are wrong.
And when I say reject everything, I mean everything.
You need to hold all ideas in the realm of possibility before you accept them.
Because the thing here is that you need a radically open mind if you want to think outside of the box that you didn't know you were in in the first place.
And for all I care, you weren't born from your mother because you weren't there to see it.
I'm not talking about the physical body that you call yourself now that was technically there but couldn't register anything.
You don't remember it.
Your self, your identity wasn't even formed then.
You couldn't make sense of the world.
You didn't have a distinction between self and other.
You didn't exist. That's what I'm talking about.
Whether or not what I just said is valid, my mind is actually able to go down that path and discover new things.
Because I rejected and questioned something that is probably true, but by holding that belief loosely, I'm able to explore original thought.
So how do you practice this?
By becoming a skeptic.
Not the type of skeptic you see on Reddit or in YouTube debates.
A true skeptic who is skeptical of their own skepticism.
Someone who is skeptical about one belief but not their own is not a skeptic.
They're simply blind and dumb.
And once you label yourself or identify as a skeptic, you're not a skeptic.
To illustrate this next point, here's a quote from Sextus Empiricus, who I believe is the like OG skeptic.
The Outlines of Pyranism book is a book on skepticism.
But here's the quote.
For to every account, an equal account is opposed.
And from this, we think we come to hold no beliefs.
So in other words, for every argument, there's an equal opposing argument.
Have you ever noticed that you can argue in any direction infinitely and you will never come to a conclusion?
Usually those arguments lead to eventually someone just closing their mind and then being strict about what they believe and then the argument ends there because there's no room for further discussion.
So once you understand this, you suspend judgment and cease to hold firm beliefs.
But that's not to say that you shouldn't act with conviction towards your goals.
It simply means that you should pivot or change direction when you're exposed to better information.
So rather than not holding firm beliefs, think of the contradiction, firm beliefs held loosely.
And with all of this, there isn't one set thing that I can tell you for how to act within the world.
That's up to your own discretion, making mistakes and just learning.
Now, you can practice skepticism by trying to prove yourself wrong more often.
I kind of fell into doing this naturally because on social media, well, one, I'm interested in certain things, right?
I've always been interested in health, nutrition, the gym, business.
And so when I see certain takes online, some of them are, like, absolutely negative.
Like, oh, this business model or this diet model, like veganism or something, is wrong.
And then there's the other end where, oh, this is the best new business model in the world or diet model, like the ancestral diet.
Oh, it's so new. And then it gets popular for a bit and then it fades down.
So when you're navigating social media, you're going to be convinced that things are good or bad.
And you're going to start to form beliefs and change your decisions based on those things that you actually accept and approve based on your interests.
So my challenge for you there is that whenever you notice these things, you need to research both sides.
You need to research, okay, if it's the ancestral diet, you need to research, okay, what's wrong with this diet?
Okay, what are the benefits of this diet?
And then you let both ends go down these certain rabbit holes because you can't just search it on the surface or else you're not going to find anything worthwhile.
You're not going to be able to form your own opinion because you don't have enough other opinions to pull from.
The trap here is that if you were to accept blindly what someone else says with conviction, like all the ancestral diet is the best because of this, this, and this, and they're consistently writing content on it, and that shapes your worldview and you start to adopt that.
The thing there is you're just getting quick conformational dopamine hits from those things.
And then you have an ordered mind because of it.
You're more clear in your actions.
So you get more results, right?
it's not because you have a new diet or a new training plan and that diet or training plan is the best there is it's because you're actually doing the thing and following the principles that gets results it's not about the fancy diet or whatever it may be it means it's that you're able to be disciplined
now because you've adopted the part of your identity that would eat the healthier foods and do the certain exercises that would get the results for your body same goes for business but once you start doing that thing and you attribute those results to the special little diet, then eventually you start
to push that thing as the new religion.
You lose all opportunity for new discovery and original thought.
So your job is to suspend judgment and attachment.
Your job is to question from all angles and research all perspectives.
Your job is to prove yourself wrong and understand every moving part of the argument.
From there, you can come to your own opinion.
You are no longer bound by the mind you were programmed with.
But that's just the start.
How do you come up with original ideas?
How do you structure your ideas in a way that others value in your writing, speaking, and creative work?
What do you read to find deep ideas?
Here's the thing. Original thinking is largely a myth.
Becoming a true skeptic, like we just talked about, will open your mind to less limited thinking, but it doesn't guarantee that you will have original ideas.
It's just a starting point.
And that's okay, because original thinking is perception.
Perception is dependent on identity.
Identity is dependent on conditioning, values, beliefs, conscious or unconscious goals, and the rest.
As an example, some people who've read my book, The Art of Focus, thought it was incredible.
And those aren't my words, although I think I thought it was good for a first book.
But then others didn't.
That's just the way things go, right?
When you're online, you're making videos, you're posting your opinions in public, people are going to comment negatively about that thing if they don't agree with certain things that you said.
And so when it gets negative reviews and saying how I believe one of them said like it's not or it's nothing new, like I've read this all somewhere before.
I thought it was pretty original.
I thought most parts of it were fairly original and maybe not even original, but at least unique, right, presented in a unique thing where multiple ideas were strung together.
So aside from me talking about myself and wanting you to go buy my book maybe.
The point is that certain identities at certain levels of development will see your ideas as original and some won't and that's fine.
Do you actually think all of Peterson's and Watt's ideas have never been said before or are they simply articulating a good idea in a way that a specific group of people perceive as great?
If If you want to apply this to writing or being a creator or whatever it may be, go watch my videos that are titled You Are The Niche or The Most Profitable Niche Is You and you'll understand a lot more of what I'm saying here in terms of perception and identity and how by just writing under your own
name, that makes most of your ideas unique because all of your other ideas can be taken into context by the reader.
It's not like they're just reading one post and being like, oh, that's not original.
They've read multiple of your posts.
So the longer you're in the game, the more your ideas compound in the minds of your readers, the more original of a lens they are reading your content through or maybe even listening to your music from.
They have these reference points to interpret what you're saying.
It's not to say that you are any better than the other person listing the idea.
But if me and another person that you didn't know about were to post the same exact tweet and you read both of them like a week apart, who's would impact you more and why?
If it's your first time watching me here, then you probably wouldn't be impacted very much.
But others who have like consumed a lot of my content, I feel like it's safe to say that you would think mine is more impactful in that scenario.
So getting into it, how do we discover, articulate, and create new ideas that few people have said before?
Because that's the key to your success as a creative, especially going into the world of AI domination or whatever that is.
So the first step is to just say the same thing from your own perspective.
Because most writers struggle because they feel as if they're saying what's already been said.
And I know this extremely well because I teach writing in 2 -Hour Writer, and I've been talking about this recently with people in the Cortex Discord server.
Cortex is my writing note -taking second brain app.
Not necessarily mine, but we have a team of 10 that are building it.
Great engineers, great team, obsessed team.
But here's the thing.
Originality is less about saying something new and more about exploring existing ideas in a fresh way.
This takes effort, mental labor, endurance running for your psyche.
you need to set aside time to think through an idea without distractions, go on a walk.
Second, saying the same thing isn't bad, because the best advice in business is to sell what's already selling, but with your own twist.
So you stick your hand in the river that's already flowing.
In business, you stick your hand in the niche or the industry or whatever it is that's already making money.
You're not going to somewhere where the money isn't and trying to attract it to you you go where the money is or where the attention is like on social media and you plant your own unique flag there with what already works but the key is to talk about those things with a novel perspective so how do you
do that that's what we're going to cover with the other steps so step two is to read what people haven't read before the best ideas i've found are the ones collecting dust in little -known books, podcasts, videos, and posts.
The point here is that most people aren't original, they're just talking about ideas you haven't seen before.
If you're consuming the same information that everyone else is, it's no wonder why you feel like you're saying the same thing as them.
So stop reading mainstream books, stop watching mainstream content, stop only getting your information from the algorithm.
You need to actively hunt for ideas.
I'm not saying that you, like, have to stop the mainstream books or the mainstream movies or whatever it may be.
Those are good for entertainment, right?
But your intention with those is entertainment.
It's not learning. It's not finding ideas so that you can master your craft.
You need to separate those two things.
And when you're trying to actually do something great, then you need to be intentional and put a lot of effort and priority into hunting for the ideas that will change the course of that thing that you're doing.
So again, this takes effort.
You're not just going to type into Google and find out on the first page of results.
You have to dig. You have to actually research.
You need to listen to two, three hour long podcasts that nobody has heard before that have like 2000 views on YouTube.
You need to go and find those channels and know bullet point summaries of something that's popular, isn't going to give you anything original.
I hate the bullet point summary culture, the people that comment, Oh, can this guy's just babbling all the time.
Can I get a five minute or not a five minute, a five bullet point summary you're missing the, you're absolutely missing the point.
Nothing, nothing against the people doing that.
Just the concept of like, I need bullet point summaries for everything.
It's just cheap dopamine.
Even in learning, even when you're trying to do something good, you can't escape the cheap dopamine.
Can you go watch my video, the cheap dopamine epidemic, where I go over the difference between how short form content is in tropic and long form content or long -term gratification in the form of content is centropic.
One leads to more order and clarity in your life.
the other leads to more disorder.
Having bullet point summaries for 20 books is going to cause a lot more chaos in your mind than just reading one book.
And you're going to get a lot more out of that one book.
The point with that point is to just go down more rabbit holes.
Step three is to connect ideas from different disciplines.
Because I get my best ideas when I want to write about one topic, like business, but study something completely different, like philosophy.
In fact, these usually turn into my most memorable writing and videos.
People like my business videos because I bring a philosophical depth to it.
Like on the topic of niching down and the concept of you are the niche and how I brought like ego development theory to that thing and how you're targeting people at different levels of development.
Another example is just I knew that levels of awareness were a thing in marketing, right?
There's problem aware to solution aware to product aware and everything in between.
And so when I read the book Awareness by Anthony DeMello, then I'm like, I can start to make connections between these two things and I can bring this really unique and potentially original perspective to writing and teaching about the levels of awareness.
Now the thing here, again, is that this is much easier to do in something like a long -form video or a long -form newsletter.
I've said this many times before, but if you're a creator who only makes short -form content like TikToks or Reels or even tweets, as much as I love Twitter, even tweets, you're not building as much reputation as you think you are.
There's a reason you remember the author that changed your life with the book, but you don't remember.
You may remember a life changing tweet, but that's probably only because you've spent enough time with that person's content.
You have all of the moving pieces that make that idea work.
Even if you haven't spent time with that person, that singular tweet means nothing to most people.
It means the world and changed your life because you have all of the circulating ideas that allows it to connect.
That's what books do for you.
That's what longer form content does for you.
If people go and read your content and they don't have any context or you're not creative enough to write a post that clicks and hits people in the perfect spot, then long form content has to be there.
So things like social media is good for attracting people who have that kind of beginner level shallow awareness because they're not on social media to learn.
They're getting on to be entertained.
So you You need to grab them and you need to take them to the deeper stuff and you need to raise their awareness.
So the point with this tip is to just stop only studying what you're good at.
It's good to study what you're good at and get better at it so you can master it, but you need to complement that with a complementary domain to bring a new dimension to it so you don't end up like the people who are pigeonholing themselves in that specialist area so that an AI specialist can go and replace
it. Go watch my videos on being a generalist.
So as an example, if you're into marketing, study psychology or spirituality.
If you're into philosophy, study business or social media.
Write about the connections that you make.
Now, step four is to just stop being afraid of frameworks.
It seems like creative people are allergic to frameworks for no good reason.
They think that frameworks ruin their authenticity or their freedom with creative thought.
But what they fail to realize is that creativity thrives within constraints, specifically constraints that you set, right?
Agency autonomy, when you're assigned constraints, like the project of someone else, yeah, that's not fun.
You don't like working on other people's projects unless you have a shared vision and a long -term stake in that thing, like in a company when you're assigned client work.
But when you're building your own projects and you set the constraints, it's like the most fun thing to do in the world.
And the other thing here is that you can't think outside of the box if there is no box?
If you don't have constraints, how can you be creative within that thing?
So almost everything I write or speak stems from one specific framework that I call pain and process.
There's multiple. You can look up copywriting frameworks or writing frameworks or any kind of speaking frameworks or any kind of frameworks, and you'll find a lot of good ones.
Just go studying them.
Try them. But pain and process or problem and process is arguably the easiest one.
It's very simple. You start with a pain point or a problem, and then you go over the process to overcome that thing.
I have a Cortex document that you can duplicate with the link in the description that goes over examples of this and the pyramid principle, which helps with persuasive writing or speaking as well.
If you were to just follow those two frameworks, you would have great writing and speaking if you practiced.
So why this framework?
Why do we start with a problem?
Because one, it captures attention.
Two, it qualifies the reader or listener.
It It answers the question, what's in it for me?
Three, it is the start of any good story.
All stories start with a problem or a pain point, or they open a curiosity loop because something's wrong.
And then last, it frames the ideas that come next, like a story or solution.
So if you want to think originally, just start with the problem.
Think of a problem, right?
You have a topic, you have an idea.
Next, your mind should immediately go to the problem, and then you can start questioning from there.
That is the easiest way to think originally or just think impactfully.
Just try it. Take an idea from this video, like being skeptical of your own skepticism, and then, okay, what's the problem with that?
Just train your mind to think.
Problem, problem, problem.
That's the most valuable mindset you can create in any situation.
Business, startups, relationships.
If you can just become a problem solver, all of your goals are implied.
You don't need to be a goal setter.
You become a problem solver because you actively think of problems to solve.
The goal is implied because a problem doesn't or a goal doesn't exist without a problem.
And then once you start solving it, you unlock, you go deeper.
That's what allows for creativity.
So think of the problem, then think of an example or a story that illustrates the problem.
If you need help with this as well, I know I continue to promote Cortex.
Go to the Discord server, Cortex Discord server, then go to the Second Brain Course channel.
take the first actual section of that, not the Cortex overview, but the core notes section.
There's a core notes template.
It goes over how to take notes on ideas.
What it's really doing is it's helping you structure a creative and persuasive argument.
So once you build your second brain, your database of notes with all of these ideas, once you have 10, 20, I guarantee you won't be able to stop writing.
Now, step number five is that experimentation is your best teacher.
Experimentation or direct experience is going to give you the most unique viewpoints on things because they're your experience and you're unique from everyone else.
The other thing is that you live in your body, you live with your mind, you live with other people, and you live with responsibilities.
Because of that, it should be considered your full -time job to learn about them, practice skills that improve them, and master those domains.
Like that's one thing that gets me, It makes me feel off.
It's like people are like, I don't know what to do.
And meanwhile, their life is in the shitter.
It's like, what do you, what do you think you do?
You're over here studying this esoteric crap rather than just fixing what's right in front of you, because that's going to teach you more than that is.
Now, here's the reason behind this.
Since most thinking starts with a problem and experimentation, not prescription, is how you solve problems for good, then original thinking is the by -product of experience.
You gain experience by noticing your own problems.
You notice your own problems by snapping out of your mindless routine of trivial tasks.
You look at yourself in the mirror and be honest about your discontentment.
You dig deeper to get to the root of that problem.
I don't like how I look turns into I'm uncomfortable taking my shirt off, turns into my wife or husband deserves better, turns into I don't have the energy to build the life I want, turns into people won't respect me if I keep doing this, and then that finally turns into, I don't want to end up alone.
Now you're problem aware.
Start researching and experimenting with solutions.
When you start in the gym, you have no idea what you're doing.
You're better off buying a program and studying nutrition until you grasp the fundamentals.
With enough study and not latching onto specific training or diet ideologies, you can start experimenting to discover a better way of doing things.
Slowly, then all at once, you create your own original way of thinking about a specific domain of life.
That's valuable. That's what people want to follow, purchase, and support.
That's how you turn your mind into a creative machine that others can't help but be attracted to.
AI. I'm actually very excited about the neural search pane.
So a way to think about that is like as you're writing, it will notice what you're writing and it will start to surface other ideas for you, related ideas that can help you continue your writing.
So if you're writing a newsletter or a Twitter thread, it will automatically pop up ideas for you that you've either highlighted or written before.
And you can use those or use AI to help you synthesize them inside of there.
So super excited for that.
That's it for this video.
Apologies for the endless self -promotion of Cortex.
But we're up against the big boys here, Notion and Obsidian, although we're not really trying to compete with them.
Okay, I'm done. Go use Cortex.
Bye.
