Welcome explorer

You’re in the Slipstream. The wake of the worlds greatest ideas. If you’re looking for the inspiration to upgrade your life, you’re in the right place.

After 6 years of deep immersion in entrepreneurship, health and self-improvement, one lesson stands out as the clearest one among them all:

The quality of your ideas determine the quality of your life!

ENTREPRENEURSHIP/ WRITING/ CONTENT CREATION

✍Slowing down to speed up

In life, we often bite off more than we can chew. We want to get to our goals and dreams as fast as possible, with little time wasted.

The problem is that most people have not fully thought out and planned where it is they want to go. As such, they have unrealistic expectations on themselves and of reality.

In my case, I was too ambitious to aim for a twice a week newsletter at the start. While wanting to deliver more value and grow faster, it runs counter to my larger strategy of putting out content in a holistic fashion. I want to develop content across a range of platforms and media types.

If you’re a social media user, you would have seen me post on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Medium in this past week - all in addition to this newsletter (published on Beehiv).

I’m even ambitious enough to take this to Youtube as well.

In order to build a multi-channel content engine, it’s going to take some time and a lot more planning, testing and tinkering.

So, I’m going to reduce the publishing of the newsletter to once a week on Saturday mornings.

This will give me time to better explore and attend to the other media networks, each with its own sets of rules, tools, audiences and norms. Each one is its own game!

As my goal is to disseminate my ideas and educate people, I want to be as effective at this as possible. As I get feedback on these ideas from you, my audience, I’ll be refining them further and posting them in various formats to interact with different communities.

For me, it’s about having an ongoing and developing conversation with the public and my audience. Secondly, its about learning the marketing and communication skills needed to succeed on these platforms.

Where is it all going?

Content marketing is extremely hot. Success in this field is disproportional to the effort put in, and the compounding effects (on network, credibility and opportunities) are among the best there is.

As I break into this space and experiment with different business models, I’ll pass on those learnings to you so that you may begin your side hustle asap!

Don’t let social media use you, rather learn to use it to reach your financial and lifestyle goals!

SOCIETY / LIFE

💀Utopia leads to extinction - We need a better model for society

In the 1960s, Dr Calhoun performed (in my opinion) the most important experiment on societal organisation. He aimed to determine the effect of living in a utopia by recreating it for a mouse population.

What is a utopia? A place of unlimited food, water, living space, population growth without predators, and so on.

The experiment started with eight mice, who began to reproduce quickly, enjoying their newfound "utopia" with unlimited resources. Within 4 years, however, the population had become extinct through self-annihilation even though all the resources it needed for survival were readily available, including ample space to live.

How could such a thing happen?

Well by the simple concept that struggle and suffering leads to growth and strength. While comfort and pleasure leads to decline and weakness.

It all starts with the social education of the young.

Due to the abundance of food and water and lack of predators, there was no need to perform any actions to acquire resources and/or avoid danger. So the young have no opportunity to see such actions, learn through positive and negative reinforcement (e.g. bad pupils often lose their lives) and, later, use them effectively.

The study showed that contrarily, difficult conditions instigate better coping mechanisms for the population, leading to its growth, strengthening and reinforcement.

The scientist carefully documented the growth, activities and state of the population all the way to extinction. The trouble began on Day 315 when social norms and structure started breaking down.

Aberrations included the following: females abandoning their young; males no longer defending their territory; and both sexes becoming more violent and aggressive. Deviant behavior, sexual and social, mounted with each passing day. The last thousand mice to be born tended to avoid stressful activity and focused their attention increasingly on themselves.

Human society has come to strikingly resemble the self-annihilation tendencies of the mice.

The only real difference is that a generation of mice takes about 50 days to play out, while a generation of humans takes about 20 – 25 years.

What does it mean for you?

We are not living in a way that we have evolved too, and as such our internal chemistry is deviated from the baseline. We have widespread existential crises because people don't know who they are, mostly because they fail to see themselves as parts of a larger machine known as society.

No man is an island.

Yet this is what everyone is aiming towards. Deficiencies in challenges in life, strong social bonds and reciprocity is the reason why we are so susceptible to dopamine addictions.

Do you know about the study that got rats addicted to cocaine while they were being tested in lab settings and locked in cages? When it was tested on wild rats living in natural colonies in open space, they could not get them addicted to cocaine. The environment made them more likely to become drug users!

Do you see how the environment you are in influences the kind of behaviour you exhibit? Most (if not all) addictions are a result of a person having a deficiency in their lives (compared to our optimal evolutionary environment) and not being able to solve the root cause.

I've seen first hand how lack of awareness and integration of the young into the social fabric of life, results in their unhappiness and in society getting worse.

Be aware that providing everything to your loved ones can become detrimental past a certain point. If they're never hungry, do they know the value of food? If they aren't aware of the effort it takes to grow food and cook meals they will all too easily refuse to eat something because it "doesn't suit their taste". Do they have compassion and empathy for others? If they never feel hunger how will they empathise with those that beg for food?

It turns out that “spoiling” kids actually makes them spoiled!

Maybe its time to balance it out with some tough love. Reward good behaviour, disincentivize the bad behaviour.

Instill in them the understanding and interdependence we have with greater society and that we should be orienting ourselves in a "service-to-others" kind of way.

"The lack of challenges gradually spoils the behaviour of subsequent generations of a population. This degeneration is inevitable and leads to eventual self-extinction. Due to the lack of challenges, the extinction of a population is inevitable. It lasts several generations, but is inexorable."

Socialism / progressivism teaches children that competition is bad. “Everyone’s a winner” is the mantra of our time, and this creates an environment where children are not challenged. In fact, it is no longer even socially acceptable to subject children to any challenges at all. We are weakening our children, our families, our societies - and by law!

Thomas Sowell stated, "The welfare state shields people from the consequences of their own mistakes, allowing irresponsibility to continue and to flourish among ever wider circles of people."

Applicability to Humanity?

A fulfilling life is built through dealing with and overcoming pain and struggle, whatever form that may be. No life is ever exempt, and actually trying to make one exempt just leads to further suffering.

We must orient our lives towards being close to the production of our own food, being in touch with nature, hard work, sunlight , fresh air and soil. We are only meant to be living in communities of a couple hundred people, to have time to think about life and to appreciate being, to have limited choices at love and marriage, and when we find it, to work hard and with commitment to building a strong and stable family. We raise kids with the understanding and appreciation that we are here to serve the tribe, and if we do it well, the tribe will serve and protect us.

This is the harmonious cycle of humanity, our natural equilibrium state. In many ways, technology and industrialization moved us away from this and as a result we have more people suffering (mentally, emotionally, and possibly physically) than ever before.

Important Lessons from this study:

1. The very real dangers of a Universal Basic Income (UBI) or welfare / stimulus giveaways

2. When you give resources to populations without any apparent scarcity or competition, those population raise generations of offspring that are incapable of functioning in society.

3. Population itself is not the problem. Collectivism and the welfare state is what will lead to humanity’s self-annihilation.

4. They no longer valued competition, achievement or resources. Zero population was the inevitable result.

Read time: 10mins

HEALTH/ EXERCISE

💪🏽Train like Bruce Lee

Jeff Cavalier from AthleanX.com is one of my prime teachers when it comes to physical health and fitness. He constantly puts top notch, science-backed exercise content backed by his decades long experience as a personal trainer, sports coach and bodybuilder himself.

For a guy in his mid-40s, his body is in the top 1% of 1%. He really walks his talk, which is why I listen to him so much. After all, you wouldn't trust a skinny chef right?

This video, while short, summarizes some really profound and advanced training principles that Bruce Lee supposedly employed in his own routines. These are factors that, when applied to your training program, will easily supercharge the intensity and the benefit you get (in terms of physiological change).

Do you know these training terms/ principles? If not, it’s time to learn!

1. 2:05 "Lift What Can Be Lifted"

2. 2:20 ROM/TUT

3. 2:50 Yielding Isometric

4. 3:40 "Contraction Creates Command"

5. 4:07 Intra-set

6. 5:21 "Create Strength By Not Losing Strength"

7. 6:08 Plug Energy Leaks

8. 7:50 Overcoming Isometric

9. 8:25 "You Are What You Eat"

10. 10:00 "Abs Should Be Like Steel"

These are some time-tested techniques that you can use to take your training to the next level.

Any particular technique that you really like or have used with success before?

Watch time: 12 mins

PROSPERITY/ LIFE LESSONS

💰Hugh Jackman: Lessons from a legend

Let's be honest, we all want to be more prosperous. But what does that mean? According to Mirriam-Webster, "the condition of being successful or thriving".

I've always understood it as to live a life you are proud of, and one that brings you immense joy. One where you do not feel a lack of anything, In fact, the opposite - you feel an over-abundance that you would want to share with the world.

Now if you’re already like this, you probably don't need to be reading this newsletter but writing one!

Every now and then I like to hear a good life story, especially of someone who is now successful and who we cannot imagine struggling and being a normal kid, far from their dreams and potential. Hugh Jackman is such a person for me.

Having been the iconic Wolverine in X-men, he was one of the best and most masculine of “action-men” at one point. But he didn't let that box him in, he moved across genres and at one point was singing on Broadway! Talk about breaking through your own boundaries and constantly redefining yourself.

This interview with Hugh was crazy inspiring. You'll see the authentic, energetic and driven person he is, and leave in more admiration for his true character than any he has ever played. He shows that its okay to be imperfect (in fact, we all are) and that you can work towards perfection.

He shows how you can live your life fully and with no apology.

Inspirational.

Watch time: 1h42mins

Mentors, teachers, thinkers and doers. The best the internet has to offer

👨🏽‍⚕️Huberman Lab - Deep neuroscience backed ideas and protocols for improving your life

🤖Lex Fridman - Stimulating, free-ranging conversations with the worlds’ greatest thinkers, builders and problem solvers

💥Impact Theory - Focused interviews with the world’s most successful people. Find specific protocols and ideas that took them from zero to hero

🏋🏽‍♂️AthleanX - Peerless training advice on muscle gain and injury prevention.

What did you think of this weeks ideas? Anything resonate with your own experience of the world?

If you’re reading this for the first time, consider subscribing to get priority access to the best ideas, tools and offers I can find.

Btw, have you been struggling with anything particular in the area of personal development shoot me a question! I’ll try recommending something that helped me with a similar issue.

And lastly, if you’ve got anything interesting to share and think other peoples could benefit from it, please just reply to this email or DM me on Twitter, or My DMs are always open!

Till the next time,

stay fresh, stay focused

- Karmsheel