Seeing Through the Illusion

You see them everywhere. They're not common, but they're everywhere. You see them on billboards, T.V. and internet ads. You have memories of them from your childhood. Among everything this world has to offer they stand out. They're idolized, they're made examples of. They leave the world in awe at what they do. People latch onto them to get them through life, whether for the right reasons or the wrong reasons. For some it's as simple as they enjoy watching them perform. For others, it may be the inspiration that they need to move through this life.

We call these people Masters. They come in all different shapes, sizes and form. Some of them make millions, others barely make anything. Some are known around the world whether we like it or not while some are unrecognizable to most of us. Some Masters compete in head to head events, but other Masters may be more abstract in how they are defined.

Achieving Mastery and/or being a Master is separate from being a Champion, and indeed much more valuable. A Champion is a fleeting position relative to the rest of the competition. It's more of a feeling than an absolute, a goal as opposed to something that you are. This may sound unromantic, or perhaps uninspiring. It may evoke powerful emotions that make you want to argue this point, and if you're a fierce competitor at anything in your life then by all means it should.

Reality though, and all that it encompasses, doesn't care about anything other than what is true, and therefore you shouldn't either. If you buy into the illusion of being a Champion or having those desires, then while I never would tell you you are wrong to feel those things, you're inherently giving yourself lower chances to either become a Champion or remain the Champion.

And with that, I present to you a much more powerful concept: Ruthless Perfection.

Ruthlessly Perfect

Welcome to Ruthlessly Perfect, a series designed to help anyone in any endeavor realize their potential, GUARANTEED. Now I know that doesn't sound as beast mode as "Becoming Unbreakable," or any combination of words that would probably sound way cooler. But we're not interested in making ourselves feel better than we actually are, so let me ask you this: If you've reached the highest echelons of your endeavor, and you're competing against the small, select and elite handful of humans that have reached the same level as you, what is going to separate you from them and allow you to rise above them?

You're gonna work harder? At a certain point how much harder you work isn't gonna do anything if your competition is working just as hard. There's a limit to how hard you can work and in many cases when you reach this limit it's actually counterproductive to push past it.

You're gonna work smarter then. Of course you are, you'll do whatever it takes, you always have and that's what got you to this level. NEWSFLASH: That's what got your "Championship" level of peers to the same position on the mountaintop that you're all at right now, so what the hell are you going to do? What are you going to do to overcome your competition if you're all doing the same exact things with the same amount of dedication and tenacity?

There's a quote from Einstein that revolutionized the way I approached life from the minute I read it, and there's no better application of this quote than the specific instance above:

"You can never solve a problem on the same level at which it was created."

I chose that version of the quote because it means the same thing with less unnecessary confusion, but for those who care way too much I believe the actual quote is:

"No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it."

I used to think about this quote more than you'd care to know, day in and day out. I used to dwell on it, play with it in my mind and apply it to anything and everything. At the time, I latched on to this quote because I believed in the long run it would get me to where I wanted to be in this world eventually, or at the least, a better place than I was in.

I no longer think about this quote like I used to, but that's because in most situations it's just automatic to spin the problem around like a Rubik's Cube, look at it from different angles until I eventually solve it.

To condense the previous question, I'll rephrase it as:

"How do you reach the tip-top peak of the mountain when there is no room left?"

You can't. You'll never find an answer to that question because at that point you're essentially asking yourself, "How can I be better than someone who is legitimately better than me?" And you just can't. Look people, I'm one of the most hardcore you'll ever meet when it comes to holding beliefs about "Doing the impossible," and "Never taking no for an answer," and other odds-defying beliefs that inhabit my being. As we'll get to later though, if you want to be the best you can beat something, and achieve the highest level of results, you're going to need to learn to accept, process and utilize reality to your advantage, and what I'm telling you is nothing more than reality at its finest.

The truth is guys, the mountain is always growing, and it never stops. So long as the mountain has humans at the top of it, it will be continuously engaged in a process of redefining how high its peak is, how far up into infinity it stretches. That's what makes competition so beautiful. More importantly though, that's what makes the idea of being a Champion worthless in the grand scheme of things. Well, maybe not worthless, but certainly not optimal.

Being Ruthlessly Perfect is utilizing Einstein's quote to rejuvenate, redefine and ultimately evolve your game. You can always have the goal of being a Champion in mind, there's no problem with that. If you want to give yourself the highest possible chances of getting there though then you need to be Ruthlessly Perfect.

And that's the intro to this series. I have no idea how long this series will be and as you'll come to understand I have no need to. This is a very multidimensional topic, full of depth and intricacies. I look forward to flushing it out to the best of my abilities, and I'm in no rush to do it.

I believe it's best to start by building the foundation from which everything stems. Any results that you get in life whether in competition or out of competition are a manifestation of your inner world, i.e. how you feel, what you're thinking consistently, etc. Although your inner world is all encompassing, the actual time you spend manifesting your results specifically in competition come from just a small window of time, and that window is the time that you're actually performing. During this time, your mindset plays by far the biggest role in your success, and that's what this first piece is all about: The Optimal Mindset.

You can't win 'em all...Or can you?
Dissecting the 2015 NVL MVP: Cam Newton

Cam Newton, the 2015 NFL MVP. I chose Cam not only because of his relevance since he led the Panthers to the 2015 Superbowl, but also because he's currently performing at the highest level possible when it comes to being an athlete in the most modern times of our species. In fact, Cam has the potential to go down in history as the best NFL player ever. I'm not going to list of every one of his accomplishments or accolades, so just take a look for yourself. The cream of the crop, the elite of the along, a men among boys if you will. Well, more like the most dominant athlete among the most dominant athletes in one of the most cutthroat, physical sports known to man but you get the point. Cam is a prodigy who is currently in his prime, on pace to realizing his full potential as a football player.

Check out this video from Cam. I recommend watching the whole thing. It's only five minutes and it's insight into one of the greatest athletes ever.

Cam starts by saying, "For a person to sit up here and tell me that, man it's okay, you can't win em all...Yes you can."

To begin with that statement contradicts itself completely, so Cam's already starting off shaky and unclear here. Coming from the perspective of Ruthless Perfection, you never casually tell yourself or accept when someone else says, "man it's okay." I think it's safe to say he's on board with us there, but he follows up with "you can't win 'em all," and that's completely separate. Whatever conclusion we come to, either you can or can't win them all, one thing's for certain: Never casually accept that it's okay. You're being less than all you can be if you're accepting that attitude.

Moving on, Cam follows up with, "If you're going into any season, if you're going into any game thinking to yourself, that this is the game that we could lose, or we don't necessarily have to win this game because we already won so many other ones, then you're failing yourself as well as your teammates. Never is there a point in time where I think that this is a good time to lose. Never is a good time for me to ever accept me giving sub par effort to my teammates knowing that we have an opportunity to do something or achieve something great."

Makes ya feel all warm and fuzzy huh? It's inspirational for sure. Great insight into how Cam thinks and feels definitely. If we're going to connect the dots though and take his "Yes you can" statement literally, reality strikes hard and it's clear Cam's just plain wrong. In addition, the inspirational statement afterwards has zero correlation to him claiming that you can win 'em all to the point where he doesn't even make sense.

C'mon Cam.

If you end up accepting the reality that you can't actually win them all (which is where I'm going with this if you couldn't tell already), that doesn't at all mean you should go into a game thinking you're going to lose, or that maybe it's a good time to accept giving sub par effort.

Cam's records and career so far speak for themselves, so I'm gonna go ahead and give him his full props and respect for his results in the game, but it's time to branch off here and take the steering wheel of logic from him.

Cam's attitude in this video in a sense truly is top notch, and it's this exact attitude and these exact beliefs that led him to his success so far, including his 15-1 2015 season. Make no mistakes there, this is how Cam thinks and feels and for all of my joking, there is definitely a direct correlation there to his success.

What he's saying makes no sense though and we'll use that to come to some powerful conclusions. Let's get literal here for a second.

To play the game with that attitude of legitimately trying your hardest every game to win is the only path possible to an actual undefeated season. But what about that little 1 next to the 15 on that 2015 season? What about the game that mattered most that year that he lost after regular season, the Superbowl? How about the eight games they lost in 2014 compared to only seven that they won? The 4 games they lost in 2013? Or how about the game in high school that cam references himself during the video?

Sorry Cam, but you're just wrong. We can just google your career and see that your statement is plainly incorrect. I encourage you to keep your attitude that's gotten you so far, but saying things that are clearly untrue is just delusional.

Wait a minute...delusional?

Walking the Tightrope: The Optimal Mindset

Cam actually ends up nailing the golden theme of what it takes to be as successful as possible, and that's when he says you should "Strive to become the highest form of yourself possible." Let me make this clear: This is the simplest most potent way to define what it means to have the optimal mindset. I'm going to flush this out in detail, but this is the main piece, the main goal of Ruthless Perfection, and it doesn't need to be any more complicated than that.

We'll come back to this theme, as it's the most important in this entire article. For now though let's tackle (so smart) The Optimal Mindset and how to achieve it.

In order to have the highest possible chances of being the best, you have to simultaneously believe you're the best, but also realize that you're not so you can play in a way that gets you the best results, and gives you the highest chances of winning. Makes sense? Probably not, it's confusing.

I like to think of this concept as walking a tightrope, and if you haven't already you should watch Man on Fire, a documentary about one of the world's greatest tightrope walkers ever, Philippe Petit, and his journey in 1974 to walk a tightrope across the Twin Towers. This man is definitely a Master, and the documentary is beyond inspiring. You can find it on Netflix as of right now and I highly recommend watching it in full. If you're too lazy, here's a good video that sums it up.

You start off on one end of the journey, the starting point of course. Across from you is your destination, or your goal, which in the case of Ruthless Perfection is to achieve your highest potential and to perform to the highest of your abilities. Speaking of heights, whatever is at stake on your journey is the height of your tightrope walk. If you are attempting to run a half marathon, you could say that your tightrope is maybe a few stories high, nothing to scoff at for sure. If you're an Olympic athlete going for gold, you're probably closer to the Twin Towers height that Philippe walked.

In order to walk across this tightrope and succeed, you need to have The Optimal Mindset and what I mean by that is, you must remain exactly in the middle or as close as you can to the middle for the distance of the entire walk.

There are three different ways you can fall off of this rope. The first way is to slip with your feet, and we'll equate this to letting your mind wander off somewhere, not being present to the moment, or in other words losing concentration.

If you can manage to maintain concentration throughout the walk, then it's going to come down to avoiding the other two ways of falling off, which are leaning too much to the right, or leaning too much to the left. It's all about balance. To the right of you, is logical analysis. To the left of you, is your delusional belief.

Let's get this straight guys, you need a perfect balance of both of these. You need to be like Cam Newton with the belief that you're literally going to win every game, even though we've concluded that's delusional. You need to feel that and perform with that, every time no matter what. But if that's all you have, you'll fall of to your left.

You also need the most logical analysis of yourself as possible, so you don't end up like Nate Diaz who loses and never learns from it. If you look at Nate's record, (19-11) that's not exactly the record of a Champion, if you wanna go back to that term. Nate Diaz believes so deeply that he wins fights that he loses, more than half of his losses could have been avoided if he stopped veering off to the left of his tightrope. And his tightrope is high up, lemme tell you.

Cultivating this balance throughout your career whether it's Football, Skiing or competitive e-sports is the most important factor in terms of your success. There are more pieces to the puzzle of being Ruthlessly Perfect for sure. What's amazing about The Optimal Mindset though is that you don't have to go searching for anything else psychology wise, or performance wise or anything of the sort. You can and I'm sure many of you will, but let me explain why you don't need to.

The Optimal Mindset is a concept I created to basically take years and years of information that was brewing around in my mind, constantly being tested and refined whenever I could, and condense it all in the simplest most potent form. I'm a firm believer that the best type of knowledge and information are the types that get you the specific results your looking for, in the least complicated, most potent way.

I'm going to dive into the concepts of Delusional Belief and Logical Analysisand then wrap this volume up.

Delusional Belief

The reason I use the word "delusional" is to ensure that no one else in the world has a stronger belief system than yourself, and at the very least they can only equal you in belief. Delusional belief is extremely powerful, whether for the right reasons or the wrong reasons. Many people with mental disabilities have delusional beliefs although they are unguided and misdirected. Hitler had some of the most terrifying delusional beliefs humanity has ever seen. The good news is, through logical analysis and the harnessing of our own delusional belief, humanity came together and overpowered that evil.

One of my favorite quotes has always been:

"Scattered rays of light can fill a room, but a focused light can cut through steel." -Dwayne Johnson, 5LINX Network Marketer

Imagine your belief like rays of light. If your inner world is dark, then you have no belief in yourself and that's not good. You need light, lots of light. At the very least you need enough light to see where you're going in life. At the most, you need to focus that light so you can get to where you need to go. That's what delusional belief is all about to me. It's cultivating over time the strength and potency of your light, by constantly challenging yourself, overcoming those challenges, wash rinse repeat until before you know it you're at the top of the food chain.

Some people are born with this incredible power, and it's a fact that it does come easier to some than others. It's often mystified and idolized. It's one of those things where we'd rather look at a picture of Michael Jordan flying through the air with a powerful quote attached to it, then ever believe we could harness that exact same power. Don't be fooled though. You most certainly can learn to wield this power. It's a journey in and of itself and a lifelong one at that, but make no mistake. This is a power we are all entitled to as humans. Most people never learn how to accept and cultivate this gift though, and I believe that's because they can't help but to fall to the right of their tightrope.

Logical Analysis

The flip side to the coin, Logical Analysis, is equally as powerful as Delusional Belief to the point where it holds people back from ever being great. Now that's not necessarily always a negative. I don't believe everyone should live their life attempting to be great. There's nothing wrong with being successful and happy on your own terms and I have nothing but respect for people who live their lives by their own definition of success. When it comes to being Ruthlessly Perfect however, unless utilized properly, logical analysis can easily block your belief system from ever reaching its full strength.

Logical analysis when unguided, looks at the feedback the world gives you and tells you "this is who you are based on this evidence." A good example would be e-sports tournaments, where unless you are the person who happens to claim the #1 spot that tournament, you are technically a loser. We've already determined that you can't win 'em all, but if you let your logical analysis run rampant you're giving the winner of the tournament a huge mental edge since their logical analysis concludes that they are the most capable of winning the tournament, so they're naturally going to have the easiest time playing to the best of their abilities.

The most important thing to understand about logical analysis is how powerful it is and how effective it is when taken control of. Using Mixed Martial Arts as an example, let's take a knockout artist with devastating one punch knockout power vs. a ranged fighter. Range is the arguably the most important factor in determining who has an advantage in combat sports.

The knockout artist has overwhelming evidence that he's going to knock the ranged fighter out. That's what's gotten him to this point, it's a part of his being. He feels it in his body and his arms when he fights, and that feeling is what guides his style and the choices he makes in the Octagon. He's naturally going to be using more power with every punch and he's going to constantly have the urge to throw that punch.

The ranged fighter is going to do everything he can to pick apart the knockout artist. He can after all land punches and kicks to his opponent while his opponent is too far away to strike him.

Extreme discipline adhering to conscious logical analysis is going to give the knockout artist the highest possible chances of winning. He's going to have to come up with a specific game plan for this fight, one that doesn't rely on all of the feedback and evidence he's gotten from his career up to this point. That's why logical analysis is tricky. It's logical, but it's not optimal unless consciously utilized. If this power puncher can resist his urge to fight how he's always fought and what's gotten him his success up until now...If he can adhere to the strategic game plan him and his coach developed and hopefully practiced, only then will he be able to fight to the best of abilities, or as Cam Newton puts it, reach the highest form of himself possible. Otherwise, he's going to get picked apart and punished for being reckless, eventually run out of energy and get overwhelmed.

End of Volume 1

That's pretty much it guys. There was a lot of information in this article. If you can't get through it one one sitting don't sweat it. Come back to it. In fact come back to it a few times, re-read it over time. As you walk your tightrope over and over, coming back to this article with more experience should provide new insights that you couldn't have gotten your first time or second time reading this article. If this benefited you on an important level, do me the biggest favor and share this on Social Media. I've been competing in e-sports, specifically Smash Bros Melee now for ten years. I've put a lot of work, studied a lot of material over the years to improve my game and I'd love nothing more than to put it out to the world in the forms that I've come to best understand it all.