Forge Your Own Path

Become Sovereign

Made With ChatGPT

“Your intuition can lead you into the exact steps you need to take, even when they don’t make sense on paper. It won’t always offer the full plan, but it will give you the next right move and that is often enough.” - Dimi, A Slow Living Path

I’ve been unlearning a lot of things in my life for the past few years. One of those things is all of the contradicting information about making money online.

Like a lot of people, I got into self-improvement to help me become a better version of myself and to learn how to make money on my own terms.

I used to watch all of the podcasts about it and even some of the most influential people in the space — Dan Koe, Justin Welsh, Gary Vaynerchuk, Ryan Holiday, Earl Nightingale, etc.

You name it, I’ve probably listened to them at one point during my journey.

It’s exhausting at this point. Taking in all of these various opinions about what success means to people.

After taking in all of this information and processing it, I’ve come to the final conclusion that success is what the individual makes of it.

For some, it’s raising a family and working a job for 40 years. For others, it’s going all in on their dreams and living life to the fullest.

There’s no right or wrong way to live. All that matters is that you feel fulfilled with your life.

In the self-improvement space, a lot of people love to tell others the “optimal way” to live their lives. While some of this comes from good intentions, they don’t take into account the other person’s life circumstances. Some people can’t make things happen due to their economic situation or other reasons.

Even the so-called “Sovereign Creators” fall into this category every now and then. They say that they are different from what most of the Creator Economy is doing, yet their actions are the same.

After a while, everything feels like noise; all of these conflicting viewpoints on life is mind-numbing. Constant chatter telling you the same things over and over, all while not taking into account what they are really doing. (At least from my perspective)

I can’t stand listening to it anymore. I can’t stand reading it anymore.

All it’s doing is reinforcing a feeling inside of me that tells me, “I’m not doing enough,” when I know I’m doing everything right. I’m doing everything they say, yet I don’t get the same results.

Why? Because I’m not as well known as they are. I don’t have a team of editors who can help me with my videos. Therefore, I can’t do anything that they can do.

This is why I’ve been learning to silence the noise around me, so I can listen to myself for once.

Silencing The Noise

Most days now, instead of opening up my phone and watching another YouTube success video, I pull out my notebook and write down all of the things that are bothering me in my life.

I look at them and try to figure out how to take small steps to solve them day by day. Some days, I come up with a big way to fix it. Other days, it’s something small. Either way, I’m actually making progress rather than sitting around hoping it will fix itself.

For example, one thing I’ve been struggling with is going out and having a good conversations with people. I’m always in my head thinking that I need some elaborate first impression in order to make me not look awkward. Of course, it would always lead to me doing exactly that.

Most days, I would beat myself up for making the same mistakes over and over. Now I refrain from doing that, telling myself, “It’s okay to mess up. That’s how you’re going to get better.” The next day, I would head out and see if I can improve where I messed up.

It wasn’t until I started working on my own problems that I began to realize that the majority of people are stuck in a victim mindset. All they do is complain about the problem rather than develop a solution to it.

It’s not their fault, though, since this mindset was taught to them by the system. However, it IS their fault if they CHOOSE to stay in that mindset.

So, if you don’t want to be victim of your circumstances anymore, then you need to stop complaining like everyone else and take the necessary actions to fix them. Learn to tune out the noise around you.

Forging Your Path

“Someday the young bucks on this app will stop chugging on Dan Koe’s pickle and think for themselves.” - Cookie

If there’s any kind of advice I can give to people in today’s modern landscape, it’s to follow your own path.

Stop listening to everyone online tell you what to do.

You already know what you want to do. You’re just looking for a shortcut that doesn’t exist. You’re looking for an easy way to make money when it’s not that easy. You glorify an entrepreneurial lifestyle when it’s not as glamorous as everyone says it is.

Stop outsourcing your power and intellect to others who most likely don’t have your best interests at heart.

One person I would like to shout out who shows this perfectly is Dimi. Her publication on Substack is “A Slow Living Path” — a publication about embracing the slow life in the modern world and following your intuition.

Dimi could’ve easily been like everyone else on Substack — talking about growth tactics, how notes is a game-changer, how to game the algorithms, or even talking about how to integrate AI into your workflow. Instead, she chose to speak and write from her soul about her own experiences and growth.

By doing this, she was able to stand out and make her way to 1K subscribers in 4 months.

If you ever get the chance, give her publication a read.

So, how do you start forging your own path?

1. Stop Listening to Everyone — No one knows what you want better than you do. Learn to listen to yourself.

2. Define what really matters and focus on those things exclusively. Not some stupid gossip online or what some guru says.

3. Do what you want because that’s what you want to do. If you want your Substack to be about your personal journey instead of growth hacks, then do that! Stop doing what everyone else is doing just because it works.

Conclusion

Now, I’m not saying taking advice and learning from others is bad. Far from it. Plenty of people have given great advice that has tremendously helped others.

All I’m saying is learn to take advice with a grain of salt. Not all of it is good for you based on what your circumstances and skills currently are.

Take the things that you know will work for you in the moment and leave the rest. After that, implement the knowledge and grow along with yourself day by day.

Again, you know exactly what you want. All you need to do is trust yourself to obtain it.

Go out there and forge your own path instead of following someone else’s.

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Thank you for reading! I appreciate your time and attention.

For those who don’t know, I’m a musician, beat maker, and beginning writer. I’m documenting my journey from a worker to an entrepreneur, sharing my personal insights along the way.

If you’d like to support my work, consider purchasing my latest beat tape on Gumroad to help fund my music.

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Much love. See you next time.

Frederick