If your life sucks, this is for you.

Go to school.

Get good grades.

Go to university.

Get a job.

Get married.

Have kids.

Go to a job you hate.

Come home.

Stare at a screen.

Go to sleep.

Repeat.

This is the plan that’s laid out for you.

This is the plan you’re likely following.

But if you follow it for long enough, one day you’ll wake up realising your life sucks.

This might be after 40 years in a job you hate, it might be when you get married.

For me, I woke up when I was in university.

I realised this plan that was laid out for me was a trap.

And it’s a damn easy one to fall into.

The problem isn’t with the lifestyle that this plan creates, some people might love that lifestyle.

The problem is the mindless following of it.

You’re raised being told this is the golden path, that it’s the safe option.

But what they don’t tell you is that if you follow it without intention, you’ll lack fulfillment, time, and a life you love.

You’ll not get to where you want to be.

You won’t achieve anything you want to achieve.

And one day you’ll wake up, realising your life sucks.

Although the traditional path is perfectly laid out for you to follow without a second thought about any step you take, it’s not the plan’s fault your life sucks.

It’s your fault.

You stopped growing.

A life without growth, improvement, and progress is a life void of responsibility, meaning, and fulfillment.

And a path that requires no real conscious thought to follow is a catalyst for a life of no growth.

That is why your life sucks.

You’re not growing.

But why are you not growing?

Well, to know that you need to know how you grow.

The Ingredients of Growth 

Growth requires an excess of energy.

Think about the gym, if you want to put on muscle, you need to eat in a calorie surplus - giving your body an excess of energy.

This doesn’t happen mindlessly.

If you do it mindlessly, you’ll either eat too much (and get fat), not eat enough (and not grow), or not train hard enough (not giving your body a reason to grow)

You have to attack growth with the intention of growing.

This requires you to voluntarily shoulder responsibility - the responsibility of leveling up the desired area of your life.

You have to set a goal that you want to strive toward.

This goal creates meaning and with meaning, comes responsibility.

This is partly why the traditional path results in your life sucking.

People follow the path mindlessly (as it requires no real mindful thought about where they want to go to follow it), resulting in no meaningful goals, no voluntary shouldering of responsibility, and therefore no growth.

But responsibility alone isn’t enough to elicit growth.

Responsibility is like training in the gym, it’s what gives your body a reason to grow.

It forces you to improve and progress so that you can shoulder the responsibility of even bigger goals.

However, that’s not enough.

You need excess energy, you need fuel.

You need standards that demand your all.

You have to be a professional.

The standards you hold for yourself, in all areas of life, are the energy you give to grow.

Without these, the reason to grow is pointless.

Because these standards are the actions you’re taking on a daily basis, the higher your standards, the more you meet them, and the more actions you’re taking, the more energy you’re creating and putting into the world - into fuelling your growth.

When you lack these standards, or you lack the integrity to meet them, you don’t grow.

This is another reason the traditional path results in your life sucking.

For most careers and most positions, you don’t need standards that elicit your all.

You can get by doing the bare minimum.

Hence, you don’t give enough energy to the world to fuel your growth.

Your life sucks because you’ve fallen into the path laid out for you with no second thought of how to voluntarily shoulder responsibility and set standards that demand your all.

But you can turn it around.

The Recipe For Growth

You have the ingredients.

Responsibility and standards.

Now it’s time to put them together and whip up a tasty dish of consistent growth.

Step 1. Voluntarily Shoulder Responsibility

Remember, this is the reason growth happens.

You have to shoulder the responsibility of achieving big meaningful goals, so that you can rise to the level that is required to achieve them.

So do it.

Set goals that mean something to you.

By now, you likely know I’m a big fan of having 3 goals;

• A physical goal

• A financial goal

• A purpose-related goal

Make them meaningful by ensuring they add up to your dream life and you becoming all you could be.

And then break them down into daily actions that you can form as habits, that over time help you achieve those goals.

My previous newsletter on “How To Build Habits That Stick” will help with this, click here to read it.

Remember, the problem isn’t necessarily the traditional path.

The problem is you following the traditional path (or any other path) without the ingredients necessary for growth.

 So if you want to stick on the path you’re on, that’s great - still set goals around that path or whatever you want to achieve.

Step 2. Set Standards That Demand Your All

You have to be a professional.

You have to have standards that make you proud.

And not just in the areas of your goals, but in every area of your life.

I do not care how much money you make, how jacked you are, or whatever else.

If you slack in another area (if you dress like a child, if you’re rude, or anything else), you’re an amateur.

That low level of being in 1 area of your life will ripple into every area of your life because how you do 1 thing is how you do everything.

So set your standards and set them damn high.

This means you;

• Go through each area of your life

• Figure out what a professional would do in that area

• Do that

Yes, this will take time to go through each area, figure it out and rise to that standard, but you can’t expect this massive pivot in your life to happen easily.

Remember you are growing, and growth isn’t mindless - it requires effort and energy.

So whether this means you have to start working out, eating healthy, dressing well or working hard on your goals, you do it.

Figure out your standards and make them non-negotiable.

Otherwise, if you make them negotiable, you’ll ruin your self-respect when you don’t do them.

Making you less likely to do them again in the future, creating a downward spiral of less and less self-respect.

Step 3. Provide Value And Make An Impact

This step isn’t necessary for growth.

But it is necessary for your life not to suck.

One of the other facets that create fulfillment and a life you love is impacting others in a positive way.

You’re not playing a solo game.

This is a team game.

If you’re not impacting the rest of the world and providing value, you’re playing against the rest of the world.

So provide value and make an impact.

Again, you can do this through the traditional path, but it will require a lot more thought and effort than if you follow other paths such as the path of entrepreneurship.

This is the way I’ve decided to go - and for a number of reasons;

• More leverage

Therefore I can impact more people, make more money, have more time

• Autonomy

I’m not told what to work on or when to work on it.

It’s up to me to decide and choose.

Which is great not only for that sense of autonomy but also for forcing myself to voluntarily shoulder responsibility, hold myself to a standard, and elicit growth.

If I don’t rise to the standards that I’ve set myself (creating daily, making an impact, living by my brand mission etc), and if I don’t shoulder the responsibility of achieving the goals I’ve set out for myself, then I neither grow nor provide value to the world.

The creator business model is the ultimate vessel for a fulfilled life.

Now, you don’t have to follow this path of the creator business that I’m on (as much as I think you should).

But if your life sucks, and you want that to change, you need to;

• Voluntarily shoulder responsibility

• Set standards that demand your all

• And provide value and make an impact

Do yourself proud, and build a life you love.

- Ross

And when you’re ready, here’s how I can help you:

• Achieve Self-Mastery, unlock your true potential, and smash every goal you set with MasteryOS

• Join the waitlist for cohort 2 of Done In 4

• Learn how to build a multi-6-figure audience and business with Personal BrandBldr