’Wealth is created not through only the opportunities you say yes to, but even moreso the ones you say no to…’
That isn’t an exact quote, but is close.
I used to really look up to Roger Hamilton, creator of the Wealth Dynamics profiling system. Dude had some serious insight into the workings of the world, drawing upon ancient wisdom of the I Ching as the foundation for Wealth Dynamics, and brilliantly connecting principles & laws of universal order to their expression in the realm of entrepreneurship. Irregardless of the precise words he used, that was a concept he placed great emphasis on as imparting the priceless value of discernment in where & how we place our attention, energy & time.
Though I’d been deeply imprinted with the concept of opportunity cost in economics 101 that spoke to a similar idea, I hadn’t fully connected the dots and saw it as the same. Whether it was the application of the principle in a different context - that of entrepreneurial guidance as Roger uniquely offered in - or his particular perspective and way of expressing it in different words, his take on it didn’t fully sink in or strongly resonate until many years later. Yet, the older (and hopefully wiser) I’ve gotten, the more apparent the Truth of the statement rings.
I watch & listen to alot of YouTube. (As much self-judgement there is about that, I often forget & overlook the fact that one of my 5 Strengthsfinder strength is Input - the intake of great amounts of information potentially actually a talent and in service to some ‘greater purpose’ beyond the superficial condemnations of overindulging in ‘social media.’) With such a wide spectrum of inspiring & informative content and the ability to ingest at 2x, the $17.84 per month for an ad-free Premium subscription is well worth it; and while I have great difficulty accounting for where all my time goes if asked, a good chunk definitely involves YouTube - whether commanding my full attention or merely playing in the background as doing other things…
Sometimes the recommendations popping up end up being fantastic. Sometimes, not so much. When the algorithm served up a video titled, “Your success is as good as your nervous system,” it seemed to have enough potential worthy of the Watch List. As getting ready for snowboarding this morning, I put it on. Within a couple minutes, it was apparent that my expectations were not going to be met - nothing particularly new or resonating with potent insight, merely some twenty-something year-old regurgitating basic-ass personal development that inspired little more than a yawn and questioning: ”why the fuck am I watching this…?”
There’s been such a massive influx of content available online the last years as “content creator” has become something the younger generation aspires to; yet for all the content out there, it has seemed that a smaller & smaller amount of it actually offers much of real substance. As more jump on this bandwagon or that to add yet more quantity of information to the endless buffet of the World Wide Web, it’s seemed as though the overall quality has diminished.
(That’s not to say there isn’t great quality stuff to be found; only that it tends to stand out all the more for its rarity when is.)
Perhaps it’s the “time blindness” factor of ADHD at play, such that I wasn’t as attuned to this before - and discerning of where my focus went. Only last year, did I begin to realize how much time was disappearing as diving down rabbit hole after rabbit hole of mediocre content, left with relatively little to show for it. Sure, building the Watch List up and knocking videos off it provided some fleeting dopamine hits and speeding through it all scratched some itch & satisfied some hunger for stimulation; yet a sense of disturbance began kicking in as the question arose: what is the actual opportunity cost of all these countless hours spent consuming stuff that didn’t really inspire, rather than invested with greater diligence?
The time-blindness was no joke until about age 33. I honestly felt as though I had “all the time in the world,” fucking clueless to the irrefutable fact time is limited. Sparing the details of how/why, that changed. And the further I go on, the more apparent it feels that there is less & less time left in this incarnation - which changes everything. Increasingly, there is a growing sense of what is and isn’t worth my time, energy and attention. (Albeit actions don’t always correspond, with many diversions & distractions still burning it away on stupid shit - too many fucks given to the wrong things).
There are people I tuned into a couple years ago, that just don’t resonate the same. There were times I loved their insights and felt a satisfying sense of connection based on shared values and a “likemindedness;” yet times change. In some cases, I feel like I ‘got what was needed.’ In others, it’s felt like I’ve matured and broadened into a wider spectrum of perspectives - seeing the merit of what they offer and appreciative of how it served, yet little nourishment possible anymore as having moved beyond those levels they were teachers of.
And through the activations of it all - not just blindly consuming content for the sake of it, but growing & linking neural networks to expand awareness of a bigger picture of how all these different pieces fit into a larger interconnected puzzle - there has definitely been an upleveling of complex-pattern-recognition that also changes things: I don’t have to listen to an entire piece of content to get someone’s point or transmission, having been exposed to it before in some similar form elsewhere; the archetypal patterns are apparent; there is a recognition of the frequency that speaks instantaneously - along with an increasing sensitivity to the clarity or distortion of the frequency and ideas encapsulated in it.
Like the 20-something dude practically reading a script - knowing where it was going, because I once sat in his shoes, trying to teach similar concepts, consuming then the same programs he is now, digesting bits & pieces of code his speech contained from countless others over a couple decades. And sure, it may be hypocritical that some part of me judges it as “basic,” acknowledging that it may be of value to someone wherever they are at in their journey, just as many speakers & teachers were once valuable to me at different points in mine. Though there is also immense, priceless value in the side of judgement that is not the egoic “better/worse, higher/lower” type, but that of discernment; and specifically here, that which speaks clearly: ”No. This is not for me. Of the hundreds of millions of pieces of content I could be investing my time & energy into instead, this ain’t it.”
Opportunity cost.
There may have been points in my twenties where I could afford to get distracted with all sorts of tangents and it did serve - providing knowledge & experience to grow those neural networks, part of an educational & evolutionary process as getting exposed to more of the full-spectrum of life’s offerings. And now, things are different. Perhaps it’s a time for integration - more space required to digest what’s already been taken in, rather than continuous gluttonous patterns over overconsumption without discernment. And with that, perhaps a surrender to some larger process of transition from that stage of consumption in quantity to a refinement of clarity on what to do with and output from it that is of a higher quality standard my Cross Of Demands is yearning to see more of in the world. (Abandoning the glitzy idealism of “be the change you want to see in the world,” while embracing the humble truth there may be to it, along with a surrender to whatever it is that may want/need to emerge through me.)
There are an endless stream of self-appointed gurus, copycat marketers, wannabe-influencers, etc. flooding the web with proclamations of how other ’should’ do things, what to believe, why their enlightened formulas & strategies are the best and will help you “manifest everything you want,” etc, etc - no shortage of people attempting to be external authorities (as well-intentioned as some may be, a majority still motivated by financial self-interest and confirmation bias, at the end of the day). Yet for all the possible routes others promise to success, enlightenment, truth, awakening, or whatever it is, what is the opportunity cost of listening to them?
As Roger spoke of in regards to business opportunities, it was the wisdom of saying no to those not aligned that was critically essential to freeing the time & energy for pursuit of those correct for us. All the promises of “financial freedom” via forex & crypto trading, MLM, content-creating social media travel influencership, or whatever the fuck someone else vying for your attention & dollars don’t amount to shit if stealing your limited time from where it’s needed pursing a path of art, charitable work, or whatever niche endeavor calls to your heart & soul. Opportunities are abundant; yet the pursuit of one always comes at the cost of countless others - so choosing damn wisely is kind of a big deal, as not all of those abundant opportunities are of equal potential;
Though, “opportunities” not only pertain to business. Nor does the cost of pursuing one path always come in the forms we might think.
And while most of us have grown accustomed to thinking of the world in certain terms, few consider opportunity cost in context of frequency.
While choosing from the buffet of content online to consume, how often do we consider: ’where on the spectrum from clarity to distortion is the frequency of this? To what degree are we sacrificing clarity, not recognizing the opportunity cost of spending time & energy in/on paths offering frequencies tainted with distortions?
And if not being discerning to ensure what we’re consuming is truly in resonance, how might we be distorting the clarity of our own frequency?
I’ve wrestled with the ‘free will versus blueprint’ debate for a while, and all the moreso lately as encountering the “attract whatever you want, be whoever you choose to be” type rhetoric. As alluring that may all sound when in one’s twenties and just starting out exploring life’s possibilities, maturation over time reveals many of the flaws with such beliefs. Sooner or later, life has its ways of teaching the, ”if you wanna make God laugh, tell him your plans,” wisdom. It’s tough finding a fine balance of being in the uncertainty of just how much of life is beyond our control and how much is within our capacity to choose…
And here again, we face those questions: if choosing what (opportunities or paths) to pursue for ourselves, what is the opportunity cost? Whether influenced by others’ opinion & beliefs or drawn one way or another by motivations & intentions rooted in distortions rather than clarity, what other doors consequentially close (that may have actually been far better for us to walk through)?
Or perhaps another popular take expressing the concept from a different angle: the whole, ”if it ain’t a ‘hell yes,’ it’s a hell no.’”
Why waste our limited time & energy on things, places, people, information, etc. that doesn’t truly do it for us?
But, circling back to the free will vs. blueprint point… is it always a matter of what we want? Or to what degree are there things that we might be meant for in our lives - that pursuing what ‘we want’ could potentially even derail us? Hence, clarity vs. distortion - when everything has a (high) opportunity cost, that clarity may be all the more important, with making choices from the distortion leading to drastically higher opportunity costs.
With the utmost clarity, perhaps the opportunity cost becomes minimized. Yes, there will always be alternative paths that could’ve been taken; though at least there will be no loss in eliminating those that would’ve been chosen in/from distortion. But without clarity, when pursuit begins with/from distortion, the opportunity cost becomes perhaps clarity itself - along with the spectrum of amazingly beautiful opportunities accessible from/with it.
Including, the “highest potential” of who we were “meant to” become. Not the ego-driven & appeasing ideas of “what we want,” influenced & distorted by external opinions & standards - but that of our refined, clear soul frequency in its authentic Truth & expression.
Or translated a more-relatable way, with a touch less grandiosity-laced “highest potential & purpose” type talk: peace, satisfaction, success, fulfillment, joy, and happiness. Those rewarding states of experience sacrificed for the pursuit of what we may have thought would lead there but was never in alignment. Instead, ending up in anger, frustration, bitterness, disillusionment, and regret because we valued & chose the wrong things. Without clarity, making clouded decisions, becoming students of opportunity cost at its worst - wasting our lives swayed by others’ distorted influences, perhaps causing collateral damage unto others along the wreckless way; eventually looking back to see how far off course we veered from where our heart & soul could’ve been gratified. (Possibly seduced by the “there are no limitations” siren songs, lured down paths promising the ego its wishes - only to learn it was Saturnian limits & restrictions necessary to keeping us “in our lane” and on-track with our true soul mission.)
Or at the extreme: the opportunity cost, our health… and lives. Listening to the wrong sources propagating beliefs that end up being fatally destructive to those for whom those paths are not correct.
For sure, there’s alot of great content of all sorts at our fingertips. Though with each choice to consume what hits our field of attention or not, there may come a far-greater choice as attuning to the implications: will the direction of my/our time & energy down this path perpetuate distortion or serve the refinement of clarification - both of knowledge/wisdom and my/own frequency?
There were times that all the self-help, spiritual, and entrepreneurial “gurus” served a purpose in activation & clarification of certain things for me; and as season change, different cycles of life brought different conditions in which many of them only added more distortion, during phases where inner work of refinement was due. There were times various “truthers” helped shine light on some things in ways beneficial to my expansion; and then there came times when I could see with greater clarity the distortions they propagated, needing to pull away to focus on my own processes of discovery & distillation - disengaging from content, undertaking the refinement of senses & sensibility to upgrade capabilities of discernment regarding context.
Indeed, it’s seemed many have been “waking up” in some regard, consuming less mainstream media garbage and Hollywood-ized propaganda - tuning into all sorts of “alternative” sources for information, entertainment & education. Though still, there’s no gatekeepers for quality-control, and there’s typical plenty more (sub)-average content than stuff that’s truly awesome. And it’s far too easy to slack off in maintaining our own filters; surely everyone can relate to waste time away scrolling through stuff that doesn’t all that significant nourishment to our minds & souls. Sure, mindless consumption can be a great way to unwind sometimes and the dumb & mundane may too have their place in a well-balanced content-diet. But how conscientious are we really, typically, of the degree to which where our focus goes is impacting our frequency or not? Are most of us exercising finely-tuned sensitivity to recognize where what we intake may be impacting our perceptions & thinking through distorted viewpoints or serving a process of refining our intellectual capacity and the resulting clarity of vibration? Probably not.
As hard as I may be on myself, I can’t help but wonder at times whether I’ll arrive at death’s door to a failed report card. Will I “die with my music in me,” what I’ve put out only a small fraction of what I could/should have because I was too damn distracted listening to new-age clowns on YouTube? Will God ask where all the books I was ‘supposed to’ write are, and I’ll have to embarrassingly admit I spent the time needed to write it watching cat videos and hot girls on Instagram? How many of us might get that life-flashing-before-eyes moment only to be flooded with regret as confronted with important friendships & relationships neglected because we valued & chose the wrong things - or were given a glimpse of all the amazingly rich connections we could have shared, had we not been preoccupied with things we should’ve been saying no to?
Of course, none of us are perfect, and the human experience comes with its limitations. Maybe “we’re all doing the best we can at the time,” and we can’t fairly compare “highest potentials” to realities that will always include trial-and-error. No doubt, forgiveness & compassion are part of the curriculum here. Though, there’s also a time we gotta grow up, take responsibility, and make better decisions.
Granted, I ain’t one to preach any sort of one-size-fits-all solutions. I’m just here sharing some thoughts, perceptions, lessons, etc - which may or may not have particular relevance to where you’re at. At the end of the day, we all choose for ourselves how to respond to life (even when there is a large element of “no choice” in it). As the saying goes, ”whatever floats your boat.”
But…
No matter what gets our individual boats floating, are we intending to float off directionlessly into oblivion - or where exactly is the destination?
Like that saying/metaphor goes, you could set sail from New York to England… but if your trajectory is one degree off, you’ll end up in South Africa.
Perhaps it’s similar as we sail the ‘ship’ of our lives over the course of the decades we’re here. Maybe there was some soul purpose or intention from the start we consciously forgot, or maybe some of us have more flexibility in our path and such a fixed course wasn’t in our cards (an entirely other debate); though either way, it might not take all that much to veer off one degree here or there along the journey… ending up somewhere we really didn’t intend or want to be. And bear in mind, again: we’re not talking a physical location here, but frequency.
No wonder the emphasis on deconditioning in Human Design; or how others have stated similar concepts as “unlearning.”
Modern technology has opened the portal to total bombardment of nearly every frequency on the spectrum of human experience possible. And in the “attention economy,” there is fierce competition for ours. As echo chambers multiply in magnitudes, the amount of noise & distortion accessible at any given moment is unfathomable - and a ton of it, possessing the inherent potential of a virus-like nature to distort & corrupt our own clarity; dipping our toes into the wrong pool, toying with sharks that contain very-real possibilities of sinking the whole ship.
From some perspectives, this may seem dramatic; but life gets pretty fucking serious sometimes. No matter the airy-fairy, “nothing has inherent meaning, it’s all made-up, and nothing matters” rhetoric some may attempt gaslighting themselves & others with, this all does matter. The degree to which we are in clarity or distortion makes ALL the difference in our here & now life experience - as well as having a ripple-effect far beyond what our minds might be able to comprehend.
So what the fuck are we doing following the norms of continuously getting distracted with shit that doesn’t matter and playing into the propagation of distortion on planet that could use alot more clarity as we transition through some crazy-ass evolutionary shit that needs those who are to survive on top of their game?
Yada, yada, yada.
Transmission complete. 💣💫🧬
It's kind of funny how you would think that ADHD is going to make you not able to focus on any one thing (which it does sometimes), but the flip side of that is it can also draw you into things so deeply that you often forget about the rest of the world around you. Almost like an obsession. I've been lucky(?) enough to not jump down that YouTube hole yet. I usually just use it when I need to learn to do something, then I shut it off until the next time. I'm starting to understand more how it can be someone's main form of media consumption.
yeah, hyperfocus is seriously a thing. lol.
i do find the Vyvanse helps alot with being able to somewhat consciously control/direct it, though. it's kinda nice not having it frequently spiralling out into self-destructive thoughts & emotions, or ending up starving cuz i've been so fixated on something for hours and can't tear myself away to actually eat. 😹
My wife does a pretty good job of redirecting my focus when I need it. For better or worse!
ah yes, the many small (and large) overlooked benefits of having a good woman by your side. how I've forgotten.