In this edition of the peak performance newsletter, we will be discussing:

• Separating the simpletons with the elites

• First Stage (Initiation)

• Second Stage (Peak)

• Third Stage (Isolation)

• Fourth Stage (Contemplation)

• Fifth Stage (Fulfillment)

But first,

Respect to you for deciding to read long form educational content like this one instead of all the short, clickbait, self improvement content that you see on social media.

You probably have a top 1% attention span by choosing to invest your time into this form of content that isn’t entertaining enough for the masses.

I’m not trying to give you some cheap dopamine, but instead giving you the lessons that I’ve learnt that will change your life.

So if you’ve chose to click on this email, then I’m assuming that you are here to apply what you’ve learnt and take action right away.

You’re not here to learn about some “cute” tactics that helps you cope with being lazy, you want actual results. If that’s you then you can subscribe to the Peak Performance Newsletter to receive high quality emails like this every week, it’s a win a win for both of us.

If not, then feel free to unsubscribe and find another creator that will tell you what you already want to hear instead.

Just a bit of background info,

And lastly,

In this post, my promise is to guide you through these 5 stages so that you can avoid the crucial mistakes that I’ve made and make faster progress in your own self improvement journey.

Treat this basically like a guide, where I give you the in-depth, autistic level advice on how to overcome the various limitations that you’ll experience throughout your self improvement journey.

First off,

Separating the Simpletons with the Elites

Now straight off the start without even publishing this beforehand, I know that this email specifically is going to preform far worse than any of my other posts.

But that’s good.

It shows me the people who are actually on self improvement and the people who want the novelty of doing self improvement.

There’s a clear distinction between the two.

You must understand that self improvement in of itself is a lifestyle, a positive integration of your own life. Not a click bait tactic or hack that you use once and then go back to indulging in your old ways.

The separation between the simpletons and the elites is growing bigger than ever, so it is of your upmost interest that you dedicate your life for the next few months to diving deep into the self improvement culture.

Either from my emails specifically or from the top tier guys that have been doing it for way longer than I have. I’m talking 5 years, even 10 years, those are the people that you want to draw wisdom from, not the conventional youtubers that try to appeal with the masses.

And the reason why I harp on this for so long is because you will not be able to
“transform” your life without a severe, and I mean a severe change in your mentality, your beliefs, and your habits.

Sounds like common sense, but there are 3 people in this world.

The people who are not on self improvement, the people who try to balance self improvement with their degenerate lifestyle, and the elites who completely integrate into their everyday life.

Maybe this sounds vague right now, but you might be able to kinda grasp what I’m saying.

Let me give you an example.

It is the simpletons, the masses, that watch the clickbait self improvement content like “ToP 10 WaYs to ChangE yOur Life in 2025” or “the BeSt WaY to become disciplined in 2025”

Now, do you think that their genuinely going to “change their life” or “become disciplined?” In a weird way you’ll actually say no even if you don’t understand why.

It’s not that these clickbait videos necessarily give you bad advice, since overall it can give you pretty basic and sound advice for beginners.

But it is the audience that they attract with these clickbait videos where these simpletons have this dirty, obsessive, needy, energy with trying to become disciplined that they’ll never get it.

They’ll see this post on the “5 stages of self improvement” and click off right away because the title wasn’t stimulating enough for them. It’s those types of people where they jump from one clickbait video onto the next, hoping to find some type of secret advice where the main problem is just themselves in general.

Do you really think that these types of people will ever become disciplined with a mindset like that?

Of course not. Weirdly enough, it’s actually those individuals who yes, were undisciplined, then some major event happened in the course of their life, and then they make a complete 180 in their transformation. And now instead of being a obsessive sperg about discipline, they just do the challenging task because it’s actually fun for them.

Instead of focusing directly on discipline, they work around it and do the tasks that will require some level of discipline in the first place. Whether that means going to the gym, reading, building a business, or just making their bed in the morning, they focus on progress on the tasks rather than the discipline itself.

Imagine the type of life that you’ll have once you acquire that elite mindset rather than the simpleton, needy, mindset with your own self improvement journey.

Now I’m not trying to bash on these people who live this lifestyle, but this is for you to understand that you cannot follow the mindset of the simpletons if you genuinely want to improve.

Because you'll end up like 99% of people if you go down the conventional route, and trust me, you don’t want to be part of the 99%…

Everyone talks about this side of self improvement like doing the “cute” little tactics, but rarely anyone talks about the psychological aspect behind what truly makes a “winner” in this game.

So ask yourself who you want to become…the simpleton that indulges in the sweeties, watches another self improvement video, and still hates his life? Or do you want to be the elite that focuses on the hard, grueling tasks at hand, and has a proper happy smile about it at the end?

The choice is yours.

First Stage (Initiation)

So you’ve read the first section on how to avoid the mentality of the masses and now you’ll learn what to expect during the first stage of self improvement, initiation.

During this stage, this is basically the prologue before you learn what self improvement even is.

For most people, this will be the hardest period in your journey, but once you get past the first few weeks, it becomes quite easy once you have enough momentum to keep going.

Everything is relative, so looking back at it now 3 years ago, it’s not going to feel as difficult for me than it is for someone who’s never been on self improvement because they just don’t haven’t made enough progress right now.

Perhaps you’re still doing the degenerate habits, like playing video games, eating junk food, maybe you’re overweight, and you just go through the motions day in and day out.

You might think that I’ll say that this is the worst stage to be in, but I actually disagree.

Honestly during this period of my life 3 years ago, things were really peaceful.

Sure I was anorexic, I had a bad diet, I had a severe video game addiction, but I had good friends and times were much simpler.

You know as a self improvement writer, a part of me wants to say that these were the worst periods and that I hated my life, but that really wasn’t the case.

Sure looking back now, I didn’t have the most healthy lifestyle, but it didn’t even cross my mind that the habits I was doing was even inherently bad.

Living that lifestyle for most of my life, it just felt normal to me and I didn’t see it as anything worth changing.

But this all changed when myself included and other people who are in the self improvement space experienced their first F-T-E (Fuck this event)

I dive deeper into this concept in this post, but to summarize it, an F-T-E is the moment in your life where you’ve hit absolutely rock bottom.

The pivotal event in your lifetime that changed it all, where you’re so down bad that you use that negative energy to propel yourself back up and change your life.

It was the “calm before the storm” is what I’d would like to say…and what changed it all for me is when I got my heart broken when a girl I’ve met left me for this other guy that she was dating at the time.

The sheer amount of shame and jealousy that I’ve experienced is what pushed me over the edge, because I made a vow to myself that I would never be disrespected like that ever again.

My pride, my ego, my self esteem, was on the line, and I was willing dedicate my entire existence to proving my self worth again. Sure, it wasn’t the heathiest way to heal from my problems, but it is the reason why I’m here today.

I’ve dialed in on my training, my diet, and it started my path into self improvement.

Without the initial hardship that I’ve faced in the beginning, then you would have never read this newsletter in the first place, and I would have stayed indifferent to the life that I was living before.

I couldn’t have said this in the past, but now I could say that I am grateful for that experience, I am grateful for my suffering, and because of that I was able to discover my true purpose.

Which was to help young guys just like myself get into self improvement and start living the life that they genuinely wanted.

Honestly there’s not much more to say about this stage other than to experience your first F-T-E right away.

This is probably the main reason why people stay stuck in this cage for so long, because they try to do the pussy approach which is to do “cute tactics” and 1% better each day.

And I mean, it sounds really wholesome and all but that’s not going to be the thing that will make you jump out of your bed and start working right away.

Pain is often the best discipline, and unfortunately most people stay in a place of comfort for too long. If anything, this event, your F-T-E, is what separates the simpletons with the elites.

Second Stage (Peak)

Now for this stage, this is going to occur when the results really start kicking in.

Either from your F-T-E or just from consistency, you begin to see visible progress in their efforts.

You see, self improvement works in a exponential trend, which means that you barely see any results in your productivity, your consistency, until months later where it starts to be very apparent.

And it is actually in this stage, where you make the most progress in your self improvement journey in comparison to all of the other stages that you’ll experience.

Basically think of it as newbie gains, you’re learning new information, experimenting with new habits, and changing old ones, you’re doing quite well for yourself.

During this “Peak” in growth, (heheh see what I did there?) It is very rarely that you gain progress in a multitude of aspects, instead it is usually one aspect of self improvement that you really hone in for this duration of time.

And its going to act as the cornerstone that will help you keep leveling up your discipline skill.

So for me and for most guys, that cornerstone is going to be going to the gym. Of course because that is probably the easiest physical measure on if you’re making progress or not.

And so for this time period, that was my only true passion for quite a while. Going to my home gym and building muscle was my main priority.

Not only will you experience physical benefits, but also the emotional benefits. Having this sharp change in lifestyle will make you a happier person, and more people around you will start to notice that you’ve changed.

And with that change, comes with new opportunities. More people will begin to respect you, you begin to respect yourself, and frankly life is just better when your disciplined, in shape, and take care of yourself a lot more.

Not much other to say in this section but to just embrace the new opportunities that are on your way and the happiness boost that comes along with it.

Genuinely one of the most happiest periods of my life, but it wasn’t long until I fell into a deep rabbit of self isolation and loneliness.

Third Stage (Isolation)

Now this was the start of my downfall into the self improvement rabbit hole, and the stage that I want you to avoid at all costs.

Now you might be thinking, “isn’t self improvement supposed to be good for you?”

Well yes, with the right intentions, but too much of it and it can be greatly taken to the extreme.

I went into this extreme “monk mode” season, where you cut off all social connection, social media, and you focus solely on your priorities. My priority at the time was building a 10/10 aesthetic physique so I trained and bulked throughout the summer of 2022 to late 2023.

I’ve gotten everything that I wanted in the second stage of my self improvement journey. I had good friends, respect from other people, status, and I threw that all away just so that I could allocate all of my time into this pursuit.

At the time, it was a very sound idea, but looking back at it, those were the loneliness times in my entire life.

I didn’t speak to my friends or anyone at all really, I just sticked to my schedule and repeated that same cycle again and again.

I thought I was the man for putting in this hard work and dedication to my craft, but it turns out that I was riddled with insecurity and self deprecating thoughts.

So instead of embracing/accepting those insecurities, I latched into self improvement like a leech because it gave me the sense of self worth that I was missing at the time.

That’s when I started to look at the world in a different perspective. I was pretty much brainwashed by the very same self improvement content that I was watching, and adopted this depressive “doomer” mindset about the world and about other people.

I fed negative propaganda into my own brain that the junk food, the video games, the social media binging, and all that type of stuff was bad, and that the people who indulged in those habits were also considered “bad people”.

And while I think that these habits aren’t inherently good for you, I was looking at it in a insecure/nihilistic perspective.

So I started to have this “me vs. the world” type of mindset where I would view someone negatively if they didn’t do the same self improvement habits that I do.

Which I know sounds stupid and overly exaggerated, but I couldn’t realize the amount of influence that social media has on you if you keep watching the same content that infiltrates your own beliefs.

Because of that, I became a full proclaimed “self improvement autist” where my whole entire life was based off of self improvement not because it made me into a better person, but because it was the only thing that validated my own insecurities and lack of self worth.

So on this graph I’ve made, we got the simpletons, the “chad”, and the self improvement autists. The simpletons are the people who “try” to be on self improvement but they end falling short because they skip the essential habits and would rather rely on “tactics and systems”.

The self improvement autists aren’t any better, if not worse to be honest, because they try too hard to be on self improvement. So you can kind of see the dichotomy between the simpletons and the autists since their at the ends in this graph.

The thing is that the autists do make results, but they can’t enjoy it because they instead use it as a coping mechanism to deal with their own problems. Which unfortunately was me for a period of time.

And on the top of the graph is just the chad like person who not only makes incredible progress, but understands when to relax and when to work because he is free of insecurities.

Fourth Stage (Contemplation)

This is what I call the contemplation or self deprecation stage, where you begin to doubt your own accomplishments and why you even started in the first place.

For this period, I was on my own. Sure I was still making gains in my physique, I was journaling, meditating, and reading consistently everyday…but I wasn’t happy.

I just didn’t have the same drive or enthusiasm for my life as I used to anymore. It wasn’t that I fallen off my self improvement habits, but the passion behind was no longer there.

I didn’t realize this at the time, but now that I’m here reflecting back on my past mistakes, I understood why I felt so unhappy and depressed.

During my initiation stage on self improvement, I had a clear mission that I needed to do. I needed to prove my self worth again, my own pride, and so I did. But I do remember the exact moment that my life started to go downhill from there.

It was when I started connecting back with the same girl that drove me to have this life changing transformation. I wanted to go back and apologize for my actions, she forgave me, and we ended it there on good terms.

And that was that. I’ve fulfilled my mission. The only reason why I’ve went into self improvement was to reclaim my own self worth, and that’s what I thought I did.

But for that pursuit, a piece of my soul died along the way. I no longer had that same drive that I’ve once did from that point onwards.

I was so incredibly insecure with myself, that I started spiraling inward. I relied on self improvement as a crutch to prove my own self worth rather than a positive integration.

I’ve completed this chapter of my life, but that left me with nothing to fight for anymore.

I’ve built everything I learned on a broken foundation, full of insecurities, negative beliefs about myself, and my own fair share of childhood traumas.

Instead of using self improvement as a genuine source to improve my relationships, health, and social life, I used it as an outlet to pour all of my insecurities onto.

I was living the life that I hated, even though on the outside, it seemed like everything was alright.

And there’s a quote that keeps coming into my mind while I write this email from Friedrich Nietzsche which is...

I know that I’m going slightly off topic but this insight might actually be very valuable for the guys who are going through similar circumstances.

3 years ago, I had a clear fight, a clear war. I declared “war” basically on myself in order to reclaim my pride once again.

And then peaceful times came, I wasn’t doing anything super fulfilling or purposeful for 1 ½ years straight. Basically just going through the motions. Journal, meditate, read, gym, repeat, over and over again.

I didn’t have anything to fight for. So I started to attack myself inwards through my insecurities which caused me to over-obsess in self improvement, because I thought that it would have given the self worth and fulfillment that I wanted all this time.

So I want to ask you to ask yourself “Am I doing self improvement for the right reasons?”

“It is to actually improve my life or is it used as a source to overcompensate with my own insecurities?”

Fifth Stage (Fulfilment)

This was a section from the book, The Way of the Superior Man which saved me from a life of constant ambition but endless regret.

In the book, the section tells you to stop waiting for a completion in anything because it’s never going to be over. Whether that means in your work, relationships, health, or wealth, there’s always going to be something new that you’ll want to chase.

So the fallacy of “Yes when I’m done with x, then I’m going to feel like y” is never going to happen because you'll always end up chasing for more.

This was the realization that I had with my own self improvement journey that broke me from the limitations in my own mind.

I thought that I could only be happy if I achieved the 10/10 physique but really I was stealing happiness from my current self by comparing the happiness I would get for my future self.

I was in a state of constant turmoil, because I was quick to point out what I don’t have instead of being appreciative for what I’ve already built.

But if you’re always comparing yourself to the ideal version of yourself, then you’ll never find true happiness because there will always be more to gain.

So I thought to myself “why not appreciate and be grateful for the small wins now, instead of hoping for the completion of it in the future?”

Currently, we’re on track to hit 1,000 subscribers in the next few months, but I started to get into this depressive attitude about it because we were plateauing the recent growth of new subs.

But then I look back a year ago and think “Wait a minute, I’m still making great progress because I didn’t have 50 for the first few months of me starting”.

That is the obsessive but dangerous nature of self improvement, yes you can improve to better all aspects of your life, but would you do it at the sacrifice of your own happiness?

This is the stage where I find myself being right now.

This isn’t to say to not work hard and set meaningful goals, but to stop focusing on the score for once and a while, and start focusing on what really matters.

Which is your fulfillment and happiness.

Because without those 2 things, then what’s really the point of self improvement?

Author’s Notes:

That is all I have for you today. And as promised, I went over the 5 stages of self improvement, how to avoid the same mistakes I’ve made, and how to make faster progress on your own self improvement journey.

I hope this guide was valuable. And if it is, feel free to share it to someone who might benefit from reading educational content like this one.

If you want to receive personalized feedback from me, comment below your current problems that you’re facing right now and I’ll give you a solution based on my own experience.

Until next time, take care.

-Jason