The #1 factor impacting entrepreneurial and creative success

Hey friend,

It’s a beautiful sunny morning in Prague and I’m slowly settling back and readjusting to the specific vibe of this beautiful city I call home.

Whenever I travel, it feels like I’m changing not only (administrative) states but most importantly (mental) states. My behavior changes when I change the environment.

It puts the “I really like the vibe of this place” statement into perspective when you frame it as such.

So where am I getting with this?

One of the master keys to changing your behavior (leading to different results) is intentionally designing your environment.

In this week’s newsletter edition, we’re diving into the mental (and emotional) states as a result of your environment and how to use this awareness to propel your creative output.

Did you miss last week’s edition on a better way to build digital products and services?
It got great feedback from a few readers, so I strongly recommend tuning in to minimize the risk of building something and hoping they’ll come.

The proud sponsor of these letters is yours truly in Your Creative Corner.
Investing the most precious of resources known to man. Time.

In collaboration with these Creative Flow Inducing Tunes:

TLDR;

The biggest obstacle to achieving external outcomes, whether in personal or business life is not what you think.

If you can’t face internal conflict, you’ll stay stuck repeating the same patterns.

The secret is to embrace the totality of the human experience.

The full emotional spectrum.

And turn your pain, fear, and insecurity into allies.
Only then can you gain fragments of clarity.
And move in the desired direction.

By getting brutally honest about where you are right now:

• Asses your social, mental, emotional, and physical environments (identify the recurring patterns)

• Avoid chasing shiny objects like the plaque & break through the valley of despair

• Accept feeling uncomfortable like your life depends on it

• Acquire a taste for feeling like shit at times

• Adopt methods to regulate your states

• And fall in love with the process (stop obsessing with outcomes)

Your environment is either a support system or a series of subtle traps. Which one are you in?

Whether you know it or not, your environment dictates your behavior and either supports you in your desired lifestyle changes or subtly sabotages your attempts.

What traits set apart those who can successfully navigate the challenges of starting:

• a new workout

• a new project

• a new diet

And keeping these new behaviors for the long run?

You guessed it.

ENVIRONMENT:

• Social

• Mental

• Physical

• Emotional

I’m using the term environment to define the entirety of the mental, emotional, and physical spaces we inhabit which in turn impact our actions, thoughts, and emotions.

I left out the social environment intentionally because it is perhaps the most obvious. It’s also the single biggest influencer on the other 3.

You’ve probably heard the expression: “Your Zip code determines your future”

Meaning, that the role models and examples of behavior and thought in your immediate environment mold your entire being.

Most prominently up until the age of 7.

We’re wired to take signals from our immediate environment which inform our decision-making.

Allowing us to drive on autopilot.

Conserving energy for other problem-solution equations.

It’s a shortcut to making decisions without exerting staggering amounts of energy.

What a great design. Right?

But what happens if you’re driving in the wrong direction?

Meaning, you don’t want to live the life everyone else in your Zip Code appears to have settled for.

How do you reconfigure your autopilot in real-time?

Avoid the catastrophic cycle of chasing shiny objects

This is the only difference between someone stuck in endless loops of failed attempts and someone who pushes through to success.

Awareness —> Action

By becoming aware of how exactly your environment shapes your behavior and drives in(action) you put yourself in the driver’s seat of your life.

This is how you set yourself up for success and endure any short-term challenges and pain standing between your current situation and your dream life.

Without overcoming this obstacle, you remain stuck in an endless repetition of the shiny object chase (AKA cheap dopamine high).

If I had a nickel for every time I went on this amusement park ride.
I’d probably be able to retire early, swapping those nickels for satoshis back in 2012.

Here’s how this works:

"Especially relevant to the aspiring entrepreneur endlessly distracted by the next big thing. The new silver bullet system. The new and improved guru. The next hype (crypto, AI, copywriting, community, content creation,…)"

You can probably tell how the endless repetition of this cycle gets you chasing the next golden opportunity only to drop it midway for the next thing.

Let’s imagine you just subscribed to the Creation Codes (the newsletter you’re currently reading).

You feel the dopamine rush of tuning into the absurd vision of living life on your own terms and pursuing your highest excitement in this new golden age of technological utopia.

You haven’t heard much about the creator economy and the open pathways to getting employed by the internet for sharing your journey.

The promise is exciting.

So you venture bravely into this new world order.

Only to find out it’s no different than any other path in life.

It’s hard work.

Your enthusiasm subsides and gives way to informed disillusionment.

The “easy life” that you read this proposition as turns out to be a little less easy. And a lot more like having to learn new skills and suck at something for a while.

The feeling of despair kicks in.

You feel like you’re not going to amount to anything after all. All of those people who judged you for taking a step in a different direction might be right after all.

You look back to your familiar ways.

And apply for that new 9-5 in a different industry.
You land a role in an AI startup.
”They must be onto something.”
”It’s going to be different now.”

The dopamine rush of the new promise kicks in.
You’re excited AF.

Sounds familiar?

So how do you ensure you stick with your intentions/goals?
There’s a better way.
I promise.

Most common solutions FAIL because you stay the same

You can see how changing roles, industries, markets, and customers (also applies to diets and workout regimes) doesn’t lead to breakthroughs, fulfillment, and your dream life. — those changes are the very thing keeping you stuck in a loop.

And underpinning it is the biggest trap of our civilized modern-day human experience.

You and I have been sold a big fat lie.

The problem is we were led to believe we shouldn’t feel:

• Lost

• Afraid

• Insecure

• Confused

• Like a Failure

Our temperature-controlled, overfed, sheltered, and under-challenged lives are slowly killing us.

This is why I despise Positive Psychology.
It’s only 1 side of the coin.

It completely ignores the other half of our human experience.
Masquerading as self-development.

While it’s nothing but an inverted form of dehumanization.

How are you going to create anything meaningful avoiding uncomfortable emotions?

It requires that you separate yourself from what makes you human!

Your ability to feel the full emotional spectrum.

No course, life/business coach, mastermind, book, seminar, or community is going to relieve you from this problem.

As long as you keep pursuing solutions from this mental and emotional state.

Not because there’s something wrong with those solutions.
Because it always is just another form of distraction.
An escape mechanism from the underlying pain.

The secret: Embrace the Suck

The journey is about deconditioning yourself so that the expectations others project on you no longer override who you want (and need) to become.

Remember the Social component of your environment. The Zip Code?

I recently had a brush with the culture I grew up in.
Visiting my hometown.

It was a beautiful reminder for me to live my life on my own accord.
Instead of as a response to the opinions of those around me.

It became painfully clear to me how I was still subtly living my life trying to acquire external validation and approval from my peers.

Ouch!

But see, here’s the trick.

I embraced the suck.
I didn’t try to run away.
Or confront the gossiping entity.
Or distract myself with another activity.

I used it instead as a black mirror.
Reflecting perfectly where I still cared for the opinions of others.

Feeling the entire range of emotions:

Fear.
Anger.
Anxiety.
Insecurity.
Depression.
Overwhelm.

These are powerful tools.
You can learn to work with them.

Integrating the parts of you,
once discarded in your shadow.

Learning to love those parts of you.
You were made to believe are unlovable.

Society will have you think you need to have control over your emotions.
That’s not true.
You can’t stop how you feel.

But you can take responsibility for how you respond (instead of reacting).

And your vehicle of transformation is a deeply regulated central nervous system.

At this point, you might be wondering what a step-by-step process for CNS regulation looks like.

Truth be told. There’s no prescription.
What works for me might not work for you.

The secret is consistency and the number of repetitions.
Regardless of the tool, technique, or mindset.

That’s what enables you to stay regulated and in an emotional state responding to your envisioned outcome.

This applies to creative projects, entrepreneurial endeavors, health, relationships, you name it.

Because there’s an underlying universal principle that governs our human psyche.

So instead of trying to “figure everything out in fine detail”
Or postponing taking action “when you get [WHATEVER]”

1. Sit down and take a pen & paper. (Yes, old-school)

2. Draw a graph with four quadrants

3. Name each quadrant: Mind, Body, Spirit, Creativity

4. Assess your current state in each quadrant on a simple traffic light scale

5. RED = BAD (Not doing anything to fix it)

6. YELLOW = MELLOW (OK-ish. Doing something, lots of room for improvement)

7. GREEN = CLEAN (Masterful, I got this in the bag)

8. Note down 1 activity for each quadrant that helps achieve the desired state

Here are a few examples that work for me:

• MIND (Journaling, writing down my thoughts in public. AKA this Newsletter)

• BODY (Sauna, Yoga, Jogging)

• SPIRIT (Breathwork, Meditation)

• CREATIVITY (Building a service business in public, content creation)

I promise that if you commit to this process for the long haul, your life will be unrecognizable in 1-2 years.

Master your environment, Master your life

• Asses your social, mental, emotional, and physical environments (identify the recurring patterns)

• Avoid chasing shiny objects like the plaque & break through the valley of despair

• Accept feeling uncomfortable like your life depends on it

• Acquire a taste for feeling like shit at times

• Adopt methods to regulate your states

The key to it all is to fall in love with the process and stop chasing results.

If you can do that, you'll build a deep connection with your inner realm that will help you dial in your business and personal goals much faster.

I hope you’ll give this a try!

See you next week.

Want to Dive Deeper?

I work with a limited number of clients 1:1 helping them overcome these subtle forms of sabotage and co-creating a conducive environment for growing an impact-driven business. I’m able to take on 1 more client as of June. If that’s you, shoot me a DM, and let’s figure out if we’re a good fit.

Aleksander Brankov