Here you will find a structured explanation of the I Grow Younger Framework.
Human potential
Human potential is unlimited. You can have Success and achieve everything that has Meaning. Of course, your current situation limits your choices considerably. But in the long term, there are no tables that can’t be turned around. Situations that increase our knowledge of ourselves and the world will happen to everybody.
Your character is in your head and nowhere else. You just need to rewire your human brain a bit. Your brain’s best ability is that it can learn and change. Once you believe it’s fixed, it actually is. Don’t ever listen to someone who tells you what you can’t do. They are always wrong. Be smart, think, share and get feedback, research and trust your Intuition. Options in life are so much more than your mind can comprehend and you can follow an almost infinite number of life paths. Believe everything is possible, still evaluate the odds and always remember the much better idea may be the next thought you have, if only you keep options open.
Anyone who tells you “you will make it” does not understand the odds side of things and is not helping your cause. “I can make it” are the right words to use. If everyone comes to believe in the unlimited human potential inside them and lives with this hopeful feeling, what a world we would live in!
And the right time for a good Change is always now! So let’s start …
Game of Self and Game of Life
Life is much easier to understand and live if we have two approaches to two fundamentally different concepts – the Game of Self (everything inside you, consciousness) and the Game of Life (everything outside you, reality). Mixing up the self and reality parts together is often paralyzing and can be the main reason people get stuck in life. The golden rule says not to mix facts and feelings. Feelings are exclusively Game of Self and facts are exclusively Game of Life.
To move forward in the Game of Life, we need Structure and to work skillfully with Science, people, concepts and Resources. The main resources in life are: Freedom, people, health, assets (eg. Money). The Game of Self needs Chaos and is a mess of images, feelings, and thoughts moving forward in Time. Scientists call it consciousness, we – the picture – your ever changing, inaccurate perception of reality mixed up with your thoughts and feelings. You can point the picture to: the Game of Self (Self-love, understanding, Learning, creating, meditating), the Game of Life (meeting people, moving, working, eating) or some risky combinations of the above that we will explore later.
Start the Change with the Game of Life and once you’ve made Progress, you’ll have more resources. Dedicate your efforts in to serving others. This will make you feel better, improving your Game of Self. We call this process Personal growth or the I Grow Younger process.
Flows and Boxes
Our genes, our past and the environment makes who we are, but we can only change our environment. A conscious improvement can only have one Direction – Outward direction and one place where it happens – the Game of Life. You cannot improve your Game of Self by force. So we need a Structure that help us open up. Humans interact internally and externally only with two types of structures: Flows and Boxes. Flows and Boxes are categorically different, do not complement but rather destroy each other. Boxes have boundaries. Flows expand in every direction. Boxes cannot bring true long-term Happiness. Flows can. Boxes close us in. Flows open us up.
The first creatures had few goals in life – survive, eat and reproduce. Finding food required a process-oriented brain (Box). Not being eaten required a fluid, intuitive brain and general awareness (Flow). So focus and general intuitive awareness have to coexist. This is how the brain hemispheres – Left brain (manipulating the world) and Right brain (understanding the world) evolved. Now we want more than survival – happiness. But we forgot happiness is a Flow. Left brains and Boxes took all the credit for the progress. The relatively safe and comfortable life of the modern human needs Flows and Meaning more than Boxes and logic.
To restore the Flows we need to start with a leap of Faith. This process is popularly known as “letting go”. Only Flows improve things and true letting go is not exchanging one Box for another. It’s embracing Flows and ditching all possible Boxes. Every time you feel the urge to put something in a Box, resist. The Boxes make you weak and unhappy. You need Flows, even if they bring Chaos to your life. Flows are: Love, Energy, Creativity, Curiosity, unobstructed time, nature, Spirituality. Boxes are: all internal and external categories and labels, Goals, plans, time slots, houses, rules, dogma, Numbers.
Forest model
We need an environment stimulating Flows. Imagine you get lost in a forest, a Box, so you can plan on going into it. But then, you have to find your way back, which is a Flow. The Forest model is the only magical one that can strategically create a Flow out of a Box.
There are two types of forests – popular and unpopular. Popular forests are books, music, dancing. The popular forests are easy to find and try, but a better solution are the Unpopular forests – all Flow experiences that combine getting out of your comfort zone with committing not to go back in it until every road back is a Flow. Danger perception, physical movement and sounding crazy are all advantages. Unpopular forests are: Get lost, Straight line hiking, Snowy slope sliding, Get off just in time, Sleep on bean bags, Walk fast in transport, Move fast in a crowd, Write open letters, E-mail, don’t chat, Make chaotic gifts, Become a mentor, Internal uncertainty, No expectations, Procrastination, Empty time slots, Spend more, Value your time, Price high. The solution is to destroy the Boxes as a foundation of your life and embrace Flows. And the unpopular forests are your superpower tools for this.
Hunter mode and Sheep mode
Flow vs. Box thinking is a spectrum in our mind, related directly to the brain hemispheres and strengthening specific neurological pathways. But there is one other important spectrum, a biological one, related to hormones in your body – Hunter mode vs. Sheep mode. The Hunter – Sheep model defines two ways you can feel, think and act in – modes that set current life Direction. When we act like a Hunter, we’re being driven by Love, its physical manifestation (Energy), and its intellectual manifestations (curiosity and creativity). When we act like a Sheep, we’re being held back by Fears and Inertia.
When people in Hunter mode encounter a problem, they have a quick, small-scale and active solution, based on love and creativity or they dismiss the problem as not worth solving and forget about it. Sheep reactions tend to complicate things. Hunters do it; Then they do the next; And then the next. Sheep think about it; Then they think more about it; And then some more. Even before failure is confirmed, the Hunter has already moved on. They get extra Motivation and become even more of a Hunter. They don’t overanalyze. This is contrary to Sheep, who take failure as personal defeat. Self-esteem drops and extensive useless analysis is done.
Success and Added Value
As for success, the Hunter takes it naturally. They don’t celebrate, just move on to the next piece of the big picture. They make sure every Success has Added value. Sheep strategies rarely truly succeed. People in Sheep mode often misunderstand Achievement for success.
Motivation, Resistance and Change
Every action you take creates and influences the next. A Hunter move leads to more Hunter moves, and Sheep moves lead to more Sheep moves. Our chances of Change are the relation between our motivation and our resistance towards a certain action. When the Hunter in you wins, your Flows are strengthened, because you open up and there is space for them.
Productivity, Creativity and Implementation
People with more Flows than Boxes have always productivity. Every work process has creativity and implementation phases. So we can define productivity as creativity plus implementation. Implementation is a Left brain Structure. It’s the only time we need to create mental Boxes. Creativity is a Right brain Chaos. It can be stimulated by Flows – giving it space and time to form and thrive. Boxes and Flows are like fire and ice and destroy each other in the short term. Implementation and creativity are in a constant fight within you.
We stimulate Flows and creativity if we remove enough Boxes and brain fragmenting distractions like Phone notifications and Social media scrolling. All structures are Boxes and will suppress your creativity. The only exception are Empty time slots – Boxes with no other Boxes inside create the space for Flows.
The current world makes great ideas more important than great execution. But their generation is completely unpredictable. Creativity is a slow, chaotic and immeasurable Flow. You need Diversity of Experience – live dynamically, talk to smart and creative people, connect, engage, share, try as many different things as possible.
Core Flows and Secondary Flows
The Core Flows are Self-Love (destroys the Barriers within, you see yourself and your life experience as one whole), Unconditional love (destroys the barriers between you and other people), Meaning (destroys all other barriers in the world, seeing it as a whole), Responsibility (destroys all barriers between our values and taking action on them) and Growth / Scaling (destroys all barriers that slow us down on our mission). The core Flows generate Secondary Flows such as Curiosity, Playfulness, Joy, Love for nature and creativity.
Intrinsic motivation
Intrinsic motivation is the sum of the core Flows. If you don’t know why you do something and it’s some joyful Flow experience, then it comes from Intrinsic motivation. The brain has two neural pathways – one for Extrinsic motivation and one for Intrinsic motivation. Dopamine is central to both. Extrinsic motivation is anything about avoiding pain (Sheep mode, Fear) and seeking pleasure (Hunter mode, reward).
Stillness
There is one critical Flow – the value of empty intellectual space, Stillness. It’s just the absence of thinking. Mental peace. Like sadness can be a healthy processing state on an emotional level, stillness is a healthy processing state on an intellectual level. In both states the brain turns off its tireless conscious prediction engine functionality, resulting in Boxes fading away and space for Flows being formed. Stillness can happen at any moment you are not stimulated.
Balance and the extreme ends
Slowing your brain speed to near zero is great – you win in Flows and Intuition; Working at insane Speed is also great as it helps your body get into Hunter mode and doing beats thinking; The mid-ground of getting some work done at half speed is a bad choice. You’ve heard enough times that balance is good. But there are many cases where the extreme ends (one or both) are the best place to be.
A typical example is to eat half of a huge pizza and have two options for the other half – throw it away or leave it for a homeless person. You decide to throw it away. How much should you care about what you just did? Too little and you let it go. Too much and you order three pizzas and bring them to a local homeless shelter. For most people, it will be a near-best use of their time and money in the Game of Life to do something so good for others and society. In the Game of Self you feel great and you made a Hunter move, that may well lead to other beautiful acts in the future.
You care too little – you’re good. You care too much – you’re the best! For the medium amount of care given – you spend a slightly guilty evening at home and no homeless person gets to eat any pizza. Also, you made a Sheep move which may lead to other such decisions in the futurea. Some stuff you cannot change and you shouldn’t care. Some you can and you should care for the Change to happen. It’s sometimes a Hunter move to not care if the issue isn’t critical. But to care and not do anything is the classic Sheep move, the worst of the worst. By implying that somehow the best amount of everything is always in the middle and you should look for balance is not just irresponsible, it’s harmful to individuals and society.
Intuition and Logic
We’ve said that productivity is creativity and execution. And for both we need Intuition. The brain has two separate decision-making mechanisms: Logic, based mostly in the Left brain hemisphere, very good at depth and Intuition, based mostly in the Right brain hemisphere, very good at width. Logic only handles Boxes, Intuition – also Flows. Logic is about the exact, Intuition is about the fluid. Logic is a local tool. Intuition is a global tool. Logic is evolutionary new. Intuition is evolutionary old, an almost perfect decision-making tool. Logic can be accumulated and systematized by the whole of humanity. Intuition is a private, individual tool. With logic you have to understand and explain to get a correct answer. Intuition is a shortcut – you just have an answer.
The brain is a biological neural network, not so different from AI, but with massive advantages: more connections, parallelism and energy efficiency. Intuition needs data points and Time to develop and the pattern recognition capabilities of your brain will take care of the rest. Flows help create the space for Intuition to form. So does Speed. The more you have lived through (Diversity of Experience), the more helpful data points there will be for patterns to emerge.
Intuition about quantities, Intuition about structures and Vibe Intuition
There are two basic types of Intuition: Intuition about structures and Intuition about quantities. Vibe Intuition is kind of combination of these two.
I Grow Younger is all about building an intuitive framework about you and your life. If you don’t understand yourself (Game of Self), you cannot understand society and the world (Game of Life) – they are made of people like you. Human beings are interconnected. Everything influences everything else. You are a complex vibe system. Self-understanding simply means having Vibe Intuition – the best tool for self-improvement. Vibe Intuition is all about how structures and quantities evolve over time in closely interconnected systems like a human being. Vibe Intuition simply tells you what is the critical for you at this very moment – Flows; Self-love; Unconditional love; Hunter moves; Long-term Freedom; Chaos; Meaning.
Intuition about Structures deals with relations between objects, causes and effects, how everything evolves over time. Intuition about Quantities tells us how much is there of everything quantifiable – space, time, value, money, people’s tolerance, your tolerance, all limits, all critical masses needed to trigger change. These two require a very different wiring of the brain. It’s a big challenge to develop them both.
The quantities that are worth feeling are Thresholds and Flows – Numbers, Money, Freedom, Time. You cannot measure a Flow, but you can compare it to the same Flow in the past. These are important data points for your Intuition. That’s why we define the following types of Intuition about quantities – Handling numbers, Intuition about large numbers, Time understanding and Feeling thresholds.
Feeling thresholds
Life is a mess of structures and quantities, united by a universal principle: Quantity Change leads to Change in Structure (Quality Change) when a certain Threshold is passed. Knowing where the threshold is, is a quantity question which makes Intuition about quantities extremely important in life. Feeling the thresholds of humans is also extremely valuable.
Handling Numbers
Numbers govern the modern world like no other and are of critical importance. But numbers are also quite new for humanity so we never had the time and possibilities to develop an Intuition about numbers and abstraction. Life is full of situations when numbers are all around but the real challenge is not to count or do mathematical operations with them. It’s important to understand the abstraction, to understand what they represent and what the context is.
Numbers don’t bring sustainable long term Happiness. Numbers can bring long term unhappiness. Numbers cause emotions of at least the same strength as similar non-number events. A big danger about numbers is that they are easy to compare. Avoid number related emotions, don’t give them space, don’t give them time, don’t give them reasons. Friends, love, freedom, creativity are all so much more important than numbers! If the number represents another number(s), then it’s Game of Life stuff and you can dive in as your emotions are not in danger. If the number represents a non-number value like your performance evaluation or directly your Self-worth, then it is Game of Self stuff and emotions and happiness are in danger. This is the moment to avoid, ignore, not care. An inflection point between the two is pricing. Never be afraid to price high.
There is one case where numbers should be used a lot – probabilities. Practice and your brain will develop a probability Intuition that is extremely useful. A key characteristic of people with financial success and entrepreneurs is that they love being specific and hate ambiguous numbers.
Time understanding and Intuition
It’s your responsibility to understand time. It’s a purely intuitive skill that is not taught anywhere. It’s about feeling the Flow of time. Only among entrepreneurs and freelancers I have ever found people with developed time Intuition. Time understanding helps you feel how your life develops in time. Life will feel like a continuum. You will feel when something is too fast, too slow or too repetitive. It’s like a whole new level of consciousness that keeps you time-healthy and time-effective. Based on this feeling you can work and grow fast while being patient about the things in life you cannot really force.
Intuition is built from experience. You need data points. You can play two simple mental games – think what the time is and then check the real time and think how much time has passed since a memorable event. Time understanding will offer you effectivity, Self-love and creative adaptability, will make you better at work and happier in life.
Time question and Vibe question
It’s of paramount importance to ask others “the Time question”: “What do you do all day?” until you have the Intuition developed. Give me a minute by minute breakdown of your typical day. Ask the time question everywhere. Use it to ask people about their work, students about their study and parents about their parenting. It’s the most educational question you can ask someone along with “the Vibe question”: “How do you feel?”. These are the two questions that bring life detail and nuance. While “How do you feel?” is the central Game of Self question, “What you do in your day?” is the central Game of Life question.
Ultimate skills
Intuition about quantities and Intuition about structures can be also called Intellectual Ultimate skills. Ultimate skills are the most crucial skills that we need to master the Game of Self and the Game of Life. There are also three Emotional Ultimate skills: Acceptance, Mindfulness and Direction. Acceptance is to handle the past better. You will be able to change most of the future if you accept all of the past and the present you cannot change. Mindfulness is to handle the incoming Flows better. It is the art of not reacting, labeling or even thinking. It is about understanding yourself and the world. It’s a Flow state. It’s basically being fine with your internal and external Chaos and being healthy. Direction is to make your actions better. Every action of yours can be in an Outward direction, driven by Love and Energy, a Hunter move.
The Universal forces – Chaos and Structure
Paradoxically you need Chaos to learn to feel structures and also to develop the Ultimate skills. Chaos and Structure are universal forces. They are the two competing forces in your life. Their dance creates the future. Chaos changes or deconstructs Structures. The Chaos of life will trash your every unnatural and rigid order. Instead, we have to embrace the structure that occurs naturally. This structure is not something we create – it already exists within us, forming the foundation of our Intuition.
You need Chaos to have creativity, invent new things and for your personal development. It fights Boxes and Inertia on a personal level and enables Flows. It is also the way to the Ultimate skills. Chaos will help you encounter many random structures in a given time and this is all your brain needs. Structure can only preserve, Chaos is the force of creation.
Structure is useful to find patterns – it is mostly created, processed and experienced by your left brain. Structure is everywhere and needed in the Game of Life. On the personal level and in the Game of Self it creates Boxes. People evolved without much structure and cannot understand structure without proper education. Not understanding structure is a major failure of modern society. Structure is very valuable for mankind. We owe much of the progress in our quality of life to its preserving qualities.
Your personal life structure definitely has its place in the form of good habits. Humans need some supporting framework of consistency in their lives. However we need Chaos to grow. Chaos allows better structures to emerge naturally. Love, creativity and other chaotic aspects of life can exist in beautiful harmony with such structures.
Entrepreneurship
The current economy rewards new ideas and dynamic action. It rewards Chaos as long as it doesn’t clash with the rule of law. Entrepreneurship needs Chaos and it’s currently the best path to money and Long-term Freedom.
On the other hand organized Chaos is simply good for mental health as it guarantees that you go out of your comfort zone and face your fears on a regular basis.
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