You’re probably going to make a mess of your 20s

65% of people never make it past Stage 3.

You’re probably going to make a mess of your 20s.

Or you already have.

I have a feeling this is going to piss some people off, because I’m only 23 at the end of the day, so who am I to tell you anything about how to live your life. But the hairy reason behind why I am doing this is because 65% of adults never make it past the third stage of psychological development.

There’s five stages btw.

Most of you reading this still view education as something to be completed.

Which is why most people plateau in life at 23 as soon as they leave college.

Walking around at 60 with the mental capabilities of a 23 year old is a sight nobody wants to see. Yet we see enough of it.

I can hear people in the back already, saying we live in “The Information Age,” where you can ask AI anything and get the answer, and that everybody has access to the information that could make them $100k per month ye ye we get it.

Let me ask you a question then.

If you have all this information, then why aren’t you happy? If you’re so smart, why can’t you solve all your problems and suffer less than you already do every day? Why is it, that every time you get that 2am spark on a Sunday night where you want to (finally, once and for all) rebuild your life… within 2 weeks you’re back to your old habits of self-sabotage and self-destruction?

I might have an answer.

With this essay, I want to open up the bonnet of your mind (and my own mind, in writing this) so we can tear apart what’s underneath that bonnet together.

To see what parts are rusting, what parts need replacing, and what parts we can upgrade together.

Because you don’t need more information if the very thing processing that information needs upgrading.

You just need to give me the next 15 minutes if you want to escape Stage 3 once and for all, and launch into Stage 4, and thus the next stage of your life.

You’ll be excited to hear the benefits of joining the select few living at Stage 4.

But first, here is why the majority of people will never move beyond Stage 3.

Idea I - You don’t need more bloody information

To start, a quote from Albert Einstein:

We cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them.

If information isn’t the problem here, what is?

I’d like to take a second and turn to the lazy ambitious types.

You know, the select few who struggle with knowing (1) what to do, and (2) actually doing it.

I get it.

Anytime I have felt this in my own life I’ve always turned to more information. Or more habits to try out, at 8:00am once I jump out of bed with my own crusted eyes taking a full hour to completely open. And willpower (which I never realized runs out eventually). I never addressed the thing receiving that information.

The mind.

The self-help book genre is dying. Which I find interesting.

I’m not sure if it’s to do with AI being readily available to anyone with a screen. You can ask AI to make a detailed, personalized plan for you based on James Clear’s Atomic Habits that would cost as little as some coffee granules in the grand scheme of things.

Information is losing its value.

And despite the fact that life has never been as good as it is now, with all its opportunities, especially if you’re writing and posting content online under your own personal brand, people are not becoming happier, healthier, or less “fucked up” by their own definition.

It’s like we’re going… backwards.

Here is something that should bother you.

Two people can read the same book, and it can change one person’s life and do jack-shit for the other.

But it’s the same information?

Yes… but there’s something else that is different.

Two people can listen to the same song and get two totally different experiences from it. Anytime I listen to Deftones or TOOL my heart gets fired up, and I want to do hard jiu-jitsu rounds. But to my girlfriend, it’s just screaming.

It’s the same input of information but two different structures making meaning from it.

Not everybody consuming the same self-help content is processing the advice with the same mental structure.

So you don’t need more information. Be happy about this. You can close Claude now and take a walk outside to relieve the strain from your eyes and brain.

Robert Kegan spent over 30 years studying how the meaning-making structures in our brains actually develop.

Here is what he found.

Idea II - Kegan’s five stages of development

I’ll boot through this quickly enough.

You need to understand what stage you are at before I give you action steps for implementing any of this. You wouldn’t expect to hit a bullseye on your first time picking up a bow and arrow in Minecraft.

So pay attention.

The first two stages can be gone through briefly.

Stage 1: The Impulsive Mind (early childhood)

There’s no difference between you and your impulses.

You are your impulses.

There is no separate sense of self, or “I” deciding whether or not to act on them.

Think back to when you were a young child and you were hungry. My primal ass always went straight for some Dairy Milk chocolate and a cup of Lyons tea.

Everyone moves past this level.

Stage 2: The Imperial Mind (roughly 6% of adults)

This is where you start developing a strong sense of your own needs.

At this stage, you view other people as either a problem or a solution for helping/preventing you from achieving your needs.

Selfish, yes. There’s a lack of empathy at this stage. Self-interest is the first type of interest here.

Most people move past this in adolescence, although this stage can poke it’s head out when you’re stressed (same with Stage 1 if you’re hungry or thirsty, for example).

Stage 3: The Socialized Mind (about 58-65% of adults)

Here is where we get to the good stuff.

Carve this sentence into your skull:

At Stage 3, your identity gets shaped by people around you.

Family. Culture. Friends. Algorithms.

Which makes sense. It means you’re fitting in with the tribe (because getting abandoned by the tribe meant certain death thousands of years ago).

So you’re better now at empathizing, cooperating, and maintaining relationships…

…but you let them shape everything about you.

This is where things start getting spooky.

Your sense is self IS those external inputs. There is quite literally zero gap between who you think you are and what other people say/think about you.

They’re the same thing to your Stage 3 mind.

Human beings are imitators. We learn by imitating. But we don’t voice our individual opinions (usually) because thinking as an individual always means risk of being abandoned by the group. Although you have to risk offending in order to say something worth considering, but not at this stage.

I like the idea that the definition of sanity is acting like everyone else.

So let me ask you.

The code that’s running inside your head. How much of it did you actually choose?

In a tribal society with one set of rules, one god, one leader, that was all fine. Stage 3 was good enough.

But modern life demands self-direction.

You need to be skilled at handling conflict and making decisions that nobody else can make for you.

Stage 3 is not as good for handling modern life.

Profound Idea: Creating your own values feels impossible because your mind is literally wired to outsource them.

Your goal is to reach Stage 4.

Stage 4: The Self-Authoring Mind (roughly 35% of adults)

The hallmark of living at Stage 4 is having an internal compass.

What does that mean?

It simply means you can look at expectations and claims people make, evaluate them, and decide whether you agree or not.

Easier said than done. Here is why this is relevant to you:

At Stage 3, you ARE the feedback.

But at Stage 4, you can HOLD it.

I remember back when I did my livestream with Dan Koe talking about the long-form writing process, I talked about how anytime a post of mine got less than 300 likes on Substack, I would feel like I failed to write a good post. And Dan really opened my eyes when he said it’s better to not look at your writing in terms of low engagement meaning you did a shit job… and instead see it as feedback.

Why am I saying this?

Well, those are two ways to look at how a piece of content performs:

1. I could spiral for a week thinking I’m not good enough because I got less likes than usual

2. I could take that as feedback to learn from and improve with by 1-5% next week

Kegan says that this transition from Stage 3 to Stage 4 can feel like a partial death of self. Which is what learning is. You have to cut away any dead wood, and you separate wheat from chaff.

You have to let your bad ideas die so you don’t have to.

Abstract, I know. But so profound!

I used to be the world’s greatest conformist when I was a kid. If anyone disagreed with me, ever, I always took that as proof that I was in the wrong. Every time. Even if the facts punched me right in the face. I still wouldn’t have believed them.

Which is why I spent most of my childhood terrified of the outside world, and other people, and it’s why I used to stay inside all day playing Minecraft when I should have been out making mistakes and adventuring.

I’m happy that’s no longer the case now. And now I’m writing on the internet, which I would not have been able to do 3 years ago let alone 9.

Stage 5: The Self-Transforming Mind (only 1% of adults)

This is where you can step back from your own system and see its limits.

You can hold multiple perspectives (like a profound thinker should be capable of doing) without needing to pick any one of them.

Which is a real superpower.

I love this idea from Ken Wilber:

Nobody is smart enough to be wrong 100% of the time.

OOF.

Floored me so hard when I first read that, that I laughed aloud!

Without having a mental model in your head first, taking action on any of this is pointless. You wouldn’t drive a car without fuel and a destination in mind, you know? But now that you know the theory, you have some new knowledge…

How do you act on all this?

And launch yourself into the next stage of your life?

Idea III - How to move from Stage 3 to Stage 4

A part of yourself must die for a new part to grow.

That’s an old, ancient idea, rooted deep in all major religions, and also neuroscience and human biology/psychology.

No I will not cite sources. Because this idea couldn’t be any more fucking true than it already is.

This ain’t some hack or some small weekend project.

Neurons that fire together will wire together, which means this shit takes time. Imitation patterns are physically wired into your brain. So going against your programming (the code you’ve been running on all these years) will take sustained effort to fight against the tide for a while.

Until the waves start moving in your favor.

Step (1) - Identify your current stage

Before you can change anything about yourself you need to know one thing.

What stage you’re at this very second.

Kegan says it too (common sense being uncommon here) but most of us believe we are at a higher stage than we actually are.

Think how often people overestimate - and also underestimate - their abilities in relation to all sorts of things…

I want you to think about these 5 questions right now.

Yes. Right now.

1. Do your opinions change depending on who you are talking to?

2. Do you avoid saying what you actually think, because you’re worried how people might respond?

3. Anytime somebody criticizes something you do, does it feel like criticism about what you’ve done, or about you yourself as a person?

4. Do you know what you believe about money, relationships, having a career, and being successful, but in a single sentence about each?

5. Anytime you have to make a big decision in your life, do you need assurance? Is the first thing you do always to ask someone else what they think?

If three or more of these sound like you, you’re at Stage 3.

Don’t stress. Most people are and that’s ok.

We’ll go through what’s necessary for getting you up to Stage 4.

Step (2) - Write down every belief you can think of

I recommend you do this tonight before bed.

Open a notebook, or grab a page and pen, and pick one domain of your life:

• Health

• Wealth

• Relationships

• Career

• Identity (this is probably the best one to start with)

Write down every belief, opinion, or thing you value, anything you genuinely believe to be true about that domain. Filter nothing, be as honest as possible. Nobody else can see this, which is why we’re doing it on paper.

Examples:

• I am not a confident person.

• People view me as inferior compared to everybody else.

• I should have my career and my life plan finalized by age 25.

• I don’t think I am capable of socializing or making new friends.

• I value writing and learning every morning.

• I don’t value doomscrolling my free time away.

This exercise is crazy.

I don’t know why we just aren’t told to do this.

You will not believe (pun absolutely intended) how many bullshit beliefs you let determine every outcome of your life. Simply because you (1) never got deathly specific about what you believe as opposed to living in vagueness, and (2) thought about each belief for anything longer than 5 seconds with clear, basic thinking.

Here’s how you’ll stress test and destroy every one of your self-limiting beliefs.

Step (3) - Question each belief

What, why, and how.

I want you to run every belief, opinion, and value that you can think of through the what-why-how framework.

In order:

1. What claim do you believe here? - State the claim in one clear, simple sentence that a 10 year old could grasp easily.

2. Why do you believe it? - Is the belief true? Or do you feel like it is? What premises support it? Can you give at least 3 reasons? Are they your own reasons or somebody else’s reasons?

3. How does this help you live the life you actually want to be living? - Is it relevant to where you want to be going, or where someone else has been telling you to go this whole entire time?

An example: I need to wait until I feel ready to start writing content online.

Clear claim. But is it true?

Well, you only learn by doing. You won’t get feedback on what’s working and what isn’t unless you post. You also don’t know what “good” or “high-quality” is. Only an audience can tell you that. You can’t build an audience without writing content. Because an audience is a by-product of content people consistently love to listen to, read, or watch?

And if you want to grow your brand, or promote a product or service, you need attention. Attention is online. All of it. So you need to post content to get eyes on what you’re promoting so you can make a living out of this.

See how we annihilated a weak belief in just two paragraphs?

Go on lots of walks and have fun with this!

Step (4) - Do 1-3 tasks per day

They must be Stage 4 tasks only.

What do I mean by this?

There will always be a gap between what you say you value and how you actually behave.

The only way to close that gap is through your daily decisions. The average person does anywhere between 7-14 things per day. If you can nail the first 1-3 of those things, tasks, I mean, you will be making some serious ground.

Do this every night:

Before bed (I like using a notebook) plan your 1-3 tasks for the next day following these three rules.

1. The first task should always be solving your current constraint - the one thing that, if solved, moves everything else forward.

2. Every task is high ROI (return on investment) and needle-moving only - no busy work please. Productive work only!

3. Track your time on task (TOT) in your notebook beside each task - Forget about time blocks and just track how long it took you to complete each task. Like with the stage of development we initially think we’re at, most people have a horrific sense of how long it would take them to do something like write 500 words or one section of a long form post like this one.

Beyond those 1-3 tasks, you should be doing other Stage 4 micro-habits.

Like saying what you actually believe to be true in conversations. Or making a plan for your mornings off without checking what everyone else is doing first. Criticism, too. Next time you receive some, think whether you can support it with reasons before making a reaction.

These are tiny tiny movements. I say tiny twice for a reason.

Moving to Stage 4 is a marathon. I like to think of it as a marathon’s worth of sprints, and not just one single dash to a finish line done once. You needed repeated bouts of high quality effort done across months.

Yes. MONTHS.

Practice repeatedly, until the new wiring takes over.

Step (5) - Give your mind space to rebuild itself

Give your default mode network room to do meaningful, contemplative work.

Which, is the brain’s network for being bored, processing information, emotional regulation, and receiving insights (think shower thoughts).

Be bored. A lot.

Start by going on walks without music. No stimulation. No distractions of any kind. If you learn to sit with your own thoughts, for long enough, in time they will start serving you. You’ll start having ideas once again. You’ll start developing an extreme sense of clarity that will shift you into the next stage of your life. All by being bored, which is pretty insane.

I wrote more about this in my essay on living a deeply intellectual life. It will help you live a life for maximizing your intellectual capabilities (and not becoming an intellectual degenerate).

You are all in no matter what you do.

So why not make the most of it?

Nobody will ever come to save you. You’ve heard that idea enough online I’m sure. So take absolute responsibility over everything you do and examine here.

I appreciate your time and attention a lot. I hope you found value in reading this (of course).

Also:

The Profound Writer 2.0 will be releasing late October / early November.

I’m yet to confirm an official date, but I can’t wait to release the first major updates to the course.

You won’t believe what’s coming.

Which means this is your last chance to access to current version of the course, which you can check out here.

You’re an absolute legend.

- Craig :)

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