Always Avoid the Mainstream

If you have been reading this blog, you know most of what I write is counter-intuitive (best illustrated with the list of 80+ aphorisms you should know, the carnivore diet, or the article on competition). I often write that the best practices are in fact the opposite of what everyone is doing.

But why?

Because society’s way of working is pyramidal.

The majority is always at the bottom. And those at the top are always a minority.

If you want to join the top, you have to avoid doing what the majority is doing.

What does that mean?

It means you need to avoid being normal. Don’t do what normal people do. Don’t take the same path.

A friend once observed that your chances to succeed were higher if you did the exact opposite to what was advocated in mainstream media, than if you followed it.

This is because the mainstream narrative targets the majority at the bottom.

Let’s take a few examples:

• Dating: society is screaming for men to become “nice guys”, but everyone knows girls always end up dating the assh*les and drugs dealers.
• Nutrition: the mainstream narrative is calling for the world to turn vegan for “health and the environment” while meat is both more environmentally friendly and better for your health.
• Finance: the mainstream narrative is all about “finding a job” and “asking for raise”. Those at the top don’t have jobs. They own companies.

Conventional action will give you conventional results.

If you want to escape the bottom to join the top, you’ll have to leave conventional at the door.

Resis the urge of short-term gains (money from a salary, food from McDonald’s, orgasm from porn) and take the long, exponential road. The road less traveled.

---

How to Escape the Mainstream

To quote Peter Thiel, the purpose is not to make it a principle to do the exact opposite of what everyone else does, but to simply “think for yourself”.

It is to decide what your own goals are, find out how others achieved them before you, and embark on the same path.

There isn’t anyone on this planet that have achieved any levels of success by being conventional. No one. In fact, it’s the opposite.

The more at the top you go, the more weird and extra-ordinary people get.

So escape the mainstream.

If the media screams “go left” and you don’t have time to think, your reflex should be to go right.

• Don’t eat what they tell you to eat.
• Don’t do what they tell you to do
• Don’t think what they tell you to think
• Don’t read what they tell you to read
• Don’t buy what they tell you to buy
• Don’t believe what they tell you to believe
• Don’t watch what they tell you to watch

And above all, don’t listen to what people tell you to do. Watch them instead. Actions reveal always much more than words do.

For more articles, head to auresnotes.com.