The Rules of Living Sensophically

The music stops. The lights brighten. Hundreds of heads just turned your way.

Dilated pupils pierce deeply into your soul. You stand hesitantly in the doorway.

Welcome to our house party.

You’re either in the really really right or really really wrong place.

These rules will quickly clarify that distinction.

If you’re one of us, you step into the party — high-fives, hugs, and booty-bumps all round.

If you’re not, you slowly step backwards, close the tab, and we all pretend like this never happened.

Find out… Are you one of us?

#1. We know that if “we should” …we shouldn’t.

We’ve had enough of being told what we SHOULD do with our future. We’ve been “shoulded on” our entire lives by our families, friends, society, religion, gender norms, MTV, and Disney movies.

Enough BS, already. We’ve tried their way and it doesn’t work for us. Now it’s our turn.

To be authentic means to be the authors of our own lives. Let them call us nut-jobs, because in a nutshell, we’re all about authoring our own stories.

We strive to be highly authentic about our thoughts, feelings, beliefs and life purpose.

Their validation can’t sway us. We’re self-validating.

#2. We rock with “connection over validation.”

Joseph Campbell is our homeboy. And we know the question “‘What will they think of me?’ must be put aside for bliss”.

Back in the day, we kept our mouths shut — secretly seeking validation and doing whatever possible to prevent ourselves from looking like an idiot.

No more.

Connection takes priority over validation for us. We strive to communicate from our core — vulnerably and wholeheartedly — and if people don’t dig us, we know that’s a good thing.

Why? Because it means they’re not the type of people we wanna spend time with anyway. And it’s better to establish that now than to wait 3 months before finding out that they suck.

Of course, we reserve the right to tell them nothing if our intuition says they’re closed-minded, arrogant, dishonest or douchey.

The Fifthth gets pled.

(One, two, three, four, FIFTH!)

But more often than not, we love communicating from our souls, sharing our stories and struggles while basking in the celebration of each other’s successes.

Whenever possible, we aim for *connection* instead of validation.

To us, connection is love. And validation is fear.

We choose love.

#3. We’ve got “The Happiness Advantage.”

Hold up. Why is it that SO many people are working SO hard at being successful, yet aren’t truly happy?!

We think that’s pretty ridiculous. And we’re no mathematicians, but we’re confident it’s because they’ve got the formula backwards!

They think success comes first, and THEN happiness will follow.

But modern social science is saying it’s the other way around — and we agree.

Harvard positive psychologist Shawn Achor calls it “The Happiness Advantage“. He says…

“More than a decade of groundbreaking research in the fields of positive psychology and neuroscience has proven in no uncertain terms that the relationship between success and happiness works the other way around.

Thanks to this cutting-edge science, we now know that happiness is the *precursor* to success, not merely the result. And that happiness and optimism actually fuel performance and achievement—giving us the competitive edge that I call the Happiness Advantage.

It turns out that our brains are literally hardwired to perform at their best not when they are negative or even neutral, but when they are positive. When we are happy—when our mindset and mood are positive—we are smarter, more motivated, and thus more successful.”

Over here, we focus on happiness FIRST, knowing that in the long run — in the long run, I say — success will follow!

Counterintuitive? Yes. Courageous? We think so. Cool as fuck? Betcha last buck.

#4. Hamster wheels aren’t our speed.

Most of us have unintentionally tried ’em out, worked our tails off, and ended up feeling utterly exhausted and hopeless while gasping for a hit of enthusiasm.

Done with that.

Waking up excited in the morning is a priority for us, so we live in integrity with our values. 

Wait, WTF are values?! We could teach a course on them, but simply said, values are the things that are most important to us.

We’re students of ourselves. And we take the time to find out how to courageously create lives that authentically reflect our attitudes, preferences, desires, and beliefs.

We know society tried selling us a bridge when it implied there was one perfect path to pick in life.

There’s not.

But by studying ourselves, we use the knowledge we gain to confidently go in a direction which indisputably makes sense. And we support each other in the process.

#5. We prefer sex over masturbation.

We’re life-long lovers of learning. Yes, nymphs for the wisdom on optimal living. But we take it deeper.

We feel that knowledge without implementation is like masturbation without sex. Feels good. But you’re not actually doing anything.

Applying what we learn takes courage. So when we talk about growth here, it means learning PLUS courageously applying it.

Sensophy comes from two root words. Sense + Sophy.

Sense = Feeling

Sophy = Wisdom

Sensophy is the feeling of actually applying wisdom.

#6. We’re extremely self-centered.

[Shocked face] OMFG! Can you believe he just said that?! 

Yes. We believe that change starts with ourselves. And that if we wanna live extraordinary lives, we’ve gotta become extraordinary people.

Our outer world is a direct reflection of our inner world. And we know that happiness is an inside job.

So we’re always “doing the work” on ourselves, moment to moment to moment.

No playing the blame game. No talking shit about peeps. And no excuses about how our childhood fucked us up forever. We have an internal locus of control.

Sure… We wanna inspire 8 million people and put a sizable dent in the universe. (Seriously Steve, thanx for the inspiration.)

And all that’s nice. But we’re not gonna neglect our relationship with our moms to do it. We hold doors for people. Practice random acts of kindness. And think Aristotle was onto something with this:

“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”

Change happens one person at a time. And although we’ve had our fair share of drunken nights, we value our health and make THAT a priority (consistency on our fundamentals).

We know we can’t make the world a better place unless we’ve done that inside of ourselves in a deep and profound way.

Self-centered. :o)

#7. Karma’s common sense to us.

Although we’re deeply aligned with our core values (see #5) and heavily immersed in a community of people who get us, we know there’s another major piece of the “WTF Should I Do w/ My Life?!” puzzle.

Here’s how it all fits together.

We know that deep fulfillment comes from deep *service*.

That. Is. Key.

Giving is the new getting. Service is the new sexy. 

It’s not that we’re in a bromance with the Dalai Llama or cuddle-buddies with Oprah. But we think Emerson spews it eloquently:

“It is one of the beautiful compensations of this life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.”

Self-centered? Yes. But selfish? No.

Karma’s common sense to us. So we continually play with two quality questions:

1. How can we create a life in which we can serve as much as possible?
2. How can we *enjoy the process* of serving as much as possible?

#8. We’re well aware that we’ve been brainwashed.

Answering hard questions and creating a life of purpose don’t happen in a day — they happen over a lifetime.

Contrary to pop culture’s cute implications, there’s no miraculous pill that’ll make everything fall into place tomorrow. It takes time. And a commitment to patience, persistence, diligence and playfulness is what’s gonna enable us to weather the inevitable hard times.

We’ve ALL been brainwashed by pop culture (and the big corporations who manipulate it) to think that there’s something wrong with us if we can’t get what we want as soon as we want it.

Bullshit.

We’re willing to fail a lot (more on that in #9) and look dumb at times, but we know that 10,000 hours of deliberate, diligent practice are gonna get us intimate with our dreams.

The good news is, when we approach creating an extraordinary life with the perspective of it being a long-term vision, it takes the pressure off of us. We don’t need to have it ALL figured out right now, and setbacks, mistakes, and failures become great teachers to guide us (not signs that we should throw in the towel).

It’s the hero’s journey.

LONG. TERM. VISION, baby!

#9. We either win or we learn — but we never lose.

We let other people prove themselves. We focus on IMproving ourselves.

Psych-buffs know this concept as the “growth-based mindset.”

Essentially, we believe that success is about “what you do” much more than “what you are.”

Hustle, heart, using effective strategies, seeking guidance from experts, being able to cope with setbacks, seizing opportunities — these are what lead to success!

Not innate ability. Not brilliance. Not a trust fund.

We believe people CAN change — and that although we each get dealt a different hand in life, winning is all about how we play our cards!

Every situation is an opportunity for us to grow.

So we either win or we learn — but we never lose.

Let’s call it “learning publicly.”

#10. We believe goal accomplishment is kinda like peeing.

Goals are great. But not for the reason most people think. Most people fall into the trap of “when/then” thinking…

*When* they move to a new apartment, *then* they’ll be happy.

They unconsciously assume that obtaining these accomplishments will provide them with a hidden gateway into an infinite stream of euphoria.

Over here, we know that’s a load of crap.

The excitement and joy that accompany the accomplishment of goals generally last a very short time.

In fact, accomplishing most goals is actually much more like a sense of *relief* than a stage of prolonged joy. Perhaps the way peeing feels when you’ve been out drinking all night. Ahhhh…

Instead of thinking our lives will fundamentally be different when we nail our goals, we fall in love with the process of pursuing goals.

We love ’em because they provide us with an autonomous path to walk on. Goals give us meaning, direction, a mission, a project, and a sense of purpose.

Cue the Run DMC and walk this way. We know the path is the prize.

It’s either a hell YES or a hell NO.

If it’s a no — sayonara, try tomorrow, nice to know ya.

And if it’s a yes — come join us in Sensophy’s Inner Circle for our weekly group calls and private support community.