I was broke till I was 36.

I put everything into my teenage dream, which failed miserably.

I wanted to play drums with my musical heroes.

I don’t know how many thousands of hours I put into practising my skills, but I got very good.

Still, my career growth never truly reflected my skill level. I performed and recorded with a few bigger artists (Roni Size, Kelis, Culprate), but I never managed to break through to the highest heights of my profession.

After I exited that career (and the traditional economy it existed in), I reflected on why it had been so difficult to make progress in it. And I noticed one profound difference when I compared it with the new digital economy.

The #1 Advantage of The Digital Economy

In traditional economies, progression is made in steps.

As a drummer, I worked at one level of opportunity until I made enough progress in all relevant skills that I was able to leap to the next level. I had to be patient because there’s a huge jump between steps in the traditional music industry.

But in the digital economy, things are different…

Here, there are effectively infinite levels of opportunity.

In the digital economy, your business grows in direct proportion to the value you bring.

For example, when you level up your coaching skills, you immediately gain access to more and better clients. It’s as simple as demonstrating new insights in your content, which attract those new clients (who’ll pay higher fees because you’re able to solve bigger problems).

In a traditional economy you have to wait for a job position at a higher pay band to open up. But in the digital economy there are no gatekeepers. You’re able to transmit your value to potential customers immediately (and you’re always paid in direct proportion to the value you provide).

Why Doesn’t Everyone Join The Digital Economy?

There’ll always be people who prefer to work offline. Those who craft things with their hands, for example (though I’d recommend those people start a personal brand anyway to bring in more and better business).

But there’s just one thing stopping most people from quitting that job they hate and living a new life aligned with their deepest purpose: their limiting beliefs:

• “I hate making big decisions.”
• “I have nothing of value to share.”
• “I can’t change.”
• “I prefer an average life.”
• “I can’t handle failure.”
• “I need to know something’s going to work out before I do it.”
• “I need to research more before I act.”
• “I prefer learning from other people’s mistakes.”
• “I can’t reach the level of success I want so why even try?”
• “I don’t want to stand out.”

Every time you think one of these thoughts—or something similar—you kill your better self. That self who controls his or her own destiny. That self who makes their greatest contribution to humanity. That self who’s satisfied on their deathbed.

So right here, right now, I’m going to help you uninstall those limiting beliefs.

10 Mindful Money Mindsets

This section is all philosophy.

Scroll down if you just wanna get to the action—the shit to do to actually change your mind.

Personally, I always found the philosophy important: I always wanted the “why”. It made the action part much easier.

But when it comes to how to get something done, I’ll only ever make suggestions. You do you. And if “doing you” doesn’t work, click here to get infinite further suggestions.

1. The Self-Trust Secret

It’s impossible to not trust yourself. Because if you think you’re untrustworthy… You’re trusting your judgment that you’re untrustworthy.

You might need to read that again. There’s no simpler way to say it, but the insight is powerful.

So you may as well cut the bullshit, stop hiding behind layers of thinking, be brave (we’ll cover this later), and do what feels right in your gut. Even if no-one else agrees (we’ll cover this too).

Yes, this is risky.

It’s safer to do what everyone else is doing.

Until, that is, you end up at a midlife crisis. Or, worse, on your deathbed, realizing you wasted your life doing what everyone else wanted you to do instead of doing what you wanted you to do.

If you’re 30 and you live till you’re 77, you only have 2453 weeks left. If this makes you uncomfortable, it's time for big changes. Good news though: if you’re reading this post you’re in the best place for making those changes happen.

2. Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway

“Not only am I going to experience fear whenever I’m on unfamiliar territory, but so is everyone else.” - Susan Jeffers, PhD

Susan Jeffers literally wrote the book on fear. She did extensive research on the topic and dispelled a huge myth:

People we call “brave” are not necessarily without fear. Rather, they feel the fear and do it anyway.

Imagine: what would your life be like if you didn’t feel you had to wait till fear was absent to go do the scary thing? What would you be able to achieve? What would you be able to do for others?

3. Growth Mindset

"In a fixed mindset, students believe their basic abilities, their intelligence, their talents, are just fixed traits…In a growth mindset, students understand that their talents and abilities can be developed through effort, good teaching, and persistence. They don’t necessarily think everyone’s the same or anyone can be Einstein, but they believe everyone can get smarter if they work at it.” - Carol Dweck, PhD

Which mindset do you have—”fixed” or “growth”?

Do you believe your abilities to write and speak about your experiences, understand internet business, and earn money are fixed?

Or do you understand that you can improve in these areas and impact tens, hundreds, thousands, perhaps even millions of people (and earn as many dollars as a result)?

Research proves that it’s your perception of yourself that’s the deciding factor here.

Good news: you can change that, too. (And you will, below.)

4. Fail Fast, Fail Forward

In this picture we see a baby bird preparing to take its first flight.

It’s scared. And all the adult birds watching know that it could get injured.

But unlike adult humans, adult birds can’t intervene.

Schoolteachers (and the system of which they’re part) stole real learning opportunities from you by stopping you before your learning got risky.

And this made you so afraid of failure that you want to just stay in the tree your whole fucking life.

The worst part is that what you’ve missed out on due to all this is invisible to you. How can you know what your life would’ve looked like if you’d been more of a risk-taker?

You can only guess. But I guarantee you’d have learned more. And it’s what you’ve learned throughout your life that determines your capacity to serve others.

Serving others is how you earn money.

Staying in the tree keeps you from failing, but it also keeps you from learning—it keeps you from growing.

Slamming into the forest floor hurts like hell… But pain is the greatest teacher.

5. Have a Real-Life Project

Maybe reading that last section you thought “but I learn lots of stuff Dan!”

If so, I ask you to consider the nature of your learning. Specifically, how much time you spend acquiring knowledge vs. how much time you spend applying knowledge.

You can acquire knowledge in the tree. But to apply it, you have to take that leap and fly or fall.

Most people spend a lot of time acquiring knowledge*,* but little-to-no time applying it*.*

(Actually, most people do hardly any learning at all, but those people don’t hang out on this corner of the internet.)

This is a problem.

Imagine I’d read every book in publication on how to do a triple heart bypass, but I’d never actually performed one. Would you trust me to do yours?

Maybe if you had no other option…

But if Stephen Strange were there, we both know who you’d pick.

I’m not saying “don’t read books”.

I’m saying give yourself a real-life opportunity to apply what you’re learning in them.

I promise your learning will go much faster.

6. Process-Focus

We all love results.

In fact, results are so great that we usually focus too much on them—and not enough on how to get them.

But to state something obvious…

The only way anyone ever got a result was by following a process.

Maybe their process was planned out…

Maybe it was a total accident.

But they must have followed a process.

And those who follow conscious, deliberate processes get more reliable results. These people are the professionals, the experts, the masters.

Purpose-built machines are often the most efficient at getting a particular result—because they follow a single process, in the same sequence—with perfect precision—over and over again.

Of course, the process they follow is designed with a result in mind.

But the machine never thinks about that result.

In this regard, it’s good to be more like a machine. (I’ll teach you how below.)

7. The Winner Effect

“Confidence is a drug, and winning is the dealer.” - Tim S. Grover

Psychologist Ian Robertson recently confirmed what the Buddha taught about success 2500 years ago.

Robertson observed that animals who won fights against small rivals were more likely to go on and win against big rivals.

So he questioned: “is this “winner effect” present in human psychology?”

He discovered that it was. And not only in relation to fighting, but in relation to everything we experience.

In practical terms, when you acknowledge small successes as you go about your day, you’re statistically more likely to enjoy bigger successes down the line.

Acknowledging success is a major ingredient in what the Buddha called Right Attitude.

This can be taught, it can be developed, and it can be mastered. (Again, I’ll teach you how below.)

8. The Failure Party

I heard of a family who threw “failure parties” for their kids.

They’d literally get out the cake and party hats.

This was as a response to the faulty attitude the kids’ schools were instilling in them (”failure is bad”).

The parents wanted to recondition their kids to embrace failure—because they knew that it was unavoidable on the road to success.

At these parties, they’d talk about the build-up to the failures—the effort the kids had put in—and what lessons could be taken from the experience.

The kids got so much benefit that the parents started throwing parties for their own failures too!

And what did this family do when one of them enjoyed a success? They threw a party for that, too.

Now, I don’t recommend cake—that’s a failure on the health front. (Which, now that I think about it, could lead to a “failure party feedback loop”. We definitely don’t want that—you’d never get anything done.)

We’ll talk about a more sustainable “failure party protocol” below.

9. Long View

In terms of evolution, you’ve been on a 2.8 million year journey to get here.

Can you wait a couple more years to get that car or vacation or computer upgrade?

Maybe you feel like you can’t…

And that’s because our ancestors—across those millions of years—had to be impatient to survive.

In fact, our ancestors specifically—the ones who populate the whole of our actual family trees—were the most impatient, the most desirous and greedy. These qualities drove them to feed themselves and their immediate families through endless days and nights of harsh conditions and scarce resources.

So what happens when we put those brains in modern circumstances? People get fat and die of heart disease.

Civilization is now progressing 141,000 times faster than evolution.

This is why it feels so hard sometimes to resist temptation, to be patient, to keep yourself from spiralling out of control and becoming a total fucking mess.

In a more real way than we like to admit, there’s an ape inside all of us that just wants to eat and fuck and pick its nose.

But there’s something else going on, too…

The greatest quality of the human being, if you ask me, is wisdom.

We know that eating all the food isn’t a great idea because we see where it would lead. And so we do our best to tame our inner ape.

To the degree that we’re aligned with wisdom, we use long view to make plans, direct our energy, and make things better for everyone.

And those of us who do this best get rewarded by everyone else.

10. Don’t Expect People to Understand

If you want to be the best at anything then you are, naturally, on a path to being different from almost everyone you’ll ever meet.

This is just statistics. Consider: how many people are the best at what they do? “The best” is a singular term. So there’s precisely one of the best in anything (though of course it’s rarely easy to define who that is—which makes for great debate).

Even if you want to be among the top 1% then, realistically, you need to be prepared to be different to 99 out of every 100 people you meet. This means thinking differently, speaking differently and acting differently to them. Which, in turn, leads to a consequence few of us truly desire, which is that almost no-one will understand you.

This takes enormous courage.

The Courage to Be Misunderstood

When I was 12 I decided I wanted to be the best drummer in the world.

Every adult in my life told me this was a pipe dream—that there was no way I could achieve it, and that I should have a “plan B” in case it didn’t work out.

But they were missing something important:

No-one who became the best at anything had time for a “plan B”.

I managed to stay on my purpose fairly well, but I could only do so much against my circumstances.

My father insisted I went to sixth-form college (age 16-18 in the UK). But all I wanted to do was keep practising, performing, and teaching music. I was already earning a little cash, which I’d hoped would prove my potential… but it wasn’t enough to earn the support I needed to realize my ambition.

I flunked my exams, but they were enough of a distraction that I couldn’t truly dedicate myself to music. I gave an 8/10 commitment and, sure enough, I reached an 8/10 skill level compared to the best in the world.

But I wasn’t done with being misunderstood…

Once it became clear that my teenage ambition was dying, I turned to a discipline called Alexander Technique to address the physical issues I’d developed over years of playing, travelling and partying.

Alexander Technique is niche as fuck, and difficult to explain. But I knew it was what I needed, so I dropped $21,399 I didn’t have on studying it full-time. My family was deeply concerned.

And if that weren’t enough, at the same time I started studying with my monk teacher and abandoning my culture’s beliefs and attitudes.

My poor father only wanted what was best for me, but I’d repeatedly gone in the opposite direction to what he’d have chosen for me. Looking back, this took enormous resilience on my part. (And enormous surrender on his.)

The final piece was coming out here online and starting a business on a model that didn’t even exist until 10 years ago.

But…

When the paychecks started to come in, I was finally able to show my family some results they understood.

It took me till I was 36.

I definitely wasn’t the quickest to achieve any kind of worldly success.

But I’d done it without compromise.

I’d done it without sacrificing my wellbeing.

I’d done it with my integrity intact.

~

I share this story to encourage you to keep moving toward what you want, what you see as important, what you want to create in the world…

And to not give a fuck what anyone else thinks about it.

But that’s enough of the “why”.

It’s time for me to show you how to actually adopt these mindsets.

10 Mindful Money Megahacks

Here’s where you’ll finally turn everything above into actionable steps that will change your thoughts, your actions and—therefore—your life.

A lot of these hacks will start as journaling processes, but don’t be fooled—none of this is just about writing stuff down. The journaling just helps you gain clarity on where and how to take action.

Treat these hacks as experiments. Try each one with an open mind and observe what happens.

I’d love to hear about your results—however they look—in a DM on X or Instagram.

1. The Self-Trust Hack

1. Start a journal entry.
2. Reflect on a moment when you second-guessed yourself.
3. Write down what you really wanted to do at that moment.
4. Write down what you did instead.
5. Play out what would’ve happened if you’d followed your gut.
6. Reflect on what you’d have learned from that experience.
7. Reflect on what actually happened.
8. Compare the two outcomes.

You can repeat this process as many times as you like.

The purpose is to examine the possible outcomes of trusting yourself.

Note that they won’t all be “good”. But I place “good” in quotes here because often the learning you’ll experience from doing what you think is right becomes the real good.

Finally:

1. Once a week, decide to follow your gut instead of your thinking mind. This doesn’t have to be in anything huge.
2. Journal about your experiences and outcomes to prove that you can, in fact, trust yourself—even if it’s not always comfortable to do so.

2. The Fear Hack

1. Start a journal entry.
2. Write down something you’ve been avoiding due to fear.
3. Reflect on what your life will be like when you tackle or embrace it.
4. Write out a baby-step plan for feeling this fear and moving forward anyway.
5. Go do that first baby-step as soon as possible.
6. For accountability, share your plan with me (X, insta), with a trusted friend or—for bonus points—on social media. This will make it far more likely that you’ll follow through.

3. The Growth Hack

1. Start a journal entry.
2. Identify one aspect of yourself which you’ve taken to be fixed, but which could actually be developed (e.g. fitness, reading speed, social skills, earning potential).
3. Go to chatgpt.com.
4. Sign up for an account if you don’t have one already.
5. Copy & paste the following prompt:
6. Create a step-by-step plan I can follow for personal development in the area of [your desired area of growth]. Draw from the best of psychology and self-help. Make the plan simple, easy-to-follow and direct. It must lead me from [where you are now] to [where you want to be]. Give proposed time frames for each step.
7. Adjust for any AI weirdness with follow-up questions or your own edits.
8. Follow the plan.
9. Track your results to establish your new growth mindset.

4. The Failure Hack

1. Consider something really fucking difficult that you could attempt right now. (It doesn’t matter what it is—a video game on its hardest difficulty is an accessible option.)
2. Give it your best shot.
3. If you don’t fail, find something more difficult to try.
4. When you do fail, grab your journal and write down 1 thing you learned.
5. Repeat to solidify in your mind the value of failure as a learning experience.

5. The Application Hack

1. Grab your favourite self-help book. (If you don’t have one, pick a bestseller that appeals to you.)
2. Consider its main topic (e.g. business, spirituality, dating).
3. If you don’t have a real-life project relating to that topic, start one (e.g. follow my 240-step Freetirement Guide, establish a daily meditation habit with my guided core practice, or get yourself on some dating sites).
4. Instead of reading whatever educational material you’re working with to completion, find one thing at a time to apply to your project, then apply it.
5. Track your results to see how application boosts your learning.

6. The Process Hack

1. Start a journal entry.
2. Write down something you really want. (It could be an object, an experience or even a relationship.)
3. Now, imagine you were a master coder who was going to build and program an AI-enabled robot to get that something for you.
4. Write out—in baby steps—the process by which you’ll have the robot get the thing you want. (Don’t worry about accuracy—this is just a thought experiment. Get as close as you can to a real-world process without research.)
5. Now look at your steps and count how many times you wrote “daydream about the [thing you want]”.

If the number you counted is anything more than “0” you have a less-than-efficient process.

Robots that make cars never think about cars.

Robots that make phones never think about phones.

Robots that make robots never think about robots. (Trippy.)

The end result is only considered for direction.

Any moment spent thinking, dreaming or obsessing about the end result—the thing you want—during your own processes is wasted energy.

Repeat this hack whenever you need a reminder of that (and to tighten up processes you’re actually engaging in).

7. The Confidence Hack

3 monks stood in a quiet courtyard.

The first monk said, “I wish for only one more year to practice the teaching of the Buddha.”

The other monks nodded in respect.

The second monk said, “I wish for only one more day to practice the teaching of the Buddha.”

The other monks nodded in respect.

The third monk said, “I wish for only one more breath to practice the teaching of the Buddha.”

The other monks nodded in respect.

The Buddha said only the third monk had Right Attitude.

~

One of the most powerful lessons I got from my monk teacher was to acknowledge the “smallest unit of win”.

He taught me that success is in the mind. In other words, we interpret certain things as successes.

Some things are well agreed upon—for example everyone considers a billionaire successful. Or do they?

My teacher certainly didn’t.

And here’s where it gets really interesting: some of those billionaires themselves don’t feel successful.

We’ve all heard the stories of those individuals who have every measure of material success and yet are hopelessly unfulfilled. Meanwhile, the monks are sat in the forest with nothing but a robe and a begging bowl, feeling like they won the lottery.

What’s their secret?

They’ve trained themselves to acknowledge a simple mindful breath as a win. They also count a mindful mouthful of food, a mindful step, a mindful greeting as a win.

For at least a year I thought I’d have to become a monk to figure this out.

Then I spent some time at a monastery and realized that it doesn’t matter where I am. *Right Attitude—*the attitude of a winner—is entirely in the mind.

Here’s how it’s cultivated:

1. Take a mindful breath.
2. Acknowledge that if you intended to practice mindfulness then, obviously, you did what you set out to do. This, by definition, is a victory.
3. Acknowledge also that mindfulness is universally praised by wisdom teachers and psychologists alike.
4. Once you’re comfortable with this, move onto a slightly bigger win (e.g. getting up on time, eating a healthy breakfast, leaving the house before rush hour).
5. Use a mental reminder like the word “yes” or “victory” or just “win” to keep yourself on track.
6. Journal on how your confidence improves over time—and what this does to your life—to grow your conviction in the winner effect.

When I first heard about a mindful breath being a success I said “no fucking way. How can breathing be a success? I have to be the best drummer in the world to be successful. I have to own a big house to be successful. I have to have proven myself to the world to be successful.”

But those are just interpretations I inherited from society.

And psychology has proven:

Having a high standard for what counts as success makes it unlikely **you’ll achieve any at all.

I encourage you to go the other way.

~

BONUS: I run a complete life management system in Notion. I call it the BUDDHA MODE OS. On the front page of that system I’ve embedded a relic from my childhood. I play it when I complete a task:

8. The Failure Hack

1. Put your ego aside.
2. Buy these.
3. Next time you fail at something, put one on.
4. Start a journal entry.
5. Write “Failure Party [date]”.
6. Reflect on what you learned from your failure.
7. Acknowledge that you’d never have learned these lessons if you hadn’t been bold and made your attempt.

9. The Perspective Hack

1. Start a journal entry.
2. Write “My Eulogy” (a eulogy is a speech made at a funeral).
3. Compose the most ideal, inspiring, moving eulogy you can think of. What do you want to be remembered for? What legacy do you want to leave?
4. Write down what you must achieve in your life in order for this eulogy to be true.
5. Write down the steps you need to take every day **to make these achievements possible. (What time do you need to get up? What does your diet have to be like? Your fitness? Your work? If you need help with this, check out my article on the 5 Self-Help Non-Negotiables.)
6. Every time you feel like choosing pleasure over purpose, return to this journal entry.

10. The Resilience Hack

1. Go to canva.com.
2. Sign up for an account if you need one.
3. Create a new document that’s the size of your computer wallpaper.
4. Go to bing.com/images
5. Search for images of the people you most admire—the pioneers, the geniuses.
6. Copy/paste those images into your Canva document.
7. When it’s full, save the image and set it as your wallpaper.
8. Hopefully your wallpaper is now filled with people who were at first misunderstood, but went on to achieve greatness.

Examples of people I admire most are Buddha, Ram Dass, Alan Watts, F.M. Alexander and Viktor Frankl. Every one of them was misunderstood by the people around them and this was required for them to go on and do the great things they did.

Return to your own vision board of inspirational figures when you feel alone in your journey.

If You Need Help With All This

I’m here to help you create scalable income from your couch.

Click here to tell me about your goals. I’ll get back to you within 24 hours to tell you how I can help you reach them.

Win/win for the win,

dg 💙

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