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🚀 Living A Limitless Life Newsletter

Hey friend 👋,

Welcome to Living a Limitless Life!

Welcome to the 38 new legends who have joined the LALL newsletter since the last edition.

If you haven't subscribed, join 2,694 other brilliant people curious about Living A Limitless Life.

You'll improve your life & biz in 10 minutes by:

• The Three Best 1% Business & Self-Improvement Tips I've Found This Week:
  • Slow is smooth
  • When having a bad day do this
  • Embrace loneliness
• A 4-Minute Read That Could Change Your Life.
  • I’ve Observed 100+ People In Their 20s and 30s, This Is Why Most Of Them Won’t Be Wealthy
• Michael's Weekly Book Club
  • How Will You Measure Your Life? - Clayton Christenson

Today's Sponsor is... ME!

Here's a FREE copy of my short Workbook — The Hidden Secrets To Building A Five-Figure One-Person Business Alongside Your 9-5 Job 🔥 ​ Download it HERE

The question I am asking myself this week❓

How do I know if I'm being patient (a kill) or stubborn (a flaw)?

This week's quote that made me think 💬

The Three Best 1% Business & Self-Improvement Tips I've Found This Week:

• Slow is smooth - and smooth is fast. I want to go faster. Always. I find it hard to take it easy when I know I can push harder. But then I start to burn out. I need to remind myself that faster isn't always better. I pushed hard in January and got a lot of things done. But for February I'm picking a pace I can sustain. Action: Remember you're working for results in 3-5 years, not tomorrow. You can take your time.

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• When having a bad day do this - Stop digging. I had one of those days where nothing seemed to go right. I had a poor night's sleep. Projects weren't going well. I couldn't seem to write anything meaningful. When I have those days, I just let go. Yep. I don't try to fight it. I just try not to do anything destructive. Action: Embrace bad days. Lower your expectations. Use them to set up a better day tomorrow.

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• Embrace loneliness - It's a superpower. Knowing that you don't need anyone is a liberating (and scary) feeling. I'm extremely extroverted. I want people around me. But I'm not dependent on them to take action. Or need anyone else to improve my life. Action: When you don't need anyone, you get to want someone.

A 4-Minute Read That Could Change Your Life.

Read on: michaellim.co​

Read time: 4 minutes

I’ve Observed 100+ People In Their 20s and 30s, This Is Why Most Of Them Won’t Be Wealthy

“Observe the masses, and then do the complete opposite.”

That’s a life mantra that’s served me well. If you want average results, do what the average person does.

Here’s what I’ve observed.

1: Increased earnings never go into wealth-building skills.

Wealth is a skill you can learn.

Some modern wealth-creation skills are:

Coding. Copywriting. Digital marketing. Social media content. In short, generating attention with good writing and converting it.

But most people are stuck in an industrial model of employment. Learn a generic set of skills, sell it to one employer at a time, and try to get a 10% raise every year. And then use that new money to buy new clothes and cars.

This is what keeps most people stagnant.

Every extra dollar, spare time, and most of your energy needs to go into learning wealth-building skills. Become ruthless with acquiring knowledge and information to build wealth. Spend money on skills, not lifestyle inflation.

Yes, this means sacrifice.

Less Netflix. More reading. Less social events. Reduce discretionary purchases. If you have a 9–5, this means working after hours and on weekends. I never said this would be easy.

Look, you can spend your money however you like big man.

But only one way will get you rich. Choose wisely.

2: The biggest lie we are fed

I come from an immigrant background.

From a very young age, I was always told to save, save, and save some more. This taught me financial discipline. And learning to live below my means before the age of 12. Great for surviving, not so much for thriving.

Saving is only Level 1 of wealth building. Master it and move on.

Why? You can never save your way to wealth.

Sure you could scrimp your whole life and eat canned beans, but you also want to have wealth alongside your health. What’s the use of a couple of million at 80 when you can’t walk?

To create wealth, you need to uncap your income.

There are only two ways to do this:

Own a piece of a business. Start your own business. You can’t get wealthy renting out your time by the hour. A salary pays you the minimum amount to keep you in your job. This doesn’t mean quitting your job. But you should always be looking for ways to make more money.

Love it or hate it, business is the best vehicle for building wealth.

Our entire tax system favors business structures. Personal income tax is non-negotiable and higher than business income tax.

With a business:

You limit your liability You make money first, then decide how much tax to pay. You can also run every personal expense through your business. A business is the best vehicle for building and keeping wealth.

Start a business, or die trying.

3: They believe making money online is a scam

Without real models, making money online does look like a scam.

I write words on my laptop. My laptop is connected by invisible waves. The waves shoot out signals to towers across the world. My words can now be viewed by anyone across the world. I make money from this.

I get it. It sounds like a complete scam.

Whenever I talk about making money online or passive sources of income, I’m immediately shot down by friends and family who interrogate my time spent, how passive it truly is, and how long it could last.

Just remember, when a dog is scared it barks.

They miss the forest for the trees. And rather put their heads in the sand than look at the broader trend. The world is shifting towards creators and artisans. Mass model marketing and branding are crumbling.

If you don’t build on the internet, you’re missing out on the biggest leverage to create generational wealth.

4: They play the victim

We are living with a new pandemic.

Not the crazy bat virus cough, but the virus of victimhood mentality.

Everyone is a victim of something nowadays. Their skin, religion, gender. Whatever. But we’ve never lived in a safer and more tolerant time in human history.

What’s worse? Some people even find things to be victims of.

Foreign wars they don’t understand. Geopolitical complexities in countries that would never impact them. They are puppets of mainstream media who know how to exploit their emotions.

Again, you can spend your time however you want.

But my life has improved in proportion to how much personal responsibility I take.

I take responsibility for things that aren’t even my fault. Why? Because if I don’t, I can’t improve. Other people’s mistakes fuel my ability to learn.

Personal responsibility > victimhood mentality.

5: They don’t understand leverage.

Leverage is the total output per unit of input.

People with high leverage can get a lot done with low amounts of time. Here are some of the forms of leverage they exploit:

Community — people working for you. Capital — money working for you. Code — algorithms working for you. Content — ideas working for you. The 20th century was built on community and capital as forms of leverage.

Requires permission. Difficult to attain. Hard to manage. The 21st century is built on code and content as forms of leverage.

Permissionless. Easy to attain. Easy to manage. People are applying 20th-century leverage to 21st-century wealth-building strategies. It’s a similar shift we made from an agricultural-based society to an industrial-based society.

100 years ago, most people worked on farms. There is nothing eternal about how our economy works.

So what do you need?

Learn the skills to build 21st-century leverage. See #1 for some ideas.

Exploit leverage, or become exploited by leverage.

It should be clear what the barriers to wealth are: Your skillset. Your beliefs. That’s it. There is nothing else stopping you.

Your skillset is (relatively) easy to change. Beliefs are harder.

Beliefs can take months or years to change. Most people will never change them. They continue to believe in an economic model that doesn’t exist anymore. That’s why they will never be wealthy.

It’s harsh but true.

Michael's Weekly Book Club 📚

My Book of the Week was...

This is book #6 of the year.

How Will You Measure Your Life? - Clayton Christenson

Why did I read this book?

I'm experiencing a crossroads in my life.

2023 was the year where I achieved everything I wanted. I had a bucket list of things I wanted to do before 30. Get a house, travel solo extensively, live as a digital nomad, grow my business, sell my business, and be a speaker at international events.

I was lucky enough to be able to do all those things plus more in 2023.

Now in 2024, I'm trying to decide what I want to achieve next. A friend recommended this book when she was at a crossroads so I decided to give it a read.

Rating: 7/10

You should read this if you're.... a tad lost, overwhelmed, or burnt out as a Type A personality (me).

Key ideas:

👉 Learning 1: Life is about pivoting - All the best companies deviate away from their initial strategy to find product-market fit. But most people don't take that same approach to their own life. We can waste years or even decades stubbornly persisting despite data that we should re-evaluate and change course.

👉 Learning 2: Words mean nothing, show me your calendar and bank account - We are great at fooling ourselves. We say relationships are the most important aspect of our lives, but don't spend the time or the money investing in them. Action > words.

👉 Learning 3: Intrinsic motivation trumps extrinsic motivation - Money and status are not fulfilling in the long term. I've known about this for years but still get trapped in wanting to make more money or doing things that stroke my ego.

Best quotes by Clayton Christenson

💬 "It's easier to hold your principles 100% of the time than it is to hold them 98% of the time." and “decide what you stand for. And then stand for it all the time.”

💬 "Intimate, loving, and enduring relationships with our family and close friends will be among the sources of the deepest joy in our lives."

💬 “You can talk all you want about having a clear purpose and strategy for your life, but ultimately this means nothing if you are not investing the resources you have in a way that is consistent with your strategy. In the end, a strategy is nothing but good intentions unless it's effectively implemented.”

How to apply these ideas:

💡 Success in life is yours to define - What society values might make you miserable. The goal of life is to choose metrics you can measure. This could be time with family. Games played with your children. The amount of revenue your business brings in. No one can take the choice away from you about how you define the success of your life.,

💡Career and money are just a few components of life - Your job and bank account are only two ingredients needed to live a fulfilling life. I'm no baker, but I know you need more than water and flour to bake bread. But we tend to over-index on making money and under-index on relationships.

💡Take advantage of unseen opportunities - All the best opportunities that have changed my life are ones I never anticipated. The random person I met at a networking event that leads to a new client. The speaking event I did inspired someone to take action. The content I posted on LinkedIn attracted a buyer for my first company.

You can buy the book ​HERE​ (No, this isn't an affiliate link...yet).

Writing Tip Of The Week:

I would love to write all day with a free calendar.

But that's not achievable for 90% of people. We have commitments. Obligations. Responsibilities. Caring duties. A full-time job. Whatever it might be.

But don't let a lack of a perfect structure stop you from starting.

If you've only got 20 minutes, write for 20 minutes.

If you've got less, do less.

Do whatever you can with whatever time you have.

Constraints inspire, not prevent creativity.

I'll see you next week!

Michael ✌️

P.S - You can also find me here:

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113 Cherry St, Seattle, WA 92768
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