Uncertainty is the way

The Path of All Great Men

I’ve spent the last 9 months in a program created by Doug Casey, and further developed by my father…

These two men are the exact type of people you’d be lucky to be a guinea pig for.

Doug is both well read and widely read. He has written 9 books. One of them, Crisis Investing, was a huge #1 best seller. He published a newsletter for decades. Doug is the OG International Man. He’s travelled to over 175 countries and lived in 10. And, he’s a legend amongst those in the resource investing space.

My father (Matt Smith) has his own stack of impressive accomplishments as well.

To list a few: Founder of Royalty Exchange, a jobs portal in the late 1990’s, an ad agency, a marketing analytics business, and several niche publishing companies.

The point is, they’ve lived life in a unique way, on their own terms. And, they’ve found success in doing so. They’ve both faced difficulties uncommon to most men and, despite this, they wouldn’t trade their lives for a life of ease through “normality”.

They have seen how lost young men are today, how most young men have no direction, and frankly, no clear reason to do anything. To combat this, they created a program which we now call The Preparation.

A Life of Self-Direction

The great men of the past impress us all. Yet, where have they gone?

Their memory has been suppressed and cast out of our society. In consequence, young men like myself have no image of greatness to admire and strive for.

Even if we are interested in history and we learn about great men (Socrates, Ben Franklin, Teddy Roosevelt…) their lives were lived so long ago that it’s hard to connect with them. Society, language, the world as a whole—it’s all changed.

The prospect of living life on your own terms (as those great men did) seems impossible today. Especially in our society of total conformity, amorality, and poor education.

Cogs in the wheel, that’s what we are meant to be.

Well, The Preparation does away with all that nonsense. It’s a program which is completely led by the individual himself. Essentially, it’s less of a program, and more of a way of life.

As an alternative to the typical rout of college, its designed to put you at the helm of your own life.

Society and it’s expectations of:

• Go to college

• Get a job (hopefully its a good one)

It’s all set aside in the program to get young men to stop going with the flow, to stop living idly.

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Recommended read:

Don't Fall Into "The Doom Loop"

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To go further, The Preparation is meant to create competent, confident, dangerous individuals who are prepared for life at an incomparable level to that of their peers.

Confident because they will become competent in several fields.

Dangerous because they will come to possess a stack of skills, a strong character, a network of like-minded people, and the ability to face the uncertainties of life head-on.

I’m more than 30 weeks into the program. It’s going great.

I write updates on my progress every week. If you, a friend, or a loved one is struggling to find direction, you may want to send this to them.

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P.S. we are putting together a book on The Preparation at the moment. It’ll be a practical guide about how to direct your own life as a young person. Gaining education, developing character, building skills, finding adventure—it’s all in there.

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A Life Lesson

There’s several lessons I’ve learned during my time in The Preparation. One of the greatest lessons being: Life itself is uncertain.

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Recommended read:

Lessons From The Preparation

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This fact becomes crystal clear when you consciously choose how you shall live.

Most will never realize this. The life of the average person is shifted from one controlled institution to the next. Unconsciousness is normal and accepted when everyone walks the same general path through life.

It’s comfortable because it’s familiar. The outcomes of each phase of life are generally understood and formulaic. Uncertainty rarely seems to poke it’s dark figure around the corner. In fact, uncertainty is kept at a distance and scorned.

Yet, at the same time, uncertainty lurks around us forever. The modern world pulls the wool over our eyes and lets us pretend this isn’t the case.

Lean into it

Uncertainty is as certain as death.

“Death smiles at as us all; all a man can do is smile back.”

-Marcus Aurelius

Let us smile at uncertainty, too.

The great men of the past looked uncertainty dead in the eye each an every day of their lives. As Doug Casey and my father have (that’s not to say that they are great men; although my father and I would agree that Doug is).

Everyday was a direct confrontation with the unknown.

Would they succeed? Would it all pan out? Will all their efforts be for nothing?

Yet, upon awaking each day, they set off on their own path again:

Thomas Mann (1875-1955)

Mann was always awake by 8:00 A.M. After getting out of bed, he drank a cup of coffee with his wife, took a bath, and dressed. Breakfast, again with his wife, was at 8:30. Then, at 9:00, Mann closed the door to his study, making himself unavailable to visitors, telephone calls, or family. The children were strictly forbidden to make any noise between 9:00 and noon, Mann’s prime writing hours. It was then that his mind was the freshest, and Mann placed tremendous pressure on himself to get things down during that time. “Every passage becomes a ‘passage,’” he wrote, “every adjective a decision.” Anything that didn’t come by noon would have to wait until the next day, so he forced himself to “clench his teeth and take one slow step at a time.”

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)

In a 1782 letter to his sister, he gave a detailed account of these hectic days in Vienna:

My hair is always done by six o’clock in the morning and by seven I am fully dressed. I then compose until nine. From nine to one I give lessons. Then I lunch, unless I am invited to some house where they lunch at two or even three o’clock, as, for example, today and tomorrow at Countess Zichy’s and Countess Thun’s. I can never work before five or six o’clock in the evening, and even then I am often prevented by a concert. If I am not prevented, I compose until nine. I then go to my dear Constanze, though the joy of seeing one another is spoilt by her mother’s bitter remarks…At half past ten or eleven I come home—it depends on her mother’s darts and on my capacity to endure them! As I cannot rely on being able to compose in the evening owing to the concerts which are taking place and also to the uncertainty as to whether I may not be summoned now here and now there, it is my custom (especially if I get home early) to compose a little before going to bed. I often go on writing until one—and am up again at six.

-Mason Currey, Daily Rituals

Ben Franklin developed his own daily ritual:

These great men (and many others) created something beautiful in uncertainty.

Their daily rituals only serve as a small example of they shaped their own lives. They planned and directed each day to meet their desired future, even with the knowledge that it might not work out.

Those who start The Preparation will be face-to-face with uncertainty in their own lives. This is good, it means you’re going your own way. Accept the unknown and lean into it. Who knows what you could accomplish.

Uncertainty is the way of great men.