a practical guide to reality creation.

Reader, a sad fact of life is that most of the people you will meet on the street live divided in their minds and suffer from deep inner conflict.

This inner conflict manifests itself in their worldview. in their decision-making, and ultimately in their circumstances.

They will look to cheap dopamine hits to distract themselves from this inner war. But this only acts like a band-aid to a problem that will inevitably bleed through…

Almost 300 years later, and the same idea remains true. How many people do you know have the ability to do this? Be honest, do you have the ability to do this?

If you work in an office, the chat by the water cooler is usually about the next holiday or something that doesn’t really matter.

(I’ve never actually worked in an office, so I’m guessing here. Do water coolers even still exist?)

But also, I know entrepreneurs who suffer from this same problem. They become slaves to what they have built and try to distract themselves from this fact.

The through-line I notice, for 99% of people, is that escapism isn’t a choice; it becomes necessary for their survival.

Endless entertainment, holidays, dinners, even doomscrolling.

And there’s a fundamental problem here: the work they do is just a means to an end.

But the truth is, it doesn’t have to be this way…

The moment you understand you can actually build a life that doesn’t need a constant escape, and you can enjoy the work for its own sake - everything changes.

I’ve met several high performers who are already in the top 1% in terms of output.

But beyond that, an even smaller percentage of those have truly built a life that doesn’t need an escape. The work itself IS the reward, and everything else is a bonus.

And so in this letter, I will give you a comprehensive guide to building a life that doesn't need escaping from.

Allowing you to move beyond the hustle-rest-repeat cycle and into sustainable creation.

based on the decade of experience I have in doing this for myself, but also picking up the key ideas that other high-level operators have told me along the way.

I’m going to break this into just three sections, for the sake of time.

1. The Gifts in your DNA & the mental/spiritual shifts needed to find them
2. How to put them into play through skill-stacking
3. How to grow sustainably without burning out

Strap in, by the end of this letter (if you read to the end), you’ll understand the practical next steps you should take to begin building this life in record time.

I. Your gifts are already encoded in you.

The main roadblock I face when asking people what they’re good at is that they don’t know.

In his book “Mastery” Robert Greene wrote two lines that stood out to me. I read them when I was young and they have always stuck with me:

And

I believe your destiny was encoded in you long before you arrived here.

Now I understand, reading that out of context, it can sound a bit woo-woo and airy fairy, but let me support this claim with evidence.

Don’t you wonder why certain children are prodigies?

Or why can certain people see a future that directly contradicts the evidence that is in front of them?

Mozart was composing music at just 5 years old…

Nikola Tesla was visualising machines compulsively despite his poverty…

Michael Jordan had basketball in his blood…

What I’m trying to say here is that people don’t have ideas, ideas have people.

So your core gifts are innate, encoded in your unique makeup, and must be unearthed through focus and practice.

How do you find your gifts?

It’s not always the case that it will naturally reveal itself like it did for Mozart; for others, it takes aggressive experimentation and iteration.

I remember reading this tweet online: “Is 27 too old to start your life over?”

And the viral response read: “Until death removes you from this world, the reset button is forever pressable.”

A similar idea, and what I think inspired it, is - until death, all defeat is psychological.

Let me ask you a question - when was the last time you actually tried to discover your gifts?

I don’t mean just thought about it, but actually tried?

The majority of people will spin their wheels trying to discover their gifts mentally. Without actually trying physically.

I said ‘aggressive experimentation’ because this idea exists that 10,000 hours are required to achieve mastery in a craft…

However, Naval claims 10,000 iterations are far more important.

For context, here is the list of things I’ve tried from age 14, before landing on what I do now at 26:

• Selling sweets on the school playground
• Affiliate marketing
• Growing Instagram pages and selling them
• Creating custom business cards and selling them
• Freelance graphic design
• Starting an agency to build websites for brands
• Social media marketing for brands
• Photography & Videography
• Creative direction for brands
• eCommerce5 different brands (until something actually worked)
• Opening a restaurant in London

That’s not even everything. I intuitively knew with each of them that I could be good, but not great.

I could make money, sure, but could I do it even when I didn’t feel like it? Would I do it for free? It was all push motivation (meaning I was forcing myself to do it)

But each pivot was necessary to land where I am now. Where I can confidently say I am building something I don’t need to escape from, where the work is the reward. A.k.a pull motivation. (The work itself pulls me forward)

Every episode of my show and every piece of content I share feels like something I’d do even if no one was watching.

And for a while, that was actually the case, I was doing it for free, and so that to me was the indicator that I am truly on the path.

Here’s the key for you: what ends up being your gift is something you were naturally inclined to as a child.

Your childhood obsessions weren’t distractions; they were prophetic. Supporting the notion that ideas have people.

The problem is, we let our external programming - our parents’ idea of success, fear, cultural conditioning - get in the way, and we can no longer hear what our intuition was once screaming at us.

A lot of my work is centred around removing this conditioning and subconscious blocks to hear your intuition again.

Because I’ve discovered it’s the key to living on purpose as opposed to on autopilot.

Take some time to sit down and think - what did I used to be obsessed with? Ask your parents or siblings, they have a clearer picture than you do.

It might not be obvious, but once you look for long enough, patterns will begin to emerge, and you will spot a through line.

For me, it was evident that I always wanted to entertain or educate in some medium: magician, footballer, actor… now I look at what I do, and creating cinematic content that educates is kind of right on the money.

Another way to discover this is by asking yourself what feels natural to you but like work to others. I, for one, couldn’t wrap my head around equations or formulas in maths, but for some kids I knew, it was as natural as breathing.

Whatever feels like play to you is your edge.

Most of the time, this goes unnoticed because we have this tendency to think that it’s natural for everyone else too, but I assure you, it’s not.

You’re undermining your gift and abilities.

Okay, so discovering what these are is just step one. How do you actually turn that into something tangible? That could even pay you?

Let’s get into it.

II. Gifts are refined through skill-stacking and picking the right vehicle.

I mentioned all of the things I’ve tried for good reason. The number one way to build a life you don’t have to escape from is skill-stacking.

Meaning, collecting so many types of skills that it creates an unfair advantage in the workplace.

A question I hear often: “In today’s world, should you be a generalist or a specialist?”

You have to be a generalist to then become a specialist.

Simply put, mastering multiple skills across multiple domains increases your odds of gaining mastery in specific area.

It gives you the data to know where you will have the most conviction as a specialist.

If you try 100 different business models, you’ll intuitively know which one to niche down into.

Online, the quote goes “A jack of all trades is a master of none.”

But it’s often cut short; the full quote goes:

I fully agree. When you learn how to stack the right combination of skills, you become a weapon and create a competitive edge that can’t be replicated.

If you’re in this early stage of not quite knowing what to do yet, one of the most practical pieces of advice I can give you in this letter is - go on more side-quests.

(random adventures/side missions) because you will pick up a skill that you normally wouldn’t.

Do a public speaking engagement, build a business in a random niche, or go to that crochet class in your city.

The more skills you stack, the more chances you have of building something special.

Innovation is not always about inventing something new. Because nothing new exists under the sun, but usually it’s arranging skills in a unique way that gives the illusion of newness.

Imagine the advantage the crotchet’er who also knows how to code will have…

Skill-stacking makes you multi-dimensional in a world where you are taught to be unidimensional.

It allows you to spot patterns and connect ideas, and that is where the magic happens.

Steve Jobs studied calligraphy in college, and that is what ended up giving Apple its aesthetic edge in typography in later years, a perfect example of how each skill acts like a single thread that’s actually part of a much larger tapestry, weaving together.

So once you have begun stacking skills, it’s about packaging them in a vehicle that allows you to turn them into something tangible.

There are a few ways to do this:

1. Offering what you do as a service for people/brands
2. Building your own business
3. Finding an employer who is in need of your skills and working for them (or shadowing them for free)

In my opinion, only the first two will give you true freedom.

I wrote this in my last email, but business is the greatest self-improvement vehicle, because it requires you create and embody the identity of your highest self.

The mental shift you have to go through is that businesses are not just a means of making money; they are vehicles that offer solutions to people at scale.

It is a form of service (more on that later - this is an important psychological shift).

Once you rid yourself of the programming that “making money is evil”, you can then remove the friction that’s stopping you from getting started.

If you genuinely offer something of value, I believe it’s your duty to do everything you can to get that into the hands of customers who need it.
​
(Which is why I will never apologise for selling my services, which ahem* you’ll find at the bottom of this letter)

“If you secretly despise wealth, it will elude you.” — Naval

Picking the right vehicle is a game of trial and error. I think the fastest way to not only pick up skills but also understand business models is to work with people who are already successful in them.

Example: at 17, I offered to run the social media of a restaurant chain (because it was terrible, and I had done this before, so I knew this was a value add) and although I knew I was worth more than I was being paid - £50 a month! - I saw it more as an opportunity to spend time with the owner of this restaurant.

I watched how he operated like a hawk and absorbed so many subtle nuances about business and life, from someone 20 years my senior that I normally wouldn’t have.

The principle here is dropping the ego and embodying the student’s mind.

Those who can do this will go very far in life, and it’s an important step in building a life you don’t have to escape from.

Sometimes these steps require you to feel like you’re going backwards,

e.g, not being paid what you’re worth… but know that it’s not always about money, and that it’s an important lesson in the pursuit of mastery.

The student never arrives and understands that everyone is superior to him in some way.

So, experiment, stack skills, go on side-quests, work for free, embody the student’s mind. Explore your options until you find what fits or until you collect enough experience to start something of your own.

This is the part most people skip because of their ego, but I feel it’s the most vital step in your long-term growth.

Even to this day, I will offer up things for free to try and create value for those I want to learn from.

Or even pay for mentors/masterminds to continue my growth and skill acquisition.

The greatest operators I know, the 9-figure earners, elite athletes, or top podcasters in the world share this trait - they are always in the pursuit of wisdom, that’s what keeps their edge sharp.

Now the next step in this guide is about growing without burning out and ensuring what you built doesn’t become your own prison…

III. How to grow sustainably without burning out.

One of the traps that’s easy to fall into when it comes to building a life you don’t want to escape from is becoming a slave to your own craft.

There’s a famous quote that goes:

Too often, I see founders or creators collapse under the mental pressure of what they’re building, and that’s not to say that this journey isn’t hard; of course, it is.

They become double-minded and are never fully on or fully off, but instead live in this messy, anxious middle.

“A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.” — James 1:8

What I’m pointing to here specifically is that you can escape the hustle-rest-repeat loop only to enter a new one. But now you’re under the illusion that you’re enjoying it because it was your own free choice.

A rude awakening most people who pave their own way undergo is that, yes, they ‘escaped the 9-5’, but now will end up working 18-hour days themselves and fracturing their minds in the process.

And for a few seasons, this is necessary; it’s the required groundwork that no one else is going to do for you, but it’s not how you will sustainably grow and scale to new levels.

Most of all, it will not create a life that you don’t want to escape from; you will probably crave an escape more than ever.

Understanding seasons

Here’s what I’ve learned: the grind isn’t wrong, it’s just a season you dip in and out of.

"Being in the trenches” is glorified, especially with hustle culture, but I feel this is wrong on so many levels…

What do you think telling yourself that being in the trenches is doing for you subconsciously?

It begins to build an underlying narrative that what you desire remains perpetually out of reach. And you’ll never align with your desires living in the trenches.

The first shift is changing your language.

The second is when people make the sprint their permanent identity. Whenever I begin something new, I work 14-16-hour days. I told myself this was what it took. And for that season, maybe it was.

But why didn’t anyone tell me that seasons are supposed to change?

The danger isn’t hard work; it’s hard work that never evolves, or better put, you never give it room to take its natural course.

The question you have to keep asking yourself is: Am I still in a necessary season of building, or have I just made burnout my identity?

The delegation ego death & building systems.

At some point, sustainable growth requires you to let go of tasks you’ve mastered.

It's a type of surrender (I suggest reading the surrender experiment to help with this).

This is harder than it sounds, especially if you’re a perfectionist like me.

When you’ve built something from nothing, every piece of it feels like yours, the editing, the emails, even the admin. You know you can do it well, so you keep doing it.

But just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

The same ego that stops people from learning is the same ego that stops people from delegating. It shows up differently; one looks like pride, the other looks like control, but it’s the same root.

I had to learn this the hard way. There were tasks I held onto for far too long because I convinced myself no one could do them like I could (and even to this day, it’s a trait of mine I am training to let go of, even if it is true).

But what was also true was that those tasks were keeping me from the work only I could do.

This is what I wish I knew earlier: you learn by doing everything, then you learn by releasing everything that isn’t your highest contribution.

Even now, I pay to delegate things that drain me or can be done better by a specialist.

Both require the same thing - admitting you can’t do it all, and that trying to is actually holding you back.

​In an episode with Dan Koe on my show, we spoke about the art of building systems. This is the key to sustainable growth that is better to understand now rather than later…

The truth is, when you learn to think in systems, you will truly build a life you don’t want to escape from, because you don’t need to.

Will it still be hard? Yes, but freeing up your mental bandwidth is the highest return on investment you can make as you grow.

The key to long-term growth without losing your mind in the process is understanding that consistency is built through systems.

The whole universe operates in systems; they are an integral part of nature. Think about it:

The solar system

The ecosystem

The nervous system

The cardiovascular system

A system is just a process; we all have them, whether we know it or not.

You have a system for making our morning coffee, or reading your favourite book, that makes it just flow with ease.

Building a life you don’t want to escape from will come from intentionally designing systems that will help you sustain your growth. They close loops and handle the cognitive load so you can actually be where you are.

When your systems are running, you’re not carrying the mental weight of everything that needs to happen.

You’re free to be present with what’s in front of you. This is the deeper reason systems matter, not for productivity, but for real presence.

Here’s a quick way you can build a system in your life today

Create a simple morning routine you can follow - believe it or not, that’s a system.

• Choose a consistent time to wake
• Write your to-do list
• Exercise for 45 minutes
• Commit to a deep work block

A very simple system will change how you operate; instead of being dragged through the day, you set the pace.

And finally, before we close off…

The most important question you can ask yourself when it comes to building a life you don’t want to escape from…

And if you take anything away from this letter, let it be this:

Who and what are you doing all of this for?

The greatest act that has served me was dedicating my purpose to a higher cause.

For my parents, family and friends. For God.

When your why is strong enough, the how is never a challenge; you will find a way or will make one into existence.

Muhammad Ali said, “Service is the rent you pay for your room here on earth” and to me it closely ties into the Vedic idea of Dharma, which translates to purpose or duty.

Duty and service are in a marriage; you cannot have one without the other.

And so by asking yourself the question of what am I serving, beyond myself? You create a sense of meaning that you will never find in the pursuit of anything external.

It takes people far too long to understand that all the wealth and material items in the world are an endless and meaningless pursuit.

And the smart ones eventually give it all away.

But imagine you could do both, you could serve and build for yourself at the same time. That is possible, and it’s what I’ve observed in the truly fulfilled high performers around me.

Service keeps you spiritually grounded, even when you’re physically attempting to scale a mountain top.

Keeping your “Why” top of mind and at the front of your awareness is more important than you realise.

So, Reader

Your gifts are already in you, encoded, waiting to be discovered.

Skill-stacking turns those gifts into something tangible, something the world will pay for.

Systems protect it all. They protect your energy, your presence, your sanity.

And keeping why you do it top of mind is the mental fountain that never runs dry. That is the formula for sustainable creation.

Your goal should never be to escape reality, but to build a reality worth being present for.

That’s the life that doesn’t need escaping from, not void of challenge, but one where the challenge itself is chosen.

And the conscious decision to do the inner work that equips you for whatever life decides to throw at you.

That’s a life full of purpose and meaning.

– Milan

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