You’ve probably seen the movie the Matrix and whether you believe it’s fantasy or a nearly spot on representation of reality, you’re probably sick of the rat race, culture wars, frankenfoods, and a world that seems more bizarre by the day. You want sanity, good health, peace and prosperity. You want to opt out of the crazy and take back your life.
Or do you?
In the Matrix, Morpheus offers Neo two pills. Take the blue pill and you can keep dreaming in the current reality you know. Take the red pill and you wake up to the truth and chaos – but also have the chance to change everything.
If you think you’re a red pill person – give me the truth and the power! – you may be surprised to learn that maybe you’re actually a blue piller at heart.
Here’s how to know if you can hack reality.
Destination vs Journey
The blue pill is the easy way out. It’s the status quo and going along without really questioning anything. You’re allowed a few doubts and grumblings but even so you won’t take action to change your life or will only take minimal steps that offer superficial change. You’ll listen to gurus and commentators, adopting their beliefs because they mesh with your inner comfort zone, but despite this not much changes outwardly or inwardly in your day to day life.
Meanwhile the red pill takers take action and revolutionize their lives. Nothing is the same after taking the red pill and they can’t go back to the reality and way of life they left. They’ve taken back control of their lives and their before and after lives are night and day different.
That’s the fundamental difference between those who take the red pill and those who opt for the blue. Most of us are blue pillers who think we have taken or want to take the red pill. The question to ask to see the truth is whether anything has radically changed.
When I was leaving the rat race, I worked my ass off to get out and took every step necessary, regardless of how difficult, to change my life. Countless times my colleagues and friends complained about their lives, moaned about being stuck, asked me how to get out, listened eagerly as I gave concrete steps… and never did a damn thing to help themselves.
That’s the blue pill in action.
You see, they want to arrive at the destination without having gone on the journey. They want the finish line without having run the race. They want to have peace and happiness without going inward to cultivate those states of being. They want good health without changing their eating and exercise habits. They want to be financially free without altering their spending and investment habits.
They want a magic pill to transform their lives without any effort or change on their part.
They want the blue pill.
The Hard Truth is the Red Pill
Unfortunately life doesn’t work that way. The red pill is for those who can:
- Put in the work
- Ignore peer pressure
- Go inward
- Question and think for themselves
- Tune out naysayers
- Cultivate inward joy and peace
- Self-motivate
- Radically transform their lives
If you lack these levers, you’ll more easily quit or give up, blame others and settle into a defeatist, fatalistic existence that results in not becoming the person you believe you at heart you should be. Instead, you live the life others expect of you and not the one you dream for yourself. Remarkably, this is the number one regret of the dying! It’s such a common regret and yet few people have the strength and determination to live otherwise.
Most people are waiting for permission to start, want perfect conditions before they act, or hope for someone else to save them from their circumstances or at least change them. In this way, inaction leads them nowhere except that greatest regret of the dying.
Most people live lives of quiet desperation. Facing this bitter truth and taking action to keep that from being your lot in life is taking the red pill.
Changing Yourself Is Also Taking the Red Pill
Any change you undertake and keep at is a sign you’re ready for the red pill or have taken it. Going against habit, culture, conventional wisdom, and caring more about what we think of ourselves than what others think of us is a remarkable feat. It’s nearly impossible for most people to change because the effort and hurdles seem higher than the imagined worth of the reward.
If you’re serious about your health, your financial freedom, your greatest well-being, you have to take the red pill. You have to take concrete steps and actions to change, grit your teeth through peer pressure and temptation, and stay on the path while everyone else has fun wrecking themselves on the modern amusement ride versions of processed food, drugs, alcohol, hyperconsumption and mind-numbing entertainments.
As Krisnamurti said, it is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
Take the red pill, wake up, take the journey inward, change your life and take back your meaning and reason for being alive. Your health and happiness will thank you in a very short time.
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