I went on a 36 Hour Trip with my 3 closest, higher-quality friends. This is what I learned.

“There is a need for adventure within us.”

I traveled 6 hours by train with two friends of mine (Juani and Santi) to go see another friend of ours, one of the guys I admire the most, Said.

I’m very lucky to have them in my life.

The power, the energy, the wisdom you receive when you have friends like them, fully in self-improvement, all of them entrepreneurs, all of them content creators.

Honest, hard-working individuals.

Voila. Beautiful.

I traveled with Juani and Santi.

We went to a Starbucks before hopping onto the train and the adventure already began.

The conversations started.

3 men facing life head on, immersing into chaos to find the treasure of the great life.

Talks on life, discipline, love, friendship, and growth.

Is not that you lack discipline, it is that you need to change your perspective. — Juani

On taking advantage of books:

Imagine the author is talking directly to you. Is your personal coach. Read one book at a time, treat it like that, take every action step. — Valen (me)

On the progression of learning, and necessity of each stage:

There is level to the levels — Santi

On personal relationships:

When someone has a bad day, look beyond that. Don’t react, empathize. — Juani

Is not what you do or what you think that disturbs people, it is the way you say it. — Juani

Open your heart by being yourself and let the love in. — Valen

Another interesting activity we did was to share quotes that impacted us.

This is an incredible one that Juani shared:

When you accuse nor oneself nor others your education is complete — Epictetus

It impacted me strongly as I’m used to kicking my own ass for the mistakes I make.

For me, this quote suggests that we zoom out and look at our life as we are a human being, not a God.

As we understand others, understand yourself and make decisions to position yourself in a conducive environment, don’t just expect you to change from one day to another and don’t expect you to have infinite willpower.

Don’t get me wrong, willpower is very important.

And it’s equally important to see your strengths and weaknesses and work on those step by step.

Also, kicking yourself mentally doesn’t lead you anywhere. Trust me, I tried it thousands of times. It worked zero out of a thousand.

Said’s questions

After the 6 hour trip, Said received us with food and his unwavering cherish.

He also prepared a list of questions.

The first one reached my heart, the second one was very insightful.

1. A member of your family you admire the most and why:

Chicho, my Italian grandfather, was a joyful, social, generous and hardworking individual.

I know there are very few people with these qualities as maxed out as he had them.

I’m truly grateful to have had him in my life, as he continues to be a source of inspiration for me beyond his life on our planet.

Juani: his mother and father: Madre y Padre in Spanish → MaPa → Map 🗺️

It’s very interesting how Juani admires both his father and mother and recognized he took great qualities from both of them.

I see him as a responsible and sensible young man and I’m excited to see what will come out of him in the next decade. Definitely worth watching.

1. If you could have dinner with 5 historical figures, whether dead or alive, who would they be?

Buddha, Jesus, Seneca, Mandela, Gandhi

I chose these 5 people.

My greatest admiration to them for the world-changing effect they produced with their wisdom and courage.

It’s unbelievable how 1 person can have such an effect, thanks to the millions of others that came before them and laid out lessons and technology to magnify their impacts.

I know this can be done yet again in our modern times.

Physical activities.

We ran. A lot. I also learned a bit how to ride a bike.

It was a fun, exciting, exhilarating experience. I struggled, but in 20 minutes I could ride somewhat straight!

All thanks to the coaching and encouragement of Said and Juani, who know how to ride a bike.

It was fun to walk, run, and bike for around 20 kilometers across Junín. We felt the JUNIN’S SEALS.

Unforgettable experience (my butt keeps hurting some after 3 days of the trip thanks to the bicycle)

The return: Talks on life, manifestation, and our highlights from the trip.

The return trip was supposed to be a sleep one.

The trip was from 1 to 7am. We tried, but after over an hour none of us could sleep.

We ended up having deep conversations. What a highlight.

The best conversation from the trip, at least personally.

Santi and Juani seated in front of me.

Both started giving out FACTS.

This moment was magical and here I can just show a few quotes I took from this conversation:

Feel that you have the power to be successful now in order to manifest what you want. This is not mental masturbation. — Santi Graziano

Detachment from outcomes is what gave me the most results. — Juani Caparelli

Post-trip (and sleep) reflections. Lessons learned and next steps.

I'm a man on a mission.

At some point after this talk, I remembered and talked about my League of Legends journey, where I manifested the impossible.

I wanted to go from Gold 3 to Challenger in 3 months.

I aimed for the stars and landed on the moon, peaking on Diamond I in 2 months

(then I stopped being focused in my SoloQ because of wanting to help my friends and build a team together, and now I’m realizing the same has probably been happening to me on a lesser level, but that’s a topic for another newsletter 😅)

The thing is, at that point in my life, I was a man on a mission.

A similar thing happened to me on Empretec, the entrepreneur immersive workshop I did, full-time (8 hours), 6 days, where I needed to build a profitable business OUTSIDE OF THOSE 8 HOURS.

In 4.5 days. HA!

And I made it.

And on one of those days I had a call with Said at night, as I was telling him how I was ignoring my family and being so fucking focused as I haven’t been in a long time.

After some time he told me about that week. “Man, you were a man on a mission.”

It stuck to me.

And I wanted to replicate those previous 2 experiences of mine again, now with this newsletter.

I went ahead and rewatched the video that made me establish that 3-months to Challenger goal back in 2020.

It’s in Spanish, and the main concepts I already remembered so I don’t think I needed to watch it, but it felt good to watch and reflect again with the same video, as I did back then.

I might make a summary of that video + my personal advice given my experience, so you can carry out the process yourself, and without the need to watch the video.

So if you’re interested, you can send me an email at [email protected] to let me know so I write about it in one of the next newsletters.

I’ll give a brief summary right now

The 3 Months Rule (summary)

Realize that you could achieve incredible things with just 3 months of dedication and effort.

Realize that you could destroy everything you value most in life: your relationships, your home, your rent, your job, your grades, with just 3 months of falling into your worst vices and laziness.

Now the actions:

1. Define what’s the hardest goal you could achieve 3 months from now.

   Stop now and ponder on this.

   Give yourself 5 minutes to think about this and you’ll get an answer. If you’re like me, you came up with an answer instantly.

   That’s probably it.

   Follow your intuition and settle with what you feel is right.

   UNLESS is an instant-gratification activity like gaming, as I did back then.

   In that case, think long-term instead of today’s enjoyment.

   You will thank me later if you skip that play stage and go straight to where I’m at, working towards a purpose, to work from what I love.

2. Now define HELL.

   Where would you end up if you let the worst of you win on a daily basis? Write it down.

3. Now you have a hell and a heaven, 3 months away.

   Go make the heaven a reality by planning ahead every day what you’ll do in the next day that will get you farther than you were the day before WHILE you enjoy your day and are excited about what lies ahead.

   (don’t say study for 12 hours, or work for 8 hours on the computer everyday.)

   Find the balance between progress and enjoyment.

   Follow your intuition in this too:

   • Will I have progressed if I did X tomorrow?

   • Will I have enjoyed my day if I spend tomorrow with X schedule / set of activities?

The two final lessons

• Bond with men.

• Live life, have experiences. Life happens offline.

Let me unpack them.

Bond with men

2 years ago I started this book called No More Mr. Nice Guy.

It talked about how you could achieve your dream life by being authentic, and went into a step-by-step plan with over 40 activities to make it happen.

I followed it relentlessly and it helped me tons.

My personal and professional happiness skyrocketed thanks to the book and it still holds lessons I come back to until this day.

I still learn from the book and re-reading parts of it and I keep growing.

The thing is, there is a full chapter about bonding with other men and the importance of it.

I fully realized when I came back home after the trip of the effect this bonding had, and I remembered this chapter. SO FUCKING TRUE.

I wasn’t acting like a little kid in need of attention and approval with my parents. That's a hell of a lot of progress.

I wasn’t making my tone of voice like a 12 year old kid with them. THAT’S HELL OF A LOT OF PROGRESS.

What’s even better, I was a man on a mission again.

I could say no to everyone and just focus.

Live life, have experiences: life happens offline.

Really.

A big part of self-improvement IS changing the things you do daily (your habits) to improve your life.

That’s especially true at the start.

Now, once you conquer most important habits (meditating, reading, deep work, dopamine detox, exercise, socializing) there is a whole set of experiences you need to go through to actually level up:

• making a business

• developing high-quality relationships when you can be vulnerable and honest

• traveling

• finding your purpose and making a living from it

• getting to know mentors, interacting and learning from them,

• making hard decisions according to your values

• deciding what your values are in the first place.

There’s just so much more to life.

Seriously.

Act:

1. Do yourself a favor and make a list of things that popped into your head while you read this that you could do to implement some of the ideas I shared into your life. This probably includes the 3 Months Rule exercise.

Seriously: STOP READING RIGHT NOW AND DO IT.

2. Now that you’ve done it, make one step right now, or even complete one of the items if possible.

Thanks for reading. You can always hit me up at [email protected].

Now you’ve consumed enough. Go act!

And have a great week.

Valentin