Believe it or not, there is a force that controls how most of us run our lives.

It's like an operating system on a computer. It tells us what we can and cannot do, and it controls our subconscious existence.

This force can't be seen or touched, but it is there, it is omnipresent.

You see it when you look out your window.

You see it when you open up social media.

You see it when you go to the grocery store.

Let me know if this sounds familiar:

• Go to school and get good grades to get into a top university.

• Go to school again for another 4 years and six figures of debt so you can (maybe) find a job in the workforce.

• Work in this job for eight hours a day, five days a week on autopilot.

• Follow the latest fashion trends. Drive the latest sports car and buy the latest designer items.

• Follow the latest celebrity news and let their drama determine your mood for the day.

• Work in a job you hate for the next 50 years until (hopefully) you'll have a chunk of change large enough that it doesn't run out before you die.

Few know that we have been programmed for this existence.

We are living by an unconscious script that is writing our life story.

Life's Operating System

In a 2005 commencement speech to Stanford University, Steve Jobs said, "Don’t be trapped by dogma—which is living with the results of other people’s thinking.”

Steve Jobs referred to this operating system as the script, the matrix, or whatever you want to call it.

To quote one of my favorite books on this concept, Unscripted: Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Entrepreneurship, MJ DeMarco describes The Script as, "an inescapable gospel of cultural presumptions woven by 'other people’s thinking'; a browbeaten pantheon of provincial beliefs and sanctified social mores."

Most of our thoughts aren't our own.

They come from the seeds that were planted from these sources:

• Friends and family

• The education system

• Corporate

• The government

• Media

• The financial industry

I mentioned this briefly in my last newsletter. 

Our view of the world comes from the people we spend time with and listen to.

It doesn't matter which side, whether you’re watching The View on live TV, or Andrew Tate on YouTube, we consume so much of other people’s content, that we outsource our thinking.

Instead of having original thoughts and ideas about the world, our thoughts have become ‘ready-made’, just take them out of the packaging, and adopt them as our own, without any second thought at the contents or the suppliers of those thoughts in the first place.

Because of this script and the ready-made thoughts we consume, we become slaves to the things we own, the car we drive, the house we live in, and the credit card company we use to pay for it all.

All because we've been told to think this way.

The Fallacy of Conventional Wisdom

If you've ever heard the phrase "Don't talk to strangers", this should be an updated version:

"Don't take advice from strangers", or to make things even more clear:

"Don't take advice from people who aren't living the life you want".

You see, the fallacy of conventional wisdom is this,

Listening to conventional wisdom leads to a conventional life.

If you do everything average people do, you will have everything average people have:

• A 9-5 they hate.

• A wife who doesn't love them.

• Kids that don't respect them.

• A body they're not proud of.

You get it.

So to free us from this operating system we must form the one thing that society has prevented us from having…

Independent thoughts.

Once we become aware that society is trying to own our thinking we need to learn how to start forming our thoughts and opinions.

I'll share with you the three phases we must go through to become independent thinkers.

This is the same process that I am currently following and will allow you to look at your life through a whole new lens.

I'll also share the four fundamental habits of independent thinking.

These tools can be equipped to your arsenal to dissect any piece of information you see and learn how to form your unique perspectives.

By becoming an independent thinker, you'll be able to:

• Become less ego-driven

• Grow a greater and more rounded perspective of the world.

• Become more confident

• Have thoughts and opinions with foundations you can stand on.

• Discern the truth and what is only perceived as the truth.

• Learn who is trying to help or hurt your journey.

Let's dive into it.

The 3 Phases of Independent Thinking

To become truly independent thinkers, we must progress through 3 levels.

Level 1 - The Patchwork Identity

I talked about this in my framework on becoming more than you currently are.

It starts with picking and choosing the people around us who possess qualities that we admire.

They could be real or fictional characters.

It could be their attitudes, their mannerisms, their language, etc.

Have you heard somebody use the term "brokie"?

Most likely, that was taken from Andrew Tate.

Even how he holds his hands:

I've seen people in my fraternity do this exact pose (I've done this myself many times too).

It shows that we all start with a patchwork identity whether we notice it or not.

This is the first level on the path.

We begin to try on different people's thoughts opinions, attitudes, and actions for size.

After a while though, this gets uncomfortable, which is when we naturally progress to the next phase.

Level 2 - Trust in the Self

The patchwork identity, after a while, doesn't work.

You don't feel like yourself because you aren't yourself.

You realize that it's a mask that doesn't contain your true self.

Those pieces that we try on end up diluting themselves and dissolving with our own true identity.

We begin to experiment in the world as we act and be ourselves.

Imitation is completely normal. But as we mature, we learn that imitation isn't enough.

We become tired of other people's interpretations and become curious about our views, which we realize are valid.

This level is all about trial and error to test our perceptions.

We will fall back into convention every so often, but this builds resilience.

Like a muscle, autonomy is built through practice.

As you will learn in this stage, this is where you will start to come across your mindsets, biases, and assumptions.

You learn that you have your filter for which you see the world, we all do.

It stems from our past experiences, and how we were nurtured.

We must ask ourselves:

• Are the filters working for me?

• What do I want the filters to be?

When we start to form unique thoughts and views, it can become increasingly difficult to tune out people's filters: their opinions and expectations.

As we progress, it becomes rewarding as well, because we learn to trust our understanding.

Naturally, we move into the final stage.

Level 3 - Truly Independent Thought

Once we progress to the 3rd level. We have a power that brings an enormous amount of control into our hands.

Choice.

We can choose the material we take in, the response, and what we want to create and put out into the world.

When we choose, we self-create. When others choose for us, they create us.

We shift from living by the script of other people's thinking to consciously participating in our lives.

We begin to evaluate decisions based on our criteria.

We engage with the world with our sense of dignity and value and are comfortable testing our assumptions and the assumptions of others.

We have the power to choose our behaviors, thoughts, and beliefs.

Now that you have seen the process of becoming truly autonomous, let's look at 4 habits that you can instill in your daily life to help you progress into becoming a sovereign thinker.

The Fundamentals of Independent Thought

I mentioned before that autonomous thinking is like a muscle, it must be exercised regularly for it to grow.

These habits that I will share with you are the ways that you exercise this muscle, and how it will grow.

Habit #1: Critical Reading

This is very different from traditional reading.

Most people think that everything they read is true and has their best interest at heart.

Critical reading is all about engaging with information from various sources and practicing passing the material through your filters.

It's all about reading the physical words and reading beyond the words:

• What is the author's objective here?

• How does this make me feel?

• What is fact vs. presented as fact?

• Regardless of what the author thinks, what do I think?

Take, for example, a social media post about a meme coin that did 1000x:

They tell you that you missed out on this opportunity and that these opportunities aren't forever, and you could be missing out on a bunch of money.

You look deeper and learn that the creator of the post is selling a paid community for trading meme coins.

This is critical reading, taking the information, understanding why it was written, and forming your own opinions about the piece regardless of what the author wants you to believe or not.

An independent thinker isn't afraid of challenging material because his identity is separate from what he thinks, and the material that challenges his views allows him to adopt a greater perspective and opinion.

Habit #2: Poking Holes

As an independent thinker, we must learn not to be too comfortable with our own opinions.

We must get into the habit of poking holes in our cherished opinions and the opinions of those we hear.

Getting too attached to your opinions means you don't abandon them when you should.

As an example, a toxic relationship you could be in.

Our ego prevents us from seeing the flaws and shields us from the truth.

Although we must be independent of other people's opinions, we also must free ourselves from the chains of our own outdated opinions.

This takes humility and curiosity.

For more on this, look at the Greek philosopher Socrates, who was extremely skilled at challenging assumptions by asking questions.

Habit #3: Being Okay with Being Disliked

Independent thinking means to think regardless of the thoughts, opinions, and attitudes of others.

When this happens, dislike will happen in the minds of others, but this shouldn't be a problem.

With everyday people, the purpose of thinking is different.

For most people, the purpose of thinking is to reinforce an identity, to fit in, etc.

As an independent thinker, the goal is to learn, understand, and directly engage with reality.

If you become disliked because of your independent thoughts, you instead become respected, which is much more valuable.

Two mature adults can disagree on a topic and still respect each other's opinions, which builds a deeper connection.

Habit #4: Always Staying Curious

Being independent means being independent of your thoughts too.

Disconnect your ego from your thoughts and learn that your views, beliefs, and filters aren't solidified, they are ever-flowing and changing.

It's important to be able to adopt new perspectives and try different lenses for how you see the world.

This is why it's important, for me, to travel to different places of the world and learn from many different cultures and types of people.

Becoming more 'worldly' allows me to look at life through a more well-shaped perspective.

There are people in our lives who have lived in the same environment and interacted with the same people for their entire lifetimes.

When this happens, they start to live in a bubble, and all their existing beliefs become confirmed by the people they interact with and the information they consume.

This is confirmation bias: The tendency to support information that confirms our existing beliefs and values.

This is how people start drifting into living a scripted existence.

The opinions of others match the beliefs that they were taught in the past, which solidifies these beliefs to be true and absolute in their mind.

As independent thinkers, we must question everything and explore not just the unknowns, but the unknown unknowns: beliefs not just in our conscious mind, but in our subconscious mind, the unconscious beliefs that govern our actions.

As I mentioned earlier, the goal is to learn, understand, and directly engage with reality, not just coast along it on autopilot.

Your Mind is Waiting to be Unlocked

You now possess the tools to start becoming a sovereign individual.

You now can take any piece of information and discern if it will help you on your journey or hurt you.

Now, these tools will take deliberate practice and it will take time, but the more you practice, the better your muscles will get, and you will start to see the impact in your everyday life.

You'll feel a sense of accomplishment when you start to disconnect yourself from outdated opinions that you once held sacred.

I'm going through this process as I write to you and I can't wait to hear how you go through the process yourself.

Becoming an independent thinker is one of the most liberating feelings in the world.

I want nothing but the best for you, so go out there and take control of your destiny.

Godspeed

—Ferrone