Dear Google,

Breakups are never easy, and I wanted to write you a thank you letter in lieu of what I could not say to you in person. Over the past 3 and a half years you have assisted me in my continued growth both professionally and personally.

You made work easy by offering to feed me whenever I was hungry.
You gave me nice massages for a nominal fee.
When I was sick you gave me the time to stay home and recover.
You even did my laundry and washed my dirty dishes.

You showed me that work can be rewarding, and that people are by nature, good.
You showed me that it was possible to fight for a just cause, despite public opinion swaying the other way.
You showed me the kindness of those perceived strangers you call “Googlers”
Being with you also made me learn how to deal with high stress situations and achieving high goals, and I will take these lessons to heart on my journey.

Rarely, when some of your friends abused their power, (as is inevitable when you have so many friends) you consoled me with summer BBQs and teddy bears, though I know that you had no control over their day to day actions.

Most importantly I will remember all of the awesome friends you were able to introduce me to through your social circle. I met all sorts of amazing Googlers that I will continue to be friends with, even after our breakup.

I hope we can remain good friends as well, and I wish you the best in your future endeavors.
XOXO,

Signed.

On my last day, the goodbyes were easy to make, as I started at the eyes of my co-workers, some of them felt genuinely sad but happy for me. Others hid behind a general and fake politeness that detaches from authenticity. Even others, better friends of mine actually felt sad and “a little jealous” that I have the opportunity now to do my own thing. I felt fine. I felt like this was long overdue and I have actually stayed for too long.

Playing society’s game for 6 years, I have gone to a wide eyed college graduate to a more mature young man, who is jaded at the corporate game. The social programming that society has put in place to keep things stabilized. Play the game! Work the tough job! Win money for yourself! Buy the nice car! These are all short term fixes to true self esteem and core confidence.

Tyler Durden (RSD) on social conditioning and the state of advertising in this country:

The Game

The game is rigged against you as the consumer. As a member of society the system is promoting you to become structured and follow its rules. I believe in a life of your own design.

The question you have to ask yourself is”Do I care what other people will think of me? Or do I really love what I do?” I think that if you are here on the blog reading it now, you have in your head the birth of an idea to live a life of your own intentions.

Monday morning came around and I felt great. I woke up when I wanted to, and did the things I wanted to do. I got more work on my business done in a day than I did with a week at work. The challenge now will be to build a business that sustains my lifestyle.

Planning the Prison Break – Total Time: 2 years.

First Year:

• Recorded spreadsheet of all monthly expenses
• Make a commitment to pay off ALL credit card debts
• Saved first $10,000 in the bank
• Go against the grain – 95% of Americans save less than 5% of their annual income. Most of your friends probably spent most of what they make. You can’t let peer pressure and social pressure influence you. Mark the prices down and be frugal where it counts. Stop eating out all the time and learn to cook for yourself.

Second Year:

• Pros/Cons of quitting my job sheet – there were a lot more disadvantages to staying. Most importantly, it was the opportunity cost of doing something great for myself.
• Immigration issues – how do I get out of this jail and stay within the laws?
• Job salary and final paycheck – make sure you work this out
• Get out of Jail plan – Make connections while you’re still at the company. Install social back doors so that if you fail, you can easily get another job through your network. I have over 1000+ connections on LinkedIn.
• Get to now the people you genuinely want to know at work and make friends with them. Learn as much as you can.
• Make sure you have enough money in the bank to give it a good shot. In the online world 100 days can be enough to make or break you. If you can’t find out if you can build a business in 3 months, then don’t do it at all.
• Do it. Walking through the door can be tough. Have bullet points written down and be in a calm mood when you present your plan to the boss.

Friend calls you up to go out, there’s an event at a bar. Same scene, same girls. You wonder if you should muster up the courage and energy to go out, or decide to stay in and make some progress on that website you have been trying to launch in the past 6 months.

Scenario 2 – you have been doing well at work lately – new job and new promotion. 2% salary raise. Yeh. You decide to go out more this week with your friends. You get a few number closes, but none of them return or pick up when you text/call. You wonder where your game has gone wrong, and after a while decide “fuck it” and focus on some other area in your life. Maybe you’ll muster up the anger or motivation to call up a few PU friends and ask for their advice, but ultimately, the game dynamics go back to you.

You go back to focus on work, but you realize that you are working your ass off for your company and they are making all of the money. The constant ass kissing and power maneuvers at work get to you. You decide to start your own company on the side. You do some research and work, but really have no idea where to start. You write a business plan.

A friend’s birthday comes up – you decide to go. You hit it off with this girl, and decide your game isn’t so bad after all. You go out a few more times over the next 2 weeks – some nights are good, some night are not. A lot of effort is being put into this and the results of lays is not showing.

If the above 5 paragraphs sound remotely familiar, that is because I have experienced it first hand. I have been writing these “Business vs. Love” posts for…. 1 year now!

It took a some simple advice from one group member, a Stanford PhD student at our MasterAlliance meeting to wake up me, “R, maybe there are just excuses? I mean, when I didn’t want to work out, I was throwing out the exact same reasoning as you. These are just excuses that stand in your way. Maybe I am wrong, but think about it.”

He’s right. The truth is, if it came down to it, I would choose love over money. Because love transcends material things, even this life, money is only a tool we use to trade things of perceived value in this world. But achieving both often means going after something the right way. You want to pickup a girl? Focus and learn from each set’s mistake. Don’t over analyze your sets, and focus on your skill set. Film yourself if you have to to see your flaws.

Waiting for that business plan? It is not going to write itself. Stop watching porn and if you are going to blow off your friends, make a commitment to finish 20% of that plan by the time you go to sleep. These are things that are definite and require energy, but the fact is sometimes this pain of exerting energy is better than the pain of mind-numbing and time passing that comes from doing a lot of things that are 1. half assed and 2. not significant anyway.

“With Scarcity comes Clarity” – Sergey said recently in the economic downturn, and this is another sage advice that I am lucky enough to see working at Google.

Alpha: Well. I was basically in a tough situation at work with 2 of my female managers. The situation lasted for about a month as I worked very hard to transition out of the group into a new team. For me, this was a difficult road. I learned a lot along the way. Read 48 laws of power and highlighted specific chapters. Basically, I was in a position of no power, and I had to play the game by other people’s rules and still come up on top.

When I received the offer from a fast growing group within the company, my new manager suddenly became very nice to me. I have heard and witnessed a lot of things about her, but in the end, we ended on a good note and I wrote her a final thank you note on the last day. I won’t bad mouth her here. People who are a certain way with people that create enough negative energy will craft their own demise, in time. And my mama taught me better than that

One of the other reasons I took a week off, after receiving my offer was that I needed a mental reset. I have hit a ceiling with my career, my life goals, and in general my pick up skills. I needed to re-frame my thinking. Today I read “The Answer”, and John Assaraf talks about why so many people fail – because the conscious mind is weak. It is short term. Long term habits and behavior is changed by concentrating and feeding your unconscious mind, where it is active 100% of the time and connects with Infinite Intelligence. Interesting.

I made 5 collages of pictures, photo shoots and pictures from magazines of the things I wanted in life, and they are hanging up on my bedroom wall right now. A lot of Victoria Secret models As well as guy models/actors/leaders I look up to: Barrack Obama, Jeremy Piven, and my mom and dad!

I feel happy. I feel free. My carefree attitude has translated into an awesome vibe and everyone I interacted with today, I think, felt happier by just being around me. It is a cool feeling. So this is what people who do not have to work fulltime to maintain a lifestyle feel like. This is what movie stars and Vincent Chase feels when they are not working