Chapter 1: My Story
Hello, my name is Kit Ryan. Short for Christopher actually, but my friends call me Kit.
The purpose of this book is to show you how I turned my life around from being a nobody to becoming the best version of myself. The practical tips and actionable steps found in each chapter will show you how to 10x your life just like I did.
In the last 5 years, I have started 3 companies, and graduated with Economics and Accounting degrees. Now, I am pursuing my Juris Doctor, Masters in Business Administration, and CPA – all at the same time.
But, life was not always this way. 5 Years ago I had just barely graduated high school and all my friends were excited to go to college. I remember someone asked me where I was going after graduation. I lied and said UCSB, but in truth I had no idea what I was going to do. Because of my poor performance in high school, a whopping 2.5 GPA, there weren’t any colleges beating down my door to invite me to attend.
It’s not like I wanted to do poorly, my mind was just focused on other things. My mom was diagnosed with lymphoma when I was 9, and my dad was constantly working.
These circumstances put extraordinary stress on their relationship which was filled with endless hours of screaming at each other, throwing things, and plenty of tears.
I had every opportunity to succeed, but I let my home life become an excuse for my failure. It corrupted my mindset and sent me spiraling down a sea of bad decisions.
I let the external forces in my life, which I had no control over, become the driving forces in my life. I was going nowhere fast and I knew it, but I had no idea what to do about it.
But one day everything changed. This book is not about my struggle, it is about my transformation.
By the time my senior year of high school rolled around, I was shit out of luck. No school wanted me and how can you blame them? I had no extracurriculars, no special skills, and horrible grades. To my embarrassment, everyone else had a plan. Everyone else was going to college.
And it hurt, a lot. With nowhere to hide, my sense of shame that I was completely lost in life, and everyone knew it, became overwhelming.
All of the sudden I associated so much pain to not moving forward in life that I became ready to face change.
I decided to go to Santa Barbara City College. In my first 2 semesters, I racked up a 3.9 GPA, and began my route to success. Even though it was not as prestigious of a school as those most of my peers were attending, I was able to start accomplishing small goals and my confidence started to improve.
I was starting to associate pleasure to doing well in school.
That’s when the real change happened.
But still, I was embarrassed because I was at a City College and not a “real” university. I needed something to stand out compared to those 4-year guys.
So, I started investing.
I bought a couple of investing books and took an investing class in my first semester. I began trading call and put options. I did butterfly spreads. I did short, and long calls. I did it all!
I went home after my first year (for a day) and I felt great! I did well in school, I made a ton of money, but alas it was not enough. Still I felt like I was at the bottom because I was not leveling up to others. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was goal setting, and using the Law of Attraction. I wanted to graduate with a 4-year degree, and I wanted to make hundreds of thousands of dollars. I visualized myself doing it, and I was constantly thinking about it.
From there I got into UCSB, and began pursuing entrepreneurship because I believed I could make more money that way. I started my first company Dealio Inc. LLC, and ran with that. Today we have thousands of restaurants making deals on our platform, and have cut deals with enormous companies in and out of the United States.
But, I still wanted more. I would ask myself questions everyday about how I can better myself, and how I can achieve greatness.
One of the questions I would ask myself is what is my goal and how can I reach it?
I wanted to make multiple multimillion dollar companies. Now how can I do that? I began to goal set and work my way back year to year, month to month, day to day, until I found what I can do right now to move towards those goals.
At this time one of my goals was getting my MBA. How do I get my MBA? Well, if I go to Law school and get my JD I can skip the work experience requirement and get an extra degree. Bam! I was going to law school.
Next it was mastering sales, and marketing. Bam! Luminouslampz was born! I started selling beautiful rustic lamps on Shopify and learned (through fire) how to market, advertise, and sell products.
After I started making money there, it was time to pursue my real passion, helping people better themselves. And here we are: Think Tea, a drink that is healthy for you and helps you focus is now in production.
Now, I am writing this book to help you better yourself the way I did.
This book is designed to explain the theory and practice behind the simple techniques I have used to transform my life. None of them are complicated, but they do require commitment. They all come back to a simple idea: How to reclaim your personal power and effectively channel your energy to achieve what you want most in life, whatever that is.
Let’s get started!
Chapter 2: Mindset
If you want to get long lasting and consistent results, the number one thing you need to do right now is change your mindset. The correct mindset will enhance your quality of life, make you a go-getter, and fuel the drive you need to achieve your goals.
The wrong mindset, which the vast majority of people have, will decrease your quality of life, make you complacent, and perpetually hold you back from the best version of yourself. In order to accomplish big things, you need to have a mindset that enables your success.
Luckily, you can actually reprogram your mind to give yourself the correct mindset to achieve ultimate happiness and success.
Where it All Began
I didn’t realize what your mindset could really do until a few years ago. Before I learned how to take control over my thinking patterns and manage what information my mind took in, I felt lost, confused, and unhappy.
I was tired of how depressed and unsuccessful I was so I was willing to try anything to improve my life. Reaching around for an answer, I stumbled upon the audio book called The Greatest Salesman in the World by Og Mandino and it changed the way I looked at the world.
Mandino makes the case that your thoughts rule your behavior, and that these thoughts can actually be controlled. I started to take a look at my own thoughts, just observing them at first, and I realized that my thinking was setting me up for failure. I knew that I had to make a change. Once I did, I started seeing tangible results in my life almost immediately.
Although this book will walk you through what was ultimately a complete transformation in my life, it all started here: learning to take control of my thoughts and how I perceived myself, others, and the world.
Reprogram Your Playmaker
It turns out that your thoughts have a huge impact on your subconscious, and your subconscious has a lot to do with what you choose to do during the day. In this way, your subconscious acts like a decision maker that guides the rest of your mind and body.
A useful analogy is a playmaker for a sports team, that is, someone who makes decisions that drive what the entire team does. It can be the coach or a star athlete who makes calls to guide the team to victory – or defeat.
Essentially, the playmaker is the decision maker.
Your subconscious is like the playmaker for your body. It drives you and determines what you are going to do in almost every moment. Have you ever realized that you spend most of the day on auto-pilot? For example, you don’t have to be thinking about driving in order to make it from your house to work each morning.
Your subconscious mind is doing a lot of work for you that makes it possible for you to put your conscious mind on higher order thinking.
However, this also means that your subconscious plays a large role in driving your priorities and ultimately deciding whether you do what is necessary to meet your goals.
Your subconscious is constantly taking in information to determine what you should be doing. In fact, you subconscious never stops taking in information, even when your sleeping.
In addition, your subconscious is particularly vulnerable to your thoughts and beliefs. This means that if you can control your thoughts you can actually influence your subconscious and bring your mind’s own playmaker into alignment with your chosen goals in life!
Here is the kicker: If you’re not controlling your subconscious, you’re letting your subconscious control you. You’re basically choosing to let your playmaker run on auto-pilot.
The Law of Attraction
Unfortunately, your subconscious is very susceptible to negative thoughts, and that negativity leads to laziness and failure.
This is what happened to me. I was constantly thinking about all the negativity in my life and it started to control me, becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy of failure and setbacks. It is kind of like when you think “I’m getting sick” and then suddenly the next day you’re coughing and sneezing.
When you look at the world with