How To Become the Top 1% in 3 Months

November 15, 2024 | Allan Luna

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Every major achievement in human history began with delusion—someone daring to dream what others believed to be impossible.

Many people who get this concept, end up using delusion in the wrong way. They set a near-impossible goal of making a million dollars in 3 months, retiring their families, or trying to gain 30 lbs of muscle in 3 weeks, meanwhile they are armed with a weak skillset, no foundation of basic living, no guide, no plan — strictly a delusional vision.

Then when they attempt to execute on this goal, they ultimately fail, making little to no progress, successfully lowering their self-confidence, esteem, and have the nerve to say it’s impossible after only trying for 2 weeks before giving up.

Now note, these are the individuals who are starting with an incredibly weak foundation.

• Inconsistent Sleep Schedule
• Little to no physical activity
• Poor diet and eats unhealthy
• Watches porn and doom scrolls social media
• Doesn’t self educate

These people are truly delusional for thinking they even stood a chance at making any progress in life. But here’s the catch, it is possible to be delusional and still making lifechanging accomplishments, we just need to be strategic in how we do so.

In our context, we’re going to learn how to strategically incorporate delusion into our lives **to make what might seem impossible, achievable for ourselves. Because believe it or not, delusion has actually been used quite a few times in human history.

The Delusion of Flight

Great achievements have often started with an audacious belief that defies conventional wisdom. Do you think that the technology we have today was based off of common knowledge? Of course not. We often had to use innovation and delusion to create new things, just like one of mankind’s greatest achievements, the power of human flight.

Respectively to the timeline of humanity, we only recently discovered the power of flight. The date is October 7, 1903. Samuel Langley, an American Engineer and Physicist, was made a laughing stock and ridiculed by the NY Times when he attempted to fly his aerodrome craft but almost immediately crashed after takeoff.

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If you were to say these very words or say that humanity would achieve the power of flight back in the early 20th century, you’d definitely be labeled, delusional.

The NY Times even made a bold statement in an editorial titled “Flying Machines Which Do Not Fly”, that flight would only be possible within 1 to 10 million years through the combined efforts of mathematicians and engineers. Obviously that was false.

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Only a century later, we now have Artificial Intelligence, vehicles that drive on autopilot, and the ability to do so much more. Honestly, humanity has only been able to develop so quickly due to the delusions of others. If you want another example, you can take a look at Elon Musk who can also be seen as straight up delusional with the goal of making planetary travel accessible for humans.

Understanding Proper Delusion in Performance

So what does Delusion and the power of flight have to do with you and joining the Top 1% of human achievements? Now I’m assuming that you’re not here trying to build the world’s first teleportation device or time travel machine and that you want something more feasible such as making a million dollars within the next few years, retiring your family, finding a wife or even achieving 10% body fat. And even if you are aiming to change humanity, thank you in advance for contributing to society.

Delusion, more specifically strategic delusion—the belief in our abilities to accomplish what might seem impossible—keeps our emotions of fear and risk in check. These emotions are often responsible for our inaction when it comes to our goals. This is not to say that being risk-averse or being fearful is a bad thing, it’s the opposite.

Being risk-averse means that we don’t put all of our eggs in one basket and potentially screw ourselves over, depending on the goal. Being fearful allows us to make the safe decisions.

The only problem here is that you’ve probably been risk-averse and fearful for some reason when it comes to chasing after those dreams that might seem impossible to you at this moment. Maybe it’s time to instill a sense of delusion.

How delusional do we have to be? Within obvious reason, you need to have a solid foundation and resources to work with. You need the delusional belief in yourself, that with enough effort, consistency, and wit, that you will inevitably reach your goals of achieving what might seem like the Top 1% to everyone else.

So the question remains, why use Delusion for accomplishing our ambitions and how does this even work?

The Self Efficacy Theory and Delusion

Albert Bandura was a highly influential Canadian-American Psychologist, who is credited for his theory of Self-Efficacy. He emphasizes that our belief in our own abilities increases our resiliency and boosts our chances of success when it comes to taking on new challenges.

To better understand this concept and how to efficiently use strategic delusion with the theory of Self-Efficacy, there are 4 sources of energy that influence our success that we need to pay close attention to:

1. Mastery Experience (Personal Success)
2. Vicarious Experience (Observational Learning)
3. Verbal Persuasion (Encouragement)
4. Physiological and Emotional States

Mastery Experience (Personal Success)

Whenever we successfully make money from our business, create content on social media, reach our PRs at the Gym, or even successfully ask a girl out, we gain experience which builds our personal belief in ourselves to handle similar challenges. The opposite can be said for when we fail. Therefore, getting in the reps for tasks that relate to our delusional dreams, plays a crucial role in getting there.

Vicarious Experience (Observational Learning)

The most common thing that all of us do when it comes time to try and achieve any form of success is to look at our role models, or look at people that’ve reached the life we want to live. For me, I saw digital nomads on Instagram, Facebook and YouTube. I decided to copy them by starting a business. A Vicarious Experience, comes in the form of observing others, successfully accomplishing goals which in turn increase our belief that if they can do it, why can’t we?

Verbal Persuasion (Encouragement)

I remember when I used to work out in a group with my friends — we would chase after breaking PRs, especially when it came to benching or doing deadlifts. Call it ego lifting if you will. I still have the video of me deadlifting 325 lbs while only weighing 130 lbs. I didn’t think that this would be possible especially when I only had 1 month of gym experience. But my friends hyped me up and I did it. Verbal Persuasion comes in the form of positive reinforcement and verbal support from others, such as your peers or people who are trusted and respected. This can also increase self belief or self-efficacy that we have the ability to reach our goals.

Physiological and Emotional States

This isn’t talked about enough, at least I don’t think so because if it was, then therapists and counseling would go out of business. Stress, Anxiety, Fatigue can reduce confidence while positive emotions can do the opposite and enhance it. If we can figure out how to take care of ourselves properly and keeping our mental health in high regards and our physical health at an all time high, we also boost our self-efficacy. You can do this by learning meditation, going to the gym, and just finding efficient ways of managing stress.

Why Delusion Matters to Self-Efficacy

I’ve never utilized strategic delusion until the Summer of 2023, where I accidentally discovered it and my mentor implanted this phenomenon in my mind.

He invited me to work with him on his Sales Agency, to build it from scratch. His goal was to make $1 million in cash collected within the next 3 months. Now I’ll be honest with you, he was already a 7-figure entrepreneur and for me I’ve never made more than $20,000 in a single month before.

And now I’m here wondering, how the hell are we going to do that. Long story short, we work together, with me doing most of the creative work on the systems side of things, to devise a strategy in which this would happen. The fun part? I ended up doing this all by myself. The result? We spent 2 months creating a foundation, and on the 3rd month we made $200,000, which was double his personal record.

Now you understand why, when it comes to goal setting, you set a goal so far out of reach that people laugh at you, that seems impossible. A goal so far fetched, that the NY Times prints out an editorial turning your failure into a laughing stock. That’s how far you wanna go.

But the thing is, when I look back, I see how Bandura’s theory of self-efficacy played such a strong role — my mentor’s strategic delusion forced him to work 16+ hour days for 3 months straight, and I ended up in that same position also working 16+ hours straight per day, without ever feeling burnt out or wanting to quit.

If self-efficacy is the belief in ones abilities to achieve a goal, then strategic delusion becomes the exponential fuel that accelerates our capabilities.

You may be starting to think that self-efficacy is just some positive mindset or self talk but it’s so much more than that. This is the unshakeable belief that you have the power to reshape your life, no matter how unlikely or impossible it might seem to others. And I need to remind you that strategic delusion is about daring to believe in your abilities, and more importantly in yourself, so deeply that your actions start to reflect on your beliefs even if everyone else thinks you’re headed down to failure.

Now that you understand how delusional goals must be met with a delusion sense of self belief, there remains one more topic to cover.

The Two Things in Top 1% Success

When you look at arguably successful people on the planet that have achieved the top 1% of goals, the Wright Brothers, Elon Musk, the guy who invented the wheel, I don’t know his name, and for me personally, my sales mentor, there’s a two things that they have in common. A Vision and a System.

Note, that I said a vision and not a goal, a system and not a plan. Now I’m going to cover 2 actions that we can use for us to reach those delusional goals of ours.

• Vision Creation – which is just goal setting but taken multiple steps further, covering the specifics of the results of achieving a life-changing goal • Infallible System – a step-by-step blueprint and plan you can always rely on to keep you on the inevitable path to success

When it comes to goal setting, it’s very commonly said that to properly do so, is to set a target that is just within the border of failure — which is hard to determine because most people haven’t taken the time to properly self assess just how good they are in a certain area of life.

Setting a goal this way, is a quick way to failure and seeing little to no progress.

How many times have you done goal setting and tried taking action? How much progress have you made? How many achievements worth sharing, have you accomplished?

Probably not enough. You’re probably not satisfied and you want more.

The whole argument around goal setting is that rather than just setting something bordering failure, we should be choosing a target that when said out loud, sounds extremely unfeasible, silly, and downright delusional. Your friends should be laughing at you. Media should be making fun of you.

Not only that, when you think of setting a normal realistic goal, does that inspire you? Probably not.

The Power of Vision Creation

The whole purpose of a goal is for us to set the right direction to success. But I want to share something bigger and much more effective called Vision Creation.

When we set goals, we don’t consciously think of what happens as a result of accomplishing it — which is inefficient because we’re not utilizing our emotions to drive our actions further.

The top 1% of mankind, are all visionaries — Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Warren Buffet all have a vision that greatly contributed to the betterment of society. So if they have a vision, then by the Vicarious Learning we talked about earlier, we should emulate what these men have done.

Create a vision, one that is so colorful and vivid that when you close your eyes and think about it, you can clearly see, feel, hear and maybe even almost smell and taste the success. That’s how you know you’ve done it right.

• Define what success looks like
  • Where do you live? What color is your house? What car do you drive?
• Who do you imagine to be by your side?
• Where are you right now?
• What are you doing right now?
• Why do you want to be successful
• Why does it matter to you so much

This is the basic foundation of creating an effective Vision. Of course we can go deeper but there’s only so much we can cover for the moment. If you want a deeper dive on how to create a Vision, check out my free mini course called The Clarity Accelerator, to help you get clear on what you want and to create a step-by-step plan to get to your delusional goals.

The Infallible System

“We are not the highest versions of ourselves which we can imagine. We are the lowest version of ourselves which we can accept. Understand that you will do nothing to achieve your dreams but fight like hell to not breach your standards. If you want to achieve your dreams and goals, you must turn them into irrefutable standards. “ — Sam Ovens

When it comes to our goals, ambitions, or dreams, we won’t put in the effort. It’s just a desire which lacks substance and commitment. Sam is basically saying that we are only as good as our standards. In other words, you’re only as good as your worst days.

I’ve attempted multiple times during my journey of entrepreneurship to build a profitable business that would allow me to become a digital nomad for over 3 years. And I’ve never been able to do so until the Summer of 2023.

• Day trading the stock market — lost $12,000
• Drop shipping — I didn’t care about shipping products that don’t contribute to society.
• Copywriting — I was too nervous to do outreach
• Time Management Coaching— I didn’t know how to sell.

And the reason for why I failed, was because I didn’t have a system that would bring me there. A bulletproof, failsafe system. An Infallible system that I could always rely on to get me there.

Let me ask you a question. If you had a way to work optimally no matter how much you didn’t feel like working, and you were able to do this consistently, what would that do for you?

What if you were able to produce high quality work like you always did on your best days but this time you could replicate it on your worst days too? Now what if you did this for a month?

What progress would you make on your business? How about your weight loss or muscle gain? What about finding that perfect girlfriend?

Now what if you did this for 2 months, 1 year, 3 years? Do you see what I’m getting at?

Those dreams of yours that might sound downright impossible right now, is just your mind being unable to comprehend how that’s even going to happen. But if you were able to work optimally for 1 to 3 years, does that goal still sound impossible? Do you think there’s a slim chance of making it work?

Of course you do. Because the life that you want, has already been made possible by those above you. But how can we create standards and finally the Infallible System that will guide us down the right path to success?

Disclaimer: A few words before I share because this is what worked for me, and it might not work for you. Working optimally requires individual experimentation and research.

An Infallible System consists of the following:

• Physiological Standards — think of your health, diet, sleep, exercise, and even work environment
• Digital Environment Optimization — cleaning up our social media, our computers, phones, and other devices
• Mental Focus — starting with prayer or meditation to increase the quality of the work that we do and how much we can focus

I’m only going to briefly cover these concepts, otherwise I’d end up writing a book or creating an entire course which I did. If you want a deeper dive into an infallible system, check out my other free mini-course called the Next Level Performance Blueprint, to solve problems such as brain fog, procrastination, confusion, and low energy levels.

I want to give you least possible amount of excuses for you to fail. And this needs to happen especially when we’re here trying to achieve what might seem like the Top 1% of goals.

Physiological Standards

The most productive time in my life was when I worked with my mentor in person. I spent 16-hours a day for 7 days a week for 3 months working on a project without feeling burnt out and unmotivated. But I was also arguably the healthiest in my life I’ve ever been. What I’m going to share with you is fairly basic, but people don’t do it, and I’m not sure why.

Just kidding, I do know why, it’s ego, and people don’t think the rule of cause & effect apply to them, but we’ll talk about this another time.

My Standards were:

• 8 hour of sleep (most of the time)
• 1 hour of gym per day
• Morning Meditation
• Midday Sunlight Exposure
• Workspace cleanup
• Intermittent Fasting
• 1L of water in the morning with electrolytes
• Black Coffee, no sugar, no milk

For sleep it’s obvious, no sleep means no energy, and no energy means you feel like shit. You feel like shit means you won’t get high quality work done.

An hour of gym was to stay in shape especially because I spent most my days indoors, sitting on a chair in front of a screen.

Morning Meditation was my way of clearing my thoughts and practicing on improving my focus on the task at hand. Think of it as the gym but for our minds.

Sunlight Exposure was to regulate my circadian rhythm and this ties back into sleep.

Workspace cleanup, just means to make sure that there wasn’t any garbage laying around from dishes to loose papers. These are distractions and take away from your mental focus.

Intermittent fasting, puts your body in a state of autophagy, which is where your body starts to break down the old cells in your body. You honestly end up feeling better from eating later in the day than you do in the morning anyway.

Drinking water with electrolytes was to stay hydrated. Black Coffee is to curb morning hunger and also provide energy for the day.

These are pretty much my physiological standards that I followed that allowed for me to have the most optimal amount of physiological energy for any given day. I didn’t get sick and I was never tired.

When it comes to this, you have to experiment what works for you.

Digital Environment Optimization

We live in an age where smartphones and social media has taken over the world. It has never been easier to get information from other sources than today. As a result of this the average attention span in our population has decreased.

When was the last time you ever tried to focus on a new project or task that would point you in the right direction to changing your life, how long were you able to focus for before your phone distracted you? 10 minutes, 5 minutes, 30 seconds?

How many notifications do you get from Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, and Emails? Everything in this world was designed to take our attention away from the things that truly matter to us in our lives, yet we don’t notice it. And even if we do, we end up going back to old habits and routines that don’t serve us.

If we want to combat this and truly build an Infallible system for yourself to reach your goals, we need to clean up our digital environment. The same way we clean up our room and our work station, is the same thing we need to do on our phones and computers.

Just as a cluttered room clouds our focus, a cluttered digital space can hinder our mental clarity.

The world is headed towards a digital economy the work we do, to the entertainment we enjoy, to the people we speak with is all going to be online. I’m not sure what goals you have but I can almost assume that it has to be done in your digital environment. Delete everything that doesn’t serve your purpose and execute on every opportunity you get that will push you closer to your dreams.

Building Mental Focus

When I was in my early 20s, I used to think that meditation was stupid and prayer was for the hopeless individuals that think they can pray their problems away or meditate and manifest millions of dollars. To get to where you want to be, you need to take action, consistently.

No amount of woo woo magic is going to get you there. What I didn’t know was that these actions are supplemental to our mental health and our mind, more importantly our mental focus.

If I gave you the step-by-step blueprint to make a million dollars in 3 years, what does it matter if you can’t focus on the actions necessary to reach that goal? And even if you try taking the right actions, what does it matter if the quality of work you do is of garbage quality?

This goes back into our digital environment helping us in retaining our focus, but to take it a step further, the whole purpose of prayer and meditation is to increase our mental focus. Try this exercise when you have time, choose a project or goal you’d like to complete. Then, choose a task that you need to work on to get closer to it. Sit down and focus on that task and mark down how long you can stay focused for.

If your answer is anything less than 2 hours, you need to start improving your mental focus. Do this by meditating daily. The length of focus and quality of work comes as a result of your mental muscle, otherwise known as your mind.

I won’t lie and say that I meditate every day, but when I did, I was in a state of extreme clarity and everything I did just felt of high quality. I felt more present in my life not just in my work but also speaking to my loved ones and playing sports. Everything just feels surreal. It’s not this repetitive loop of an autopilot lifestyle.

And to be honest, many of us need to start living intentionally but I’ll get into this another time. We’ve now covered what it’ll take for you to achieve your version of the Top 1% of achievements.

The question remains, will you keep doing what you’re comfortable with, or embrace a level of belief that others deem to be delusional. The top 1% did not get there by setting normal goals and playing it safe. They chose to believe in something bigger than their reality, bigger than what everyone else thought possible and by building a system that makes that vision inevitable.

If you’re ready to stop moping around, start incorporating what we’ve covered. And if you need additional help, check out my two free mini-courses – the Clarity Accelerator and the Next Level Performance Blueprint. Combined, they’ll give you everything you need to get clear on what project to work on, how to get there, and how to create standards for yourself to be on a clear path to success.

— Allan L.