My name’s Louey, and I give a shit. It’s taken me a while to become comfortable with this idea, but I really do.
Seeing people in pain — most of which is unnecessary — really cuts me up. I feel it. Every part of it. And it stays with me long after the event has finished.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t feel all pain. I see people doing dumb stuff and making poor decisions, and I don’t feel their sorrow. But for those who played no role in their pain, especially those two young to have a say over the content of their lives, I really feel it.
It’s also taken me a long time to realise that this part of me, the part that wants to do something big, that wants to create change, that really gives a shit about the world and the people moving through it, has existed for a long time.
I have very vivid memories of being just a young fella, no more than 13 or 14, and not understanding the world.
It wasn’t an ASD issue or anything like that where I literally didn’t understand people. It was something different.
I would stand around with kids my age and listen to them talk. I would hear their words and understand their meaning, but I could never understand why they were choosing to talk about those topics.
Why did it matter who said what in class and made what mistake? Why did it matter which sporting team scored more points? Why was it relevant that this band or another was touring?
How did these things matter? How do they move the needle? How do these things really impact the movement of the world and the challenges that surround us?
I didn’t realise that these were the questions in my head at the time. I just thought I should play along and be nice and try to fit in. Yes, it normally came out as awkward and strange and everyone thought I was a weirdo, but hey, I gave it my best shot.
The older I get, the more comfortable I become with the idea that I really care and that I want to do something big. I want to be a force for change. I want to heal the pain. I want to move the needle.
This website is my record of my journey to do so.
The first steps forward in my journey started back in 2005 when I first discovered it was possible to change the way you think about yourself and the world and overcome your personal limitations.
Before that point, I was just spending my days wading through the endless emotional mess I created from the simplest and most innocuous social interactions. But in 2005, I learnt that I could change those interactions for the better.
Change happened fast and by late 2006, people were coming to me for advice on how to be a more confident person.
Those first few enquiries grew into a company that spawned a deep obsession with understanding people; with understanding why and how people live their lives and the deep forces that drive their life and life challenges. I used conventional ideas from psychology and personal development as launching pads to go deeper to where I thought the core of our challenges were born and to create a pathway out of those challenges.
I arrived at a place that I believed (and couldn’t believe) that no one else had found. A simple idea for the foundations of human motivation, decision making, learning, and emotion that seemed to tie every theory I could find into one system as well as provide a simple framework for dealing with the challenges that exist in life.
And after seeing it, I couldn’t unsee it. Life seemed obvious. Pain seemed obvious. And most importantly, the solution seemed obvious. It was all right there, right in front of us, rooted in fundamentals that are tested and verified, day in, day out, all over the world, and yet no one was talking about them.
I grew that company until 2013 when three simultaneous issues happened:
- I reached a point where I thought I’d found the answer to the cause of all humanities challenges
- I had taken that solution as far as I knew how to grow it
- The need for financial security started to weigh heavily on my shoulders
This led me down a different path; one that utilised my website development and people management skills to turn random internet searches into rivers of money. And boy did it flow, in quantities that I never dreamed I would see.
The $2,000/month I was making through my personal development company was a rounding error in some months and I quickly started to solve some of my pressing financial issues.
I stayed on this path until I reached a very comfortable place in my life and decided that it was time to allow that part of me that see searches for meaning and significance to take the lead once again.
So in late 2021, I sat down and thought about my future: Where did I want to achieve? And what path was going to get me there the fastest?
These were interesting questions to try and answer because in the last 8 years, one very significant part of me had changed: learning how to run businesses and reach hundreds of thousands around the world had expanded my map of what is possible to include literally changing the entire world.
Instead of trying to come up with a small business I could grow into a medium business and maybe help a few thousand people a month, I now believed I could influence the direction of humanity as a whole and I needed to work out which vehicle was going to help me do that in the most effective way.
So, to do this, I choose to study psychology.
Not with the aim of sitting quietly in a chair and listening to one person share their troubles and their grief, but with the aim of developing my ideas into a theory that not only provides the next generation of psychologists with the tools they need to impact the lives of others, but more importantly, carries enough weight behind it that it is able to influence the direction of government policy and world-wide mental health treatment.
The aim is to go big and make a real impact.
So as I write this, I’m into my second trimester (my second and third subject) and my theory, Psychological Needs Satisfaction Theory, is starting to take shape.
I hope to have the foundations finished and to start working on the development of some of the finer details.
If you’re interested in following this journey, please check back both here, and the PNST website, regularly. I will update them with all the thoughts I can spare in my day.
And if you have any questions, hit me up on my contact page.
Till we meet again,
Louey.