The world is broken. Whoever has the guts to do something about it relentlessly, succeeds.

This realization is a blessing in the skies. It happens in two folds.

First, the existential crisis. Your future self is already written by models you mistake for reality itself, models that provide predetermined answers for every situation.

Religion tells you what's good and evil, capitalism tells you what has value, democracy tells you what's fair. When you realize these “universal truths” are just models, every principle, rule, value, compass you ever used to navigate life becomes more fragile than you could have ever imagined.

Naturally, you get scared, anxious, and depressed. You start ruminating on questions like: What is the truth? How should I live? What are the societal, religious, moral—whatever—rules and principles I should follow to live life “correctly”?

Second, the rebirth. Now, you can't look at the world the same way you did. There is no way back, this paradigm shift is irreversible. This is an inflection point in your life. It probably feels like disaster, but trust me, it is the best thing that could happen to you.

Like all inflection points, this one follows one of three trajectories: you rise, you halt, or you fall. You either rise through an exponential, yet difficult, phase of growth; halt and remain in that depressive state eternally; or fall into denial and spiral into exponential suffering.

Which path you take comes down to one trait: courage. If you don't have the courage to face this disillusionment, to accept that your worldviews were never real, you will spiral into denial. If you have the courage and discipline to face it, you will rise to unmatched stages of growth and create your own truth.

I won't dwell on the denial path because I hope you don't take it, but know this: the suffering in denial is much worse than the suffering of facing the truth, and denial robs you of the growth that follows.

Now, assuming you go through this healthy existential crisis and have the courage to face the truth, what happens next? You complete your depression. You grieve your old self, the version that needed those models to be real in order to live. Yes, this grief is painful, but it is also rebirth.

Suffering is necessary for growth. When you grieve your old self, you make space for your new self, the one you will build.

Building your new self. Now that you have buried the static, paralyzing parts of yourself and former worldviews, you can see the world raw, without bias or judgment.

You realize there is no objective “right” or “wrong,” everything becomes relative. There is no objective “truth,” only what I call relative truths: things that are true to you, but not necessarily to everyone else, and vice versa. Every objective truth is just a relative truth that enough people agreed to share.

And here's the paradigm shift behind every world-changer: if all truths are relative, you can create your own. You see something broken in the world? Good. You can craft your own truth about how it should be and relentlessly push to fix it.

This is how successful people change the world. They're not geniuses who see reality more clearly because they're smarter than you. They're people who went through this existential crisis, had the courage to accept the disillusionment, noticed broken parts around them, and relentlessly built better ways. They realized that something the world accepts as objectively normal is actually just another relative truth that enough people agreed upon, one they personally thought was wrong. So they pushed their own relative truth relentlessly until it scaled, gained social acceptance, and became the new normal.

The question now is, how to make your relative truth an objective one?

From relative to objective truth. Now that you see the world raw, without attachment to any model, you can clearly spot what's broken and why. You have the power to revisit and redefine everything.

Here comes the saying everyone repeats but few understand: “Successful people are confident in their weird ideas to the point of delusion.”

If that were the whole recipe, anyone delusionally confident would change the world. Obviously not.

So what's different about actual world-changers? They've gone through this existential crisis, had the courage to face it, and the discipline to rebuild. You can't change the world if you still believe in fundamental rules about how life “should” work. You can't be a visionary if you haven't experienced this collapse of worldview, identity, and meaning, followed by the courage to rebuild from first principles. That's why so few people ever change the world: this prerequisite is extremely hard.

Those who make it through gain something invaluable: the ability to see the world raw, without models clouding their vision. With this lens, they notice broken things everywhere that others accept as normal.

But even within this tiny subset of people who acquired this lens, not all become world-changers. Those who do are the ones who find that one broken thing that obsesses and consumes them, something they care about so deeply they'll spend their life fixing it.

This combination—the lens to see what's truly broken plus the obsession to fix one specific thing—is how revolutionary companies and theories are born. This is how individuals change the world: they see clearly, find their obsession, and pursue it relentlessly.

Once you've reached that level of maturity, you realize something counterintuitive: those “delusionally confident” successful people are not delusional at all. They know everything is fragile, so they might as well push their relative truth.

The truly delusional ones? Those who haven't yet gone through this realization. They still live in inherited worldviews they mistake for reality, never stepped out of their comfort zone, never challenged their assumptions. They're delusional because they think their models are the truth, either because they never faced the disillusionment or, worse, didn't have the courage and spiraled into denial.

Changing the world. So what makes a world-changing visionary?

1. They were lucky enough to encounter challenging worldviews.
2. They were courageous enough to let their worldview collapse completely.
3. They were disciplined enough to endure the existential crisis and be reborn.
4. They were lucky enough to find a broken thing that obsessed them.
5. They were relentless enough to push their relative truth until it became reality.

The hard part: you can't remove luck from the equation. The good part: you control your luck. The more you step out of your comfort zone, the more likely you'll encounter challenging worldviews and trigger this crisis. Push through it, equip yourself with this lens, look around and notice how broken the world is until you find something that consumes you so much you'll dedicate your life to solving it. Then you'll change the world.

If you internalized all of the above, you're very lucky and now understand the game. The world is broken. Most people can't see it. You can. Now what are you going to do about it?