How to Be Cross Eyed: Thriving Despite Your Physical Imperfection—a mémoire and lifehacking manifesto

Jonathan Roseland

Jan 2026 · Jonathan Roseland

About this ebook

There's that moment when you meet a new person, and you can tell that they are just a bit disoriented by your weirdness. You feel that familiar little pang of embarrassment and shame because you know how weird you must look to them. You're physically imperfect. So am I. I know that moment as well as you do…

But you don't have to be cross eyed (or have a conspicuous physical imperfection) to enjoy this book. Really thriving requires an uncommon set of barely legal Biohacking tools, social dynamics strategies from the fringes of polite society, and rapid mindset-transformation technologies, which this lifehacking manifesto delves into deeply.

This book is especially for that one or two percent of the population that has a glaring physical defect, which I fall into. I'm cross-eyed with Strabismus, which you can see below. If you're reading this, perhaps you are too.

There are certainly people out there with more conspicuous physical imperfections who have it worse than I do. However, the eyes are the windows to the soul; they are a part of nearly every important human interaction. Not having normal eyes has been a disadvantage that I've needed to develop a specific set of skills and life strategies to overcome.

I was talking to my lovely fiancée about this book, and she asked me if the purpose of the book was to help the self-esteem of people with physical imperfections.

Not really.

This book is more about the lifehacks that I've employed over the past 15 years; strategies, methods, and tools that work to help you overcome the challenge of a physical imperfection and thrive. These things will likely improve your self-esteem, but they will also work if you have low self-esteem, or no self-esteem (or too much self-esteem - as I'm sometimes accused of having!) Self-esteem is not my focus; there are better books on self-esteem. My focus is on what works.

This is not your typical self-help book…

I've had a pretty interesting life. I've dated a politician's daughter in Medellin, Colombia. I hung out with spies in Kyiv, Ukraine. I've almost died underwater twice. I participated in a bank robbery, and I lost my virginity to a spy (yes, really!) From getting into high-speed car chases to being deported from South American countries to representing the US Presidential candidate Donald J. Trump, I've found the happiness I didn't give a damn about and realized my dream of becoming an adventuring philosopher.

I'm not a theorist in the business of making generalizations. The tactics and tools presented here are for rigorous practitioners, ethical hedonists, and open-minded self-experimenters.

I may sound like quite the pompous pontificator, but I'll offer no apologies because storytelling is the best way to impart the unconventional mindset that saved me from mediocrity and the biohacks that enabled me to defy my selfish genes.

If you're bored with the tired problem>generalization>platitude>strategy formula that most self-help books follow, you'll enjoy this memoir of adventures, failures, and unexpected successes across three continents. I'll share with you some powerful tools for transformation - Biohacking, smart drugs, flowstate, red pill mindset, and more - with which I've managed to pack several lifetimes' worth of peak experiences into a single decade.

About the author

Jonathan Roseland is an Applied Neuroscience Strategist, adventuring philosopher, pompous pontificator, writer, K-Selected Biohacker, tantric husband, raconteur, and Smart Drug dealer.

Jonathan hails from Denver, Colorado, and now lives with his wife and son in Sofia, Bulgaria.