Be aware that many goals are figments of your imagination.
Let’s say your goal is to own your own private jet. Nevermind the idea of whether this a good goal or whether it will “truly fulfill you” – simply look at the goals reality and purpose.
The goal of owning your own jet has the reality that you can travel places fast and more easily than a public airport. Would you have the same goal if there was a teleportation device? Maybe not. Perhaps then the goal is traveling fast without being around the general public. Also, maybe you want a plane because then you know you’ve “made it big.” But what if you could afford to rent the plane instead? Your reality of “traveling fast and privately” isn’t different at all when you own vs rent a plane.
The reality of having $1,000,000 in the bank vs $100,000 is no different at a given moment besides reading different numbers on a screen.
The reality of having enough money to go on an African safari does change your reality.
The reality of driving a nice car is definitely different than driving a crappy uncomfortable car. But owning it vs leasing it is a mental construct, granted, you may realize you have more cash in the long run with owning vs leasing, but at least you know that your goal of ownership is fake, and the goal of “nice car” is real.
The reality of owning 100 acres, if you have no plans on using it and simply just want it to be “yours”, vs owning 1 acre is absolutely no different in reality. Your mind can only “possess” so much in reality.
If proving the fact that you’ve achieved a goal isn’t related to the actual goal at all, then you’re chasing vapor. If you wanted to own and drive a Ferrari, and you drive around town in it, that’s easily proven that you drive the car and you’re in it. If you prove the part about you owning the car isn’t related to the car, which it’s not, because you prove that by showing paper with ink splatted on it in patterns we call letters – this has nothing to do with your experience of the car, and you’re chasing vapor.
A goal might not seem like a concrete ‘real’ goal at this moment in time, but some of those ‘fake’ goals turn into reality later on. A $5M bank account and a $5K bank account may not change your current moment besides looking at pixels on a monitor telling you your balance, but it may turn into something very real when in a month the $5k bank account forces you to trudge into a job you hate, vs the $5M account still doing whatever they wanted.
Seeing goals as physical things (a car) or experiences (going on a trip) is probably better than goals like “making it”, or owning more than you can comprehend like earning a billion dollars. Therefore, you have internal and external goals. An internal goal of, “I’m a respectable person.” is valuable, but internal goals must be addressed as internal. Sometimes those internal goals can be fixed with some affirmations, therapy, etc. People often try to fix internal goals (eg “I want my parents to be proud.”) by achieving external goals (“Therefore my goal is to buy a yacht.”).
If you’re doing this, you’re on a path worth pondering before you move forward.
Therefore, it’s good to ask:
1) Is my goal internal or external, and if it seems external, consider if it’s actually internal, but you’re trying to solve an internal goal with an external goal?
2) If my goal is external (eg. own a plane), what’s the deeper point of it (private fast travel)?
2a) Are there parts of that external goal that are imaginary (eg. owning the plane, vs renting it)?
3) Should I still be focusing on the goal in it’s current form?
Opening your mind to see concrete reality of goals allows it to see creative solutions (eg. “What if I find a way to lease a car for ultra cheap vs only thinking about ways to save up and buy the car outright?”).
If you don’t separate your real vs imaginary goals, you’ll find yourself chasing smoke trails of imaginary goals far too much.
Failure is always an option, and winners often quit.
“Winners NEVER quit! Failure is NOT an option!” Just kidding – it’s a great option. Beware of the idea that failure isn’t an option. First off, it detaches you from reality, which is never a good thing, because you can’t make good decisions when you don’t have a grasp of reality.
Here’s reality: you can ALWAYS fail.
The board at Groupon turned down an offer for $6 billion buyout from Google in 2010. They probably thought they were going to valued at $10 billion or some insane goal, and “failure wasn’t an option!” Then Groupon plummeted, struggled (and continues to struggle a bit), and is now worth about $3 billion (50% less than what they could have had). Imagine working for 8 years, stressing out hard core during that period (because it hasn’t been great for them for the last 8 years), AND losing $3 billion.
The Groupon team probably said that “failure wasn’t an option,” and that massive break from reality actually made them fail.
Seth Godin talks extensively in the book The Dip on why knowing when to quit is critical for you to admit failure and be able to move onto something else rather than continuing to waste time on it. Jeff Bezos is known for his complete lack of fear of failure and has no problem trying many different business models that fail rapidly and he gives up.
But what about “winners never quit!?” Winners don’t quit when things get hard, but winners absolutely quit when they know it’s time to move on.
If you feel like failure isn’t an option, it creates fear of trying something new, and if you have fear, you don’t do anything. The “failure is not an option” mantra is probably the best way to simultaneously pep yourself up, then achieve absolutely nothing. Those people brag about how they never fail, but nevermind the fact that they never try anything, and therefore never succeed either.
Failure is an always an option, and realizing that can actually help you avoid failing.
You’re only 5 friends, and 3 steps, away from getting rich.
Science or BS: You’re the average of the 5 people you hang around with? It’s a little bit science, a little magic, and a little vague too.
Jim Rohn, Tony Robbins’ mentor, said you’re the average of the 5 people you hang around with. The easiest example was to consider those 5 people’s income that you hang around and average it out – that’s very likely your income.
There’s truth to this statement, but it’s also not quite right.
It’s not stated how long it takes for this to occur first off. And “hanging around” isn’t real clear either. For example, James Altucher says it’s the 5 people in your mind, the people you think about, that matters the most. Another guru said that if you’re chatting with these people online, it counts. Which if you’re talking to someone online, they inherently have to be on your mind to a degree. And then finally, Shawn Stevenson author of Sleep Smarter, talks about how brain waves match up with one another when they’re talking with each other in the same room. There appears to be some magic of proximity here too.
Maybe it’s all a big hack, because the people you work with are likely the 5 people you’re around most often, and if you’re working together, you likely have similar salaries. Maybe Jim Rohn noticed an obvious thing like this, made it a big vague and “mystical” sounding, and left the audience to find their own reasons why. “It’s brain waves and the universe!” or “It’s because they have the same mentality!” or whatever, and we’ve just run with it since then.
If money is your world, you’d never hang around anyone that’s poorer than you, else there’s be a ‘magic’ pay cut coming for you in some undisclosed amount of time. Money isn’t everything though, and maybe that someone that’s not as rich as you might have more integrity, health, or love in their life than you, and that brings you up in some way in that regard.
Let’s pretend it’s definitely right, for whatever reason that may be, then the goal is to simply be around these people in a real way such that you’re interacting with them. We presume that it’s not only proximity, but having a deeper relationship with these people. This is why house cleaners for the rich and famous don’t all get rich a year later – they never become friends with their boss.
A lot of times you can get your foot in the door by giving first by providing value, and asking (and expecting) nothing in return. Clearly, you have to pick the right people to do this with, otherwise you get abused / taken advantage of. This works quite a bit, but it can put you in the ‘house maid’ category while working for free. Not good.
I’d be willing to speculate that it’s not about brain waves (although that’s assuredly a factor), or even proximity (like the maid), but really about being friends with these people. And the best way to be friends with people outside of your socioeconomic circle is not by sucking up or whatever, but by trying to provide value for long enough around them that the possibility of developing a friendship. You’re not asking for a hand out from these people, you’re looking to be legitimate friends with them. Faking it and going through the motions isn’t going to work in this ‘magic’ sort of sense of things Rohn is talking about.
So, here’s the obvious formula for friend filled wealth that I’ve never seen clearly stated:
- Figure a lifestyle you’d like (eg. work all the time and make billions vs work very little and make $100k),
- Find the people that are living a life similar to what you’d like,
- Find a way to be friends with these people by usually providing value at first.
3 steps…done.
How many other casual observations are we glazing over that you can make into simple and obvious formulas like the one above?
Why you’ve got to give up on being the best.
James Altucher talks about “idea sex”, which is simply combining different ideas and skills to come up with something unique.
Seth Godin, Jim Rohn (Tony Robbin’s mentor), Tom Bilyeu (founder of Quest Bars), and most all people say that you should be a master of one thing.
“When you find yourself on the side of the majority, it’s time to pause and reflect.” – Mark Twain
Maybe all these people are right. But maybe it’s like saying, “Pick the right lotto numbers, and you’ll win!” Because your odds of being the best one thing is probably about the same odds as the lottery.
Consider that Scott Adams (creator of Dilbert) mentions that Trump got where he has because he was good at so many different things, although not the best at any one things.
Tim Ferris shows that it’s possible to be good at multiple things as well. But many tend to think that doing more than one thing in life is impossible. Even Confucious jumps in on this and says, “The man that chases two rabbits, catches none.” There’s certainly a balance in between of becoming a master of one thing vs jack of all trades.
Most people are awful at most everything and decent at one thing (usually their profession). We’ll all unlikely be the “best” at any one established thing. I don’t think Quest bars are the best nutrition bars, but maybe Tom Bilyeu is very good at persuasion, business, nutrition, and being a chef, and mixed together that was enough to make a billion dollar empire.
A highly desired web developer that can code what you see (the front-end) and the brains (the back-end) of a website is a “full stack developer.” I think we’ll see more of the rise of the full stack person.
Maybe if you become very good (not even the best) at just a few things that you care about, stack those together, you inherently become the best at being you.
The Paradox of Content
Google, data filtration, paradoxical advice, and the next billion dollar app.
Seth Godin, Gary Vee, and many others are talking about how you need to be producing more content and we need more producers and not consumers.
The problem is, most people probably shouldn’t be producing content. And really we have too much content as is. When people that didn’t even feel like they had something decent to contribute with start an avalanche of crap onto the net, it’s going to make things worse.
But the overall level of quality will rise, because from that garbage in the quantity will start to emerge quality. But hopefully there’s some better ways of separating out the junk from the quality. Right now, Google is the thing that does that. But I think there will be some other business / engine that helps us find content that we want personally. Micro search engines (eg. Yelp, Trip Advisor) currently only help us find things better in certain niches, but aren’t really customized to us at all.
If the avalanche of content (garbage?) starts to take hold, I think we’ll see some massive opportunity in the ‘data filtration industry’ (making up that term).
The most accurate, best, and relevant advice that’s totally worthless.
Long time ago, I saw a YouTube comment where the guy was grumbling that the speaker didn’t ever seem to get to the point and that it was a bad speech. I agreed with him. Then I came back 2 years later and had my mind blown with the exact same speech. Here’s what happened…
Here’s the best analogy of why most self-improvement material is absolutely right, but totally worthless and why it doesn’t “work” for many –
Imagine you’re lost, but you want to get to NYC.
You get some directions, “Go Northeast”, which is advice that’s very effective for many people in the US, and people rave about the advice with 5 star reviews. You do the exact advice and actually end up worse…because you’re unknowingly starting out in Maine.
So on the way of being lost and heading Northeast, you go into a gas station (you get the “Know Thyself” home study course!) and ask which way is Northeast, which you then discover you’re in Maine.
Now you know to follow directions for people based in Maine and get one guru book that says “turn left, travel 5 miles” and another that says “go right after the bridge” and so on. It’s all out of order, because no one knows exactly where you are in Maine. So, all the advice is totally right, but it’s all out of order. You run around in circles following directions that are accurate, but not in the right order.
Many people’s goals change for the better in this process. So, you realize halfway to NYC, that you were actually wanting to get to LA.
And now you realize you made a wrong turn a few miles back and you’re lost again. Rinse and repeat the cycle of inefficiency…
But each time you do this, you start memorizing more roads, more bridges, and so on until you basically have the entire US interstate system mapped out and memorized in your head. Then you know where you are, hopefully had a good idea of where you want to go, and finally how to get there. This takes the idea of “what level are you at” a bit further in regards to why it’s so damn hard to “level up.”
Doing all this one video / book of directions at a time is why this journey becomes almost impossible. Good / accurate directions of “turn left at the bridge” may even be 100% relevant to you eventually, but if that’s not your next direction, it’s often useless.
There’s no secret to success?! Wrong…
“There’s no secret to success, it is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.” – Colin Powell.
“There are no secrets [to success]. Be humble. Be hungry. And always be the hardest worker in the room.” – Dwayne Johnson
Telling someone that hard work is the answer is like saying, “You can get to California by putting one foot in front of the other and never giving up!” That’s true. But if you only follow that advice, you’ll likely go in the wrong direction, or die on the way, or take forever. It’s not the whole debate on “right vs good advice” I spoke about earlier as much as it’s just simply bad advice.
Down deep in your gut, you know there’s just gotta be some secret to success, which is why it’s so tempting to click on the ads selling you those secrets.
Truth Cake will give it to you straight like no one else will…
The secret to success is that there IS a secret, but it’s a secret…which means no one is going to tell you.
Sometimes there are more or less secrets in certain industries. The secret to success in lawn mowing was advertising in the right neighborhood that needed it. The secret in stock trading was that bit of insider info you overheard. The secret for Nike getting off the ground was finding the right supplier overseas to make the shoes. The secret for making it big online was understanding precisely how to manipulate Googles search engine results.
When the secret gets exposed too much, industries become commoditized and/or simply die. Stock trading strategies die when too many people know about them (well, maybe not). Sales tricks die when everyone has had the same trick done on them. Police interrogation tricks like “good cop bad cop” die when people know the secret.
Who knows what the secret is, or if there even is one for your industry, but you won’t find it if you don’t look.
What is this site?
Self improvement for smart people.
I follow business leaders, gurus, and philosophers and note things others missed that I’ve found valuable.
This site is my precious treasure chest of ideas on business, philosophy and life. And hopefully during your pillaging here, you get your mind blown.
My life’s goals are to help summarize the human knowledge base, dispel self improvement myths, and achieve a resultant and unrelenting state of 24/7 euphoria. I’m kidding, but we’ll still try!
Follow along on my journey!
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