Pick And Shovel Work

“You’ve gotta love the dirt.” -Gary Vaynerchuk

“The dirt is where you start. It’s where you’re built. It’s where you find your initial success. We all start in the dirt on the journey to success, but few are willing to remain there. Few fall in love with the dirt. The day you leave the dirt is the day the clock starts ticking down on your run.” -Sahil Bloom

Before you get the big, bountiful rows of corn, you’ve gotta do a ton of hardscrabble, unfun, thankless, unseen, pick and shovel work. You’ve gotta love the dirt.

Besides the farmer, this applies to any endeavor. Some examples…

The actor: learning lines.

The producer: writing cold (yet thoughtful) emails.

The athlete: getting up early and working out.

The musician: constantly playing scales.

The investor: doing tons of research to find one opportunity.

No dirt. No glory.

Mad As Hell

“My anger is more likely to do me more harm than your wrong…Moreover, if it be the duty of the wise man to be angry at base deeds, and to be excited and saddened at crimes, then is there nothing more unhappy than the wise man, for all his life will be spent in anger and grief.”” -Seneca, On Anger

“Try to remember that when you find yourself getting mad. Anger is not impressive or tough – it’s a mistake. It’s weakness. Depending on what you’re doing, it might even be a trap that someone laid for you.” -Ryan Holiday, book The Daily Stoic

“And why should we feel anger at the world? As if the world would notice!” -Euripides

In 1976, Howard Beale got up on live television and screamed “I’m Mad As Hell And I’m Not Gonna Take It Anymore!!!” And then he urged us to get up, go open our windows, and scream those same words.

It’s nearly fifty years later and we’re still mad as hell. Angrier than we’ve ever been. But the question is, what are we doing with all this anger?

Are we just taking it? Because that’s what the media wants. Get angry and then “take” these two pills to feel better. (Ever notice just how many pharmaceutical ads run during the nightly news?)

Or.

Are we taking that anger and using it as fuel to affect real, positive change in the world?

P.S. – Big thanks to John K. and the Vs. gang for a sizzling Tuesday Night Reading of “Network” yesterday, and inspiring this post.

Make Friends With The Joy Thieves

“There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow men. True nobility lies in being superior to your former self.” – Ernest Hemingway

“When you are content to be simply yourself and don’t compare or compete, everybody will respect you.” –Tao Te Ching by Lao-Tzu (Stephen Mitchell translation)

“Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.” -Alexander Pope

“All happiness depends on the proportion of what we claim and what we receive. It is immaterial how great or small the two quantities of this proportion are, and the proportion can be established just as well by diminishing the first quantity as by increasing the second.” -Arthur Schopenhauer, book The World as Will and Representation

“In a very real sense, we are as young as we feel inside. what we feel and think will determine what we experience, which will in turn influence what we feel and what we think, in a never-ending cycle.” -David Robson, book The Expectation Effect

Teddy Roosevelt once said “comparison is a thief of joy.” He’s right. It is.

I’ll add another thief of joy: Expectation.

Yet comparison and expectation are inevitable. We do it all the time without even thinking about it. It’s hard not to.

So what to do? Repress these feelings? Just accept our fate and be doomed to a life of misery?

I present another option.

How about we make friends with these thieves? Or as the Buddhists would advise us to do with any negative feelings, “invite them in for a cup of tea.”

Huh? Say, what?

Take the first thief: comparison. Let people’s accomplishments inspire and motivate you. If you’re a bit jealous, good! Get curious with your jealousy. Be thankful for it. Maybe it’s a clue as to where you should direct your time and energy. A potential passion project lurks.

And with the second thief: expectation. Use the power of expectation to believe good things will happen. Get specific. Write down your goals and your “why.” Visualize not only the outcome, but the whole process, warts and all. And so you don’t get overly attached to the expectation, use the mantra of “this…or something better.”

Make friends with the joy thieves. Harness their skills to assist you in setting goals and achieving your dreams.

The Performance Formula

“Visualization works if you work hard. That’s the thing. You can’t just visualize and go eat a sandwich.” -Jim Carrey

Timothy Gallwey, author of The Inner Game Of Tennis, has a nifty formula to measure performance. It’s as follows:

P = P – I

Performance = Potential minus Interference.

There are two ways to boost your performance.

(1) Increase your potential. You do this largely through gaining experience. Training, Learning, and most importantly, DOING. Call this The Outer Game.

(2) Decrease your interference. This has to with our mind. THINKING. Eliminating (or at the very least, being aware of) our fears, doubts, assumptions and self-limiting beliefs. This is The Inner Game.

Most people spend all their time on the outer game and no time on the inner. But as you can see from the equation, each game is worth 50 percent. So it makes sense to spend just as much time on the inner. If you’re working hard but not getting the results you want, perhaps give some focus to your inner game. See if that does the trick.

When you’re giving equal attention to both games and they’re working hand in hand with one another, that’s when your performance will really soar.

Become The Ball

“As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous vermin.” – Franz Kafka, novella The Metamorphosis

if you don’t become the ocean
you’ll be seasick
every day -from the poem, “Good Advice For Someone Like Me” by Leonard Cohen

In his masterpiece, The Inner Game Of Tennis, (a must read for any artist, trust me it goes waaay beyond tennis) author Timothy Gallwey talks about the importance, yet inherent difficutly, of true concentration. He gives all kinds of practical advice and tips on how best to do so. One strategy he espouses is to “watch the ball.” But not watching in the traditional way we might think. Rather, to watch it so intently that one almost falls in love with the ball. Or “becomes the ball.” Gallwey writes about Bakhti yoga which aims at “perfect concentration through devotion.” A story from the book…

A seeker after Truth sought out a yoga master and begged him to help him achieve the enlightenment of perfect union with his true self. The Master told him to go into a room and meditate on God for as long as he could. After two hours the seeker emerged distraught, saying that he could not concentrate, since his mind kept thinking about his much beloved bull he had left at home. The Master then told him to return to the room and meditate on his bull. This time the would-be yogi entered the room and after two days had still not emerged. Finally the Master called for him to come out. From within the seeker replied, “I cannot; my horns are too wide to fit through the door.” The seeker had reached such a state of concentration that he had lost all sense of separation from his object of concentration.

Makes you wonder…maybe the reason why Gregor Samsa turned into a giant bug is that he just concentrated on it so much.

P.S. – “Be the ball Danny.”

This…Or Something Better

“Desire is a contract you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want. Therefore, choose your desire wisely.” -Naval Ravikant

One way to not get overly attached to your desires is that for whatever it is you seek, constantly say or think to yourself, “I desire this…Or something better.” Like a mantra.

“I desire this…Or something better” embraces trust. Trust that if what you seek doesn’t happen (even if you wanted it badly and worked as hard as you possibly could for it), or not in the way that you thought it would happen, that’s perfectly okay. It wasn’t meant to be. Trust in that.

“I desire this…Or something better” also allows for possibility. The possibility that arises from being open-minded to all opportunities. Opportunities that will inevitably spring up from your initial desire, followed by you taking action.

One Dollar Idea

Stop waiting and thinking up your original, “million dollar idea.”

Instead, come up with your “one dollar idea.”

Meaning, find a simple, perhaps even boring, idea that has value to someone else. A value in which that someone would be willing to pay you one dollar more than it cost you to make or provide it.

Then, harness all your energy and resources to produce a “million dollar execution” of this idea.

Turning Pro

Shane Parrish wrote an excellent article on the differences between an amateur and a professional. I highly encourage you to read it. Click Here to do so.

A couple of highlights:

Amateurs have a goal. Professionals have a system.

Amateurs wait for someone to recognize their positional, tap them on the shoulder, and give them a big opportunity. Professionals go show people what they are capable of with no expectations.

Amateurs see feedback and coaching as someone criticizing who they are. Professionals know they have blind spots and seek out thoughtful criticism.

Amateurs wait until they feel like it. Professionals do it when they don’t feel like it.

One thing I would add, and keep in mind Shane uses the word “amateur” differently than I do…

Marry the amateur’s “beginner’s mind” and “art for art’s sake” spirit with the professional’s discipline, consistency and work ethic, and you’ve got a home run. Be a Pro-Am.