The easiest way to give away all your power is just to lay it all out in the open. No filter. No nothing. Anything that comes to mind you just sling out into the world. Until one day you realize that no one listens. No one cares. You don’t want to be this person.
But the fact of the matter is: most people are that person.
Because it takes cunning, skill, and understanding to play a different game. One where you build reputation not by what you do say, but by what you leave out. When you play the game like this, you create an enigma because no one will be able to exactly pin you down.
You leave little breadcrumbs. Little clues. You give hints, but no instructions. You give a direction, but no roadmap. And by doing this you will instill this question in the back of everyone’s mind: who is this?
And you will find out that this is the way to get attention, because then you are turning your public figure into something that’s larger than yourself. You become hard to pin down, and exactly because of that people will want to know: who is this?
But you have to be out there. People will have to be able to find you. They will have to be able to find some sort of resource, which will allow them to spend two hours getting to know you.
You will have to be deliberate about what you put out there. There will have to be some original thought. You will have to be a critical thinker. You will have to be aware of using as few words as possible to get your point across. You will have to have the ability to finish most of an idea, but not all. You will have to connect your ideas to some other ideas, but you will have to do so loosely.
After those two hours of going through the stuff that you put out there—-- they will feel like they got to know you, but just like the enigma that you created around yourself: they will feel like they know some, but not all. And that’s the way that you answer the question: who is this?
And then, after a few years of “building” like this, you look back and you realize that you learned more about yourself than you ever did before. You have transformed, you have become more interesting, and you have a better life because of it. Now ain’t that something?
One of the ways that I keep constant reminder in sight is literally asking questions: am I making progress? Am I in charge? Am I on task? It may seem almost silly to literally ask those sorts of questions, but it works for me. Because it’s a constant reminder. It’s a constant reminder of what is important—--not just to me personally, but more so to get the job done.
And you can think of variations, literally in the vein of the job: is the job done? Am I making progress? Am I doing the right thing? And you can think of variations in this vein, and I guarantee you that this will be extremely helpful once you are on a task.
What about the “way before”? What about that time when you have an idea to act on? When you have a dream of which you believe that you can turn it into a reality? What sort of question can you ask yourself then to get started, to build momentum, to build self-belief, to build confidence, and to build the conviction that you can do this.
So for the way before it’s more about imagining an inner dialogue, not just with yourself, but with a third person who is simply going to ask the question: why not you? And this is where you turn the whole inner dialogue into a pep-talk, and it’s highly effective if you do it well. It should be build partly on rationale, partly on blind belief, but the outcome has to be certain as it can be.
Because the question is: why not you? You got the brains, you can study the plan, you can grow immensely in the next couple of years, you can build a wall around your family. So why not you? Because you can set priorities, you can identify a fat pitch, you can ride a wave for as long and as hard as you possibly can, you can get eye-balls, you can get people excited, you can create something that people will want and need. So why not you?
Why not do the thing that you care deeply about. Why not just try to do it. No matter what, and no matter how small. Consider this: if you do something that you care deeply about, then you will be able to create your best work. You will be able to create something that truly matters. Not just to you, but also to other people. They will be able to pick up on it when you do your best work, and they will cheer you on for it.
You will just have to find the inner strength to keep on going before the fly-wheel has picked up speed. Before it has so much momentum that it can’t be stopped. And this is hard. This is the lonely hour, where you will doubt yourself, people will think that you are a fool, and they will think that you will run yourself into the ground.
And this is the hardest part. Because is where you will need blind belief that goes against what your brain might be telling you. This is where you grind and keep going up that hill, and where that small question will be a constant reminder: why not you? And it will turn into: it has to be you.
And then when you have gone through it. When you are on the other end. Then you will have forgotten all about it. You will have transformed, you will have built a better foundation for your family, and it will then be down the line again, that you get an itch, where you get “willing” to back-track and to reinvent yourself.
And that’s when it becomes relevant again, that’s when you start asking yourself: why not you? But by then it’s different: you no longer start from scratch, but you start from something that you built before. You start from the foundation that you build during your first grind.
And that’s the exact place where you want to be, because then you have turned your whole life into a fly-wheel that just keeps on going and going. You will grow, you will evolve, and your life will be way richer because of it. But you have to start somewhere. You have to be willing to take the initial small risk, the small leap of faith, and then sometime after—-------boooooom, you’re where you want to be. Now ain’t that something?
