B00CHVIVMY EBOK (19 page)

I also disappoint the right people. I learned this trick by signing up for something called the “Warrior Dash.” It’s a 5K obstacle course that involves mud, fire, water, and Viking helmets. I signed up for it months before the race date, but twenty-four hours before the event, I decided not to go.

Why? Because it’s important to disappoint the right people in my life.

For years, I thought if I lived a perfect life, I could make everyone happy and never disappoint anyone. I know that’s a foolish thought, but people-pleasers like me are constantly intoxicated with expectations like that.

But the day before the race, I realized something: I was going to be out of town for the next three weekends. I speak at the Dave Ramsey live events, and we were headed out to visit three different cities.

I had a choice to make. I could either disappoint my kids—who need guiding—and tell them, “Hey, on the Saturday before I’m gone for three Saturdays in a row, I’m going to spend five hours running in a race instead of hanging out with you.” Or, I could disappoint my friends and tell them, “I’ve got to bail on the Warrior Dash.”

I decided to disappoint my friends.

Instead of doing the race, I spent the entire Saturday with my wife and kids at a botanical garden. It was an amazing day, and I felt instantly that I had made the right decision.

As you guide, you’re going to disappoint people who want your time or your input or your attendance. And often you won’t be able to give it to them. But it’s okay to disappoint people, as long as you make sure you’re disappointing (and guiding) the right people.

The biggest lesson for me was to not say yes to things I am ultimately going to say no to. When my friends asked me to run in the race, I should have looked at my calendar, seen the travel I had scheduled, and said no. But I didn’t want to disappoint them. My initial yes only amplified the disappointment of me eventually saying no twenty-four hours before the race.

Don’t tell polite lies, like “Let’s grab coffee sometime,” when you have no intention of doing that. Pick your guiding spots carefully, and then stick to them.

Fast runners

You got your start in guiding with a single question. You then tied guiding to something you’re already interested in, and you picked your spots carefully. Now, how do you know you’re guiding? How do you know you’re really helping others? The other lands tend to have discernible signs. What about guiding?

I think the best way to know if you’re really helping people is to observe the pace of everyone else who is running with you.

In the 2012 Summer Olympics, Kenyan David Rudisha set the world record in the 800-meter race. On the surface, that is not so amazing. Lots of records were set during the games, and lots of people got gold medals. Usain Bolt got considerably more press than Rudisha. But in many ways, Rudisha’s race was far more amazing not because of what he accomplished with his running, but because of what his running inspired in every other runner in the race. Seven of the eight runners set their personal bests during the race. The last-place runner was the fastest last place in the history of the event.
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David Symmonds, the American, came in
fifth, which isn’t great until you look at the history books. Symmonds’s fifth-place time would have won him a gold medal in 2008. And 2004. And 2000. In fact, Symmonds’s fifth-place finish would have been good enough for a gold in every Olympics, except one, since 1896.
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How were so many athletes able to achieve so much in one race?

Someone set the pace a little ahead of them. Or as
the Guardian
reported, “Rudisha pulled the field around behind him, like a speedboat leading seven water-skiers.”
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The other runners couldn’t help but raise their game that night. Rudisha’s pursuit of awesome was infectious.

You may not feel qualified to guide. But please know that in the land of Guiding you have the chance to do something even more important.

You have the chance to change the world.

You never get to change the world before you change your life. Now that you’ve walked through four lands and are standing in the fifth and final land, you’ve changed your life quite significantly. Now it’s time to change the world.

People are mistaken when they think chasing your dream is a selfish thing to do. As if perhaps being average is an act of humility. As if perhaps wasting the talents you were given is proof that you’re a considerate individual.

It’s not.

“If you were meant to cure cancer or write a symphony or crack cold fusion and you don’t,” asserts Steven Pressfield, “you not only hurt yourself, even destroy yourself; you hurt your children. You hurt me. You hurt the planet. Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of the actor. It’s a gift to the world and every being in it. Don’t cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you’ve got.”
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Here’s what’s next for you

1. Find someone to guide.

2. Take another part of your life back to the start, and journey down the road to awesome again.

That’s it.

Those are the only things we ultimately do in the land of Guiding.

We just talked about the first step. That one is pretty easy. If anything, the hardest part will be deciding which people to guide. People who notice you’re not average tend to want to take you out to coffee and ask, “What’s different about you?”

The second is actually an invitation to the fountain of youth. Turns out it’s not in Florida; it’s on the road to awesome in whichever state or country you live.

The only way to stay young is to keep learning. That’s not last-chapter hyperbole—that’s science. In the book
Ten Steps Ahead
, Erik Calonius wrote, “Even though the number of neurons in the human brain decreases as we age (as has been said time and again), the number of synaptic connections can grow as long as we live. If we keep using our noodle, in other words, we can make our brain better every day.”

Neuroscientists Steven Quartz and Terrance Sejnowski report, “Being born some way doesn’t amount to forever remaining that way. . . . Your experiences with the world alter your brain’s structure, chemistry, and genetic expression, often profoundly throughout your life.”

And most encouraging—given that the first land on the road to awesome is Learning—is what New York University neurologist Joseph LeDoux has to say on the matter: “Learning allows us to transcend our genes.”
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In other words, the land of Learning can keep you younger than your genes say you are.

Science aside, it’s easy to look at the end of someone’s life and see how important it is to keeping walking down the road to awesome.

I think of my friend Brent’s grandfather. He was a decorated World War II vet who went on to be an All-American college football player who was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame. He then had an incredibly successful and widely respected medical practice in San Diego for forty-four years. After he was forced to give up his practice because he was just “getting too old” at 77, he immediately started to decline. Within two years, he was dead. When I asked Brent about it, he said simply, “I think he died because he couldn’t find the next thing to start.”

That’s why my grandmother takes Tai Chi. She may be 85 in birth years, but she’s 22 in Tai Chi years. She’s brand-new on that particular road to awesome. She knows that ultimately the road is a circle, not a straight line. Will she master Tai Chi? Will she one day guide in it? I don’t know, but I didn’t know she’d spend our Christmas phone call asking me about a reader from my blog who comments a lot either. His name is Michael, and she was a little worried about him. Turns out she’s 22 in blogging too.

I’m not sure what you need to take back down the road to awesome, but I do know it works with more than just your career or passion. Awesome marriages go through the same five lands. No awesome marriage is ever accidental. Awesome companies go through the same five lands too. Steve Jobs was a genius at editing, reducing the entire Apple product offering to just four brilliant lines. Awesome families go through the same five lands. Average families are the norm; awesome families follow a map.

I hope you punched fear in the face. I hope you escaped average. I hope you figured out what your diamonds are and started doing work that matters. I hope you realized the door to purpose has been unlocked this whole time.

And when you survey your life and find something else that could be more awesome, I hope you’ll do what I’m going to do once I finish writing this sentence.

Start again.

What Now? Action Always Beats Intention

What Now?

Action Always Beats Intention

Anyone can dream.
It’s the doing that is such a hassle. Where do you start? What do you do next? What will keep you from heading right back to the road to average?

This.

This will.

In these pages are practical, tactical steps you can take. Some are simple, like writing down a single idea on a Post-it note; others are more detailed, like tracking your time for seventy-two hours. But each one is designed to jump-start your travel down the road to awesome. This is where inspiration meets instruction, hope meets hard work, dreaming meets doing.

Let’s go.

Punch Fear in the Face

1. Buy a journal. You’ll keep walking in circles unless you document your experience.

2. Answer the question, “What do my voices of fear and doubt tell me?” Every time you bump into one, write it down.

3. Mock each fear you write down. If you’re afraid you’ll lose your job and never be able to find a new one if you launch a new project at work, write that out. Exaggerate that fear in the craziest ways possible so you can see how silly it is. “If the project fails, I’ll get fired and blacklisted from that entire industry. All companies, in every city, in every country will not hire me. I will be forever unemployed and have to grow a really crazy beard and collect cats.”

4. Once you’re done laughing at your fears, make them face the truth. Next to each one, write what is true (e.g., “Everyone will laugh at me if I try this new dream.” Truth = “My friends won’t laugh. My sister won’t laugh. I just proved that ‘everyone’ was a lie.”). (See pages 70–71 for more examples of how I do this.)

5. Look for patterns in your voices. Fear always likes to pretend it’s brand-new each time. It’s not. Chances are you’ll be able to identify four or five primary fears at the root of every voice.

6. Fear masquerades as new because it wants you to waste energy looking for a new way to fight it. Now that we know we’ve seen it before, we can look for a successful tool we’ve used in the past to combat it. What’s something that has worked for you before that could work for you today?

7. Identify a “mirror friend,” someone who will reflect the truth of your experience back to you. This is a friend who will listen and then help you see the situation you’re in for what it really is.

8. Share the voices of fear and doubt you run into with your mirror friend or someone else you trust.

9. Think you’re the only one who hears a certain voice of fear? Visit nomorevoices.com and see that you’re not alone. Find your voice and share it with a community of people who are on the road to awesome just like you.

10. Fear is schizophrenic—it always tries to argue both sides of the coin. It will tell you that you can’t chase your dream or that if you do, it must be perfect. Knock its legs out by writing down the opposite things it is saying to you right now (e.g., “It’s too late to chase your dream” and “You should chase your dream later”).

Escape Average

1. If we’re going to escape average, we need to know where we feel like average has crept into our lives. Do an “average audit.” Survey the seven key areas of your life: physical, spiritual, financial, family, social, intellectual, and career. Write down which ones feel average. (We’ll need this list when we get down to step 6 in this section.)

2. Be brutally realistic about your present circumstances. List out your current debts (e.g., student loans, mortgage, credit card, etc.). List out your current roles (e.g., father, husband, coach, etc.). List out your current assets that may contribute to your dream (e.g., college degree, blog, network of friends, expertise in field, etc.). The goal of this is to paint the clearest, most honest picture of where you are right now. (See pages 35–43 for more background on this principle.)

3. Be wildly unrealistic about your future circumstances. We’re going to take dozens of steps toward our dream in the weeks to come, but right now, just free write every crazy thing you’d like to do (e.g., you’ve never played guitar before, but someday you want to play the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, Tennessee). Everything you wrote down during step 2 doesn’t exist.

4. Recognize that there will ALWAYS be tension in your life between steps 2 and 3. Do regular temperature checks to make sure you have not pendulum swung too far in either direction.

5. One of the first things that happens when we escape average is that we face the “great wall of purpose.” Which of the five purpose lies from pages 47–49 do you struggle with the most? (1. Everyone but you knows exactly what his is; 2. You’ll only have one; 3. You should have it figured out by the time you’re 22 years old; 4. It changes everything instantly; 5. You have to know the finish lines before you cross the starting line.)

6. Every big finish began with a small start. Looking at the results of your “average audit,” what’s an area where you want to make a small start? We tend to see the whole mountain first, not the first step. Write down a list of first steps you could take (e.g., lose one pound, update one section of your resume, ask one person on a date, etc.).

7. Write “Some beats none” on a Post-it note and place it on your alarm clock, computer, or fridge. When fear tells you that if you don’t have time to run five miles today, then you shouldn’t bother running two, remind it that “some beats none.”

8. Ask one successful person in your life if at the start of their journey they knew exactly where they’d be standing today. If they say, “No, of course not,” hug them and walk away encouraged. If they say, “Yes, of course! I predicted this years ago!” keep looking for someone honest.

9. Standing on the shoulders of a giant is one of the ways you can accelerate your journey down the road to awesome. Who in your life right now may be a giant? Someone who has already traveled the same path you’re on and could share some advice with you?

10. Write one giant in your life a thank-you note today. Nothing kills the toxin of ego like gratefulness, and we’ve all been helped by at least one person in our lives.

11. Before we jump into the land of Learning, make sure your feet are on the ground. Have you climbed the rungs of an entitlement ladder anywhere in your life? If you asked friends if you were on an entitlement ladder, what would they say?

The Land of Learning

1. Do a seventy-two-hour audit, writing down the thirty-minute chunks of time you spend over a three-day period (two work days and one weekend day). Example: Monday, thirty-minute commute, eight hours of work, one hour lunch break, etc. (If you have the patience to do a weeklong audit, that’s even better.)

2. Review the result of your audit and find your “5 a.m.,” which is thirty minutes you can rescue to work on your dream each week.

3. Immediately realize there are more than thirty minutes available. Rescue as much time as you want.

4. Create a clear picture of why you’re getting up early or staying up late to work on your dream. For example, I hate getting up early. But I tend to go to bed earlier if I remember that it means I get to write more in the morning, which I love doing. Be hyper-clear about the reward that is behind the work. Write in your journal, “I’m being selfish at 5 a.m. because ________.”

5. Write a list of all the things you won’t get done now that you’re focusing more on things that matter (e.g., “It will take me forty-eight hours to respond to emails instead of twenty-four hours because I’m going to work on my business plan instead of obsessively checking email.”). Don’t feel ashamed or guilty about what balls you may drop. Drop them on purpose.

6. Crash your plane. Answer the question, “If I died today, what would I regret not being able to do?” Write down one to five answers. If you have more, that’s fine; you may just need to spend more time in Editing (page 86).

7. Take your list from step 6 and honestly ask yourself, “Are those the things I’m spending time doing right now?” If the answer is yes, awesome. If the answer is no, ask yourself, “Why not?” What’s keeping you from doing those things?

8. Answer the question,“What can’t I stop doing?” (pages 91–92)

9. Be a student of you. Think back to the most successful project, idea, diet, or goal you ever completed. What did you learn about the way you work best in that situation that can be applied to this one? Example: I was able to lose weight when I had a team of people cheering me on. If I’m going to work on being awesome at ________, I need to put together a team of supporters in order to succeed (page 92).

10. Take what you learn from step 9 and apply it to every tactic I share going forward. If you work best with low details, go lower than I suggest. If you work best with high details, go more detailed in the actions I suggest. Customize this section of the book to your strengths.

11. Identify one small, nonfatal experiment you can do this week with your dream (page 100). Starting a blog is an example of a good one. Me starting an ad agency with a near stranger is a bad example because it proved to be fatal to our friendship.

12. Give yourself copious amounts of grace for the moments you will inevitably stumble back onto the road to average without realizing it. Perfection will tell you nobody else does that. That’s a lie. Perfect isn’t the goal or even possible. Awesome is, and even awesome makes mistakes along the way.

The Land of Editing

1. Ask this question first: “What gives me the most joy?” Don’t ask, “What am I good at right now?” or “What will make me the most money?” or “What will cause the least inconvenience in my life?”

2. What dream for you would actually be a park bench? What dream is your version of Frisbee golf (pages 110–11)? For instance, I wrote technical copy for companies for years, but that was a park bench for me. It was good work, and I got paid well, but it wasn’t something that fit what I felt called to do.

3. Finish this sentence: “This would never work, but I’ve always wanted to ____________.”

4. Find an anti-mentor—someone you never want to end up like. Write down what it is about their life that you fear will become true of yours. With that answer, what are some obvious steps you can take to ensure that doesn’t happen? (Side note: Never tell someone they are your anti-mentor. For some crazy reason, people don’t like that.)

5. Write a list of your diamonds (e.g., family, friendships, work, etc.) (pages 121–22).

6. Now write a list of your rocks (e.g., having zero emails in my inbox, taking care of my yard, keeping up with the Joneses, etc.).

7. Write down that same list, only this time use the time audit you did in the land of Learning as your guide. Are there any big discrepancies between what you think your diamonds are and what your calendar really says they are? If so, what do you want to do about them?

8. Have you ever chased someone else’s diamonds? Have you ever chased someone else’s dream because you were afraid to chase your own? Make sure the dream you’re editing is your own and not your mom’s, your dad’s, or a teacher’s you had who said, “You’d be good at __________.”

9. Go into the observatory tower and write a “wild success paragraph” for each diamond you identified in steps 5 and 7. If you were wildly successful with each idea, which one would generate the most joy in your life (and subsequently other people’s lives)?

10. Answer the “mountain climber questions.” What’s something you’d still do even if no one ever clapped? What’s something you’d still do if you never made a dollar? What’s something you’d still do if you never earned a second in the spotlight (pages 131–33)?

11. Create your own seesaw. If you had to pick two passions and put them on either side of a seesaw, which one would you want to win (pages 130–31)?

12. Build a “later list” to store all the good ideas you might explore the next time you edit your life.

13. Write a paragraph describing who your “secret self” really is (pages 133–34).

The Land of Mastering

1. Admit you feel like the only one who read this book and wasn’t able to find just one thing they want to master. Realize that’s not true and proceed with the tactics anyway.

2. Figure out if there’s a way to volunteer somewhere in order to get better at what you’re passionate about. If the answer is yes, decide if you have the time to do that.

3. Decide if there is a part-time job you could take to move you down the road to awesome. Don’t be so quick to dismiss this one if your goal isn’t career-related. If your goal is to lose weight and there’s a part-time job that would force you to be physically active, it may be a good fit.

4. Survey your life and decide if there’s ever been something you experienced that made you think, I could do that better. Was that the start of a dream that needs to be explored, like the taxi driver on pages 141–42, or just a fleeting observation?

5. Find and attend one event centered around whatever it is you’re trying to master.

6. Set a “rep” goal for the month. Write down every rep you do and what you learned from the experience (page 146).

7. Create a list of people who are doing what you’d like to do. Research one to three things from each of these people that you can incorporate into your own road to awesome.

8. Scribble down “Who said it?” and “Why did they say it?” on a Post-it note. Stick that note to your computer for the next time someone criticizes your dream.

9. Beat critic’s math by reversing the numbers. Take the negative feedback you received and divide it by all the positive feedback. For example, three Amazon one-star reviews of my last book divided by the total number of books I sold means 0.004 percent of people hated it. If my daughter got a 99.996 on a test, I wouldn’t worry about that 0.004 percent she missed. Find your real number and write it down. Then laugh at how silly it is to let 0.004 percent of people control your day.

10. Start a preemptive thank-you list. By the time you hit Harvesting, you may think you accomplished all of this on your own. You didn’t. Create a list of the people you need to thank when you are successful.

11. Start looking for a fellow traveler, someone who is hustling on their own dream. Mirror friends are critical, but a fellow traveler will have trench wisdom and advice that a mirror friend might not have.