The 50th Law (23 page)

ATTUNE YOURSELF TO THE DETAILS

As a young student-artist in late fifteenth-century Italy, Michelangelo had to confront a personal limitation. He had grand concepts of things he wanted to paint and sculpt, but not the requisite skill. He looked at the masterpieces of other artists and wanted his own work to have a similar aura and effect, but he was frustrated at the flatness and conventionality of what he created. He tried an experiment: he began to copy his favorite masterworks down to the smallest brush stroke, and he discovered that the effect he had so admired was embedded in certain details—the way these artists were able to make figures or landscapes come to life by their intense attention to the fine points. And so began a remarkable apprenticeship to his craft that would last the rest of his life and completely alter his way of thinking.

In creating his sculptures, he became obsessed with bone structure, but the books and techniques on the subject seemed woefully inadequate. He started dissecting human corpses, one after another. This gave him a profound feel for human anatomy that he could now reproduce in his work. He developed an interest in texture, how each kind of fabric would fold in its own way. He worked on perfecting his reproduction of clothes. He extended these studies of detail to animals and how they moved. When he was commissioned to do his larger pieces, he avoided that old temptation of beginning with some grand concept—instead he looked at the material he was to work with, the space, the individual figures that might comprise it, and from there he would conceive the overall shape and effect. In this intense attention to detail, Michelangelo seemed to have discovered the secret for making his figures come to life in a way that exceeded any other artist of his time.

Often when you begin a project of any kind, it is from the wrong end. You tend to think first of what you want to accomplish, imagining the glory and money it will bring you if it succeeds. You then proceed to make this concept come to life. But as you go forward you often lose patience, because the small steps to get there are not nearly as exciting as the ambitious visions in your head. You must try instead the opposite approach, which can lead to very different results. You have a project you wish to bring to life, but you begin by immersing yourself in the details of the subject or field. You look at the materials you have to work with, the tastes of your target audience, and the latest technical advances in the field. You take pleasure in going deeper and deeper into these fine points—your research is intense. From this knowledge, you shape the project itself, grounding it in reality rather than in airy concepts in your head. Operating this way helps you slow your mind down and develop patience for detailed work, an essential skill for mastering any craft.

REDISCOVER YOUR NATURAL PERSISTENCE

This is the dilemma we all face: to accomplish anything worthwhile in life generally takes some time—often in blocks of years. But we are creatures who find it very hard to manage such long periods. We are immersed in the day-to-day; our emotions fluctuate with each encounter. We have immediate desires we are constantly working to satisfy. In that long period of time that we need to reach a goal, we are assailed by a thousand distractions and temptations that seem more interesting. We lose sight of our objectives and end up following some detour. This is the source of so many of the failures in our lives.

To force yourself past any obstacle or temptation, you must be persistent. As children we all had this quality because we were single-minded; you must simply rediscover and redevelop this character trait. First, you must understand the role that your energy level plays in mastering a process and bringing something to completion. If you take on added goals or new tasks, your focus will be broken up and you will never attain what you wanted in the first place. You cannot persist on two or three paths, so avoid that temptation. Second, try breaking things up into smaller blocks of time. You have a large goal, but there are steps along the way, and steps within the steps. These steps represent months instead of years. Reaching these smaller goals gives you a sense of tangible reward and progress. This will make it easier for you to resist any diversions along the way and fearlessly push ahead. Remember: anything will give way to a sustained, persistent attack on your part.

Reversal of Perspective

We generally experience boredom as something painful and to be avoided at all costs. From childhood on, we develop the habit of immediately looking for some activity to kill the feeling. But this activity, if repeated often enough, becomes boring as well. And so for our entire lives we must search and search for novel amusements—new friends, new trends to latch on to, new forms of entertainment, new religions or causes to believe in. This search might lead us to change our careers and set us on a path of meandering here and there, in search of something to dull the sensation. But in all of these cases, the root of the problem is not boredom itself but our relationship to it.

Try to look at boredom from the opposite perspective—as a call for you to slow yourself down, to stop searching for endless distractions. This might mean forcing yourself to spend time alone, overcoming that childish inability to sit still. When you work through such self-imposed boredom, you will find your mind clicks into gear—new and unexpected thoughts will come to you to fill the void. To feel inspired you must first experience a moment of emptiness. Use such moments to assess the day that went by, to measure where you are headed. It is a relief to not feel that constant need for outside entertainment.

On a higher level of this reeducation, you might choose a book to overcome your boredom, but instead of reading being a passive process of diversion, you actively mentally engage the author in an argument or discussion, making the book come to life in your head. At a further point, you take up a side activity—cultural or physical—that requires a repetitive process to master. You discover a calming effect in the repetitive element itself. In this way, boredom becomes your great ally. It helps you to slow things down, develop patience and self-discipline. Through this process you will be able to withstand the inevitable empty moments of life and convert them into your own private pleasures.

NOW THERE ARE…INDIVIDUALS WHO WOULD RATHER PERISH THAN WORK WITHOUT TAKING PLEASURE IN THEIR WORK; THEY ARE CHOOSY…AND HAVE NO USE FOR AMPLE REWARDS IF THE WORK IS NOT ITSELF THE REWARD OF REWARDS…. THEY DO NOT FEAR BOREDOM AS MUCH AS WORK WITHOUT PLEASURE; INDEED, THEY NEED A LOT OF BOREDOM IF THEIR WORK IS TO SUCCEED. FOR…ALL INVENTIVE SPIRITS, BOREDOM IS THAT DISAGREEABLE “LULL” OF THE SOUL THAT PRECEDES A HAPPY VOYAGE AND CHEERFUL WINDS.

—Friedrich Nietzsche

Push Beyond Your Limits—Self-Belief

YOUR SENSE OF WHO YOU ARE WILL DETERMINE YOUR ACTIONS AND WHAT YOU END UP GETTING IN LIFE. IF YOU SEE YOUR REACH AS LIMITED, THAT YOU ARE MOSTLY HELPLESS IN THE FACE OF SO MANY DIFFICULTIES, THAT IT IS BEST TO KEEP YOUR AMBITIONS LOW, THEN YOU WILL RECEIVE THE LITTLE THAT YOU EXPECT. KNOWING THIS DYNAMIC, YOU MUST TRAIN YOURSELF FOR THE OPPOSITE—ASK FOR MORE, AIM HIGH, AND BELIEVE THAT YOU ARE DESTINED FOR SOMETHING GREAT. YOUR SENSE OF SELF-WORTH COMES FROM YOU ALONE—NEVER THE OPINION OF OTHERS. WITH A RISING CONFIDENCE IN YOUR ABILITIES, YOU WILL TAKE RISKS THAT WILL INCREASE YOUR CHANCES OF SUCCESS. PEOPLE FOLLOW THOSE WHO KNOW WHERE THEY ARE GOING, SO CULTIVATE AN AIR OF CERTAINTY AND BOLDNESS.

The Hustler’s Ambition

LET ME POINT OUT TO YOU THAT FREEDOM IS NOT SOMETHING THAT ANYBODY CAN BE GIVEN; FREEDOM IS SOMETHING PEOPLE TAKE AND PEOPLE ARE AS FREE AS THE WANT TO BE.

—James Baldwin

Curtis Jackson’s mother, Sabrina, had one powerful ambition in her life—to somehow make enough money to move her and her son far away from the hood. She had had Curtis when she was fifteen, and the only reasonable outlet at that age for making any good money was dealing drugs. It was a particularly dangerous life for a female hustler, and so she built up an intimidating presence to protect herself. She was tougher and more fearless than many of the male dealers. Her only soft spot was her son—she wanted a different fate for him than hustling. To shelter him from the life she led, she had him stay with her parents in Southside Queens. As often as possible, she would show up with presents for the boy and to keep an eye on him. Some day soon they would move to a better place.

As part of a drug beef, Sabrina was murdered at the age of twenty-three, and from that moment on, it looked like Curtis’s fate in this world had been sealed. He was now essentially alone—no parents or real mentor to give him a sense of direction. It seemed almost certain that the following scenario would play itself out: He would drift towards life on the streets. To prove his toughness, he would eventually have to resort to violence and crime. He would find his way into the prison system, and he would probably return for several stints. His life would basically be confined to this neighborhood, and as he got older he could turn to drugs or alcohol to see him through, or at best a series of menial jobs. All the statistics on parentless children growing up in such an environment pointed towards this limited and bleak future.

And yet in his mind something much different was taking shape. With his mother gone, he spent more and more time alone and began to indulge himself in fantasies that carried him far beyond his neighborhood. He saw himself as a leader of some sort, perhaps in business or in war. He visualized in great detail the places where he would live, the cars he would drive, the outside world he would some day explore. It was a life of freedom and possibility. But these were not mere fantasies—they were real; they were destined to happen. He could see them clearly. Most important, he felt that his mother was looking after him—her energy and ambition were inside him now.

Oddly enough, he would follow in her footsteps with the same plan—to hustle and get out of the game. To avoid her fate he forged an intense belief that nothing could stop him—not a gunshot, the schemes of other hustlers, or the police. These streets would not confine him.

In May of 2000, Curtis (now known as 50 Cent) somehow survived the nine bullets that a hired assassin had pumped into his body. The timing of the attack had been particularly poignant—after years of hustling on the streets and in music, his first album had been about to come out. But then in the aftermath of the shooting, Columbia Records canceled the album and dropped him from the label. He would have to start all over. In the months to come, as he lay in bed recovering from his wounds, he began to reconstruct himself mentally, much as he had done after the murder of his mother. He saw in his mind, in even fresher detail than ever, the path he would now have to take. He would conquer the rap world with a mix-tape campaign the likes of which no one had ever seen before. It would come from his intense energy, his persistence, the even tougher sound he would create, and the image he would now project of an indestructible gangsta.

Within a year of the shooting, he was on his way to making this vision a reality. His first songs hit the streets and created a sensation. As he progressed on this path, however, he saw one very large impediment still blocking his path: the assassins were looking to finish the job and they could show up at any moment. Fifty was forced to keep a low profile and stay on the run, but this feeling of being hunted was intolerable. He would not live this way, and so he decided that what he needed was a group of tight-knit disciples who would help protect him and overcome his sense of isolation.

To make this a reality, he told his closest friends to convene a meeting in his grandparents’ house in Southside Queens. They were to invite his most fervent fans in the neighborhood—the young men whom they knew to be loyal and dependable. And they should all bring guns to help secure the street before Fifty showed up.

When Fifty finally entered the living room of his grandparents’ house the day of the meeting, he could feel the energy and excitement. The space was filled with over twenty young men, all ready to do his bidding. He began by painting for them his precise vision of the future. His music now was hot, but it was going to get a lot hotter. Within two more years, he was certain to land a major record deal. In his head, he already could hear the songs for his first record, visualize the cover and the overall concept—it was to be the story of his life. This record, he assured them, would be an astronomical success, because he had figured out a kind of formula for how to make and market hit songs. He was not the usual rap star, he explained. He was not in this for the bling or the attention, but for the power. He would take the money from the record sales to establish his own businesses. This was destiny—everything in his life was meant to happen as it did, including the assassination attempt, including this very meeting that afternoon.

He was going to forge a business empire and he wanted to take all of them with him. Whatever any of them wanted, he would provide, as long as they proved themselves dependable and shared his sense of purpose. They could be rappers on the record label he would establish or road managers for his tours; or they could go to college and get a degree—he would pay for it all. You are like my pack of wolves, he explained, but none of this will happen if the alpha wolf is killed. What he asked for was their help—in providing security, in keeping him in touch with what was happening on the streets, and in doing some of the legwork for the promotion and distribution of his mix-tapes. He needed followers and he had chosen them.

Almost all of them agreed to the proposal, and over the years to come many of them stayed on to gain important positions within his expanding empire. And if they ever stopped to think about it, it was uncanny how close the future had come to resemble the picture he had painted so many years before.