A late forties executive, he shook his head and laughed.
That’s a gift and curse of FaceTime.
For most years we’ve worked together I couldn’t see his responses.
I’d just told him the name of a song that has been playing in my head recently.
It’s old, from 1984, I doubt I’ve even heard it for a decade.
But it’s a goodie.
And it’s REALLY been speaking to me these last couple months.
“Keep on moving”
Ain’t nothin’ gonna break my stride
Nobody gonna slow me down, oh no
I got to keep on moving
Ain’t nothin’ gonna break my stride
I’m running and I won’t touch ground
Oh no, I got to keep on moving
Do you remember this song, if you were even alive in 1984?
You can see why he laughed, can’t you?
Yet it was still a powerful reminder for him in these treacherous times.
Like Churchill said about hell, you’ve gotta keep on moving.
Here’s the video if you want to rock it out.
btw, it has some trippy dancers and amazing hair like this artist.
“But how can you feel your best about heading into a recession?”
That’s a question we got from this article last week on stopping being consumed by the debilitating fear in our world.
It’s a great question.
Few of us feel our best about heading into a recession.
And even fewer of us feel our best fearfully focusing on the future.
Besides, how many of us feel our best anyways?
Don’t you wonder why we are less than a shiny, happy species?
I wonder if it has anything to do with being served fear as an all day happy meal?
Food for fear
Our society is food for fear.
We’re apparently mystified by our worsening “mental health crisis,” which is exactly what you expect from this 1-2-3—
-
- Incessantly fill your head with mostly negative information
- Focus on unknowable things that feel bad that you can never influence
- Repeat as many seconds a day
About as mystifying as our obesity or loneliness epidemic, right?
Is this how it’s meant to be?
How your brain is supposed to be used?
You’re taught nothing about using this most magical machine, so perhaps this is right?
It’s a machine for filling with fear to be fear filled for the future?
Yet even if that’s right, I’m still thinking that some of us want to feel good about the future?
Heck, maybe this is taking it WAY too far these days, but perhaps even EXCITED?
When you work on Wall Street you have the same conversations over again.
Just like the brain has some 70,000 automatic thoughts a day, 70-90% that are negative and redundant, most conversations are too.
“Where do you think the economy is headed?”
That’s a question you can get pulled into all day every day.
One person shares their opinion.
Others thoughtfully deliberate.
Endless time is wasted.
0% certainty
The future is 100% unknowable.
Period.
Full stop.
We all know this, of course.
None of us have a crystal ball, and all that.
But because of the way our brains are set up and how you are socially conditioned, all day every day you can be “thinking” about the future.
This can be extremely valuable.
A magical thing about being human is the prefrontal cortex that gives your brain the unique ability to strategize, rationalize, plan ahead.
There is limitless value in this.
It is probabilistic thinking, preparing for different scenarios.
This is different to kidding yourself that you have any certainty whatsoever.
This is how I’m feeling these days.
Rocketing into the stratosphere.
We’ve gone supernova.
Hahahahaha.
I’m just playing around here.
But in many ways it does feel this way.
It’s very exciting.
Leap to hyperspace
This feeling for me started a couple months ago when this article from a couple years ago kept getting hit on the website.
It’s from my September Man upgrade that is now a continuous upgrade.
When I read it I cringed a bit.
It takes a pretty aggressive frame but it also does lay out a method for leaping to hyperspace.
Back then we executed this leap, btw, to tremendous effect.
And I feel it building again.
Leaping hyperspace.
Living supernova.
Still I’m just taking steps.
Exploring this magical journey wherever it leads.
I never set out to do this work in the world, let alone to build programs on the brain or reality constructing.
Certainly not to focus on the future of our species.
Beginning this work 22 years ago I MERELY wanted to know how you live the life you TRULY want.
It seemed like the most obvious thing to me.
So I just started taking steps.
Down the rabbit hole
See, this is ALL that got me started on these topics.
I didn’t get it anymore.
Since I “woke up” in high school and creating your best life became my obsession it had seemed obvious.
Work hard in school.
Get the best job you can.
Do your best work.
Keep creating your best life.
Simple, right?
It all made sense, until it didn’t.
Have you learned things in life that have changed so much for you?
Of course I know you have, and here I’m trying to get specific with you.
That some or even just 1 of these things might have fundamentally changed you and your life.
You were just going along as you had been.
Like you used to think or feel or behave a certain way.
And then you learned some or just 1 thing that changed you forever.
Perhaps rapidly.
This is 1
1 thing I struggle with in all of my work is how to convey it.
There are things that I’ve come to know that I can’t say how I know.
Or there are things that have been so fundamentally transforming for me but I don’t know how to get the message across.
A problem is that these concepts can all seem to make sense at a certain level.
You think that you really get it.
And then, some thing clicks in a way that you REALLY get it.
It’s like a deepening or insight or knowing.
Once you get this, everything changes.
And it can be the same for ALL humanity.
A client just needs one special quote to get fired up.
He can get it from just about anywhere.
For him a single burst of inspiration propels a LONG way.
Personally, my brain demands more fuel.
I need 73 🙂
What’s in a quote?
Not much, one may say.
Or you might say that some quotes contain so much more than one can convey.
This quote you see at the top of this page, for instance, is one of my favorite, by educator John A Shedd in 1928—
“A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.”
Powerful idea, isn’t it?
You see that it forces your brain to consider risk a certain way, doesn’t it?
This is why we used it to “reframe” taking risk in this program for Rocketing To the Top like Musk and Bezos.
Most often in life you’re told what you can’t do.
In fact, one might say that most of your life is this way.
From the day they’re born to the day they die most people live by other people’s rules.
Living within the limits of what the world thinks is possible, you never learn what is TRULY possible for you.
Let alone when you’re the one limiting yourself.
Limited brain
In fields of excellence you come across the notion of limiting beliefs.
These are beliefs that limit and hold you back.
Unfortunately, what’s most missed on this topic is that it’s never just beliefs limiting you.
You are limited by the ENTIRE brain.
It is a limited machine.
Mostly operating to keep you safe, it’s mostly commanding what you can’t do, mostly governing what is possible for you.
But that limited brain only knows the limits of its cognition, rather than the limits of what is truly possible.
Are there things that you want to do but you fail to get yourself doing them?
Perhaps they are old habits you’re “trying” to change?
Or you have actions you’ve decided to take, yet you fail to get yourself consistently taking them?
Maybe you give it your best shot for a while and then it’s hard to keep it up?
Perhaps you find yourself resisting these actions?
Or even avoiding them altogether?
What to do?
This is the topic I was writing about here on MORFOCUS.
See, the bigger challenge for me and most my clients is different to this thing we typically call focus.
It’s beyond the obvious things such as prioritizing, organizing, shutting off distractions, etc.
Because it comes back to the emotional thing—
Discomfort.
Sometimes just thinking about your goals can feel uncomfortable.
Taking your best actions can be uncomfortable.
Even when you “want” to do them or have “decided” they matter it can still be hard to get yourself focused on what is uncomfortable to do.
What would you say is the hardest part to achieving what you TRULY want?
Often people tell me it is knowing what you want.
For sure this can be hard.
In fact, it was so hard for me that this question hijacked my life 22 years ago, and led me to build The System for achieving what you truly want, even if you don’t know what this is.
So, certainly, I agree this can be hard.
But I’d suggest that what comes with it is much, much harder—
Knowing how you ACTUALLY achieve it, as quickly as possible.
How, REALLY, how?
For ACTUALLY achieving, this is the ONLY question that counts, isn’t it?
Certainly there are lots of people who are interested in these topics in theory.
But if you’re serious about actually achieving what you truly want, being certain on how is ALL that counts.
How certain would you say you are?
Do you know exactly how you achieve?
Meaning, you know with CERTAINTY the actions that drive the success you want?
Or is it less clear for you?
You see so much opportunity left on the table.
Last week I spoke to a leader of a tech company.
Her industry is on fire.
Growing faster than ever.
It’s her time to seize this opportunity.
Yet she’s holding herself back from going for it.
It was clear why.
She’s afraid
Afraid of getting it wrong.
Scared that if she pushes for what she wants she’ll be perceived as “too ambitious.”
Hahahahahaha.
Can you believe that?
I literally laughed out loud when she said it.
“Too ambitious?”
These are the sorts of fears you can have these days.
It’s such a loser time.
Are you limiting yourself?
Placing limits on what you perceive is possible, do you limit what is possible for you?
Keep in mind—
Our most advanced scientists never even know the limits of what is possible.
In fact, they never even know what makes up your reality.
Brain blown
It’s brain blowing when you go deep into neuroscience.
You learn how little we know about the brain.
Quantum physics is the same.
Scientists observe things that make zero sense to your logical brain.
Lacking any way of knowing what is truth our best scientists are STUCK not knowing.
Yet the rest of us are taught a simpler, more black and white view.
This is the case with consciousness.
You are taught to “know” that you are conscious.
And given a certain understanding of what this is.
While top scientists who deeply research these topics have zero clue what this is.
There are signs on my walls and desk.
Most of them are now covert.
Hieroglyphs.
A hidden language to anyone who doesn’t know the signs.
And then there are far more overt signs.
Ones that you can never avoid reading.
8 page banner
Each page is just one letter.
Helvetica, 600 font, yellow bold with black highlighting like the “F” you see on this page.
They are taped together all Gucci-like around the base of my desk—
M
O
R
F
O
C
U
S
Yes, without “E,” for efficiency.
