The Rocky Song, Gonna Fly Now, has only a few lyrics—
Getting strong now
It’s so hard now
Trying hard now
Getting strong now
Do you see what’s implied in this?
Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger—
Work it harder
Make it better
Do it faster
Makes us stronger
See it here again?
What’s implied is that getting strong is a result of what we do.
We work it harder, make it better, do it faster…
This makes us stronger.
I’ve been studying for a competition.
It has the type of questions that require simple memorized answers like—
What year did the Yankees win their first world series?
“Gnome” is my answer.
In a system I learned nearly 2 decades ago for quickly memorizing numbers.
You turn the numerals into letters and then words that you associate to the content.
2 being N. 3 being M.
It’s a phonetic system, so the vowels are silent as is the “G.”
To link the number to the question, I see a Yankees player beating the heck out of a garden gnome.
You could do this a million different ways, and ultimately, the more “memorable,” the more it sticks in your brain.
I haven’t done this type of memorizing for years.
Nor used this memory technique so deliberately.
But it’s still stuck in my brain.
Our lives are full of ups and downs, aren’t they?
Sometimes things feel as good as they can be.
Other times, well, life can feel real hard, can’t it?
As the Buddha put it, life is suffering.
These bodies and minds we’re born into, deteriorate.
Respond to every drop, curve our roller coaster world goes into.
Yet tossed around on the surface of the ocean, we can still remember the calm deep that lays beneath.
Twirling round with this familiar parable
Spinning, weaving round each new experience
Recognize this as a holy gift and celebrate this chance to be alive and breathing
The chance to be alive and breathing
Point being…
No matter what life tosses at us, we have this one chance to experience each moment.
And depending on your beliefs, something far deeper beyond.
Headline—”Democrats See Weak Spots in 2020.”
They’re only just seeing that?
I pay as much attention to politics as a headline that flashes across the TV I see on the ab bench at the gym.
I’ve never watched any of the candidates speak…
Just from their t-shirts and headlines it’s obvious they lack winning campaigns.
But everyone knew that, right?
When the 2020 Democratic presidential contest kicked off earlier this year, the massive field was hailed as the most diverse in history, with candidates who spanned the ideological spectrum and offered enough in a broad buffet of options to entice any voter. But after 10 months of campaigning and 15 hours of nationally televised debates, another emotion is rising: anxiety.
Seriously?
Did anyone ever see the stacked Democratic field full of contenders?
Everyone I’ve talked to on the left and right saw 20 odd distractions, with 2, maybe 3 candidates.
As I wrote before I got bored of myself on it—No Hope. No Choice. No Fun
It’s a bizarre way for a team to go after the championship.
And with all them attacking each other, so not fun for a party.
But in all fairness the shallow field is just like 2016.
Back then it was a few others I bet you can’t name, with a distant Bernie and Hillary the only choice.
Better now…
They’re the only lyrics worth me citing from Post Malone’s track Better Now.
As you know I only use lyrics about personal development.
When his song deteriorates into the typical love you girl pop.
If I were writing for Post I’d say, man you can keep getting better now.
Coz, well, who wants to be…
Worse now…
None of us want to sing along to that, do we?
No parent has a bumper sticker—My kid failed 4th grade.
Or My son was dropped from the synchronized swimming team.
No adult brags—I’m into personal stagnation, operating at a fraction of my potential.
No one proudly posts a picture on LinkedIn with their little glass award for worst performer in the company.
Everyone likes to sing how they’re better now.
But how many of us actually are?
Is how many highly successful people are unfulfilled.
Not to name names.
But even some of the most accomplished leaders will never be satisfied with what they’ve achieved.
Never escape the feeling of lack.
Feeling there’s something they didn’t do.
Need to do.
It used to be shocking to me how few winners feel like they’ve made it.
Not a problem with us humans.
Our lack of perspective.
Being ungrateful.
Missing purpose or meaning.
Failing to honoring our success.
Giving more.
Achieving that next thing.
In fact it’s not about us at all.
But how we’ve been wired.
And conditioned to think and feel.
Not many people aspire to be weaker, do they?
Yet, how many are willing to do what it takes to be stronger?
Physically, emotionally, mentally.
More capable.
Requires doing things many are unwilling to do.
You don’t get stronger lifting a puny weight.
In the same way you fail to get stronger doing things that are easy for you.
We get stronger doing hard things that challenge us.
Push us beyond our old limits.
You test the capacity of a truck by loading it up and seeing where it buckles.
And us humans must test our limits the same way too.
Sadly, terrified of buckling, many of us fail to risk getting stronger.
Raps Kanye in his track, Stronger.
Sampling Daft Punk’s, Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger.
In my ears they’re both preaching personal development.
A craft that is easily confused with a motivational speech.
Cool sounding TED talk.
Podcast. Inspirational tweet.
Is REALLY about getting harder, better, faster, stronger.
How many of us strive to be—
Softer.
Worse.
Slower.
Weaker?
How many of us pick up a self-help book for fun?
Watch an inspirational video or podcast coz we can’t think of anything better to do?
We do it because we’re looking for more in our lives.
Yet, how do we?
Get beyond the noise and actually get harder, better, faster, stronger?
We often talk about living our greatest life.
But what does this even mean?
When I get here. When I get there. When I get it done.
Looking forward. Looking back.
It’s all too far in the future.
Your greatest life is right here.
Minutes. Hours. Days. Weeks. Months. Years.
Are too long.
Living your most amazing life you live inside the seconds.
Every second is your life.
Why wouldn’t you want to make every second count?
This life of ours can never be lived then.
The only moment you can be living your most amazing life is now.
“I’ve been working since I was 10 years old,” a top Wall Street lawyer said to me.
Reaching that point when it’s time to move on he’s hardly excited about it.
To say the least.
“I love working,” he says.
It’s an end.
At his level and for many people I know it’s not about the money.
They’ve made plenty of money, and they’re lucky to work for more important reasons.
Being productive.
Challenged.
Engaged.
Contributing things of value.
Sure plenty of them still love making more money, yet we all work for so much more, don’t we?
“Like waiting tables as a kid,” he says, “taught me more about human nature than 40 years practicing law!”
Selling ourselves can be hard, can’t it?
It holds us back.
Many of us being humble tend to understate our strengths.
Downplay our achievements.
Imagine if companies sold to us this way.
TV camera pans to an obese man sitting alone on a sofa.
Filthy sweatpants, belly hanging out of stain drenched t-shirt.
As the scene opens you see the living room is a pigsty.
Shades drawn, TV flickering the only light.
Eyeing a brochure on diabetes he mumbles to himself, Doctor has no idea what he’s talking about.
Reaching down he picks up a 2 liter bottle of Coke and downs it one go.
Slogan rolls… Coke, diabetes and obesity in one gulp.
It may be true enough but they’d never sell their product that way.
Outrage is the new happy.
At a time in human history our lives have never been better you might think it’s never been worse.
The economy is still on a tear.
Living standards are the best they’ve ever been, everywhere.
Our lives only get better and better.
Yet so few of us humans ever get happier.
Anger.
Outrage.
Loneliness.
Anxiety.
Fear.
These are the daily killers of the human race.
We constantly blame it on something wrong out there, but it’s only going on in here.
A challenge some people face in retiring is what it means.
Who are you now?
How do you stay relevant?
Engaged?
Be someone of value in the world?
A Goldman Sachs partner said to me—
I saw Hank [Paulson] walking down the street and I felt sorry for him.
I thought to myself…
He was CEO of Goldman Sachs.
Treasury Secretary.
Now he’s just a guy on the street.
I love Hank and I felt bad thinking that, but really what I’m saying is what does retiring mean for me?
The drama with WeWork highlights a theme as old as humanity.
It’s not that for some rational reason investors changed their view of the company.
It’s that investors have never been rational.
As long as investors are in a frenzy they’ll justify anything.
Until, well, they don’t.
Real Estate tycoon, Sam Zell, said it well…
More or less, what does WeWork actually have that’s of value?
Cash burning business.
A model that has failed every single time.
Offset by…
Wait for it…
Being cool.
Being cool like Theranos you can get away with just about anything until you can’t.
We often talk about being open minded, don’t we?
Wanting to unlock our potential.
See another person’s perspective.
The world through another’s eyes.
For some people it comes more naturally, but for most of us it can take some training.
We live in an increasingly polarized world.
Left or right.
Black or white.
Binary or not binary.
Climate change believer or denier, etc.
This tears our world apart, but ultimately has nothing to do with our world.
Only the way our brains are wired.
Like a computer—0,1.
Roger Moore’s James Bond was a gentleman spy.
Daniel Craig’s is an assassin.
He may have a licence to kill but he’s got nothing on bankers.
I spend time around SEALs and other trained killers.
None talk about killing more than bankers.
She’s a total killer.
A commercial killer.
Some are ’00s, commercial assassins.
Unfortunately, however, many bankers only ever kill trees making useless books.
They’ll never earn their licence to kill because nobody teaches them how.
Like most great spiritual teachers he’s a storyteller.
Often avoiding direct answers his stories convey what you need.
I met with him to discuss a leap I was making.
Back then I felt stuck.
There were moves I didn’t know how to make.
Things I wasn’t able to do.
I only knew to continue.
After we met I sat in a filmed studio session he was hosting.
I don’t recall where he started but like a dream soon we had arrived here.
“Do you know the caterpillar doesn’t become a butterfly?” he provoked the audience.
When the caterpillar goes into its chrysalis it doesn’t know why.
It’s living its nature.
Building a protective shell encasing itself inside.
It cannot know why.
Nor what it will emerge to be.
She asked me, rhetorically.
She knew the answer but it was still elusive for her.
“There is no when, is there?” she said shyly.
When I get that house.
When I get paid.
When I get the big job.
When I’ve built my business.
When I’m in shape.
When I find someone to marry.
When things with my spouse are better.
When. When. When. When. When. When. When.
Us humans are full of whens yet…
Where do you find that crazy job you truly want?
How do you hunt it down?
Best get yourself in front of opportunities?
It’s the hardest problem salespeople spend their lives solving.
Often we think of selling as what you do when you have a prospect in front of you.
When in fact most the sale happened way before that.
In the way a top salesperson prepares for the sale.
Developing collateral.
If they’re a real pro, laying out their best ideas in a selling Black Book.
But FAR MORE importantly…
In the way they target their hungry buyers.
Kids in Africa.
India.
Half the damn world.
They are TRYING to survive.
It was 2001.
The Internet bubble had burst.
Goldman’s Silicon Valley office I’d relocated to was being slashed.
It didn’t make sense to me.
Is this as good as it gets?
All these people who’ve given their life to this business just trying to survive?