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Geoff Blades

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Is Passion Enough?

“Follow your passion.”

I don’t know how many self-help junkies I’ve heard say that, as if it was a deep, actionable insight that escaped most people.

The problem I have with people who say “Follow your passion” isn’t that it’s bad advice (it is) or that it’s skin-deep pseudo-philosophy (it’s also that). My problem with people who tell others that all they need to do is follow their passion is that they hurt people.

Passion is a wonderful, critical component to success and a fulfilling life. But a component on its own is useless, and passion by itself is simply not enough.

Prescribing “follow your passion” as a complete life philosophy is like teaching a young person to drive by saying “push the gas.”

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The 1 Thing No One Wants To Admit About Success

What is success to you? Money? “Freedom”?

Doing something meaningful? What is that?

There’s lots of reasons to chase success, but there’s one they don’t talk about.

We live in a culture where we build cults of personality around our most successful people. We put their inspirational quotes on our walls. We share “motivational” memes on Facebook. We watch Rocky montages every morning.

Well, some of us…

Rocky

The point is, we’re very comfortable fetishizing the hard work that goes into success. We know it doesn’t come easy. We know success is a grind. We love the distraction of the hustle.

But there’s one aspect of success that we all know, somewhere deep inside, that we don’t say out loud:

We all know success is empty.

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The Ultimate Guide To Using Role Models

High performers learn from other high performers. If you want to manifest a change in your life or achieve a certain goal, the best thing you can do is study people who have already done it.

I’ve been fortunate enough to have worked with many hundreds of highly successful people.

Yet I’ve found that there are small things that distinguish the most successful few. One of those is role models.

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Some Great Carnegie Principles for Leading

I keep on my desk a summary of Dale Carnegie’s principles from his famous book, How to Win Friends and Influence People.

In his book he has some 30 simple principles you can easily use that he boils down to short statements like, “Give honest and sincere appreciation.”

I keep them as a reminder for myself and sometimes I work through them with my clients, such as today.

My client is having a difficult situation with one of her senior managers.

The manager has clearly made some mistakes, my client could have managed her better, but at this point my client wants to get the relationship back on the road.

After talking about it for a little bit, we went into each of Carnegie’s principles for being a leader.

It was a hugely constructive way for us to resolve this, and I thought some of you might benefit from reminding yourself of these principles too:

Be a Leader: How to Change People Without Giving Offense or Arousing Resentment

  1. Begin with praise and honest appreciation.
  2. Call attention to people’s mistakes indirectly.
  3. Talk about your own mistakes before criticizing the other person.
  4. Ask questions instead of giving direct orders.
  5. Let the other person save face.
  6. Praise every improvement. 
  7. Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to.
  8. Use encouragement. Make the fault seem easy to correct.
  9. Make the other person happy about doing what you suggest.

Why Being "Crazy" Is The Only Way To Evolve

Those of you who have been around here for a while and know how I roll, know that part of my life is exploring how deep the rabbit hole goes.

It’s “crazy” to tell a “normal” person that you do meditation and hypnosis a couple of hours a day because you perceive that world to be deeper than this one, but that’s the truth of how I live.

I’m not into wasting time reading the news or Facebook or some other crap that people waste their time on.

I avoid their programming. I’m into programming that makes my life better.  

And I know that those of you who are serious about evolving beyond this monkey brain and body that we find ourselves shoved into feel the same.

So, I invite you to a game I’ve been playing with myself for a couple of months.

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Doing Great Things Isn’t Always Great

I saw this chart on LinkedIn, so I decided to rip it off and put it here.

Although it’s small, I hope you can get the notion.

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I’ve personally experienced this journey a number of times, and many of my friends and clients have too.

They say it takes decades to become an overnight success, and this shows you how it happens.

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The 1% Aren’t Winning, But These 5 Entrepreneurs Are

The 1% aren’t winning. I say it over and over again in my work, but it’s a tough pill for most people to swallow.

Intellectually, we can understand that money is not the same as happiness. But on some basic level we are all taught to equate financial success with life success. No matter what our cultural programming, it’s a statistical fact that 2/3rds of workers in America, regardless of class, admit to being unhappy in their job.

But if the 1% aren’t winning, who is?

The builders. Creators. Sure, many of them may not yet have the success that they want, but they are living a life of purpose, driven by a vision and passion to make the world a better place.

Here are five of my favorite builders:

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How Being Mission-Focused Makes You Recession-Proof

Everyone has an opinion on surviving a recession. You remember all those terrible news spots and articles in 2008:

  • “Everyone should own a liquor store, downturns never affect them!”
  • “You should work in healthcare. Even broke people get sick!”
  • “Just start a dropshipping company and sell fake purses. It always works!”

And underlying all that advice is one thing:

Happiness in your career and life is irrelevant, just so long as you feel a little safer financially.

If that’s how you feel about your life, then there’s no reason for you to read ahead. Happily  stagnate forever. If you want to live a life where you are constantly moving forward, where you are always bettering yourself and moving towards what you truly want, then read on.

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How Did Trump Win?

Right after the credit bubble burst in 2008, shocked, people scrambled desperately for answers.

Turning to the economists, nearly all of whom failed to predict the deepest recession in decades, they asked, “What will happen next?”

Having seen the obvious writing on the enormous wall of debt shadowing the world, and positioned myself perfectly in a distressed debt investing job, I found it terribly amusing.

If the world’s “smartest” economists couldn’t even see the credit crisis coming, then, how would they have any clue about where we are now headed?

Obama And Trump Won The Same Way

I won’t even turn on the TV or Internet to watch the mostly useless talking heads endlessly debate how “this could have happened.”

Nearly all of them had absolutely no clue before, so, why on earth would they see it any more clearly today?

They won’t. You can already see them blaming Wikileaks, or whatnot.

They will cry in their lattes, but most of them will never get how Trump pulled this off, because they never bothered to ask how Barack Obama did it.

Mesmerized by his nice sounding words, and slow, melodic voice, buying into the meme of the messiah, they simply failed to see they were being influenced.

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Trump Vs. Clinton: How Propaganda Becomes Fact

I am often reminded of the difference between how we like to think the world works, and how it really works.

Years ago when we were doing some work for a public pension fund I learned that in some government jobs there’s a standard racket.

Pensions are set off their final year income, so it’s standard to jack up your overtime in your final year before retirement, so you not only earn more that year, but every year for the rest of your life.

To those who do it, it’s just part of the racket, it’s normal. It’s still wrong.

When you hear stuff like that you think, ugh, it just sucks that otherwise ethical people accept that as truth.

What is Truth?

There’s a lot of that in this election.

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How To Quit Your Job (And Still Win)

You’re going to quit at least one job in your life, probably several. In fact, 2.8 million Americans quit their jobs every month. You know what’s heartbreaking about that statistic?

Virtually none of those 2.8 million people know how to quit their job and still win.

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3 Things That Hold Many of Us Back

Inside we all have a vision for our lives and who we dream to be.

For some of us this is an extension of our current path, but for many of us, going after what we truly want requires a deliberate shift, which can be hard to do.

Not only must we find the fuel to drive ourselves forward, but often we too must remove those things that hold us back.

If you try to drive your car while the handbrake is still tightly gripping the wheels, you’ll hardly get anywhere, and going after what you truly want is much the same way.

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Need a Shot of Mojo?

One of my advisors has an interesting take on where she thinks many professionals are stuck.

She says, particularly in the drag race that is New York, many hard charging men and women have had the mojo beaten out of them.

Whereas most of us started our careers feeling unstoppable, somewhere in our twenties and thirties, after sustaining inevitable setbacks, many of us feel like we’ve lost a step.

And while it can sometimes feel like that mojo got left behind with Austin Powers, like a well-driven Aston Martin that has taken a few dings over the years, often we only need a little touch-up.

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Fill Your Windshield

I started listening to podcasts.

For years I’ve known that plenty of people are putting out great content on podcasts, but, quite frankly, I haven’t made the time to listen.

It was my loss. I’m listening now.

This weekend I listened to The Unmistakable Creative podcast with Srini Rao interviewing author of The Talent Code, Dan Coyle. 

He shared many fascinating insights on unlocking human performance, and there was one particular metaphor that deeply stuck with me. 

Throughout the podcast, Dan talked about “filling your windshield,” meaning, what you are looking at, with the people and things that you want to be your reality. 

In describing how people develop quickly in “talent hot beds,” Dan uses the example of a skateboard park. 

Every day, kids are surrounded by better skaters, going for it, ripping new tricks. And, up and coming skaters can be constantly filling their windshield with these role models. 

When they are in the park, they’re not just practicing on their own, or surrounded by people who allow them to coast, but they are constantly shown a successful role model of who they could be. 

Those skaters who are serious about developing, not only watch, but learn to emulate their role models, then over time, become role models to others, and so on. 

It is in this way that talent hot beds in Russia consistently produce top tennis players, kids riding around together all get better faster, and we can each challenge ourselves to new levels of performance.

Fascinating way to see it, right?  

A question it inspired in me was: To keep getting more of what you want, how should you be filling your windshield? 

Get In Over Your Head!!

I love this quote from T.S. Eliot— “If you aren’t in over your head, how do you know how tall you are?”

It reminds me of this quote from Mario Andretti— “If everything seems under control, you’re not going fast enough.”

There’s a common theme here, right?

The other day my buddy Paulo threw a backflip off a jump in Vail.

He landed it near perfectly but he blasted off the bindings on the backs of his skis, which apparently weren’t built for his type of crazy.

Now, truth be told, while it is pretty nuts to throw a backflip on skis, when you understand the process behind it, it’s not that crazy.

Some years ago Paulo and I were hanging out in Manhattan with his buddy Nick who is pretty handy on a motorcycle.

Both guys were having a good laugh about how Nick used to jump his dirt bike over one of the neighbors houses.

“WHAT?” I said to him. “I used to ride dirt bikes, but I never did anything that crazy.”

He went on to say that it’s not that crazy when you simply build up to it over time, a notion he called Raising the Baseline.

He said, at first you start with small jumps, then you get to bigger jumps, and before you know it seems quite normal to be soaring over the neighbor’s house.

Doing a backflip on skis works the same way. 

Paulo started jumping with skis on a trampoline, then down a ramp into a pool, then into an air bag, and once he built the confidence and competence to not kill himself, he raised the baseline to go vertical on snow.

While these two examples are extreme, we all have plenty of our own experiences of just how far we can take it when we are first willing to get in over our heads.

one secret, 35 seconds

Yesterday on a lift, a guy from Boston got asking me about what I do.

After telling me that he too wants to do more of what he wants…he asked, “What is one secret that you can give me right now in 35 seconds?”

I told him, it’s easy for me, but you’re probably not going to like it.  

That’s because it’s one simple idea, but it requires doing something hard…

“What’s that?” he asked.

“Commit yourself to developing new skills…commit yourself to get better. “

So, I asked him, if you could develop one skill that would have the most impact in getting more of what you want, what would it be?

“What do you mean?” he asked.

From what I knew about his job he needs to be disciplined in how he uses his time, and he drives his path to success by selling himself and his firm. 

Naturally I asked him, “If you commit yourself to this year building mastery at managing your time and learning skills of selling, won’t you get more of what you want?

He agreed, so I threw him two shortcuts: Eat That Frog and How To Master The Art of Selling are two books that give you a good start on mastering both skills.

Done. 35 seconds.

That’s the secret. But it’s also the easy part.

Now it’s up to him to put in the effort and practice to learn the skills for doing he wants…

Get more and more excited!!

My buddy emailed to tell me that storm Kayla was coming through Colorado so I checked the snow report—

“Looking ahead, we’ll see a strong storm hit Colorado on Saturday…very heavy snow on Saturday afternoon and Saturday night with double digit (10+ inch) snow totals…”

Woo-hoo!!!!

That’s how I feel, especially given I postponed my trip to New York, again (actually, again, again, again).

Some time ago I set the goal to infuse more and more pleasure into all things.

It really started when my friend Jane got into hypnosis and she showed me how just by imagining a time in your life you can feel that way again. 

And in fact, if you really build up this memory and intensify the amazing feelings you had back then, you can feel as though it is happening again now. 

When I started writing, the predominate strong negative emotion was ARRGGHH and I had to discipline (force) myself to write by sticking to a schedule. 

Over time as I kept writing I learned to enjoy it more, but I wanted to truly love doing it. 

I no longer wanted it to be something I forced myself to do, but something that I went to bed excited to wake up and do.

Like as a kid on Christmas Eve barely able to sleep because I was so excited to wake up and tear open the presents, I wanted to feel the same way. 

How would it be if you could wake up with this type of excitement?

How amazing would it be to live this way every day?  

What would you have to think or do to keep “rehearsing” feeling this way?

Like, for me, just imagining waking up on Sunday to a foot of snow gets me there… 

You may not be a fish but…

My friend said to me, “You’re obviously very self-aware, so you probably know this…”

I thought, OK, where is this headed?

Then he said, “There is a marked difference in the way that you write when you are in Vail relative to when you are in NYC.”

Hmmm, I’d just come off a site I write at and read some hater comments and I thought, here we go…

Then he said, “Your tone, your timbre, the way you write, it’s all different.”

OK. Good or bad, different?

Then he said, “It’s just more upbeat..it’s more like a…forceful positivity.

It surprised me. I hadn’t seen that.

You don’t notice your nose every time you look out even though it is stuck on the front of your face, but upon further consideration it was all quite obvious.

On my way out to Vail in November I wrote an angry piece about the media 24/7 blasting news about the Paris bombings in order to drive ratings…

When I got to Vail, I paid zero attention to all that.

Just leaving NYC and coming to Vail I stopped talking to people about the noise of the world, the economy, the pathetically JV debates we call an election, the markets, credit bubble, unemployment, and whatnot.

In Vail you don’t talk to people about that; you mostly just talk about how awesome it is.

How awesome was that run? How awesome is the snow? Man, it’s so awesome just to be out here…

You may not be a fish but your environment is your reality.

✕