Rocket to the Top Like Musk and Bezos
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?
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.
Do you know that Mars is only 9 months away?
That’s how little space there is between here and there.
Learning this blew my mind on the whole space travel thing.
It seems foolish now, but before my brain had thought of distant space travel like cryo chambers, light-years of sleep, robot pilots, and so on.
But only 9 months at regular human speed?
What’s the big deal?
Duh
Obviously, the whole thing is a big deal.
Just escaping gravity of this planet is a BIG deal.
In every way, every thing about colonizing Mars is a “difficult problem,” as Elon Musk might say.
Yet, still, listen to Musk talk about it, even just a few clips on this page, and it seems no big deal.
Watching Elon you can be convinced that so long as he keeps working at it he’ll reach Mars.
Whether it happens soon enough is the real question?
That’s why you see them building rockets around the clock.
Musk knows he now has this solved so they’re iterating as quickly as possible.
We all limit ourselves.
Cap our potential.
It’s safe.
Comfortable.
We all get that with little risk there is little reward.
Yet, still, we often take too little risk to achieve what you TRULY want.
I used to be this way.
It’s one thing training this program on Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos did for me.
It helped me put all my cards on the table.
To risk it ALL, rather than looking back having not.
You must be measured in your risk taking, of course.
But also you must stop your dreams being murdered by your false perception of risk.
And here’s the thing.
Just one small change in how you perceive risk can make ALL the difference.
e.g. Is it more risky to build rockets that blow up?
Or to remain a single-planet species waiting for an eventual extinction-level event?
Hmm.
Here’s 28 quotes from Principle 6. Take [Unreasonable] Risk from this trillion dollar program on rocketing to the top like Musk and Bezos.
1. “If you want to have more invention, you need to do more experiments, per week, per month, per year, per decade. It’s that simple. You cannot invent without experimenting. And here’s the other thing about experiments. Lots of them fail. If you know it’s going to work in advance, it is not an experiment. ” — Jeff Bezos
2. “Starting a car company is idiotic and an electric car company is idiocy squared.” — Elon Musk
3. “I had one of the most difficult choices I have ever faced in life was in 2008. And I think I had maybe $30 or $40 million left in 2008, I had two choices. I could put it all into one company and then the other company would definitely die or split it between the two companies. But if I split it up between two companies, they both might die.” — Elon Musk
He gifted a classic book that sits on the shelf next to me.
It’s a reminder of what matters most right now.
Also, it’s how I see him.
Hardcore, highest standards, disciplined, focused, getting things done.
Decades ago he helped train me in some of these things and the book reminds me that you can always train more.
The title?
“Will-power”
Published in 1905 it might as well be written today.
Arguably this topic matters even more now as it did back then because your brain is the same, and you’ve got WAY more distraction.
Ultimately, this book is about THE most important life skill that I’ve written about plenty.
It’s the concept I wrote about here as the definition of insanity.Â
Here we went deep in this monster article on how simple this can be but why most people will never do it.
You see it here on Mike Tyson’s unstoppable programming.Â
It’s what my book for Building Your Limitless Mind is about and my System for Ultimate Days too.
I decoded it behind the winning methods of Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk.
You see it over and over with top business athletes like Ray Dalio and Warren Buffett.
And top sports athletes like Muhammed Ali and Tom Brady.
It’s not JUST this thing we call will-power.
But the WILL AND SKILL to think how you want, feel how you want, and take the actions you choose.
You know that getting better is a key to success.
It may be THE key to extraordinary success.
Certainly continuously improving is key to every facet of winning and life.
The theory of evolution that got us from crawling to walking works this way.
Every winning athlete is nonstop getting better.
Extraordinary competitors in careers and business win the same way.
What do you see?
For you personally?
In your career or business?
Do you see getting better is key to your winning?
How clear are you on what it means to be getting better?
And what about this question we’re heading into—
Are you improving RAPIDLY enough?
Apparently 50% of people rank this year as their worst ever.
What about the other 50%?
It really is a tale of two worlds right now, isn’t it?
While many people are struggling from the effects of the virus and lockdowns, some people are absolutely crushing it.
It reminds you that things are never all good or all bad.
“It seemed pretty, pretty dark”
Keep in mind…
On Christmas Eve 2008 Elon Musk’s businesses were nearly bankrupt.
Personally he still had some $30 million and of course a bevy of rich friends who could help him out.
But that was the small part of Elon’s problem.
The big problem was that his two babies, Tesla and SpaceX, these two world-changing missions that Elon had committed his life to, would imminently be taken off life support.
That’s the way Elon talks about his businesses—personally.
He describes them like babies and was forced to ask questions like, “Which one am I going to let starve to death?”
That’s a quote from Elon Musk.
It’s a pretty agreeable idea, isn’t it?
Few of us would deliberately seek to take the set of actions that are most likely to make the future worse.
Yet that doesn’t mean we’re always taking the best set of actions that will make the future better, does it?
Elon Musk seeks to.
And it’s what he says next that’s just as important.
EXTREME bias for action
This clip is from Principle 9. EXTREME bias for action that I decoded from Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos—
You see this theme everywhere in Jeff and Elon’s businesses.
Whereas many people and companies get stuck overthinking things, Jeff and Elon are constantly seeking to remove the friction, and drive the set of actions that keeps them RAPIDLY moving forward.
In this clip from Elon you see the above quote and 2 more clips with the same structure such as this one—
“It’s important for us to take the set of actions that are most likely to continue consciousness into the future.” (one of my dominant drivers too)
As I talk about after Elon, you consistently see this theme from him.
He’s going after difficult goals that he DOESN’T know how to achieve.
So he’s constantly seeking the best set of actions that are most likely to create the better future he wants.
How comfortable are you with failure?
Would you say it’s something that you embrace or intentionally pursue?
Have you failed much?
Or perhaps a way Jeff Bezos might ask is—
Are you failing ENOUGH to succeed?
Fail and fail again
You know the phrase, “If at first you don’t succeed, try and try again?”
It’s a powerful way of thinking about failure because it emphasizes persistence like this quote from Elon Musk—
The first launch I was picking up bits of rocket near the launch site, which was a bit sad, but we learned with each successive flight. And we were able to eventually with the fourth flight in 2008 reach orbit, and that was also with the last bit of money that we had.
This notion to “try and try again” is exemplified by the common example of Thomas Edison’s 10,000 experiments to invent the light bulb.
It’s a “resourceful” way of thinking about failure but what I saw from Jeff Bezos was FAR MORE valuable to me.
10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4…
Oops, that’s where we got stalled on the launchpad with this program on Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.
Now we’re at 3, 2…
We’re still not yet at 1.
And we won’t yet be sharing this program more broadly.
But I do want to share it with you.
Do you know this expression?
To pull a thread and get the whole ball of yarn?
Is it something that resonates with you?
I often use it in the context of continuing to drive forward, even if you DON’T know how.
This is especially valuable when you’re stuck, not knowing what to do.
You need hope, don’t you?
Without hope, how can you be motivated to keep taking steps forward?
EASILY, when you’re operating at a higher level beyond hope.
To be sure, you would much prefer to have more hope, rather than less.
But even when things are HOPELESS truly great people keep driving forward.
Motivation vs. DRIVE
This is one of my favorite quotes of Jeff Bezos—
“I have realized about myself that I’m very motivated by people counting on me. I like to be counted on.”
Researching Jeff many of his ideas have stuck with me, yet there’s something of highest meaning here.
Leading and being counted on by others can be stressful and hard for many of us, yet delivering for others is our highest calling.
Certainly at Amazon Jeff’s counted on by millions of customers, shareholders, employees and many others.
And at Blue Origin he has the opportunity to be counted on by all of our species.