How Many Decisions Will You Make Before You Make A Good One?
No Bullshit Newsletter (1.5)
A Wake Few Wake Up Calls For You This Morning.
Walt Disney was fired from the Kansas City Star because his editor felt he "lacked imagination and had no good ideas."
Warren Buffet and Charlie Munger (combined net worth of over $120 billion, stated publicly that out of the hundreds of investment decisions they have made over the years, the majority of their success came from 12 investments.
J.K. Rowling was a single mom living off welfare when she began writing the first "Harry Potter" novel.
The real Col. Sanders was an entrepreneur who didn't become a professional chef until he was 40, didn't franchise Kentucky Fried Chicken until he was 62, and didn't become an icon until after he sold his company at 75.
Soichiro Honda's unique vision got him ostracized by the Japanese business community. Even if you didn’t know is name, I am certain you recognize his brand.
Thomas Edison's teachers told him he was "too stupid to learn anything."
Vincent Van Gogh sold only one painting, "The Red Vineyard," in his life, and the sale was just months before his death.
Theodor Seuss Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, had his first book rejected by 27 different publishers.
While developing his vacuum, Sir James Dyson went through 5,126 failed prototypes and his savings over 15 years.
A young Jay-Z couldn't get any record label to sign him and now, according to Forbes magazine, he is worth $550 million.
A New (ish) Perspective.
We often begin new adventures with an end in mind. We like to think that everything has a clearly defined start and end point. Perhaps you want to scale a business and successfully exit, or maybe you want to lose those last 10lbs so you can go back to how you were living before. But this type of thinking is extremely flawed. It doesn’t work, and here’s why.
Humans are driven by chemicals. One chemical in particular; Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that is produced in the brain. Some people refer to it as the reward center, but a great book on dopamine called “The Molecule of More” explains it in a different way. The TLDR of this book is that dopamine is the primary reason humans have achieved so much. It’s the reason we have sailed the seven seas, why airplanes take off and land everyday, why rockets have launched into space and why millionaires desire to become billionaires. More importantly, it’s the reason why you will make good decisions in life after you make lots of bad ones.
Make the journey the goal. There is no end point. The end is an illusion and nothing more. We are biologically driven for more. Yes, there are certainly ways to do this that are more healthy than others. You can delay gratification, not shoot anybody down in the process, limit your social media time and not compare your experience to others. But if you see the long game ahead of you for what it is, you can get one leg up and realize before you begin that the entire journey is a part of the process.
The worst decision you can make is not starting. In fact, that might be the only bad decision you can make. Every goal requires a start point. Nothing has an end point. Things transform, they do not end. Prepare for bad decisions. You learn from your mistakes.
Begin with no end in mind. Begin because you feel passionate and that is it. Begin knowing that it will transform and evolve, but never end. Transformation is eternal. Start today and see where it takes you.
Ty.