Dream.
Dream. Dream big. You have to dream. Otherwise you’ll get exhausted treading water. Set your sights on something high. Something bigger than yourself. Something seemingly impossible. Something you want very much. Something you want badly enough to work very hard for. You can make the impossible possible. Nelson Mandela told us: “It always seems impossible until it’s done.”
Work for your dreams.
Make big plans. Dream big dreams. And then: Get to work. Planning and dreaming are the first part of attaining your dream but planning a house only involves pushing a pencil. Making a house involves pushing a wheelbarrow. To paraphrase Rita Mae Brown: Never hope harder than you work. Hoping doesn’t build buildings. It doesn’t move bricks. It doesn’t sweat. It might get you started. It might keep you going. But it’s not an action. It’s never Step 4 in your 5-step plan of action. As they say: Hope is not a strategy. As the poet Rudyard Kipling advised: Dream, but don’t make dreams your master. Many people have a lot of enthusiasm for being extremely rich or successful but not a lot of enthusiasm for working extremely hard. The two must be chosen together.
Put in the time.
Malcolm Gladwell estimates that it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert at something. Working 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, 50 weeks a year, that’s five years. That’s a lot of time. Find something you love and then put the time in. Find something that you love enough to love it through the dips because there will be ups and downs. You will probably lose your balance and fall down at some point. You will have to pick yourself up and keep going. The ambulance or fire truck might not come. You will be mostly alone. Or feel mostly alone. Five years is a long time and you will be tempted to get distracted or quit. You might not even notice that you got distracted or quit. But you can’t just plant the seed and walk away. You have to water the plant, prune the plant, and protect it from weeds and whatever else comes its way. You have to stick around. If you’re following the right thing: Don’t quit. Stay the extra hour. Go the extra mile. It’s never crowded, as they say. Persistence might be your greatest tool.
You might think that you’ll make something great and tell 10 people and they’ll tell 10 people and so on and so forth until soon the whole world knows about the great new thing you made and you’ll be a millionaire or famous artist or whatever you want to be. But it’s usually more like this: You tell 10 people and 1 of them tells 1 person and then that person doesn’t tell anyone. So you have to do it again. Tell 10 more people. And make something great again. The fact that you made something meaningful to that 1 person who decided to tell one of their friends means that you made something remarkable. Literally remarkable. That’s something to be proud of. You made something that’s worth spreading and it did spread. As Seth Godin will tell you, ideas that spread win. So keep at it. Keep creating. Keep working. Work on your craft. Find your voice. Quality will come and people will come to quality. As Steve Martin said: “Be so good they can’t ignore you.”
Follow your bliss.
Joseph Campbell gave us some good advice on what to follow: “Follow your bliss.” If you don’t choose something that you love, then you will quit. If you follow your bliss, then you will continue on when it doesn’t make good sense to. Everyone else would have quit right then. Right then when you loved it enough to continue. If you press on in the moments when everyone else would quit, then you will get to places that no one else will get to, see things that no one else will see, and be able to do things that no one else has done. When stories of success are retold, they almost always involve one line that is something like this: “And then I worked very hard for 10 years.” Ten years don’t pass in a sentence. Ten years is ten years. Your bliss for your work and your project is what will keep you going during those ten years. Someone asked why successful people don’t stop working once they have enough money. Someone else answered that it would be like a guitarist putting down her guitar after she wrote and sang her first song, which happened to be a big hit and make her lots of money. The guitarist doesn’t put down her guitar. She writes another song. Because it is her bliss.
Work harder and smarter.
When there is a lot of work to be done, people are tempted to take shortcuts. They say work smarter, not harder. They say this because they assume that hard work is something to be avoided. But often it’s only once you have worked harder that you can work smarter. If you watch an amateur lay one brick and a professional lay one brick, it looks about the same. But if you watch the amateur and the professional each lay a thousand bricks, then you will notice the difference. You will see the expert, time-saving, energy-conserving techniques that the professional has developed over the years, and the special tools that she has gathered especially for this task. You will see her leave the amateur in the dust. You can try to work smarter instead of harder, but it’s best to work harder and smarter. The harder you work, the smarter you will get.
Be success waiting to happen.
If you work hard enough and smart enough and long enough, then you will give yourself the best chance of realizing your dream. Henry David Thoreau says that you can expect success. He writes, “If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.” Dr. Seuss wrote: “And will you succeed? Yes! You will, indeed! (98 and 3/4 percent guaranteed.)” Nothing in life is guaranteed—not success and not failure—but as Wayne Gretzky said: “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” You need to take a shot and see what happens. There are accidents waiting to happen that often turn into accidents. Be like that, but be success. Be success waiting to happen. And realize that success waiting to happen doesn’t look like someone waiting around for success to happen. Success waiting to happen looks like someone working very hard and very smart and for a very long time. Ask yourself: How hard would you work if you knew that success was guaranteed? That is how hard you have to work right now in order to succeed.
Envision your success.
Imagine your success. Presume success is possible. Sometimes we succeed only because we believe it’s possible. Look like a guy whom we forgot to that tell it was impossible. Surprise us. Blaze a new trail. Sing a new song. Get what’s inside of you out. It’s your turn. You’re up.
“Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.”
—Henry David Thoreau
There’s only one way up.
No one coasts their way up to the top. There is only one way to the top and it is up. It is push-ups and pull-ups and sit-ups. It is standing up for what you believe in. It is getting up when you get knocked down. It is giving up something that’s good enough to take a shot at something spectacular. It is dreaming up a plan and then staying up late to make it happen. It is thinking up things that have not been thought up before. It is walking up to Opportunity’s house and knocking on its door. It is up to you. This is it. This is your chance. You’re up.
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