I just started a new book. A book chosen because of a trip booked. A trip booked because of a unique opportunity to have someone take care of Teddy in my house for a couple weeks without having to pay them.
I thought about everywhere I wanted to go, what I wanted to do and see and sat and thought about which trip would give me the greatest thrill. Hunting in Africa was the clear choice. Green Hills of Africa, Hemingway’s classic non-fiction about hunting in Africa, the next obvious decision after the trip was booked.
Early in the book Hemingway’s asked about American writers, who’s great, who isn’t, who produces the best work. Hemingway’s response to the fella was a tad unexpected.
We do not have great writers. Something happens to our good writers at a certain age.
That something that happens to them is the topic of this article. It’s something that happens to all of us. Though the things may be different than the list Hemingway gives for the reasons why good writers decline at a certain point in their lives and careers, the sentiment is the same.
We start off with hunger and clarity. We begin without fear and acquire it as we acquire stuff, relationships, connections, things that hold us down and change our priorities when they shouldn’t, they should merely strengthen the original ones.
4 Things That Make You Fail
1. Applause.
Accolades can kill our momentum far more effectively than failure. Hemingway lists this as the primary source of destruction of America’s good, promising writers.
We listen to the praise and we lose our hunger. Failure produces more hunger. It gives us a challenge, something to prove wrong, to dispel, to defeat. Praise is merely an opinion, opinions are useless, yet we allow praise and applause to give us reason to sleep in, to rest on our perceived talent that was never really talent but the culmination of hours of purposeful work.
We lose because we listen. We hear the good and we’re so arrogant that we believe the hype and believing such hype prevents all of the things that got us to the place where acclaim is thrown our way.
What to do:
Practice humility. Block out the praise. Let the work talk for itself but never lose the process or the learning mindset that got you to a point not where you ideally want to be but where you’re beginning to earn praise for your work. Beginning is the keyword.
Once you start to win the challenge is to compound those victories and use them as fuel for the fire that gets you up early and working. Don’t let praise quell your hunger and desire to create something great.
2. The Opinions of Sheep.
And crap is what most criticisms are.
The critic doesn’t count, as Theodore Roosevelt wrote. Sure, you have to listen to your customers, their feedback is invaluable, but non-customers, venomous idiots that simply want to bring you down will make the most noise. Shut them out!
This is something I learned early on. Most critics don’t actually want you to improve. They want you to stop. They complain and comment from their parent’s basement. They’re not working or hustling, they’re merely commenting, hating that you’re doing while they’re sitting on their asses thinking of ways to get under your skin.
You have to realize that these people are losers. They’re cowards. They’re primarily online but they exist in the real world too. Online they can hide behind a computer never having to actually confront anyone. Ignore them. They don’t exist. As soon as you respond or try to stand up for yourself, you’re taken away from your work.
On a bigger scale, I know people who actually make decisions based on the opinions of these sheep.
You have to let the market decide whether something works or doesn’t, not some goofball who’s never going to take action on anything. That’s just silly.
You’re in the arena. Stay in the arena. Don’t jump out into the land of the critic and get consumed by the envy and fear that runs their lives.
3. Silk Pyjamas.
That Haggler quote is a great one. It’s a lot easier to get up early and run when you have to, when you’re in poverty, at the bottom of the totem pole, and you have the hunger to rise and succeed. That goes away when you don’t have to get up early, when you have what you’ve always wanted, when your survival is no longer on the line.
Fighting this is next to impossible. It’s what claims most, keeps most at ‘good’ and short of ‘great’. The only way to break through the barriers that success brings is to create the right habits.
We go over this extensively in the Fuck Mediocrity program you can learn more about here:
When most get what they want they sit back and forget what got them what they want. They also realise that what they want isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. This can lead both to complacency and depression.
The amount of rich people who, by all appearances are successful, who are depressed boggles the mind. They have everything they thought they wanted yet their lives are empty. It’s a depressing feeling, wanting something for so long then finally getting it and not getting the feeling you thought would accompany it.
Habits.
Create the habits that are your life, your work, what you produce, and don’t get away from them no matter how much success enters your life.
4. Fear.
Fear opposes logic for the most part. We fear losing the stuff we acquire as we earn. We actually buy stuff that makes us afraid.
We also lose the gun-slinging approach that brought us victory because we’re now more afraid to fail than ever.
Fear of failure and fear of success, of getting what we want or the knowledge that to get what we want we have to dedicate our lives to something that isn’t guaranteed to work stops most people from even starting.
When I started this business I had no clue what I was doing. I basically had no clue what I was doing for the first 3 years. I saw other guys come in and win big, making millions, while I plugged away making pennies. The fear that the 12+ hours a day of work I was doing wouldn’t bare fruit was real and crushing. It could have very easily made me quit.
The fear that work won’t cut it cuts audacity at the knees. But work is never all you’re doing. You’re learning along the way. Those 3 years of failure were essentially a 3-year education that was far more valuable than any course I took in school.
Fear of failure, fear of wasting time, fear of losing what we’ve won, they’re all little devils that enter our brain and place emotion where logic should dominate. Don’t let them.
Instead, let your fear act as a compass guiding you to the battles you have to wage to become the man you need to become to live the life you’re put here to live. (Read This: 4 Fears Every Guy’s Gotta Face)
STAYING THE COURSE
Staying the course is boring. It can’t be about the money but about the craft. This means you can’t spend more when you earn more. You have to keep a simple life, one led by habit and daily work, one where your thrills are adventures and experiences and not purchases.
Don’t let victory nor defeat derail you. Don’t let fear temper your aspirations. Don’t let expectations of a society addicted to mediocrity tell you what to do or where to go or what to hunt.
Wake up with purpose, on purpose, and shut out everything trying to make you average.
About The Author
Chad Howse: Chad’s mission is to get you in the arena, ‘marred by the dust and sweat and blood’, to help you set and achieve audacious goals in the face of fear, and not only build your ideal body, but the life you were meant to live. He’ll give you the kick in the ass needed to help you live a big, ambitious life.
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