[JohnnyDeez]

Step 8: Adjust the Stones

You will, in short order, find that what you are doing isn’t working. Stop doing it. Try something else. Repeat this process enough times and eventually you will make some headway. Headway generates initial results, initial results generate reward, reward generates momentum, momentum put human beings on the moon and carved the Grand Canyon. Do not underestimate it.

As you progress, you will realize that some of your blocks are misplaced, inaccurate, or unnecessary. Remove them, and add in the ones that are working. You’re slowly building a logical guide to your dream BY MAKING MISTAKES AND EXPERIMENTING!

That IS the process. Failure. Restructuring. Repeating.

Learn to love it (or at least accept it) or learn to never change anything. It’s your choice.

Action Item: Take enough action within a 2 week period to make some changes to your pyramid. Try some things, adjust.

Step 9: Set a Date

It would be unwise of you to pursue your new endeavor haphazardly, without any sort of logical or set endpoint. If you just kinda, sorta move forward, your will defeat yourself. There won’t be enough pressure. You won’t crest the hill.

Races are timed. There are competitors.

Elk fight for mates.

Effort, failure, and timetables are woven into the fabric of the universe. Everything has it’s start and end. It’s a circle. Make your goals and dreams a part of this circle. Do not pretend, that if you pursue something without any real focus, that you will make it where you’re going. Setup some consequences.

Lions only have so much energy. If they don’t catch the gazelle after a certain amount of attempts, they go hungry. Everything is gain or loss. Their world is real, and so is yours. Don’t let 5 more years drift by where nothing actually happens. Where you’re working the same job, are still single, are still broke, or aimless. Get focused. Set a date for completion.

Pick a point in the future that you think is a reasonable amount of time for you to complete your goal. Now, increase that amount of time by 50% (you will probably underestimate the amount of effort necessary).

That’s your date. And, when it arrives, you ship.

Maybe that will mean moving to a new city, quitting your job or breaking up with someone. I don’t know, but you have to have a firm date.

You will not feel ready when the time comes. And it will likely appear to you, at that point, that you simply cannot move forward with your plan.

Actionable Item: Move forward anyway, boldly, and with as much confidence as you can muster. You will sort out the details as you progress, or you will fail miserably in the process. Either result is ten times better than delaying - inevitably.

“In any moment of decision the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.” ~Theodore Roosevelt

Step 10: Meet the Resistance

When the date nears and the hour is upon you, you will meet your largest dragon yet. If you thought the effort up until this point was difficult, you haven’t seen anything yet.

You will make mistakes that cost you time, money and effort.

You will sabotage yourself.

You will lose focus.

You will lose heart.

You will feel like the very universe itself has shown up to stop you. You will feel like giving up.

Don’t.

In Seth Godin’s book “Linchpin”, he talks about the Resistance. A force stemming from your very physiological makeup, that will attempt to sabotage any sort of extraordinarily positive change within your life. When your ship date gets near, you will feel this force. It will be difficult. You will feel like quitting. But, you have to push through it.

How?

Do not resist the resistance, for that will only make it stronger. It is the self-affirming ego that creates this disconnect within you. It needs safety, it needs continuity of personality, present and future. It cannot allow change to occur, or heavens forbid - growth. And, at every turn, it will put into action any step that will serve to dislodge you from your current path.

Accept this reality. This is your cross, your burden. It is your struggle to bear. Mt. Doom rests at the end of your journey, not at the beginning.

Actionable Item: Keep moving forward. Be methodical. Accept the difficulty of your situation.

Step 11: Take The Risk

When the time comes, you jump ship. You publicize, you market, your leave, you buy, you show up... whatever the end-result is that you were looking for - you do it. And, you do it knowing full-well that it may backfire and blow up in your face. You do it knowing that you’re ok with that.

Anticipation of failure or the ‘worse-case scenario’ is usually as painful or more painful than the reality. Don’t punish yourself by experiencing your failures twice. When they happen (and they will), be there for the occasion, for the first time.

Go to the Olympic trial, ready or not. Market the business. Email the clients. Publish the manifesto. Leave the country. You must go.

Few things in life are totally irreversible. If it doesn’t workout, you can get a new job, boyfriend, business, etc...

You’ve got to be willing to jump ship, or you’ll sink with it.

Actionable Item: On your date, do your thang.

Step 12: Failure is Not Optional

You do not get to do big things without screwing up. You will not lose the training wheels and then never fall of your bike. Bruises, bumps, missteps and skinned knees are the name of the game. They’re the fabric of what gets you from A to B. The process by which you move forward.

Don’t resist the process. Don’t resist failure.

Laugh at it. Enjoy it. Shrug off your awkward moments and utter letdowns, they are only as big as you make them. No one else cares.

Actionable Item: Go fail at something - intentionally. Go skiing and fall. Go try something you’ve never done. Go write a song and sing it on a street corner, put out a hat and make no money. Get use to the feeling.

Step 13: Repeat: There is no End-point

If you arrive at your goal and achieve your dream, you will become a changed person. And, as a result, you will develop new passions and new dreams. This is normal, and to be expected. However, there is a very real risk in accomplishment of our ambitions. There is, the risk that you will simply move onto the next goal or task, living forever in a state of seeking. Spinning the hamster wheel because you don’t know how to stop or what else to do.

It’s folly. You cannot achieve anything in life because everything of worth is already inside of you. If you follow your goals and passions, with grim determination and succeed, you will quickly find wanting once again grows within you. And, with that wanting will come dissatisfaction.

There is no magic pill that will make you happy. And nothing, externally, will give you what you ultimately seek.

Seek it for the challenge. Seek it because you believe in contributing. Seek it because there’s nothing better to do. Seek it because it’s all you know. All you believe in.

But don’t seek it because you need it, or, because you think it will make you happy. You will be left with more of the same, and find that you have only completed one cycle of a circle that never ends. The circle of dissatisfaction.

Satisfaction lies within.

"Your internal state is most paramount. If you become overwhelmed by mental discomfort, external things will not help at all. However, if internally there is love, warmth, and kindheartedness, external problems can be accepted and faced more easily." ~The Dalai Lama