Think Different.
Here’s to the crazy ones.
The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers.
The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently.
They’re not fond of the rules. And they have no respect for the status quo.
You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thin you can’t do is ignore them.
Because they change things.
They push the human race forward.
And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius.
Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.
Retrain how you use your mind. Start with retraining the 100 billion neurons and tens of trillions synaptic connections in your brain. That three pounds of jelly inside your skull is the psychological key to your success.
Expect positive outcomes
Stop beating yourself up mentally.
Im inferior. Im defective. Im weak. Im vulnerable. Im unattractive. I’m unlovable. I’m a loser. I’m doomed. It’s hopeless.
The next time you catastrophize something that isn’t that bad, understand that your reaction is a generic survival trait that you inherited from your hunter gatherer ancestors. Negative thoughts like this are unavoidable at times. But they are almost always overblown and only represent one perspective.
Catostrophizing (v.): thinking of small problems as enormous impediments) to perfectionsim, where anything less than perfect execution causes intense frustration.
Expand the Possible
I don’t know what the artist intended (Tom Otterness), but I see a kid who’s sad because he’s thinking inside a box. If he could think in a bigger, less confined way, his problems would seem smaller, and he’d be in a better mood.
That’s why I find time for thought experiments that encourage me to think in large arcs of time and space - millions and billions of years instead of decades or centuries. I visualize space getting bigger and bigger and I try to identify with the totality of the universe. Or it could be a vast multiverse containing an infinite number of universes spreading out in every direction. My goal is to feel like a bodiless mind floating in space.
Sometimes I do the opposite by visualizing space contracting until it all fits in the palm of my mind or within the nucleus of an atom.
With respect to time, I visualize the evolution of the entire universe . I want to playfully daydream. I’m training my braind to rearrange so it can move nimbly among variables. When I don’t have that sense of fluid time and space, my mind can get hung up on problems I’m facing, and I may not make the best decisions. With expanded awareness, I can shed the nitty-gritty and accurately size up what matters most, what I need to know, and what I should do about the issue at hand.
If you want to see problems and opportunities differently, you have to push yourself. My thought experiments help me rearrange my brain in specific ways so that my mind can go anywhere it needs to go and feels comfortable wherever it ends up.
I close my eyes and feel my brain become energized as I plug it into an outlet that instantly recharges it’s battery. FEEL the brain.
Problems, Problems, Problems
Life can be uncomfortable. But you can accomplish a lot if you can figure out how to reframe the uncomfortable things in ways that allow you to utilize them.
Problems are assets. Not something to avoid, but something to run toward. Big ambitions often beget even bigger problems. If your initial reaction to a major setback is overwhelming frustrating, that’s understandable, but it’s also counterproductive. Once you’re over that moment, pivot toward success.
The fact is, I’m not going to create huge amounts of value unless I’m courageous, and problems are a by-product of risk. Where are the inefficiences in the process that created this problem?
You need to be flexible, fearless, and open-minded, and stay attuned to your internal chatter.
Rigid Thinking Won’t Cut It
I need to be able to zig and zag opportunistically, even if it requires completely rethinking a former premise. I want to implement strong feedback loops and a work culture where everyone accepts that there is more than one valid way to look at an issue.
Entropy, a measure of disorder, increases with time. You can expect that problems, by nature, will get increasingly bigger. Accept imperfection and learn from it. If you resist embracing an imperfect situation today, you might lose the opportunity to capitalize on it tomorrow.
Think Huge
If you want to earn huge, you have to think huge. Your goals should be bigger than what you currently think you can accomplish, because that can actually help you achieve those goals. Exactly how much money do you want to make? By when? How will you feel when you have all that money in your hand?
Whatever strategy you have, make it ten times bigger.
In a fight, who wins? The smart guy or the crazy guy? An unhinged combat, willing to scrap and claw to survive, could beat even the most skilled fighter.