So we go into the store and someone says, “can I help you?”,
and you say, “I'm just looking”. “I'm just looking”, is a statement of no intent.
And that's the way many people have been trained to go through life.
Because the system wants you to have no intent, it wants you to do your job, get paid, buy stuff,
put it in a storage unit, watch TV, repeat, no intent.
I was trying to understand why people, who put a lot of effort in keep making
the same dumb mistake, and the dumb mistake is
they do hard work and hard work and hard work, and just when they get to the point where everyone
else is quitting, they quit too.
And if they just stuck it out for two more months or two more years or 20 more years,
they get to the other side. Well, we're scared of intent,
because if you announce your intent, even to yourself,
makes it way more likely that you're going to fail.
So we go into the store and someone says, “can I help you?”,
and you say, “I'm just looking”. “I'm just looking”, is a statement of no intent.
And that's the way many people have been trained to go through life.
Because the system wants you to have no intent, it wants you to do your job, get paid, buy stuff,
put it in a storage unit, watch TV, repeat, no intent.
And as soon as we start having intent, we hesitate.
“Who are we to do it?” We feel like an imposter when we have intent.
But if you can announce your intent, then you can get to,
who exactly are you seeking to change? What change exactly are you seeking to make?
Do you know who has intent? Surgeons.
If you go to a surgeon, she doesn't just accidentally cut you open.
She says, “you have a blocked vein or whatever, I'm going to go in there and fix it”.
Intent, it either works or doesn't work. And that action, whether we work for a company or
on our own, can fuel us doing
ever better work, because we can say, “I set out to do this, and it either
worked and I'm sorry it did, or worked and I'm glad it did”,
or ,”I could have done it better and here's how”. And how do you set intentions, is it goals?
Is it values, is it a mission? For me personally?
Yeah, and for anyone out there who wants to do it? Well, I think that all of us have no place to
begin but with ourselves. What turns us on?
What gives us a smile? What would make our parents happy?
What would happen to our status with our neighbors and our role in
the community if X, Y or Z happen? So we always begin there,
even the most selfless person on Earth. You know you’re diving in to a shark
infested waters to save someone's life. Well, yes, saving their life is important,
but part of the reason it's important is you want to be the kind of person
that would have done that act and save that person's life,
being that kind of person is better than walking away and watching them drown.
So that's where we begin. Which is getting clear in our head about
what are the shifts we seek to make to become the person we want to be.
And then there's a series of choices we have to make,
but I think they're easier if we have habits. Habits get us results, goals are results.
But having the goal of, “I'm going to make a number one bestseller”,
that didn't tell me anything. Whereas having the goal of,
“I'm going to write every single day and I'm going to learn this and this,
and maybe the byproduct is that there's a best seller at the end”,
those are different things.
So I'm way more focused on habits. And my advice to people is,
Number one, you don't have to be original, you do not have to pick a way to make a living
or an impact that has never been done before in history.
And two, the people who have come before you and got to the other side,
what path were they on? So if you want to be a successful cardiac surgeon,
you probably need to go to medical school, that's part of the deal.
If you're not going to go to medical school stop telling me
you're going to be a surgeon.
But if you do that and then you get the fellowship and the intern,
then you're on your path. So tell me who's come before you,
who has made it through this dip? Because you can follow that path.
And that is the easiest way I know to tell them that part.