How I Lost The Secret Of Dazzling Success For 20 Years

One day, I decided that rather than being skeptical of how personal development theories work, I would actually try them out for myself. So one morning, I ran with my eyes closed to a nearby hillside and started doing pushups. After the first few dozen of these on the ground, the voice in my head said “that was easy!” and so I continued for another hour until things started getting tough. What had seemed like a breeze before now became strenuous labor—my body began to shake and sweat profusely as each time my arms went down between pushes I had to deal with a new squiggle or bump on the ground below me. Determined to reach the bottom, I kept pushing myself until finally…

"BAM!"

I hit the bottom of a ravine.

I knew that I didn't want to be in such a state of exhaustion so I stood up, wiped my brow and decided to run back home. But once I got back down to where the hill sloped toward the road, I suddenly felt very dizzy. So rather than turn around and start running all over again, I decided to simply walk slowly home. On my way there, though, a great sense of foreboding came over me and before long my legs started buckling beneath me. At this point, I ran to a nearby bus stop and waited for the bus, an idea becoming more appealing as the dizziness slowly abated. As soon as I got off the bus, I felt fine.

The next day, though, when things happened similarly to how they did that morning in my mind's eye—I actually started running down the same hillside but then took a wrong turn and ended up in a ditch—and yet again that voice said "that was easy!"

And so it went for the next few days until after a week or two of this utter insanity I was so tired of suffering from imaginary injuries that each time my body fell down on itself I was grateful it wasn't real and would wake up. “That was easy!” that voice would say.

It seemed to me that life had become a series of dreams punctuated by moments of lucidity. And it would remain this way for twenty years, the only exception being the times when I had moments of clarity in which I'd feel myself thinking, “I'll do this and then do that…” but then something else would happen instead because I'd forget to put these ideas into action or because I'd lose interest on the way there. After a while, I became a master at going from one dream to another and from one idea to another—but nothing really changed for me during those years.

Until one day, after I woke up feeling nauseated and sweating profusely, I suddenly began recalling memories of the times in my life when I had been successful. I felt both relieved and embarrassed at the same time; relieved because it was obvious that my hard work had finally paid off but embarrassed because the first time I had ever been free of these problems was while being sick. And this realization led me to start taking a closer look at myself.

I soon discovered how much effort is required to get results in life. Whereas before I had always thought that things happened coincidentally and by fate. The more I thought about this, the more I became aware of how much effort it took to make something happen. And I realized that if I wanted to succeed at something in life, then it was going to require tremendous amounts of focus and effort (no matter what it was—whether writing a book, creating a movie or getting a date).

As time went by, I also discovered that effort isn't only important—it's paramount. That is, if you have the right kind of effort and you put it into the right things then most of the time they're likely to work out. But if you put the wrong kind of effort into the wrong things then unfortunately, you're going to lose out 99.999% of the time.

And so much effort goes into just getting by that 99% of people who never get ahead and don't change their lives for the better must be very frustrated. But I soon discovered that if and when someone has enough social pedigree and credentials (in any field) to be considered an expert in their field, then they automatically give up a significant amount of their life for nothing in return. I also discovered that people (especially of the female persuasion) are unlikely to listen to experts because they're not family and so instead of asking for help, we have to get it for free.

It was at this point that I came up with my favorite saying: “Expertise is a double-edged sword.”

I'll never forget the day when I was sitting in my room reading a book by Napoleon Hill's that mentioned how the rich don't pay their bills because they use their money to generate more money. Here was a man who was considered a genius who, although he had the power to do anything he wanted, still ended up living in a rented room. The more I thought about this, the more it made sense and so I started aiming for my dreams again.

By now though, I had realized that it wasn't enough just to want things; one also needs to be willing to do whatever it takes to get them. And although I was willing to put in the hard work, it soon hit me that this alone wasn't enough. For example, I decided to get a date with an attractive girl from my class at college. But when I called her up and asked her out for a cup of coffee, she said “no” because she believed that if an “expert” like herself didn't have time to devote herself to me then neither did she. And so it was that any number of other women who thought they were too good for me never gave me the time of day and they ended up marrying men who treated them poorly.

I soon discovered that the real reason why most people don't have any money, can't get a date or have never achieved anything in their lives is because they've chosen not to. And so they're left living with poverty and/or loneliness as well as other problems. But once you start realizing this, it's easy to see how these things work and to make the distinction between people who want things and those who won't do whatever it takes to get them.

Conclusion

The more things I thought about and tried to understand, the more I understood that what's important in life is not having a goal; it's having the motivation and then the determination to do whatever is needed to achieve it, regardless of how difficult. This was all brought into vivid focus for me when I began thinking about just how much effort it took for me to get out of poverty (and how much effort it takes for other people to stay in the same position).

Once you start realizing this, it's easy to see why people stay poor or why they never achieve anything in their lives.