ryanhyde

“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” – Albert Einstein

Why did Google do so well in the beginning? Because it was so simple to use. A white page with their logo and a search box. You weren’t swarmed with choices to make like Yahoo and MSN.

Simplicity is a principle of success in business and in our personal lives. Instead of adding things to your life. Try taking something  away.

Designers are big on making things simple and avoiding “feature creep”. They know when they are done when there is nothing left to take away.

On my drive home today from work I was listening to the news. Every story began with the phrase “Because of the Economy”. I hate to break it to you but the economy did not get us into this mess and it definitely will not get us out of it.

What did get us into this?

I’ll tell you the truth no one has yet admitted to, it’s all . . . “Because of the Jones’s”.

It’s “Because of the Jones’s” that we bought more then we could afford.

It’s “Because of the Jones’s” that we just had to have a mansion.

It’s “Because of the Jones’s” that we bought the Porsche Cayenne Turbo S.

Now that we have a name for the culprit of our down economy, we can move on. They did this. With there nice house and there fancy cars. If they can have it, why can’t we?

The problem is we wanted the American dream without the working for it. By looking for the next “get rich quick” scheme. We saw all the easy money to be made buying and selling homes. We saw how much money traders and investors made in the stock market. We were looking for an easy way to make money, a way where we wouldn’t have to work.

It is time to stop cutting corners and to get to work. I don’t mean working later or staying up all night searching the internet. I’m saying we “Do Less” not more. Stop avoiding the tough decisions in your life and decide today to face them head on. That’s hard work.

We also need to stop defining success by what we wear, what we drive and where we live. Start doing things because it is something you are passionate about. Success is the completion of a worthy goal. Have you ever accomplished something that really meant something to you? That’s success. That’s the real American dream.

The story that our parents told us “go to school, get good grades and work at a large company, you’ll be safe”, is false. There is no security at a large company. The world will pay what you are worth, period. You can’t hide from your responsibility at a big company.

I graduated college two years ago and life has been tough. However, I stopped looking for the easy way out because it doesn’t exist. My goal is not to get rich quick but to work my way out of this challenge. It is not easy learning a new skill that you need in order to accomplish your goals and reach your potential. But if your passionate about change, about making a difference, about accomplishing something that matters to you, then the hard work isn’t work anymore. The journey becomes as rewarding as the end goal, if not more rewarding. Somewhere along the way you’ll find something you love and the world will start paying you for it. Instead of taking, we now have something to give.

We need to stop “blaming the economy” and start taking action for our own futures. We can start innovating as a country. We wouldn’t need to “bail out” the big companies that stop innovating in order to maintain the status quo, who are afraid to make the tough decisions that comes with change and risk.

There is no easy way out of this. The sooner you admit that to yourself the sooner we can get on with changing the world.

In this final section Steven Pressfield stressed the importance of “professionalism”.  The most important thing about art is to work. Nothing else matters except sitting down every day and trying. Doing brings power as we site down and do our work.

It took Steven 10 years before he got a check for something he had written and ten more before a novel, The Legend of Bagger Vance, was actually published. When he finished no one else knew it but him. Nobody else cared. But he felt like the dragon he had fought his whole life had dropped dead at his feet.

Rest in peace.

The next morning he went to a friend’s house for coffee and told him he had finished. His friends reply, “Good for you, start the next one today.”

Why did he say that?

Sales people are told that when you make a sale you should get back on the phone because chances are you will make another one.

A quote in the book “Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, magic, and power in it. Begin it now.” – W.H. Murray

When we begin.
When we make a start.
When we conceive an enterprise and commit to it in the face of our fears, something wonderful happens.

Resistance feeds on fear. We experience Resistance as fear. But fear of what?
Fear of consequences of following our heart. Fear of bankruptcy, fear of poverty, fear of insolvency. But this is not the Mother of all Fears, the Master Fear. That fear is:

Fear That We Will Succeed.

That we can access the powers we secretly know we possess. That we can become the person we sense in our hearts we truly are.

We fear discovering that we are more than we think we are.

We know that if we embrace our ideals, we must prove worthy of them. And that scares the hell out of us.

A hack is someone who second-guesses his audience. When the hack sits down to write, he doesn’t ask himself what’s in his own heart. He asks what the market is looking for. Trust what you want and not what you think will work for the target market you are writing for.

The key to all of this is that we must do our work for its own sake, not for fortune or attention or applause.

Are you a born writer? Were you put on earth to be a painter, a scientist, an apostle of peace? In the end the question can only be answered by action.

Do it or don’t do it.

Remember this, if you don’t do it you hurt not only yourself, but also everyone else.