The Roman general Vegetius had a saying: “if you want peace, prepare for war.”
Later, this was condensed down to “peace through strength.”
And it applies just as much to individuals as it does to nations.
Everyone over 25 wants similar things: we all want to find the love of our lives, and to have 3 children with them, with the nice house in the suburbs and the saturday morning kids’ soccer games. And enough left over to go on vacation three times a year.
“Is that too much to ask for?” we tell ourselves. A peaceful, nice life. No one believes this is too much to ask for. And they’re right, it’s not greedy to want these things, you should want these things, and more.
But here’s the kicker: this kind of life is certainly attainable, but it’s not normal.
Your neighbors might make it seem normal, but I’m betting it’s a facade. Either they’re putting in extraordinary work behind the scenes, or they’re barely getting by.
The media also makes this peaceful quiet life seem normal.
My girlfriend and I were watching Father of The Bride the other day—it’s such a fun movie. But this time around I realized that the movie makes it seem like they’re a normal, middle-class family. They have a cute, normal-looking house, on a very pretty but modest-looking block. They appear middle-class.
Except they’re not. The father owns a very successful sneaker company. His factory employees hundreds of workers. This family is not middle class. The dad pretty much owns Skechers.
His name says it all: George Banks. In the movie he’s a literal bank to the family. He’s loaded. That’s how he can lead this peaceful life. Even so, he still panics at how much the wedding will cost. A lot of the humor in the movie derives from his reaction to spending.
You and I do not own Skechers. At least not yet.
I don’t say this to discourage you. I say this so you understand: it’s OK to feel like you’re exhausted simply trying to catch up to what’s normal.
And I’m not telling you to stop.
My point is: This form of peace requires war.
The ordinary American dream requires extraordinary work.
There’s a vicious lie in the media: That normal habits gives you a normal life. No, only the people who work really hard are the ones who achieve what most call normal.
I used to think that if i felt fear or anxiety that i was doing something wrong. So I would turn around and head in the other direction.
But I was totally wrong: the fear and anxiety and tiredness are pointing you in the RIGHT direction. They’re your North Star… You have to get through all that to get to the other side, to get to the success you want.
My current job now, a big part of it requires sales. It’s a change for me, but I’m embracing it. I wanted something like this. So I could grow.
And success in sales comes down to one thing: putting your product in front of a lot of people. But guess what, most people you call won’t want what you’re offering, or they won’t want it from you. So you will get way more NOs than YESes.
In this type of job, even normal success requires a lot of rejection. It’s a perfect mirror for life.
There’s this book about sales called Go For No. The book focuses on a guy who sells copiers to businesses. The guy realized that 20 meetings a week would average out to about three sales. With those three sales he could lead a decent life. And that worked for him. On some weeks, he would get the three sales from his first couple meetings, so he would relax and take it easy for the rest of the week. He already hit his goal.
The book then reveals this guy’s thinking is backwards. He’s benchmarking on the sales when he should be more concerned about the refusals. Instead of aiming for the 3 sales, he should be aiming for 17 rejections. This way, if he hit three sales early, he would keep going and doesn’t kill his chances of having a great week.
If you think about it, stopping at three sales also means he’s not getting his 20 repetitions each week, so he’s actually practicing less.
If you have to get 17 NOs to get to 3 YESes, then wouldn’t it make sense to get the 17 NOs over with quickly so that you can get to the 3 YES’s faster?
It’s easier said then done. I get it. At first I was hesitant, but just recently I started pushing myself more and more to go for NO. And it won’t happen overnight. You could understand this concept and still experience the anxiety that comes from this. But like everything, soon your game elevates. The NOs don’t phase you anymore.
This is the author’s advice to me, and my advice to you: Lean into the anxiety and fear and rejection. This is how you meet success.
Success is not in the opposite direction of failure. Success is on the other side of failure.
You have to get through the failure to get to the good stuff.
A successful life, like a successful business, must include some level of stress or anxiety. At first it tastes bitter, like poison, but soon enough it’ll start tasting sweet, because you know it’s getting you closer to your higher self and goals. Like they say “it doesn’t get easier, you just get better.”
Success and power and status are not directly tied to effort, deservingness, or even niceness. They’re closely related, but not directly.
Success and status are simply about the visibility and position you occupy in society. How much leverage you have towards towards creating change. This means no visibility—and no leverage—no status. It just so happens that finding the lever—or as I call it, the Magic Button—at first takes a lot of effort.
It kinda ties in to the whole “work smarter not harder” saying. Yes, we should work smarter and apply pressure only on the leverage points, but at first you have to sift through all the crappy work to find the magic button. Without HARD work there’s no SMART work. The hard work and the stress comes first.
So if you run away from the hard work, you never get a chance to do the smart work.
If you bail on the things that bring stress and anxiety and fear at the first sight of them, you never make it to the other side—the side where the gold is. The place where things come easier.
Most people want a “normal” life but a normal life requires un-normal amounts of work, at least in the beginning. And it requires un-normal sacrifices. The great news is that the extraordinary sacrifices soon stop feeling extraordinary. They become your new normal. And at that point they pay HUGE dividends.
The highly-visible positions, the ones which connect you to lots of other folks, require a lot of trial and error. So fail often. Develop thick skin.
This is the point where I’m going to talk specifically to the men in the audience, because well, I don’t claim to know all the struggles women go through. So I won’t even try here.
But men, listen and internalize this— As a man, you aren’t born special… Maybe growing up your mom convinced you that you were a prince, but past 18 years old no one is going to give you this title for free.. No one is going to take care of you just because you’re you. As an adult you have to make yourself special through hard work and failure. You have to pick up skills others need. You have to make people care.
This takes a lot of work. If your hope is to be a protector and provider for your family, you better get tough first.
Now, this is for both my ladies and gentlemen: Realize now that life for a normal head of a household is far from normal. If it’s feeling too easy and normal, that’s a sign you’re actually falling behind.
As Epictetus said: “The trials you face will introduce you to your strengths.” No trials. And no anxiety. No strengths. It takes un-normal work just to have a normal life. So lean into the anxiety.
