![]() Some polite declines followed, and then came the torrent. A whisper of curiosity and a handful of clarifying questions. And then, there was a faint trickle through the ether. Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. ![]() or more, if the spirit moves you.”Īfter hitting “send” dozens of times, I clasped my hands to my chest with excitement and bated breath, to which the universe replied with. I sent an identical set of 11 questions to some of the most successful, wildly varied, and well-known people on the planet with “Answer your favorite 3 to 5 questions. Then, I started pitching my little heart out. From the outset, I told the publisher that it also might not work, and that I’d return the advance if so. Next, I needed to create an incentive to encourage people to respond, so I sought out a book deal. Could I get the Dalai Lama? The incredible Temple Grandin? My personal white whale, author Neil Gaiman? Or Ayaan Hirsi Ali? I wrote out the most ambitious, eclectic, unusual list possible. It had to be a list with no limitations: no one too big, no one too out-of-reach, and no one too hard to find. First, I scribbled down a list of dream interviewees, which started as one page and quickly became ten. So, why not spend a week test-driving the path of least resistance?Īnd so it began. Pain is never out of season if you go shopping for it. Would it work? I wasn’t sure, but I did know one thing: If the easy approach failed, the unending-labor-in-the-salt-mines approach was always waiting in the wings. More specifically, what if I asked 100+ brilliant people the very questions I want to answer for myself? Or somehow got them to guide me in the right direction? What if I assembled a tribe of mentors to help me? Ninety-nine percent of the page was useless, but there was one seed of a possibility. Sometimes, we “solve” the problem by simply rewording it.Īnd that morning, by journaling on this question - What would this look like if it were easy? - an idea presented itself. This leads us to look for paths of most resistance, creating unnecessary hardship in the process.īut what happens if we frame things in terms of elegance instead of strain? In doing so, we sometimes find incredible results with ease instead of stress. It’s easy to convince yourself that things need to be hard, that if you’re not redlining, you’re not trying hard enough. What would this look like if it were easy? is such a lovely and deceptively leveraged question. That morning, it was answering a laundry list of big questions. What would this look like if it were easy? Then, I did what I often do - whether considering a business decision, personal relationship, or otherwise - I asked myself the one question that helps answer many others. Noticing that I was holding my breath, I paused and took my eyes off the paper. One morning, I wrote down the questions as they came, hoping for a glimmer of clarity. How could I best reassess my life, my priorities, my view of the world, my place in the world, and my trajectory through the world? How could I better say no to the noise to better say yes to the adventures I craved? ![]() How much of life had I missed from underplanning or overplanning? ![]() ![]() Were my goals my own, or simply what I thought I should want? The things that worked out weren’t supposed to work, so I realized on my birthday: I had no plan for after 40.Īs often happens at forks in the path - college graduation, quarter-life crisis, midlife crisis, kids leaving home, retirement - questions started to bubble to the surface. My first book was rejected 27 times by publishers. Truth be told, I never thought I’d make it to 40. The first six months were a slow simmer, and then, within a matter of weeks, I turned 40, my first book ( The 4-Hour Workweek) had its tenth anniversary, several people in my circle of friends died, and I stepped onstage to explain how I narrowly avoided committing suicide in college. To explain why I wrote this book, I really need to start with when.Ģ017 was an unusual year for me. Probably they get answers, and serve ’em right.’” Then Albert straightened up and said, ‘Damned if I know. ‘Do you know what happens to lads who ask too many questions?’ “The only true voyage would be not to travel through a hundred different lands with the same pair of eyes, but to see the same land through a hundred different pairs of eyes.” ![]()
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