We have become accustomed to mediocrity. On a daily basis nothing truly amazing happens, well other than the fact that we wake up on a spinning planet that revolves around a giant fireball in a universe of unimaginable size. Nothing that we would consider amazing or out of the ordinary happens. And as a result, we have become accustomed to the mediocrity of the average life. And so when someone either falls or rises to one of the two extremes, as in the go from the ordinary to extraordinary, it is difficult for people to grasp.
When someone goes from being ordinary and doing the same shit everyone does to doing something that would be considered ‘great’, people don’t like it. People suddenly realise what they aren’t, and that angers them. They try to pull you back to the ordinary, just like crabs in a bucket will pull each other down because that crab can get fucked if he thinks he’s leaving the rest of us here.
Greatness is an extreme, and as such it requires extreme action. People will look at you and say that what you do is unhealthy or they’ll say something like ‘the light that burns twice as bright, burns twice as fast’. But everyone remembers a rocket launch that lasts a few seconds, and no one remembers the light bulb that burned for a few months before being thrown into a landfill. And not only that but the efficient light bulbs burns twice a bright and just as long. People don’t seem to realise that the fuel you put into your vehicle has a major effect on the performance of said vehicle. You fill your body with McDonald's and grease your going to burn half as bright and half as long, and you’ll suffer heart disease or diabetes along the way.
Einstein was criticised, as was Elon Musk, as was Nietzsche, as were all the greats who went before us. All the greats who will come after us will also be criticised because no one wants people to do what they couldn’t. But the only way to become great is to do what they don’t. If you want to be in the 1% you have to do what the 99% don’t do. I’ve had people tell me that most entrepreneurs fail and that most of those that do fail are now on the streets because they put everything they had into it and it failed. Which is true, this has happened to lots of people. But I have much more respect and admiration for those people than the people telling me to get a concrete job and the people who tell me to have a fail-safe ‘just in case’.
To get to the extreme of greatness you have to do something extreme. The most effective way to secure your success is to put yourself in a position where you have no other choice than to succeed. You don’t win a race by leaving 10% in the tank. You also don’t win a race by spending all your time planning how you're going to win. Experience is the best teacher and it’s also a bitch. So you either grow some balls and accept the reality of what it takes to land yourself on the right side of greatness, or you fall on the wrong side where everyone will laugh at you for even trying. Lots of people try and lots of people fail. To get yourself in places where they will never reach you have to go all in every day.
A genius is someone who shoots at something no one else can see and hits it.
Choose your target and never lose sight of it, no matter how thick the fog gets.
Cormac