Complacency had set in. I had kind of gotten used to the idea of doing this job for the next 50 years.

The long hours but high pay kept my ambitions in place, my dreams in check. I was too busy to have fanciful thoughts. I need to keep my head down and work. Yes, they were in their place…but only for a bit however, only for a bit.

As I witness the enormity of this destructive system on my fellow college graduates, their spirits crushed as they baked underneath energy efficient fluorescent bulbs, I too suffered a similar fate.

“This is what we wanted?!” Was what we all thought.

This is real life? The fun and freedom of youth traded away for paper and time spent in a box?

This ain’t cool. No way. I rationalized this deal as a good deal. Hey I was making enough to live, I was getting experience, maybe in 4 or 5 years I could get another job with less hours and more pay…no it’s really a good deal. Quit complaining.

Idiot.

I quit. I just came to the realization that I didn’t want to do this anymore. I don’t need to walk down this path others have walked. I am a creative force! I don’t want to spend my life in a nondescript job doing boring unimportant work. That in the scheme of it all means little to me…or anyone else for that matter. I want to live a life filled with joy and excitement. Not a life relegated to siting in place for 9 hours a day staring out the window, jealous of the landscape people who get to be in the sun. So I quit.

I had no concrete plan of what to do next, (honestly do I look like a guy with a plan?) but things worked out. I make a nice income online with niche websites and I take projects up that interest me. Oh and I started this site to help you brace your uniqueness and reject mediocrity. I make no bones about it though, I want to turn this from a simple site to a profitable venture.

The point of my story is risk risk = reward

It does seem obvious to do what everyone else is doing, but the truth is we don’t profit from old systems anymore. We just deeply rely on them. Some systems still do work no doubt, but too many don’t. For most, the path was a construct of someone else’s previous success. It’s all in your head. That’s how they did it. It was their way, and their way can not be your way.

If you could just copy someone else way then that would be easy. It’s never easy.

• You need to struggle a bit.
• You need to wander a bit.
• You need to search and search some more.
• You need to use shear will of force to become the person you desire to be.

Risk = reward. Simple as that.

This brings me to my guest today. A professor of riskology over at Advanced Riskology, Tyler Tervooren.

Who better to talk about risks than a guy who quit a $50,000+ year job to pursue his dreams. Tyler was profiled over at MSN money about how he lives leverages a state program that allows him to collect unemployment benefits while he pursues his own small business (Advanced Riskology). He built up his savings, kept his expenditures to a minimum and pursues work that is deeply meaningful to him. His mission with Advanced Riskology is to inspire you to take more risks in your life. Like he did with his own. Here is the interview:

1. So who is this professor of riskology?

For those reading who have never heard of you before Tyler, can you please share a short run down on who you are and what we can learn from you?

I’m just a guy who slowly realized that the best times of my life – the times when I really grow, learn, and get to know myself – were the times I took big risks and stretched myself beyond my comfort zone.

I pretty much grew up believing that the safest path from A to B was always the best one, but am certain now that it almost never is. I took the safe path through college, got a safe job, and settled into a comfortable life only to find myself completely unhappy with where I’d ended up.

This really frustrated me, so I spent a long time looking at the decisions I’d made up to that point and realized the reason I wasn’t enjoying life anymore was because I wasn’t testing myself or pushing myself to new limits. So now, I try embrace that lifestyle and that’s what Advanced Riskology is all about – helping people lead more interesting lives by taking bigger risks.

The tagline of the site is “better living through uncertainty” and that’s what I try to live up to with everything I write about.

2. Failure to Launch

So you launched your site, wrote a detailed Ebook filled with bits of wisdom (take this job and shove it), are on your way to creating a vibrant community over at Advanced Riskology, and are working on achieving more than 99% of the world ever will.

Why do you think some fail to launch? That is take action (or enough action) to start seeing results. Is it fear of failure?

I think fear fear of failure definitely plays a large part in the internal battle that everyone has when they’re trying to find their “great idea.”

Humans are social creatures and we like to know what other people think of our ideas so we ask for a lot of advice. The problem with that though, is that our best ideas usually can’t be understood until they’re implemented. No one else can really “get it” until they can see it. So the advice we end up getting is usually along the lines of “I don’t know about that” or “sounds interesting, but be careful.”

No one means to kill your idea, but when you fill your head with that kind of advice, it gets harder and harder to go through with it. I always say that “good advice will kill your dreams” because conventional wisdom is always to be careful and go slow and try things on the side. That’s fine for a lot of things in life, but when it comes to your best ideas – the things you’re most passionate about – it’s the worst advice you could ever get.

When it comes to your best stuff, you have to trust yourself and lean into your work. No one else is going to understand until you just do it and say, “See, here’s what I mean.”

I also think a lot of people have a fear of success as well. People tend to have friends and social circles at the same rung of the socio-economic ladder, so doing something that could propel you to the next one can be scary because we’re afraid we’ll lose all of our friends.

3. Dealing With Apathy

Besides fear of failure I believe apathy plays a role at holding people back. Too long in a job some begin to lose their inspiration and motivation. The path to success could be laid out in front of them yet they don’t do the necessary hard work. They just keep on the mediocre path they are on. What advice can you give to people who keep failing due to apathy. What advice do you have to beat it once and for all?

I know exactly what you mean. The longer you do something, the easier it is to just keep doing it. If you’re on the right path, then that’s awesome, but if the path your on sucks, then things just get worse and worse at the same time as they get harder and harder to change.

My advice would be to just start small and build momentum. It’s the only thing that’s ever worked for me. You’re not going to go 10 years down the “road of apathy” to one day see the path to success and turn around on a dime to follow it. You can’t stop a speeding train and turn it around in 10 seconds.

The best you can do is start looking for the little things – the tiny parts of everyday life – that make you happy and start trying to do them more. Start putting on the breaks and looking for a new course.

It seems completely insignificant at first and you kind of feel like a fool because it’s just a drop in the bucket, but as you keep at it you start to see bigger and bigger opportunities and things start to fall together as your new direction starts to experience less friction.

My favorite cartoonist, Hugh Macleod, likes to point out that the best ideas you’ll ever have in life won’t come to you in a fit of inspiration. That’s Hollywood BS. Your best ideas sneak up on you slowly but surely. They start out completely insignificant and build up over time. They’re not flashy and they’re not sexy. Flash and sex are tricks that bad ideas use to steal your attention.

4. Shout out To Your Followers

As your popularity continues to grow I am sure you receive some nice positive feedback. Can you share the single most powerful piece of feedback you have gotten thus far?

That’s a really great question! I had to think about it for awhile. To be honest though, I think the most powerful piece of feedback I’ve ever gotten was negative.

I get really nice emails from people all the time saying how much they appreciate Advanced Riskology and what I’m doing, and that’s really awesome; it’s what keeps me going.

But, I got an email a few weeks ago from a guy that called me a bunch of names and basically said I was an irresponsible kid that was going to ruin the world by trying to change the way people live, work, etc.

I was flattered that he thought I had that much power (I wish!), but what was really powerful to me was that his email reinforced my belief that you can’t do something interesting and meaningful without ruffling some feathers. The ratio of postive emails to negative ones I get are probably at least 100:1. If I watered down my message, I’d probably get less hate mail, but I’d get a lot less nice emails, too.

If you want to do something meaningful, you have to accept the fact that there will be people that will hate you for it. It’s a sad fact of life. Fortunately, a lot more people will love you for it. The idea is to keep tipping the scale in the positive direction.

5. Sense of Urgency

Most of us have our ideal lifestyle in our head, but how do you connect real action oriented steps to the dream? How do you create a sense of urgency to do important work and take advantage of opportunities as they come instead of doing what is easy ( that is, nothing).

That’s super important, so I’m glad you asked it. I’m actually working on a really big article right now where I talk about how to write your autobiography years ahead of schedule. The idea is that you need to specifically visualize what your end goal is – your ideal life – but that’s not nearly enough. You have to start working backwards from that in tiny steps and you can’t stop until you have something that you can do right now, in the next 5 minutes, without waiting for anything else to happen.

It’s easy and really fun to dream up your ideal life, but it gets harder and the waters get murkier as you scale down from that because things get a lot more real, more urgent, and that’s when your fears start to kick in and you start to shut down.

Most people don’t want to get specific about what they want their life to look/feel like in 20 years because they’re afraid they won’t like it when they get there. But if you don’t create a very specific image, you can’t create very specific actions that you can do right now that will get your closer. You have to just go with your best guess right now and change it over time if you need to.

My favorite Beatle, George Harrison, likes to say, “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.”

6. Keep Going When You Feel Like Giving Up

For some, it is not necessarily a lack of time, but rather a lack of motivation to keep going when things are not working. How do you maximize motivation to keep going when things get rough? How do you balance this between strategically giving up?

Well, this is where I differ from most people in my beliefs. I think that if something isn’t working, then you probably should give up. Life is too short to keep going at something that isn’t fun and isn’t working. Of course, that gets misinterpreted a lot and what I really mean, like you said, is to give up “strategically.”

If you have your end goal clearly defined but you have a lack of motivation to go after it, it’s probably because whatever strategy you’re using simply isn’t working and you need to stop doing it and try something else. The end goal remains, but the course to get there changes, probably quite a lot.

For me, things are exciting when they’re either a) new, or b) working well. If the “newness” wares off and it’s not working, I say goodbye and try again. Of course, it’s up to you how long “new” lasts and sometimes you have to go into something realizing upfront that it’s a long-term strategy and that you might not see results right away.

Set deadlines. Deadlines can be your best friend.

7. Spread Your Influence

Kevin Kelly talks about finding 1000 true fans. How do you plan on growing your readership and influence?

Well, as a good transition from the last question, I have a strategy that I’ve been using and I plan to keep using it until it stops working!

Right now, about 70% of Advanced Riskology’s growth comes from major media mentions or guest posts. Those drive lots and lots of interested people to the site. Getting an interview with a major media outlet like MSN takes a lot of tries, but not a lot of work. On the other hand, writing an awesome guest post that gets people interested takes a lot of work, but not a lot of tries to get the opportunity.

So, I kind of do a balancing act between going after really big interviews and writing top notch guest posts. Truth told though, I don’t spend more than about 15-20 minutes a day trying to promote the site to new people.

The other strategy is just to always be putting out my best stuff. I try really hard not to hold anything back. When people see you giving away your best stuff, they’re naturally inclined to share it which gives you more time to keep creating great content because your audience starts to spread the message so you don’t have to.

I also answer every single email I recieve. I have no idea if that actually works, but I like to believe it does because it’s a lot of work. At the very least, it makes me feel good!

8. Mentors

Do you have mentors and if so, how have they helped you become more of a risk taker?

I’ve been asked this question a few times, and my answer is always awkward because, in my opinion, Chris Guillebeau has been an incredible mentor to me, but we’ve never officially talked about any kind of “mentorship.” It makes me wonder if anyone ever has a sort of formal discussion where they decide that, yes, you’re in a “mentoring” relationship.

I live just down the street from him and we catch up from time to time. I freelance for him on a very part-time basis and he helps me out whenever I have a question or need some advice from someone who’s been there. Even if I didn’t know him personally, I’d probably still call him my mentor because his blog is one of very few that I read every single article and come away with ideas about how to step up my own game and take more risks with my work.

So there, it’s out in the open! Chris, if you read this, you’re officially my mentor.

J.D. Roth from Get Rich Slowly is also someone that I feel has gone out of his way to help me along when I had no freakin’ clue what I was doing. Of course, I still don’t, but I’m getting better.

9. Marathon + Antarctic = Awesome (yes they have those: Ice Man Marathon)

You’re seriously going to do a marathon in the Antarctic..wow really? That seems to be more challenging than any mountaineering you do. How the heck are you going to prepare for that?

The answers to those questions are “yes” and “I have no idea.”

I want to run a marathon on every continent, so when it comes to Antarctica, I’ll just have to grin and bear it. Actually, I’m sure it will be a blast preparing for it and it will be an awesome memory once it’s done. As for the actual event, we’ll see how that goes. :)

I’m planning to do a lot of cold weather mountaineering between now and then to get me ready for the temperatures and I do a lot of running anyway. Like most things I do, I set a goal and then figure out the details along the way. I almost never have any idea at the very beginning exactly how I’ll accomplish something. Wish me luck!

10. The conclusion

Thanks Tyler!

Thanks for having me! It’s a real privilege.

—

So there you have it. 3100 words later and we have reached the end. Go subscribe to Tyler’s site if you have not done so: Free updates

If you like what I am doing over in my part of the Internet I would appreciate your support. Everyone has to start somewhere and I am new to the party: rss | email.

Share this with others as well if you think it is was as inspiring as I do.

Also, know any remarkable risk takers who are embracing uniqueness and rejecting mediocrity that I should interview? If so hit me up via my contact page.

So what big risk are you going to add to your bucket list? Me? I am going to try my hand at bullfighting (no joke). Thank you very much for reading!

“You know what I am? I’m a dog chasing cars. I wouldn’t know what to do with one if I caught it!

I just do things…I’m not a schemer. I try and show the schemers how pathetic their attempts to control things really are” – The Joker

Here in lies some of the best career advice I have heard in quite some time…from of all people a mad man ( a fictional one at least, but go figure).

The joker is such a dangerous force of destruction because he not only operates under a different view of reality than the rest of us subscribe to, he also acts upon it which so few have the courage to do ourselves…and gets results! Though horrific those results may be (think bombs, knives, guns, blood,) they are results none the less.

Trying to reason with the Joker, to figure out what his end game is, to discover his evil villain plan behind his bloody red smile…only realize there is no god damn plan, it’s simply creative destruction carrying forth the joker…it kind of forces one to contemplate the devilish brilliance of being the joker.

We all just need to start doing things that interest us genuinely. We also need to stop looking for a map, plan, or path on how to do it.

While typically I believe the advice “just get started” is just plain stupid (that will be a post next week) I do think there is tremendous personal development value in just doing it. In just following your heart and rejecting the path others have set you on. Happy people just do what their heart tells them to do. They just do what they need to do to make it happen, and don’t quit until it does happens. Unhappy people sit around and wish.

Now you may think I am going to preach to you all the virtues of just doing it or just getting started… all I have to say about that stuff is “meh”. You can find generic insights like that elsewhere. Some of it is brilliant and eloquent, other is just bullshit for ordinary people.

The real value is realizing there is no plan for life. No checklist to run down, no instructions to follow, no right way of living.

The human experience is an interesting one. Referring to my life and to your life as the human experience does a nice job at overly complicating the who situation of being a person to begin with. As if existence and survival is not enough… no we are forced to contemplate and comprehend our existence as well, and also try to find meaning in it. Hey that’s just how it is. If it was only about a struggle to survive most of us would be doing great, but it’s not. It is more about a struggle to find and do work that is deeply important to us, make a contribution to humanity, and to turn  a profit so we don’t starve.

So stop acting like you have a path.

No one has a path. Not even you…yes you, you sitting there reading this. You think you have a path don’t you? Only a path that was constructed by the consciousness of another human being perhaps. You can confine yourself if you so choose, but you don’t have to.You can really do handstands on a rings of fire if you wish. Tell them Edge of David said you could if you need cover.

I have no particular path I am following, nor do I see myself walking someone else’s path. While I certainly have goals I plan on achieving,  I really am just making this up as I go along. That is how it is for most…well maybe not most, but certainly the most interesting among us!

Take my buddy Joe. Joe is a US Marine. Lost a hand thanks to the multiple wars my country has decided to launch. He thought he had a plan just like you think you have a plan. His plan was to be like his dad. Move up the ranks, and retire at a minimum of lieutenant colonel. That’s never going to happen for Joe now…but that is OK!

Upon his discharge he decided to devote his time to work he found meaningful. Work that was making a contribution. Work that paid him enough to not starve. That work is helping to rehabilitate young wounded soldiers. Something I have an infinite amount of respect for. Yea, he could have mopped about, but he has a life to live and work to do.

I could really care less if I am forgotten when I am dead. I just want to know what I did matter.

You think you have a plan but you don’t. No one does. So stop containing yourself and get busy living. Also, stop reading this and go outside. Even if you’re in a cubicle right now. The sun will do you some good.

So do I really look like a guy with a plan? I hope not!

I also want to apologize for the language. Just another creative fog has taken over momentarily. It may pass or it may stay. I don’t know. You should subscribe to find out: rss | email

(eh who am I kidding, it’s your own fault. What do you expect from a site called Edge of David, strawberries and rainbows? Seriously though, I have some interesting stuff coming up, stay tuned.)

image cred: hhj1

Sometimes I think I can’t handle the immensity of reality. I wish I could easily  subscribe to the illusion of now and forever like so many do…

but I don’t. Now is only now, and it is never forever. This especially rings true when a MIND BLOWING synchronicity happens that only serves to reminded me of how our lives run out way too quickly (our lives are much to short from my perspective).

I was in one of my perpetual work hazes the other day. Making tea, working steadily down my to do list. I had my Sennheiser EH 150′s on with music pumping out of them. I love these headphones. Music is such a huge part of my life, a way for me to relax and let my mind wander…I simply can not stand  listening using those stupid little ear-buds. The left one always seems to be blow out first anyways right? The base reproduction is also non existent on top of that. These Sennheisers seemed to fit the bill wonderfully… they are cheap to, so I don’t have to worry about them breaking, and they plug into my Ibanez amp for my electric guitar! Awesome, win win in my opinion.

When I had a free moment I decided to go to my parents home and drop off my old ear-buds for my mother. I also remembered a book I left in the basement that I wanted to pickup while I was there. Again, another win win (I am on a roll). So I open the door to the basement…damn! I forgot I did that! When I was a 10 year old kid I drew a picture on the wall leading down to the basement. I dated it the exact time it was when I drew it, the current weekday and date, how old I was, and what the weather was like. Think of it like a time capsule.

The date is what got me.

It was 17 years to the day since I drew that.

17 years.

17 years!

To the day. Of all the days, how utterly mind blowing is it that I would happen to notice that picture 17 years to the day. The odds are simply overwhelming to comprehend. Of all the other things I could have been doing, thing I could have been seeing, or places I could have been. I was standing in the downstairs hallway of my parents home looking at an image I drew and dated for the future me… on the exact day that kid made it for me all those years ago.

If for whatever reason I was to believe in a Divine being watching over me, letting me know I am being watched over…yep I would give this moment to let myself believe that.

All those years

Don’t be fooled by the illusion of now and forever. You are going to be an old man or woman soon enough. As I looked upon this image a flood of memories came smashing back of the past 17 years. I remember of people come and gone, of memories come and gone, of places been, of dreams I had, of goals I accomplished. Now so completely and utterly in the past. Vanished.

That time just happened and now it is gone. Wave it goodbye and say hello to now and get ready for the future because it is coming up on you quick. There is nothing you can do about it by the way. No sense holding onto the past, live free from it. Now and forever is an illusion. It is never constant. Change is only constant. People change, things change, you change. If you’re not changing that means you’re stagnant…and that is a suboptimal alternative anyways.

Embrace the flow of reality from here to now, then to  beyond. Ditch the illusion of now and forever. Live for today because that is all you have.

I want you to do something.

I want you to set up a time stamp for yourself like I did.

Put down the date, the time, and what you hope for your future self. Think of it like leaving an older you a message.

Try to think about the past 17 years of your life. How different you are now than you were. Is the current you successful? By successful I mean doing work that is important, making  a healthy income, and contributing to the greater good? Or are you a cog in a machine? A replaceable part?

The beginning of every month I cover my quest to turn EOD from a simple site into a profitable venture.

I stumble into the kitchen looking for the kettle. It’s pitch black as my eyes adjust to the darkness. OMG, it’s 2:00 am! It was just 8:20 pm last time I checked…I had just finished a marathon of sitting in front of the computer editing and deleting, editing and deleting. Editing and deleting what you may be wondering? My old contet, all 110 post of it (old content = prior to June 2010).

As August ends, as summer ends, so too do these long grunt work fill hours end of editing my old content! I can not tell you how good It feels to know, to really know that it is finally over and I can do the work I enjoy.

Much of my old content was riddled with errors. Spelling errors, run on sentences, incorrect grammar. Much of it was also really stupid, so it got nuked. As I talked about in fail blog my original motivation a year ago when I started, was to make money with blogging. That is easily the worst reason to start a blog.

You start a blog because you have an idea, you have art, you have inspiration you wish to share with others, and use blogging simply as the best medium for that end purpose. Not to make money. Money follows as a function of the value you create and provide with blogging. If you have a lack of inspiration, a lack of motivation with blogging, you are going to create very little value for anyone. You’re just not going to produce work people care about and as such you are never going to grow. Which means you are never going to make any money.

Move to a new domain and start over

That’s what I did. I realized the error of my ways and wanted to produce content I was actually proud about, and that people cared about.

My original domain was dating related. I viewed dating as a niche that was ripe for the taking as there is (and still is) no dominant dating blog. I stupidly figured that it could be me. So I did the typical keyword search to find out what people were searching and wrote posts around that. It was all quite a chore writing about dating…but through its failure gave me inspiration in an odd way….

It made me think about what fosters a healthy relationship

It helped me form my formula that now governs my content:

personal development + self realization + financial abundance + empowered relationship = a very powerful person.

That you have to work on your own limiting beliefs first, which will help you discover who you really are and what you want to be. By knowing this, it will help direct you towards work you find meaningful and important . By doing work that is important, it will lead to a healthy income. All this combined allows you to approach any relationship (be it romantic or otherwise) from a position of strength.

The real key to all this is uniqueness and artistry

Work that is important is not work that requires you to be replaceable like a cog in a machine. No, it’s about embracing your unique gifts and talents. To use these gifts and talents to create and provide value for others. If blogging is the best way to provide that value, then start a blog. If not, then please don’t! Find another way. But either way, you must embrace your humanity in today’s world as playing it safe is no longer safe.

With regard to blogging, I have learned it is of little importance what niche you define yourself. Rather it is always, ALWAYS about the content. It’s about giving yourself away. I guess Edge of David is a personal development blog, but it is so much more about creating personal freedom, doing work that matters, over coming roadblocks and achieving personal and professional success. I just share my best ideas be it about dating, marketing your ideas, personal hangups, business, blogging, making money, economics, whatever i think can help.

Current frustrations

This site is still sand-boxed by Google at the time of writing this! This is frustrating to no end for me. What is sand-boxing you may be wondering? It is when Google index’s your site, but does not allow any of the content to rank for keywords. Google does this to prevent spam from entering into the search results. For example:

This post about the magic wand question should be ranking for the search term “magic wand” or “magic wands”, but it’s not.

Your site gets sand-boxed if it’s 1) new or 2) had major changes to it. Unfortunately for me I fall under both of these, so I should be sand-boxed.

The frustrating part though is the only posts that rank are dating related posts from when the site was under the old url. So the only way people find Edge of David is by a bunch of random dating terms. While this is fine, I do write about relationships, it tends however to give people the impression that this is a dating advice site and it is not.

For example, the three tabbed widget in the upper right corner I had to switch around because “current hits” shows the posts that got the most hits in the last 7 days. It’s always the same 6 dating posts…makes it look like all I write about is dating when in reality I had only written one post in July about being retrosexual and one post in August about how to create a real relationship. The rest of the content had a different focus. I had to change this widget because it was giving the wrong impression. I want people to search around the site and explore the new content because it is quite good, and not just write me off as a pickup artist or as a corny relationship blogger.

Strategies to overcome current frustrations

I am so proud of this site and I sincerely want it to reach more people because it’s worthy of that. The old adage, if you build it they will come is a fallacy in the online space. You need to have a marketing strategy to get you over that hump. The hump is 1000 visitors a day and 1000 rss subscribers. Once you get beyond that it starts to get much easier to grow (so I am told) as enough people will share your content with others.

My strategy to grow this site, get some good links, and to get me out of the sand-box is to reach a broader audience. I will do this in three ways:  1) interview interesting people with influence and 2) guest posts on sights that have a large audience I could reach and help. Once my site is out of the sand box, I can then focus a little on 3) SEO to help my posts rank. Really however, it is about building a community that I can help, and that can help me. Garner enough influence and audience so that the site grows organically via links, retweets, stumbles, emails, and word of mouth.

Current successes

I want to end this on a high note so some really good signs are the engagement I have been experiencing with this site. Already, even with the site sand-boxed my subscriber base has already surpassed my old domain. Also, I have gotten some really nice emails from people who have found my site, said they loved it, and have shared it with others. Engagement in my opinion is a huge indicator of success for a site. Also, searches for “Edge of David” and “The Edge of David” are way up, it is my 4th most referring search term, and about 5x as many searches than was ever done for my old domain.

This site is still small, but it is showing tremendous promise, it’s up to me to grow it.The grunt work may be over, but the truly hard work, the important work, has just begun.

wish me luck,

-David

Naysayers are abound and they have stories.

Stories of failure. Like the one of that guy who did that thing and is now living in a van down by the river because he failed. Sad.

Or that girl who risked it all and moved to a foreign city to take a job that did not materialize. She can now be found working retail, stocking shelves late at night. Be scared…

No, you must ignore these people in your life.

It is not that they want to discourage you (OK they sort of do), but rather they care about you and do not want to see you do anything risky…

Really, they worry for two reasons.

The first is out of genuine concern for your well being. Naysayers often take the form of loved ones: your parents, siblings, friends.  They do not want to see you fall on hard times. To put yourself in a situation where you can never recover from.

The second reason is a bit more selfish. A bit more fearful. They fear that by some astonishing measure, you will manage success for yourself. That your position will vastly improve over their’s. That you will utterly and completely shattering the social hierarchy they have become comfortable with into a million little pieces.

It’s like a bucket full of crabs. Your trying to climb out of the bucket and they keep clawing at your legs, dragging you down. Keeping you on the same level with everyone else. Climbing out of the bucket takes a measure of bravery. If you manage it, you demonstrate that it can be done. This will then shine a bright light onto their own timid existence. A timid existence spent baking under fluorescent bulbs wearing shades of khaki brown while working in front of excel spread sheets making sure to please the boss.

We all know someone like this. Someone who is all to apt to tell you how you will fail, or how it can not be done, or by how YOU can not do it.

I know a guy like this, he is actually a good friend. I never share my ideas with him anymore. Instead of engaging me, being supportive, being a friend really, he looks for ways to cut me down. It’s really an exhausting battle explaining to someone “no wait, you don’t understand”. It sucks the life out of me. The motivation. I start to question myself, and it is for this reason why you really should listen to no one, particularly naysayers.

The funny thing is, these naysayers bring up stories of failure but never  seem to know anyone specific…but they are sure as hell they exist. Somewhere.

If you happen to come across this risk taker that is now living in a van down by the river let me know. I want to interview them.

Honestly, everyone who I know that is doing really well is doing so because they are remarkable. Because they are risk takers. Because they have chosen to follow their hearts desire and do whatever it takes to get to where they want to be. Even if that includes living on the edge for a bit.

The world has changed. Trying to be safe is actually incredibly risky. Safe is boring. Safe is replaceable. Safe is mediocre. The deal has changed. No longer can you go through life just doing what you are told, showing up, and following directions and expect to live a life worth living.

You have to think for yourself, solve problems, create value for other human beings, find a medium to provide that value, and not give up when it is rejected. Simply keep doing it till you get better at it. Share yourself. Share your humanity. Stop being brainwashed or discouraged by these vampire naysayers.

My view of how things really work.

Naysayers use the stories of failure as a shield and an excuse for their own chosen and settle mediocrity. It makes them feel better. It makes them think they made the right choice in life and I am the one who is crazy.

You can truly do anything your heart desires so long as you choose to listen to it, follow it with conviction, passion and discipline. Listening to naysayers and their frightful stories of failure only helps to undermine your desires.

There are no failures. Only stories of failures. Only people who gave up. Only people who were too afraid to ever start in the first place. These types indulge in stories of failure because it proves to them that change is risky. Staying put is safe…but it is not.

Embrace your humanity or live in quiet desperation.

Fear and uncertainty are monsters. Big monsters. With red eyes and spiky skin. Maybe 9 ft tall and weighing 500 lbs. The trick is to think of fear and uncertainty as a horse. A gentle mare. That can be tamed and used for your own purposes. If successful, if you do tame it, it only adds to your abilities. The once fear now provides the very opportunity you were looking for.

Not only that, you can you now surpass other individuals who are much more smarter than you. By surpassing people who should seemingly be better off than you… but are not, it also gives way to an increase in your confident nature. Making you that much more powerful.

Don’t listen to anyone.

With obstacles in life you can go over it, around it, duck it, sidestep it, or as naysayers would have, avoid it. Surrender to it. Don’t listen to anyone (especially naysayers) because it will only lead you to a path of mediocrity, paralysis, of defeat and ignominy. Listening to them and avoiding the hard work of contributing your humanity and settling for mediocrity will block the way. It closes the gate.

No, instead realize you can and must contribute your humanity. Your uniqueness to the world. By doing so you can create something awesome. Be something awesome. As long as you are will to trade risk for reward. Up to you. I have said enough.

SO let me ask you, where will you be this time next year? Is that what you really want?

best,

-David

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image cred: michelem