Name it. Make it. Live it.

I don’t like to talk politics on my blog. I don’t like to talk religion, and I don’t like to talk economics.

Why?

Because all of those subjects are inflammatory as f#ck and you just can’t do it without an explosion going off in the comments section. It’s not that I’m afraid to express my ideas, it’s just that I’d rather not moderate that kind of discussion. Also the conversations usually give off a negative vibe and that’s not what i’m looking for.

On the other hand, I’m a HUGE DIE HARD Ayn Rand fan. Don’t get all worked up unless you’ve read every single one of her books! For now I’d like to share 5 quotes in particular that resonate with me and that I KNOW will resonate with you too.

How do I know this?

Because this audience is supposed to be full of passion, fire, determination, and an unbridled desire to really live. If you’re not, you are about to be.

With that said, here we go.

If you don’t know, the thing to do is not to get scared, but to learn.

It’s OK to not know. It’s not OK to not think.

Even though I didn’t really know why I was miserable at a perfectly good job, I didn’t get scared and try to block it out. I tried to figure out why I felt that way.

I don’t know if I’m going to make it out in the big bad world of the internet on my own. What I do know is that I’m going to learn everything that I can so that my chances of success are as great as they can possibly be.

I didn’t know how airplanes work. I used to be irrationally scared of them. I learned how they work. Now I’m still scared of them but I know that it’s irrational. It’s a work in progress.

If you don’t know if something is going to work out, or why things are the way they are, or why everyone hated your last post, don’t get scared or discouraged. Learn. When in doubt, the answer is always to learn.

The man who lets a leader prescribe his course is a wreck being towed to the scrap heap.

Unfortunately this is the state that most people live in every single day. They let their boss, politicians, or cult leaders tell them what is important and what isn’t important. Everyone is walking around blindly following ‘leaders’ because they ‘must know’ something that they don’t.

The enormous fail here is that no one even recognizes this. And I’m going to throw in another Ayn Rand quote because it helps me illustrate this point:

The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody has decided not to see.

This is why it’s so hard to explain this concept. Look around you and you will see that nearly everyone is letting someone else determine what their next step in life is going to be. It’s so wrong and it blows my mind that it took ME this long to figure that out. All I want to do is run around my neighborhood shaking people and yelling at them to wake up.

Stop. Think. Plot your individual course in life. If you decide that the direction that your boss or leader is going in is the right direction for you, then by all means continue. But if not you have to get out of there and get out fast.

If you don’t want to do that, then it means you just don’t want to think. If you don’t want to think, then you don’t want to live.

The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.

Too often people today start with ‘is that allowed’ or ‘has that been done before’ or ‘who do we ask’ or any other variation of self-doubt. Stop relying on someone else to give you permission to act. Just because someone told you that it was ok doesn’t mean that you are automatically absolved from the consequences of that action.

There is no one in this world that can dictate your actions unless you let them. Stop thinking about the world as a place made up of rules, boundaries and confinement.

It’s not.

An error made on your own is safer than ten truths made on faith.

When was the last time you took initiative and made a decision and failed? It sucked didn’t it? It sucked a lot because it was all you. There was no where else to spread the shame of failure.

When you make a mistake because you decided to take someone else’s word on faith, it doesn’t suck so so bad. It wasn’t your idea after all. You trusted so and so and this is where it got you.

Why is the first one safer than the second?

Because in the first situation, you know exactly what you did and how you can prevent failure next time. In the second situation you are powerless to mitigate failure because you have no idea exactly why you did what you did.

The quote does not say that it’s easier to make a mistake on your own than to make a mistake based on the beliefs of someone else. It’s not easier. It’s much harder. But it’s safer because you have the knowledge. And knowledge is power.

The quickest way to kill the human spirit is to ask someone to do mediocre work.

If this doesn’t ring a bell then you must not be living on the same planet that I am.

Do you wonder why you look around and see a bunch of unambitious miserably happy people? People who have already died and are just imitating the motions of life?

Purpose. Purpose. Purpose.

Your purpose in life is your work. No matter what it is.

Whether you are an awesome floor cleaner or a Nobel Prize winning author. I don’t care if you are really good at mowing lawns or really good at brain surgery. What I do care about is that you know what you are good at and what you love to do and you do it to the best of your ability.

This is not what we ask people to do. You graduate from college expecting to change the world and then find that you’re doing nothing but playing politics and making pretty charts for managers (most of the time).

The longer you accept such a task, the faster your brain and spirit will atrophy. One day you will find that you don’t feel that fire anymore. Eventually you will forget what it feels like. By that point it’s nearly impossible to resuscitate you. Please please please don’t let it get that bad.

Learn to value yourself, which means: fight for your happiness.

This is the crux of this entire post and the meaning of this entire blog. If you made it this far then that means you are in it for the long haul.

If you value yourself and your life, then there is only one way you can really live: In a state of happiness.

Don’t give me any shit about that being impossible. ITS NOT. I’m not saying that you’re going to have sunshine, rainbows, and teddy bears in football jerseys for your entire life. I’m saying that the majority of your life should be spent being happy.

Happy is the norm. Suffering is the exception. Memorize that.

Happiness doesn’t just come. You have to fight for it. Fight for your happiness means fighting for your life. This is what I want you to learn from this blog.

Name it: That means fighting to determine your passion. Fight to find what stirs you, what excites you, what really gets you going. Don’t just think for five minutes and decide you’re not passionate about anything. I don’t care who you are, there is something that makes you go ‘hell yes!’ and thats what you need to find. It may not be easy. It may be hiding somewhere. But by golly you better fight with everything you have to find it.

Make it: So now you’ve found the little sucker. Your happiness bug. Now what? Now you have to make it happen! You’ve got a thing for barbies? Build your work around barbies! You have to create it. It’s not just going to magically form itself into work that you can live off of.

Live it: This is it. The culmination to all of your hard work. Live your dream. When you start to get really comfortable or if you aren’t constantly challenged, start the process all over again. Living means growth. Even if you get to where you wanted to go it doesn’t mean you should become stagnant. It just means that you’re going to go farther than you dreamed.

So dream big & I’ll meet you on the other side.