Dan Waldschmidt's Blog, page 15

The Superpower of Hustle.

Great athletes train their muscles to respond with extreme precision even when the rest of their body is fatigued.

A great golfer will often practice a particular swing hundreds of times per day and thousands of times over a year to create a memory for the muscles that make that swing work.

As the golfer perfects the tiniest of details that allow him to place a golf ball wherever he chooses, the muscles that flex and twitch in that process are strengthened.

The better the practice, the better the performance.

Over time, the same muscles are exercised and strengthened. And the golfer develops a subconscious superpower.

Even when tired and stressed, his muscles take over automatically and do what they have been trained to do. He doesn’t need to think about it. He doesn’t need to obsess about it.

He doesn’t need to wonder what’s going to happen. It is almost automatic.

The same is true for the Olympic pole vaulter, a seasoned Southern Baptist preacher, the right forward on a championship soccer team, an elite sales professional, and an amateur runner. 

Deliberate practice creates a subconscious superpower. 

When things get tough, the body puts on auto-pilot what it has trained and prepared and planned to do.

Which is why it is so important that you develop the right muscles. The right automatic response.

How you practice and what you practice becomes your go-to move when you’re under extreme pressure. 

When things get tough, and you’re backed into a corner, you’re going to respond automatically. 

Despite how self-aware you think you are or how intellectually agile you might be, when things get tough enough you will automatically revert back to muscle memory. 

One of those muscles needs to be hustle.

Fred Smith, a brilliant business thinker, was giving a failing grade by his Yale professor because his idea for FedEx “wasn’t feasible”. Today that idea employees 400,000 employees and generate $50 billions per year in revenue.

R.H. Macy, who had a dream to “Be everywhere, do everything, and never forget to astonish the customer”, went broke seven times trying to make that a reality. His department store would be a permanent fixture in New York City.

Robert Goddard, perhaps the smartest astrophysicist in the world, engineered two hundred failing ideas for rockets before he got one to fly into space. His mistakes cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

Henry Ford, who transformed business innovation, went bankrupt five times before his automobile manufacturing idea started working. His creditors took everything from him along the way.

J.K. Rowling, the highest selling author of modern time, shopped her book thirteen times before a publisher would take a look at the first Harry Potter book. That series of books would end up selling 450 million copies.

Hard work. Tenacity. Determination. Resolve. Sweat. Blood. And tears.

You won’t make it if you don’t know how to grind. You won’t come out a winner if you don’t know how to hustle. If you aren’t committed to doing whatever it takes to achieving greatness.

When you face repeated failure, you have to hustle.
When you get told “NO”, you have to hustle.
When you face financial ruin, you have to hustle.
When success is unforeseeable, you have to hustle.
When conventional wisdom says “it would never work”, you have to hustle.
When you are tired and beat down, you have to hustle.
When no one believes in you, you have to hustle.
When you have nothing else to give, you have to hustle.

Like an elite performer, your default decision in the middle of trouble to hustle and grind is what determines your ultimate destiny.

And that, at it’s very simplest, is the superpower of hustle.

When you’re tired, fatigued, and beyond your limit, your muscle memory guides you to do what matters.

You hustle. You work. You grind. You dream. You persist.

You emerge successful.

Switching Hands In Order To Win.

In 1936, Berlin, Germany held the world’s attention. But not for the government led by the National Socialist German Worker’s Party. Their leader stood ready to prove the superiority of the Aryan race.

Athletes from around the world traveled to the center of German power to display their athletic prowess in the XI Olympiad. It was the year American Jesse Owens captured four track and field medals — the first American to do so, cementing his place in Olympic history.

But off in Wannsee, southwest of Berlin, Germans, Scandinavians, and other global powers were battling it out for the shooting medals. Eight Hungarians competed. One took silver in the men’s 50 metre rifle, prone.

Their best shooter was conspicuously absent. Karoly Tackas, sergeant in the Hungarian army.

But since only commissioned officers were allowed to compete, he was forced to remain home while two Germans and a Swede took their places on the podium in his event: 25 meter rapid fire pistol, where targets are only visible for an increasingly smaller amount of time. Any competitor who misses a target is automatically ineligible for the next round.

The rule barring non-commissioned officers to compete was lifted for the 1940 Olympics, and Karoly knew the event would be his.

So did everyone else in 1936.

In 1937, everyone continued to believe he’d take gold in Tokyo in 1940 as Karoly kept training. Kept improving.

In 1938, everyone still believed he would win. You could say he was the man with the golden right hand. He believed it too. One training session, as he prepared to lob a grenade like had thousands of times before, something was different.

All of that changed one day in a routine military training session.

As he prepared to lob a grenade like had done thousands of times before, something was different. Pull… Click… Boom… But the boom of the explosion felt too close.

He held a faulty grenade. Or rather, he had held a faulty grenade. It exploded early.

Looking down, he saw a bloody stump. Gone was his right hand — and his dream of 1940 Olympic gold.

For a month, Karoly lay in the hospital bed, feeling useless. Utterly depressed.

But he determined to figure it out.

As soon as he was out of the hospital, he taught himself to shoot left-handed. At first, he could barely hold the pistol — nevermind shoot straight.

He was manically focused on getting this right. For a full-year, he trained to do the opposite of what came naturally.

Frustratingly, agonizingly, he started to make progress using his left hand.

In 1939, he stepped back into the public spotlight and competed in Hungary’s National Shooting Championship.

His friends were shocked to see him there and thought he had come to spectate.

“I’ve not come here to watch. I’ve come here to win”, he told them. And win he did.

He was back, and ready for the 1940 Tokyo games.

But he faced circumstances outside his control.

But in 1939, the same Germany that hosted the world igniting global war by attacking Poland. The 1940 Olympics were canceled. And so were the 1944 games.

He grew depressed and frustrated. Yet through all of this, Karoly persisted. Shooting. Training. Improving his craft.

It was 10 years later — in 1948 — when the world finally came together in London, just three years after being torn apart by global war.

As British athlete John Mark circled the track in Wembley stadium to light the cauldron in front of thousands, the stadium’s marquee held these words:

“The important thing in the Olympic Games is not winning, but taking part. The essential thing in life is not conquering, but fighting well”

That could have been Karoly’s motto.

He had fought well to come back from the hospital bed to his country’s winner’s podium. Now it would be time to step onto the global stage and fight for his dream. Gold in the 25 meter rapid fire pistol event.

Quiet and steady, Karoly didn’t let on to the inner flame burning in his soul. When the world record holder (and favorite to win) Carlos Díaz Saenz Valiente approached him, confused why he attended, Karoly replied, “I’m here to learn”.

When the world record holder, and favorite to win, Carlos Díaz Saenz Valiente approached him, confused why he attended with only a stump of an arm, Karoly replied, “I’m here to learn”.

It wasn’t even close. Karoly shot better with his non-dominant hand than anybody else in history had with their good hand.

On the podium, having bested Valiente to take Olympic gold, setting both an Olympic record and a world record in the process, Díaz Saenz Valiente turned and said, “You have learned enough”.

He had accomplished the unthinkable.

With one hand. With the wrong hand.

Four years later, Karoly was back at the Olympics to defend his title as the world’s best rapid fire pistol shooter. He fell one point shy of tying his Olympic record score of 580 points from the London games.

Karoly went on to rack up 35 national shooting championship wins in Hungary during his life. All of them with his left hand.

So what is your excuse? What is holding you back from “fighting well?”

Out of money? Out of time? Lose your friends, your marriage, your job, or your looks?

You might have to switch hands along your journey to success. You might be forced to do that because of circumstances outside your control.

There isn’t an excuse big enough that can stop you from accomplishing your dreams when you decide that you’ll do whatever it takes — even if that means switching hands.

No One Cares About Your Excuse But You.

The only one who really cares about your excuse is you.

No one else really understands the reason or has a reason to care about the reason why you aren’t where you want to be.

No one else is really concerned about the explanation behind your failure.

It’s just you.

You’re busy trying to let everyone know all the important history behind why you are where you are right now. You’re busy defending and championing.

But all of that is a waste of your time. Because no one cares about the reason why you’re not successful.

They just know that you’re not. They see it. They hear it. They feel it.

All that time you’re spending trying to give your side of the story — that’s just a waste of your time.

You could be spending that time and focus on working through the challenges holding you back from being successful.

You could be fighting for your future.

It makes sense that you want people to know why you’re not where you want to be. You want them to understand your journey. You feel your pain. To know that you are trying.

That’s just not important. It’s your journey.

Your battle. Your struggle. And your reward. You win or lose based on your own performance.

Just know that no one really cares about your excuse except for you.

Everyone else is busy trying to win. Maybe you should be too.

You’re Going To Have To Sacrifice Eventually.

You’re going to have to sacrifice eventually. That’s just how life works.

You can either sacrifice now to achieve progress or you can sacrifice later when you’re still stuck.

It’s uncomfortable to have to sacrifice now. It hurts emotionally and financially — and sometimes physically.

But once you realize you’re going to have to do it eventually, it takes some of the sting away.

It forces you to examine your priorities.

You realize that the tough stuff you’re doing now replaces the misery and regret you’d otherwise feel later.

Your sacrifice now is really an investment in your future happiness. In your future success. In achieving awesome.

Make no mistake, life isn’t free. Success isn’t easy. Progress doesn’t happen without friction and pain.

For you to get to where you want to be you’re going to have to struggle and grind.

People are going to make fun of you. Your intentions are going to be mislabeled, misrepresented, and maligned.

But that’s okay. You know the secret to success.

You understand your sacrifice now pays down your future debt.

If you want something you’ve never had before, you must do something today you’ve never tried before.

Challenge yourself each morning when you wake up.

Are you trying something new? Are you sacrificing something big so that you can achieve something even bigger?

You’re going to sacrifice eventually. Make sure it’s not your dream.

How To Escape Your Past.

The fastest way to escape your past is to find your future. To achieve your destiny.

You have problems. That is always going to be true.

Your particular situation might be worse than others. You might still bear the physical or emotional scars of your past.

It’s quite likely you’ve done things you regret. Or had things done to you that are deeply unforgettable.

Your past will always haunt you. Until you make your future your only obsession.

That’s the only way to escape the regret and darkness of your past.

You have to find your future. You have to move towards it.

You have to run with every ounce of your energy towards where you want to be.

That’s how you escape your past. It’s how you find separation between who you were and who you want to be.

The past will always be there to haunt you as long as you meander and think, ponder and obsess about what has happened to you.

You have to get up and move. You have to hustle and grind.

It’s going to hurt. But the hurt of achieving your destiny is so much better than the hurt felt by staying stuck, mired by the fear and dissatisfaction of your past.

History has a way of repeating itself.

Unless you break the cycle.

Unless you break the cycle, you’ll always return to the worst possible version of you.

You will never be happy unless you make a plan to be happy and work towards it. You will never be rich unless you make a plan to be rich and work towards it.

The only thing holding you back is you.

Your past doesn’t own you. That regret you feel don’t need to be permanent.

The future is there for your taking. Go. Get it. Strive mightily towards it. Run with every ounce of energy you have.

That’s how you escape your past. You create a better future.

The best news is that you can start today. Right now. You don’t need anyone else’s permission or approval.

You just need to put your head down and grind. One step in front of the other.

The faster you move the further away from your past you’ll find yourself.

Life Isn’t Fair. So What.

Growing up black in early 1900s Alabama meant growing up with distinct disadvantages.

Inferior access to basic public services.

A constant fear of attack–or worse, lynching.

Percy Julian couldn’t go to highschool with other white people. He couldn’t even go to high school.

Desperate to continue his education, however, Percy signed up for Lincoln Normal School, forcing him to trade biology lessons for blacksmithing lessons.

An unfair education in an unfair city.

And yet, Percy was accepted to DePauw University in Indiana.

As the train pulled away from Alabama, the only home he had ever known, he saw his grandfather’s mauled hand waving goodbye. As a slave, his grandfather had lost two fingers as punishment for learning how to write.

But at Depauw, Percy shook the hand of Kenneth C. Hogate, future editor of the Wall Street Journal, and the man who convinced DePauw to accept Percy.

It was the first white hand Percy ever shook.

And while DePauw let Percy study on campus, his skin color unfairly prevented him from living on campus.

He was forced to live off-campus and figure out a way to make it to class each day, living in unfair, subpar conditions with fellow black classmates.

Percy eventually befriended the Sigma Chi fraternity who let him live with them — in the basement. And that was only if he agreed to wait on them and maintain the boiler.

It wasn’t fair, but Percy pressed on.

His hometown high school, Lincoln Normal School, wasn’t that great of a school. And despite all his hard work, Percy wasn’t able to keep up with his classwork. The college forced him to attend high-school level classes at Indiana Asbury Preparatory Academy.

It wasn’t fair, but Percy didn’t quit.

And yet, Percy graduated in 1920 among the best in his class and a member of both the Sigma Xi honor society and Phi Beta Kappa.

He was set for a strong academic career.

Except every academic door slammed in his face because of his skin color.

No assistantship. No fellowship. No internship. Not even a single graduate school acceptance letter.

Instead, Percy spent two years teaching at the African-American Fisk University in Nashville, TN.

But he worked hard at it, eventually winning a fellowship at Harvard, where he earned his Masters in organic chemistry in 1923.

Life finally broke in his direction.

It was finally treating him “fair”.

Except it wasn’t.

While Harvard would let him study there, he couldn’t teach. The faculty took away his teaching assistantship, deciding that it would “make white students nervous to have a black teacher.”

But he kept working. And in 1929, having graduated from Harvard and now heading the chemistry department at Howard University in D.C., he won the prestigious Rockefeller Foundation fellowship.

He traveled to Vienna, Austria to study with world-renowned chemist Ernst Späth.

Together, they isolated the active ingredient in Corydalis cava — a plant used to treat pain and heart palpitations.

His success continued in 1931 when he graduated with his Ph.D in Chemistry.

Only the third African-American man to do so.

He moved back to DePauw where he taught chemistry–but also worked with another college from his time in Vienna to develop a new drug to treat glaucoma.

The Dean of DePauw was so impressed with Percy’s work that he moved to appoint him as chair of the entire chemistry department.

But the Dean’s colleagues talked him out of it. They were worried how people would react to a black dean.

Any white man with Percy’s track record would’ve been an easy “yes”.

Percy had to sit on the sidelines while another less-accomplished white man unfairly became chair.

His time in academia was over. He was ready to move into corporate work.

Percy was set to accept a job with the Institute of Paper Chemistry in Appleton, Wisconsin — but turned down the job when he read a local city statute that: “No Negro should be bed or boarded overnight in Appleton.”

It was a good job that Percy wanted.

But racist laws and attitudes unfairly prevented him from advancing his career like he wanted.

Job after job after job at prestigious chemical companies closed in his face — only after they learned the prestigious scientist they were about to hire was black.

Four years later, he joined chemical giant Glidden in 1936 as their Director of Research for all soy-based products.

His streak of massive successes continued.

He and his team developed lecithin, commonly used for food preservation.

They developed Aer-o-foam, the go-to fire retardant of the US Navy during WWII.

They synthesized stigmasterol, reducing miscarriage rates.

They figured out how to mass produce cortisone.

Which currently was painstakingly created  from cow bile. It was so expensive that most consumers were unable to afford its high price.

In 1950, the Chicago Sun-Times named him “Chicagoan of the Year” for his chemistry work.

And not long after, the Chicagoan of the Year moved himself and his family to the quiet Oak Park suburb west of downtown Chicago in a lavish, 15-room house.

But before he and his family could even move in, an angry, white mob firebombed their home. It was Thanksgiving Day in 1950.

Months later, they were again attacked. With dynamite.

Fearing more attacks, Percy and his son could often be seen perched in a tree, shotgun in hand, to deter more violence against his family.

He even hired a private guard to watch the property 24 hours a day.

While the attacks led to a band of community members rallying around them, it didn’t fix the emotional damage that had already been made.

Percy told Time magazine, “We’ve lived through these things all our lives. As far as the hurt to the spirit goes, we’ve become accustomed to that.”

But Percy refused to let unfair physical, verbal, and emotional attacks hinder his work.

Ever the tinkerer, he realized that yams produced cortisol better than soy beans, and so in 1953, he left to form his own company: Julian Laboratories, headquartered in Chicago.

He set out to manufacture cortisol cheaper than other large pharmaceutical companies.

And despite having to build a second factory in Mexico to get around one company’s refusal to sell him the yams he needed, it worked.

In 1961, Percy sold his company for $2.3 million to Smith Kline.

Almost $20 million dollars in today’s dollars.

Percy Julian eventually retired with over 130 patents bearing his name.

The National Academy of Sciences chose Percy to be the first African American chemist they inducted and only the second African American man they ever included.

Life wasn’t fair.  But he persisted.

He had dreams that other people didn’t want him to have. He persisted.
He lost job opportunities that he deserved to achieve. He persisted.
The community around him was violently bigoted against him. He persisted.

When life isn’t fair, you can give up or go on. The choice is yours.

It’s easy to be distracted by how you feel when other people treat you unfairly.

It hurts deep in your soul. You’ve been wronged. It feels terrible.

So what. You’re not the only one who has it tough. You’re not the only one who is in pain. You’re not the only one.

Look around you. Life is unfair to everyone. And at the worst possible times. You’re never going to escape from that. But you can make the decision to persist.

To stand your ground. The keep doing things that get you closer to where you want to be.

No amount of bigotry or hate can match the desire of a person possessed by a sense of mission.

So make that your anthem. When life isn’t fair, push harder.

Why Good Advice Doesn’t Usually Work.

Not all advice is good advice.

In fact, most advice isn’t good advice for you.

The ideas themselves might be accurate. And the insight might have helped someone else create outrageously amazing results.

But they’re not you.

They don’t have your life experience, resources, skills, experience, or drive.

So while the big picture might be right, a thousand tiny variables that determine success or failure won’t work for you.

Which means you have to think for yourself. You have to be self-aware enough to know what you do best and what needs improvement.

Which is hard all by itself.

It requires a level of honesty and raw self-transparency that most people aren’t willing to have when looking at themselves. When judging themselves.

Most people just want to make excuses for their failures and crow about their wins.

So being honest — truly honest — about what needs to be fixed is no easy task.

But once you’ve mastered that, you have figured out the advice part.

Because you’re no longer on the receiving end. You’re on the searching end.

You know what you need to fix and you’re looking for advice about that particular thing.

You’re not letting yourself be distracted by everyone else’s good ideas.

The bad ones too.

You’re not controlled by the criticism and skepticism of your doubters.

You know who you are and where you want to go and are working actively each day to find people who can help you get there a little bit more quickly.

So before you go chasing that magical advice that will solve all your problems, take a moment and think about you.

Think about your dream and where you want to be.

Even if you had the perfect advice, do you have a track record of doing whatever it takes to achieve results?

What’s the most important thing you want to achieve right now. And why?

Just because someone smart and successful told you that “you need to do” something isn’t a good enough reason for you to change your life plans to go do it.

What is most important is that you’re​ honest enough to know what it takes and strong enough to do what it takes for as long as it takes until you reach the finish line.

Because You’re Poisoning Your Future.

What you consume has an impact on you.

It’s not a shock for you to believe that drinking poison would negatively impact your existence.

It’s not a shock for you to imagine that surrounding yourself with negative, lazy people would negatively impact your enthusiasm for living.

The things you put into your body and into your mind are the fuel that drive your performance.

They dictate your future possibilities.

You can’t feed your body an unhealthy diet and then be shocked that you don’t have the energy and strength and stamina to be a high performer.

You can’t feed your mind the negativity and fear and rage of other people’s opinions and then be surprised when you struggle to stay motivated and focused on your goals.

Your fuel is your future.

What you put in is what you get out.

So do things that’s fuel your future.

Avoid negative influences that make you feel uninspired.
Carve off time each day to fuel your mind with new books and fresh ideas.
Pay for a coach to guide you a little bit more quickly down your path to awesome.

Take action right now.

Look at where you want to be in the next 12 months and then make sure that what you put into you today will yield the success you want down the road.

The ideas you fuel feed the future you realize.

What Is it Going To Take?

What’s it going to take to get your attention?

You’ve been wasting your time. Filling your life with self-destructive behaviors and fulfilling personal addictions. Thinking little of the consequences that are sure to follow.

You aren’t obsessed about a purpose.

You’re just trying to do as little as possible. You’re hoping that no one else notices that you’re not committed.

It’s not even about commitment.

You’re barely even going through the motions. You’re not even pretending to care.

But you will one day.

You will care eventually. It is inevitable. Life has a way of getting your attention.

What you invest in ultimately comes back to help or hurt you. It might take months. Or years. Even decades.

It might take so long that you’re convinced you can get away with living a life without consequence. There is no escaping.

You don’t need to. Embrace it.

Relish in the knowledge that your hard work and enthusiastic focus will come back to benefit you.

Live life on your terms–without waiting for your string of careless living to catch up to you.

That requires intensity. It requires urgency. It demands accountability.

What a sad existence to realize too late that you could have started living an awesome life earlier.

Which begs the most important question you can ask yourself right now:

What is it going to take to get your attention?

What magnificent awfulness needs to happen for you wake up and be the amazing person you were meant to be?

Poverty Is A State Of Mind.

Poverty is a state of mind.

What you think about most is who you are  — and what you achieve.

Wealth is how everyone else knows what you have been thinking about. It’s the end result.

In business, we call this a “trailing indicator.” The very last alert you’ll see.

Being broke isn’t a state of mind. It’s a state of reality.

Failing isn’t a state of mind. It’s a moment in time.

Even what other people think of as success, like money and fame and fun, isn’t a state of mind. It’s just a current status.

Don’t confuse where you are in life right now with getting to where you want to be.

Don’t be so discouraged that you start thinking that just because you haven’t done it, you’re never going to do it.

If you give up on yourself in your mind, your results will always lead to disappointment and failure.

Ever wonder why so many people who win many millions of dollars playing the lottery lose it all so quickly?

It’s not about the money. It’s about their mindset.

They were poor before they won the lottery. And they end up poor despite all the money.

All their friends and family thought they were rich. Even they themselves thought they were rich.

But they were broke. Not because of the size of their bank account, but because of the size of their belief.

All the wealth and fame and success you want for yourself is the product of your mental wealth. Measured by what you’ve learned. Multiplied by the inspiration you consume.

Read a book about the life story of someone you have always admired. Take time to let their journey and struggles sink in.
Join a mastermind group of people you think are out of your league. Listen, learn, and grow from your experience with them.
Cut-out divisive talk radio programs and biased daily news from your routine. It’s okay to be clueless about the opinions of negative people.

There is no single, guaranteed path to success.

But there is one guaranteed way you will end up failing. To have a poor mind. To think only about what other people can see about you on the outside.

If poverty is a state of mind, what is your true net worth?