Dan Waldschmidt's Blog, page 17

How To Make A Way When There Isn’t One.

“Inveniam viam aut faciam.”

That was supposedly Hannibal’s response to his generals’ advice that crossing the Alps by elephants is impossible. It means: “I shall find a way or I shall make one.”

For Robert Peary, it was his life motto. The words inscribed on his tombstone.

In 1881, he joined the US Navy Civil Engineers Corps, a job that sent him to Key West, Florida on one of his first assignments to do the impossible: build a new Navy Pier that other smarter, more experienced engineers said couldn’t be done.

Most would’ve balked at the request, citing other engineers’ experience or environmental conditions.

For Peary, it was a chance to prove himself and launch his career.

With a bit of ingenuity and hard work, he pulled off the impossible—and saved the US Navy over $675,000.

After that, they sent him down to Nicaragua to serve as the chief assistant on a surveying expedition — where he became obsessed with the idea of becoming the first man to reach the North Pole.

But he realized that to be the first, he would have to be different. Radically different.

So in 1886, he convinces his superiors to let him take an extended leave of absence to journey into Greenland to prove America’s superiority on the global stage.

On his first trip across the tundra, he broke every rule in the book.

Peary studied the ways of the native people at a time when experts were convinced that the Inuits lacked any practical Arctic know-how, despite having lived there for generations.

He learned to hunt for food while traveling, instead of ignoring the local animals.

He understood the value of animal skin clothing, wearing deerskin parkas, bearskin pants, and sealskin boots.

He and his team built igloos as they went, instead of carrying tents, to reduce the cargo weight they’d have to transport.

He formed an elite dog team to pull the team’s sleds, instead of having his own men pull them like every other explorer.

He walked in front of his team, charting the path forward instead of driving the team from behind.

His radical plan led him to be the 2nd man to cross the entirety of Greenland.

But in the late summer of 1891, an accident almost ended his life as he ventured further north. An ice block wedged under the rudder, lurching the ship to one side, pinning down Peary–and snapping both of his shin bones in his right leg.

The doctor said to pack up his sealskin boots. His exploring days were over.

They turned the ship around and headed home to let him find time to heal.

A few months later, he decided to compete against both his own men and Eskimos in a snowshoe race. He won.

Robert Peary would not go down without a fight.

A year later, in 1892, he picked up where he left off, kicking off a 1,300 mile round trip expedition just 10 months after he broke his leg.

Peary was back and fighting at full strength: mentally and physically.

After six more years of exploring and preparing and planning, he gathered a team to help him claim the North Pole for the United States.

This time, he’d attack the North Pole by an entirely different means.

He would sail as far north as he could, trek to an abandoned outpost in northern Canada called Fort Conger, and then make their final push for the North Pole across the ice covering the Arctic sea.

His right-hand man Matthew Henson knew it was a risky plan, but Peary, racing against a Norwegian competitor with the same plan, pressed on regardless.

He and the team finally stumbled into the dilapidated wooden shack that is Fort Conger.

They were so close they could practically taste victory.

Sitting next to the warmth of the fire, he had, as he described it, “a suspicious wooden feeling in the right foot,” so he pulled off his boots.

Eight toes had developed frostbite. His legs were dead white from the knees down.

His toes needed to be amputated. Soon.

As he lay in a cot just a few hundred miles away from the North Pole with his dream (and his toes) gone, he scratched a phrase into the wooden wall: “Inveniam viam aut faciam.”

It was his lifeline to the North Pole. The one thing he could cling to.

It was the fire that burned in his soul and kept him alive in the frigid Arctic.

After a month stuck at Fort Conger, the weather finally cleared and Henson led the team back — south — back to the ship with Peary strapped to a sled. He had crippled himself.

Again, the doctor told him his adventure days were over. But he wasn’t accepting that.

In May of the following year, he went further north than anyone else ever.

And he did it on his frostbitten, toeless feet. He had to turn back though. It was another failure.

Five years later, he made his seventh trip to the Arctic circle with state-of-the-art transportation, an all-new strategy, and an all-new crew.

The Roosevelt, designed by Peary for this journey, could cut through ice with a 30” steel hull–the first in the world to do so.

He sailed the Roosevelt up to Ellesmere Island, putting him 300 miles closer to glory than any of his previous trips. He only had 450 miles to go.

He planned to cover those miles over the frozen Artice ice with a radically new system: 6 teams with right-hand men, 5 sleds, and more than 15 dogs per team would leapfrog each other and build igloos and set up supply outposts.

The plan involved each team dropping out one by one to make way for the 6th team, Peary’s team, to dash to the North Pole.

It was a genius plan. But nothing went right.

Temperatures regularly stayed in the -50F range. Sheets of frozen Artic water smashed together creating 50 ft high walls of sheer ice that Peary’s men had to hoist their massive 500lb sleds over.

But when the blocks of ice didn’t smash together, currents ripped them apart — stranding Peary from the rest of his team.

They were forced to turn back. Without supplies and their support crew.

They only made it back to the ship by eating their sled dogs, forcing the men to haul the sleds themselves.

It was disastrous. Peary was done. He quit.

He returned home to his family. The dream was over. For almost a  decade, he would be a professor. His adventures were behind him.

Until he heard of others planning to make it to the North Pole and steal his dream.

He decided that he wasn’t going to let anyone else take what was his.

So in August of 1908, at 52, Peary made what he called his “last and supreme effort.” He determined he would get there or die trying.

So he loaded up the Roosevelt once more and set sail for Ellesmere Island.

The first day after they arrived, as they set out on the frozen Artic blocks, the sled broke down for Peary’s right-hand man Matthew Henson.

After spending a day fixing Henson’s sled, they noticed a dark cloud on the horizon — there was a huge gap in the ice ahead.

Overnight, the gap closed enough for Peary and his crew to navigate from massive ice block to ice block to get across the Artice water before they could continue.

Just days later, another huge gap opened up in the ice. This time, it was a quarter-mile wide and extending as far as they could see.

There was no crossing this one.

So they waited. And waited. And waited. For days, they encamped by the break, able to see the other side, but unable to get to their goal.

After days of waiting, the ice blocks closed enough for them to cross.

On April 1, 1909, Peary took  Henson and four of his best Inuit drivers and 40 of his fittest dogs in a mad, last-ditch sprint for the North Pole.

Five days later and a quarter-century after his first attempt, Robert Peary set foot on the North Pole.

After his death in 1920, the US Congress posthumously awarded him official congressional thanks, an honor once formerly reserved only for war heroes.

Teddy Roosevelt Jr, the son of President Theodore Roosevelt in whose honor Peary named his famous ship, said of the great explorer, “To me, Admiral Peary’s life is epitomized in the splendid lines from Tennyson’s ‘Ulysses: ‘To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield’”.

He was a man wholly consumed by a mission. His purpose was unwavering.

He got knocked down. He lost friends in pursuit of his goal. He was critically wounded and suffered staggering hardship.

Yet he continued.  Unwilling to sacrifice his goal.

That could be you today.

You’ve been knocked down. You’ve been hurt. You’ve lost things that matter dearly to you — friends, health, money, and respect.

“Inveniam viam aut faciam.”  That’s your mission. Find a way. Or make one.

Stop Being Embarrassed By Your Hustle.

It is a ridiculous waste of your time to worry about how other people view you. Specifically, if you’re trying too hard.

You can’t try too hard. That’s never going to be your problem.

You might hustle in ways that lack a bit of class — but your problem isn’t that you’re trying so hard that it is stopping you from being successful.

That’s just silliness.

Part of why you think that is the peer pressure from other people who are lazy and still want to look like they’re awesome. Which is an insane combination.

The other part of that is the “don’t stand out and be weird” rule you’ve been taught to believe since you were a small child.

Sometimes hustle is embarrassing.

You have to do things that make you look stupid and feel uncomfortable. But that doesn’t mean you don’t do them.

And it doesn’t mean you’re trying too hard.

Let other people think what they want. You stay busy getting to where you want to be.

Don’t be embarrassed by your hustle. Be upset with yourself that you aren’t trying harder.

How To Solve Any Problem.

Activity is the antidote to almost any problem you face.

It is the single greatest weapon that you have at your disposal — your ability to dig your hands into a situation and create change.

Taking action is the best way to handle the worry that you feel.

Getting busy is the best way to dig yourself out of debt.

Learning something new is the best way to stay inspired.

Activity is the answer.

Whether you are frustrated by a difficult business situation or feeling trapped by the consequences of bad decisions you made in the past, you need to take action. Activity is your secret weapon.

You might need to make a phone call right now.

You might need to ask forgiveness from someone you’ve hurt.

You might need to clean up your resume or do some research.

You know what that something is right now.

Chances are, it’s that thing you’ve been putting off doing up to right now.

Which is why activity is so important — because nothing works if you don’t work.

Your life is the direct result of the choices you make. Worry and fear and doubt aren’t required. You don’t have to live beaten down and broken by the circumstances life throws at you.

You can be happy and fulfilled and feel successful.

But that will not happen until you master the craft of putting in work.

Activity — that’s your go-to plan.

No matter how big the problem is, taking action will solve it.

The Uncomfortable Fact About Failure.

Giving up is an attitude long before it’s an action.

You think about quitting long before you actually do it.

What you allow yourself to think about is your choice.

Giving up is the result of you not making the right decision about what you allow yourself to think about.

That’s the uncomfortable fact about failure. You make the decision to fail.

You could make a different decision.

You could decide to vigilantly guard your passion and dreams by blocking negativity as you find it in your thoughts.

Instead, you decide to “consider your options.”

And most often those options are the negative slime that poison your hope and convince you that giving up is the best option.

Which is why the most powerful activity you can do is to control what you allow inside your mind.

When things get tough and you find yourself starting to rationalize giving up, remind yourself of why you started down this road in the first place.

Go back to the time when you desperately wanted to get across that finish line.

Remind yourself that big goals require tough people. This isn’t supposed to be easy.

You control the outcomes in your life.

Right now, you are deciding how successful you end up being down the road.

This moment. The thoughts in your head right now. This is the time when winners are made or conquests are lost.

Make the right decision about what you allow yourself to think about.

Choose to fight. Choose to win. Don’t give up.

12 Rules Awesome People Live By.

Being awesome isn’t an accident.

Sometimes it seems like something amazing you just experienced came out of nowhere.

But when you take a harder look at exceptional people who do extraordinary things, you realize that being awesome starts with a plan.

It’s governed by a set of rules. A set of rules you can adopt.

No matter what you want to achieve, you can be awesome at it.

Here’s how you do that:

Be in the healing business first. — Heroes heal. The most powerful weapon you have is to put people back together. People will pay or do just about anything to feel better. When you help them do that, you position yourself to do awesome things.
Practice better honesty, candor, and kindness. — Passive aggression kills your positive momentum. So do too many white lies. Don’t waste worry or sleepless nights on people or situations that you could improve with a clear and honest conversation about your expectations.
Play the long game. Always choose the high road. — Time equalizes all things. Don’t obsess about delivering justice. The people who are doing wrong will harvest the consequences of their actions. If you’re not careful, you will waste your time doing everything but being awesome.
Have a mission, not a series of goals. — Aim a little bit bigger. Goals come and go. A mission is life-changing. Take time to think about what you want for yourself. Obsess about your greatness. Don’t just do things. Be committed. That’s the beginning of awesomeness.
Get some help for your head, health, and heart. — You’re busy helping everyone else. What are you doing to stay recharged and happy? Your dream will die as your spirit is diminished. Guard your sanity and inspiration. Hire a coach or a therapist — or both.
Militantly fight average and ordinary. — Extraordinary outcomes are the result of you encouraging “being different.” Make yourself do hard things. Talk yourself through the drama of being unliked and uncomfortable. You can’t be ordinary and extraordinary at the same time.
Use technology to smartly multiply your efforts. — There are dozens of specific apps that make new habits stick. Leverage smart tools to make your mission more powerful and effective.
Make everyone around you feel awesome. — The biggest impact you can have is to inspire everyone you meet. Smile more. Even on the days where you are feeling absolutely awful. The best way to feel better about yourself to show love to those around you.
Refuse to worry about things outside your control. — Change what you can change. Be deliberate about keeping your thoughts focused. Worry is a choice. You get to decide what you allow inside your head. Take action instead of sitting idly by, consumed by fear.
Follow-up faster than other people anticipate. — Success is largely a result of being awesome at following up and following through. That extra week you take to return an important phone call or respond to any email is almost always the difference between success or failure.
Avoid any negative influences in your day-to-day life. — Negativity will break your spirit and smother any motivation you might feel. Get away from people who bring you down. Make it a conscious effort. You aren’t going to fix them. They are going to break you.
Make time to have a life outside of what you do as work. — You are not your job. You are you. And a better you means a better you at your job — or anywhere else you happen to be. Develop hobbies and friendships. Allow yourself to be curious. And obsessed.

It’s not going to happen overnight.

But awesome is worth it.

So make being awesome a permanent part of your life.

Improve. Adapt. Adopt new ideas and better ways of thinking.

Believe passionately in your mission. Just keep getting better.

Be awesome.

When You’re Just Not Willing To Give Up

Walking down Shotwell St in San Francisco, you’d be forgiven for not noticing the thin, nondescript brown building with its two businesses splitting the narrow front. Pedestrians walking past on October 3, 2015 might’ve smelled the scent of freshly cooked pasta and sauce wafting from the building.

Inside, an artist was cooking up an experience: with handmade unstained porcelain bowls and carved wooden spoons, artist Emilie Gossiaux served 85 guests a meal they weren’t likely to forget.

Not because of the delicious food or the bowls left unglazed for the sauce to leave their imprint.

It was because Emilie Gossiaux was blind.

And deaf. And serving each guest personally with food, dishes, and utensils she made herself.

It was all part of an exhibit celebrating the life and work of Oliver Sacks — a neuroscientist famous for studying the edge cases of what the human brain is capable of.

She had been blind for the past 4 years and 360 days. Deaf since she was 5 years old.

Art was always her coping mechanism.

As a kid, her mom used to find her hiding in the closet, drawing her own cartoons hours after she was supposed to be asleep.

She filled notebooks with her sketches and drawings as she processed what life was like growing up “different”, constantly being picked on, having to learn to lipread her teachers.

As her mom said about her art: “it is all she sees”.

On the Friday morning of October 8, 2010, she had to go to the studio of famed artist Daniel Arsham whom she was working for while attending the prestigious Cooper Union art school in New York City. She kissed her boyfriend goodbye and pedaled off through the bustling New York City traffic.

At the corner of Johnson and Varick in Brooklyn, as she waited for the light to change, her life changed forever.

An 18-wheeler took that turn too tight, plowed right over her, crushing her—fracturing her skull, pelvis, and left leg.

She was rushed to the hospital where doctors frantically worked to save her life. But the doctors couldn’t work fast enough. She flatlined.

Her heart stopped beating: 1 second…10 seconds…30 seconds…

A full minute passed before her heart started pumping blood again.

But she couldn’t breathe. Her internal organs had swollen from the trauma and were compressing against her lungs, causing her to suffocate.

The doctors had to do something—so they pulled her intestines out of her abdomen so that her chest cavity had room to breathe again.

She was alive. But inside, Emily remained in a hopeless, dark, silent void. Still unresponsive.

Her mom sat down by Emilie’s bed. She had just given the medical team permission to harvest Emilie’s organs when the time came.

That seemed to be coming all too soon.

Sitting there, she read one of their favorite books to Emilie, The Bridge of San Luis Rey, a 1927 Pulitzer-winning novel about seemingly random tragedy and death.

Her mom, overcome with emotion, whispered in Emilie’s ear, telling her that she would love Emilie forever, an unending love, a love that wouldn’t quit.

To the surprise of her mom, Emilie raised her left hand.

When her mom tried to convince the doctors that Emilie was inside, alive and fighting to come back, the doctors insisted that Emilie’s responses were just reflexes.

They saw no signs of high brain function.

Every time she scratched her wounds, slapped away a helping hand, or flailed her head when they tried to reinsert her hearing aids, the doctors insisted it was a reflex.

The doctors didn’t believe it was possible for her to recover from an accident that bad. But after several weeks of steady improvement in ICU, she finally stabilized enough that she had to go somewhere.

But where? She was blind and death. It is impossible to help someone recover when they can’t respond to basic commands.

Somehow Emilie kept finding a way to fight back.

When they removed her tracheotomy, she started talking again.

She cursed out everyone around her.

She called people “Ms. Dashwood”, recalling Sense and Sensibility she and her boyfriend Alan had watched a few months back. But it wasn’t enough to prove she was a candidate for rehab.

That left just one choice: a nursing home.

Her dad flew back to their hometown of New Orleans to look for a place for Emilie (without bothering to tell her boyfriend). They felt it would be best for him if they just took Emilie away.

Alan insisted they give her a chance. He knew she’d claw her way back.

He was desperate for her to come back.

At 3 am one night, he had a breakthrough.

He had read about Annie Sullivan, the woman who taught Helen Keller through print on palm.

Taking her left palm in his and using her wrist as the baseline, he painstakingly traced large capital letters in her hand with his pointer finger.

I-L-O-V-E-Y-O-U.

I love you.

“Oh, you love me? That’s so sweet. Thank you.” She responded.

But she didn’t know it was Alan or that he was her boyfriend.

But to Alan, it didn’t matter. He couldn’t believe it. Neither could the doctors. He had to prove it to them somehow, so he started recording their conversations.

“What’s your name?” “What year is it?”

By painstakingly tracing each letter, he convinced her to let them put her hearing aids back in. And instantly, her personality came back.

But that was just the beginning of the fight. She would have to learn how to communicate all over again. She would have to learn how to do everything all over again.

So she dropped out of school to deal with life. What other choice did she have?

It takes most people 2 years to learn Braille.

Within a year, she finished reading her first Braille book: Ernest Hemmingway’s The Sun Also Rises.

She enrolled at a dedicated school for blind people to help them navigate society.

She could have picked a campus in her hometown, but she chose Minneapolis. She wanted to train in a city similar to New York City.

She wasn’t about to give up on her dream.

While in school, she took up an Industrial Arts class. She was determined to get back to art through whatever means possible.

Her teacher handed her a block of wood. She was told to carve the wood into who she wanted to become. As she painstakingly worked the block down, a definitive shape started to emerge.

She was carving a knife.

Emilie was going to cut through everything that was holding her back from art. That determination led Emilie to enroll in a night class where she honed her ceramics skill.

That determination led Emilie to become one of the first people to wear the BrainPort, a device specifically designed to help blind people “see” with their tongue.

The camera on the bridge of a special pair of sunglasses translates various shapes and levels of light into electromagnetic signals that stimulate the tongue like thousands of soda bubbles.

The only problem: the resolution was like using a child’s Lite Brite. Her doctors told her that even with the BrainPort, it would be impossible to create good art.

Somehow, she figured it out.

She painstakingly set up a blank sheet of paper on her desk and positioned a bright light on it so she could better see the contrast. If she drew with enough force, she could feel the wax of the crayon with her fingers — like Braille.

She also realized that a rich, dark ink called India Ink would show up well through the BrainPort.

And so she drew. Using the BrainPort as her guide, she drew a pair of hands. And as she studied those hands, she realized their cupped shape resembled a dove. She took that drawing and shaped it out of clay.

In 2013, that dove won Emilie the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Award of Excellence.

A year later, Emilie finally accomplished one of her dreams: she graduated from college.

And today, she continues to create art that inspires the world.

Every inch of her success was a fight.

She understood that small progress takes massive effort—and was willing to do whatever it took to turn her dream into reality.

Are you? Or have you decided that life is especially unfair to you?

It doesn’t matter what you have gone through so far in your life.

Get hit by a bus? Go through an ugly divorce? File bankruptcy? Lose a job? Lose a friend? Lose everything?

You can rebound. Your comeback story is ready to be written.

But only when you’re not willing to give up.

It Has To Be About More Than The Money.

It has to be about more than the money. That goal of yours.

It can’t just be about making a few extra dollars. 

That’s not good enough. Not big enough. Not powerful enough to sustain you in the bad times to come. 

And they will.

You’re going to be tested and tried. 

You’re going to be beaten down by failure and humbled by the criticism of your peers. 

In your moments of self-doubt, more money isn’t a big enough cause to drive you to do the hard things that being successful demands. 

You need a mission.

A cause. A calling. 

It’s already inside you. 

You know it’s there. You can feel it rise up within you from time to time. 

That’s the thing you need to embrace.

That’s your roadmap.

That’s the prism through which you need to view your priorities. 

If it doesn’t matter in the long run, it’s not part of your short-term work. 

That’s the standard for your actions — the measure for what makes it on your to-do list.

Awesome is your calling card.

Whatever “awesome” means for you.

Not dollars and cents.

In truth, you will always need financial resources to achieve your desired goals.

But that’s not your dream. It can’t be.

Or you’ll stay stuck and broke.

You Need A Coach.

There’s somebody out there who has already done it before.

It doesn’t matter what your goal is or what you would like to improve, there’s somebody out there with a lot more experience than you who is willing to help you get to where you want to be.

Your mission is to find them, pay them, and do exactly what they tell you to do.

In other words, you need more coaching in your life.

That’s a lesson all high performers have learned. You can’t fix yourself because you can’t look at yourself objectively.

You don’t see your form or hear your tone like a coach will.

All the emotional baggage in your head like how hard you are trying and how badly you want it throw off your judgment.

Your true results get lost in the process. You can’t see things clearly.

Which is why you need a coach.

Someone to see you as you are. Someone to take you from where you are to where you want to be.

They’ve made mistakes that you’re going to make – unless you adjust. They have found breakthrough and innovation in a thousand possible opportunities that you haven’t even uncovered yet.

You can accelerate your results and progress by simply using the lessons they have already learned.

Looking for baking lessons to improve your catering business? There’s probably a YouTube channel with plenty of advice for you.
Looking for business advice on how to launch a new product to existing customers? There are plenty of online courses and experts ready to help you.
Looking to lose 20 pounds or run a faster 5K? There are people who can help you right where you live.

Some of that advice you need is free.

But you’ll get better results and find yourself more committed when you pay for coaching.

You’re invested when it’s coming out of your budget. You’re more likely to do what needs to be done when you’re sacrificing for long-term success.

There isn’t a good excuse for staying stuck. Getting unstuck is just a bit of inspiration away.

Something your coach is about to tell you. Go find one.

Why You Have To Love What You Do.

To be successful you have to love what you do.

That’s not optional. It’s mandatory.

If you want to win you have to wake up each day deeply passionate about taking steps closer to where you want to be.

Progress is a grind. Daily.

You are going to have to do things that you don’t love to do. Things that make you feel uncomfortable. Things that are hard. Things at which you are guaranteed to fail the first few times you try them.

Which is where your love makes the difference.

If you don’t love what you do, you’re going to fail and not get back up.

When things get tough you’re going to find a way to allow yourself to quit. You’re going to create smart excuses and intellectual arguments to justify giving up.

Which is why you must do what you love.

If you can’t do it all right now, then make the move to get started. Begin the process of transitioning from where you are now to where you want to be.

Hire a coach who has already done it before.
Find a mentor who can help you round out your rough edges.
Join a group of like-minded individuals heading in the same direction.
Ditch your negative friends and anything else that breaks your spirit.
Read a book and learn something new that inspires you.
Challenge yourself to do something new and improved each day.
Save more money than seems necessary, convenient, or easy.

Your opportunities for improvement are endless.

Don’t let living swallow your ambition to live.

To truly live. To be the person you want to be. Life on your terms. Doing what you want, when you want.

That is possible. In fact, it’s guaranteed.

If you try long enough & hard enough, you’ll get to where you want to be.

But you have to want it. You have to love it. It can’t be a job. It has to be a mission. A calling. A way of life.

That’s worth fighting for. That’s worth doing whatever it takes.

Do what you love. Start right now. Do one thing that matters.

You’re Not Willing To Be That Weirdo.

Hitting a golf ball correctly takes years of practice.

Center yourself over the ball. Start with your arms straight and bend a little at the waste. Rotate the club backwards in an arc up towards your shoulder while twisting the hips to follow suit. Drive the clubhead through the ball like a hockey slapshot with your hips, arms, and shoulders. Finish with the club on your opposite shoulder.

It’s the move we’ve seen countless professionals and struggling amateurs perform thousands of times at the most elite tournaments on the planet. It’s the stroke Tiger Woods learned from his father at 6 months old.

If you want to win a golf tournament, the pros say, follow those steps: pull back; twist up; drive down; rotate through.

The pros agree that’s the only way.

Except it isn’t.

At 26, Moe Norman stepped into the tee box on Augusta National for his first shot of the 1956 Masters Tournament.

And broke every convention known to golf.

No hip rotation. Instead of swinging back at one angle and slicing down at the ball on a much steeper angle, it was a perfect arc with a noticeable bend in his knees as he makes contact, ending with the club straight up in the air, instead of resting on his shoulder.

It was weird. But accurate. A technique he started formulating on his own at 15.

A technique that made him radically better than anyone else on the planet.

He could hit 20 golf balls back-to-back-to-back into the area of an apple crate.

Over the span of 7 hours, he smashed 1,500 drives–all of which landed within a 50 foot radius.

His shot was so consistent, golf legend Ken Venturi nicknamed him “Pipeline Moe”.

He shot 17 holes-in-one.

9 double eagles.

3 times he shot a “perfect round”, averaging at least a birdie on all 18 holes.

He broke 33 course records.

And at just 26, he was invited to The Masters, the greatest tournament of them all, where the golfing world learned of his prowess.

But at his first appearance at The Masters, he had to drop out after 36 holes–because his hands were bleeding.

He had spent the previous night hitting an additional 800 golf balls. He just wanted to master a tip given to him by Sam Snead, the man known to have the “perfect swing”.

He was driven to succeed in his own weird way, and people mocked him for that.

The same weirdness that led to greatness led to countless ridicule.

He dressed funny – even for a golfer.

He was incredibly shy and repeated his words often. He had bad teeth. His golf clubs didn’t have covers and so were known to have dirt on them.

Top ESPN golf correspondent Scott Van Pelt painted him as “a man who lived far outside the pristine, cookie-cutter world of the PGA tour.”

And at a PGA tournament in New Orleans, PGA officials were fed up with his “weirdness”. In 1959, Moe shot the greatest game of his PGA tour, finishing just off the podium in 4th place.

He was getting noticed. And not in a good way.

PGA officials told Moe to stop being so weird, stop rushing his play, and stop hitting off gigantic tees.

Stick with the system. Blend in. Do what everyone else is doing.

If he could change, they’d let him stay and keep playing.

But Moe knew that wasn’t for him. He liked who he was.

So he left the PGA scene and went back to Canada.

The game he loved so much rejected him.

That’s when the revolution began. Moe would set the world on fire.

He tore up the Canadian circuit with brutal accuracy while American golfers swung frustratingly inconsistently.

Moe had an incredible career in Canada, racking up over 50 wins and winning the senior tournament 7 out of 8 times.

The Canadian Golf Hall of Fame inducted him in 1995.

The Ontario Sports Hall of Fame inducted him in 1999.

The Canadian Sports Hall of Fame inducted him in 2006.

But Moe’s greatness never made a splash on the biggest scene of them all: the PGA. All because he let personal attacks drive him away.

Just like we all do.

“Sit down.” “Be quiet.” “Obey the rules.” “Don’t make a scene.” “People are looking at us.”

It’s what we tell kids every day. It’s what’s been ingrained in us since we were kids: “Stop being so weird.”

And that’s why success seems impossible

You can’t win if you want to fit in more than you want to accomplish your dreams.

You aren’t willing to do what it takes to be successful.

And what it always takes is being weird. Being laughed at. People pointing fingers at you. The crowd mocking you behind your back.

Tiger Woods, the most dominating player in his era of golf, said about Moe Norman that it was “frightening how straight he hits the golf ball”.

Most professionals consider Moe the greatest ball-striker of all time.

In a game where placing the ball where you want it is the only thing that matters, Moe was the best.

Just because you are the best doesn’t mean that you’ll get to where you want to be. It doesn’t mean that you will accomplish your goals.

You have to be willing to be that weirdo. Are you?