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I’m confident in what I do because I know whatever happens, I’m going to adjust and keep rolling. Not everything works the first time, sometimes it doesn’t work at all. But there’s a difference between confidence and cockiness: confidence means recognizing something isn’t working and having the flexibility and knowledge to make adjustments; cockiness is the inability to admit when something isn’t working, and repeating the same mistakes over and over because you stubbornly can’t admit you’re wrong.
A Cooler takes no risks. A Closer takes risks when he can prepare in advance and knows the consequences of failing are minimal. Nothing feels risky to a Cleaner; whatever happens, he’ll know what to do.
No fear of failure. That’s not about the myth of “positive thinking”; it’s about the hard work and preparation that go into knowing everything there is to know, letting go of your fears and insecurities, and trusting your ability to handle any situation.
You have to be willing to fail if you’re going to trust yourself to act from the gut, and then adapt as you go.
You can’t control or anticipate every obstacle that might block your path. You can only control your response, and your ability to navigate the unpredictable.
Once you start blaming others, you’re admitting you had no control over the situation.
A Cleaner doesn’t; he never wants to be locked in to one plan. He’ll know the original plan, and he’ll follow it if it feels right to him, but his skills and intuition are so great that he’ll usually improvise as he goes; he can’t help it. He just goes with the flow of the action, and wherever his instincts take him, that’s what you get.
A Cooler wonders what’s going to happen. A Closer watches things happen. A Cleaner makes things happen.
Trust yourself. Decide. Every minute, every hour, every day that you sit around trying to figure out what to do, someone else is already doing it.
Good things come to those who wait. No, good things come to those who work.
Figure out what you do, then do it. And do it better than anyone else.
Making it to the top is not the same as making it at the top.
Doors swing two ways. Did you shut it on the competition or on yourself?
Cleaner Law: when you reduce your competition to whining that you “got lucky,” you know you’re doing something right.
You cannot understand what it means to be relentless until you have struggled to possess something that’s just out of your reach.
People who start at the top never understand what they missed at the bottom.
Do you want it easy, or do you want it great?
Good enough, if good enough is what you set out to achieve. You made some money sitting down. But money doesn’t make you smart, it doesn’t make you a good businessman, and it sure doesn’t make you better looking. Most of the time it makes you soft, complacent, and mistakenly confident about your future.
You start having a little success, people notice you, it feels good . . . and maybe you start feeling a little satisfied and privileged. Trust me: privilege is a poison unless you know how to manage it.
Cleaner Law: When you’re going through a world of pain, you never hide. You show up to work ready to go, you face adversity and your critics and those who judge you, you step into the Zone and perform at that top level when everyone is expecting you to falter. That’s being a professional.
Do the work. There is no privilege greater than the pressure to excel, and no greater reward than earning the respect and fear of others who can only stand in awe of your results.
The loudest guy in the room is the one with the most to prove, and no way to prove it.
Talk never goes up in price, it’s always free, and you usually get what you pay for.
When you’ve worked so hard and so long to master your craft, learning every detail and nuance of how to do it better than anyone else, inventing and reinventing new ways to set the standard of excellence for yourself and others, who can possibly give you advice on how to still improve? Who’s out there to tell you more than you already know? How many people can relate to what you’ve done, and what you still want to do?
Cleaners have this in common: at some point they learned they could only trust themselves. Maybe it was a lesson they learned in childhood, or from something that happened later in life, but it forced them to rely on the sheer power of their gut instinct, and they realized that to survive and succeed, they could never take their hands off the wheel.
Cleaner Law: surround yourself with those who want you to succeed, who recognize what it takes to be successful. People who don’t pursue their own dreams probably won’t encourage you to pursue yours; they’ll tell you every negative thing they tell themselves.
Failure is what happens when you decide you failed. Until then, you’re still always looking for ways to get to where you want to be.
Success and failure are 100 percent mental.
When someone else says you’ve failed, what they really mean is “If that were me, I would feel like a failure.” Well, that guy’s not you, and he’s obviously not a Cleaner, because Cleaners don’t recognize failure.
building was a setback. But dealing with setbacks is how you achieve success. You learn, and you adapt. When everyone else is talking about how you “failed,” you show up like a professional, remap your course, and get back to work. That’s the progression of good-great-unstoppable. No one starts at unstoppable. You fuck up, you figure it out, you trust yourself.
Fuck “try.” Trying is an open invitation to failure, just another way of saying, “If I fail, it’s not my fault, I tried.”
I refused to see my situation as a failure. You take what everyone else sees as a negative and turn it to your advantage. You don’t sulk, you don’t curl up and die, you glare at it and think, if it’s not going to happen this way, it’s sure as hell going to happen that way. And you tell anyone who doubts you, “I got this.”
Done. Next. A Cleaner’s favorite words.
Every dream you imagine, everything you see and hear and feel in your sleep, that’s not a fantasy, that’s your deep instinct telling you it can all be real. Follow those visions and dreams and desires, and believe what you know. Only you can turn those dreams into reality. Never stop until you do.
The greatest battles you will ever fight are with yourself, and you must always be your toughest opponent. Always demand more of yourself than others demand of you. Be honest with yourself, and you’ll be able to meet every challenge with confidence and the deep belief that you are prepared for anything. Life can be complicated; the truth is not.
I truly believe I have zero limitations. You should believe the ...
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Listen to your instincts. They’re telling...
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