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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Steve Kamb
As Ben Franklin said, “Some people die at 25 and aren’t buried until 75.” I felt like he was speaking to me.
Along with hacking myself physically, I’ve hacked my brain, too. I actively seek out small failures to learn from so that I can succeed at big missions. I seek out challenges that scare the crap out of me, which has led to jumping out of airplanes, leaping off bridges, and giving talks in front of large groups of people despite wanting to vomit seconds beforehand.
Each time we do this, we are contributing to our pile of underpants. Whether it’s scanning a fitness site for advice on completing a marathon, reading a phrase book to better learn French, watching a video of somebody doing parkour, attending a TEDx conference and learning about volunteering opportunities in Africa, or even just reading this very book, we are all making mental notes of the things we’d like to do. This is the equivalent of collecting a pile of underpants.
People who dominate Phase 2 are action-takers. They understand that collecting a few underpants and then immediately trying to do things with that knowledge is a much faster path to Phase 3 than just collecting more and more underpants!
Phase 2 is about learning, trying, failing, backtracking, trying again, and learning even more.
As Winston Churchill declared, “Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.”
Phase 1, and 90 percent on trying out the new things you are learning.
Paint your first terrible picture. Write the first chapter of a book that will never be read. Ask somebody out and get shot down. Save money for a trip and book the damn thing. Start a crappy blog. Record a few awful podcasts. Pluck a few wrong notes on a guitar. Pronounce words incorrectly in a foreign language.
This book will guide you from Phase 1 to Phase 3, but I cannot complete Phase 2 for you: You’re gonna have to get up off your ass and do that yourself.
Think of it like becoming the main character in a Choose Your Own Adventure book—it’s tough to find out what happens if you don’t turn the page.
So other than reading this book, do yourself a favor and don’t collect any more underpants for the time being.
Hope needs to be combined with action for the story to progress. A call needs to be answered. Adventure can start anytime, anywhere, but it has to start.
In the book, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, the #1 regret voiced by those on their deathbeds, having the crystal-clear ability to look back at what they had done or not done over the course of their lives, is that they wished they’d had the courage to live lives true to themselves, as opposed to the lives others expected of
them. Let that sink in for a moment.
That’s what I did. It wasn’t because I was born adventurous. I simply decided to heed the call when it came knocking—my computer exploding—and I became my own hero.
If you’re not sure how to write out your origin story and alter ego, then try this activity: write as if you were looking back on your life at age 99. What did you accomplish in your adventures? What are you known for? Who did you impact? Dream as big and as grand or as small and specific as you’d like to. It’s your story, and you get to write the script! I want to know where you are, and where you plan on going.
I’m going to systematically and thoroughly destroy any argument this voice in your head might have, so we can stop focusing on what’s impossible and shift the focus away from, “I can’t, because” and toward “Okay, this is my current situation, let’s fix it.”
Starting today, that voice in your head is no longer allowed to utter the words: “I don’t have time.” Instead, the voice must use the phrase, “It’s not a priority.”
“It’s not what we say is a priority, but what we actually do that’s a priority.”
we need to do whatever we can to stop spending money on the unimportant so we can reallocate those financial resources to things that provide us with sustainable happiness.
The great news about working in a job that leaves you unfulfilled and unhappy is that it doesn’t need to define you. Until there’s an opportunity to make a change, you can put your focus on growing and advancing in your spare time. Or, you can start by making your adventure about breaking free first, before moving on to the next quest.
“If no one ever told you when you were born, how would you know how old you are?”
“Get busy livin’, or get busy dyin’.”
Within our movement, we’ve decided that instead of asking, “When does life get fun again?” we’ve reprioritized what’s important to us and ask: “How can I have fun and grow today?”
“Be judged, or be ignored.”
