They say that there is a thin line between crazy and genius, what they don’t tell you about on the other hand, is the true shape of the line.
You see, the road to success is not a straight line. Not by a long shot, it has so many peaks and dips that if it was to be put in a diagram, then it would bear more resemblance to a volatile stock market chart that it does to your regular straight line.
Here’s where it gets fascinating, whether it’s Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, or even the newest undiscovered prodigy. Whenever their newest project is launched, the perception around their person keeps oscillating between a revolutionary visionnaire and an arrogant prick who doesn’t understand their needs.
When things go bad, some people try to completely avoid their negative emotions (fear of failure) and jump on the first solution that is offered to them to sooth that discomfort, even if that solution would only makes things worse.
That’s why the expression From the frying pan to the fire is so damn popular.
Some people have even weaker hands and react even more negatively to uncertainly. Stress immediately sets them on a fight or flight mode where urge is the worst possible consigliere.
As the ups and downs keep wrestling with each other, the blames are suddenly replaced by adoration and vice versa, continually interchanging in such an entrepreneurial road where uncertainty is the only constant.
Quite the paradox.
Today we pick up from where we left the last time, with you facing your unclimbable mountain.
Part Two: The Anomaly
Will you climb?
Maybe later.
One step at a time would’ve been great, but instead soon enough you get surrounded by all the distractions that society has to offer, and if you blink, they swallow you alive.
What you do is to play it safe, you avoid all the uncertainty because you think that’s the smart play, though instinctively you know that something is missing from the equation. Still, you’re afraid to dig in inside.
What you do instead is to watch all those characters played by your favorite actors starring at the face of that big scary unclimbable mountain.
But here’s a crazy question:
What if it was all in front of you but you can’t see it? What if it’s a metaphor that tells you: Your turn.
You keep watching, you flinch with every obstacle the hero encounters, you bite your fingernails at the uncertainty that lingers all along the storyline…
After the pain comes the climax.
Your turn.
The movie is over, and now it’s your time to act. You feel pumped, the adrenaline runs through your veins, you feel inspired, you feel like a stalwart warrior locked inside a holy war.
I can do this!
I’m gonna make Monday morning my bitch!
You get back to work next Monday ready to take on the world.
By Tuesday your friend’s concerns are already affecting your judgment, you start seeing their past failures as your future success.
Their fear of the unknown is replacing your courage and ingenuity.
By Wednesday the doubts are settling in and making a home in your heart. By Thursday they sank deep into your bones.
And by the weekend… Well by the weekend, you’ve already given up. You go back to the movies agian to watch how other people fought their battles.
The hell happened to I can do this?
The amazing part however, is that it was never about motivation in the first place. It rarely is, at least not on its own.
It was about all the small inner battles, all the new habits you have to acquire, about learning to make sober decisions while watching everyone else letting their urges and fear take the driving seat.
It was about removing all the things that don’t really matter instead of letting them condition your decisions.
It was about understanding the concerns of those around you and take them with a fine grain of Himalayan salt.
It was about training yourself to deal with these things with pragmatism. It was about learning to not letting fear influence your decisions, so then you can come back stronger.
All these skills are acquired as a consequence of learning to live with uncertainty instead of complaining about it or even worse, avoiding it completely.
But you didn’t know that back then.
Before you know it five years have passed, and there you are fantasizing about what could’ve been.
And then you start time-travelling.
You sit in bed, fantasizing about what could’ve been. It’s 2012 and this time you didn’t give up on that project that is now booming without you. That girl that wanted to move abroad so you can be together, you didn’t talk her out of it because this time you weren’t worried about what the future holds.
Oh, and by the way, you invested in Bitcoin as well.
Then all of the sudden, the phone rings and brings you back to the future, all you have left is a deep thought lodged in your psyche being played as a broken record in repeat mode like a loop from hell: I should’ve been braver.
Trust me, I’ve been there.
The Hero’s Paradox
There is a reason why people like to read so many stories and watch countless movies that have the hero’s struggle as a main premise. Because it takes them to a realm where they have more strength and courage to face their own demons.
Here's the funny part:
You see, the very people who create, script or act those stories were forced in a way to became the heroes of their own stories before you get the chance to appreciate their work.
They've usually had to make all kinds of sacrifices, cut toxic people from their entourage. They've probably made all sorts hard decisions and learned to live with uncertainty.
Let’s take actors for the sake of argument, I mean can you imagine what they have deal with?
Hollywood is an absolute Mecca for uncertainty, at the core it’s a business of rejection, the anti-thesis of fragility. You spend God knows how many years struggling without knowing if your chance is ever gonna be up or not.
Talk about uncertainty.
What’s funny about the whole thing is that there is so many that loath these people, in case you’re wondering about how that paparazzi phenomena came about. There is an entire industry built to satisfy the needs of certain people who want to watch the demise of other people.
There are many reasons behind that, one of which is that successful individuals tend to remind people of all the chances that they didn't take.
Maybe for them, uncertainty and fear has long won the battle, and the comfort zone became the only possible option. After all, if I don’t have a choice, I can’t feel regret.
The problem however, is that if there’s one person you can’t bullshit is yourself.
By the way, this is not just about actors, or musicians or writers… Scientists, inventors, engineers, they all had to go through the same.
They faced their demon and stabbed it in the fucking heart.
And naturally, all start-ups also have to deal with the same, uncertainty. The road to success is filled with lows points and high moments, packed with ups and downs, and with all sorts elements that you cannot control.
About the only thing that you can control is how you react in face of uncertainty, because that’s what’s ultimately is going to define your outcome in one way or another.
I know it’s hard, it's really hard. Most people try avoid uncertainty like the plague. Some deal with it letting their emotions grab the driving seat.
Fear is treacherous friend, it clouds your judgments and forces you either surrender to it or it pushes you to make hasty decisions that will inevitably seal your fate.
The problem however is that in everything that's worth it in life, you either have strong hands, or you become a statistic. I know that probably everyone around you is reacting to uncertainty with fear.
But if you want to be an anomaly you have to act like one.
I can’t tell you what choices to make, only you have to make that choice. I can’t tell you whether to stick with steemit or if you should panic with every drop in price and leave.
The only thing I can tell you is what I’m doing, and for what it’s worth, I don’t wanna time travel again.
I don’t wanna sit in bed three years from now, and watch steem reaching millions and disrupting the system, helping countless of people in the process, and have that happiness mixed with some feelings of regret.
And let's not forget the old risk VS benefit aspect.
Look at what we have here. It’s barely six months and we have more variety of topics, more guy-to-girl ratio than any other crypto. In case you haven’t noticed, that’s the first step towards mass adoption, a crucial element that many other brilliant projects, tend to overlook.
We have a so much space to build from, so many directions to expand on if we’re not busy taking shots at each other. I know it can be scary at first, but in the long run it could perfectly be an amazing ride.
And lest we forget:
You can’t have an amazing ride without a few bumps.
So buckle up!