In today's book of the day, "When Nothing Else Matters: Michael Jordan's Last Comeback", the author says Michael Jordan, “Invented himself out of fantasies. Not as delusions but prelude, visions to be realized, destiny at the end of the lane.”
You have to believe in the inevitability of your success.
Of your life.
Dreams.
Aspirations.
It's that simple.
Most people operate out of either negativity or on the flip side out of delusion.
You should avoid both.
With Michael Jordan: "[Everything] derived from his sense of fate, the conviction that good things were meant to happen to him on a court, a gift unaffected by his struggles in a game."
You should operate out of faith.
See your future before anyone else.
There are 3 ways to get to a place of 'inevitability':
1. Has to be earned: Avoid the delusion which whispers in your ear that your success is guaranteed. It isn't. It only becomes inevitable when mixed with effort. Michael Jordan put in more hours than anyone - he was the first in the gym and the last to go home. No effort? Then no inevitability. You have to outwork everyone else. Then the inevitability is earned.
2. Comes from massive experimentation: There is this one story where Michael Jordan is getting old (He was 40 which is ancient in professional basketball), and a younger teammate, Rip Hamilton, challenged him to a bet on shooting half court shots (47 feet from the goal - that's far - try it sometime):
"[Jordan] struggled with the half-court distance while expressing ever more confidence that the contest would soon turn, making this sound like fate: 'Feelin’ good—oooh, almost, there it is,
startin’ to feel it, oooh, feelin’ it.'
Three more Jordan shots went wide, and the swishing Hamilton tacked on a couple hundred dollars more.
Jordan began improvising, seemingly compensating for his wrist’s tendinitis, adjusting his form, finally settling on a one-legged set shot that look borrowed from the ’50s and Bob Cousy, his left foot on the floor, his right knee lifted and bent.
He gave the ball one bounce, did a little hop, got a hip into the shot and flicked it, effortlessly. Finally, he started finding his range—“oooooh, oooooh, oooooh”—hitting 8 of his last 13 mid-court shots to win more than $1,000...
Jordan won because he didn't just have confidence and faith.He tweaked his technique.
Don't fall in love with your current methods.
3. Don't be phased by disappointment: The author says about Jordan, "He knew that basketball was an aggregation of disappointments. What distinguished Jordan from mortals by then was less his talent than his refusal to back off on a bad night: He didn’t cower like beaten prey and disappear in the midst of a 3–15, not even with a throbbing knee. The doctor who knew him best thought it explained why Jordan had been uniformly great during his career’s most formidable challenges. 'Michael always thinks that the next shot he’s putting up is the one going in; he’s always saying to teammates, ‘Keep putting it up, keep putting it up,’ Heffero n observed. 'His belief is absolute, no matter how he’s feeling physically'.”
Your life is like a game.
I've always liked that metaphor.
Put in the work.
But don't beat your head against the wall if your current methodology is not working. Tweak your approach. In the 67 Steps I talk about "How To Get Over The Wall Of Life. Go back and listen to the tools to getting over the walls and obstacles in your life.
Let the disappointments slide off your back.
Go forward and forget.
Like the great Pulitzer Prize winner, Erich Remarque, wrote: “To forget is the secret of eternal youth. One grows old only through memory. There's much too little forgetting."
Live the inevitability...
Stay Strong,
Tai
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