The man pictured is Jay-Z, and one of the lyrics from a song on a recent album of his is:

And it’s much bigger issues in the world, I know
But I first had to take care of the world I know

Making your local world a priority is the way to build up a foundation.  Thinking about other folks’ issues and lives is a great way to waste time, but it won’t get you any progress.

To start, take the example Jay-Z used in the song where he said this quote.  He had endorsed a certain company for a long period, and then a representative of the company said that they weren’t interested in an endorsement from someone like Jay-Z in the hip hop community.  Therefore, Jay-Z decided to make a statement, and switched to endorsing a competing product.

Though this was a small issue in the eyes of some, it was something he had to handle before he could move on.  Therefore, this was part of the world he knew, as in the quote.

Do you sometimes get caught up in other people’s worlds before your own?  A lot of people go on Facebook and live through others’ lives for hours at a time.  Some famous people have thousands of followers pseudo-living through them.

What is your world?  Well it consists of:

• your local city
• family
• friends and relationships
• colleagues
• neighbors
• your health/fitness(check Dietriffic for nutrition tips)
• your socioeconomic status

Things like these are where your concern should always start at.  This is the world we live in.

For example, you live in the city you live in.  That is your home base.  I often see people talk about national or global politics when they haven’t even been to a local city council meeting or taken part in any local activities.  It makes much more sense to start small and grow large than to attempt to start large and somehow fill in the cracks or weaknesses in the method later on.

Just as countries have neighbors, you have your neighbors.  Sure, there are national border issues and trade disputes and imbalances, but the world you want to start with is the one you are in.  Do you have a neighbor that you could help with something, or forgot to invite to something, or can connect with in some way?  A lot of people don’t know their neighbors.  I put up a post on Reddit about this a few weeks ago and got many responses from people that say they barely know their neighbors at all.  Doing a little for your neighbors is all it takes to build some understanding and make your home feel more like a home.

There are huge issues in the world like cancer treatment, lack of food or clean water, or corruption or violence, and these are worthy of tackle, but one can’t really tackle such issues until they have their own issues in a managed state.

There is one quote that says you have all you need, meaning that you have everything you need to move to the next step within your grasp.  You have local clubs and activities to join, information from the library or internet, social networking ability on and offline, and your family and friends for guidance and assistance, etc.

Take care of your personal world, and then you can think about taking a crack at the larger world we all reside in.

Hey all.  It is me, Armen, also known as the coolest guy on and off the internet, back with another post~.  I do it for the people.  This one is about quotes some fellow bloggers(I might as well use that term for a change, but I’m not a blogger, I’m a site-writer) use on a regular basis in their thoughts, or that they use as a motto, or that they are quite fond of.

As you read these quotes, you might want to think about a quote that you have running in your thoughts at regular times.  It could be a short one like “Just do it” that you use to get things started or completed, or “what goes around comes around” to deal with someone wronging you.  Whatever it may be, it can be good to know what quotes are in your thoughts on a regular basis.

My first quote is from Mike King, writer at Learn This, and his quote of usage is:

You miss 100% of all the shots you never take. -  Wayne Gretzky

Mike knows what’s up.  Are you a guy?  Did you not talk to that girl at the coffee shop?  Guess what.  That was a shot and you missed it.  Are you a girl?  Did you not talk to that guy at the coffee shop?  Guess what.  Well, society expects him to talk to you so I guess this doesn’t relate to the quote so well.  Are you a student?  Did you leave something out of your essay because you thought it might not be well-received, even though you had an inkling it might make it one of the top essays?  That shot was missed folks.  Are you a parent?  Did you not sign your daughter up for the musical instrument class because you weren’t sure they could handle it?  That shot was also missed.

As we go through our day, we see shot after shot.  Even people that do barely anything see opportunities they can take advantage of, but instead, they miss out on them.  Who wants to miss a shot?  Noone, that’s who.  22% is higher than 0% most days of the week.  31% is also higher than 0%.  I can do more of these math problems but my calculator will run out of ink if I keep using it here.

A doctor might be wavering between two methods of treatment for a patient, with one having 40% chance of success and the other having a 15% chance of success.  However, if he keeps deciding for hours until the patient is no longer functional, he now has a 0% chance of successful treatment, and that’s a fact you can take to the bank or your local credit union if you aren’t a fan of the recent big bank monthly fee additions.

Onto the next blogger and their quote—

Used by Bud Hennekes, writer at A Boundless World  we have:

This too shall pass.

This quote is a useful one for many different situations that can come up.  It is more for the hard times than for the good times(I think it is almost only for the hard times).  Let’s say you are in a period of unemployment, or lack a partner, or have an illness, or have just experienced grief.  Then, this quote fits your situation.  You must remember that terrible things have come and gone for all people through all of history.  Thinking that your ‘thing’ is the end-all is about as realistic as thinking that teen singers are going to bring forth a powerful voice.

This quote is not one you should use during a good time.  Actually, it is.  At that time, it will remind you that your good time will pass, and that you need to make sure you take care of the foundational parts so that you can return to a regular mood in a stable fashion.  Sometimes, when you are in a good mood, you do things that would not make sense if you knew the good mood would just last another 10 minutes.

Let’s say you start a new job.  The first two weeks might be tough because you know so little about the environment and other people and requirements.  That is the harder period.  That period shall pass, and you will then be in a position and have competency in it, so here is another example where you should use this quote.

To the third quote–

This one is used by Farnoosh Brock of Prolific Living:

The lust for comfort kills the passions of the soul. – Khalil Gibran

Let’s first discuss the lust for comfort.  Who is looking for comfort?  Most people are.  You’re probably looking for comfort.  We seek that feel-good feeling of safety, relaxation, and well-being.  While this is great, it is actually terrible.  When you strive for that boring comfort that we all know is the comfort most people are thinking of, you give up risk-taking, and risk-taking is necessary for the “passions of the soul” that is present in the 2nd half of this quote.  To see that lounge chair in the sun with no worries type of comfort, one sets aside the roughness and toughness required to have enough of a thick skin to follow one of those passions of the soul.  Find me some person who followed one of their passions who had an easy time with it.  Whether this is Eminem, Tony Hawk, Sheryl Swoops, or J.K. Rowling, following your passion basically requires you to walk around with a big piece of armor across your chest, to protect from stupid people trying to cut away at your self-confidence, so that you quit making them look weak in comparison.

I hope you liked that last line.

So, therefore, we have to cut away those weak thoughts of comfort-seeking when we have them.  It’s that simple.  When the thought of some idealistic future comfort comes in your mind, tell yourself “this is stupid”, and move on.

Speaking of the passions of the soul, it is sort of interesting how so many people have them.  We sometimes think only 5% of people have big passions because they are the only ones who make it, but there are a huge chunk of people, possibly like yourself, who have big passions and don’t touch them out of fear of whatever.  They have big passions too, but they just don’t act on them.  Near the end of people’s lives, they could care less how much money they have in the bank, or other stupid things, but people do regret not following their passion.

Our next quote comes from Peter Clemens, creator of The Change Blog:

In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock. -  Thomas Jefferson

Let me tell you.  Rocks are great.  They are like the symbol of stability and strength.  We will get back to that.

First, let’s discuss the first half of this quote by the honorable Thomas Jefferson.  Regarding style, swim with the current, and be as others are.  This means to wear red if that is the thing that is happening, or to add some extra tone to your voice if that is what people are doing.  Style is something you bring for others, because the clothes you wear are for others to see, and the style you put in your craft is for others to enjoy and get fulfillment from.  This is why style is to be maintained in according with what people are currently doing and wanting to see.

Now, as far as the second part of this quote, principle is something you don’t mess with.  Various folks have said “if you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.”  This is quite true.  Your principles have to remain whether times are good or bad.  That is why they are principles.  If you toss them away at the first sign of difficulty, what was the point of maintaining the charade of having them up until then?  If your principles involve being a strong family person, but you forget your family when some emergency occurs, how is that the case?  If you are against drug usage, and allow a peer to influence you into using one, what are you really against?  This list goes on and on.  If you are a person who speaks about environmental protection, but who starts bending the rules when it costs a little bit, why put up an act?  You’re not fooling anyone if you don’t live up to a principle you’ve set forth.

It can get pretty heated up in here.

The next quote is used by Vincent Tan, who writes over at Health Money Success(one of the most direct site names you will see):

Reaching your destination is all about taking one step at a time.

This quote reminds me of my one audio post about taking the first step for whatever you are working on.  Smart people break things into steps.  Giving a speech to 100 people might be a 12 step process involving steps for writing the speech, steps for acquiring the audience, steps for securing a venue, and steps for follow-up.  Big things get small real quickly when you break them apart.  A tree can have 100 branches and seem huge, but if they are cut off one at a time, the task is not so difficult.  Steps are the way we go from the first floor of our complex item to the second floor of the process.

Now, if you take one step at a time, that means you aren’t try to ‘cheat the system’ or skip ahead.  Trying to speed by or find some secret faster path is a good way to lose time.  You do things one by one, one step at a time, and you pass the people who are either try to cheat their way through, or who aren’t doing anything.

Making a great salad is as easy as some 10 steps that are done one by one, and the end result is healthy food you can eat for days.

Our last quote here is one used by Celestine Chua from The Personal Excellence Blog:

If you want to get something you have never gotten before, you have to do something you’ve never done before.

Now, Celes has done a lot of things she’d never done before, and now she has gotten a lot of things she had not gotten before, so this quote certainly fits her.

We have to understand this quote and then absorb it.  Let’s say what you are doing is called X, and it gives you Y.  Doing more X is going to give you more Y.  That is how the world works.  If you want M, you are going to need to do something different, like Z.  X is not going to get you M.  This makes life seem more appropriate and fair.  Instead of thinking doing more X will get you Y, and also M, and also whatever else, you will know that doing more X will just get you more Y, whatever that Y is.

It is when you do or create something different that you get something different, and that you learn something new about yourself.

If you are wanting to get a new client, you are going to need to reach out to potential clients in a new way.  Sitting there like you may have been will get you a new client as much as buying a lemon will help you make orange juice.

I hope you all enjoyed these various quotes and my commentary upon them.

Maybe I will hear from some of you folks/readers in the comments.  Which quote did you like best?  What is your own quote of usage?  Your feedback is cool and also gets you to learn more for yourself.

photo credit: James Jordan

“No one who can rise before dawn 360 days a year fails to make his family rich.” – Chinese proverb

Many people look for the big answer to take them from where they currently are to a state of fulfillment and lower stress. This quote has a definitive answer for how to do that. It isn’t often that you find something so direct, so it is valuable to have, and very fitting to follow. Here I discuss some of what the quote is saying, and what you can do to get on the victory train:

Wake Up Early

The main concept behind it is to wake up before the sun comes out for 360 out of 365 days of the year. Notice that the quote doesn’t say much else about what the person needs to do. This is because anyone with the self-discipline to wake up before the sun comes out for 360 days of the year will use that self-discipline, plus what they already desire and know, to achieve great things in a short time, making their family rich. Self-discipline is the key thing here, as no one leisurely wakes up before the sun comes out for the majority of the year.

This is not so much about the message of waking up early, although that is a requirement present in following the direction of the quote, but about the concept of sticking to a strict regimen. Anyone who can do this is in for great things. Following a strict regiment tells the people of the world a lot about you, like:

• you run your own show, and are not concerned with what others do
• you have enough of a foundation to maintain a regimen of your own making
• you have a bigger vision or desire than most people
• you follow good role models or examples to obtain similar success

360 Days Of A Year Is Nearly Every Day

Leaving out a couple of days for breaks, you have to keep this system going daily for it to work out as desired. If you have some sort of regular employment, this habit might lead you to get promoted sooner than your co-workers, as you would be early, show much more drive, and be awake and productive when others are a bit slower. If you are building a business, this routine early waking would be enough to outdo your competition.

This Concept Is A Solution

It is not often that you see a quote that gives you a direct solution. If you follow the message of this quote, it would almost take effort to not succeed, because anyone that is awake before the sun comes out will think of ideas, know that they can follow through on them as they did with the early waking, and will have the confidence to leave others in the dust.

As a society, we tend to look for the solutions out there, and some are shown as quick-fixes. Some are shown as slower fixes as well, and they are still not actually solutions all the time. Here you see what you can do if it fits in line with your desires to make yourself and your family rich. Beat the sun to the day for 360 days of the year, and you can expect results that others can’t even envision for themselves.

As a closing point, try and imagine what it would be like to wake up before the sun comes up every day. Your world might become quite different from how it currently is, and that small shift in your morning routine shifts your whole view of the day. We are very much in control of how we perceive the world, and can adjust our perception in more productive ways.

“Competition is easier to accept if you realize it is not an act of oppression or abrasion – I’ve worked with my best friends in direct competition.” – Diane Sawyer

This quote leaves you with a proper sense of how to respond to competition if you have been allowing your competition to slow you down.  Remember that your competitors are not fixated on leaving you unable to produce, but are looking to expand upon their own operations.  To understand this, you have to let go of some ego that is telling you that any competitor you see has you in their sights.

It Isn’t An Act Of Oppression

Others aren’t focused on reducing your capability to produce or perform, as that would take away from the energy they have for their own tasks.  This is a self-correcting concept, as any person who was spending their time trying to compete with you to reduce your growth would also slow down their own growth, leaving them less able to succeed further down the road.  The only people that are able to grow quickly are the ones who focus on their own material, so they won’t bother to aggressively compete with you in hopes of slowing or reversing your progress.

The Best Production Comes From Competition

In the quote, Diane points out that she worked with her best friend in direct competition.  This can be some of the best competition there is, with results arising rapidly.  At the same time, whether with close friends or distant strangers, your most energetic activity and task completion will come in the face of competition.  This is why you can’t run away from endeavors that place you up against someone.  Jay-Z said “Don’t run from the pain, go towards it”, and although competition doesn’t necessarily match up with causing pain, the concept remains that you want to head to where the competition is.  Showing up is the majority of the battle, and the rest will be doable.

Focus On Your Own

You only have enough time to focus on your efforts, let alone feeling bad about how others are doing compared with your work.  It can only slow you down, and you have material to progress forward on.

Quotes can have a powerful effect on our actions, as we repeat certain quotes of interest in our minds when we want guidance or motivation. I have bundled all of my Quote Analysis articles written thus far here at Timeless Information, as well as expanded on a few of them, to produce this compilation eBook, titled Quote Analysis: Volume 1.  It contains 11 quotes in total, an analysis/discussion of their meaning or value, and added images that relate to the concepts they convey.  Feel free to download it, send it to others, print it out, link to this post, etc.  If you have any feedback you would like to provide, feel free to do so here in a comment, or at the contact page if desired.

Download Quote Analysis: Volume 1 here

“The mind, ever the willing servant, will respond to boldness, for boldness, in effect, is a command to deliver mental resources.” – Norman Vincent Peale

Obama’s book is called “The Audacity of Hope“.  Sir Alan Sugar once told an apprentice “Be bold” when he was hesitating to voice his opinion(In a past comment I also pointed out that not voicing your opinion causes your blood pressure to slightly rise.)  “Go big or go home” is a well-known saying about bringing effervescent potency to something or not doing it at all, leaving out the ineffectual middle-ground.  Here I discuss boldness and the responses associated with it.

Boldness Leads To Rewards Every Time

One key point to set the stage is that boldness is rewarded time and time again.  Before I point out any examples, think about the examples of boldness being exemplified during your day.  Either you or people that you saw or dealt with brought boldness in some fashion.  How did people respond when they did so?  I have seen that the majority of cases where boldness was shown resulted in positive or highly positive results.  A select few resulted in minor negative results in the short-term, but then the results turned out favorably for those dauntless individuals, as they bounced up from their mistake with vigor.  This is doable because actual errors are very minor entities, but being scared to make them is a much larger issue.

To Stick Your Neck Out Or Not

Think about the people that you see praised for their efforts.  The majority of the time, if you take away the boldness they implemented to do something quicker than others, or stick their neck out in public, or do something that the others around them wouldn’t have even risked doing if left for 10 hours, they would then have very little to be praised for.  Example after example shows the bold person moving ahead.  Ask a question in class and you are now more likely to do well in the class because

1. you get your question answered

2. you show everyone in the class that you are looking to pass

3. you show the teacher that you value your position as a student with an opportunity

4. you asked what 10 other people wanted to ask, and they now partially look up to you for that, and are more likely to study with you or help you out

That all came from asking a question.

Boldness Represents Acceptance Of Accountability

Connecting back to the quote at the beginning of this article, boldness is an indirect signal that you will be providing mental resources, and are allowing yourself to be held accountable for what you are about to do.  Accountability is a large part of boldness, or else everyone would be bolder and not back up their initial claims.

Communication/Discussion Example

You are interested in jewelry, and have your own jewelry site.  You are walking through a bookstore and pass someone reading a jewelry book.  Your level of boldness determines what comes of that situation.  People who are not bold won’t even see the opportunity there, or will pass by the person and feel quite disappointed for not talking to them.  A bold individual, or a regular individual that decides to be bold, will create something of that situation.  Talking to the book reader could present the opportunity to bring someone to your jewelry site, find out information about jewelry, get a testimonial, find a member for a future meeting, etc.

When you don’t take this opportunity, there is only one person in the world who will know of your weakness, and that will be yourself, which will result in disappointment.  If you see the person reading a book on something that relates to your own site, but don’t mention anything, he has no way of knowing all the ideas floating in your head.  Boldness is the separator between opportunities created and opportunities missed.

Bold Social Networking In Public

We can see that people are becoming more and more connected through numerous technologies and methods of socialization.  At the same time, people remain very hesitant to say what is on their mind in public.  The 1 bold person out of 10 people is rewarded with tremendous amounts of attention and communication, but what about those other 9 people?  Everyone is able to see what lavish rewards bold people get, but not everyone skips right into presenting themselves equally as bold.  Keeping in mind the wonderful benefits that bold people get should be enough to motivate emulation of their action.

Here I will run through a list of boldness examples that come to my mind:

1. Zappos CEO Tony was on the show The Apprentice a few weeks back.  It is key to realize that it is just as likely that he was not on the show, and that another individual from another company was in his place; however, he was likely provided the opportunity to appear on the show, and boldly went through the procedure to heavily endorse his brand.  Boldness like this is not to be ignored.  Another person placed in his position might have gotten scared of not representing his brand properly, or some other self-created fear.

2. The first person who responds to a question or comment gets the most feedback and chance for learning.  On sites, the first comment on an article tends to be viewed and analyzed the most.  Someone who lacks boldness might end up taking long enough on their weak comment to have it show up as the 5th comment, so they will lose both on the listing of their comment and the potency of their presented opinion.

3. In real-time chat, people who lack boldness are easily identified, as their factual responses come quite slowly, and they use qualifiers in their statements to protect from damaging the other person, which actually ends up damaging their message transmission

4. On Twitter, Ashton Kutcher has currently created a pseudo-battle between himself and CNN Breaking News to become the first account with 1 million followers.  Although there is no relation between his writing material and that of CNN breaking news, and the battle was completely created out of thin air, his boldness in creating hype around it has netted him hundreds of thousands of followers on his account.  While another person is probably quite disappointed for hesitating, Ashton has gotten more followers in a few days than most will ever get on Twitter.

5. The musician John Mayer made a comment on his page that said “Some girl just knocked on my car window at a red light and handed me her demo. That’s how you DO IT!!”  He showed exuberance at the fact that someone had the boldness to present their material to him directly.  That quick bold action is worth more than a month of generic processed action with no vigor behind it.  Had the girl seen John, and then hesitated, and then gotten too afraid to give him her demo, one huge opportunity would have been lost.

A Little Boldness Will Set You Apart

Boldness is quite rare in our times, which is why it is so easy to stand out.  A small action can propel you up in an instant.  Hesitation is the enemy of what boldness can be.  When you hesitate to do something, you have made a choice to give up any benefits that boldness would have provided.  Hesitating, even for a second, is a conscious decision made by you that communicates your giving up of any shot of acting boldly.

Implement Your Idea Boldly Or Consequences Show Up

As an ending note, this should be one that will prompt you towards boldness.  There has certainly been a time when you had an idea and someone else had an idea that was very similar to it, if not identical.  They were bold and released it before you.  They ignored the possibility that it wouldn’t be received well, because they knew that that was irrelevant, and ignored any nonconstructive criticism, because it was not transmitted with good intent.  They then received accolades and kudos for their effort, while you got nothing for being afraid of the backlash, disappointment, feedback, and other issues that were made large in your mind, but were actually the smallest problems one could imagine.  Don’t let that happen again.

“To be understood, first seek to understand.”

A large portion of social communication involves understanding concepts brought up by others.  However, there can be a tendency to want to have your own ideas understood first, which can be seen as pushy, and is not likely to occur when others get a feel for your motives.  An optimal way to get others to understand what is on your mind is to work in reverse, by first focusing on understanding their position and views.

It Starts When The Conversation Starts

The idea behind this arises from the initial response.  When someone tries to get you to understand their mindset, without consideration for your mindset, you feel that they are inconsiderate, or possibly view you as less relevant than them, and then ignore their communication on purpose. It is a natural evolutionary response, because those that don’t start to ignore these people can end up getting used repeatedly.

Fair Trade/Creation Of Value

It can be thought of like social monetary dealings.  Smooth communication would be akin to each person starting with $10 of value before the communication, and ending with $11 of value.  On the other hand, when one person tries to forcefully get their thoughts in first, it is like trying to get a $1 worth of information created from the other person, without showing any intent to provide a $1 of value in return.

Who Isn’t Listening To You?

A way to check if you have been taking more than you have been giving is to assess how your communications go with certain people.  If you notice that there are people who are not initiating conversation with you like they were in the past, it is highly likely that you were not wanting to find out about what was going on in their minds, while concurrently you were releasing your thoughts to them as though your thoughts were more valuable than theirs.  The only way to rekindle relations with these people is to present yourselves to them in a manner that seeks to understand them first.  You can only belittle someone for so long.

“How Are You Doing?”

This is often true with people wanting to inform others about their day.  They can overwhelm the other person with facts, without thinking about how the other person is seeing it.  The other person might end up leaving soon after out of frustration.  In this case, it is beneficial to stay within limits of discussion, as the other person will be wondering when they will have the opportunity to voice their views.  Although a certain amount of people can be overpowered in most communications, it is not a sustainable process to do so, and you never know when a person who is important to you will give up communicating with you, due to your inconsiderateness for their time and attention.  Similar to it being easier to prevent sickness than to treat it, it is harder to gain back their positive spirit after you have let them down, as opposed to maintaining balanced relations from the start.

“Real education must ultimately be limited to men who insist on knowing, the rest is mere sheep-herding.” – Ezra Pound

There is a direct message being described here, which is that the very few who are highly determined to acquire education are the ones who it really benefits to provide it to, while the rest of the people are to be allowed to watch from the sidelines.  The provision of education is wasted on those who are not really interested in learning the material.

This concept can be extended to the thought that only those who are 100% directed towards a goal are the ones who should, and will, obtain it.  A person who puts a goal on the back burner, leaves it for a later week, thinks that he can get the chance to do it later, or works toward the goal lightly is indirectly saying that the goal isn’t that relevant to him.  Most of the time, when someone says “I really plan to do it soon” more than once, you can expect that the goal is not high on their priority list, regardless of the amount they discuss it.

Education continually evolves

Education has to be grasped for, because the information behind it is continually changing, so it is impossible to work linearly towards obtaining knowledge in a category.  By the time you end up understanding 20% of a specific category of learning, 30% of the research in the category may then be updated.  This is why people that are not reaching out for their education will soon be out of the loop, because their routine towards it is not sustainable, and they are easily derailed from keeping up.  If education were at a standstill, people could learn a certain amount of items and then be completed.  Also, competition comes into play here, as you might learn X items, but if someone else learns X + 2 items, you are once again at a disadvantage, and need to educate yourself further to stay relevant.

Strictness helps education transmit more efficiently

If the opportunity for education was removed for those that weren’t battling to acquire it, we would see less frustrated individuals, because much of that frustration comes from spending time on learning that one is not actually planning to use much of for future actions or efforts.  At the end of Richard Dawkins’ TED speech about atheism, he concluded with “Let’s all stop being so damned respectful.”  Although his speech was about a different subject, it relates in that harshness can be more beneficial than friendliness for both the acceptor to educational facilities and the mindset of the one wanting to be educated.  There has to be passion on both sides for the transfer of knowledge to occur.

Academic admissions

The most successful academic institutions commit a plenitude of effort to their admissions processes, in order to keep out those that are trying to “game” the institution, or those that are not really interested in the institution but applied leisurely.  The push-pull effect shows up here, in that the more someone is pushed away from reaching a goal, the more they will pull back towards it, if it really is their goal.

Knowledge has to be applied

The way to use this information is to judge which knowledge you are passionate about seeking, versus the knowledge you are seeking for ostentatious or ancillary purposes, and to remove those educational pursuits that you don’t plan to make use of.  If one person learns ten things they don’t put to use, and another person learns one thing that he does put to use, one of them will get a set of results while the other is limited to bragging about the knowledge he has in fact wasted.  To repeat that point for memory purposes, something that you learn, but don’t make use of, is worthless to you.

Books connecting to this issue

Quite a few books have a message that relates to this concept.  Seth Godin’s “The Dip” speaks about how if you are not passionate enough to get through the dip that shows up as a difficult test during your efforts, you are better off not pursuing that path.  In the same way, if you don’t see yourself building and building upon knowledge in a category you are planning to learn in, you are better off not heading in that direction.  Leo Babauta’s “The Power Of Less” says to do less, in order to get more done; this relates here in that doing a small amount of learning in a subject, and then applying that learning passionately, is worth loads more than learning heavily about a subject and not applying that learning to a product, creation, or service.

Reality show similarity

Relating to pop culture, American Idol has Simon Cowell, Hell’s Kitchen has Gordon Ramsey, The Apprentice has Donald Trump, and any successful reality interview/selection show has a well-known judge on their show who represents the idea that if you are not passionately reaching towards your goal, and in the right category that suits your strengths, you will be admonished or removed from the selection process.  TV judges,  university admissions personnel, hiring managers, and research grant providers are all examples of people that work to lead passionate and fitting people towards their goals, and to keep any other individuals out of their way.

“First they ignore you.  Then they laugh at you.  Then they fight you.  Then you win.”

This quote by Ghandi has been heard by many, and there is much to gain from it.  It provides a sequential set of responses that you will have to deal with as you build up in some category. Having an idea of the stages gives you a sense of what to expect during your expansion, so that you are much better able to control how you handle the effects.  Without keeping this set in mind, you might end up becoming unhelpfully angry at any of the stages before the victory would set in.  I will use an example of starting an online rare books store.

First they ignore you.

At first, noone would know about your online business.  Some people would run across it, and then actively ignore it, as it would seem to be irrelevant and lacking in acceptance by the public.  Others would see it, and instead of telling others about your useful creation, pretend as though nothing of value was seen.

Then they laugh at you.

Soon after, some people would start to make comments that don’t help your building of the business, like “Aren’t there already other rare books stores online?” or “You don’t have a chance in that industry.”  These comments would fit into the category of them laughing at you.  They will come in many forms, and the indirect forms are the ones that can halt your efforts the most.  Overarching lines like “Don’t you think demand for rare books is decreasing?” can be used by others to halt your progress.

Then they fight you.

The next step would be competitors of your category starting to use methods to topple your efforts.  This is a standard response that shows up because you may start taking their customers.  The “struggles” of rising are only there because other individuals purposely place them there to keep you from entering their domain.  Some examples would be someone hacking into your rare books website, talking negatively about you on a book reselling site, or talking condescendingly about your site on their book reselling site.

Then you win.

The last step, if you were able to handle each of these previous steps, would be success in your chosen field.

Another way to make use of this quote is to think of it in reverse.  If you don’t want a competitor to get to the final stage, you might want to refrain from performing the actions in the previous stages.  Ignoring a new competitor might be fine in the short-term, but in the long-term, it could result in your efforts being overtaken because you weren’t staying percipient.  If you laugh at new competitors, you are actually energizing them to work harder.  That is not beneficial for your business undertaking.  After that point, their efforts may be at the same level as your efforts, and you will have no choice but to battle them.  The victory would then go to whoever was more prepared.

“The man who never makes a mistake always takes orders from one who does.”

This quote should be enough to get readers of it into action.  It can be seen as a threat in a way, pointing out that any avoidance of activity that could lead to a mistake is acceptance of being led by another person who was willing to go through that type of mistake.  The point here does a fine job of keeping your thoughts in line with the understanding that there are others at the same point as you, and the ones who are willing to err, while progressing forward, are the ones who can lead individuals that were not up for the challenge.

This also informs/reminds that people who are rising quickly in their field of interest are making mistake after mistake, and are more than fine with it, as those mistakes are irrelevant when compared with the progression enabled by them.  Leadership can be thought of as one person handling those who didn’t aspire to travel through the mistakes that he did.  It also tends to be the case that the leader is not too different in ability from the others, but that the key point of willingness to err and come out wrong is what distinctly separates the two groups.

You would do well to look at people that are at a similar decision-making point, and ask yourself if you would be alright having them as your superiors.  If this is not the case, the decision of whether to accept mistakes as possible outcomes, and progress forward, should be clear.