When we see heroes, their origins are usually explained from luck or circumstance. They are average people struck by extraordinary chance. I’m not inspired by this. In life, there is no radioactive spider. Nobody hands us a pill that allows us to use all of our brain. I don’t plan on winning the lottery or else being doomed to be the extra in someone else’s movie. The people who live life as an extra in someone else’s movie are under the impression that some circumstance is responsible for coming along to change their life, or they just think that special things are only found in movies anyway. The belief in either of those illusions is the only way they can rationalize and accept their situation. I am inspired by creating something from extraordinary mediocrity. Something that didn’t come from luck, chance, fate, or anything other than personal ambition.
When I ask someone what they want, or what their goals are, they usually say the same thing. “I just want ___”. Whatever you say to fill in the blank is a lie. You don’t want that. You wouldn’t have said the word “just” if that was what you wanted. You said what you would settle for.
It’s not my place to tell anyone to have more ambition. We have different values. Personally, I cannot seriously share my real goals with many people beyond what I have planned for 1 or 2 years from now. I would expect anyone to genuinely not believe me, it doesn’t get me any closer by talking about it, and I wouldn’t believe anyone else if they told me that those were their goals either. The chances of it working out for them are too low and they are almost statistically guaranteed to fail. And so am I, if my effort and choices were victim to being confined to the statistics of other peoples’ efforts and choices. We get dealt some cards, but most of the cards are actually dealt by ourselves. All I can tell you is that when I think about what I want, I do not answer with “I just want…”
If I had to reason what lights a fire inside of me, for the most part it would be explained in the following excerpt. A bit of an explanation into why I own my own business, why I enjoy it, and why I do things that other people tell me are a little too risky.
The following is a slightly edited excerpt from The Cruise of the Snark, 1911 By Jack London
"Our friends cannot understand why we make this voyage. They shudder, and moan, and raise their hands. No amount of explanation can make them comprehend that we are moving along the line of least resistance; that it is easier for us to go down to the sea in a small ship than to remain on dry land, just as it is easier for them to remain on dry land than to go down to the sea in the small ship. This state of mind comes of an undue prominence of the ego. They cannot get away from themselves. They cannot come out of themselves long enough to see that their line of least resistance is not necessarily everybody else’s line of least resistance. They make of their own bundle of desires, likes, and dislikes a yardstick wherewith to measure the desires, likes, and dislikes of all creatures. This is unfair. I tell them so. But they cannot get away from their own miserable egos long enough to hear me. They think I am crazy. In return, I am sympathetic. It is a state of mind familiar to me. We are all prone to think there is something wrong with the mental processes of the man who disagrees with us.
The ultimate word is I Like. It lies beneath philosophy, and is twined about the heart of life. When philosophy has maundered ponderously for a month, telling the individual what he must do, the individual says, in an instant, “I Like,” and does something else, and philosophy goes glimmering. It is I Like that makes the drunkard drink and the martyr wear a hair shirt; that makes one man a reveller and another man an anchorite; that makes one man pursue fame, another gold, another love, and another God. Philosophy is very often a man’s way of explaining his own I LIKE.
…
When I have accomplished a personal achievement, I am exalted. I glow all over. I am aware of a pride in myself that is mine, and mine alone. It is organic. Every fibre of me is thrilling with it. It is very natural. It is a mere matter of satisfaction at adjustment to environment. It is success.
Life that lives is life successful, and success is the breath of its nostrils. The achievement of a difficult feat is successful adjustment to a sternly exacting environment. The more difficult the feat, the greater the satisfaction at its accomplishment. Thus it is with the man who leaps forward from the springboard, out over the swimming pool, and with a backward halfrevolution of the body, enters the water head first. Once he left the springboard his environment became immediately savage, and savage the penalty it would have exacted had he failed and struck the water flat. Of course, the man did not have to run the risk of the penalty. He could have remained on the bank in a sweet and placid environment of summer air, sunshine, and stability. Only he was not made that way. In that swift mid-air moment he lived as he could never have lived on the bank.
As for myself, I’d rather be that man than the fellows who sat on the bank and watched him. I am so made. I like, that is all. The trip around the world means big moments of living. Bear with me a moment and look at it. Here am I, a little animal called a man — a bit of vitalized matter, one hundred and sixty-five pounds of meat and blood, nerve, sinew, bones, and brain, — all of it soft and tender, susceptible to hurt, fallible, and frail. I strike a light back-handed blow on the nose of an obstreperous horse, and a bone in my hand is broken. I put my head under the water for five minutes, and I am drowned. I fall twenty feet through the air, and I am smashed. I am a creature of temperature. A few degrees one way, and my fingers and ears and toes blacken and drop off. A few degrees the other way, and my skin blisters and shrivels away from the raw, quivering flesh. A few additional degrees either way, and the life and the light in me go out. A drop of poison injected into my body from a snake, and I cease to move — forever I cease to move. A splinter of lead from a rifle enters my head, and I am wrapped around in the eternal blackness.
Fallible and frail, a bit of pulsating, jelly-like life — it is all I am. About me are the great natural forces — colossal menaces, Titans of destruction, unsentimental monsters that have less concern for me than I have for the grain of sand I crush under my foot. They have no concern at all for me. They do not know me. They are unconscious, unmerciful, and unmoral. They are the cyclones and tornadoes, lightning flashes and cloud-bursts, tide-rips and tidal waves, undertows and waterspouts, great whirls and sucks and eddies, earthquakes and volcanoes, surfs that thunder on rock-ribbed coasts and seas that leap aboard the largest crafts that float, crushing humans to pulp or licking them off into the sea and to death — and these insensate monsters do not know that tiny sensitive creature, all nerves and weaknesses, whom men call Jack London, and who himself thinks he is all right and quite a superior being.
In the maze and chaos of the conflict of these vast and draughty Titans, it is for me to thread my precarious way. The bit of life that is I will exult over them. The bit of life that is I, in so far as it succeeds in baffling them or in bitting them to its service, will imagine that it is godlike. It is good to ride the tempest and feel godlike. I dare to assert that for a finite speck of pulsating jelly to feel godlike is a far more glorious feeling than for a god to feel godlike.
Here is the sea, the wind, and the wave. Here are the seas, the winds, and the waves of all the world. Here is ferocious environment. And here is difficult adjustment, the achievement of which is delight to the small quivering vanity that is I. I like. I am so made."
-Jack London
If you feel along these lines, I suggest you stop saying what you "just want". If the above excerpt could describe your perspective or if you wish it could, then you should most likely take your current life goals and make them 5-10 year goals, and then amplify them tenfold.
When I ask someone what they want, or what their goals are, they usually say the same thing. “I just want ___”. Whatever you say to fill in the blank is a lie. You don’t want that. You wouldn’t have said the word “just” if that was what you wanted. You said what you would settle for.
It’s not my place to tell anyone to have more ambition. We have different values. Personally, I cannot seriously share my real goals with many people beyond what I have planned for 1 or 2 years from now. I would expect anyone to genuinely not believe me, it doesn’t get me any closer by talking about it, and I wouldn’t believe anyone else if they told me that those were their goals either. The chances of it working out for them are too low and they are almost statistically guaranteed to fail. And so am I, if my effort and choices were victim to being confined to the statistics of other peoples’ efforts and choices. We get dealt some cards, but most of the cards are actually dealt by ourselves. All I can tell you is that when I think about what I want, I do not answer with “I just want…”
If I had to reason what lights a fire inside of me, for the most part it would be explained in the following excerpt. A bit of an explanation into why I own my own business, why I enjoy it, and why I do things that other people tell me are a little too risky.
The following is a slightly edited excerpt from The Cruise of the Snark, 1911 By Jack London
"Our friends cannot understand why we make this voyage. They shudder, and moan, and raise their hands. No amount of explanation can make them comprehend that we are moving along the line of least resistance; that it is easier for us to go down to the sea in a small ship than to remain on dry land, just as it is easier for them to remain on dry land than to go down to the sea in the small ship. This state of mind comes of an undue prominence of the ego. They cannot get away from themselves. They cannot come out of themselves long enough to see that their line of least resistance is not necessarily everybody else’s line of least resistance. They make of their own bundle of desires, likes, and dislikes a yardstick wherewith to measure the desires, likes, and dislikes of all creatures. This is unfair. I tell them so. But they cannot get away from their own miserable egos long enough to hear me. They think I am crazy. In return, I am sympathetic. It is a state of mind familiar to me. We are all prone to think there is something wrong with the mental processes of the man who disagrees with us.
The ultimate word is I Like. It lies beneath philosophy, and is twined about the heart of life. When philosophy has maundered ponderously for a month, telling the individual what he must do, the individual says, in an instant, “I Like,” and does something else, and philosophy goes glimmering. It is I Like that makes the drunkard drink and the martyr wear a hair shirt; that makes one man a reveller and another man an anchorite; that makes one man pursue fame, another gold, another love, and another God. Philosophy is very often a man’s way of explaining his own I LIKE.
…
When I have accomplished a personal achievement, I am exalted. I glow all over. I am aware of a pride in myself that is mine, and mine alone. It is organic. Every fibre of me is thrilling with it. It is very natural. It is a mere matter of satisfaction at adjustment to environment. It is success.
Life that lives is life successful, and success is the breath of its nostrils. The achievement of a difficult feat is successful adjustment to a sternly exacting environment. The more difficult the feat, the greater the satisfaction at its accomplishment. Thus it is with the man who leaps forward from the springboard, out over the swimming pool, and with a backward halfrevolution of the body, enters the water head first. Once he left the springboard his environment became immediately savage, and savage the penalty it would have exacted had he failed and struck the water flat. Of course, the man did not have to run the risk of the penalty. He could have remained on the bank in a sweet and placid environment of summer air, sunshine, and stability. Only he was not made that way. In that swift mid-air moment he lived as he could never have lived on the bank.
As for myself, I’d rather be that man than the fellows who sat on the bank and watched him. I am so made. I like, that is all. The trip around the world means big moments of living. Bear with me a moment and look at it. Here am I, a little animal called a man — a bit of vitalized matter, one hundred and sixty-five pounds of meat and blood, nerve, sinew, bones, and brain, — all of it soft and tender, susceptible to hurt, fallible, and frail. I strike a light back-handed blow on the nose of an obstreperous horse, and a bone in my hand is broken. I put my head under the water for five minutes, and I am drowned. I fall twenty feet through the air, and I am smashed. I am a creature of temperature. A few degrees one way, and my fingers and ears and toes blacken and drop off. A few degrees the other way, and my skin blisters and shrivels away from the raw, quivering flesh. A few additional degrees either way, and the life and the light in me go out. A drop of poison injected into my body from a snake, and I cease to move — forever I cease to move. A splinter of lead from a rifle enters my head, and I am wrapped around in the eternal blackness.
Fallible and frail, a bit of pulsating, jelly-like life — it is all I am. About me are the great natural forces — colossal menaces, Titans of destruction, unsentimental monsters that have less concern for me than I have for the grain of sand I crush under my foot. They have no concern at all for me. They do not know me. They are unconscious, unmerciful, and unmoral. They are the cyclones and tornadoes, lightning flashes and cloud-bursts, tide-rips and tidal waves, undertows and waterspouts, great whirls and sucks and eddies, earthquakes and volcanoes, surfs that thunder on rock-ribbed coasts and seas that leap aboard the largest crafts that float, crushing humans to pulp or licking them off into the sea and to death — and these insensate monsters do not know that tiny sensitive creature, all nerves and weaknesses, whom men call Jack London, and who himself thinks he is all right and quite a superior being.
In the maze and chaos of the conflict of these vast and draughty Titans, it is for me to thread my precarious way. The bit of life that is I will exult over them. The bit of life that is I, in so far as it succeeds in baffling them or in bitting them to its service, will imagine that it is godlike. It is good to ride the tempest and feel godlike. I dare to assert that for a finite speck of pulsating jelly to feel godlike is a far more glorious feeling than for a god to feel godlike.
Here is the sea, the wind, and the wave. Here are the seas, the winds, and the waves of all the world. Here is ferocious environment. And here is difficult adjustment, the achievement of which is delight to the small quivering vanity that is I. I like. I am so made."
-Jack London
If you feel along these lines, I suggest you stop saying what you "just want". If the above excerpt could describe your perspective or if you wish it could, then you should most likely take your current life goals and make them 5-10 year goals, and then amplify them tenfold.
Dislike ads? Become a Fastlane member:
Subscribe today and surround yourself with winners and millionaire mentors, not those broke friends who only want to drink beer and play video games. :-)
Membership Required: Upgrade to Expose Nearly 1,000,000 Posts
Ready to Unleash the Millionaire Entrepreneur in You?
Become a member of the Fastlane Forum, the private community founded by best-selling author and multi-millionaire entrepreneur MJ DeMarco. Since 2007, MJ DeMarco has poured his heart and soul into the Fastlane Forum, helping entrepreneurs reclaim their time, win their financial freedom, and live their best life.
With more than 39,000 posts packed with insights, strategies, and advice, you’re not just a member—you’re stepping into MJ’s inner-circle, a place where you’ll never be left alone.
Become a member and gain immediate access to...
- Active Community: Ever join a community only to find it DEAD? Not at Fastlane! As you can see from our home page, life-changing content is posted dozens of times daily.
- Exclusive Insights: Direct access to MJ DeMarco’s daily contributions and wisdom.
- Powerful Networking Opportunities: Connect with a diverse group of successful entrepreneurs who can offer mentorship, collaboration, and opportunities.
- Proven Strategies: Learn from the best in the business, with actionable advice and strategies that can accelerate your success.
"You are the average of the five people you surround yourself with the most..."
Who are you surrounding yourself with? Surround yourself with millionaire success. Join Fastlane today!
Join Today
