Like me, if you had well-meaning parents, they probably told you that you could be anything you wanted when you grow up. When I was a kid, I remember wanting to be everything from an astronaut to Captain American and the President, which was cool when I was younger. But by about 13 years old, your skills should be shaped toward a more focused direction. However, for most of us, the advice we are given for our adult life is not much better.
The Twin Towers of Bad Advice
There is a recognizable difference between good advice and bad advice. Good advice applies perfectly to the situation at hand and delivers desired results most of the time. Bad Advice might not apply to the given situation and is undoubtedly bad if it does not produce promised results. The twin towers of bad advice, if followed literally, advice always fail. This is, of course, “Do what you love” and “Follow your passion.” This advice is garbage. No matter how much you love eating ice cream on your back porch, no group of consumers is willing to pay you to do it. This might be a silly example, but the same is true, so some people’s passion for dancing to bagpipe music, Jim’s poorly drawn artwork, and Jill’s handmade cat mittens. What you love and or passion is not enough to supplant market demands, valid business models, and the principles of a market economy. Therefore, the twin towers are terrible advice. If your passion is not marketable and in-demand first, following it is a grave mistake. I think Mark Cuban, a billionaire, says it best “One of the great lies of life is ‘follow your passions.’ Follow your passion is easily the worst advice you could ever give or get.”
All Eyez On Me
The problem with following your passion and doing what you love is inherent selfishness. If your business is all about you and what you love, you are your customer base. You are channeling 2Pac “Live the life of a boss player, All eyes on me.” When you use the Twin Towers as a guide for life, you abnegate any fiduciary duties and replace them with self-serving motives. This career of following your passion is often no different from being at a grocery store and grabbing an arm full of chicken nugget samples in those plastic shot cups. Nobody cares about your passion, to put a fine point on this concept. The market is far more self-centered than you. So, if your passion does not solve people’s problems, your passion will not pay the bills.
Be A Problem Solver
Does a market exist for what you love? Does what you love fulfill a need? Most often, the answer is no. There is no market for off-key singing. And your passion for singing will not make anyone want to pay for your screeching. Does what you love solve a problem for many people? You loving baking will not make your couscous and cranberry muffins taste good to anyone. But if you make something of value and can communicate that value, you will succeed. Whether you love what you do or not. Fill a need for many people, and riches will follow. Follow a path that makes other people’s lives better. Success has a much chance of happening when you add value than when you follow the course of the twin towers.
Dollaz and Sense
Do what you love, and you will never work a day in your life, might be accurate, but most people who blindly follow this advice have trouble eating every day. In the words of another 90’s rapper DJ Quik “if it don’t make dollars, it don’t make sense.” If you listen to the world’s worst advice and follow your passion, please do yourself a favor and answer three questions:
What problem do you solve for people?
How many people have this problem?
Why should people use you instead of everyone else doing the same thing?
If you have a solid answer to these questions, success is not guaranteed, but if do you do not, failure will follow until you do.
Go Get It
Gentlemen, as we know, the world will not just hand you success; you must go earn it. The good thing is that most people are not even looking to make a mark on the world. So really the competition is few, but the competition is tough. People will try to distract with the easy, feel-good route that ends in frustration and loss. Success is a product of how many people lives you affect or how much you impact the lives you touch. Success happens to you because of what you do for people who are not you. The twin towers of bad advice focus on making yourself happy, precisely in the wrong direction. When you find frustration, headaches, bad customer service, or solutions that cover but do not solve existing problems, you have an opportunity to add value. This is where your success lies. Gentlemen identify that problem then cast that solution onto the world. Success is yours for the taking. Go get it.
No man is an island. In most of our lives, we will find that growth and lasting success are often a product of the time someone has invested in us. Likewise, our lasting effect on the world is felt most when we invest time into people and help them develop toward their full potential. Thus, the need for you to have the ability to build relationships.
EFing New Guy
To build a relationship, you must build trust. Often, we assume some level of trust in a new relationship depending on where you meet the new person, but sometimes that trust is misplaced. Many of us have made the mistake of trusting someone in the wrong manner. The question is not should you trust; it is to what degree should you trust that person, and how do you build trust, so your relationship grows and thrives?
Let us be clear: you should not grow your relationship with toxic people in your personal life. People should have value intrinsically, and you need to see people as more than just resources for you to pull from. Jim Rohn has a famous saying that you will become the average of the five people you hang out with the most. So, choose wisely and fire quickly.
Before you can build trust, you must understand that person and clearly define your relationship. You must communicate the boundaries of the friendship while remaining open for deeper connections. Often, we shy away from this topic; by not having this conversation, assumptions are made, leading to disagreements and even betrayal down the road.
Take the time to understand other and make sure you both know if this is a transactional relationship, acquaintance, or future BFF. When you begin on the same page, building trust becomes much more accessible.
Ways to Build Trust:
Earn It
Don’t assume trust exists. Always work to earn it. When you stop taking trust for granted and prioritize it, you will be conscious of your actions. Make keeping your promises about little things as important as keeping your promises about the big things. The process of minding the little things takes work. So, take the time to work on your personal growth. Focusing on personal development makes you a solid man and fosters trust and grace in relationships. Gentlemen: reading, listening, counseling, and growth are essential for building trust in your relationships. Do the work.
Be Supportive
It is essential in any relationship to be a supportive force of positivity for another person. It is even more important to show that support when we are in a stage of building trust. If one person does not feel that they can take a risk, be open, make mistakes, or try new things without support, the relationship will stagnate. On the other hand, being supportive in good times and bad show us that someone has our back. Gentlemen, you must draw the line at being an enabler. In simple terms, an enabler is a person that helps another person harm themselves. The harm is often physical, but it can also be emotional, financial, or spiritual. It is hard to build trust with a self-destructive person, and they will pull you down if you let them.
Learn to give and take
If you expect to get what you want 100% of the time in a relationship, you are not in a relationship. You are a parasite. Healthy relationships are built on compromise. However, it takes work on each person’s part to ensure a reasonable exchange. Generally, you will have things in common to bond over, use those similarities as jumping-off points to grow and expand. In all relationships, keep your frame but be willing to enter the “wheelhouse” of other people. This allows you to grow and expand your worldview. You must never lose yourself or who you are aiming to become.
Own who you are
If you have not heard this today, let me be the first to tell you, gentleman, you are awesome right now the way you are. I am here to help you become legendary. Trust me; legendary is in you. God put you on earth for a definite purpose as you work to understand that purpose, know that the purpose is in you. If you are a natural loner, be a loner with solid relationships. If you are an overweight homebody, work to be a more fit homebody as you build relationships. The world is big, full of all kinds of people, and in general, life is long. With commitment, work, and proper direction, you can gain all the values and skills to make you the man you want to be. It starts with you seeing yourself for who you are now and owning it. Now that you own who you are, warts and all, you can set your path to personal greatness. Trust me; once you accept then resolve to improve yourself, the world will open to you like never before.
Seize the day
I have laid out quick tips on building relationships: earn trust, be supportive, learn to give and take, and own who you are. These principles will sustain you in friendships and romantic relationships to a lesser degree. So, give it a try as you do the work to become the best version of yourself. Set some goals and make progress every day. I see you out there, my friend. You are well on your way to becoming legendary. Let’s get back to work.
On earth, we are constrained by certain realities. If you stand on the ground, hold a book over your head and release it, the book will fall. If you eat fast food three times a day, never exercise and drink sugary drinks like water, you will be obese, and if you treat her like a star, she will treat you like a fan. These are realities of life. Like the sentences above, the effects follow the causes that precede them in life. There is a fundamental and more pervasive truth on earth. However, you define success; success ends with hard work and luck, which is variable. However, it all starts and dies in the same place as one’s mindset decision. So, to ensure we do not lose these time-tested mindsets that Legacy Gentlemen have used to revolutionize society, I will cover three mindsets that will make you legendary.
Problem Solving from First Principles
We must understand what is wrong then fix it, also known as problem-solving—those who revolutionize and change the world using first principles. First-principles mindset is the practice of actively questioning every assumption you think you ‘know’ about a given problem and then creating solutions from scratch. This kind of thinking is the precursor to innovation. If you use this method correctly, you will not be bogged down by perceived limitation, but because you use best practices as the “jumping-off point,” you will save time and produce outstanding results. So, let’s talk about the framework for first principles.
First Principles framework
1. Identify and then challenge your assumptions – write down long-held assumptions about the issue you are trying to solve or the value you are trying to add. If you are trying to gain 10 pounds of muscle, you might assume you don’t have the body type that can do it. If you are trying to start a real estate wholesale business, you might assume it can’t be done without a large sum of money. Challenge your beliefs. How do you know an assumption is valid? What would happen if the opposite were true?
2. Separate the issue into its fundamental principles – what are the most basic truths of your case? Asking thoughtful questions is one way to identify fundamental principles. Let us go back to Henry Ford. In the early 20th century, making cars was time-consuming and expensive because the team making the vehicles had to be knowledgeable master craftsmen on making or assembling most of the parts. Ford asked if this was the only way to do it.
3. Create new solutions – with the parts identified, ask how can they be recombined in a different way to produce something new and insightful? Someone who believes they have the wrong body type to gain 10 pounds of muscle could try a weight gain nutrition program with high-intensity weight lifting workouts with no cardio workouts. A budding real estate entrepreneur could partner with several small investors to share costs and perform essential tasks on the property. It’s important to be fearless and think like there is no box. As Elon Musk once said, “Good ideas are always crazy until they’re not.” So, think big and go crazy.
This problem-solving mindset is one of the first arrows in your legendary quiver. So, do you think you have to be born with it or grow into it?
Growth Mindset
Have a growth mindset. A growth mindset believes that intelligence and ability can be nurtured through learning and effort. Growth-minded people see setbacks as a necessary part of the learning process and bounce back from ‘failure’ by increasing effort. This mindset has positive effects on motivation, professional, and academic performance. The evidence suggests the brains of people with a growth mindset are more active than those with a fixed mindset–particularly in areas associated with error correction and learning. In her 2006 book Mindset, Dr. Carol Dweck explains this idea entirely; however, I will go over the high points.
The main difference between growth and fixed mindsets is the belief in the permanence of intelligence and ability; one views it as very permanent, with little to no room for change in either direction (fixed), while the other views it as more changeable, with opportunities for improvement (growth).
This difference in mindset will lead to marked differences in behavior. When you think intelligence and abilities are immutable traits, they are not likely to put in much effort to change their inherent intelligence and abilities. On the other hand, when you know you can change these traits, you become more willing to put in the time and work to achieve ambitious goals. You will gain more than others with a growth mindset because you will be less concerned about looking smart or talented and put more energy into getting better. This is the second arrow in the legendary quiver. Boom! Winning.
Winning Mindset
Many Americans were winning so much they were tired of winning in the past. This is a product of a winning mindset. Boom winning! A winning attitude is a determined, resilient, deep thinker whose ideas are most initially rejected until the successful outcome starts showing significant achievements. All noteworthy inventions came from this rare, exclusive, and golden winning mindset. Most of them were, at first, tagged as lunatics and manic before they could conquer the world.
Champions possess the winning mindset. Someone who presses on against all odds, undaunted in pursuit of his goals, is the one labeled a winner. A winning mindset isn’t something you are born with; It must be developed. Once it’s possessed, it will propel you to achieve all your goals and aspirations no matter the conditions around you.
In his book “Think and Grow Rich,” Napoleon Hill said, “Your mental attitude is something you can control outright, and you must use self-discipline until you create a Positive Mental Attitude-your mental attitude attracts to you everything that makes you what you are.”
Yes, the mindset of a champion produces winners. You do well to emulate such an attitude. It leads to excellence in every facet of your life. It’s the same mindset Michael Jordan developed when he spent hours and hours practicing his craft to become one of the greatest basketball players of all time. A winning attitude clearly calls for focus and sacrifices, but any gift on your way to greatness is never too big and is undoubtedly worth the effort. This idea is best demonstrated in Valuetainment’s Patrick Bet-David video on the winning mindset. Mindset quiver equipped to move toward legendary status.
Is that all?
Your thinking sets the course your body will tread, as I have written before. Having the correct mindset is the precursor to success in all areas of life. First Principles, Growth, and Winning attitudes are three weapons in your mental arsenal. These are not the only thinking patterns you need, and they are all useless without you putting in the work. Get your body fit, get your money right, and know your value. Doing these things will put you on the path to being legendary.
