Successfully navigating your career, like many other challenges in life, is a balancing act.
And when it comes to dreaming big and chasing that dream to reach a fulfilling and meaningful life, it feels less like the balancing act of standing on top of a stool, but more like the balancing act of walking on a tightrope between two skyscrapers.
This analogy has a lot of symbolic meaning packed into it… So… Pay close attention…
First of all, it takes time. Crossing from one skyscraper to another is not a balancing act of a few seconds, like standing on the edge of a chair or table to change a light-bulb. You have to take multiple steps, one after the other, all the while keeping your balance so that you don’t fall. Tightrope walking between ski scrapers, at a minimum, can take up to half an hour for the expert acrobat. It’s a test of endurance, mental and otherwise.
Second, it’s the kind of act that requires commitment. You’re not going to just decide halfway across that you don’t like where this is going and turn back. Once you start at one side, you have to get to the other. Or you fall…
Third, if you fall, you are finished. For the tightrope acrobat, this is indeed the case. For those of us navigating big career changes, it feels the same way: Failure appears to be quite catastrophic, which you quickly notice, as you take your first few steps across the chasm between your career goals, and catch a glimpse of the corpses of the fallen, who all fell chasing their dreams…
Who exactly are these “fallen”?…
The perpetual “idea man” who starts a new project every week without ever finishing one. The stuck middle manager whose work has become so meaningless that it starts to show as frown-marks on his face. The newbie social media “something”, who pretends to be a reality tv star while working at a fast food chain. Or the online life/success coach who can’t make rent.
It’s scary to look at the fallen and think that if you dare for greatness, you might end up like them.
Yet Dare You Still Must!
Becoming one of the fallen might be atrocious. But it’s also scary to take the safe route. It’s a soul crushing kind of scary, but scary nevertheless – to do what your parents or your friends who have already given up on their dreams recommend: “get a steady job, put your time in, work your way up and find happiness with the little things in life.”
What kind of life is that?
Which way is better?
What should you do?
Thank you for asking, I’ll tell you…
First of all, you must stop listening to anyone who recommends you give up your dreams. You don’t want to live their lives, do you? Then why would you take their advice? Shut them out. Don’t hear them. Don’t take them seriously…
Don’t resist or argue with them either. On the contrary fact, have compassion for them: It’s threatening for people who have given up their dreams to see the ambition in you. It forces them to face their own failures and admit to themselves that they could have pursued a better life.
Next, you have to get it out of your head that it’s a tightrope between two skyscrapers and that to cross to the other side you must never fall. On the contrary, you have to fall, and you have to fall as many times as you need to, and get up as fast as you can, before you can learn how to cross that chasm to the other side.
Make no mistake: You can’t on day one go to the top of the highest building you can sneak into, and then, manage to tightrope walk across to the next one. No one can do it on day one. It’s like that scene in the original Matrix movie, “everybody falls the first time” they try.
It takes skill, preparation, and practice to get you sufficiently competent so that you can walk across the skyline without falling to your death. And you develop that competence close to the ground, in your backyard or at the local park, between two tree stumps, where falling is inconsequential.
The acrobat didn’t learn his craft between skyscrapers. Neither should you… You need an environment where you can make mistakes, adjust, and iterate.
It’s also important to note that schools don’t prepare you for this kind of failure in the real “safe space” that you need…
Our education system is built on what pedagogues call “the banking model of education”. And that model doesn’t want risk takers who learn by trial and error. That model wants drones who memorize and regurgitate facts, and follow instructions from authorities, to the letter.
Of course, there are some institutions such as private clubs, “interesting” fraternities with pirate flag themes, and mentorship or tutoring programs that teach some children to reach their dreams. But unless your parents could afford a private tutor to mold your thinking as a member of the ruling class, your education didn’t give you the intellectual or emotional skills to chase your dreams to success.
You have to find a way to learn it…
That brings me to my final point: To achieve your career dreams…
You MUST Learn These Special Skills:
You can learn them on your own. Or you can learn them, again through trial and error, but in an environment where you are surrounded by people who can fast track your learning.
Either way, you’ll have to experiment, try things out, fall and get up, and do the tightrope walking of career development. But when you are surrounded with the right people, it becomes significantly easier.
Of course, ideally, you do all this career development not in some hobbyist club or unfunded entrepreneurship meetup, but in a real company while getting paid.
Remember: The reason the “idea man” never finishes a project is because he doesn’t know how to manage a project or execute a schedule. The reason why the middle manager lost his soul to subservient sycophant-ism is because he was never taught the skill of building leverage. The reason why the social media “star” isn’t making it is because he doesn’t know how to craft a compelling narrative in a way that sticks. And the reason why the motivational success coach can’t pay rent is because he was actually never around anyone successful. He doesn’t know how to be successful, let alone teach it!
Compared to that, people who have actually amounted to great success were all prepared, surrounded by other successful individuals, and did all their learning at someone else’s dime – while employed…
How Success Begets Success
Bill Gates was thoroughly educated in computer science and contracted for IBM way before he started Microsoft to become the richest person in the world. Steve Jobs was one of the most versatile trained individuals on the planet before he founded Apple and mainstreamed computer use, innovated the iPhone and changed the entire planet’s culture. Jeff Bezos worked at Wall Street and learned all the dirty little secrets about building an empire before his company, Amazon, made a single sale. Gary Vaynerchuk spent his entire youth trying (and succeeding) to sell things, and worked at his parent’s liquor store for almost a decade, before becoming a transformative leader in digital marketing. Jack Welch began as a junior chemical engineer in General Electric’s Plastic Division before turning into an iconic business executive. Warren Buffet worked as an investment salesman, way before he became the biggest value investor ever. And even Thomas Edison worked as a telegraph operator, before he invented the lightbulb and founded General Electric.
Of course, there are some anomalies like reality tv stars who became successful despite having zero talent, or schmucks who win the lottery – but they are not successful, they are simply lucky. Their path is not a strategy for achieving your dreams, it’s a coping mechanism to make yourself feel hopeful.
The reality is, the few successful people who make it big without first working for others – like Mark Zuckerberg – are equally prepared as the earlier examples. For instance, Mark was at Harvard, and already surrounded with the successful people he needed to learn from, before he founded Facebook.
And that’s the crux of the matter…
All of these greats became great, not just because they had dreams, and they thought positively, and they dared to chase their dreams and they took action… They became great because they were prepared for greatness.
And when it comes to this preparation for greatness, there IS a formula…
It’s not about how long you work, or where you work, or what title you have. It’s about being surrounded by mentors and guides who teach you all the crucial skills you can’t learn in books. It’s about learning the hard problems about succeeding in business and in your career, on someone else’s dime, in fact, while getting paid to do it.
The Secret Formula is Learning The Secrets Ahead of Time
This is why, if you aspire to be great, the single most important thing you can do is to work for someone, or a company, that pushes your limits while teaching you it’s secrets. A company where you get to learn while you work, develop yourself, and have people around you that can facilitate your growth.
Having a crappy job to pay the bills while working on nights and weekends to chase your dream is an extremely risky business, IF there is no one at your crappy job who you can look up to and learn from.
The “idea man” needs someone who will teach him skills like “managing a project when people lie”, or “executing on a schedule when people don’t do their work”. The middle manager needs someone to show him “how to build leverage so that he can force his promotion”. The social media star needs someone to teach him “how to craft a narrative that people buy into”. And the success coach needs a mentor who will actually teach him “the habits that lead to success”.
By all means, dream big and chase your dreams.
But also, be sure you are prepared. Learn the skills you need from practitioners by watching them, working for them, and working with them.
This means, whatever you do, do your damndest best to make sure that you are employed at the highest and best use of your time.
Don’t trade your life for money, build a career instead.
Use everything at your disposal to do that. It can be some of our work. It can be work from some others.
Does not matter. Use everything at your disposal to achieve your dreams!