Read Miller’s first book Tropic Of Cancer last week. Great mind.
Here he speaks about finding meaning and doing meaningful work as a person, as an artist.
A genuine activity may often be no activity, inaction. I don’t say to be quiet, to do nothing. I say it should have sense, it should have meaning what we do. And the greater part of what we do everyday has damn little meaning.
Henry Miller
You have to realize that some day you will die. Until you realize that you are useless.
Tyler Durden, Fight Club
There’s only one thing I like about the news on TV: it reminds you, every single day, that you are going to die. I believe that’s a good thing.
You could die today. It could be tomorrow. In 10 years or 50 years. Whenever it is, it certainly is going to happen. It’s the one thing – whatever you do – you cannot get away from.
And as Tyler Durden said in Fight Club: if you do not realize this, you are useless.
Throughout my reading, film-watching and web browsing I’ve noticed that quite an amount of pretty successful people had this realizing-I’ll-be-death-soon thing pretty well covered – and often even used it as a motivational tool that put a bit of urgency behind their work.
Here are 6 successful people who – in different ways – used death as the prime motivator for their life’s work.
Yeah sure, Tyler Durden’s a fictitious character and his life’s work “Project Mayhem” never really happened but he had one hell of a way of getting you to realize the power of death lurking in the background.
Below you find two of my favourite scenes in Fight Club in which Tyler uses death to make this everyman character played by Edward Norton realize that he’s wasting his time on earth, living this meaningless life while thinking that he’s got all this time. Tyler wants him to understand that before he can find meaning in anything, he has got to realize that he’ll not be here forever.
First you have to give up, first you have to know… not fear… know… that some day you’re gonna die. It’s only after we’ve lost everything, that we’re free to do anything.
Narrator: What are you doing?
Tyler Durden: Guys, what would you wish you’d done before you died?
Ricky: Paint a self-portrait.
The Mechanic: Build a house.
Tyler Durden: And you?
Narrator: I don’t know. Turn the wheel now, come on!
Tyler Durden: You have to know the answer to this question! If you died right now, how would you feel about your life?
Narrator: I don’t know, I wouldn’t feel anything good about my life, is that what you want to hear me say? Fine. Come on!
Tyler Durden: Not good enough.
If you haven’t watched his speech at Stanford, you should watch the whole thing and listen deeply. Jobs’ thoughts on death start at 9 minutes 39.
Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
Covey is famous for writing The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. In the book he has this visualization exercise named “The Funeral Exercise” which has been hounting me ever since I read it a while ago. It goes like this:
In your mind’s eye, see yourself going to the funeral of a loved one. Picture yourself driving to the funeral parlor or chapel, parking the car, and getting out. As you walk inside the building, you notice the flowers, the soft organ music. You see the faces of friends and family you pass along the way. You feel the shared sorrow of losing, the joy of having known, that radiates from the hearts of the people there.
As you walk down to the front of the room and look inside the casket, you suddenly come face to face with yourself. This is your funeral, three years from today. All these people have come to honor you, to express feelings of love and appreciation for your life. As you take a seat and wait for the services to begin, you look at the program in your hand.
There are to be four speakers. The first is from your family, immediate and also extended —children, brothers, sisters, nephews, nieces, aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents who have come from all over the country to attend. The second speaker is one of your friends, someone who can give a sense of what you were as a person. The third speaker is from your work or profession. And the fourth is from your church or some community organization where you’ve been involved in service.
Now think deeply. What would you like each of these speakers to say about you and your life? What kind of husband, wife, father, or mother would like their words to reflect? What kind of son or daughter or cousin? What kind of friend? What kind of working associate? What character would you like them to have seen in you? What contributions, what achievements would you want them to remember? Look carefully at the people around you. What difference would you like to have made in their lives?
First let me say that you HAVE TO READ this dude’s autobiography - it’s spectacular! I have the utmost respect for this man as he embodies the word Hustler as much as a man possibly can. I wrote down my favourite quotes of the book here.
Concerning “death as a motivator”, Malcolm X goes one step further than the guys above and considers himself dead already.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Death-At-Your-Heals Tactic
Most of us probably know Dostoyevsky as that Russian dude who wrote these humongous 1,000 page books. What most of us probably do not know is that if this man didn’t have had a certain life experience at age 23 we quite possible never would’ve heard of him.
When he was in his early twenties, Dostoyevsky was jailed after being part of Russian radical groups. After 8 months in jail, he and the other members of the group were told they would receive their sentence. A couple of months was the usual sentence for their crime.
When they arrived in St. Petersburg, Dostoyevsky couldn’t believe his eyes: what he saw was a scaffold, a priest, rows of soldiers, thousands of spectators and lines of coffins. Looks pretty clear to me.
And indeed their sentence went the following:
All of the accused are guilty as charged of intending to overthrow the national order, and are therefore condemned to death before a firing squad.
As he realized what was about to happen, he thought the following:
If I do not die, if I am not killed, my life will suddenly seem endless, a whole eternity, each minute a century. I will take account of everything that passes – I will not waste a second of life again.
As the soldiers raised their rifles and took aim suddenly a carriage entered the square. A messenger got out and told the firing squad that the czar had changed his mind and cancelled their death sentence.
Dostoyevsky’s new sentence: 4 years of labour in Siberia. Here’s what he wrote to his brother after this near-death experience:
When I look back at the past and think of all the time I squandered in terror and idleness, … then my heart bleeds. Life is a gift…. every minute could have been an eternity of happiness! If youth only knew! Now my life will change; now I will be reborn.
All of his life, this experience had an effect on Dostoyevsky. He reminded himself continually of it, never wasting another moment. And whenever he found he was getting too comfortable after successful book releases he would blow all his money by gambling it away in a casino.
As Robert Greene writes in The 33 Strategies of War: “Dostoyevsky wrote as if his life were at stake.”
His motto in life:
Try to get as much done as possible in the shortest time.
Even though this Roman Emperor has been dead for almost 2,000 years this man has had the most influence on my life. Ever since I read his Meditations (a notebook in which his reflections on kind of everything are bundled together) I looked at the world differently. This is a quote of him that comes to mind:
Remember how long you’ve been putting this off, how many extensions the gods gave you, and you didn’t use them. At some point you have to recognize what the world it is that you belong to; what power rules it and from what source you spring; that there is a limit to the time assigned you, and if you don’t use it to free yourself it will be gone and will never return.
Marcus Aurelius
Meditations (Book 2.4)
Every time I cross an intersection with my bike I visualize being bombarded 20 meters in the air by an in-coming car – then realize that in fact our time here is limited and I could’ve died on the spot. This is something we should all be reminded about every once in a while. Maybe even all the time.
Steven Pressfield starts The War of Art with the following words:
Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance.
You might as well rephrase that last sentence.
I love the sounds of repetiton. They might be my favourite kind of sound.
What I like about them is their familiarity. Throughout the years you get to know them really well.
Because of your particular interests and passions they’ve been with you for years. And they’re probably here to stay for quite some time.
10,000 hours they say are necessary to develop mastery in a certain domain. If that’s what you’re going after, these sounds will slowly ingrain themselves into your skull. They’ll be with you for life.
These sounds embody progress. They’re the sounds of advancement, telling you you’re doing the work – you’re in it right now. Assuring you you’re on the right track. This is the hustle.
They are the iron plates clanging against the floor when doing deadlifts.
They are the pages turning when studying a book.
They are the basketball shooting machine releasing ball after ball when practicing free throws.
These sounds of repetition are letting you know one rep – one page, one shot, one deadlift – at a time that you’re taking the steps necessary to get to where you’ve set your aim.
The sounds of repetition serve as your emotional support group throughout your struggle – throughout the grind. They’re your feedback when you’re training your skills all alone.
What are your sounds of repetition?
Last week I heard the greatest thing while watching a seminar of a person who has probably influenced me the most in the past year.
Realize that this person is regarded as one of the best – worldwide – in his field of expertise.
The setting he said it in was a mentorship program where a dozen of people from all over the globe came to listen to him – pick his brain, ask him questions.
They came there to know everything he knows. The students and the almighty, all-knowing ruler kinda thing.
When asked by one of the interns “at what point in his career he felt like he made it”, this is what he said:
I still have the same recurring dream: that people realize I’m a total fraud, that I’ll get caught. I have it a lot. Where I wake up and I’m like ‘Oh my God, I have no idea what I’m doing. I have been bullshitting these people for all this time and they finally know.’ Like the Wizard of Oz. They pull the curtain back and I’m back there in my underwear and I don’t know what I’m doing.
He then went on to tell the interns about a psychologist who once said the following:
The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Complete confidence is granted to the less skilled as a consolation prize.
Hearing him – of all people – say this, changed everything for me.
Through strength training you make your body physically stronger. You create tiny tears in your muscle tissue by pressing and pulling a heavy weight. When your muscles recover from the effort, you get stronger.
By lifting iron you force your muscles to contract hard. You create tension – a lot of tension. You create tension because you don’t really have choice. Either this or your body collapses. When deadlifting twice your bodyweight, collapsing isn’t an option.
In strength training iron is the Resistance.
In daily life the exact same thing happens to you. You often arrive at home feeling worn out because of the shit that happened during the day. You feel all tense and irritable because you got pushed around, not taken seriously. You had to stay nice when dealing with some arrogant douchebag. Maybe you took a shot and tried something that scared you – and failed.
In life, the daily struggle is the Resistance. The Resistance that’s working against you – it often seems. Whatever you think it means, you’re right.
You think it’s trying to destroy you? It’s holding you back from achieving your goals?
You’re right if you think that.
Whatever your perspective is on your daily hustle, you’re right. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Look at this Resistance as the iron you’re pushing and pulling in strength training though. And that would change everything.
Instead of trying to avoid risk and hardship – you’ll start looking for it. You’ll start doing what you’re most afraid of because you realize that whatever happens to you – in the end – will probably make you stronger.
You’d look at all that negative stuff that crept into your day as feedback – feedback that will make you better prepared for the day that’s coming. Better prepared for life.
You take the blow. Learn the lesson. You move on – stronger, quicker, more agile.
The daily struggle – the hustle – is your strength training for life.
You recover and strengthen your mind by using it all as feedback.
Because that’s exactly what it all is: feedback.
What is a reputation really?
The general estimation that the public has for a person.
So basically it is what the average person thinks of you.
Should this matter?
- Don’t think so.
Who are these people really? Who is this “average person”?
Do you like these people? Look up to them? Are their actions in any way an inspiration to you?
- NO.
Why then, should it matter to you what your reputation is with these people.
What you are telling me here is that you are trying to live up to a reputation people you do not like handed over to you.
You’re basically acting like a puppet playing a role directed by others in a play that is your life.
Don’t get this twisted. To let this influence your thoughts, your decision making – your actions – is always your choice.
Reframe what bothers you. Look at this stuff objectively – and you’ll see that it will all just flow away.
Like a dead fish lying on the shore. Slowly the waves take it back where it belongs – wasting away, in nothingness.
Do this with all of your false thoughts.
“Strip them bare of the legend that encrusts them,” Marcus would say.
Like the dead fish, lay these perceptions on that shore.
For the logos to take them away.
Out of The Century of the Self:
Possibly the greatest truths we know have come out of people suffering. The problem is not to undue suffering or wipe it off the face of the earth, but to make it inform our lives instead of cure ourselves of it constantly and avoid it.
Arthur Miller
Robert Frost‘s poem “The Road Not Taken” couldn’t have found it’s way in my life at a better time as I’ve been struggling for a while now with making the decision – constantly juggling between the one that feels right and the one that should be right.
One day it might turn out to be the decision that started it all for me. The decision I make, might just be temporary and only affect my near future. I guess we’ll have to wait and see. For now I’ll let Robert’s poem do the talking:
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.Robert Frost
If you’re more of a visual person and like the poem, then take a look at the video below. It’s amazing.
People are going to act this way – meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous and surly. You know that. Marcus warned you about this. Maybe you haven’t prepared yourself enough?
Returning to Stoicism has served you well in the past. Why then, do you feel the need to keep on looking? Expect people to behave in this manner so you won’t be taken by surprise.
You are the master of your own thoughts. It is you – not them – who decides to let this instance become a problem. Or rather remain a problem. You are always in control to get rid of unnecessary thoughts – false perceptions – by taking the time to see through them and by describing to yourself what they really are. Write them down if you need to.
Only false perceptions make you act like this. If they weren’t false, you would not be like this. You would accept the situation and get on with your life.
Marcus said:
The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.
Just make sure it isn’t you that becomes the obstacle – by not letting the logos do it’s work. That would mean wasted energy. As your body should be shed of excess weight, so should your mind of excess perceptions. Stay lean in all that you are.
Use both your body and your mind for what they were meant to do – work.
Mental monsters of your own creation. No more.
