Simply Getting it Done

This past weekend I was in Florida to help celebrate my good friends Tony and Lisa getting married. It was an awesome weekend. There was deadlifts, sunshine, an Audi rental car, no hurricanes, and on-board wifi. The only downside was the location was quite literally on the farthest place on the continent from me, so the travel was a bit arduous. it was a 16 hour day from when I started on Thursday until I got to the hotel, and an 18 hour day on the way back. I guess it’s lucky I have some experience with traveling to make it easier, plus I finally figured out how to nap on a plane, so that was awesome. In my opinion the best part was just hanging out with friends with whom I don’t get to see too often in person. That and watching Tony nervously prep on his wedding day, and staring intently at “Keeping Up With The Kardashians” at Eric’s place while we got ready.

While traveling down, I started listening to the audio book of The 48 Laws of Power, written by Robert Greene. One aspect that hit home was a concept that kind of paralleled a passage Tony read from in his wedding vows from Turning Pro by Steven Pressfield. In order to have power and to be considered a professional in anything, you have to actively create change and move away from comfort.

Let’s say you desire freedom. You could move to a cabin in the middle of nowhere and walk around as naked as you like, shouting at squirrels, chopping all the wood you want and pooping everywhere and no one would bat an eye. You would have zero influence over the lives of others and have no ability to have them do what you want, thus rendering you free, but powerless. Continuing to be amateur in any venue is quite similar. You have freedom, but no power or authority. You exist, but your presence or lack thereof has zero bearing on those who can create massive change in any direction.

In the words of Cersei Lannister: “Knowledge isn’t power. Power is power.”

To sit and stare at a blank page is one of the most daunting challenges a writer could face, but it’s one a professional faces every single day, and one they rise up to meet every single day. An amateur would see this and procrastinate, moving on to other things, expecting to find inspiration elsewhere. A professional gets it done.

In the quest for power, you could sit back as a wallflower and not get involved in developing relationships, avoiding cultivating your expertise on a subject matter or forming a circle of influence, and continue to remain an amateur in terms of the development of your own personal or professional power. An individual interested in amassing more power will not sit back idly waiting for power to come to them. They will simply get it done.

At the wedding reception I was talking with Steve Bergeron of AMP Fitness and we discussed what it meant for him to recently open his business and try to develop his voice, and how I was able to do that myself. I talked about my turning point was realizing that anyone who has achieved greatness at one point or another had to decide for themselves that they would do it, and then stuck with it. In other words, I was in the same position when I started that they were in when they started: scared and staring at a blank screen. They had to decide to get out of their own way to make success happen, and so did Steve, and so did I. The safe path would have been easy and stable, but not as rewarding.

In terms of thermodynamics, most systems gravitate towards a state of entropy, or an energetic equilibrium, where the system is as stable as possible. To create change in that system involved the addition or removal of energy. Think of water. For water to freeze, you have to remove energy. For it to boil you have to add energy. In either case, the change in energy creates a change in the state of water, which will result in the change in what it does. Change is an active process.

Similarly, let’s look at your fitness program. If you’re in a state of entropy with your workouts, you’re putting in the same energy to maintain but not enough to see change, be it positive or negative. How do you change that? Actively change the energy being invested in the system. This could mean changing your workouts wholesale, spending more energy focusing on one or two aspects for a little while longer to create a change in state, or simply coming down to measuring what’s more important to you and then investing in it.

Change of any kind requires the investment of energy. This scares a lot of people, but it shouldn’t. In many cases it simply means putting your head down and pushing forward on the path you’re currently working on, but with enough vigour to get the job done and enough focus to ensure you’re not thrown off track. The process is usually pretty simple, it’s just the act of doing it.

Getting into a meaningful relationship and getting married is change. Both require significant investments of energy and focus, but they’re both incredibly beneficial and worth the investment. A fitness program, personal development, and business advancement are similar in terms of the investment. It takes a lot, but is worth it in the end.

So now the big question is what are you currently an amateur in and looking to turn pro, and how will you use this to develop power? What steps do you see as being necessary to make that leap, and if you know them, when are you going to take them? If you don’t know what it takes to make those leaps, how will you find out? Stoicism about ones own life is no way to live.Pick your battles, understand you will wage war on them, and then simply get it done.