All change is hard at first. It’s messy in the middle and it’s gorgeous at the end. All change is hard at first. If it wasn’t hard, it wouldn’t be real change. It’s supposed to be hard. You’re disrupting your emotional architecture. You’re reinstalling and dismantling old beliefs. You’re installing new rituals. If you look at the neurobiology, you’re actually setting up new neural pathways. And the more you practice the neural pathway over and over of a single skill, it’s like the basketball player or the hockey player or the football player or the painter. Every day he or she is going in and practicing. And that neural pathway is like a grassy field, and the more you walk the grassy field, the more it becomes a road. And if you keep on doing it and you pave it becomes a highway. And if you optimize it consistently, ridiculously, over days, months, years, and a lifetime, it becomes a superhighway. It’s a neural superhighway, if you were to get into the neurobiology of it. You actually trigger a brain cell called an oligodendrocyte. You have it in you. That’s what I’m saying. Science is confirming you have genius in you. It’s a type of brain cell. It only gets activated when you isolate a skill. So if you’re trying to
be distracted and be great at a million things, you’re never going to get that superhighway. But if you focus on one skill, maybe it’s leadership, maybe it’s your business vision. Maybe it’s being a world-class footballer. Maybe it’s being a great painter. Maybe it’s being the best cellist in your nation. Maybe it’s being the best coder in your industry. I don’t know. But I do know that if you try to be all things to all
people, and if all you’re doing all day is checking your social feed and being distracted because you’re escaping from your greatness, you’re never going to rise to world- class and install the neurobiology, that neural pathway that then triggers an oligodendrocyte, which produces a fatty tissue. Do you see how powerful this is? This is the science and the fatty tissue is called myelin, and it starts to wrap around the superhighway. This is the neurobiology of greatness. You practice the skill 66 days, you keep on going. If you do it with consistency, it becomes automatic. You do it every day. The weeks slip into the months. The months slip into the years. Everyone else is distracted. People are chasing these shiny toys. You get knocked down, you get back up. The Chinese say, get knocked down eight times, get up nine. And you keep on going and you do it over a lifetime. Or at least decades or at least months, certainly years. Then you trigger oligodendrocytes, which wrap myelin around the superhighway, which accelerates your learning, which allows you to see things other people can’t see. And myelin, I believe is
the DNA of genius. Steve Jobs wasn’t a genius. No. All he did was focus on his few ambitions with a monomaniacal concentration and he spent a lot of time in isolation, like every genius. And so all I’m simply saying is you have the hardwiring in terms of your neurobiology and your physiology and your psychology to be a true legend. The best boxer isn’t the one with the best reach and the tallest and the strongest. The best boxer is the one who shows up at the gym at 4AM and does the work. Not once a month, every single day. What’s important isn’t what you do once a month. What’s
important is what you do every single day because your days are your life in miniature. Take care of each day. Own each day, create greatness each day. Small daily improvements each day. You’re pretty much guaranteed a great life if you do it with consistency because consistency will lead you over time to legendary. Act on this material because ideation without execution is a hallucination. And so I trust that
you will act on this information, not because you should, not because you could.
I’m going to really challenge you with great love and respect because you must. This is your life. This is all you have. Before you know it, you’re going to be at the end. The street sweeper gets buried next to the CEO, and all you will be is dust. Life is short. Act soon. Today. You have to act on these ideas. Your greatness, your potential, your life depends on it. Your loved ones are depending on you. Your organization is depending on you. Your clients are depending on you. The world is depending on you. Like I said, don’t wait for more heroes. That’s what victims do. Say, “You know what? I’m going to
become one of them.” Being successful isn’t easy, but it’s the best move you can make and it takes a lot of work. Leadership and success is about implementation and execution. It’s not about talking about what you’re going to do, it’s about doing what you said you’re going to do. That’s what makes greatness.
