🏴 On winning, care, and the outsider

To the obsessed,

Here are your weekly Ten Bullets.

Ten ideas to help you build companies, make art, and fuel your obsession.

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1. On life:

If your life does not fill you with adrenaline and intensity...

Start a new life.

2. On care:

"Either you care, or you don't. There's no in-between. And if you care, then go all of the way."

— Stanley Kubrick

3. On owning a word:

“Creating a new phrase and co-opting an existing word are still underrated and undersaturated strategies. The power of them is that the word or phrase is the message, and the message is the copy. In an age of abundant, fleeting content, you need a message that you can repeatedly deliver. Putting up a logo or brand name at the end of a video isn’t as powerful as what you actually say. Memorable phrases and themed words are a cheat code.¹ The more they capture an identity, the better. (I’m not saying I always like all of the examples, but there’s an art to doing it tastefully.

If you’re starting something new, lead with a word or phrase you want to associate with, not just a brand name. Think of it as the new wordmark. It’s not enough anymore for a person, product, or company to just be consistent. You need a consistent message, down to the exact few words, maybe even just one.”

— @anuatluru, The New Wordmark (great writer, worth subscribing)

I could talk forever about owning a word. It’s the core thesis for everything I’m doing around obsession. I believe if you hammer one core concept every day, and orient everything in your life around it, it will enable you to grow faster and further than you’ve ever imagined.

A lot of ‘word of mouth’ is making yourself to easy to recognize, and easy to explain.

What’s easier than being known for one word?

Also, there is the effect of- when you repeat something, people start seeing it everywhere.

I’m willing to bet you’ve seen ‘obsession’ much more online, in books, and in conversations, since you started following me.

4. On winning:

“Winning requires you to be different, and different scares people. So if you're worried about what others will say, the long-term effects, the sacrifices you'll make, the sleep you'll lose, your family being angry... I can't help you with that. There's nothing "typical" about the lifestyle and choices you'll have to make. Winning is inside all of us, but for most, that's where it will stay, trapped under a lifetime of fear and worry and doubt.”

— Tim Grover, Winning: The Unforgiving Race to Greatness

5. On obsession:

“In Walt Disney's case the surge of empowerment was so great one might even have concluded that animation took the place of religion for him, since in his adulthood he showed little or no interest in formal religion and never attended church. Indeed, the animator created his own world an alternative reality of his imagination in which the laws of physics and logic could be suspended. Though Walt Disney could never fully articulate why he was attracted to animation, falling back instead on vague generalities, it always had these two great and unmistakable blandishments. 

For a young man who had chafed within the stern, moralistic, anhedonic world of his father, animation provided escape, and for someone who had always been subjugated by that father, it provided absolute control. In animation Walt Disney had a world of his own. In animation Walt Disney could be the power.”

— Neal Gabler, Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination

6. On bad luck:

7. On winning:

Surround yourself with people where extreme goals feel normal.

8. On the outsider:

“Admit it.

You aren’t like them.

You’re not even close.

You may occasionally dress yourself up as one of them, watch the same mindless television shows as they do, maybe even eat the same fast food sometimes.

But it seems that the more you try to fit in, the more you feel like an outsider, watching the ‘normal people’ as they go about their automatic existences.

For every time you say club passwords like ‘Have a nice day’ and ‘Weather’s awful today, eh?’ you yearn inside to say forbidden things like ‘Tell me something that makes you cry’ or ‘What do you think deja vu is for?’

Face it, you even want to talk to that girl in the elevator.

But what if that girl in the elevator (and the balding man who walks past your cubicle at work) are thinking the same thing?

Who knows what you might learn from taking a chance on conversation with a stranger?

Everybody carries a piece of the puzzle.

Nobody comes into your life by mere coincidence.

Trust your instincts.

Do the unexpected.

Find the others.”

— Timothy Leary (h/t Connor Gross)

9. On seeking approval:

10. On Mr. Beast’s Obsession:

“There's not a single person on the planet that's been more obsessed at the same timespan as me, because it's physically impossible. Almost every hour of the day. In math class, in any class, any time of day, I was thinking about YouTube, nonstop, the last 10 years."

— Mr. Beast (Colin & Samir)

Mr. Beast talking about obsession- in this interview and on Joe Rogan- was one of the ‘triggers’ that made me focus on it.

If you enjoyed this, forward it to an obsessed friend.

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