In 1987, Paulo Coelho had something special to share;Â he had completed a story which followed a boy searching for his destiny.
After pitching the book to various publishing houses, it was accepted and printed to sell that same year.
Over the next 6 months, he would go on to sellâŚâŚ. 2 books.
The publishing company revoked the rights, and the books were removed from their untouched shelves.
But Coelho was convinced it was a great book, âIt was written from my soul,â he said. So, instead of giving up, he started knocking on doors.
A year later, he was given a break; a new publisher decided to give Paulo a second chance and the book was published again. Slowly, through word of mouth, it finally began selling; first one-thousand, then three-thousand, then ten-thousand book by book.
Today, The Alchemist has sold more than 115 million copies worldwide and has been translated into over 71 languages.
Paulo Coelho later said, âIâve been rejected many times (from publishers to girlfriends). This lead me to the best publishers in the world, and to the perfect wife.â
We tend to focus on the strengths of those who succeed, but what about their setbacks?
A young entrepreneur has a coding gift, but what about the times investors laughed at their pitch?
An olympic athlete has the perfect body-type, but what about the countless personal injuries they trained through?
Perhaps, itâs really the obstacles that are the most critical component to our success.
Not one, not two, but many, many obstacles.
The setbacks we encounter give us the opportunity for our true selves to develop. When we tough it out, we end up learning new lessons, which are applied in the final act of our stories.
Thereâs a tremendous power to feeling something deep within your soul. Itâs only when we keep moving forward, over and over again, that we achieve our full destiny.
Whatâs your setback?
Believe in yourself â get out there and start knocking on doors.
Youâre just one break away from becoming a worldwide hit.
Once upon a time, there was a multi-story office building in New York.
Occupants began complaining about the poor elevator service provided in the building. Waiting times became excessively long, and many tenants threatened to move out if it wasnât fixed.
A consultant was hired and management authorized a study to determine the best solution.
The study revealed that because of the age of the building no engineering solution could be justified economically. Each option was estimated to cost millions of dollars, which would result in minimal speed improvements.
The desperate manager called a meeting of his staff, which included a graduate in psychology.
The young man decided to focus on something different. Instead of analyzing elevator speed, he studied why people were complaining.
If the complaints were a consequence of boredom, the building would need to give those waiting something to occupy their time pleasantly. Perhaps this may solve the problem, he thought. He suggested installing mirrors in the elevator lobbies; people love to look at themselves, right?
The manager took up his suggestion and installed the mirrors at a relatively low cost.
The complaints about waiting stopped. [1]
Sometimes we spend a lot of time focusing on a symptom instead of the issue.
There are a lot of symptoms for each problem, so itâs easy to confuse the two. Unfortunately, once our brains see something one way, we rarely change our assumptions; it becomes harder to form new, creative paths.
Albert Einstein once said, âIf I had an hour to solve a problem Iâd spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.â
Top performers focus on questioning the problem, not the solution. What keeps them up at night? A deep desire to understand the questions across our universe. Even 90% through a problem, brilliant minds like Einstein would continue to dispute the issue at hand.
So, which part of the equation are you spending your time on?
Could it possibly be the elevator speed, when in reality, the tenants are your concern?
[1] ACKOFF, R. AND GREENBERG, D. (2008) TURNING LEARNING RIGHT SIDE UP: PUTTING EDUCATION BACK ON TRACK, NEW JERSEY: PRENTICE HALL.
In 1973, John Darley ran an interesting study. His main goal was to understand if religion has any effect on âhelping behavior.â The results uncovered the fundamental reasons we choose to act.
The study went like this:
Forty students were divided into two groups.
The first group was given a sermon to memorize on the importance of being a Good Samaritan (helping others etc). They were told that soon after reading it, they would need to present the speech at another building across campus.
The second group was given a talk on job opportunities and the same instructions. They too would need to walk across campus and present their speech in another building.
There were two twists:
Subjects were given different times that they had to deliver the sermon so that some would be in a hurry and others not.
On the way to the building, everyone would pass the same stranger slumped in an alleyway, who looked to be in need of help.
Q: Which group would be more likely to help the person in need?
A: It wasnât the Good Samaritan group. In fact, neither group stopped more often than the other to help.
It turns out, the only factor that made a difference was how much of a hurry the students were in.Â
When we feel rushed, we are less likely to notice whatâs going on around us. When it comes to living by our moral code, that can also fall by the wayside.
How many times have you walked the same city block or taken the same route to work? When was the last time you really noticed what was going on right in front of you?
Science is now gleaning more about human potential than ever before.
Top performers notice the subtle factors in their environment, which leads them to faster and more creative solutions. Itâs not their IQ or EQ (though those help), but instead their ability to perceive the situation that truly sets them apart.
Are you preparing a Good Samaritan speech in your head, but ironically ignoring those who need help right in front of you?
Everyone has trouble delaying gratification, but some people have it worse than others.
Letâs explore why itâs so hard, and how it connects to your success.
Part 1: Itâs not (totally) your fault
Our brains are wired to favor immediate reward.
Two Million years ago, our only priority was to stay alive. Cavemen didnât have time to sit around and contemplate life (sorry Aristotle!), instead they needed to hunt and gather. Our human brains encouraged this behavior through a short-term feedback loop, which worked really well. This simple system was at the root of our survival; donât be eaten, successfully procreate, and improve living conditions.
While humans have evolved and developed the ability to rationalize, our brains continue to use the same decision-making system.
Itâs as if we have the newest iPhone, but itâs running on the original Mac software.
Using fMRI machines, scientists can observe what is going on in our brains while we make decisions. Ultimately, itâs a fight between two parts of your brain; emotional vs. rational.
When we choose immediate gratification, our emotional parts are in control; when we choose future rewards, our rational parts are running the show. (Brain Battles, 2004).
This explains why, when weâre under stress, we tend to break goals and indulge in bad habits. Stress basically numbs our prefrontal cortex and gives complete control to the amygdala.
Itâs like emotional morphs into Muhammed Ali, while rational downgrades into a nostalgic childhood geek.
Place your bets.
But thereâs a greater issue.
Todayâs world is significantly different than that of our ancestors; our goals are at odds with our brains.
Want to get in better shape?
Work-out daily, become lean months later
Want to start a business?
Operate on annual losses, see profit years later
Want to be more financially independent?
Save and invest for decades, have enough to retire comfortably later in life
Weâre in a constant fight against immediate reward, and our ability to overcome it is extremely predictive of future success.
This is especially true in the 21st century, but, before we apply it to our lives today, letâs take a quick look back on history.
Part 2: Human time dilation and relativity
Time dilation is a scientific concept discovered in 1897 by Joseph Larmor (source). Time dilation occurs when two people are looking at the same event but observe a different amount of elapsed time.
When this gets discussed in the scientific community, itâs focused around velocity and gravitational fields. For example, when we are on Earth we look out into the universe and view things in âEarth-time,â which is based on our gravitational field. If we were on Mars, we would see the exact same events, but happening slightly slower. This is because the gravitational field on Mars is different, and, therefore, time moves at a different speed.
Have you seen the movie Interstellar?
The scene below is touted by some astrophysicists as one of the best visual representations of time dilation ever. In this scene, part of the team spends less than 15 minutes on a high-gravitational planet. When they return back to their ship, 23 years has passed for the crew members who remained on board.
I posit this is happening everyday, all around us.
…
Instead of velocity and gravity, itâs based on our experiences and use of technology.
Hereâs what I mean:
The technology we use has subtly established new baselines for our expectations and our patience.
This change began a few centuries ago, but it is progressing. Quickly.
Months: In the 1600s, when settlers first arrived in America, they set up a monthly horseback post between New York and Boston [1]. Back in that time, that was the speed of communication and exploration; it was their reality. Think about it, not only did they wait months to receive messages by post, but it took them months to sail across the ocean and arrive in America. Their reference point for time was in months, basically the currency or units of exchange.
Days:Â Once the United States Postal Service was established in 1775, improvements in infrastructure allowed mail to be delivered on a more regular basis. By the 1800s, Americans were becoming used to receiving new mail each day, a vast improvement from the century before. With this improvement, the new baseline shifted from monthly to daily.
Hours: In the late 1800s, Alexander Graham Bell figured out a way to transmit sounds over wires, creating the landline telephone [2]. While the invention occurred in the 1800s, consumer adoption didnât start taking hold until the 1960s [3]. With a telephone in every home and office, it was expected that youâd be able to answer or return a call within a few hours of receiving one. What was also widely popular around this time? The color television and the evening news. These technologies helped create a new world, one understood by the hour.
Minutes: Ray Tomlinson is credited with inventing email in 1972 [4], but it wasnât until the 1990âs when email became more adopted by everyday people. Likewise, microwaves become common in every home, which meant one great leap; foods that were meant to take an hour to cook, would now be ready in minutes. Children born in the 90âs are also referred to as the âMicrowave generationâ for this reason. Kids growing up at this time naturally saw the world through minutes, and would now be able to have another basic need even faster than their parents.
Seconds:Â Steve Jobs. Just by saying his name, you likely pictured two things; iPhones and black turtlenecks. We can credit him with the proliferation of smartphones, and along with those, improvements in mobile apps, sites and tools. A few seconds, can feel like an eternity. And if you need proof of this point, 53% of mobile users abandon sites that take longer than 3 seconds to load [5]. Today, for better or worse, the baseline is seconds.
The baseline leaps between generations continues to accelerate.
The boxes are getting smaller and the clocks are halvening. Improvements are taking less time to develop and, when they go into production, their addition is exponential.
Consider how often you may check social media after youâve added a post, or how often you refresh your inbox after an important email has been sent. Do you think of it in months, days, hours, minutes, or seconds? The sheer speed we now have has changed our definition of delayed gratification; time has recalibrated.
Which takes us back to our kid and grandparent graphic; same reality, different baselines.
Your baseline is highly predicated on the way you choose to use the technology available. If you allow it to control your expectations and understanding of speed, you will continue to have difficulty delaying gratification.
And, gratification, is where this all comes together.
Part 3: Where everything comes together
Our greatest pursuits are set on long time horizons.
The more ambitious the goal, the longer you must persist without immediate results.
Perhaps this is one reason why we look at wildly successful individuals as if they are cut from a different cloth. Itâs as if they possess some sort of magical power to accomplish remarkable things, meanwhile, we are merely âaverage.â Yet, fundamentally, they are more masterful at delaying gratification. A small part may be in their genes, but Iâd posit itâs mostly hard-work, focus and comfort when waiting to reap reward.
The Reward Delayed Timeline
They are achieving goals that have longer reward delays. As their ambition and impact increase so do the stakes and risk. Are they immune to reality and natural stress? Certainly not. They stay grounded and honest to the necessary waiting period needed to get the job done. By surrounding themselves with others who are similar, it makes goals feel more possible and recalibrates their natural baseline to a new timeframe.
More delayed gratification = more ambitious goals
“The first order thought of instant gratification is a crowded path, ensuring mediocre results at best. Delayed gratification, which requires second order thinking, is less crowded and more likely to get results.”
A simple example would be writing this article. Believe it or not, this article took two months to complete. That meant opening a Google Doc hundreds of times, only to see incomplete or partial work. The writing too underdeveloped so I couldnât share my work for feedback. I was forced to wait.
Hereâs the thing, if I had to plot it on the Reward Delayed Timeline, itâs not that high; it falls somewhere around âSkilled.â Itâs measly compared to a founder starting a business (Industry Leader) or a personal favorite of mine, Elon Musk (World Changer). Getting humanity to Mars is at least a 30 year project, which has minimal feedback loops along the way. Thatâs some serious second order thinking.
How to elevate your second order thinking
Step 1: Determine your most ambitious goal
Print a copy of Reward Delayed Timeline (download here)
Plot your top 2 or 3 aspirations on the chart
Step 2: Ask the questions
Are your reward expectations sitting on the right time horizon?
If not, either adjust your goal or reset time expectations
Work backwards, set micro-goals that prove youâre progressing
Step 3: Commit to to the delay
Whenever you feel down on yourself, pull out your timeline
Remind yourself how ambitious your goal is, and at what delay level you committed to.
You can do it.
Repeat, repeat, repeat.
Anyone can change the world, but it takes patience
As our baseline shifts, it becomes harder to stay on task, delay results, and produce deep meaningful impact.
Â
I believe that if you can put your phone down and detach more often, youâll be better at setting time-delayed goals and sticking to them. By focusing your efforts on a reward-delayed timeline strategy, you can correctly plot the ambition, skills and patience needed to get the job done.
Â
Because once you become a master of yourself, you can master anything.
Once upon the time there was an old farmer who had worked his crops for many years.
One day his horse ran away. Upon hearing the news, his neighbors came to visit. âSuch bad luck,â they said sympathetically.
âPerhaps,â the farmer replied.
The next morning the horse returned, bringing with it three other wild horses. âWhat great luck!â the neighbors exclaimed.
âPerhaps,â replied the old man.
The following day, his son tried to ride one of the untamed horses, was thrown, and broke his leg. The neighbors again came to offer their sympathy on his misfortune.
âPerhaps,â answered the farmer.
The day after, military officials came to the village to draft young men into the army. Seeing that the sonâs leg was broken, they passed him by. The neighbors congratulated the farmer on how well things had turned out.
âPerhaps,â said the farmer.
Human nature has wired our brains to judge achievement and setbacks on an immediate basis. When things go wrong, we throw our hands up right away. This leads to these sort of âhalf stories,â which limit our potential.
   Half story: I was turned away from +10 companies my senior year of college.
âŚBad luck.
   Full story: The week of graduation, a role opened and I got a job at Google.
âŚGood luck.
Same story, different luck.
This extends itself beyond setbacks; what about the way we consume news? Most headlines may as well read, âWe donât know all the details, but weâre confident this is bad.â
Immediate judgement prohibits us from seeing the full picture, when in reality, the story isnât complete.
Before weâre able to declare luck (good or bad), our stories need time to develop.
Which story have you ended too quickly?
Is that setback actually the beginning to a great luck tale of your own?
In 1518, a case of dancing mania broke out on the streets of Strasbourg, France.
When Frau Troffea started dancing, neighbors thought she was having a psychotic episode. But when she refused to stop, the spirit eventually became irresistible; others couldnât help but join in.
Within a few days, thirty more people started and, by the end of the month, four hundred villagers were shaking their tail-feathers.
We tend to underestimate the power of those around us; our actions are influenced by those we interact with most.
When we shine a positive light at work or at home, we are directly impacting our teammates and families. By focusing on our wellness, we can create a happiness mania that spreads for months; just like Frau Troffea.
We can transform the well-being of those around us, including ourselves.
Research suggests that when we view others doing an action, our brains fire neurons as if weâre performing the action ourselves. This explains why we cringe when we see a movie character crash their car or suddenly feel tired when we see someone yawn.
These cells are called Mirror Neurons and they help our brain naturally mimic others to better understand the context of whatâs going on around us.
But this power goes beyond the big screen and has greater implications than an inconveniently timed nap.
What emotions are you sending to your teammates? How do your behaviors affect other people? Are you glancing at your phone on the table during a meeting?
Your actions work like a two-way mirror; they reflect from yourself onto the other person.
Start by paying attention to your own signals and âmake that change.â
Between 1933 and 1945, the Nazis opened more than 40,000 concentration camps across Europe. Millions of people were stripped of their rights, forced into labor, and dehumanized; one of those people was a psychiatrist named Viktor Frankl.
His parents, brother, and wife were killed inside the camps; he nearly lost his entire family. Each morning, he woke up with less faith in humanity.
One day, he became aware of what he called, âthe last of human freedoms.â
While everything was taken from him, there was one thing they could not take: the freedom of choice. He still had the ability to decide how his circumstances would affect him. This one power gave him the strength to survive the war and go on to publish 39 books and receive 29 honorary doctoral degrees.
Each time something happens, there is moment between the action happening and your reaction. Inside this space, each person has the ability to choose their way forward.
It doesnât matter what the situation is; you always control the space. Sometimes the space feels small, sometimes, it feels non-existent, but itâs always there. If Dr. Frankl was able to recognize the space despite his extreme, despondent circumstances, it can always be found. Recognizing the power to control the reaction is stronger than any comic book charactersâ supposed gift.
Itâs not what happens to us, but how we respond that determines our reality.
If youâre reading this article, I need to thank you.
Thank you for becoming a fan, sharing with friends, and for all of the encouragement along the way.
Building a subscriber base is a lot like weight lifting.
Let me explain…
The first time you hit the gym, your muscles arenât very strong. Something as light as 25 pounds, really feels like 100.
Well, thatâs the same thing that happens when you start anything new. Iâll use this blog as an example, but odds are, youâre also working on something you’re excited about too. Take this framework and fit it into whatever constitutes as your blog.
If you plot difficulty over your most ambitious goals, they get more achievable over time. It takes a while to establish a base, but once you do, the next goalpost becomes easier. Much like when you hit the gym, the first set of weights feel way heavier, but if you stick with it, your muscles build and those once heavier weights become your warm-up exercise.Â
It has this funny compounding effect; where your progress keeps doubling, yet, it continues to get easier. Your ability to impact keeps growing too. Suddenly lifting 100 pounds feels less than your original 50 pound rep on day one.
This blog is still in its earliest infancy. We’re deciding which exercises make sense and when to fit the gym into the busyness of life. We have to zoom in really close to see the location.
This past month, youâve seen me lace up my sneakers and hit the gym. After a month of checking out the equipment, Iâve decided to put a new workout plan in place. That’s right, channeling my inner Kanye =)
Monday Tidbits are staying, but Iâm switching around the article content.
I want to go deeper on these topics and add more visuals (similar to this week). Who knows, maybe there will be video content too or a podcast for the train ride or drive. But basically, the articles won’t come everyThursday.
If youâve enjoyed anything so far, or thought this week was cool, I think youâll love whatâs coming next.
The destination may change but who cares?
Changing the workout routine keeps life interesting.
