Reading

School is useful if you want a job.

School is useless if you want a business.

Allow yourself to be a beginner at things.

No one starts off as excellent.

Until it’s done

tell none.

Too much availability

kills your value.

Finish something. Anything. Stop researching, planning, and preparing to do the work and just do the work. It doesn’t matter how good or how bad it is. You don’t need to set the world on fire with your first try. You just need to prove to yourself that you have what it takes to produce something. There are no artists, athletes, entrepreneurs, or scientists who became great by half-finishing their work. Stop debating what you should make and just make something.

The strongest are gentle.

The smartest are quiet.

The wealthiest are simple.

The happiest are private.

Real power doesn’t need to prove itself.

A monk goes out on a boat in a small lake to meditate. After a few hours of uninterrupted silence, he suddenly feels the jarring impact of another boat bumping into his.

While he does not open his eyes, he feels the irritation and anger building within him.

“Why would someone do that? Can’t they see me here? How dare they disturb my meditation?”

He opens his eyes, ready to shout at the person in the other boat, only to realize that it is empty. It had come untied from the dock and was floating in the middle of the lake.

In that moment, his anger and frustration disappears. After all, you cannot be angry at an empty boat.

The story offers a powerful lesson, which I call the Empty Boat Mindset:

In life, you’re going to experience countless collisions. With people. With environments. With chance circumstances outside your control. Each of these collisions will threaten to derail you. To stoke the fire of anger, stress, and frustration. To knock you off your path.

The truth is that the negative emotions that grow inside you are rarely from the collision itself, but from your perception of the negative intent behind the collision.

If you convince yourself that every collision is a deliberate action by a bad actor, negative emotions will control your entire life.

In others words, your interpretation of the collision creates your own poison.

The Empty Boat Mindset is the reminder that most of these collisions you experience in life are with an empty boat.

There is no negative intent. There is no desire to harm. They are simply the random collisions of objects floating along on the lake of life.

Interestingly, when you embrace the Empty Boat Mindset, you reassume control over your own boat. You’re no longer prone to the spiraling emotional effects of chance collisions.

You are a seasoned explorer, ready to adapt to whatever the seas throw your way.

So, the next time you feel a collision and find your negative emotions growing, pause and ask yourself a simple question: Am I just getting angry at an empty boat?

My mentor once told me:

Showing your
emotions to the
wrong people is like
bleeding next to a
shark.

Maturing is realizing you prefer a quiet life. You don’t chase after friendships or relationships.

You’re happy with the few friends you have, no drama, just working on being the best version of yourself, not comparing your life to others, and learning to enjoy your own company instead of relying on others to be happy.

Fall in love with the work. The early mornings. The struggle. The self-doubt.
The pain. The silence when nothing’s working and no one’s watching.

That’s where the magic happens. That’s where everyone else quits. It’s the filter. Most people can’t do the work long enough to get what they want. It’s that simple.

So don’t just survive it. Crave it. Chase it. Fall in love with it.

Because the ones who make it aren’t the smartest or the most talented.

They’re just the ones who stayed in the fire long enough let it change them.

Work until it works.