That’s the hard part about projects that you created, they have self-imposed deadlines; and that makes it hard to know when to quit, when to declare success, and when to move on.

You can always convince yourself that you just need a little more time, a little better luck, to get things going.

You don’t want to be the next aspiring writer, business mogul, or whatever, only to find yourself in the same place 20 years down the line: Still just an aspiring writer, business mogul, or whatever, but not having anything to show for it.

People might tell you to “be realistic”, but this means comprising your ideals. So figure out a way to not have awkward conversation at christmas dinner parties when your family asks you why your chosen profession is still not making any money, and carry on. If you have an ability to learn and self correct, you’ll get there eventually. But if you find yourself not enjoying the journey, then it’s time to quit.

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I’ve been looking at the same thing for what seems like eons. So much shit floating around me. My ‘Day to Day’ states:

“At the fishbowl looking at the world and letting everything fade but 1 thing. iPhone databases. Very very complex, yet very very simple. Just focus…focus. See this one thing as the world…the future. Let the energy of it fill you. Feel its fire. I am above the bullshit, I ride alone, this beast is mine to tame. Talk seems to be the appeal in all the twitters and facebooks I see flicking around me. I shut it all out and only see this. I shall sit here till I have it or I will die in my seat. Fishbowl is open 24 hours. Give me database or give me death.”

Within minutes of writing that statement, of letting everyone around me fade, the hundreds of minds dicking around with some shit, when BAM it hit me! I heard myself say “Holy Shit!”.

My Holy Shit was that I finally found out how to take a vast database of data and simple query it for use in my iPhone application!

I just stared at my computer until the screen faded under screen saver. Stared wide eyed. It must be the same feeling a scientist has when they stumble across something no human has ever seen before. They see the truth in it and just pause.

I have been on this for months. Over all the bullshit. The meetings. The talks. Its the persistence that is of the only value. No matter how you feel. The key is shutting it all out, looking at the world, letting it go and rising above it.

In the article “If you want to be rich, first stop being so frightened“, billionaire Felix Dennis says “The number one reason why people fail is because of a fear of public embarrassment”. We fill our minds with this mind clutter. We worry about what others will think. About not making the money. About missing out on all the parties where everyone is mingling, networking, having fun and moving forward.  The fear that you will be left behind. It’s bullshit.

The real value is in coming back to the core. For me it is here. In a room of 500 buzzing computers and freeing my mind of all of it. My passion flared a few minutes ago. Vast and beautiful. My skin is still goose bumped. My breath is short. So persist. Persist again. Read this post on overcoming fear if your having trouble letting go of the inner monologues.

The only other answer to how I feel is I had a stroke and am lying on the fishbowl’s floor unconscious dreaming all this…someone call 911.

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The answer is: both, but mostly something else.

Love can inspire you to create beautiful things, however the act of producing something you are passionate about makes you a creative and loving person. This will attract others of like minds and that will re-inspire you.

I have found that if you neglect that latter part and are waiting for love to inspire you, you will never create anything.

I lost sight of that recently and was focused on money, wanting a vacation and being a whiny bitch.

I left town in a huff last night and here I sit on a public computer in a lobby in Chicago realizing just how far off track I’ve been.

You have to love yourself first. And those you really love, that have actually inspired you, deserve to have that favor returned in a productive way.

Yes, love can give you creative energy, but just do the production as mundane as it may be. Starting will give you the fire you need.

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There are two ways to overcoming fear:

The first is by brute force. You vomit in the bathroom, pop a mint, then walk into that boardroom. It’s best to start slow however.  The idea is, it becomes like resistance training with weights. You start off light and work up gradually increasing the weights. Each new situation will always hurt, but the light weights you lifted when you started don’t hurt at all anymore.

Fear is like that. Things that scared you as a child no longer do…except for clowns of course. However, overcoming fear by brute force is inefficient. Takes time and a lot of pain.

There is a second approach. Eliminating fear altogether.

Sounds crazy.  How do you eliminate fear? Isn’t fear helpful? Yes it is but only in the fight or flight response that comes from a life-threatening situation. It is in the non-threatening situations like public speaking where fear is detrimental to the success of that meeting.  As we all say to ourselves, “If I can just relax, be myself, sound professional, don’t mess up, then I will be successful”. That is true to some extent and that knowledge increases the tension, compounding the problem.

The truth is that fear shows that you have made a fundamental error in your perception of reality.

Take for example an overheard work conversation. You hear your boss around a corner speaking to someone else saying “I’m going to have to fire Mike tomorrow, he does not know it yet so don’t tell anyone”. The rest of the day you see people looking at you odd, your gut hurts, you go home and go over all you did and think about what can you change. It’s only the next day at 8am you find out he was talking about Mike in accounting, not you.

All that fear you felt was wrong. Fear is just telling you that you need to change your reality. It’s a warning sign that you’ve got something wrong. You had an illusion about what reality was when it was not.

Now this is going to get a little trippy here, so bear with me.

Have you ever been in a dream and you wake fully frightened and say “I thought for sure it was real!”. You had a fundamental flaw in your perception of reality while you were coming out of a dream state. If you had known that it was a dream, you would have no fear. If you dreamt you were on stage, but knew you were dreaming, you would not care if the audience laughed at you or not, you’d just walk off stage, perhaps flip them off, but you would not have any fear.

All fear is just a perception. And in actuality, all reality is just your perception using your ears, touch, smell, sight, etc. If you could view all reality as if it were a dream, a dream that you own, then you would have no fear.

Usually the cause of the fear is something pretty basic, such as: you don’t want to make people unhappy, and if they’re unhappy, they think less of you and you start to feel unhappy about yourself.

I tried this technique in a board room where I was selling software I had created. I envisioned about an hour before the meeting that it was a dream. I put the people in their spots and saw them all sitting there, talking.

I said, if I’m in a dream, and I don’t get this gig, I’d just shrug, shake their hands and move on.

I go into the meeting, and I’m still breathing heavy. But I look around and keep saying to myself “I’m in a dream. I’m in a dream.”

As we go around and talk, I’m selling my product and the main guy in the room leans back, smiles and says in a condescending voice to the group, “Well, you know what they say about something that sounds too good to be true.” Now normally, I would have laughed and gone: “Haha, well that’s true but…blah blah blah”.

Instead, something clicked in me and I responded like it was a dream. I leaned forward, looked him right in the eye and go in a slow, firm voice, “Then don’t buy it.”

He leans back quick and goes “NO! I just never heard anyone say anything like that before. Please tell me more”. It was surreal…and fun.

Now this technique can take time, try it in a cafe or while walking down a street. Look at everything around you and view it as if it’s a dream. When you can effectively do that, you will get an overwhelming feeling of peace. Do that in a board meeting, on stage, talking to anyone who’s threatening you, and you will be yourself and answer honestly.

View your life as if in a dream and all fear will fade away.  If I had some fancy Budda thing to say I’d insert it here…but all of you reading this are a dream anyway so I’m done.

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The cartoonist and blogger Hugh MacLeod writes that what people say they want and what they are willing to work their ass off to get are two different things. And there is a lot of working your ass off involved when it comes to starting your own business (or becoming an artist, or whatever your passion is). You have to put in the hours, plain and simple. Half of the pain involved is in figuring out what direction those hours should take. I graduated from Michigan in May, and our progress has seemed very slow. To me and my parents and our friends. Yet if I look at where I was 6 months ago, we’ve made substantial progress, on many fronts.

Maybe its seemed slow because I can’t think of any flashy, glamorous, big leaps of progress. It’s been more like a series of small boring steps, with some going entirely in the wrong direction. It’s an obvious and unfortunately painful fact: The way you get things done is simply by doing the work that’s required, step by step. And learning how to work smart instead of simply working hard. This often means that entrepreneurship is lonely and frustrating. It means that you need a ton of focus. It means you need to hunker down and rid yourself of all distractions, and most of the time it means your social life will take a hit. You will have 16 hour days, 7 days a week, because you are the only force behind getting your project going. And if you don’t have the necessary experience, you’re going to educate yourself. But all of this won’t feel like work if you’re on the right path. It’ll pay off, if you’ve planned it right, by allowing you live to the life you want.

Hugh MacLeod also claims that if someone in your field is more successful than you, it’s probably because they work harder at it than you do. He writes: “The bars of West Hollywood, London, and New York are awash with people throwing their lives away in the desperate hope of finding a shortcut, any shortcut.  Meanwhile the competition is at home, working their asses off.” Everyone’s looking for the quick fix.

But it’s not always about the big idea. If you have an idea that’s yours alone, and have the passion for it, things will come to fruition. Maybe it’s simply about not quitting. You have the freedom to do something really amazing when you sing in your own voice.

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I was in one of those moods where I wanted to sail away into the unknown and and dance in a dark forest and forget everything. I needed to get away. Find out what questions I should be asking. Distract myself with fantastic scenery and wild dreams. See, I wanted to be like Max, who stares into their eyes without blinking and becomes king of the wild things.

There are people like that. They live in a rich world of their own creation. They’re not escapists, the exact opposite, they’re powerful, because in end, we’re all responsible for creating our own lives.

It’s rare to find that person who’s truly happy with the way his life is going and who commands his own ship. We all need those kind of people, and they’re the ones who hold up under questioning, who are happy to help us find our way because they have more than enough left over to give. They may not know exactly where their own ship is heading, but they’ve got that glint in their eye and can stare any monster straight in the face. They can reveal a little about themselves because they know there’s always plenty more where that came from.

What is that magic ingredient that these people have? It’s not just confidence, it’s security. Very often it’s the self made people that command their own source of income that can take that next step in life because they know they want to, not for any other temporary reason like fame or prestige or money. Sure, those things can be fun, but its more fun when they’re the byproduct of doing the things you really love.

The people you know and the things you do shape you. There are those that make you feel small, and there are those that bring the humor, the fun, and the daring out in you. How do you meet these people? I’m not talking about networking. I’m talking about those people you can talk to and get excited with, not just about ideas. They just make you feel right. They don’t just meet you on an intellectual level, you can grab their heart and feel it too. They’re intensely emotional, but they understand their emotions and can get you excited too. There’s not many of those people around, and it gets pretty damn lonely sometimes. Because we all want to feel inspired. Passion and inspiration are closely related.

Did I just need a vacation? Should I grow a forest in my bedroom and sail away until I’m calm again? Maybe.  But I think it’s a hell of a lot nicer to make that journey with people you love.

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His motorcycle broke in the middle of nowhere. He needed a piece of metal welded. The only place in town was some tooth less guy who said it cost 5 bucks. He’s freaking out. “This guy is gonna work on my baby. No way!”. But limited choices and limited time make him hand it over as he heads out for a shaky cup of coffee. Upon return, the guy hands him the metal bracket and goes “5 bucks”. He looks down…and to his amazement…its the most beautiful weld he has ever seen. No rims. No lips. Rainbow smooth irridesence. He said “Jesus! Here is fifty! That would cost $200 in new york! “. The guy gives him back $45, says “5 bucks” and closes the door. What was that?!. Our traveler loved the weld. He loved the quality. But he contemplates this and comes to the realization that you can’t define quality. Put similar items side by side and most people can point to the one that is better. How do they know?

I challenge you to try it with a friend or two. You will only list things. Like this cap is tighter. That one has a cute bulb. Her hair is darker. Love and quality. We use them daily for people and for things. They define our work lives and our private lives. Yet they are not quanitfiable. So where do you put your passions. What do you love to do. And how do you define that. That is the challenge, and its my challenge as well. Pursue it, and there might just be a million bucks at the end of the road…unless your god damned set on $5.

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For example, on web developer stuff: “Make a web page center in the browser”.  I do a web search on that, 32,000 hits.  The second one looks perfect.  I open it up and its some tech blog with 20 people suggesting the perfect way to do it with links.  I soon have 80 tiny tabs crammed in so tight I can’t tell what they are.  So now I have to go through them all and repeat the prior process till I have 13 browsers open with 200 “related” articles and soon I’m off analyzing how giraffes can center themselves in their sleep from zoology today and six hours of my life have passed.

So what do I do? I procrastinate more.  It’s a nice little circle that makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.   I read all the GTD (Getting Things Done) stuff like Steve Allen’s book “Ready for anything”:…practiced them as well…it made me so happy to only have 4 categories of ToDo and spend all night moving them between the boxes.

I have found that the only thing that works for me is a timer.  Here is a free browser based one that I created (stole) that can be used anywhere just to remind you to get up and take a break. http://www.2people1year1million.com/timer.html.

New studies have shown that the top performers from CEOs to Athletes treat their brain like a muscle.  About every 90 minutes they take a 10 minute break that enables them to handle periods of high stress so they can pull off that all-nighter or just produce more in less time. The bonus is after every break you see where you’re at and can get back on track.

P.S. On the bright side I did discover a gem or two in those long lists of articles.  I think its hard to find good references because those who know what their doing don’t waste their time answering blog posts, which of course I’ll do if anyone wants to post me a question.

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Apparently success is more or less up to me. (As much as I’d like to blame any future failures on the bad economy, other people, or the brand of toothpaste I’m using). When starting your own business, success depends very directly on the amount of effort you put in.

The gap between the dream and where you’re at right now can be pretty daunting. You have a great idea, but thinking about all the details involved clouds your enthusiasm and delays action. For something like starting a company, you have to be involved every step of the way, and do a lot of different jobs. It’s easy to become intimidated and delayed by self-criticism and doubt. You just have to find that spark of motivation to get going, and merge all your skills into one direction.

A year and a half ago I distinctly remember anxiously trying to come up with a business idea, any idea, so that I could do this entrepreneurship thing. Now, after a lot of soul searching, wikipedia lookups and domain name registrations I have so many ideas I need folders and subfolders just to organize them all. I’m bursting at the seams with ideas and dreams for world conquest by way of innovation. So what’s the problem? Why is it so hard to get started?

A better question to ask is: How do you make that first step? Fortune favors the bold, as some guy said a long time ago and people keep repeating. Everyone likes a go-getter.

Bold. Like every good procrastinator, I just looked up “bold” on wikipedia. A bold person, it claims, is willing to risk shame or rejection, and is willing to bend rules. So bold may just be another word for risk taking. But wait, there’s more: An excessively bold person is not only aggressive, but persistently aggressive in the pursuing of his ideas. There we go. Persistently pursuing your ideas. Yes, being bold draws attention, makes us feel empowered. But often it’s not just about those big acts that grab people’s attention, it’s about those small acts everyday that eventually accumulate into a bold life.

Being bold is not about waiting for opportunities, its about creating opportunities. Bold empowers you and empowers others. Bold is not self-absorbed, and doesn’t worry about how others will perceive it. We all admire the bold, because they make us feel at ease and make us long for more. Bold’s self-confidence infects us and draws us out of our own little world. If you’re going to make a mistake, you better do it boldly. But bold is never overbearing or impetuous. Bold is just that special spark that gets you going, gets you to ask, why not? Most importantly, bold is what builds that momentum to keep you going.

Bold is not greedy or selfish, on the contrary, the non-bold are often too absorbed in what people will think of them to act. Fear of failure stops them from ever getting going. I want to cultivate the habit of boldness in all aspects of my life. I’ve always considered myself a somewhat timid individual. But just by taking that first step, and keeping at it, my projects now have a momentum of their own. Just getting this first blog post up, as incoherent as it may be, means that I am now officially a blogger. Great. Now I just have to keep going.

So me and my intrepid fellow blogger, Mike, are going to boldly go where no businesses have gone before, and chronicle the follies and fuck-ups of two entrepreneurs as they happen, in real time. Because in the end it’s all about those little steps you take in that bold direction. Hindsight can embellish and compress timelines, but its in the gritty details of the everyday process where real learning lies.

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