So many people write about the solutions they’ve found and the things they’ve discovered. I rarely see people write about they problems they are confronting, the different factors they are weighing, the sacrifices they are making and ultimately how they decide. We hear success stories all the time, that follow a traditional story arc: at first he didn’t know what to do, then he got an idea, but the challenge seemed too daunting and he thought about giving up, but he persevered and made it happen. You can do it, too! And then they run off a list of traits that they think allowed them to succeed. But those lists are most of the time emotional feel good junk food. They make us feel good, pump us up and let us know that it is possible for us to enjoy that success as well. But pumping someone up and not giving them good options about how to proceed is very dangerous. It’s deceptive to credit success with tips that hint at the process that underly it without providing enough awareness of the real ingredients. It is the process that unlocks that potential to replicate results.
I’m not saying these are bad, it’s good to share your story and I don’t know how much more can be accomplished in the time speeches like these are given, except for the emphasis on the hard work needed, and on pointing to resources that allow the inspired to learn more in depth about the process of building a strong foundation for success. I don’t know many of organizations that really prepare young people holistically for success. School certainly doesn’t teach you how to be successful. It teaches you socialization and a narrow band of academic knowledge. Being more transparent about your process will give other people the opportunity to guide you in the right direction through offering advice, point to resources and opening up opportunities. That’s the approach I’ve taken, I had no idea how to get Force For the Future started. So I took my ambitious ideas for a project and learned how to get lunch and coffee meetings with people who could give me the feedback and point me to the resources necessary to begin down an entrepreneurial road. I picked their brains and told them about my problems and got advice about how to succeed and now I have a network of friends and advisors who I can rely on for almost any problem I have.
Getting pumped up is necessary but being told something is possible without being told how is like telling a kid there’s candy hidden somewhere in a one hundred room mansion. He’ll be excited at first and run around looking for it. But then he’ll give up after while, frustrated. And maybe his eyes will light up again when he’s reminded tomorrow that there’s still candy somewhere in the mansion. But his enthusiasm will soon fade and his expectations will lower next time you bring it up. And he won’t ever find the candy because he was only told of it’s existence he wasn’t told anything about how to find it. And that’s how most people start to feel about success: like a helpless kid who just doesn’t want to be messed with anymore. He’d rather sit and suck his thumb than get his hopes up again only to be disappointed.
We need better structures to support those with the desire to do something big to actually make it happen. This is an incredibly important problem to solve. We need more young people on a trajectory towards solving today’s big issues and providing the resources, support structure and education for them to do that is the difference between resigning to dispassionate ‘pay the bills’ work or an insatiable entrepreneurial drive to improve humanity. This is a problem that I think is very surmountable and am working with some great people on some solutions right now.
