#1: Dress for the party, and the party will come to you.
Sometimes you feel like the sun has gone, and must survive in the dark surrounded by monsters and predators.
It’s like living in the second part of the quote, “Living rich and dying broke.”
No more days of champagne and roses. No more hope. You feel dead inside. Tired of losing back to back. But read me carefully,
Rich warrior.
Poor warrior.
Powerful warrior.
Weak warrior.
Still warrior. Read that again.
No matter what, you are still a warrior.
Heaven can wait, my friend.
Let me help you light up your sun again.
Please put on your Rayban sunglasses, and let’s get started.
1. Dress for the party, and the party will come to you
“I’d rather cry in a Rolls-Royce than be happy on a bicycle.” — Patrizia Reggiani.
Patrizia Reggiani Martinelli was found guilty of ordering the murder of her husband, Maurizio Gucci.
Patrizia lived so luxuriously and stubbornly that she almost ruined the famous fashion brand Gucci.
But the Gucci brand survived its darkest moments by doing what they do best: clothing of the highest quality.
Gucci applied Steve Martin’s maxim, “be so good they can’t ignore you.” And they turned their sunshine back on.
“Dress for the party, and the party will come to you” means, “Get down to doing what you do best and do it with more style and class than ever, and everything will be fine.”
When things got dark, I neglected my image and the aesthetic finish of my work, which worsened everything.
Aesthetics is something subtle that, when it fails, is hard to detect, but when you realize it increases the quality of your work and improves your image and self-esteem. And that changes everything. That lights your sunshine again, mate.
Lesson: Showtime! Start dressing and performing in style. Give an excellent finish to everything you do — make it pretty like Steve Jobs with the iPhone — and strive for excellence.
2. Check the goal, and do the task. Rest. Repeat.
“If you have more than three priorities, you don’t have any.” — Jim Collins.
Every time I read this quote from Jim, I think he must have been inspired by the story of Warren Buffett and his pilot.
Legend has it that a conversation between Warren and his pilot Mike Flint led to the 5/25 rule.
Flint asked Buffett for advice on how to reach the top of his career aspirations. The Oracle of Omaha told him to list the 25 things that mattered most to him.
Flint did. Then Buffett told him to circle the five most important things to him on that list of 25 with a five.
This way, Flint had two lists, one with five goals (list A) and one with twenty goals (list b).
“Do you know what you have to do?” Warren asked him.
“Dedicate me to list A and when I have time left over to list B,” Flint said.
“Wrong,” Buffett told him. “Everything you didn’t circle in red that’s your to-do-not list.”
When you’re in the sh*t, you want to do many things to get out of it. But it’s doing many things that probably got you into your hole.
Warren Buffett and Jim Collins have it right. You can only choose 3 to 5 main goals in your life. And the rest of the goals you have to avoid at all costs because failure is a road littered with secondary purposes.
Don’t go there.
Pick a goal. Do the day’s task that brings you one step closer to achieving it. Rest. And repeat the next day.
Lesson: it’s better to take 25 steps in one direction than 1 step in 25 different directions. You will go farther.
3. Free the f*cking elephant
“Right action is better than knowledge; but to do what is right, we must know what is right” — Charlemagne.
Who’s up for a story?
Abul-Abbas was a white elephant that the caliph of Baghdad, Harun al Rashid, gave the emperor Charlemagne. Legend has it that Charlemagne sent his elephant to war to do battle.
But not every white elephant is a blessing from heaven or a secret weapon.
Many legends tell that the most powerful kings of Asia used these elephants as gifts to send to their enemies.
The enemy could not refuse the gift to avoid offending the king, and for the same reason, he could not neglect it. And consequently, enemies were ruined by the high expenses of feeding such a large animal.
Moral of the story: don’t want to own what you can’t keep, or you will end up ruined.
Indeed you have one or more white elephants in your life. It could be a car you can’t keep, a house with rent that is too expensive—a toxic partner who always asks for more (you know what I mean).
Lesson: Free your white elephants, and you’ll get out of the pit.
Last Words
As Jay Z used to sing, “I know we’re facing a recession, but the music you guys make is going to turn it into the Great Depression.”
So stop sounding like that (quit the negativity).
Change your music and dance. Together we’re going to make it. You only have to keep fighting. It’s never too late. Believe me. As Abraham Lincoln once said,
“In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.”
A virtual hug
AG
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