Forget Being Reasonable

I had a bit of an epiphany this past week.

While for the third time making my way through what is now one of my top three favorite books on business and personal development, The Four Hour Work Week (and yes, you can consider my mentioning it here a raving endorsement), I came across the following quote attributable to George Bernard Shaw:

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

When you’re a kid, and you say to adults that you want to be an astronaut, or the President, or a professional surfer, most of the time you’re told that that’s great. You can do anything you want to in life, and your imagination is the only limit to what you can accomplish.

But somewhere along the line, we start to receive some intense programming saying something very different.

When we hit the teen years, many of us start to encounter paradigms of scarcity and limitation, and of “being reasonable” about what we should expect from life.

These frames are usually delivered through well-intentioned sources such as our parents, teachers, and other role models. The problem is that they are debilitating to that part of our consciousness that yearns to achieve, to grow beyond its current bounds, and to make a real difference in the world.

The result is that a good 95% or more of the world is made up of reasonable people.

They work in reasonable jobs, have reasonable expectations of themselves and others, and all in all live a pretty reasonable existence.

Now, whether or not there is anything grossly wrong with a “reasonable” life in itself depends mainly on what it is you want to accomplish with your life.

The unfortunate thing is that reasonable lives are by definition devoid of unreasonable goals. And if you look back at the real quantum leaps in the progress of mankind, they almost universally started out with ideas that were considered ill-advised, ludicrous, or even illegal at the time.

These ideas came to fruition only through the persistence of their creators, in spite of the jeers and exasperated mutterings of the masses.

Had these pioneers not turned a deaf ear to the conventional wisdom of their respective eras, the progress of mankind would have been stunted beyond our imagination.

So often it is only when we reach beyond the bounds of our current understandings, into the void where we are not so sure of ourselves, where we are met with ridicule and a general cry to be more reasonable in our pursuits, that we come to understand the true nature of the world, of the people around us, and of ourselves.

Perhaps it’s time to ask yourself, seriously, introspectively, whether you have succumbed to the trap of thinking small. Ask yourself whether you have settled for an existence that is far less than what it might be and ought to be.

You can make the decision now to never again be constrained by what others tell you you can’t do.

If you’ve decided that your life should look different from what it now is, then don’t let anything get in the way of moving in that direction. Take concrete steps towards your goals TODAY, because that is the only time in which you have the power to act.

Far too many of us will look back with regret on yesterdays in which action was put off until tomorrows that never came.

So, if it means taking more action with your current business then DO IT!

If it means developing skills that have intimidated you up until now then DO IT!

If it means making a change in the vehicle that you are using to get to your objectives then DO IT!

When you decide that you are going to achieve what others say is impossible, and take persistent, undeterred steps towards it, there is nothing in the world that will keep you from eventually reaching your goal.

You've moved beyond 90% of the masses just by being here.

But to attain the kind of success you're likely hoping for, my advice is to live up to the original mission of this awesome forum that Mike has put together.

Increase your value to the world.

Reach out and help as many people as possible with no expectation of receiving something in return.

Discover that wealth, both temporal and otherwise, is a direct measure of the impact you make in the lives of others.

I look forward to forming many great associations here!

Best Regards,