Author: Phil Garland

There’s a song titled Juicy by The Notorius B.I.G. in which he talks about going from rough life on the streets, never amounting to anything, to blowing up on the radio and becoming a pop culture icon. Whether it’s a put-down of a high school teacher who told him he’d never be more than a janitor isn’t important. The line that sticks in my head every time I hear Juicy is “And if you don’t know, now you know.”

From Rap Lyrics to You

We can’t all be Biggie Smalls, rising from nothing to fame. But we can all learn from what he said. If you don’t know something, what’s stopping you from knowing? It doesn’t take that long to figure out what you want to know? Actually, the faster you fail forward, the faster you try to know but don’t succeed, the faster you’ll be moving in the right direction. Not knowing something, and wanting to know it, is your first step in moving in the right direction. It’s how you get to “now you know.”

From Rap Lyrics to Example

Speaking in rap lyrics is great, but let’s take a real life example. For a few weeks now I’ve been toiling with the idea of launching a small business accounting solutions company. I already have a basic outline for it, Accounting Over Coffee, but not knowing has been holding me back. How do I get to knowing, if I don’t know the first place? Well, today I took my first step. I started to look at it as a question.

Instead of looking at my idea as an obstacle to overcome, I posed it as a research question. I know there are other people out there who know how to run a freelance accounting company. There are people all over the world doing it. But “Where are they working?,” “How are they doing it?,” we’re never my question I was asking to know. I was looking for the solution internally instead of going to the market.

Upwork

Today I signed up for Upwork. It’s a freelancing website that let’s you work as a freelancer. Although on my first day I wasn’t able to snag any accounting work, I was able to complete a job. It also opened up my eyes to other freelance accountants who have a sound business model. Each of them has obviously taken time to market their brand. Today I learned the next steps I need to take to market my brand.

It’s juicy, what I didn’t know, I now know.

We’ve all heard the saying practice makes perfect. My high school basketball coach hated the phrase. “Practice doesn’t make perfect, practice makes permanent,” he’d yell from the sideline. Perfect practice, which I don’t believe to be possible, makes perfect.

Practice Makes Permanent

Day-in, day-out habit forming creates permanent habits. If we start with bad habits, and continue bad habits on a daily basis, they will soon become permanent. Same holds true with good habits. Once we devote ourselves to good habits, they become permanent in our lives. The hard part is ensuring we’re creating good habits and eliminating bad ones. We must consistently practice, both physically and mentally, building habits that we want to become permanent.

Perfect Practice Not Possible

Perfect practice, in my opinion, is impossible. There is no perfect way to do something. We also can’t perfectly practice anything because we’ll never reach perfection. There will always be another way to improve ourselves, even when we achieve close to perfection. Since we can’t practice perfectly we have to do the next best thing, practice with our best foot forward.

Using This to Our Advantage

Practice shouldn’t be shied away from. Practicing is a key element to arriving at the place we want to be. Forget the motto practice makes perfect. It’s untrue. Perfection is not something to strive for because we’ll never achieve it. Instead focus on what we’re doing today, what we plan on doing tomorrow, and make sure those actions align with good habits.

Practicing a good habit today, and tomorrow, will propel us towards a permanent good habit. At the same time we must focus on eliminating the bad habits. If we consciously eliminate the bad, we move toward permanently eliminating bad habits. Our goal shouldn’t be striving for perfection, but being acutely aware that our actions today lead to the person we will become. Our practice will become permanent.

The reason for college is the diploma. The piece of paper that signals to employers that your are competent enough to get through a few years of lectures, courses, and final exams. It’s been a signal for hundreds of years, and, up until the last few decades, was a good signal of one’s capabilities. With more and more people getting through college, the piece of paper carries less weight and it signals less about you. However, there’s still hope. We all have one thing that signals our abilities, even better than a diploma, and that signal is pride.

Pride as Habit

Highly successful people have a trait in common, they take pride in their work, and pay attention to every last detail. Steve Jobs used to require Macs to have beautiful hardware designs even though the consumer was never going to see it. He’s quirky, sure, but it’s that quirk that made Steve Jobs who he was, and made Apple what it is.

Pride as Signal

Taking pride, and paying attention to every detail, is one of the things that make successful people successful. It also signals to others that you are capable of doing solid work.

Say, for instance, you want to become a bartender at a restaurant, but you’re told they don’t have a position for bartenders. Instead of pouting and giving up, you apply for a waiting position instead. While working, you realize the trash is rarely emptied on time, which leads to complaining bartenders. On top of your other job duties you start emptying the trash for your bartending co-workers. You become known as the waiter who takes out the trash. You build the signal, by going above and beyond, and paying attention to details. Even though it supposedly wasn’t open, six months later you get hired for the bartending job.

This is a lesson in the pride signal. By taking pride in your work, you are showing others that you are capable. On top of that you are forming a successful habit. Because you can handle a small task to the best of your ability, the signal says you probably take pride in other aspects of life, like keeping a clean kitchen at home. Taking pride in your work may be the best thing you can do for yourself and your career. Not only are you developing a habit of success, but you are developing a signal to others that you’re more than capable to get each and every job done.

Further Reading

If you want further reading on the education signal then check out these thought leaders in the education community. You can check out Bryan Caplan here and Isaac Morehouse’s blog posts about signaling here,

“If you think you know what the future will look like, you’re wrong.”

That phrase used to scare me.

How can I decide to do something if I don’t know how it’ll fit into the future?

Why would I put my heart and soul into something if it’s not going to work in the future?

If we don’t know what the future holds then how can we be sure we are developing the necessary skills for the future?

The Answer

We have no idea what the future holds. But that doesn’t mean sitting and waiting to see what it’ll look like.

Creativity is Organic

As human beings we are naturally creative. Cowering out and not trying to have an impact on the future will lead to a downward spiral, a loss of self-worth. Our need to create is innate, each day we must create, each day we must move one step closer to the future.

By challenging ourselves to do something to create, by unlocking our animalistic creativity, and by doing something productive each day, we are slowly moving towards the future.

The building blocks used to create the world 50 years from now haven’t even been built yet. There isn’t even a blueprint yet. Everyday we create, everyday we do something, we are moving closer to unlocking a piece of the puzzle.

We may not know what the future looks like. We may not know how our skills will impact the future. But action, and creation, will eventually unlock the unknown.

 

Flashback to the second grade. After spending my first grade year choosing to write numbers beyond 30,000, and foregoing reading time, the teachers determined I wasn’t very good with words. They were right. I couldn’t read. During reading time in second and third grade I was sent to the special education wing to be tutored (this while during math time I’d go to the gifted and talented wing with the other math “geniuses”).

Even though I was going to special-ed I still wasn’t learning how to read. No matter how many times we did reading exercises I couldn’t do it. I was good at faking, I still managed to pass vocabulary quizzes, and could fake a two paragraph paper on whatever assigned reading we had. It wasn’t until I decided to teach myself that I actually learned to read.

How I Taught Myself

Simple. Reading, sentence structure, spelling, they were equations. I used my skills in mathematics to memorize how many letters were in words. When I went to write the word I did the “does this look right?” test. I also formed sentences like I would a math problem. Noun plus adjective before it, with some action equals sentence.

Once I stepped back and realized my reading problem wasn’t due to lack of smarts, it was the way I was being taught, everything started to click. I ended up graduating high school with more English credits than anything else. Once I taught myself the way my mind worked, it all opened up.

Applying This Lesson

This lesson isn’t something special. We have things going on in our lives everyday that we want to excel at. Some of those things don’t make any sense to us. Sometimes we want to learn something but no guidebook exists.

When we understand how our minds absorb information, we learn how to teach ourselves. We learn the tasks we need to start doing in order to achieve our goals. And we know the tools we’ve already developed to start building a solution.

Yes, reading comes easy to some people, and can be taught to others using standard methods, but without my math knowledge I never would’ve learned to read. It took one tool to build the next. My parting advice: Use the tools you have today to achieve your next step.

“Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action” – Benjamin Disraeli

Below are some lessons in passages I have pulled from great books, all of which are worth reading. Each of the quotes is about taking action, and the results that follow.

From The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday

To conquer his [Demosthenes’] speech impediment, he devised his own strange exercises. He would fill his mouth with pebbles and practice speaking. He rehearsed full speeches into the wind or while running up steep inclines. He learned to give entire speeches with a single breath. And soon, his quiet, weak voice erupted with booming, powerful clarity. Demosthenes locked himself away underground—literally—in a dugout he’d had built in which to study and educate himself. To ensure he wouldn’t indulge in outside distractions, he shaved half his head so he’d be too embarrassed to go outside. And from that point forward, he dutifully descended each day into his study to work with his voice, his facial expressions, and his arguments. When he did venture out, it was to learn even more. Every moment, every conversation, every transaction, was an opportunity for him to improve his art. All of it aimed at one goal: to face his enemies in court and win back what had been taken from him. Which he did.

From The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle

Another example is Ray LaMontagne, a shoe-factory worker from Lewiston, Maine, who at age twenty-two had an epiphany that he should become a singer-songwriter. LaMontagne had little musical experience and less money, so he took a simple approach to learning: he bought dozens of used albums by Stephen Stills, Otis Redding, Al Green, Etta James, and Ray Charles, and holed up in his apartment. For two years. Every day he spent hours training himself by singing along to the records. LaMontagne’s friends assumed he had left town; his neighbors assumed he was either insane or had locked himself inside a musical time capsule—which, in a sense, he had. “I would sing and sing, and hurt and hurt, because I knew I wasn’t doing it right,” LaMontagne said. “It took a long time, but I finally learned to sing from the gut.” Eight years after he started, LaMontagne’s first album sold nearly half a million copies. The main reason was his soulful voice, which Rolling Stone said sounded like church, and which other listeners mistook for that of Otis Redding and Al Green. LaMontagne’s voice was a gift, it was agreed. But the real gift, perhaps, was the practice strategy he used to build that voice.

From The Education of Millionaires by Michael Ellsberg

When my father once asked the legendary Norman Mailer for writing advice, Mailer said the main secret was: “Apply Ass to Chair.”Meaning, in this case, sit down at your desk, in front of your computer, and start putting this stuff into action. Don’t wait for the time to be right. (It never will be.) Don’t wait for everything to be perfect. (It won’t be.) Don’t wait until you “learn just a little more.”(There’s always more to learn!)

Combining These Lessons

Applying ass to chair (or ass to underground or ass to apartment for two years) doesn’t mean reading something and saying “that’s neat” and moving on. Working at your craft, whatever it may be, takes time and practice. To become a better you starts with taking action. To become happier requires taking action. In order to become a master requires taking action. And it all starts with doing, repetitively doing, and then doing some more. You won’t become a world-beater in a day, but you’ll never be a world-beater if you don’t start. Resolve to take action.

A Parting Quote

“Someone once asked Demosthenes what the three most important traits of speechmaking were. His reply says it all: ‘Action, Action, Action!'”

Alright, I am going to make this quick. Easy to follow. And hopefully informative. Below we will go through definitions of “generalizing” and “fallacious” and then dive into the difference between “positivism” and “praxeology”. Enjoy!

Terms

Generalizing – make general or broad statement by inferring from specific cases

Fallacious – based on a mistaken belief

We have our first two terms. Coincidentally(?) these are the same terms as the title.

Therefore, generalizing is fallacious means making a general statement by inferring something is a mistaken belief.

Economics Lesson (More Here)

Positivism – a philosophical system that holds that every rationally justifiable assertion can be scientifically verified or is capable of logical or mathematical proof, and that therefore rejects metaphysics and theism

Praxeology – the deductive study of human action, based on the notion that humans engage in purposeful behavior, as opposed to reflexive behavior like sneezing and inanimate behavior

If you want to think of it in other terms think of positivism as macro, it’s taking a lot of numbers and simplifying them into a pretty graph. Praxeology is micro, imagine following one person around for an entire day and jotting down everything they do, then building a tidy graph for that person’s day.

Combining Terms With Economics Lesson

Generalizing is taking a positivism approach. Instead of looking at each individual’s actions, we infer something based on macro data. If we were to dig deep into each data point, each person’s individual actions, we may come away with a completely different conclusion. Most likely we would agree with the person if we saw their micro, but we rarely see it.

The only time we see someone’s micro is when we are involved in their everyday life. Social media friends (who we’re actually friends with), friends in our city/town, family (who we actually interact with), mentors, employers/co-workers (who we open up with), and acquaintances (who we speak regularly with). These are the people who see our individual actions.

Stop Generalizing and Start Meeting Individuals

Anytime we look on the macro level we are taking the individual person out of the equation. It becomes a bunch of numbers and doesn’t describe individual actions. If we want to improve ourselves, and others around us, we need to start thinking on the micro level, the individual level. We need to think about the next person we have a conversation with. Generalizing closes us off from new people, so stop it.

We spend a lot of time and energy trying to achieve acceptance into our perceived idea of societal norms. We let the politically correct action drive our goals. Instead of focusing on doing something for ourselves, we focus on doing something that’ll be accepted by others. That’s why I have to ask, “Who are you doing it for?”

Who Controls Your Actions

Why do you do stuff in your life? Is it to appease your parents, your friends, people in your community, your Facebook following? Or are you doing it because you want to do it?  Although we like to believe we are doing things for ourselves, a lot of time that is not the case. We usually try and appease someone else, instead of looking inward on what we really want. A great example of this is blogging.

For me, blogging is a way to compile thoughts, think about them, write about them, and move on. I try not to get carried away in the stats, how many people have viewed my blog, how many words I have written, or if my posts have been shared on social media. But I am human, I sometimes forget why I blog, and unintentionally get wrapped up in those things. I am blogging for me, to clear my mind, and for the idea that creation breeds the person I want to become. Although that lesson gets away from me at times, I know that I am doing it for me.

Doing It For You

This is the most important lesson I have learned from blogging. I know my ideas aren’t revolutionary. I know there are 2 million other blog posts a day, but that doesn’t mean that blogging isn’t valuable. In doing something for myself I learn more and more. The repetition of daily blogging ingrains a habit-forming mindset, as well as a countless other lessons.

Using the doing it for you mindset in all aspects of life is highly valuable. If someone has already done what you’re thinking about doing say screw it. You can do it too. Maybe you’ll learn something about yourself that can’t be taught any other way than by doing. If your friends or family don’t agree with it then become confident in your decisions, think about what you really want, and do it for you.

The most important part of living the life you want is listening to yourself. You are the greatest person to achieve your desires, no one else. Instead of having self-doubt in your capabilities, develop self-confidence, tune out the noise from others, and do what is best for you.

FA Hayek, a father to Austrian Economics, has a book titled Law, Legislation and Liberty. In it he compares laws vs. legislation. Law is the organic order of mankind that grows out of societal norms, whereas legislation is enactments by governments and congress. Walter E. Williams, in this FEE post from 2009, summarized how to look at law:

Customs, traditions, mores, and rules of etiquette, not laws and government regulations, are what make for a civilized society. These behavioral norms, mostly transmitted by example, word-of-mouth, and religious teachings, represent a body of wisdom distilled through ages of experience, trial, and error.

The societal norms that create civilized society are the status quo we live in today.

Status Quo as a Law

Legislation, the creation of legal precedent by the state, can be held above citizens based on government agencies. If you violate legislation you can be ticketed, arrested, tried, and/or jailed. However, law – the natural social order, also referred to as the status quo – doesn’t have such strong penalties for violators.

Understanding the Difference: Law vs Legislation

Since status quo is merely a law, we can violate the law when it’s best fit. Part of living free is developing an understanding of this difference. Some social norms can be for our benefit, but there are certain norms that, if broken, can result in a freer lifestyle.  A major one that comes to mind is education.

There is no federal requirement that says all persons must have a college education. There isn’t even a federal requirement for completing grade school. But there is a strong social norm that pushes people into the education mindset: grade school, high school, college, and beyond, but this is merely a social law. We can break this law without the fear of punishment via penalties or jail time. We can opt out of the status quo.

Breaking the Status Quo

Education is only one area of social norms. There are plenty of others like materialism (keeping up with the Joneses), loyalty to employers, and many other examples of the status quo. It’s important to remember these are only laws, they aren’t legislation. There is no government mandate exclaiming we must live by the rules society deems to be right. There’s nothing that says we have to do the things only our friends and family approve of.

I am not suggesting anarchy, or purposefully breaking societal norms as rebellion. What I am suggesting is looking at the society we live in. Examining the kind of person we want to become. And understanding if what’s holding us back is an act of legislation or if it’s only the status quo trying to make us stay within the confines of society. We can break the status quo and thrive, but it starts with a general understanding of law vs. legislation.

Here’s the secret: Finding happiness is nothing more than a mindset.

I have spent a lot of time “looking” for happiness. I’ve also spent a lot of time feeling pity for myself. But at the end of the day, the greatest thing I’ve ever discovered is being in true bliss. I know what you’re thinking, it’s not easy to “find” happiness. I am constantly trying to find it but can’t seem to grasp happiness for myself. Stop right there, happiness is a mindset…

The Happiness Mindset

I don’t want to warp your mind. Finding happiness isn’t as easy as snapping your fingers, which is pretty damn easy. But it’s still pretty easy to do. It requires becoming an optimist, tuning out noise, and focusing on the one person that matters most, yourself. Finding happiness isn’t about doing the things that other people deem acceptable, it’s about doing the things that your inner-self loves to enjoy.

Training Yourself to be Happy

The happiness mindset can be achieved in a multiple of ways, I don’t doubt that. For me, however, happiness arrives when I think about myself first. I put who I am, and what I stand for, above everything else. Once I come up with my commandments, or pillars, of who I am, I can start building the blocks around that. Happiness, for me, is creating the foundation that I know I can survive on and then surrounding myself with the people, books, blogs, and bosses that bring the best out of my fundamentals.

Looking to Yourself for Happiness

Here’s the thing, if you want to be happy, start looking inward. Start looking at who you are, who you’re about to become, and who you’re becoming in the future. If all three of these are in line then start building your support system. If they’re not in line then do some deeper in-looking and figure out who you are, who you’re about to become, and who you’re future self is.

Once you have figured these things out, happiness will find you. If you’re not in a place where happiness is around you remember that happiness comes to those who believe in themselves. Being confident in who you are is the start that’ll get you to happiness. If you don’t have confidence in yourself please reach out to me (my contact info can be found on my homepage) because I assure you I can find you something you can find confidence in.