What Leads to Greatness?

There Are Only Two Questions in Life...

• Bruce Lee
• Michael Jordan
• Kobe Bryant
• Donald Glover
• Siddartha Gautauma (The Buddha)
• My Father

These are the people I consider to be great. These individuals honestly expressed themselves timelessly and will continue to inspire me for years to come.

But how does one reach their own level of success or greatness?

The self-help market is saturated with books on “achieving success", "getting what you want", and "This is how you can live your best life."

So what works?

I can tell you right now, it is NOT through self-discipline. It never was, never is, never will be. Despite how loud the self-discipline advocacy is.

Disciple is an efficient way of knowing the basics or breaking the barrier to entry: learning how to read, write, or the fundamental skills in the respective crafts.

But for greatness and success? Discipline is a mere fume. It can only take you so far before you get back to the bottom again and buy another book on "how-to-achieve success".

You cannot self-discipline yourself to greatness or success. It has never happened in human history. If self-discipline is not the answer, what is?

Ironically, the answers are questions:

“What Do You Want?” And “Are You Sure?”

The Big Want

Before we get any further, the most critical question you have to ask yourself is
“What Do You Want?”

What is it? Be precise and clear-cut about it.  What is the Desire?

There's so much marketing for “self-discipline, grind, the hustle, and hard work."

Before you can work hard, you need to know exactly what you want with precision and dissection. If you don't know what you want, how could you possibly get there?

This isn't to say hard work isn't required. Hard work will be present throughout the journey.

Hard work is different than self-discipline. You need to put a significant amount of effort to see your dreams come true.

But hard work is a feature. It's not the vehicle for greatness and success. Let alone, self-discipline.

Self-discipline is dragging your feet to do something you don’t want to do. Self-discipline is forcing yourself into an unwanted activity. It's self-inflicted enslavement.

How can you possibly achieve greatness/success if you're dragging your feet the entire way? It's impossible.

You have to be willing. You have to be sprinting. Like a cheetah on the hunt, laser-focused on the object it wants to take.

This is not a trait of self-discipline, but of Nature...and Nature is anything but disciplined.

To be great, there has to be something else. That “something else” is Devotion.

Devotion is loyalty to the mission ahead. Devotion is chasing what you want wholeheartedly. To go without any hesitation, by any means necessary.

This is the complete opposite of self-discipline.

Self-Discipline is framed around “I don’t want to, but I guess I will”.
Devotion is framed only around “I will”.

Devotion is your greatest desire burning intensely within you. So much so that you have no choice, but to fulfill that desire. You're willing to do anything necessary without a single doubt in your mind.

You can't become great at something if you don’t want to do it. This is why you need to ruthlessly dissect "what do you want?"

Then ask yourself, "Are you sure?"

(Note: Your answer to this question is known within a sub-second)

• The Disciplined is unserious. The Devoted is serious.
• The Disciplined is about loss. The Devoted is about gain.
• The Disciplined is unwilling. The Devoted is willing.
• The Disciplined is fragmented. The Devoted is whole.

If I could use the term, "antifragility" coined by the great living philosopher, Nassim Taleb...

The Disciplined Mind is "fragile." Eventually, it will quit or break.
The Devoted Mind is "antifragile." It gains momentum and strength, no matter the volatility.

• Do not force yourself to do something because you "should".
  Do it because You. Want. It.
• Do not drag your feet towards goals.
  Sprint without looking back.
• Move with yourself instead of against yourself.
  You will travel way farther.

It's never about the "how". It's always about the "why".

It’s never about doing what you don’t want to do and still doing it. It’s about you desiring with such intensity that you don't have time to think about “I don’t want to".

If you want to be average, be disciplined.
If you want to be great, be devoted.

The Greats Are Not Disciplined

In the end, we all get what we want. We all submit to our greatest desire. With every desire, there's a desire under the desire.

The Greats are no exception. No one great has ever been disciplined.

If you ask the greats on “how did you achieve greatness?”

• They may say, "self-discipline."
• They may say, "hard work."
• They may say "always on the grind, grind, grind."

They may say all this. But if you read between their words it cannot be so.

A recent and visible example is the basketball player, the great Kobe Bryant.

In interviews, there are talks of Kobe Bryant getting little to no sleep. Instead of sleeping, he would go to the gym and work out.

Everyone in the audience and comment sections is in awe and amazed at how "hard-working" or how "disciplined" Kobe Bryant was.

Sure. Maybe Kobe Bryant thought that his success was due to his "self-discipline" too.

I thought that as well. But to be in a high-level league like the NBA, you need to have a high-level degree of discipline, to begin with. If discipline was the only requirement to be great, there would've been hundreds of Kobe Bryant-level players.

But how many did we get? One. So it can't be discipline.

So I asked myself...

• "What made Kobe so great?"
• "What were that x-factor that separated him and others?"
• "What made him rise above everyone else?"

Everything clicked for me when I heard one statement. It was a statement from the undisputed, greatest basketball player of all time.

In an interview, Michael Jordan commented on Kobe's championship mentality. He said,

"He [Kobe Bryant] wants it so badly...He is cursed as much as I am."

That was it.

Kobe Bryant's greatness was not the product of self-discipline. His greatness was the product of his strongest desire manifesting himself. That desire was winning in his sport…by any means necessary.

If it meant no sleep, hard talks with teammates, less family time, etc...It didn't matter. The greatest desire will always win. Without a doubt, Kobe Bryant was devoted to that desire.

Kobe Bryant's genuine desire was to become the best basketball player he could be...and he succeeded.

The Highest Form of Devotion

A more common, but absolutely no less-great example is a parent providing for their child.

A good parent does not self-discipline their way in providing for their child.

A good parent does not say “I need to practice self-discipline into this awful job for my child.” Only a fragile parent thinks that way.

A good parent says, “I am doing this because I love my child. The job being awful or not is irrelevant. My greatest desire is my child's well-being."

This unwavering desire drives the parent to take care of the child by any means necessary. The well-being of the child over anything else. I consider this the highest form of devotion.

Discipline will temporarily help you endure limits. Devotion will infinitely take you past them.

If there is something that you truly desire, you will figure it out because you are Serious.

If you are Serious, you are devoted. If you are devoted, you almost have no choice but to figure it out. The gravitational pull is too great. Even death seems like a trivial obstacle.

Discipline is weak. Motivation is weaker. It’s unwavering, clear-sighted, devotional Desire that propels individuals to great heights.

Where Can I Be Great?

"I want to be great, but I don’t know where to be great in?"

This is a valid question because I struggle with this question too.  But after some exploration and experience, there is a direction to start walking in.

There's the cliché answer,

“Do what makes you happy and follow your passion."  

This answer isn't wrong, but let’s go a little deeper than that.

Our greatest works, our greatest performances, and our greatest moments in life are when we disappear.

You were so absorbed in the activity that you became one with the activity. There wasn't you and the activity. There was no duality. There was just the experience.

When reflecting on those moments, you may ask yourself, “How did that even happen in the first place?" It was as if you and Time disappeared.

This magical state is called “Flow”. A term coined by the Hungarian psychologist, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. (Try saying his name 5x fast)

"Flow: The state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it." -Mihayl C., Flow

Examples of Flow:

• A great conversation with someone.
• A workout you enjoy.
• A performance (sport, dance, music, etc).
• Reading and writing something you're interested in.
• Anything that involves skill and enjoyment.

Whenever you enjoy doing something, there's no self-conflict. You are doing it willingly. You become immersed in the activity and nothing else matters except the activity.

Anything that puts us into the flow state makes us happier and more productive in life. Why?

Because you simply enjoy doing it. By enjoying it, you do it with excellence.

Flow is not something we should do once a week, but every day. Flow is not something that should be in one part of our lives. It should be in every facet of our lives.

• Flow in Health
• Flow in Wealth
• Flow in Love

In conflict, you are two. In Flow, you are one.

Find your flow, find your life. Once you find your life, you don't have to chase greatness. Greatness chases you.