For the past few days my LinkedIn feed has been filled with people talking about the great influence Clayton Christensen had on their lives and personal philosophies and that’s fine but I never heard of this guy.
I’ve read now that he came up with the concept of “disruption” and also wrote “The Innovator’s Dilemma,” which I have heard of, so I’m not about to sit here and say that just because I don’t know who the hell this guy was, he wasn’t a great guy.
But he was nobody to me, and I was a nobody to him (and by definition, almost everyone who ever existed) and that’s all I’m trying to say here. The moral of this story is that the nobody who writes Vectroblog can’t be a person who likes all the people who are worth liking. Or maybe it’s this: no matter how many people think you’re king shit of the universe, somewhere there’s a dude who made it through half a century and doesn’t know you from the dude who pumps gas at Costco. Not that there’s anything wrong with pumping gas at Costco – in fact I may end up – no, let’s not put that out in to the universe just yet.
I would however, like to take this opportunity to wonder if any of my gurus will warrant such a disruption on my LinkedIn page when it’s their turn to shuffle off this mortal coil?
Like Tony Robbins, master persuader, and a guy – or possibly extraterrestrial – with acromegaly, who changed my life and so many others with his own weird brand of NLP and positivity. Oh yeah. When this guy goes, it’ll be tribute city. Although I’m not sure Tony will really die, he’ll probably just transition into some kind of energy being in about a million years or so.
Like James Altucher, who writes books about quitting your job, that make it much easier not to quit your job, because reading them makes you feel like you just did, or could. Yes, again I think we’ll have tribute city, from all the other self-help bloggers. I wonder what they’ll do with his remains. I feel like he’ll probably have himself recycled. Maybe there’s an opportunity here for low-cost Internet enabled funerals….Air C&B?*
Like Scott Adams, who failed his way to success, and beat linguistic dystonia, and reinvented himself as a political pundit?
Actually yeah, probably. Those guys are famous. But what about this guy?
This is Brian Tracy. He’s been doing salesman self-help for decades and for my money he’s the king of all gurus. He taught me about affirmations before Scott Adams. He told me “I like myself” before Kamal Ravikant figured out that’s all he had to do turn his life around.
And Brian Tracy, up there in his starched white shirt and corporate Robocop-villain lookin’ face, taught me about true inner peace.
No, seriously. You think a guy like that is just in it for the money, or the most crass, commercial dude ever. But one piece of productivity advice he gave just stuck with me through the years and I give it to you now, for free.
Sit and do nothing.
He said that one of the most productive activities anyone could engage in was to just sit and do nothing. Find a spot, sit, and do nothing. No distractions. Stare into space. Look at grass growing. Watch clouds drift by and evaporate. Whatever. At first, you’ll go out of your mind, feeling like you should be doing something but eventually, at some point, that feeling goes away. And you’re fine. And then answers to questions start to flow. Ideas come. Your brain is freed.
This, in case you’re wondering, is the root of meditation. It’s all it is – stopping thinking, letting your mind stop racing.
I was always blown away by this advice because it’s so true and so incongruous for the mental image of 80’s guy. He taught me to meditate without any hocus-pocus – just to let my brain have some headspace, decades before Andy Puddicomb made billions (of pennies) on the same concept.
I don’t know how old Brian Tracy is, but when it’s his time to become someone who will always have been mortal, forever, I hope that I can disrupt my followers’ LinkedIn feeds with an admonishment to slow down, and realize that true self-help comes from the self, and some gurus don’t stand on beaches, wear robes, or build their own lightsabers. We learned in Ratatouille that a great chef can come from anywhere. Well, a great monk can, too.
Later.
* Cremate & Burial