There is a certain pleasure in knowing that it is not impossible to get what you want out of life.
Advertisers know this. When you browse the internet or walk past a magazine rack you are tempted with headlines that promise:
“
3 Steps To Becoming Rich”
Or
“How To Lose 30 pounds in 14 days”
Or
“2 Quick Secrets To Find Your Soulmate and Love This Weekend”
Or even,
“How To Go From Depressed To Happy, Overnight”
Most of those promises are just a hook to get you to buy something. They lure you in but rarely hold up their end of the deal.
These four subjects (health, wealth, love, and happiness) are appealing to us precisely because they are the raw ingredients we need to live the good life.
But in my experience, getting the good life isn’t quite that simple. You must avoid chasing a mirage, the lies of modern day life (that is actually step #32 in the 67 Steps).
There are no “3 quick secrets” or anything of real value that you can get overnight. That’s what marketers want to sell you.
The real question I asked myself many years ago was, “If there aren’t 3 steps to get whatever you want, how many steps really are there? And if you can’t get success overnight, how quickly can you actually make a big change?”
Your success in life hinges upon you finding the answer to these questions.
In some ways the answer has already been laid out by the self-made billionaire Charlie Munger when he said, “To get what you want, you have to deserve what you want. The world is not yet a crazy enough place to reward a whole bunch of undeserving people.“
The 67 Steps are not a get-rich-quick scheme, although I am sure they can make you richer than you’ve ever imagined.
The 67 Steps will not make you lose 30 pounds overnight, although you can use them to get in the best shape of your life.
The 67 Steps will not bring you a soul mate or rekindle your love life in 24 hours, But as Dr. Helen Fisher teaches, we are attracted to people on our level and as the 67 Steps raises your level, the quality of love you attract will rise accordingly.
John F. Kennedy was right, "A rising tide lifts all boats."
Start by asking yourself: do you tap dance out of bed each morning? Are you so excited about life that you can't wait to wake up? Not many people are. But it would be nice. I have been mentored by people who live life like this; great men like Joel Salatin and Allan Nation. It's a beautiful way to live.
It sounds like an impossible feat - to really live the dream. Like I said in my recent TED Talk, everybody wants the good life, but not everybody gets the good life.
The good news is that you don't have to be like everyone else. You can be the exception to the rule.
As Thoreau wrote in Walden Pond: “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation."
But if you proceed carefully you will not be part of those desperate masses.
You must start by following Pablo Picasso’s rule of life:
"Never permit a dichotomy to rule your life, a dichotomy in which you hate what you do so you can have pleasure in your spare time. Look for a situation in which your work will give you as much happiness as your spare time."
Joel Salatin told me the same thing, “If you have to go on a vacation from your job, never come back.”
There is no need to compromise. You can find whatever it is that you want from life.
For you, maybe it’s becoming a millionaire, or getting the perfect body, or falling madly in love, or waking up each morning feeling alive and optimistic.
But you won’t find it if you are looking in the same places as everyone else.
Don't follow the crowd, because most of the world is just the blind leading the blind.
Fortunately, there have been many wise people over the last 8,000 years of civilization. And they point the way. They have left clues. But can these clues really be mapped out or is it just the old causation vs. correlation argument? Is there a pattern?
I think there is. Throughout history, a handful of people have found out how to live an extraordinary life. These
67 Steps I am about to share with you now are my attempt to lay out this success ‘blueprint’.
