Living Fearlessly: The Path to Limitless Life (Dan Pena)
What if you were afraid of nothing? Imagine not fearing man, beast, financial bankruptcy—nothing. Do you understand what that would mean? How would your life change? Once you become fearless, life becomes limitless.
I’m not afraid of anything. I should be dead by now. I’ve been run over by a charging buffalo, got up, chased it down, and killed it. I killed a Kodiak bear with a knife. You can’t kill me; I believe that with all my heart. You can’t kill me.
And of course, the people I’ve talked about—Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford, Rockefeller, Steve Jobs—they’re all tough. Snowflakes melt under pressure. In 1986, the average man’s handshake pressure was 118 pounds. In 2016, it was 96 pounds. Testosterone levels and sperm counts tested 50 years ago and today show that they are producing 60 to 70 percent of the testosterone levels and sperm counts they did back then. We’re dying out.
Everybody’s scared to death of what might happen. They want to come across as your friend. It’s like my snowflake test. The first question, paraphrasing it, is: What would you do if somebody spat in your wife’s face? The answers range from, “Well, I’d try to ascertain what kind of day he was having, and if he had a bad day, I’d try to be understanding,” to “I’d be in prison for murder. I would beat the guy to death.”
The Importance of Taking Action
Is that what we need today? No. I’m not saying that’s me, though. But I am advocating that men act like they have a pair. There’s never an easy time to make a hard decision—never. But what you have to be able to do is pull the trigger, take action. Reading books and listening to podcasts is not taking action; it’s just another form of procrastination.
The main differentiation between high-performance people is they believe in the extraordinary. Remember, you’re never going to exceed your highest and wildest expectations. For those of you that want to be millionaires, you’re never going to make 10 million. For those of you who want to make 10 million, you’re never going to make 100 million. For those who want to make 100 million, you’re never going to be a billionaire. Your subconscious starts to slow down as you get closer to your goal.
Life Regrets and Choices
I have three regrets in life. One, I’m a combat-trained army officer who never saw combat. Two, the night before my mother died, I told her, “God damn it, you’re not going to die,” and she was dead in the morning. Three, I didn’t set my goals high enough. Jack Welch said it much better: “There is no such thing as work-life balance; there are work-life choices, and they have consequences.”
There are consequences for missing significant events, but are they greater than the consequences of being dirt broke when you die? Ask yourself that. Would you rather choose between your daughter’s 16th birthday or being flat broke, homeless when your time comes? Conventional wisdom and political correctness have it all backwards. You’re a bad person because you missed a birthday, right? And the pundits who tell you this are poor themselves.
Surround Yourself with the Right People
Next, you have to get by your friends. Show me your friends, and I’ll show you your future. If you’re hanging out at the pub, belching and farting, those people you’re going to the sports bars with are your friends. Then there’s just general pessimists and your own guilt, asking whether you deserve to be wealthy beyond measure. Then there’s fear—False Expectations Appearing Real—and society that wants to hold you down.
Strange times are these in which we live when the old and the young are taught falsehoods in school, and the person that tells the truth is called a lunatic and a fool. John Lennon said it differently: “Being honest may not get you many friends, but it will always get you the right ones.” From this point forward, no matter if you hated what I said or the way I said it, choose carefully the people you associate with.
Emotional Resilience and True Power
Warren Buffett once tweeted: “You will continue to suffer if you have an emotional reaction to everything that is said to you. True power is sitting back and observing things with logic. Power is restrained.” If words control you, that means everyone else can control you. Breathe, let things pass. In my day, they used to say, “Sticks and stones can break your bones, but words can never hurt you.” Now it’s the opposite.
There are major universities with safe rooms and buildings for students to go to if life becomes too stressful. If your adult child needs a safe space to avoid offensive words, you’ve failed as a parent. Most of us care what other people say and think. If you can reduce that emotional baggage just a little, you have no idea how much freer you’ll be and how much more you’ll accomplish in life.
Good Habits and Peer Influence
Most people have poor habits. I’ve had the same habits for about 50 years. When I feel whimpish, I just say, “What’s wrong with you? Come on,” and I just go out and do it. If I hadn’t built up these habits 20-30 years ago, at age 70, I certainly wouldn’t be doing this. Good habits are hard to come by, but what’s even harder to come by are people with good habits that you can be around.
Machiavelli said, “A ruler is judged by who he surrounds himself with.” If I were to decide what kind of person you are by the people closest to you, what would I think of you? How would I judge you? People don’t spend enough time selecting their peer group, even if they have good habits. That’s not enough because they go to default.
High Performance and Time Management
High-performance individuals never give tacit approval. I go out of my way to make sure that if I hear bullshit, I call it out. This keeps you with the right people and gets your message out loud and clear. Another high-performance habit is Sam Walton’s sundown rule, which means that before he left the office every day, he answered every message and cleared his desk.
Most people lack time management skills. The reporting system I use is what I learned as a young officer with NATO. It’s basically: What are your goals for the day? What did you accomplish yesterday? What are your challenges? If what you accomplished doesn’t relate back to the goals you set for the week, there’s a disconnect. Challenges come up—speed bumps, I call them. When I showed up for a meeting with Klaus Kleinfeld in a wheelchair with a drip, I was almost dead three days before. That’s commitment.
Programming for Success
Kids are not programmed for success, but once in a while, there are kids who are. Tiger Woods was showing how to hit a golf ball on TV at age three. The Williams sisters were programmed for success since they were little. I was programmed by accident. What have you done to program your children for success?
My dad had one goal for me growing up: to keep me alive until I reached the age of reason. My mother spent her whole life trying to make me what she wasn’t. Can you say the same for your parents and your children? I’m not here by accident, and yet I still push the envelope. I believe with all my heart that you were meant to achieve greatness. Whoever put us here, however we got here, we were put here to be all we can be, not a fraction thereof.