Learning Success is Like Slaying a Minotaur

Your glorious intent towards mastery will always be an on again, off again, endeavor. Like when you start going to the gym and then you slack off for a week, that week might becomes a month, so now you’re 40 pounds overweight again.

Perhaps you started practicing your social confidence exercises by approaching several women a day, and this went on for several weeks, and when most of them flaked or didn’t return texts you skipped a day, and then a week, and then online porn became an attractive option.

My own epic fable has been a series of false starts. Like at the moment I am procrastinating on starting my next book. But instead I’ve been focusing on developing my business. I should be focusing on the 80/20 rule, and do the twenty percent activity that will bring 80 percent of my long term wealth, which would be publishing more books.

Give an image to your pursuit, whether that be money, seduction, health, power, status or creative output, as if it’s a Minotaur raging in a labyrinth. In order to escape the maze you must battle the beast. If you fight that monster long enough, eventually he will relent and you can piggy back that bastard out of there. But you are going to lose many, many battles with him and have to drag your sorry ass back to the centre of the maze to heal. Nobody defeats the Minotaur on the first try. The key is to heal up, and get back to the fight as soon as possible.

If you can’t figure it out the first time, you start again, you come back to it when your mind is fresh.

For example, if you are an incredibly negative person, you always whine and complain to your friends about how life isn’t fair, and how you deserve more. Then you realize this sort of thinking won’t help you, so you take a 30 day negativity challenge and every time you think a negative thought, you catch it, write down the instance on a notepad and then dismiss the thought. For one month you are not allowed to think negatively for more than a few seconds.

Maybe you only make it four days because some a$&$*e cut you off in traffic, and you f&$*%ing snapped. It set you off on a shitty day and you didn’t write anything down. So after a chill week off you start fresh and try again. This time you make it seven days. That’s the big secret. Try again, and again, and again.

When I wrote A Thousand Tiny Failures, I started and stopped a dozen times over a year before I was able to finish the first draft. I had to fail over, and over. But every time I started again things a bit more clear. The path was a bit brighter.

Very few people can stay in the zone their whole life. It takes a tremendous amount of will power, perseverance and ambition. So the next time you quit that mission and you feel crappy about it, remember this article. Start again. I give you my permission. And this time, stay on the bull and defeat him.