Two months ago I started this website and made a commitment to myself to publish three times a week: Monday, Wednesday and Friday. The goal for every blog post is simple: to inspire and motivate you (the reader) to create your life’s work.
One month ago I made a commitment to myself to start, finish and ship my first major writing project. That project turned into my first eBook, The Art of Instigating, and its purpose is to expand on the core message of this website and my philosophy on creating worthwhile stuff.
To be honest with you, I had no idea what I was getting into with either of these two goals.
Publishing a quality blog post three days a week is way more grueling than I ever imagined. It takes hours to go from a mercurial idea for a potential blog post to the final published content.
It's arguably an insane, unsustainable endeavor.
And, for the eBook, I completely underestimated the difficulty and time necessary to craft something compelling, enjoyable, and, most importantly, useful.
I thought it was going to be easy. It wasn't.
In both cases, I should have failed.
Except that, in both cases (the blog posts and the eBook), it somehow worked out.
The point is this:
Maybe there is something to the insane audacity of big goals.
Maybe, by being just a bit mad, overestimating our own abilities, and underestimating the difficulty of a potential project, we tap into certain powers that otherwise lie dormant.
You see, any reasonable person would not commit to this kind of goal.
The reasonable person would see, quite plainly, the amount of effort and time needed to do something like this (and its lack of any kind of monetary return on investment) and pass.
The reasonable person would move on to something with some sort of security, guarantee, or certainty; something where they show up at a certain time to do what they're told until the bell rings and they can go home.
The reasonable person understands that only a madman would dive into uncertainty joyfully; only a madman would hazard the possibility of failure, setback, and defeat gratefully; only a madman would set audacious, unreasonable goals and expect to achieve them.
And that is why the madman is responsible for the achievement of all unreasonably audacious goals: because he does set them.
So be unreasonable, be a bit mad, and set your audacious goals.
Who knows, you might just bring them to life.
"The warrior knows that he is free to choose his desires, and he makes these decisions with courage, detachment and - sometimes - with just a touch of madness." - [Warrior of the Light]
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