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Edgy Conversations: Episode 5
by Dan Waldschmidt
Success (always) comes to those standing closest to the edge of explosion.
You just can’t help it.
If you are close to where huge opportunity explodes, you get caught up in the inferno of massive mind-blowing success.
It doesn’t matter what industry you are in, what your job title might be, or how much education you have.
Frankly, it doesn’t even matter what you think of as success.
If you are standing next to opportunity when it explodes you’ll be a part of something so special and amazing that you’re likely to never be the same ever again.
And in all the best of ways.
Part timing. Part patience. Part preparation.
Getting to the edge of explosion is no easy task.
(Staying there can be even harder.)
And it’s no wonder.
There’s nothing you can do to put yourself at the edge of explosion…
Nothing.
You can’t buy your way there. You can’t educate your way there.
You can’t bully, banter, or barter your way there.
It requires you to “be”…
And that’s not a secret formula or set of “get rich quick” steps that you can easily follow.
It requires doing, yes. But doing as the result of who you are. Not doing to define who you should be.
You do because you are.
Not to be.
It’s a fundamental quality of highly effective people, companies, and ideas.
They focus on:
- Being amazing – not just doing amazing things…
- Being disciplined – not just doing disciplined things…
- Being giving – not just giving as an activity…
- Being extreme – not just doing extreme things…
And “being” takes all the hard work out of figuring out what to do. And that is most of the battle around being truly effective.
So, if being at the edge of explosion is where you’ll find yourself most effective, why aren’t more of us working to put ourselves there?
Why aren’t we focusing on being “edgy”?
1. “Doing” looks about the same
For a lot of the time, “doing” and “being” look a lot alike. In fact, “doing” actually looks a heck of a lot more productive.
The classic example of this is timing when we leave the office to be a few minutes after the boss. Ever catch yourself doing that? We don’t need to be at the office. We aren’t doing anything productive. But hanging around makes us look like highly productive people.
Sometimes we even fool ourselves into thinking that we really need to be there doing that.
It’s easier to do than be.
It’s easier to appear being productive than rejecting the social pressure to “hang out”.
It takes emotional guts.
And that quality, frankly, is a rarity among pretenders.
What you really start to notice is that the more audacious and amazing you set your goals, the less you need to do, the more you need to be, and the wider the gap really is between each of those.
2. Fear and pain distract us
Time and money aren’t the big things in life.
It’s pain and fear and loss that stop us from finding the edge of explosion.
We fear failure. We fear rejection. We fear being exposed.
And that fear distracts us from being an amazing person.
And not just fear, it’s pain.
It’s the pain of:
- Past regrets
- Being transparent
- Attempting to care
- Exhaustion
- Having discipline
It’s hurts us. We hurt. And we flinch.
And in that moment, in spite of our logic, our reasons, our explanations, we begin to move away from the edge of explosion.
Our desire for comfort, for relief, for the moment of pain to be gone robs us of our will to achieve outrageous success.
3. It’s lonely (and we want validation)
It’s lonely at the top. It’s lonely all by yourself. It’s lonely when logic, facts, and social pressures position themselves against the dreams you want to create for yourself.
The crowd is long gone. The applauding is over. The passion of the moment has passed.
You are left with your will to persist.
That is all.
And the truth is that what you really want is to feel like where you headed is the place where you really want to be. You crave that validation.
You can deal with the pain and the fear and the loss as long there is a someone cheering you on.
And so when the crowd turns and heads toward comfort, away from the edge of outrageous success, every part of our being demands that we follow.
Sometimes it’s even our closest friends and family who lead us away from the edge.
A mentor. A minister. A mission.
And, so, step by step we back away from everything that we could do and become the person that everyone around us thinks that we should be.
We step back from the edge of explosion.
Time to be “Edgy”.
Maybe it’s time to focus on something different.
Maybe the old mantras of strategy and process and critique are less important than you taking responsibility for being the type of person that is ready and willing and expecting to explode when an opportunity appears.
Maybe you need to be at the edge of explosion.
Everything you are will put you at the edge of explosion.
And when that explosion of opportunity happens, you’ll be the best prepared to realize amazing success.
