Begin with the end in mind. Define success for yourself, prioritize your values, and commit to your decisions. Know who you are so you can guide yourself on the right path to hit more greenlights.
EPIGRAPH
- Sometimes you gotta go back to go forward
- To see where you came from, where you’ve been, and how you got here
WHAT’S A GREENLIGHT?
- Greenlights mean go, advance, continue
- Greenlights can also be disguised as yellow or red lights
- Sometimes red lights give us what we need
- Catching greenlights is about skill. We can catch more green lights by simply identifying where the red ones are and changing course to avoid them
- We can also earn greenlights, engineer, and design for them
- Catching green lights is also about timing, the world’s timing and ours. It can also be about sheer luck and fate
- When we accept the outcome of a given situation as inevitable, then how we choose to deal with it is relative
- The problems we face today eventually turn into blessings in the rearview mirror of life
- In time, yesterday’s red light leads us to a greenlight
PART ONE: OUTLAW LOGIC: A WEDNESDAY NIGHT, 1974
- His parents taught him not to hate, not to say I can’t, and to never lie
- We need discipline, guidelines, context, and responsibility early in any new endeavor
- It’s the time to sacrifice, to learn, to observe, to take heed
- Similar to Jocko Willink Discipline = Freedom
PART 2: FIND YOUR FREQUENCY: SPRING 1988
- Note to self: Process of elimination and identity
- The first step that leads to our identity in life is usually “I know who I’m not”
- We should get rid of the excess in our lives that keep us from being more of ourselves
- Prescribe: Boundaries to freedom
- We need finites, borders, gravity, shape and resistance to have order
- This order creates responsibility which creates judgment, which creates choice
- In the choice lies the freedom, to create the weather that gives us the most favorable win we must remove that which causes the most friction to our core being
- This process of elimination creates order by default
PART THREE: DIRT ROADS AND AUTOBAHNS: JULY 1989
- Note to self: When we know what we want to do, knowing when to do it is the hard part. Get them early so you don’t have to get them as often. Prevent before the cure
- Note to self: One in a row
- Any success takes one in a row. Do one thing well and then another, over and over until The end
- “The sooner we become less impressed with our accomplishments and more involved, we get better at them”
- Appreciate the journey, not the destination; be more involved with our lives and with our relationships
PART FOUR: THE ART OF RUNNING DOWNHILL: JANUARY 1994
- Note to self: When you can, ask yourself if you want to before you do
- If you want your jeans pressed, do you want to?
- Lesson learned: We have to prepare to have freedom
- We have to do the work to then do the job. We have to prepare for the job so then we can be free to do the work
- Note to self: We must learn the consequence of negligence
- It’s not just what we do it’s what we don’t do that’s important as well. We are guilty by omission
- Note to self: If only
- It means you wanted something but did not get it. More often than not we don’t get what we want because we quit early or didn’t take the necessary risk to get it
- Prescribe: A roof is a man-made thing
- Don’t create imaginary constraints. Or a way to think we don’t deserve these fortunes when they are within our grasp? Who are we to think we haven’t earned them?
- Prescribe: Why we all need a walkabout (meditate)
- We are more constantly bombarded by unnatural stimuli. We need to put ourselves in places of decreased sensory input so we can hear the background signals of our psychological processes
- Note to self: Sometimes we have to leave what we know to find out what we know
PART FIVE: TURN THE PAGE: OCTOBER 23, 1999
- Note to self: Some people want the AC on in the gym so they won’t sweat. He wears his beanie in July so he will
- Note to self: Sometimes which choice you make is not as important as making a choice and committing to it
- Bumper sticker: Some people look for an excuse to do. Others look for an excuse not to do
- Great leaders are not always in front, they also know who to follow
PART SIX: THE ARROW DOESN’T SEE THE TARGET, THE TARGET DRAWS THE ARROW
- Note to self: The great man is not all to each. He is each to all
- The genius can do anything but does one thing at a time
- “The arrow doesn’t seek the target, the target draws the arrow….sometimes we don’t need to make things happen.”
- Sometimes, we don’t have to actively search for something or make things happen. Sometimes, we will attract what we need at the right time. Things will happen at the right time, and sometimes good things happen when you stop actively looking for them. Be patient, and put yourself in a position to receive it.
- I had five things on my proverbial desk to tend to daily: family, foundation, acting, a production company, and a music label. I felt like I was making B’s in all five. By shutting down the production company and the music label, I eliminated two of my five commitments with plans to make A’s in the other three.
PART SEVEN: BE BRAVE, TAKE THE HILL: FALL 2008
- Prescription: Define success for yourself
- Continue to ask yourself, what is success to me?
- Your answer may change over time and that’s OK. But whatever your answer is, don’t choose anything that would jeopardize your soul
- Prioritize who you are, who you want to be
- He refused to do romantic comedies and initially turned down a $5M role. The offer went up to $14.5M and still did not budge.
PART EIGHT: LIVE YOUR LEGACY NOW: NOVEMBER 7, 2011
- We don’t live longer when we try not to die, we live longer when we are too busy living
- Relatively, we are livin. Life is our résumé. It is our story to tell, and the choices we make write the chapters. Can we live in a way where we look forward to looking back?