First, we began to scale down. It’s amazing what you collect after ten or more years of marriage. We had an attic full of stuff, a garage packed to the rafters, and more on the back porch. But we knew if we were to move to Los Angeles, we’d need to be lean and mean, so we had an immediate garage sale, gave some things away, and got our entire world down to a rental truck and trailer.
Next, we started networking. I knew that I had limited severance pay and would need all of that to help us move, so I needed some work and needed it quick. I started phoning everyone I knew in the industry, started e-mailing friends, widening the net. And it worked. An old friend at a major energy company gave me my first freelance assignment, and it began building from there.
We changed our priorities, our focus, our habits, and our thinking, and we were able to take a difficult situation and turn it from tragedy into triumph.
When asked about his secret for fabulous wealth, billionaire H. L. Hunt described it in a four-step formula:
1. Decide what you want.
2. Decide what you are willing to give up to get it.
3. Set your priorities accordingly.
4. Be about it!
How much did it take to buy you away from your dream? Whatever it was, the time to change is now. Make a commitment, take a stand, and be about it!
» JOLT #2
THE HEADACHE IS WORTH IT
The Joy of Hitting the Wall
Things do not change; we change.
—HENRY DAVID THOREAU
After I was fired, my wife and I began the greatest journey of change we had ever experienced, because I had hit a wall. I had no other choice. I had run out of options, and there was only one answer—change or die.
A Perhaps you’ve hit your wall. Maybe you’ve been fired, divorced, financially ruined, or have hit bottom from substance abuse, been humiliated, scared, or had a close call with death. If your life has been completely turned upside down and you’re at the end of your rope, then you have it easy.
That’s right—you have it easy!
When you change direction in life, the most difficult aspect of the change process is beginning. Taking the first step. Just as I did, most people will rest on their laurels, take the easy way out, rationalize their options, sacrifice their future, or diminish their past—anything—to keep from changing. If you’ve hit your wall and have no other options, then your decision is already made. Your choice has been decided and you’re on the way up.
But if you haven’t quite hit bottom yet and been jolted into reality, the choice is going to be much tougher. Your thoughts might include:
Sure I’m frustrated with my job, but at least it’s a paycheck, and a lot of people are out of work right now.
Our sales aren’t what I’d like them to be, but making a major company change right now would take some time.
Yeah, I wanted to be an actor, but moving to New York or Los Angeles would be a lot of work, and I’m not sure I really want to go back to living in a one-bedroom apartment again.
I’m not really drinking that much, and after all, I could really quit just about any time.
Oh, I dreamed about a different life, but that was a kid’s dream. It’s not really something that’s realistic for me to pursue now.
There’s no question that I could advance faster if I got my college degree, but I work all day, so why should I spend my evenings going to class?
I could go on and on. I don’t know your particular frustration, but I’m sure you have a million excuses for why you’ve never begun your journey to change. You haven’t hit your particular wall, so your life could easily go on for years, maybe your whole life, before you realize you’ve traded your dream for a shallow, empty copy.
» WHEN A GUN’S AT YOUR HEAD, YOU CAN’T AFFORD TO BE COMPLACENT.
If you’re like most people, to begin the journey of change, you have to reach the place where you realize there is simply no other choice. But if you have the slightest frustration that perhaps your dream is dying, then that’s all you need. There really are second chances in life, and this is yours. Don’t wait until you hit bottom, get fired, gamble your life away, settle for a dead-end job, or lose your spouse to divorce. Don’t wait until you’re too old, too cranky, or too locked into your lifestyle.
In their book Unleashing the Killer App, Larry Downes and Chunka Mui described the Law of Disruption: “Social, economic, and legal systems change incrementally, but technology changes exponentionally” (29). It’s been said that every twelve to eighteen months, the processing power of computers doubles. Technology is changing every day, but people change incrementally— and some, not at all.
But when people won’t change, circumstances have a powerful way of forcing the issue. As eighteenth-century poet, writer, and critic Samuel Johnson said: “Nothing focuses the mind like a hanging.” More recently, former secretary of state Henry Kissinger translated it to: “The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously.”
Foresight is a marvelous thing, but the truth is, as long as we see any other way out, very few of us will muster the will to make real change happen.
The music industry is filled with the ghosts of executives who didn’t recognize online music downloading as a viable business. As I write this chapter, Amazon.com has announced that e-books have surpassed the sales of traditional hardbound volumes, and just like the music industry, book publishers who didn’t recognize the shift
