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Having studied the biographies of famous people, we will find that there is nothing supernatural in their success stories, and the recipe for success is simple and therefore accessible to everyone. So, if you follow your dream and abandon the words “but” and “should”, you can change a lot in life.
Steve Jobs Rule: Follow Your Heart
Remembering how Steve Jobs started, few parents would want to set him as an example to their children. The future creator of the legendary Apple brand dropped out of Reed College after studying for six months. “I didn’t see the point in it, I didn’t understand what to do with my life,” he explained his decision years later to students at Stanford University. “I decided to believe that everything would work out.”
He didn’t even remotely know what to do. He knew one thing for sure: he «must follow his heart.» At first, his heart led him to the typical hippie life of the 70s: he slept on the floor of fellow students, collected cans of Coca-Cola and traveled several miles for food in a Hare Krishna temple. At the same time, he enjoyed every minute, because he followed his curiosity and intuition.
Why Steve signed up for calligraphy courses, he himself did not realize at that moment, he just saw a bright poster on the campus.
But this decision many years later changed the world
If he hadn’t learned calligraphy, ten years later, the first Macintosh computer wouldn’t have such a vast array of typefaces and fonts. Perhaps the Windows operating system, too: Jobs believed that the Bill Gates corporation was shamelessly copying the Mac OS.
“What is the secret of Jobs’ creativity? asked one of the employees who worked at Apple for 30 years. — The history of calligraphy is all you need to know about the principles that drive it. I think you should get a job as a waiter or something until you find something you really love. If you haven’t found it, keep looking, don’t stop.» Jobs was lucky: he knew early on what he wanted to do.
He believed that half the success of an entrepreneur is perseverance. Many give up, unable to overcome difficulties. If you don’t love what you do, if you don’t have a passion, you won’t be able to make a breakthrough: «The only thing that kept me moving forward was that I loved my job.»
The words that change everything
Bernard Roth, director of the Stanford School of Design, has come up with some linguistic rules to help you achieve your goals. It is enough to exclude two words from the speech.
1. Replace «but» with «and»
How great is the temptation to say: «I want to go to the movies, but I have to work.» What difference would it make if instead you said, “I want to go to the movies and I need to work”?
Using the union «but», we set a task for the brain, and sometimes we come up with an excuse for ourselves. It is quite possible that, trying to get out of the “conflict of our own interests”, we will not do either one or the other, but in general we will do something else.
You can almost always do both — you just need to find a way
When we replace «but» with «and», the brain considers how to fulfill both conditions of the task. For example, we can watch a shorter movie or give part of the work to someone else.
2. Say «I want» instead of «I have to»
Every time you are going to say “I need” or “I must,” change the modality to “I want.” Feel the difference? “This exercise makes us aware that what we are really doing is our own choice,” says Roth.
One of his students hated math but decided he had to take courses to complete his master’s degree. After completing this exercise, the young man confessed that he actually wanted to sit in uninteresting lectures because the end benefit outweighed the inconvenience.
Having mastered these rules, you can challenge automatism and understand that any problem is not as difficult as it seems at first glance.