Last week, I released my manifesto, How To Be Legendary: A Realistic Guide to Being the Superhuman You’re Supposed To Be.
To say its reception was “good” would be a gross understatement. People downloaded it to the tune of hundreds of copies per hour, shared it with their friends, tweeted quotes from its pages, and sent me a lot of great feedback and thanks, for which I’m really, really grateful.
What I said to the people who emailed me about how inspired they were was something like this: “Now, don’t just ‘get inspired.’ Get inspired and DO SOMETHING.”
See, the world is full of feel-good words. The message of How To Be Legendary, judging by its reception, struck a chord with a lot of you. I learned — and am thankful and delighted to learn — that I’m not the only one who’s felt that there is something wrong with “settling for what we’re given.” I’m not the only one who wants more.
But if it turns out that reading my manifesto was just “a message” for you? If it turns out to be something you read, that awakened something in you, and that you were briefly inspired by… but nothing else? If one day you looked back and said, “Wow, I was inspired once. That was pleasant”?
Well, that would really suck.
I don’t just want you inspired. I want you to act on that inspiration. To do something. To move.
And so, to that end, I’ve created something that maybe you’d like to be a part of — a community called Everyday Legendary which bears the tagline, “A community dedicated to achieving the impossible by becoming more, every single day.”
I, like you, am on my own journey to become Legendary.
I’m looking for a few good women and men to join me.
You’ve unplugged from the Matrix. Whether you choose to stay unplugged is up to you.
Let me tell you why most motivation is useless.
For the time it takes a person to read it, How To Be Legendary will transport you out of “the Matrix” (the world of bullshit and limitations) and into “the real world,” where you start to see what’s possible.
But what happens when you stop reading? What happens when you put it down?
Do you get a cup of coffee and get back to those spreadsheets?
Do you finish tying your tie?
Do you turn on the TV, because your favorite show is on and you nearly missed it while you were reading?
Put simply, does real life get in the way again almost immediately? Do you do all of the above despite the fact that you’ve just spent an hour or two believing that there was another way, and that you could do more?
The reason most motivation is useless is because it fails to affect lasting change. I argued a few weeks ago that because we already know most of what we need to know in order to do the things we’d like to do, it’s what’s in our heads — i.e., inspiration, motivation, belief, and all of that Tony Robbins stuff — that makes the difference.
But in order for any of it to affect you, you have to continue to dwell on it. You have to stay inspired. Reading or watching or listening to something that moves you isn’t enough. You have to continue to believe it. You have to continue to feel it. You have to continue to be driven to apply the knowledge you already have.
I said in How To Be Legendary that all our lives, we’ve been in the Matrix — in a prison that we cannot taste or see or touch… a prison for our minds. And then I said that the purpose of the manifesto was to break you out of that prison, to let you see the world as it really is.
But what good is it if, after reading, you step right back inside your prison cell and re-lock the door?
Look: if you’ve got to finish up that spreadsheet or tie your tie after reading How To Be Legendary, then by all means do it.
But man oh man, don’t let that be the first step to forgetting your detour into possibility and returning to life as usual.
WAKE. THE FUCK. UP.
Don’t just get the message about the Matrix and the real world. Get the message and act.
Don’t just be inspired. Be inspired and take a step, then keep taking more steps.
Don’t just believe in forgotten possibilities. Believe in forgotten possibilities and begin pursuing them.
How To Be Legendary is supposed to be a window into a better world. If you read it and it lifted your spirits and made you believe in possibilities you’d never before considered (or considered and then abandoned as unrealistic), then you know what I’m talking about.
The Everyday Legendary community is a step beyond that window. It’s a door. It’s a tether that keeps you firmly inside the world of the real, surrounded by people like yourself who have woken up to the fact that “impossible” is not what it used to be.
Now, in the spirit of the manifesto, you don’t need the Everyday Legendary community to be successful. At all. I said that you already know all of the information you need to know in order to get what you want, and it’s true.
But what Everyday Legendary will do is to keep you in the world of possibility. It will keep reminding you, week by week, of your dedication to becoming Legendary.
The manifesto was supposed to make you uncomfortable enough to act.
The community’s intention is to keep you uncomfortable… to keep you doing the work for as long as it takes to get to where you want to be.
You’re already unplugged. I just want you to stay that way.
The scoop on Everyday Legendary (and the shameless bribe)
You can read all about what’s involved in Everyday Legendary (including details on the lessons, the assignments, and the discussion) here, but before you go, there are three things you need to know:
- If you lie down with dogs, you will wake up with fleas. The intention of Everyday Legendary is to get you lying down with Legends, so that you can wake up Legendary.
- The cost is only $14.99 per month. As the guy who’s setting aside other work to launch this thing, that makes me very nervous, but it’s a price I know that anyone who’s serious about becoming Legendary can afford. Not all Legends in training have a lot of disposable income, so I made this cost less than a dinner out –by yourself, if you don’t order an appetizer or a dessert. I made it less than your cell phone texting plan. I don’t want “I can’t afford it” to be the reason you don’t join. (By the way, that price will probably go up in time, but the price you join at is the price you pay forever.)
- THERE IS A BONUS FOR JOINING BY WEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 12TH. As part of the launch, to get as many Legendary-pursuing folks kicking each other’s collective asses as soon as possible, I’m taking a cheap shot and offering you an incentive to join early. Everyone pursuing Legendariness needs a way to keep themselves on track and efficient, so if you join before midnight on Wednesday, 9/12, I’ll give you a copy of my Tao of Awesome course. So if you want to join, join now.
This is my new direction, folks. I want to help people grow… but I only want to REALLY help them. I don’t want to blow good feelings up people’s asses and then watch them return to complacency. I believe this enough to make it a significant part of my business. I’m trying to put my money where my mouth is.
If you read How To Be Legendary and then go out and do the things you’re supposed to do, then I’ve succeeded in my mission.
If you join Everyday Legendary, I will do my best to keep poking you until you succeed — as will the constant, unrelenting company of people who, like you, aren’t willing to settle for what life hands them.
But regardless of whether you read or join or not, keep doing.
Keep acting.
Keep shipping.
Keep kicking ass, no matter what.