To be great you just need to follow these three steps: 1) take care, 2) reject fear, and 3) keep moving. Here’s what I mean:

1) Take Care

The only way to achieve greatness is to take chances. To care, a lot. It is not enough to merely try. None of the greats got there by remaining comfortable. They all rejected fear and bent reality to their will.

Sometimes I need to remind myself of this, it is easy to get scared and complacent. This past week Timothee Chalamet’s SAG Award speech was that reminder for myself and many others:

I find this so refreshing because it feels like in the latest social media era it’s been cool to be nonchalant, apathetic, disinterested. I hope speeches like this will trigger a vibeshift towards caring, towards striving. Being vulnerable is strong - what a beautiful contradiction.

The important part about caring is to dream big, and believe in what you are working towards. If you can do that, then the rest tends to get in the way less often. Speaking of things getting in the way:

2) Reject Fear

Beyond caring, fear is the main thing in the way achieving greatness.

Fear of failure. Fear of imperfection. Fear of what people will think.

I think about this when writing blog posts.

I love writing, yet lately I’ve written less frequently. I think some of what gets in the way is feeling like every post needs to be perfect.

I have probably 25 unpublished blog post ideas that are in various stages of completion. What prevents you from publishing them is the “fear” that they should each be profound, perfectly-worded, perfectly-structured master pieces.

But that’s the wrong way to think about it. That’s not why I started this blog. I started writing because it’s a useful way to document thoughts, work through ideas, and share them with others along the way.

So today my goal is to simply remind myself of that by writing this post without thinking too hard about it. Success is just the culmination of incremental progress. And progress is laughing in the face of perfection and just moving forward.

It’s funny because caring and rejecting perfection can feel like opposing forces. If you care you naturally want things to be perfect.

But with foresight you can find ways to balance both; to care enough about progress as to not let perfection get in the way. Which brings me to my final point:

3) Move Forward

Progress is movement.

That’s the final infinity stone in the gauntlet of successful people — they just manage to make things happen. It’s speed. Another tweet I saw recently encompasses this well:

When I think about successful people, particularly in business, this seems to be a common denominator. Elon Musk and Steve Jobs come to mind.

They just continuously take steps forward, increasing their surface area of opportunity with each step.

Part of this is the art of breaking things down into smaller parts that can be decided on more rapidly. If you care enough about the ultimate goal and don’t let the fear of imperfection get in the way, then you enable yourself to move forward.

This is something I've been working on with my business over the past few months since pivoting — albeit on a relatively subconscious level until now.

The best hack toward achieving greatness might be to simply keep failing until you succeed. Most are too scared of the first failure that they never even let themselves try.

You must care, you must reject fear, and that will enable you to keep moving. Overnight success is a fallacy.

Follow these steps and success becomes a lifestyle. At least that’s what I am trying to remind myself.

Peace,
Ramsey

Note to future self: if you read this and you are still in need of some extra motivation, watch this: