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| The Buried Life Bros |
Once again, the guys from the Buried Life have a ridiculously motivational post on their tumblr. Check it out, read up, and cross some things off of your list.
6 Steps
After 6 years of crossing things
off our list we’ve noticed some patterns. Whether it’s playing ball with
Obama or writing a #1 New York Times Bestseller, these are the 6 steps
we’ve used to cross anything off our list:
#1. Stop and think about it. Really think about it.
What is it that you really want to do with your life? Start a
business? Reconnect with an old friend? Dive to the bottom of the ocean?
Smoke a cigar with Castro? Forget what you think you should do, what
excites you? What feels impossible? Be honest with yourself. Your
answers don’t need to make an impression on anyone but you.
For many people, the four members of The Buried Life included, the
impetus to make a life change only comes with crisis. The summer before
we started The Buried Life, I was struggling with depression;
Dave was struggling with his weight;
Duncan had recently lost a close friend; and
Jonnie was
just plain angry and disillusioned with our generation (“No one
protests anymore,” he used to say). The four of us were so beaten down
that we had no choice but to reevaluate what was important to us. Our
project grew out of that frustration. Sometimes it takes a debilitating
low or a crushing loss to snap you back to reality, but don’t wait for
it. Ferris Bueller put it well: “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t
stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”
#2. Write it down.
Simply put, it’s not real until you write it down. And by that I
mean, take your dream and turn it into a project. Dreams have a funny
way of staying dreams. But a project is something that needs to be done.
Approach it as you would any other item on your daily or weekly to-do
list. When you have a deadline— a presentation, a grocery list, a
birthday gift you need to buy for someone–you find a way to get it done.
Treat your dreams the same way. Add it to your list. You need to buy
toilet paper. You need to spend the weekend in Paris with someone you
love. When you write it down, you’ve taken the first step.
When we first started the project, we put things on the list almost
as a joke. We didn’t think about whether they could actually happen; we
just pretended that anything was possible. “#53: Make a TV Show” was a
dream we’d shared since we were young. We had no filmmaking background
and no connections in the business. And we lived on an island in Canada.
We decided MTV in the States would be the place to have a show because
it was the biggest and best platform we knew of for reaching people like
us. So we wrote it down. And then
we started filming it,
because that was just the next logical step. Every step led to the
next. Four years later, we were executive producers and creators of our
own show on MTV.
#3. Talk about it.
Everyone knows someone who knows someone who knows someone.
After you’ve come up with your list and written it down, start
talking. Tell everyone you know. Tell your parents’ friends. Tell new
people you meet. Talk to your cabdriver. Talk to your boss. You never
know whose uncle’s wife may be able to help you. And don’t just talk
about it, but talk about it passionately. Enthusiasm is infectious, and
people want to help when given the chance. Help can show up in the most
unusual places, oftentimes the least expected ones.
We didn’t come from money. We had an idea, we talked about it, and
people showed up in incredible ways help us. Our first lawyer was our
parent’s friend who had heard about what we were doing and offered to
lend a hand; our first manager was my godmother; I met my first
Hollywood contact while traveling in Mexico; we cold-called local
companies in our hometown to raise money for our first tour. Help often
came in strange places. In 2007 we were able to finagle a five-minute
meeting with Jann Wenner, legendary founder of Rolling Stone magazine,
in order to discuss what it would take to cross #15 off our list, “Get
on the Cover of Rolling Stone.” The five-minute meeting turned into a
45-minute meeting (after Jann threatened to kick us out and asked his
assistant for a knife), during which time we talked about everything
from protests to Bob Dylan to the difference between our two
generations. We told him about some of our most ambitious dreams,
including “#19: Write a Bestselling Book.” Jann was later instrumental
in helping us get our book published—introducing us to a company where
we met the smartest, most talented, best-looking book editor alive (hi
Lia), who eventually offered us a deal.
#4. Be persistent.
Most people give up just before they reach their goal. We all hear
“No,” a lot, but we’ve come to realize that “No” usually just means “Not
now.” Be creative in your persistence. Don’t piss people off by nagging
them—think of innovative and clever ways to grab their attention. Be
different, and never say die.
Last year, we broke into the Playboy Mansion. We rented a giant
stripper cake and decorated it like it was for the Willy Wonka–themed
party. Two of us dressed up like Oompa-Loompas and hid in the bottom of
the cake, which was then delivered to the back door of the Playboy
Mansion in a rented delivery truck. Security saw our homemade Playboy
logo on the cake and allowed it to pass through the gates. After waiting
inside the cake for six long hours (peeing in bottles and filming in
night-vision), we hatched out unnoticed and partied at the Mansion all
night with free rein. Security assumed we were just very rowdy
employees.
Playboy had no idea we had been in and out, or that we had filmed our
first episode. But when we went back a month later to ask for
permission to air, they said, “If you air the episode, we’ll sue you and
have you charged with breaking and entering.” We got ahold of the
company’s vice president, and he echoed that sentiment. MTV told us to
move on and film another episode. Our production company said there was
nothing we could do. In a last ditch effort we decided to send Hugh
Hefner a handwritten letter along with the rough cut of the episode. A
week later, we received this response from Mr. Hefner himself: “You can
air the episode. Just know I’m not very pleased with you boys.” I always
thought that crashing the Playboy Mansion was my dream, but getting
scolded by Hugh Hefner was way better.
#5. Be ballsy.
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| The Buried Life boys playing ball with Obama. |
The majority of people don’t go after their wildest dreams because they think they’re unrealistic. Tim Ferriss
says it well:
“Ninety-nine percent of people believe they can’t do great things, so
they aim for mediocrity.” The level of competition is highest for
realistic goals because most people don’t set high enough goals for
themselves. But not only do you statistically have a better chance of
achieving what may seem like an unrealistic goal, doing so fuels you.
Once you feel the first high of accomplishing something major and
seemingly unattainable, you want to go bigger and badder, and you force
yourself to fulfill the need all the more. Even better, the technically
smaller goals suddenly seem less daunting.
We put “#95: Play Ball with the President” on the list because it was
literally the most unattainable goal we could think of. I remember
Jonnie called me from his dorm room in Montreal in 2008 right after
Barack Obama had been elected and Jonnie said, “We should add ‘Play Ball
with Obama’ to the list.” I chuckled because it was so absurd and
agreed. I found it humorous not only because the idea was so outrageous
but also because I knew Jonnie was calling me from his “room,” a tiny
space he was renting for $200 a month, which he shared with a washer and
dryer. Of all people, we weren’t the best candidates for a pick up game
with the leader of the Free World. Nonetheless, two years later we
found ourselves shooting hoops with the President in the backyard of the
White House. It’s a long, complicated story, and I don’t want to bore
you with the details, but this is the kind of thing that the four of us
chuckle about sometimes. It’s as if we have horseshoes up our butts, but
it’s also happened too many times to be luck. When you dream big, you
surprise yourself.
#6. Help others.
We’ve crossed off more than 80 list items over the last six years,
but the moments that stand out the most are the ones when we’ve been
able to step into someone’s life and share something real with them.
I’ve been surprised by how little it takes to impact someone’s life.
Something as simple as asking the question, “What do you want to do
before you die?” and taking the time to listen is often all it takes. If
you’re feeling lost or depressed, you might find what you’re looking
for in someone else. Into the Wild said it best: “Happiness is only real
when it’s shared.”
Your dreams are closer than they appear. There’s nothing about
us four guys that makes us more able than anyone else to accomplish our
goals, other than the simple fact that we’ve decided to go after them.
George Elliot said, “It’s never too late to be what you might have
been.” Don’t wait.
Original Post: http://theburiedlife.tumblr.com/page/2
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