“I hate everyone I work with,” I told my astrologer / therapist. “I feel like everything I say is fake just so people can like me.”
I had clients calling me at 4 in the morning asking for advice. Then they would forget to pay their bills.
Years later I was calling new clients in a new business and helping them solve their divorce issues.
And years after that I was pretending to be best friends with people who then fired me, didn’t pay me, and never talked to me again (until they needed me again – and then they offered me a job I refused).
I was always stuck because I was pretending to be someone I wasn’t in order to get something I ultimately lost.
My integrity and my self worth and my net worth were all connected and I didn’t know it. That’s why I would lose everything.
Until:
Me. You. Us.
Me: I chose myself. Physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual health. I don’t need to write about those anymore. You can read past posts (or maybe my next one. Who knows?)
You: Then I needed a second layer. I had to find the right partners – close friends, spouse, business partners.
Nobody is creative by themselves. We all fight an unbearable loneliness. It’s with others that we form our creative partnerships. Our McCartney for our Lennon. Our Marie Curie for our Pierre Curie.
Us: Then the third layer. Silicon Valley is a scene. Thousands of people moved there in the past forty years and created a technology empire.
Steve Jobs and Bill Gates and Larry Ellison and all the hundreds of people that brought personal computing to the masses grew up together and made each other stronger, even when they were bitter enemies.
New York is a scene. It was an art scene. A literary scene. A financial scene.
You don’t have to move anywhere anymore. That’s the good news. You can be like me and live in an empty house seventy miles from anywhere. You can live nowhere and travel around in AirBnBs.
But you MUST build your scene. This is the group that be the heart beat of your ideas. The group that will spread your ideas through it’s blood and bring them to life.
These are the people you rely on to tell you if you are an idiot. If you are going in the right direction. If you are doing something unique and special.
I can call someone in my scene and say “help” and they will know exactly what I will mean. They will help me. I will help them.
These are the people who will connect all the dots. You grow up with these people. One day you’re all hunting and hungry. The next decade you’re all climbing the ranks together, bringing your creativity to new levels. The next decade you’re helping the generation that comes after you.
They spread creativity and energy like an infectious disease until you all catch it. That’s how I was able to finally grow and find some success after I chose myself and found the right partners.
It works in reverse as well. If you get infected with the negative, then nothing will stop you from coming down. You will get sick as well.
Choose Yourself. Find your Partner. Build Your Scene – That’s the pyramid every successful person in history has gone through.
Here’s the basics on building that scene. Do 1% of this a day. These are the people who will feed you, who will make you honest.