The Secret to Getting Anything You Want in Life
So I know the secret to getting anything you want in life. But before I share it with you, let’s talk about why we don’t get what we want.
We all have fear. Fear of failure. Fear of rejection. Fear of not being good enough. But all of those things stem from one core place: self-doubt.
Self-doubt is why we get a crappy job. It’s why we don’t get the body we want, or make the money we deserve, and stay in relationships much longer than we know we should. Self-doubt is why we never change. We don’t take action.
So then what is self-doubt? Self-doubt is a story we tell ourselves that we can’t do something, and that it’s not possible, how we’ll get rejected and fail.
Which is why it’s oftentimes smart people who fail. When you’re really smart, you’re really good at predicting all the possible negative outcomes, so you never take action. That’s why it’s my belief that boldness is a stronger indicator of success than intelligence.
Smart people think of all the negative things that will happen when things go wrong. But bold people think of all the good things that will happen when things go right.
Now I’m not saying that smart people can’t be bold, and that bold people can’t be smart. But it’s boldness that’s the secret sauce. Boldness is what puts you on the path to success.
The Keanu Reeves Story
When I was 18 years old, I had a really big dream. I’m from a little small town in Canada called Winnipeg, and my big dream in life was to be a VJ for MuchMusic. That’s like MTV for you guys. So I wanted to be like the female Carson Daly.
I knew the job was super competitive, so I thought: I need to make a killer demo tape, and that demo tape will get me the job.
Cut to Keanu Reeves. He was the biggest movie star of all time, and unbeknownst to me, he always wanted to be in Shakespeare. He’d just finished Speed, and he thought: what a better time and place than to go to Winnipeg, Manitoba — where it’s minus 40 — and perform Hamlet.
So I thought: that’s a great moment. I’m going to get Keanu Reeves on my demo tape for MuchMusic, and I’m going to get my dream job.
I told my family. I told my friends. Everyone just laughed at me.
The next day, I went to the theater where he was performing, stood in the back, and waited. Ten minutes turned into 20. 20 turned into 30. 30 turned into over an hour. My friend went home. I was frostbitten. And yet I was still determined.
Five minutes later, there he comes, walking out the back of the theater. I boldly walk through all the girls and all the media and all the cameras, and I tap him on the shoulder. I say: “Keanu, you’re going to be my ticket to my dream job.”
He looks at me dumbfounded and says: “How would I just give you an autograph?”
And I said: “Autograph? Why do I want your autograph? That doesn’t help me at all. I need you to get me my dream job.”
Determined, he tries to blow me off and says: “Give me your phone number and I will call you when I have a couple minutes.”
So I grabbed a girl I didn’t know, who had an eyeliner in her purse. I took the eyeliner, took a gum wrapper from my pocket, wrote my name and number, handed it to him, and ran away.
I go to school the next day and tell my friends — and everyone laughs and teases me. Day two: same thing. Day three: same thing. But I go home on that third day and my mom says: “Did you hear the answering machine?”
I press play. I hear a man’s voice: “Is Jennifer there?” My mother says: “Who is this?” And the voice says: “This is Keanu calling for Jennifer. She home?” My mother says: “She’s at school. Call back.” And hangs up on him.
The next message: Keanu again, saying he wasn’t sure what I was talking about but to call him back.
Once I got my composure, I called him back, explained very boldly what I was talking about, and two days later he’s sitting on my parents’ sofa in our living room, with my three friends holding amateur camcorders and someone holding a boom hitting him in the face. I had my Oprah moment. I got that demo tape.
Now: did I get the greatest demo tape of all time? Yes. Did I get the job interview at MuchMusic? Yes. Did I get the audition? Yes.
Did I get the job? Hell no, I did not get the job.
So Why Am I Telling You This?
That was a very pivotal moment for me in my life. It taught me a real big truth about success:
You need to ask for what you want. Period.
You know that saying, “it’s the squeaky wheel that gets the grease”? It’s actually quite true.
In a time when we are bombarded with information overload from every influencer or expert telling you how to be successful — do this, do that, do the other thing — it’s really the most basic, simple thing you can do:
Stop deliberating. Stop planning. Stop creating flowcharts. Just act.
In the words of another fellow Canadian: you miss a hundred percent of the shots that you don’t take.
What Boldness Really Means
When you think to yourself, what does boldness really mean? It basically comes down to this:
You chase what you want and you don’t take what you can get.
The problem is most of us live on default. We default to what’s convenient. We take what’s available. We acquiesce to what’s in front of us.
There’s a really big misconception about what boldness really is. People assume that boldness is something you’re either born with or you’re not. But that’s not quite true.
Boldness is a skill. Like anything else, you need to practice it. You need to harness it to get better and better at it.
The 10% Target
There is a mindset that I developed, and it’s called the 10% Target. It’s very simple:
Whatever you want most in life, you make ten attempts. The problem is most people don’t make ten attempts. The truth is most people don’t even make one attempt. They call themselves out before they even try.
The purpose of the 10% Target is to get very comfortable at failing 90% of the time.
I guarantee: if you make 10 attempts at anything, one will be successful. Because either:
- You’ll get the thing you want, or
- You will get something you never even knew was available.
Here’s what most people do: the reason why most people don’t get the job they want is because they don’t actually go for the job they want. They see what’s available on Monster or LinkedIn and go for that instead.
A survey was taken of over 160,000 people who truly believed they deserved to make more money. Two-thirds of those people never even asked for a raise. But of the people who did ask? Seventy percent got it.
What does that tell you?
Practice the Small Asks
The 10% Target does two things:
- It makes you comfortable with failing 90% of the time.
- It gives you resilience and skill.
Think about it like ordering at a restaurant. Most of us order off the menu. But being bold means ordering from off the menu. When you are comfortable asking for the small things in life, it gives you the habit and the confidence to ask for the big things in life.
Just as you would train your body to be strong, you train your brain to be bold.
Your Action Item
Write down anything you want most in life. Then make ten attempts at it. Not five. Ten. You have to embrace the 10% Target. You have to commit to making 10 attempts, because the idea is you are chasing what you want, not just taking what you can get.
The truth is: it doesn’t really matter what the failures were. What matters is I’m living proof that when you chase what you want and don’t just take what you can get, you are exponentially happier and more satisfied with your life.
I wasn’t the fastest athlete. I wasn’t the prettiest girl or the smartest in the class. But I still became a best-selling author, an entrepreneur who sold companies for millions of dollars, and co-founder of a breast cancer charity that raises thousands of dollars year after year.
All by failing 90% of the time.
And you can too.
You can fail to become successful by just chasing what you want, and not taking what you get.
Thank you.