Doing the Impossible: The 25 Laws for Doing the Impossible, by Patrick Bet-David
This Book is For:
*Ambitious people everywhere who know that they have more inside of them left to give, and who want to know exactly how to access and unleash it.
*Anyone who wants to see what's possible to achieve for someone who's willing to give up everything for the sake of a dream, and who wants to know whether it's really worth it to give everything you have to realize a worthy ideal.
*Driven entrepreneurs who want to take their businesses, their careers, and their lives to the next level, and learn from the very best in the world what it really takes to elevate their contribution and their success to stratospheric heights.
*Everyone who suspects that there's much more to life than the "common road" - the average existence that's offered to the crowd as "good enough" - and who is willing to do whatever it takes to get after it.
Summary:
“A visionary is someone who is not living in the here and now. He or she has already seen at least five moves ahead and is living in that reality.”
-Patrick Bet-David
I like to think of Patrick Bet-David as kind of like an Iranian-American Jordan Peterson.
For one thing, he's one of the most impressive individuals I've ever discovered on social media, and his YouTube channel, Valuetainment, reaches more than 3 million subscribers, so I'm definitely not alone in that opinion.
Bet-David is strong-willed, confident, inspiring, and opinionated, and possesses the hard-earned self-belief of an absolute winner. But what's also impressive is how open he is to having his mind changed. He consistently invites guests onto his podcast with whom he shares ideological differences and gives them all fair hearing. He wants to learn. He wants to be right, sure, but mostly he wants to find out the truth, regardless of where the truth comes from.
Doing the Impossible is one of his earliest books, and I think of it like the Tao Te Ching of self-improvement books: a short read that you can finish in an hour, but could think about for the rest of your life.
It lends itself to multiple re-reads, and I suggest returning to it several times a year. I do the same thing with James Allen's classic, As a Man Thinketh, and of course, the Tao Te Ching as well. Life-changing books don't have a standard page count and so don't let Doing the Impossible's 174 pages lead you to believe it's an "easy" read. It will demand something from you. It will challenge you to meet it at the highest levels of human accomplishment.
If you're ready to step up and into who you know you could be, this book is the one you should read next.
You see, too often, we forget how capable we really are. We need to believe in ourselves the same way that Patrick Bet-David believes in us, and arm ourselves with the tools, tactics, and mindset we need in order to extract the absolute most from our virtually limitless potential. That's what Doing the Impossible is about.
Each chapter is broken down into a lesson that offers essential insights into the nature of the "impossible," and our capacity to meet it. Opportunities will come to you every single day that you're alive, and each sentence in this book is designed to help you capture as many of them as possible.
We won't cover all 25 Laws for Doing the Impossible in this breakdown, but here they are, as listed in the Table of Contents, separated into three sections:
SECTION I: Recreate Yourself
Law 1 – Invest in Your Identity
Law 2 – Let the Right Ones In
Law 3 – Protect Your Credibility Score
Law 4 – Strengthen Your Greatest Weapon
Law 5 – Challenge Your Way of Thinking
Law 6 – Know Your “Why”
Law 7 – Work Like It’s 1880
Law 8 – Elevate Imagination to a Whole New Level
Law 9 – Be as Curious as Alice
Law 10 – Break Away from the Old You
SECTION II: Identify Your Cause
Law 11 – Decide to Be the Chosen One
Law 12 – Go “All In” with One Industry
Law 13 – Push the Envelope
Law 14 – Turn Your Cause into a Crusade
Law 15 – Channel Your Obsession
Law 16 – Evangelize Your Message
Law 17 – Aim for the Moon
Law 18 – Keep the Faith
SECTION III: Go Make History
Law 19 – Be Bold
Law 20 – Embrace Your Frustrations
Law 21 – Fight Adversity like Muhammad Ali
Law 22 – Let Controversy Be Your Status Quo
Law 23 – Silence Your Critics
Law 24 – Charge Your Batteries with Challenges
Law 25 – Have Heart
Individually, each law contains immense power. Collectively, however?
Collectively, these ideas and insights are nothing short of transformational, and as I've said elsewhere, I only share books on the Stairway to Wisdom that I believe you may actually want to read for yourself all the way through. This breakdown covers many of the essential points, but you're doing yourself a disservice if you leave this book unread.
I've also written previously (over and over again) that you don't need to achieve anything massive in order to be a valuable, infinitely worthy human being. You don't need to achieve the impossible, or do anything other than just exist in order to be worthy of unconditional love and unconditional positive regard.
But...
If you do wish to attempt the impossible - if you wish to turn the impossible into the imaginable and then the actual - then this is the book you need by your side.
Key Ideas:
#1: Turning the Imaginable Into the Actual
“If the impossible throughout history has become the imaginable, and then the actual, why do we think that our dreams are impossible for us to accomplish in our own lives?”
The impossible has never been done before. Instead, what many people have believed was impossible had always been possible...we just couldn't see it.
I won't rehash the entire Roger Bannister story (readers of pop psychology books are already deathly tired of hearing about it), but the super short version is that there was a time when nobody believed it was possible for human beings to run a mile in under four minutes. Then Roger Bannister did it. Then everybody started doing it, simply because it was now believed to be possible.
Nowadays, high school track athletes routinely run 4-minute miles and nobody thinks it's such a big deal anymore. The impossible had become the imaginable, and then the actual.
The lesson is that many of us are poor judges of our own potential. We sell ourselves short in so many ways, and routinely fail to imagine the full scope of our possibilities.
We believe that we can't write our novel - but that's because we've never written before!
We believe that we can't release our own album of original songs - but that's because we haven't committed to taking our singing lessons seriously before!
We believe that we can't start our own company - but that's because we've never built a prototype and put it in front of potential customers before!
The deeper reason, of course, is that between the impossible and the actual is an intimidatingly large chasm called the imaginable that we have to bridge first. We have to see it in our minds first before we can ever hope to bring it into our reality.
We can, each of us, bring the impossible closer to earth, but we have to be moving. We have to be working. We have to advance along the adjacent possible - the very next possible thing - and by doing so, we create the path by walking.
And, when we've traveled far enough, we see that what looked like an unscalable mountain is actually a much smaller hill that we have the tools we need to climb.
Everything I've just mentioned is simply a failure of vision. We need to learn to see. We need to "believe in ourselves," yes, but this advice isn't particularly helpful to someone just starting out.
In the beginning, you don't have what it takes to succeed. But you will. You just have to set your vision high enough - toward the "impossible" - and then bring it down to earth again and focus on the very next thing you have to do.
Michelangelo said it best when he said:
“The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.”
#2: The Gravity of Your Vision
“Remind yourself what life could look like if you achieve what you’ve set out to do.”
Part of the fun of having huge goals is living the process of seeing it in your mind first, and then devoting all your daily actions toward bringing it forth into the real world. It's the most addictive video game there is.
It's all about upgrading your imagination and your vision. It's about visualizing the not yet seen and making it real.
The key is to constantly remind yourself what your vision looks like - what kind of impossible you want to make actual - and then to stay focused on doing whatever it takes to pull it closer - to the exclusion of everything else. In the face of criticism, rejection, and struggle. That's how I've done it, that's how Bet-David has done it - that's how everyone who has ever achieved any kind of outsized success has done it. There is no other way.
Keep the faith in your cause and your vision, and do everything possible to intensify the feelings it inspires in you. Faith and commitment are attractive, and they will draw the necessary support to you to help you achieve your goals.
People everywhere want to give the best parts of themselves away to something. They want to be part of something bigger - some grand adventure that inspires hope, optimism, and excitement in them. Your vision can have a gravity pull, but you have to believe in it more strongly than anyone else does.
By definition, the impossible doesn't exist yet. Neither does the imaginable. They have to exist first in your mind. They must exist there before you ever have a hope of making them a reality.
But once your vision gains a foothold in your mind, it is your obligation to make it real. Your vision is something that only you can turn into a reality, and if you don't, the rest of us will be deprived.
#3: Earning Your Identity
“It may take years for us to actually transform into the person we see ourselves as; but once we truly believe that is the person we are meant to be, eventually we find a way to embody that identity.”
Every action you take is a vote for the person you want to become. That's one of the major takeaways from Atomic Habits, the runaway bestseller by James Clear about intentional personal change. Patrick Bet-David complements that sage advice with his own: "Building your identity is about earning that identity."
We tell ourselves who we are by the actions that we take, and we are always listening.
If we clean up after ourselves and keep our workspaces organized, we are sending signals to ourselves - loud and clear - that we are the kind of person who arranges their life in that way. We care about organization, cleanliness, and discipline. We are embodying our identity by behaving in a way that's consistent with that identity.
I believe that this is one of the most transformational ideas in all of personal development. Full stop. Our actions determine what we think about ourselves, and what we think about ourselves is our identity. Thus, we should work at the level of our actions, always informing ourselves about who we are and how we want to show up in the world.
That's why Bet-David is such a proponent of "acting as though." Act as though you are disciplined, capable, organized, and effective, and you will become that.
You also come to embody a different identity by asking questions; specific questions like, "What would this person I'm becoming do in this situation? How would they behave?"
Asking these sorts of questions - and asking them often - helps you crystallize in your mind a vision of your ideal self, and gives you a roadmap to follow in order to shift your identity closer to that which you want to become.
The problem most people face, though, is that fundamental, base-level identity change is often unseen and unheard. It is silent, working under the surface of conscious awareness, and it's not always easy to see and feel yourself changing from moment to moment.
You just have to trust the process and commit to daily, moment-by-moment incremental change.
You have to act, over and over and over again like the person you wish to become, and eventually, you'll get there. Like a butterfly. Okay, hear me out!
You see, most of a caterpillar's life is spent in the cocoon, where it's undergoing its silent, unseen transformation. Until one day they burst forth in a flash of brilliant life and color, and present themselves to the shining world as the butterfly they were all the time becoming.
#4: Prioritizing Transformation
“If you want to transform your identity, you must make the process a priority in your life.”
Personal transformation is never an accident. It's always intentional, and successful transformation is always done with a sincere, detailed plan in mind the entire time.
In order to change - and hold onto that desired change - you need to keep the faith over an extended period of time, and you need to keep earning that new, expanded identity over and over again if you expect it to stick.
This is a paradigm shift you're undergoing, a complete change, a break from the limited results you were experiencing before, and that's never a "one and done" process. It always unfolds over time, and if you break concentration from who you're becoming for so much as a moment, you risk losing ground and letting some or most of that progress slip away.
You and I definitely don't want that to happen, so we need to prioritize the transformation we wish to experience in our lives.
Anyone can be a new and different person for an hour or two. But in his book, Patrick Bet-David asks, "How do you expect an hour a week to compete with the other 167 hours?”
The short answer is that you can't. You need to "turn the tide," so to speak, and ensure that at least - at the very least - 51% of your waking energies are directed toward effecting your desired, dramatic personal change. If out of the 112 hours you spend awake (assuming 8 hours of sleep each night), you're only reinforcing your desired identity for 3-4 hours, then that's only 3% of the time that you're focused on self-improvement. Can anyone make any desired change while just giving it 3% of their effort?
Just like you can't go to the gym once and expect to be in shape, your transformation is occurring every moment, over an extended period of time. We have to constantly reinforce the new identity we wish to embody, or it's just never going to happen for us. The force of inertia is just too great. It's just too easy to remain the same.
There's another reason why it's so difficult, and to explain it, I'll have to unpack the term cultural gravity. Cultural gravity is the pull from your environment, the people and information, temptations and expectations that are always acting upon you, shaping your thoughts, desires, behaviors, and outcomes.
If the cultural gravity around you reflects an acceptance of being average or unremarkable, then odds are you're going to be fine with that as well. You're going to sink to the level of your surrounding expectations.
What you're doing when you prioritize transformation is fighting against all the social conditioning that's pulling you down, and against everything you've been led to believe until now about what's possible for you and what is "reasonable" for you to aspire to. Keep fighting against this. There is no other way.
Another danger, though, that a lot of high-achieving, otherwise successful people fall prey to is that they stop doing the things that made them successful in the first place! They think they've "made it" once they start to experience some success and start seeing the fruits of their labors, only to ease up on the gas and begin to slide back down.
Do NOT let this happen to you! You've worked this hard, fought through so much cultural gravity, and sacrificed so much already. You've come too far to only come this far.
#5: Your Personal Credit Score
“Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.”
-John Wooden
Bet-David's book is where I was first introduced to the idea of a personal credit score.
We're all familiar with how credit card agencies keep track of our spending and bill-paying habits in order to determine how "trustworthy" we are when it comes to paying back the money they've loaned us, but have you ever thought about how this same idea could be extended to other, even more important parts of your life?
I had never thought about it in exactly these terms before, but here's how Patrick Bet-David defines a personal credit score:
"An accounting of whether or not, historically, you’ve come through on what you said you were going to do; your trustworthiness, to yourself and others, regarding your follow-through, discipline, and integrity."
I think this is such a cool idea! Maybe it's just because of my finance-nerd tendencies, but I see the far-reaching effects of knowing - and building - your personal credit score. It has the potential to change the way you do things and to change the way you're perceived and valued by others with whom you interact.
For starters, I highly recommend that you keep track of your personal and professional commitments (literally make a list of everything you've committed to doing and/or producing) and that you review it often. Come up with an actual score for yourself, and whenever you follow through on what you said you were going to do, give yourself "credit" for that and raise your score.
Personally, I take this further than most people probably "should," but my system works for me. Whenever I make a commitment to myself or others, I write it down, including exactly what is expected of me, the date I said it would be completed, and anything else relating to that commitment.
I then review that list frequently and make sure that I am living up to all my obligations and responsibilities. If I said that I would send you an email by such and such a date, it goes on my list, and damn it, on or before that date you're going to get an email from me. If you don't, my personal credit score takes a hit.
You can work out your own system for this (the imperfect system that you actually use is much more effective than the absolutely "perfect" system that you never use), but I do believe that this is an important practice and one that can make a real difference for all of us.
The truth is that the impossible is rarely created alone. The impossible is most often created in concert with others, alongside others, and for others. There are no self-made people; we rise and fall together.
Each of us is networked with every other person who is alive on this planet, and we all need each other. The rest of us need to know that we can trust you and if you build up an impeccable personal credit score, and you demonstrate your effectiveness and reliability often, then we know that we can.
#6: Working Smart AND Hard - For an Unreasonably Long Time
“You probably want to do something big with your life. This just doesn’t happen with an eight-hour workday. You have to be willing to do the hard work and the smart work if you want to reach for a big dream.”
Having a great idea isn't enough. Working really hard isn't enough either. It's the combination of a smart plan, a sickening work ethic, and the ability to delay gratification for as long as it takes to reach success that is going to be the difference-maker for you.
It's not just the hard work that's hard. It's also the consistency of the hard work.
Anyone can work hard for an hour, a day, a week, or even a few months. But can you grind it out, year after year after year, while enduring criticism, rejection, hardship, all while receiving no guarantee of success?
If you can, then you just might make it.
Yes, you need a great plan. Yes, you need to know where you're going, how you plan to get there, and also how others have achieved the same type of success that you desire. But you also have to outwork everyone that stands in your way, and you have to outwork everybody for longer than any of your competitors are willing to stick it out for.
In a sentence, you need to commit to working your plan for so long - to taking so much action - that it would be unreasonable to expect that you would not be successful. Can you do that?
Again, if the answer's yes, then there's hope for you.
Maybe you're not a top salesperson now, but what if you made 100 sales calls every single day, 300+ days a year, for 10+ years?
Maybe you're not a bestselling writer now, but what if you wrote 1,000 words a day, every single day, 300+ days a year, for 10+ years?
You get what I'm driving at here. Most people submit an article or two to a few publications on Medium or something, get rejected, and then assume that they're not a good writer. Well, of course they're not good writers! They haven't even started trying yet!
The moral here is that the world belongs to those who can remain committed to one course of action until it brings results. After all, to F-O-C-U-S means to Follow One Course Until Success. People just give up too soon. It's almost always too soon to give up, and if you're committed, you'll always find a way forward.
Book Notes:
"If they can make penicillin out of moldy bread, they can sure make something out of you.”
-Muhammad Ali
“The toughness and resilience that my parents had to have to get their family from war-torn Iran to the United States is something that gave me personal insight into toughness. My parents’ toughness is the reason that I am here today, in America, writing a book on doing the impossible. They showed us how to do the impossible in our own lives by setting the example and doing the impossible for our family.”
“It’s never too late to be what you might have been.”
-George Eliot
“Reading allows you to shape your identity independently of your current circumstances.”
“It’s better to be alone than in bad company.”
-George Washington
“There are seven things that will destroy us: wealth without work; pleasure without conscience; knowledge without character; religion without sacrifice; politics without principle; science without humanity; business without ethics.”
-Mahatma Gandhi
“Character is much easier kept than recovered.”
-Thomas Paine
“People with a high level of faith tend to create a big following.”
“If your why is strong enough, the how doesn’t matter.”
“Sometimes on the way to a dream you get lost and find a bigger one.”
“The best way to never have others dislike you is to never do anything worth noticing.”
“A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him.”
-David Brinkley
“The key is to have no distinction between living and working. When your job is your passion, giving a speech, making phone calls, planning a strategy, or writing a business plan is not work; it’s just another part of living.”
“I stopped working a long time ago. Now I live.
“Courage comes from the Latin coraticum, meaning heart.”
“Courage is not simply one of the virtues but the form of every virtue at the testing point.”
-C.S. Lewis
“Wealth lost – something lost; honor lost – much lost; courage lost – all lost.”
-Old German Proverb
“Fortune and love favor the brave.”
-Ovid
“None of these experiences and emotions can be purchased at the mall or ordered on the internet. They can only be earned.”
“Our lives are really a highlight reel of all of our most moving experiences. That is what we will remember at the end. These are the moments that make us who we are. So why not have as many of those kinds of experiences as possible? Why not explore the world? Why not experience what it feels like to do the impossible? The journey of doing the impossible will be at times frustrating and fulfilling, at times exasperating and enjoyable; but it will always be worthwhile.”
Important Insights from Related Books:
Discipline is Destiny, by Ryan Holiday:
Self-discipline has traditionally been a hard sell. Self-indulgence, quick dopamine hits, and having a good time have been winning the marketing battle lately, similar to the "battle" between chocolate and asparagus. Or between reality television and educational documentaries.
But what if the problem is simply that we've been thinking about self-discipline in entirely the wrong way?
Up until now, self-discipline may have been the equivalent of a Henry James novel in a TikTok world. But Ryan Holiday's book, Discipline is Destiny, will have you reimagining the whole concept in a much more liberating, fulfilling way.
His aim is to teach you how to harness the powers of self-discipline to fulfill your personal destiny. While everyone's destiny is fundamentally different, everyone's destiny is the product of self-discipline. Your habits shape your character, and your character shapes your destiny, and so Ryan's book goes right to the root and gives you the physical, mental, and emotional skillsets for success.
In the final analysis, self-discipline is prescriptive. It will show you your future. Your environment, actions, habits, and mindsets are constantly shaping your destiny, and this book will show you how to guide this process more intelligently.
This involves thinking of self-discipline in the "proper" way: not as a punishment, as self-deprivation, but as it really is: a pathway to even greater freedom.
Some days will be hard. Actually, that's not true...many days will be hard. The hard days will outnumber the easy ones, but the meaningful days will also outnumber the meaningless ones. Living this way won't always be easy, but it will always be worth it.
Sample Quotes from the Book:
“At the core of this idea of self-mastery is an instinctive reaction against anything that masters us. Who can be free when they have lost, as one addiction specialist put it, ‘the freedom to abstain?’”
“‘Anyone who has not groomed his life in general towards some definite end cannot possibly arrange his individual actions properly,’ the writer Michel de Montaigne reminded himself. If you don’t know where you’re sailing, the Stoics said, no wind is favorable. This means, first, the discipline to step away and think: What am I doing? What are my priorities? What is the most important contribution I make – to my work, to my family, to the world? Then comes the discipline to ignore just about everything else.”
“Think about it: Most people don’t even show up. Of the people who do, most don’t really push themselves. So to show up and be disciplined about daily improvement? You are the rarest of the rare.”
Read the Full Breakdown: Discipline is Destiny, by Ryan Holiday
The Education of Millionaires, by Michael Ellsberg:
Just because some of the smartest and most successful individuals in the world dropped out of college or skipped college altogether, does that mean that you should too?
Not necessarily; but in this book, author Michael Ellsberg makes the case that most of what you'll need to learn in order to become successful - by anyone's standards - are skills that you'll never see taught in school.
Teaching any of those success skills would require dozens of books for each one, and Ellsberg doesn't claim to teach you everything you need to know on these pages. But he tells you where to start looking, and what's important to look for.
He doesn't just give you a fish, or even go too deep in teaching you how to fish; he simply explains why you absolutely have to learn to fish, and where to go in order to learn most effectively.
Not only that, but if you're missing any of these critical success skills, you're handicapping yourself horribly and holding yourself back from all that you could achieve and become.
Sample Quotes from the Book:
“I am passionately pro-education. There are few things I care more about than reading and learning constantly. Yet, the lives of the people profiled in this book show conclusively that education is most certainly not the same thing as academic excellence. We’ve conflated them, at great cost to ourselves, our children, our economy, and our culture.”
“If you invest in being better at marketing, sales, and leadership, then the sky’s the limit to your success. There is knowledge in the world about how to do these three things well. They may be a mystery to you, or they may not be, but they’re not a mystery at large.
There are actually simple things that every one of us can do to be quite good at these things. In fact, the bar is so low, for marketers, salespeople, and leaders – the bar is so laughably low – that you have to get like a D in these things to be extraordinary. It’s the easiest class you’ll ever take.”
“The driving theme of the stories in this book is that, even though you may learn many wonderful things in college, your success and happiness in life will have little to do with what you study there or the letters after your name once you graduate.
It has to do with your drive, your initiative, your persistence, your ability to make a contribution to other people’s lives, your ability to come up with good ideas and pitch them to others effectively, your charisma, your ability to navigate gracefully through social and business networks (what some researchers call ‘practical intelligence’), and a total, unwavering belief in your own eventual triumph, throughout all the ups and downs, no matter what the naysayers tell you.
While you may learn many valuable things in college, you won’t learn these things there – yet they are crucial for your success in business and in life. Whether you’re a high school dropout or a graduate of Harvard Law School, you must learn and develop these skills, attitudes, and habits if you want to excel at what you do.
In this new economy, the biggest factor in your success will not be abstract, academic learning but whether you develop the real-life success skills evinced by the people on these pages, and how early you do.”
Read the Full Breakdown: The Education of Millionaires, by Michael Ellsberg
The Second Mountain, by David Brooks:
What if you spent your whole life climbing the ladder to success, only to find that it was leaning against the wrong building?
In this spectacular and damn-near urgent book, political and cultural commentator David Brooks uses a different vertical metaphor - two mountains and a valley - to explore the devastating effects of our culture's unrestrained individualism, the dark night of the soul that's waiting for us when we discover that we've been sold a bill of goods, and what a full life of what he calls "moral joy" might look like.
The "first mountain" represents the relentless pursuit of success and achievement that's possessed the mind of the Western world for so long.
When you climb the first mountain, what you're really cultivating are the "résumé virtues" - the skills and talents you bring to the marketplace. On the second mountain, it's all about the "eulogy virtues" - what they talk about at your funeral.
The Second Mountain is an intensely personal book and one that will stop you cold in dozens of places as you pause to ponder the profundity of what others have discovered about the true aims of life. It can't just be about the self.
A real human life - a committed, relational life - is lived on the second mountain, with others. For others. Brooks explains how we got this all mixed up, and he also offers numerous practical and lofty ideas about how we can restore balance to our inner lives.
Sample Quotes from the Book:
“The lesson is that the things we had thought were most important - achievement, affirmation, intelligence - are actually less important, and the things we had undervalued - heart and soul - are actually most important."
“I now think good character is a by-product of giving yourself away. You love things that are worthy of love. You surrender to a community or cause, make promises to other people, build a thick jungle of loving attachments, lose yourself in the daily act of serving others as they lose themselves in the daily acts of serving you.
Character is a good thing to have, and there's a lot to be learned on the road to character. But there's a better thing to have - moral joy. And that serenity arrives as you come closer to embodying perfect love."
“Life is not a solitary journey. It is building a home together. It is a process of being formed by attachments and then forming attachments in turn. It is a great chain of generations passing down gifts to one another."
Read the Full Breakdown: The Second Mountain, by David Brooks
Be Your Future Self Now, by Dr. Benjamin Hardy:
Dr. Benjamin Hardy is the world's leading expert on the science of prospection and the Future Self concept.
Be Your Future Self Now is one of the absolute best introductions to the field, and inside this book, you're going to learn exactly why having a vision for your own future development is so critically important.
But you're also going to receive practical instruction on how to apply the science here and now to make your actual life better. Immediately. Today.
Basically, who and what you're becoming - and your thoughts about it - directly affect the quality of your experience in the here and now.
Not only that, but when your imagined Future Self directs your behavior rather than your behavior being directed by your past, that can be the shift that changes your entire life's trajectory.
Instead of running away from something you don't want (pain in your past), you'll be moving toward an exciting future that gives meaning to all of your subsequent days. To this day.
Sample Quotes from the Book:
“The first and most fundamental threat to your Future Self is not having hope in your future. Without hope, the present loses meaning. Without hope, you don't have clear goals or a sense of purpose for your life. Without hope, there is no way. Without hope, you decay."
“If you’re around people who have low expectations for you, you'll fall to those standards. If you're around people with high expectations, you'll rise to those standards."
“The more conscious you become of how everything you do right now impacts the person you are in the future, the better and more thoughtful your actions will be."
Read the Full Breakdown: Be Your Future Self Now, by Dr. Benjamin Hardy
The View from the Opposition:
No one's ideas are beyond questioning. In this section, I argue the case for the opposition and raise some points you might wish to evaluate for yourself while reading this book.
#1: Nothing to See Here!
It's hard to argue with much of the advice in this book, and pretty much the only criticisms of the book that I've read from others are that it's short. Well, and? What does that matter? Wisdom doesn't have a standard page count.
Now, many of the ideas and concepts here are going to be familiar to wide readers of non-fiction, and also to followers of Patrick Bet-David himself, but I found it incredibly valuable to have them all in one place.
Not to mention the fact that these are things that most of us should be pretty much constantly reminding ourselves of all the time! Daring to attempt the impossible, believing in yourself, holding yourself accountable to a higher standard - these are ideas most of us would be well served to be exposed to more often.
"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”
-F. Scott Fitzgerald
Questions to Stimulate Your Thinking:
The quality of your questions determines the quality of your life. That's also how you get the absolute most out of any book that you decide to read:
You ask great questions the whole time - as though the book was on trial for its life.
Here in this section are a few questions that can help guide and stimulate your thinking, but try to come up with your own additional questions, especially if you decide to read this book the whole way through...
#1: "What would you attempt to accomplish if you knew that it was impossible for you to fail?"
#2: "Is there anyone out there who has achieved the kind of success that you want for yourself? How did they do it? Do they have anything that you don't have? Are you sure?"
#3: "How would your life change - what would it look like, specifically - if you actually turned your 'impossible' vision into a concrete reality?"
#4: “What level of thinking is required for you to reach the next level?”
#5: "How hard are you willing to work - and for how long - without seeing any visible guarantee that what you're doing is working?"
#6: "Who is in your Top 5? Do you have people around you who are supportive of what you're setting out to do? Or do they try to tear you down at every opportunity? What can you do to upgrade the quality of your Top 5?"
#7: "What are you willing to do today - right now - in order to earn the identity of the person you wish to become?"
#8: "What's the number one thing that's currently holding you back? What is the very next step you could take, immediately, in order to overcome that limitation or constraint?"
#9: "How terrible would it feel to reach the end of your life and realize that you didn't actually do your best? That you left your potential unrealized, and your dreams a mere fantasy?"
#10: "If not you, then who? If not now, when?"
"Judge a man by his questions, rather than by his answers."
-Voltaire
Action Steps:
So you've finished reading. What do you do now?
Reading for pleasure is great, and I wholeheartedly support it. However, I am intensely practical when I'm reading for a particular purpose. I want a result. I want to take what I've learned and apply it to my one and only life to make it better!
Because that's really what the Great Books all say. They all say: "You must change your life!" So here, below, are some suggestions for how you can apply the wisdom found in this breakdown to improve your actual life.
Please commit to taking massive action on this immediately! Acting on what you've learned here today will also help you solidify it in your long-term memory. So there's a double benefit! Let's begin...
#1: Protect Your Love of Reading at All Costs
There are so many insanely successful people who credit most of their success to their relentless reading habits; too many for it all simply to be a coincidence.
If you want to move closer to the impossible, you must arm yourself with the best ideas from the best books, and you have to return to those ideas again and again so that they start to solidify in your mind.
The key to getting started, though, is to read what you love until you love to read.
You can't force a reading habit to develop; you'll just start resenting it the whole time and quickly burn out. So if you're not a hardcore reader right now, don't try to go from 0-100 immediately.
One of the best books I can think of for inspiring you to read more is called The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction, by Alan Jacobs, which I've covered before at the Stairway to Wisdom. It will help remove a lot of the guilt you may feel about not reading as often as you "should," and it will motivate you to make books a greater part of your life.
Also, in connection with the impossible, it's important to fill yourself up with stories about people who have surmounted seemingly impossible odds. You can gain immense strength from their stories, and their greatness can start to filter down to you through their words and their examples.
To start you off, I can highly recommend Endurance, by Alfred Lansing, Can't Hurt Me, by David Goggins, The Impossible Will Take a Little While, by Paul Rogat Loeb, as well as Napoleon: A Life, by Andrew Roberts. That's just for starters.
There are amazing books everywhere, and greatness abounds in the history of humanity. Seek out these stories and strive to bring their wisdom and power along with you on your own journey.
#2: Complete the 30 Challenges to Enlightenment
If you’re tired of procrastinating on improving your health, increasing your happiness, and changing your life, then our course, 30 Challenges to Enlightenment, might be of immense value to you. I completed the course years ago, and I still have the poster hanging up on my bedroom door!
We at HighExistence have integrated lessons from psychology, neuroscience, Western philosophy, and Eastern spirituality to create an exciting obstacle course in 30 Challenges that will unleash your potential.
Picture yourself breaking free of destructive patterns and building new, meaningful habits with a tribe of growth-minded wisdom-seekers. Now click here to make it a reality.
#3: Craft a Compelling Vision
Your future is so bright that it hurts my eyes to even look at it! I see that in you, but now you have to start seeing it in yourself.
You have to start to believe, and one of the first steps in that process is to create a compelling vision for what you want your one and only life to be about.
Are you really just going to let your one chance at life slip through your fingers? Or are you going to do every single thing in your power to turn the impossible into the imaginable and then into the actual?
Your vision doesn't have to be some grand plan for winning a Nobel Prize or gaining 1,000,000 Instagram followers, but it does have to light you up and draw you forward. It needs to have a gravity pull in order for you to care about it, and to inspire you to do the necessary work to make it into a reality.
So start thinking about this. Give it deep, intelligent thought, and take your time coming up with a vivid, magical image of what you want to move toward in your life. Make it blinding. Make it compelling. Make it yours.
#4: Vote for Your Identity
Every action you take is like a vote for the person you wish to become. If you want to become more fit, then every time you choose healthy food, a good night's rest, and a vigorous workout, that's three votes for your new identity as a healthy, fit, powerful human being.
James Clear wrote about this idea in his excellent book, Atomic Habits, and it's certainly one you might do well to keep in mind on a daily basis. We discussed this in Key Idea #3 above, but right here I want you to list the specific actions you will take - actual votes you will cast - that will move you closer to that compelling vision you hammered out in Action Step #3.
Then, I think you know what I'll be asking you to do: Cast that first vote!
#5: Upgrade the Quality of Your Associations
Your environment is constantly influencing you, most of the time even below your conscious awareness. Importantly, the people we surround ourselves with matter, and one of the best things you can do for yourself is to gather around you a group of positive, supportive, ambitious people that will make you better.
Your friend group should elevate you, not drag you down.
A helpful way to think about this is to imagine that you are in the back seat of your friend's car. Their life - and their influence on you - is the car, and you have to decide whether or not you want to get in!
Patrick Bet-David refers to your immediate circle as your Advisory Board, and he recommends filling this group with as many inspiring people as possible.
And remember, they don't all have to be people you know personally! You could read someone's book (even someone who's been dead for thousands of years) and decide to add them to your advisory board. Then, when you're faced with a decision, any decision, you can ask yourself what that person would do, and what they would suggest that you do.
Finally, if you want to join a community of positive, supportive, ambitious individuals who are committed to achieving unreasonable - impossible - levels of success in their lives, you may want to consider joining
The Competitive Advantage, my Substack publication centered on self-discipline and achievement.
You'll be among friends and supporters, and we'd love to have you!
"The path to success is to take massive, determined action."
-Tony Robbins
About the Author:
Patrick’s amazing story starts with his family immigrating to America when he was 10 years old. His parents fled Iran as refugees during the Iranian revolution and were eventually granted U.S. citizenship.
After high school, Patrick joined the U.S. military and served in the 101st Airborne before starting a business career in the financial services industry. After a tenure with a couple of traditional companies, he was inspired to launch PHP Agency Inc., an insurance sales, marketing, and distribution company – and did so before he turned 30.
PHP is now one of the fastest-growing companies in the financial marketplace. Patrick is passionate about shaping the next generation of leaders by teaching thought-provoking perspectives on entrepreneurship and disrupting the traditional approach to a career.
Patrick speaks on a range of business, leadership, and entrepreneurial topics including how and why to become an entrepreneur and the importance of learning how to fully process issues.
From a humble beginning as a young immigrant escaping war-torn Iran with his parents to founding his own company, Patrick has gained a first-hand understanding of what rags-to-riches means and how it is fueled by freedom and opportunity – the core tenants of the American Dream.
Additional Resources:
Patrick-Bet-David.com | Main Website
Valuetainment | YouTube Channel
PBD General Mastermind | Webinar
Five Moves for the Week | Newsletter
This Book on Amazon:
Doing the Impossible, by Patrick Bet-David
If You Liked This Book:
Your Next Five Moves, by Patrick Bet-David
Discipline is Destiny, by Ryan Holiday
The Education of Millionaires, by Michael Ellsberg
The Second Mountain, by David Brooks
Be Your Future Self Now, by Dr. Benjamin Hardy
The Gap and the Gain, by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy
Personal Development for Smart People, by Steve Pavlina