August 2nd, 2011 by KP

Key 3: Get a guide / Training / Guidance / Mentorship

Charisma & conviction, two keys of a master in their craft. Take notice of that when you choose your guidance or your mentor.

What are you practicing? What if you’re practicing wrong? Then you get very good at doing something wrong. So it’s a good idea to get a teacher/guide/roadmap/MENTOR. You will eventually learn that you are doing something wrong one way or another, but determining how long that will take to learn that lesson is leaving it down to fate.

A guide, training, or a mentor will auto-correct you as you go, zapping your errors the second you make them, fine tuning your “skill” in the moment rather than taking days or weeks or trying something and finally realizing it’s not done by doing X it’s done by doing Y. Mentorship will fix your mistakes in a fraction of the time it will take you to figure it out on your own.

If you take from one person it’s called stealing. If you take from many people it’s called research.

Spend your time taking & learning from the best of the best, the ‘kings’, the superstars, the masters of the craft, and then once you take everything from them, you spend the time in the dark shedding yourself away from them. This is when it becomes “you” rather than you becoming who you learned from. You gather your research, cherry pick what suits you, what you like, adapt it to yourself, then you go. Like Charlie Parker said:

“Master your instrument, master the music, then forget all that shit and just play.”

As an apprentice of your craft, you should never stop learning during the entire apprenticeship. Then when you reach the top, to stay at the top, guess what, you STILL never stop learning & exploring & expanding your knowledge base of your craft. If that isn’t the case, then you shouldn’t be doing it anymore. Remember, the key to growth is getting outside of your comfort zones & getting uncomfortable, so that once you’ve spent enough time being uncomfortable, what used to be outside of your comfort levels is now inside your comfort zone. If you’re not growing you’re dying. So in order to forever be growing, you have to continue to forever not be you.

Everyone that has made it to the top of their game has encyclopedias of knowledge on their craft. Vaults of information & learning aids that they have studied & studied & studied. This isn’t a coincidence. Find anyone, any video, any book, anything, that you can learn from in your craft. If you’re going to be here, then there’s a necessity to make a difference. It takes such a desperate obsessive focus, you have to focus with all of your fibers with all of your heart, with all of your creativity.

Be motivated by your fear of fear. Hate it when you are afraid or scared to do something. Attack your fears.

As the old adage goes, we have nothing to fear but fear itself.

The separation of talent & skill is one of the greatest misunderstood concepts for people who are trying to excel, who have dreams, that are trying to do things. Talent you have naturally. Skill is only developed by hours & hours & hours of beating on your craft. There’s no easy way around it, no matter how talented you are, your talent WILL fail you if you’re not SKILLED. If you don’t study, if you don’t work really hard, if you don’t dedicate yourself to being better every day, you won’t be able to communicate your artistry with people the way that you want to.

Never show up unprepared.

Surrender yourself to the art to the teacher, but that doesn’t mean you turn over your life to the teacher, you don’t want a guru. You still have to keep the autonomy inside yourself. You are finally the ultimate authority on your own practice.

The separation between failure and success in life is a knife’s edge. That knife’s edge is your attitude, which has the power to shape your reality. If you view everything through the lens of fear, you get reasons to not move forward, to not take action, and to stay in retreat mode. You can just as easily see a crisis, a problem, or a hurdle, as a challenge, an opportunity to prove your mettle. The chance to strengthen & toughen yourself, or a call to collective action. By seeing it as a challenge, you will have converted this negative fearful attitude into a positive fearless attitude purely by a mental process this will result in positive action as well.

KP

August 2nd, 2011 by KP

Key 2: Practice. Practice. Practice.

Practice is the magic formula, that’s the big fat magic secret out in the open. PRACTICE. Talent is important, but not nearly as important as is practice. Michael Jordan didn’t get selected for his college basketball team draft. Let me repeat that… MICHAEL JORDAN DIDN’T GET SELECTED FOR HIS COLLEGE BASKETBALL TEAM DRAFT!!!

So did he get to be the best basketball player to ever live through his ‘talent’? Was he always just a ‘talented’ basketball player? Or was it through his self discipline & dedication to PRACTICE that is what was the fertilizer for the growth of his so called ‘talent’?

The most important trait you need is tenacity. People try something once or twice, they don’t yet succeed, and they get it in their mind that they can’t do it. They’re right.

Then there’s the people who get faced with the same challenge, and they too don’t succeed the first & second time, but they have the tenacity to keep trying, and they believe in their mind that they can do it, and eventually they succeed. These people are also right.

This goes back to the saying “They can because they think they can”.

To be able to really get on the path of mastery – THIS IS OF THE UPMOST IMPORTANCE – you have GOT to be willing to spend most of your time on a plateau where you don’t seem to be learning very much. Where you don’t feel like you’re making progress. A looooooong time. Now suddenly after a long time on the plateau, it could be weeks, days, months (how about an 8 month plateau where you didn’t see a penny come in with IM!) almost ‘miracle’-like, you have a sudden jump up in learning & improvement, and you think, “ahhh I’m learning, I’m moving up the mastery mountain!”…wrong.

You are learning, but you are learning on the plateau. All of the time you are on the plateau, you have to be thinking about what you’re doing before you do it, by being on the plateau you are programming your automatic response system. And after thinking before you do it enough times, eventually you “just do” it without thinking, and that’s when you’ve learned, you learn from being on the plateau.

What a concept information is. Our library of information is directly relative to the value, status & power we have in this world. Knowledge is power.

The important thing is to take your ideas seriously. But to be critical of them, positively, while being a realist too. Don’t fall in love with your ideas, fall in love with the moment to moment aspects of the process, fall in love with the step by step progress. The rest takes care of itself.

Don’t feel that that the little things you have to do everyday are distancing you from your dream. Everything brings you closer to your dream. Every mistake, every lesson, every repetitive task (which is essentially practice) is all taking you another step closer to your dream. It’s just a mindset. It is in fact those seemingly “tedious” or “repetitive” tasks that are the stepping stones to mastery. You can never have too much practice. There is a direct correlation between someone’s level of ‘talent’ and the hours of practice that person has put in.

We are practicing all the time. Remember, what we practice, is what we excel at. So if someone is negative all of the time, they get very good at being negative, in fact they master it! If they’ve spent 40 years doing it, they are master coaches of negativity! They could teach negativity, and they will. So be VERY conscious of what you do, most of the time. Practice the right things, positive & a deep ignition for progress.

Most people take the path of least resistance. It’s much easier to accept the things that have happened to you, and that more of the same things are going to happen to you & that’s just the way it is. That’s the way most people deal with life. Then there’s that one tiny little path that is covered & filled with broken pavement, rocks, dark jungles, forests, rats, snakes, bears, lions, & all kinds of horrors. But the people that take that path, the ones who are willing to overcome all of those horrors & barriers, the hurdles, the conflicts, the obstacles that try to get in your way, and not only overcome them, but USE them instead of letting them ‘affect’ me. Use them to teach you the most important lessons, and not only use them to let you prosper, but also use them to give you the most satisfaction, because you can say “I did it.”

The size of the hurdle, barrier, conflict, obstacle, challenge, whatever you may call it, is ALWAYS relative to the amount of the gratification, satisfaction, & immense feeling of success that you get when you do struggle, you do fight & you do eventually overcome them.

Raw willingness will always win over raw “genius” or raw “talent”. The guy who is willing to go further, who is willing to push harder & through more challenges, will always come out trumps over the guy with raw “genius” or “talent”. Surprise surprise, the guy willing to go one more round when no one else wants to, also doesn’t want to, but he does anyway. That trait is the trait that will make you stand out in life. Raw willingness.

Life is like a UFC fight. The winner is the one who no matter how many times they get knocked down, they always get back up to fight again, no matter how much it hurts, no matter how much pain is causes or how much struggle it requires, until the obstacle or challenge in their path stays down and they overcome the challenge.

People that “work hard” are doing something wrong. I don’t work long hours, I play around with the computer, software & hardware, a lot. It just takes a lot longer than you think. But when you’re playing, it isn’t a ‘long’ time, it isn’t boring or strenuous, because it is playtime. This is a good thing, because if you realized how long it takes to master your passion, you’d never get anything done, you’d just give up in disgust. Because you enjoy the process & it is something you enjoy, you don’t focus on how long it might take, you just take each baby step as it comes. You actually like the details, you enjoy the fine tuning & zooming in with a telescope on the tiniest detail that no one will ever even realize was an issue. That’s when you know you’re on the path to true mastery.

In order to achieve one’s goals, there has to be a serious level of dedication, not just verbal, in fact VERBAL IS NOTHING. Fuck all of the verbal dedication. What’s the point in saying you’re going to do something? Unless it’s to yourself, you’re most likely just doing it to get the short term pleasure of someone saying “good on you”. Actions & results speak a million decibels louder than words ever will on this planet. People say “I’m really dedicated to this project”, then they spend their nights out partying & then the next day they don’t do what they need to because they’re hung over or whatever. For me, this isn’t a 9-5, this isn’t 12 hours a day, or 18 hours a day, this is 24/7 365 life-long passion. It is nothing other than “me”. So of course it is #1 priority.

When I get done with progressing on that, I look at what I need to do next, or the next day, and then I get as much sleep as I possibly can so that I’m fresh and ready to go again early the next morning. As little fooling around as possible, as little booze as possible, as much sleep as possible. That’s when I’m in the zone of quantum progress.

There is a time to let loose & release. That’s when you’ve earned it. When I achieve peaks & levels of success & I earn my release, then I am 100% releasing in the moment. And that’s a whole other side to the coin. 🙂

It’s ok to have a release & to let loose. In fact sometimes it is necessary to have a release & ‘recharge’. Just don’t get addicted to the release. There’s a fine line between releasing & seeking the short term gratification. Releasing can recharge. Chasing the short term fix is a sure fire way to butt fuck yourself in to static land where you aren’t moving forward. And if you’re not moving forward (not practicing) you’re not just staying put or being static, but you’re actually taking steps backwards, and dying in that area. That’s a fact. As humans we are creatures of motion, to evolve we have to be moving, not sitting still.

“You can be on the right track, but you’ll get run over if you just sit there.”

You have to be willing to be the glorious fool. The person who is willing to take chances, to jump, and to fall & stumble & look foolish is the one who is on the path to being a master. You’ve got to be willing to look foolish to truly be a master. Take your ego out of it. No one cares, no one gives a flying fuck about you, they’re way too busy worrying about what everyone thinks about them to think about you!

Anything that was truly hard was usually worth the struggle.

Motion attracts success & wealth. Always be moving, even if you feel like it’s around in circles. It’s better than standing still. And even if you feel like you’re on a plateau, and you don’t know where to go or if you even are moving forward, the main thing is that you just keep showing up.

What’s the best way to stop a top athlete from performing? Not to taunt them, or to boo them, that just fires them up more. It’s easy, don’t let them practice for a month. Then they lose their ‘touch’. Practice is the key to mastery, to “greatness” (read my post on greatness to find out what greatness really is).

I get really bored not having anything to do. The thought that I’m not making progress towards a goal, the feeling I get is similar to that of the feeling the character gets in the film “Limitless” when he takes the pill (sick film that takes mastery to a whole new level! It’s loosely based around my life. 🙂 ). I feel like if I’m not progressing or moving forward, then I feel this anxiety building up inside me and if I don’t do something about it fast (make progress on something, anything) then I feel like I’m going to explode. It’s crazy. I love it.

The practice, is living what I do, what I am, what I love. That thing is ‘you’, so practice being ‘you’ everyday, and it’s no longer practice. You’re just getting better at being ‘you’ everyday. That’s why it is essential you press pause, take a step back & re-evaluate life & where you’re headed. Is this where you want to be going, is this what you were destined for, is this path why you were put on this earth? Is this your life-long purpose, your dream? Take some time off from the world, and take the time to be with yourself, to figure this out. Figure out what your passion is, what path you are destined for.

The mark of the masters is one who is not only willing to stay on a plateau for a long period of time & keep training diligently, but it is to love the plateau, to cherish the plateau. Even to say “Fine I’m on a plateau, now if I stay on this plateau I am destined to have a jump upward”.

Let “the highlight of your life” be the ignition. Imagine that, standing there and realizing, this is the best moment of your life. That’s what all of this is for.

Discipline yourself, diligent, patient, long-term practice & you’ll be ok.

Practice, work your ass off, practice, one baby step at a time, practice, you cannot take no for an answer, practice, willingness, dedication, tenacity, practice, practice, practice. You often get to the point where you don’t quite know where to go, and the most important thing is that you continue to show up.

Until Key #3, no better time than the present than to go practice.

KP

August 1st, 2011 by KP

The Keys To Mastery & Success

A lot of things in life are long awaited. Usually it is never too late once they happen. Patience is the key to a healthy living… with a splash of appropriate impatience.

“I like it when things take off… when things get big… It’s exciting. In 6 months the world will know who SHM are”

The universe presents trailheads, and you can choose to take it, or not. It’s up to you whether you wake up to it & you do something with it

You often get to the point where you don’t quite know where to go. The important thing to do, is to keep showing up, no matter what.

Visualize as if it’s happening right now. Exactly as if it is happening NOW. You don’t wish, not “I want to do X”, instead, it is. It is already reality.

Every attempt at overreaching, playing tricks or looking for a quick fix to get better, they just don’t work.

 

Key 1: Surrender to your Passion

Like in the talent code – find your ignition, know what fuels & ignites your passion. And visualize it, use the ignition.

To begin with, you’ll need more ignition to keep the motivation up, to use as fuel to get the habit in motion. Like in world’s strongest man when they’re pulling a truck or a tractor or something, yes the man burns 80% of his fuel in the first few meters, but it’s essential to get it moving for that first 20%. Then once it’s in motion, it will take more fuel to stop it than it actually will to keep it moving.

Get ignited & get the fuel for the first 20% to get it moving & create the habit (the beginning of the addiction)

E.g. Would you have thought you would one day enjoy reading html code & figuring out html & php? No of course not. But it was necessary. So you pushed through the barrier of struggle enough times to where now the skill set is at such a level where you actually don’t mind when there are problems with coding, it’s actually fun.

It is going to be the same thing with producing. Except this isn’t just necessary, there’s also a passion to fuel it! It’s just going to get harder before it gets easy, so fall in love with the process. Don’t be scared to fail, welcome the idea, because all a ‘failure’ means is that you’ve learned a lesson so you’re making progress.

As Brian Tracy says “Everything is hard, before it is easy.”

Most of the population can’t get the first key, because they don’t know what they want to do with their life.

What you do as a career, becomes what you do for the majority of your waking hours. Which becomes who you are. It defines you. So what happened to you when you grew the “skill” of html – or you “fired certain signals by doing certain actions constantly and wrapped neural circuits with insulation” to create that skill, you were doing html EVERYDAY. So of course you fired that action of learning html everyday, the “skill” was born. Of course it was. The same thing happens to the rest of the population with their professions. Lawyers, doctors, checkout clerks, dentists, beggars, waitresses, you name it. They all become masters of their professions, because they do it EVERYDAY. They do it so much that they grow the skill, master it, get comfortable, and that defines them. It is now very uncomfortable for them to switch career options, so that’s just ‘who they are’ from now on.

So now that you know your passion, you just have to do it, everyday! It’s that simple. Or so it may seem haha. That’s where ignition from “The Talent Code” comes in.

“I work really hard. I LOVE what I do, and that makes me want to work really hard. So I don’t dread working really hard, because I don’t see it as work. The idea of excelling in my passion even further gives me a burning desire to take action. It isn’t work, it’s progress. I don’t work, I progress.”

I haven’t worked a day in my life since I was 17. How can you call doing something you love work? Work to me is getting paid by someone to do something you don’t want to do. I love what I do, and with that progress is what paves the path of the process.

I wake up in the morning at 6am, with no alarm clock, but because my body wakes me up. I wake up in the middle of the night, my mind racing with ideas, all because I am INSPIRED by what I do.

The first greatest struggle: Feeling that you dream will never come true. That no one believes in you. Like you’ve got this bat & ball, but no one will let you on the field to play. Like you’ll never get a chance. You can end up, with that struggle, with a lot of friends. Because there’s plenty more people who have a bat & ball, and don’t get let on the field either. They end up sitting around, drinking beers, and talking about it at night if you believe any of it. You’ll get a lot of friends that way…

How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

How do you master anything? One baby step at a time.

You’ve got to take a chance, you have to jump… and risk falling on your face. Then when you do fall on your face, a lot, and you do it enough times to where you start to get experienced, you realize that you’re going to be ok, it wasn’t as bad as you thought it was going to be, and not only that, but when you get back on your feet you’ll have made leaps & bounds in progress. The harder you fall, the deeper the lesson is learned & ingrained.

As you begin to work, then the struggles you have are that you are not valued, you are not valued in what you do. Other people are more valued in the arena than you, they’ll call you in in the morning, and they won’t work you in until late afternoon, you’re the last one to be dismissed. They don’t care about your time, they’ll just keep you around. You get your feelings stepped on, a lot. That’s the next stage of struggle that you must work through.

The thing that struck me immediately, was that I knew what I didn’t know.

Always assume the audience is smarter than you.

Crystalize your existence, and do something about it. Don’t make excuses, don’t blame anyone. It comes down to you. Excuses are like assholes, they shouldn’t be anywhere near your tongue. You know what you need to do if you want to get better. Practice. Practice. Practice. Find the ‘sweet spot’ where something is just outside of your reach, you have to struggle & fight to figure it out & achieve it, but when you do, you feel unstoppable… Limitless. Deep practice. The Clint Eastwood stare… make errors, pause, go back & slow it down at a pace you can work with, figure it out, then speed it back up. Work in chunks, the smallest chunks possible. These chunks create the first piece of a larger chunk, and it continues. Self discipline, and practice, practice, practice.

Our job is to figure out our place, know what we were destined for, then go for it, and go for it with some grace. But not the grace of effortlessness or seamlessness, but the grace of passion, failing forward, getting stuck & feeling like you have no where to turn but you keep showing up. That’s grace.

When you become more successful, and you get more offers than you lose, you get offered gigs & opportunities where you don’t even need to audition, that’s awfully nice. Then the problem you have is, you lose your friends, you don’t have those friends anymore. Now instead you have people who are jealous, they feel that you have more success than you deserve, you have ‘their’ career. You have to deal with the loneliness of that. And then you find that you always have a true friend in your passion, and that you realize that now you have more time to put in to your love of producing & music, you realize you have a very true companion in your passion, and then it all feels much better.

Everyone is significant, everyone is important. We all have the capacity for excellence, and for greatness, we just need to hit pause once in a while and take a look at US instead of worrying what everyone else thinks about us, or what everyone else is doing, or what we might be missing out on. Before we can help others, we have to be help ourselves first. It’s up to you whether you wake up to it & do something with it.

Key #2 coming soon to a screen near you

July 8th, 2011 by KP

Laidback Luke – Till Tonight

Open up your arms, spread them wide
Nothings gonna hold me back this time
I’ve been waiting for you all my life
Counting down the minutes till tonight

Open up your heart, let me in
Let the love finally begin
Cuz I’ve been waiting for you all my life
Counting down on every minute on till tonight

Sick Lyrics!
Read the rest of this entry »

July 6th, 2011 by KP

Don’t Let Your Lens Of Life Lose Focus.

I was at dinner with Jim & Anthony the other night, and we had some good talks about business & getting focused on priorities.

It’s tough to keep your head on straight & clear when everyone around you is living the high life & out doing fun shit, and you have to say no to it. It is tough, but it’s necessary. With us focusing on business & goals, like I said in one of my last posts, progress requires sacrifice. You have to always be focusing on the long term over short term. The short term is what most people chase, because you get almost immediate gratification from it, but the gratification is almost all of the time short lived too. Where as when you focus on the long term, this is what brings you the long term gratification and sustained happiness, rather than the short term happiness.

What I mean by this, is don’t let anyone knock you off course.

We were at Coachella this year, and after getting to sleep at 7am on Friday (well Saturday morning), for some reason I woke up 2 hours later at 9am and couldn’t sleep. So I went in the living room of the house we were staying at with everyone (about 10 of us were staying at this mansion, right across the street from Coachella literally walking distance!) got my laptop out and started replying to emails and getting on with some work.

There was me thinking everyone was asleep, but no surprise when Aaron comes walking in to the living room, hasn’t even slept yet and is up on his own lol.

He goes (in his aussie accent): “Mate what the fuck are you doing up?”

Me: “I can’t sleep so just getting on with some work”

Aaron” “Mate, you remind me of me. Let me tell you something, when I was your age everyone was telling me I was young & that I worked too much, that I need to let loose & live life up more. These are meant to be the best years of your life. I’m sure people say the same to you. Don’t fucking listen to any of them mate, just listen to yourself. Know the path you’re on, keep your head down & keep moving. Keep your head down for a few years of solid hard work, and life gets really fucking good mate. It’s all so worth it in the long run. Yes there’s a lot of work in the initial phase, but my life is amazing now, and every day for the past 8 years has got better and better. I can’t explain to you how much I love everyday of my life even more than the day before. Very very few people are willing to sacrifice the good times upfront in the short term, because they’re uncertain they’ll succeed, and they’re afraid they’ll “miss out”. What they don’t know, is sacrificing the short term now only leads to reaping the good times in the long run, and the long term gratification of living life is a billion times more rewarding than the short term. Difference between short term & long term, the short term rewards are short lived, long term rewards are long lived. They are consistently amazing. You’re doing it right mate, I’d tell you if you weren’t. Stay at it mate, listen to you, don’t listen to anyone else or let anyone knock you off track. Alright, now I’m off to bed.” (Aaron’s normal sleep hours are 9.30am -11.30am or so lol)

Aaron’s a really big mentor in my life, one of the most successful people I know & truly living Supernova, he’s living the life. Ferrari, sickest house in LA, most amazing social circle in the mecca of cities to make it big in the world. And he’s only 30. So that talk coming from him meant a lot.

It is hard to stay on track when you see EVERYONE you know living the high life, while you have to tell yourself everyday to keep focused on the long term & stay on track. Especially when it’s available to you, all you have to do is say yes and fall in to the fun. And the fun times feel so good, it’s so hard to resist. But that talk with Aaron, I play it over in my head again & again everyday. I told Jim the same story while we were at Aaron’s that day (watching every 4th July firework show in the South Cali area from Aaron’s house at the top of the hollywood hills, his view is literally a panoramic view of LA, from Malibu to South Bay, Santa Monica to downtown, it’s nuts there were fireworks going off everywhere you looked!)

After the three of us talking at Aaron’s and at dinner, Jim summed up everything by saying –

“Basically, what you have to do, is just not let yourself get caught up in everyone else’s shit.”

No matter how much fun it may seem, if you want to get the long term success as fast as possible, you can’t let anyone knock you off course. You have to stay true to yourself, and you can’t let your lens of life lose focus of who you are and what you’re striving for.

Jim said “I will carry mountains if I have to, as long as I’m still going to get to where I need to be.”

Basically nothing’s going to stop him getting to where he needs to go. And that’s the mindset you have to keep carved in stone in your mind.

The way to approach any goal, stay focused, stay on track, stay true to yourself and don’t let yourself get caught up in anyone else’s shit. If something needs to be done, don’t wait for someone else to do it, don’t complain, don’t think you’re unlucky for having to do it or got dealt a bad hand in life. Want to know something? Life is fucking hard when you’re trying to make it. Fact. The people who sit & complain that they got a bad hand in life, that they’re hard done by, don’t realise that EVERYONE gets dealt shit hands in the game of life! Everyone is hard done by!!!

FUCKING GET OVER IT!!!

No complaining, that’ life. Just do what needs to be done. That’s it, just do what needs to be done & there’s nothing else to it. Something needs to be done? Life knocks you down a peg & it feels like you’ve been dealt a bad hand? You feel like you’re hard done by? Welcome to real life. Get up, figure what the next step forward is, and get to it. Don’t let ANYTHING OR ANYONE knock you off course.

You’re the only person that has the ability to do that.

Til next time, suck it easy.

KP

July 3rd, 2011 by KP

The word ‘addiction’ seems to have a bad connotation attached when we hear it. And of course it should, because we immediately think of drug addicts. But I’m a drug addict, my drugs are business, the gym, my newest drug being producing, and they all fuel my #1 addiction – life. Let me rephrase that, my #1 addiction being Supernova.

I’m addicted to those as fuck.

Well what is an addiction? Addiction in my mind is an obsession or a compulsive physical and/or psychological dependency to anything. I’m a heavy addict when it comes to fitness & business. I OD on them everyday, 24/7. I can’t get enough of them. I need my fix everyday or I get heavy doses of anxiety. People might think that’s bad to be addicted to them, but I’m addicted to them, and when I’m addicted to something that is for long-term success of something I aspire towards, then there’s no way in hell I see that as bad and I sure as hell am not breaking those addictions anytime soon, if ever. For anyone.

These addictions are what have got me to where I am today, and not once in the past 2 years have I looked back and thought I’ve stopped moving towards where I want to be.

Right now I can feel myself becoming a heavy addict in another area, all my mind can think about is getting my producing fix.

After honing in on my time management this week and dedicating time blocks for each addiction I need my fix from, producing is my newest addiction. And I fucking love it.

I’m consuming myself in it.

Business & fitness (yes fitness for physical health, but more so for keeping my mind clean) are still #1 priority. I’ve always believed that keeping your mind & body healthy has a direct correlation to your success in business (I’m sure there are proven studies where this is true too), and right now with business being #1 priority & focus, that means so is fitness. Plus your mental & physiological health should not be something you ever slack on, after all our mind determines how we feel, how we feel determines our actions, our actions determine our results, so I strive to keep my mind as close to 100% healthiness 24/7 because it is the driving force behind your results.

This producing gig might seem overwhelming from the outsider looking in, I need to not only continue to learn & master the DAW (digital audio workstation) that I’ve been getting down these past couple months (Ableton Live) but I also need to learn –

– Sound production
– Production & recording
– EQ & the spectrum of sounds & tones
– Synthesis analysis
– VSTs & VSTis for the DAW
– Sampling
– MIDI & audio interfaces & controllers

And that’s just what I can think of right now. There’s going to be a load more to learn along the way too.

Seem like a lot to learn? FUCK NO!

It would seem like a lot if all I was focused on was the outcome. But the process of learning & mastering this new skill-set is going to be one of the most challenging, yet rewarding & fun experiences in my life. Success is in the journey.

Seeing the progress I’ve made in the past couple months alone gives me a buzz when I think about it, and all I can think & want to do is learn the next piece.

I used to think pro football (soccer for the yanks!) was where my passion was. But producing my own music, seeing what was once a white canvas now painted with the brightest sounds & melodies I’ve ever seen in my head, and turning the canvas into a masterpiece, putting smiles on the faces of the people that witness it… nothing has ever made me feel like this. I love to make people feel good, I mean who doesn’t? And music is a universal way to doing so. I love music, and if I can do what I love, and make billions of people happy from doing so in the process, that just makes me fall in love with it even more.

Myself & my best friends have always talked life being about your passion and purpose.

Find your passion & purpose & get addicted to it!

Who said all addictions were bad.

KP

June 30th, 2011 by KP

“All who have accomplished great things have had a great aim, have fixed their gaze on a goal which was high, one which sometimes seemed impossible.” – Orison Swett Marden

These last few weeks, make that months, I have been consciously focusing on something I learned from Carlos (he’s been my roommate & is like a brother to me).

It was as I was driving him to the airport a couple months back.

Something I’ve noticed with him since I’ve known him is that he has an amazing ability of time management & his ability to chip away at what needs to be done along the course of a process everyday until the goal is reached is insane. He never attaches emotion to a process, it’s always just next step, next step, next step. I’ve literally seen with my own eyes, him wake up, go sit at his computer at 7am before eating anything, start chipping away at his biggest task of the day, when that got done he moves on to the next thing, and the next thing, and the next thing, until it gets to 7pm and he goes –

“Man I’m starving… Oh fuck it’s 7 o’ clock, I forgot to eat!”

Yet he’s just got 2 weeks worth of shit done in 12 hours. That is not a rare sight with him, I’ve seen him do this many a time, I’ve seen him work 96 hour days straight, see projects out until completion every time, even when they looked done for, and almost as if ‘magically’ they just turn around and he achieves success… it sets the bar for what self-discipline, commitment, hard work, and drive really is.

We were talking about making it big & making stuff happen. So I was talking to him, and he said something about ‘greatness’. He goes –

“Dude, people think greatness is this huge spectacle of amazing shit that happens when you make it big. What greatness really is, when you know that someone has greatness inside them, is when they have to ability to do the little things that matter, everyday. Whether they want to or not, whether they’re really busy, whether they’re tired, they get it done anyway. They make time, they realise that getting the little things done that matter is more important than sleep, they realise that if they don’t do what needs to be done & move at the fastest pace you possibly can, someone else out there probably is moving at that pace, & that’s the difference between you or them crossing the finish line first.“

He told me that & I felt the cogs inside me ‘click’ and the lightbulb lit up…

Holy fuck how true is that?! The kid is a fucking beast, and is why he is one of the biggest mentors in my life (among very few people) that truly have impacted my growth & evolution in to becoming who I am today.

Life is a game of inches, and like Tony Robbins says, your decisions are destiny. There is no silver medal in life. It’s in your moments of decision when your destiny is shaped. Choose your decisions wisely, taking action in that split second is the difference in earning gold medal, or losing.

So if you’re wondering what greatness is? That’s about the best definition I’ve ever heard anyone give it.

Greatness is not the end result, greatness is the ability to do the little things that matter that no one else sees, everyday, until completion. No excuses, no emotion, no complaining, just action because it HAS to be done. There’s no other choice. It just has to be done.

Like my boy V from London told me –

“Success is in the journey.”

Couldn’t be more true. And that’s why greatness is the key to Supernova.

KP

June 29th, 2011 by KP

Yep this is my car. Well, it will be.

I am not afraid to admit the fact Aventador that you made a tent in my pants. This is the car that kicks ass, takes names, and doesn’t take prisoners.

My one will be in white… or yellow… or blood orange. And I’ll be waiting until it is released as a convertible, you live in LA, your Lambo needs to be a convertible. This car is where it’s at.

Let’s all just take a minute, or an hour, and take some time to soak in this beast the gods sent down from the unearthly realm they tried keeping it captive in for someone (me) to tame.

Lamborghini Aventador – you are one bad bitch.

KP

June 28th, 2011 by KP

After my last post, “self-discipline – the keys to success part I“, I wanted to follow up with this.

There are 9 key disciplines to overall self-discipline.

Discipline #1: Clear Thinking

Any problem you have in life, go and sit somewhere in solitude with NO distractions whatsoever for 30-60 minutes. Then, almost like a miracle the answer(s) will come to you. Like when a bucket of water with silt in is swished around, after a while, all the silt sinks to the bottom & the water is now clear. Its the same with your mind, do the same thing to get it clear so you can think straight & decide how to act correctly. Take 60 minutes & just sit still & think.

The small voice you always hear will now shout so loudly you will be amazed you didn’t hear it before when it seemed so quiet. Now all the silt has set, you can hear it again.

“Think on paper”, write everything down. The most amazing things happen between the head & the hand. The subconscious will provide the solution.

Discipline #2: Daily Goal Setting

Focus & concentration are essential for success. If you cannot focus or concentrate, then you have to work for someone else or under someone else that will MAKE you focus & concentrate.

Focus & concentration are both habits you can practice with self discipline. Ask yourself what you would do right now if you had $10million and just 10 years to live.

Write down 10 goals you want to achieve in the next 12 months. Write them down as if they already existed in the present & personal (I earn, I drive, I acquire etc) tense – and add “by (deadline date)” to the end of each goal.

E.g. I earn $1,000,000 by December 3rd

Write down you goals every morning without looking at yesterday’s goals.

Discipline #3: Daily Time Management

Every minute spent in planning saves 10mins in execution. Plan your day before you begin. If you’re not following a plan you’re reacting to whatever’s going on.

It gives you a track to run on. It’s best to do this night before. “Write it down before you begin.”

Prioritize your list in to – A task is a must do, B task is a should do, C task is a nice task to do. Never do a b before an a task, discipline yourself not to do things that are low value. D tasks are delegate to someone else. E tasks are eliminate – they don’t matter,

A1 (most important), A2, A3, B1, B2… etc

Discipline yourself to focus on your A1 task until 100% completion before doing any of your other tasks or anything else. When you can demonstrate each morning that you have the self control, self mastery, self discipline to start & complete your most important task, it makes you feel powerful

 

Discipline #4: Courage

FORCE YOURSELF to do what you know you should do, ALL OF THE TIME.

No excuses.

Aristotle said, ” If you desire to have a quality that you don’t have, you must act in every instance where the quality is called for, and you will have it”

Ralph Waldo Emberson said, “Do the thing you fear, & the death of fear is certain”

Discipline #5: Excellent health habits

Design your perfect body, make a list of what you want your body like, cut pictures out of magazines of how you want your body to look.

Get up & do some exercise, whatever it is, your body will continue to burn calories all day, your brain will have highly oxygenated blood first thing in the morning.

Untold amounts of highly successful people get up at 5am/530am & go & workout to start their day. When you exercise in the morning, your brain releases endorphins, which make you feel good, and you start your day strong.

Eliminate the 3 white poisons, flour, sugar, salt. Its that easy.

Drink 8 glasses of water a day to flush all the crap & toxins out of your body.

Eat more salads & eat more fruit & veg. 70% of your diet should be fruits & vegetables.

Discipline #6: Regular Saving & Investing

Resolve to get out of debt & stay out of debt.

Re-wire yourself – instead of thinking ‘I like spending money’ change it to ‘I like saving money’. Think about how much you enjoy money in the bank, moving towards financial independence, enjoy delayed gratification.

As your income grows, save more & invest more. Like Einstein said, “Compound interest is the most powerful force in the universe”.

Save 10-20% of your income – “Pay yourself” a salary from the money that comes in. 10-20% can be a lot, so instead, develop the habit of saving 1% of your income in a savings account. Discipline yourself to live on the other 99%, then each month, up your saving amount by 1%.

Develop the habit of living on less than you earn.

#1 rule: DON’T LOSE MONEY. Making money is like digging sand with a pin, spending money is like pouring water on to sand. Its easy to lose money, its hard to make it & keep it.

Pay cash & not on credit cards, it will make you realise how much you’re spending instead of thinking as your credit card as an endless supply or as ‘play money’.

If you cannot save money, the seeds of greatness are not within you

Discipline #7: Hard work

I may be less talented, or knowledgeable than anyone else, but I am willing to work harder than anyone else

60-70 hours per week work for around 10 years is the commonality for highly successful people. The harder you work, the ‘luckier’ you get.

Work ALL the time that you allocate to work. No idle activities, no sidetracking. When it is work time, you work all the time that you work!!

Start 1 hour earlier & get to work earlier, then leave work later. Work is not fun, have your fun later, enjoy your fun later as a reward after you’ve had a productive & empowering day’s work.

Ask yourself – “what is the most valuable use of my time right now?” And get to it. Then just keep telling yourself, “back to work, back to work”.

Discipline #8: Continuous Learning

The rule is: To earn more, you have to learn more. Jim Rohn said “Work at least as hard on yourself as you do on your work”.

Read everyday – knowledge is power. Attend seminars & take courses where specialists in that field will shave years off of your learning curve.

To earn more, you have to learn more.

Discipline #9: Persistence

The greatest test of self discipline is when you persist in the face of adversity and you drive yourself forward to complete your tasks 100%

When you can drive yourself to keep on keeping on even when everyone around you feels like quitting, and you feel like quitting as well, but you keep on keeping on, is when you’re on the path to passing the test.

Two Parts to Courage:

1. First is the courage to begin, to start, to launch in the face of failure with no guarantee of success

2. Second is the courage to endure, to persist, & to keep on going when you’re tired, and you’re disappointed, nothing’s working, and there’s no guarantee of success & maybe a very large likelihood of failure, but you still don’t stop.

 

Your persistence is your measure of how much you believe in yourself & what you’re doing. If you truly believe in yourself & what you’re doing, you will continue to persist regardless of what’s going on on the outside.

The more you believe, the more you persist – The more you persist the more you believe in yourself & the value of yourself. Persistence is self-discipline in action.

Think of your persistence like your measure of self-discipline.

Self discipline leads to self esteem, self esteem makes you feel greater about yourself which leads to greater persistence, which leads to greater self discipline, and you get on to an upward spiral of life.

Persistence is to the character of a man or a woman, as carbon is to steel. You make yourself, you shape yourself, you carve, form & build yourself in to a superior human being, a better & stronger person, when you persist when you feel like quitting. Persistence, persistence, persistence.

Always persist until you have completed the task. Persistence has a magical way of melting away resistance.

Eventually you develop the habit of persistence & you become unstoppable.

 

 

 

The 7 benefits of self-discipline:

1. Creating the habit of self discipline guarantees your success.

2. When you practice self-discipline you’ll get more done, faster & better than others. It leads to higher levels of performance.

3. You’ll earn more. The people with the highest self-discipline who get the results are the ones who move immediately to the front of the line in life.

4. You have a greater sense of self control, self reliance & personal power. You feel you can do anything you put your mind to because you have the ability to discipline yourself to do it anyway

5. It is the key to self esteem, self respect & personal pride. Everytime you discipline yourself you’ll like yourself more, see yourself as a better person, feel great about yourself & feel personally proud of yourself. It affects your personality in a greatly positive way

6. Increase your self discipline, and you increase your self confidence. The lower your fears of failure & rejection will be. Eventually you develop bulletproof self confidence where you can walk through walls

7. With self discipline, you build a strength of character that will drive you to persist over any & all obstacles on your path until you succeed.

With self discipline, you achieve personal greatness.

Until next time boys & girls

KP

June 27th, 2011 by KP

 

 

Self discipline is more important than anything else when it comes to your success.

I’ve been going through Brian Tracy’s self-discipline program, and if you’re wondering if it’s any good or not, it’s big fuckin titties.

Self-discipline is your ability to make yourself do, what you should do, when you should to do it, whether you want to do it or not. It is the key to success. Going back to my post the other day on “Progress Requires Sacrifice“, self-discipline is essentially having full mastery of your emotions where you decide what you want to do, rather than letting your emotions decide what you do.

The last couple years of hard grind & commitment to business have put us through an emotional roller-coaster, but when you finish the ride, or you decide to ride it again, emotionally you are forged like steel on the inside, and you stand unaffected when things seem bad.

It is the most common personality trait / characteristic I have noticed among the most successful people that I know after spending a lot of time around them, their sickening self discipline & the ability to do what they need to do, when they need to do it, whether they want to do it or not is the obvious secret to their success.

Except most people hope for it to be something else that makes people successful, they look for the quick & easy fix. But there is no magic bullet, no magic pill, no secret, other than a sickening habit of self-discipline. That is the secret to success.

I’ve always had good self discipline, but now I’ve been focusing consciously on forming that habit of self discipline, it’s getting easier everyday and outstanding self-discipline is becoming who I am, rather than something I have force myself to practice. I can feel it, and it is empowering.

Not only does it get easier as the habit is formed, it also compounds, where you might start to get more disciplined in your business area of life, suddenly your ability to get up & go to the gym when you don’t feel like it even though you know you should gets easier too. So it affects all areas of your life.

Self discipline is essentially self control & self mastery.

When you practice self-discipline, you respect yourself more & your self-esteem goes up.

Your image improves & you see yourself as a better person when you take control of yourself and do what you know you should do, for the long-term gain, rather than doing what you want to do for the short term gratification.

I’m making it sound easy.

Don’t get me wrong, it is FUCKING HARD to form the habit of self-discipline! If it was easy to go against our emotions, and we did what we know we had to do, when we needed to do it, whether we wanted to or not, all of the time, we would be evolving at an astronomical rate as a human race! It is easy to see how the statistic – the average human uses just 10% of their brain’s mental capacity is true when you really start to work on yourself & your ‘inner game’, you amaze yourself with the cognitive ability and mental capacity your brain has when it is tested.

Self-discipline is a habit that you can learn with practice & repetition. Do something over & over again, whether you want to or not, and eventually you create a habit.

The difference between successful people & unsuccssful people are their habits. Succussful people have success habits, unsuccessful people have non-success habits. The #1 habit of successful people is the ability of doing what they know they should do, when they need to do it.

Successful people make a habit of doing what unsuccessful people don’t like to do. The ironic thing, is that successful people don’t like to do the same thing unsuccessful people don’t like to do, but they make a habit of doing it anyway because they recognise that it is the price for success

Everything is hard before it is easy. Fact.

Accept that, or be forever fucked in the world of limbo where you wait for something spectacular to be handed to you on a plate.

It only takes about 21 days to break an old habit and create a new one. So practice self-discipline everyday, for just 21 days. Be willing to pay the price in the present, to reap & enjoy the rewards in the future. LONG-TERM OVER SHORT-TERM!!!

More to come in Self-Discipline: The Key To Success – Part II (I’ll be writing up & posting it soon)

The one & only,
KP