[SERIES] 6/7 Unpopular Belief: Get Famous

Famous people are frauds.Famous people are vain.Famous people are selfish.This is post 6 of 7 Unpopular Beliefs Series.

Get Famous!

Influence is power.

We discussed how money can be useful in making change in part 1.Influence is just as powerful.Marketers use celebrities to advertise their products.Why? Because we trust them. We've built a relationship with celebrities over the course of their careers.I'm including politicians in this, as well.The more people you spread your message to, the more you can help people.

"The opposite of getting famous is hiding."- Derek Sivers

Mass media is mass communication.

Fred Rogers did it.Jim Henson did it.Sesame Workshop does it all the time.Getting famous means mastering media and communicating your message. Getting famous means being a practitioner of influence, not merely a wielder of it.

2 Minute Action

What networks do you have now?Instagram? Snapchat? Facebook? LinkedIn? Twitter?For me, it's email.What's your message?Today is a great day to publish a random act of kindness or a resource that can help people.And what's great is that it doesn't need to take more than 2 minutes.

[SERIES] 5/7 Unpopular Belief: Trust Your Gut

But what about evidence?What about data?What about expert opinion?This is Part 5 of the 7 Unpopular Beliefs Series.

Trust Your Gut!

Expert Advice

The idea here is that you're believing in someone else's abilities to understand your situation better than you. Sometimes that's really helpful.In that case, you'd be following your gut to go with someone else's.

Heuristics

If you've done this a million times before, you've probably developed what psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer refers to as a heuristic based gut feeling.The idea is that even if you can't consciously articulate your situation, your brain has seen this so many times that it's actually making you feel what's different this time.It's called a heuristic. We use these all the time.

Can you read this?

I cnduo't bvleiee taht I culod aulaclty uesdtannrd waht I was rdnaieg. Unisg the icndeblire pweor of the hmuan mnid, aocdcrnig to rseecrah at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mttaer in waht oderr the lterets in a wrod are, the olny irpoamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rhgit pclae.

That's a really basic heuristic. Your brain is just making it happen for you.If you've done something enough times, Gigerenzer estimates that 80% of the time, your gut is accurate. That is a really, really good chance.

Avoid Regret

Ultimately, a major motivator for people is avoiding regret. We don't want to get to our death beds and struggle with something we should or shouldn't have done.If you didn't follow your gut, you have a much higher likelihood of regretting your decision.If the expert was wrong, you can blame the expert. How were you supposed to know? You're not the expert.If you had a gut feeling and you ignored it . . . good luck getting rid of that regret.If your wrong and went with your gut, well, you were just wrong. But at least you didn't know the answer and pick something else.

*Disclaimer for High-Stakes Decisions*

Remember the consequences of your decision in high-stakes situations.Here's an example of a flawed gut feeling:In 1999 NYPD fatally shot Amadou Diallo in New York City. Police fired when they thought the young Guinean man was reaching for a weapon, but he was actually unarmed and digging in his pocket for his identification.What happened? Social conditioning creates non-conscious beliefs. These beliefs are hard to identify because they're non-conscious. You're not aware you have them. This is the basis for racism, classism, sexism and a ton of other "isms."It's these non-conscious beliefs that produce the first impressions that can trigger flawed decisions.

2 Minute Action

Here are a few things that only take 2 minutes to do:

• Is there someone in your life who just drains the energy out of you? That's a gut feeling. Cut it off.
• Make a subtle gesture of gratitude or kindness to someone you otherwise might not. This helps those around you feel safe and more like themselves. Others are less likely to make rash decisions or judgments when they feel like we're all on the same team.
• Phone a friend. If you have a high-stakes decision to make, call 3 experts.

[SERIES] 2/7 Unpopular Belief: Be Good At One Thing

In his list of directives, Derek Sivers refers to this idea as pursuing market value instead of personal value.

Part 2 of the 7 Unpopular Beliefs Series

Don't be a starving artist!

When I was I college, I spent a lot of time studying and training for what I wanted to do: brain research.I was studying the neuroscience of the developing brain. I wasn't thinking about how much money I'd have later, or the value I was worth as a researcher. I was just thinking "hey, brains are really important and really interesting. I bet I could help a lot of people if I understood how they develop and how they work."I was sort of right.It turns out, researchers can bring a lot of money for their institutions. At Penn State, a top research institution, people are often surprised to find out that the amount of money researchers bring in far exceeds that of the football program. It's not even close.Anyway, the point is that what I wanted to do and what was valuable had a great overlap. This is called "an opportunity."If you're in love with the idea of being a starving artist, don't be mad when you are starving and can't help anyone else because you need to take care of yourself.

Go where the opportunities and money are.

If you are trying to help people, this can only lead to good outcomes. Your hard work in combination with opportunity will yield.Here's an equation for success that I pulled from a book Michael Johnson (the Olympic gold medal sprinter) wrote:

Success = Hard Work (Talent + Opportunity)

The notable part of this equation is realizing that if Opportunity is 0, the whole thing nulls out.Also notable, is the understanding that Hard Work is the multiplier. This means if your effort is distributed across many projects you're less able to drive up the success of any one of them.

Focused, deliberate effort applied in a single direction can lead to a hefty multiplicative factor.

The tricky part is that I truly believe that if you want to develop personal value, you need to be good at lots of things.Here's the conundrum:If you want to make a difference to the world, you're going to have to build something the world values--not just something that you personally value.It's up to you to pick and adjust. It's not that you can only do one thing for the rest of your life. It's just that if you choose too many, you will have a hard time getting the flywheel moving.

In fact, it's not always a good thing to make a career out of the things you really like.

Examples might include and are not limited to: sex, drugs, rock/roll, etc.

2 Minute Action

Make a list of the things you love to do.Make a list of the types of impact you're making.If you had to choose only 3 in each category, which would they be?Great. Now pick one in each category.Remember, each of these is fighting for its life for your attention and hard work.You don't have to decide your entire future in 2 minutes. But you do have to start with a change.