THE ENIGMA OF GREATNESS

When Michael Jordan started playing in the NBA, there were two types of players: Offensive players, and defensive players. Michael played BOTH.

When Mike Tyson started boxing, there were two types of fighters: Lightweight (fast), and heavyweight (slow). Tyson was BOTH.

When Bill Gates started Microsoft, there were two types of tech companies: Hardware, and software. Bill Gates mastered BOTH. 

When Jeff Bezos started Amazon, there were two types of e-com strategy: Pure online (eBay), and pure offline (Walmart). Bezos mastered BOTH. 

Conventional wisdom tells us "you must choose a side". You must pick a binary stance and stay firm in your belief. One true right and wrong.

But this binary thinking or "one or the other" is limited and if you practice it, you'll quickly snooker yourself into a corner and limit your options. You've got to learn to transcend binary thinking. Stop falling for false dichotomies.

If half the market makes high-quality products at high prices and the other half makes low-quality products at low prices — why not offer the highest quality products at the lowest prices? 

Once you learn this trick, you'll be playing with nuclear fire. 

I watched Sam Oven video on the Genius of Contradiction, where he explained how normal people make decision.

According to him, normal people believe in one true "right" and "wrong". Geniuses, billionaires, and scientific revolutionaries believe in "contradiction".

Normal people see what everybody else is thinking/doing, and then they adopt that as their own belief of what to think/do. They never think for themselves, they never agitate the crowd, they blindly obey. And this isn't a problem if you're ok with losing.

But, if you want to win, you need to think differently. You need to learn how to transcend binary logic and play with both sides of the spectrum. You need to become idiosyncratic.

Isaac Newton, Einstein, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Steve Jobs, Michael Jordan, Mike Tyson, Schumacher — they're all idiosyncratic. They all defied the "sacred conventions", upset the orthodox, and changed the rules of the game.

If you've ever wondered why some people change the world and others just live in it, it’s because they break the paradigm of how normal people view the world. Like Sam said “Genius is made of contradiction”. Successful people in life are able to contradict themselves in everything they attempt to do or are doing. They do not stick to one binary side of things.

I have seen people who are good at sales, but they're not good at like the technical things. And people who are good at the technical things, who don't think they're good at sales, right? We see these things everywhere. Or we might see somebody that's very confident and cocky. And then, we might see someone who's very shy and timid and paranoid. The point here is, we pretty much choose a side, when it comes to everything in our life, and this is not the way to do it, you do not succeed by doing this. You have to learn to transcend the binary state thinking, and you have to really learn to play with both sides depending on the situation in the environment. It's a lot easier said than done. It took me a long time to figure out how to do this, but when I did, it totally changed everything for me and I got so much more innovative. I could solve so many more problems and I could really do a lot of things that I never thought I could do, because, I got myself out of that limited thinking, which would always lead me into a corner, where I'd be like, "Oh, I can't do anything anymore." This is the way out.

A great way to find what's right, is to invert right, and we get wrong. Then, we can go out and look for what's wrong. When we've really found what's wrong, then we know what's right, because we just invert wrong, then we can see what's right. So this is a real good trick to dealing with reality. I've used it for a long time. For a lot of people, they think, to start a business, they need a good idea. They need that genius breakthrough idea that they hear about people having in the shower and things, right? Well, I went looking for the right idea, and I couldn't even find the right idea.

 

Lessons: Learn to be BOTH

• We don’t go looking for ideas, we go looking for problems. When you find the problem, the ideas flow in, all you need is to choose the best.
• When everyone is doing it, that is when it’s delusional and almost never right
• It’s hard to be idiosyncrasy and it’s hard to be isolated, but you need it to be successful
• Be confident in yourself but not cocky – thinking you are the best at it
• Once you think you are it, you stop trying, you start thinking you don’t need to learn anymore. Avoid getting complacent.
• Be polite and yet disruptive. To some people, your managers are either polite or ass hole. But the truth is to groom the best hands you have to give them some harsh and ruthless feedback. When you do that, they think about it and start working on themselves. So you become unpopular for a short period of time and in the future you become a hero whether they admit it or not. At work I will attack your logic, professional attitude, ethics etc but never your personal life (what you wear, hang out with etc), those shouldn’t be your managers business.
• Quiet with words, loud with actions. Most talkers are less doers, most doers are less talkers.  
• Openminded and stubborn, allow people to air their views about your solution but be firm to try out your own options. 
• Being a divergent thinker and a convergent thinker. Passionately attached and rationally detached. There are Divergent and Convergent thinkers. Divergent think about different ways to different solutions with endless possibilities. Convergent thinkers on the other hand narrow solutions to one possibility. Be both.
• Merging the dichotomy of "Work" and "Play" to Work/Play in one with your job.
• Being extroverted and introverted. Energetic and calm – make the switch as profession requires.
•   Specialist and generalist – No a little about a lot of stuff but have broad knowledge about one thing.
•   Lone wolf and team player- shut down once in a while, no phone, social media etc and immerse yourself in something worthy. As much as you will achieve a lot as a lone wolf, you can travel father when you play in a team.
•      Working smarter and harder. Student and teacher. Casual and serious. Be both!

Every genius of all time, every great athlete, every great entrepreneur, every billionaire, every person who's really made it or made a difference in the history of the world as we know, has been an idiosyncratic person with idiosyncratic tendencies. So you've got to learn to use contradiction as a tool. Don't be afraid of it, and don't worry what people think.

To your success!