Strive

6Disrupt Yourself

The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.

—Socrates, Greek philosopher

Use Self‐Disruption to Attain Success

Have you ever noticed how some entertainers have the power to reinvent themselves? Justin Timberlake, for example, morphed from a teenage heartthrob into a producer, restaurant owner, and philanthropist—and was startlingly successful in every role. What has made Timberlake, and others like him, so successful at reinventing themselves?

There are successful individuals who have both innate and acquired talents and skills, riches, a good background, and a positive outlook, but none of these are enough to create and sustain success. True success comes from that which is uncomfortable: Disruption.

“Disruption” is frequently batted about in tech circles to describe the sudden, incredible change brought about by a technology or action. For example, the Internet disrupted how we do business, communicate, and obtain information. Before the Internet, we usually talked face‐to‐face or through phone calls, we might have dropped a letter in the postbox for grandma, and we would walk to the public library to spend a few hours among the stacks to find information. Disrupting yourself means to embrace uncomfortable change. In this chapter, I will show how disruption leads to success and how you can start using it to achieve your goals.

The most successful individuals, corporations, organizations, and nations ...