The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur

September 9Ignore Everything

The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks. See the line from a sufficient distance, and it straightens itself to the average tendency. Your genuine action will explain itself and will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing. Act singly, and what you have already done singly will justify you now.

Ralph Waldo Emerson—Self-Reliance (1841)

If you're to get your highest-payoff work done today, you have to figure out just how to ignore a great deal of what's going on around you.

In your journey you must steel yourself, if that's what it takes, to ignore many things, many people, and many situations. But that's the natural part.

The hard part is that you must also come to recognize and ignore the “inner noise.” The stuff you sometimes unconsciously obsess over. Things like fear, doubt, and uncertainty about the entire road you're traveling.

You might not be able to fully ignore these things, but you must recognize that how you interpret these things is what holds you back. Your reaction to these inner doubts is what binds you to conform, play it safe, and mimic the success of others.

Steven Pressfield's excellent book The War of Art tackles the idea of fear in this fashion:

Fear is good. Like self-doubt, fear is an indicator. Fear tells us what we have to do. Remember our rule of thumb: The more scared we are of a work or calling, the surer we can be that we have to do it.

The real art is to go boldly ...