Here’s the simple truth about your past:

Your past will either conform you or inform you.

It will shape you and twist and force you into decisions you don’t want to make.

Or it will teach you and help you and inform you.

The choice is yours.

And maybe, like George Bernard Shaw said, it’s time to stop running from it and time to start dancing with it.

I’ve never met someone who says they don’t struggle with criticism at least a little bit. 

No one I know loves haters.

Nobody likes when rocks are thrown at them.

And the truth is, if you chase a dream that is going to happen.

I wish it wasn’t but it will. Why? Because hate only gets loud when you do something that matters.

That’s why I wrote the “Hater Handbook.” Inside the pages are the very practical, very awesome things I do to deal with criticism.

And for the next three weeks you can get it for free.

If you pre-order my new book Start you’ll automatically get a free copy of this eBook.

Order on Amazon.

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Order on Books A Million

If you already pre-ordered just fill out this form.

Hate is inevitable, your response is up for grabs.

They always say that man is the deadliest prey. But I think they’re wrong. (And by ‘they’ I mean rich men wearing tuxedos who hunt fugitives on private island retreats.) I think the deadliest prey is “the perfect dream.”

For one thing, it’s incredibly seductive. As I stared at my own blank piece of paper of a life I got overwhelmed. I wanted to write down a perfectly crafted 10 year dream with hints of what I would also be doing in 50 years. I actually told my wife that. Upon turning 36, I told her, “I only have 10 years left of L.E. living in our house until she goes away to college. I also only have 40 years left until I reach the average lifespan of the American male. I think I’m going to start a new dream called the 40/10 and come up with the perfect list of things I’ll be doing for my dream for the next 40 years and the next 10 years.”

She looked up from her book and said, “Oh? So you’re just going to map out perfectly the next 40 years of your life? Oh good, I thought you were going to tell me something unreasonable.” I shook off that sarcasm like Jay-Z shakes dirt off his shoulder and proceeded with my plan.

For months, I tried. I spent hours and hours trying to come up with the perfect dream and here’s what I learned,

It can’t be done. Why?

1.Perfect is a slippery word.
Your definition of “perfect” will change 1 million times. How do I know? Try to catch it. Tell yourself, “If I get a book published, that will be perfect.” And then when that happens, try to wrapped your hands tightly around the word “perfect,” all you want but it will have moved on. Perfect will now be a book that sells 1,000 copies. Get there and perfect will shift again. And again, and again.

2.You’re not God.
This might come as a bit of surprise to you, but you’re not. Whether you’re an atheist or a person of faith, that’s one thing we can all agree on, you’re not God. Neither am I. Don’t believe me? Try to run you dream with any degree of perfection and then watch how quickly you discover how many things you don’t actually control. Like for say, the actions of every other person on the planet.

3.You’re going to grow and change.
Thank goodness that 18 year old me didn’t come up with a perfect 40 year plan and then try to hold 36 year old me to it. You wouldn’t have believed what he thought was important back then. In fact, I don’t really like what 26 year old me thought either. I like 37 year old me way better than 30 year old me. I hope that every year I am blown away by the new ways I’ve matured and grown and changed. And I hope my dreams track right along with me.

When I bumped into those realities and realized I hadn’t come up with the perfect dream, I was a little depressed about that. Whenever you don’t know what your dream is it seems like everyone around you has their’s perfectly figured out.

Ten years ago if you asked me if I was jealous of someone named Pioneer Woman I would have said you’re crazy. The only thing I know about being a pioneer is that every time I played Oregon Trail as a kid I got dysentery. And I’m not a woman. And yet, as I started to work on my blog, I eyed Ree Drummond with great envy.

“Look how well put together her blog is! And now she’s got her own TV show on the food network! She knows exactly what she is doing. I need to get a cow that thinks he’s a dog too so that I can take funny photos of him on the porch. She calls her husband, “Marlboro Man.” From here on out, I’m calling Jenny “Virginia Slims Woman.” Two can play at this game. Time to get some cattle and rustler jeans.”

But the truth is, Pioneer Woman doesn’t have a perfect dream. She doesn’t know what the next 30 years of her life look like. And you don’t have to either.

In fact, I don’t want us to figure out what our dream is. I think that’s too small, too restrictive and ultimately the wrong thing to do. What pressure we put on ourselves by the way we frame that question, “What’s my dream?” It gives you the belief that we’re going to find one perfect thing that will sustain us emotionally and creatively until we’re dead.

Nonsense. Life doesn’t work that way. Not fun lives anyway.

A dream becomes a prison if you lock yourself into finding one perfect dream.

Instead, let’s look for something that’s a lot more fun and a lot more exciting to find.

Let’s figure out an awesome life.

Not a single event. Not a moment. Not a perfect dream, but an awesome life. Something that lasts 50 or 60 or more years.

It’s time to let go of perfect.

If you pre-order my new book Start before April 22, I will give you $250 worth of free awesomeness. What is included? Here is the list: 

1. The Start e-book. This will probably retail at $10 or so eventually, but you’ll get it free.

2. Quitter Conference Audio Lessons. Tickets to this event cost $99-$199, but you get 3-4 hours of crystal clear audio from the last one for free.

3. The Hater Handbook. Most hardcover books are around 50,000 words. This book is 30,000 words, so it’s not some anemic PDF. It’s a full on, massive handbook for dealing with haters.

4. The 3 Stages of Every Awesome Idea e-book. A few years ago, I developed a system of creativity that helped me publish 4 books, blog a few million words, and be more productive than ever before. For the first time ever, it’s available and it’s free.

5. Two video clips from the sold out Start Night event. High def, awesome and again, free.

We will never offer this package again, but you can get it free if you pre-order Start.

Just fill out this form after you purchase the book.

Buy it on Amazon.

Buy it on DaveRamsey.com

Buy it on Barnes & Noble

Buy it on Books A Million.

Should you be getting up early?

Should you be staying up late?

Should you be hustling and working and grinding?

Should  you be practicing right now?

This chart was designed for musicians, but I think it works for any dream you’re chasing.

So I’ll let it answer the question: Should you be practicing right now?

Gaze long enough into the future and it’s easy to become obsessed with it. Which is a shame, because chasing your dream is all about “the now.”

That probably makes you think of yoga. That’s what I assume anyway. When someone tells me I need to “live in the now” or “be present,” I think “There’s going to be some chanting involved with that, right? Candles? I bet there are candles. Something in a nice sandalwood.”

I’m not against dreaming about the future, not at all. If you told me, “Let’s go to a water park next weekend,” I wouldn’t respond, “No thanks, I live in the now. Let’s just organically see if that happens next week.” If anything, I’d probably ask you how long the lazy river was.

Being awesome is all about the future, but it’s not a huge fan of “next.” Neither is my wife. On Saturday mornings, sometimes I will wake up like a Golden Doodle, a scientific creation every bit as strange to me as the Liger. I’ll bound out of bed and ask my wife, “What are we doing today? What’s next? What’s next?”

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One night, I flew out to San Diego to see a friend of mine. We were both speaking at a conference in LA on Wednesday and decided to hang out the night before.

I was nervous and distracted at dinner because my mind was fixated on the speech I was going to give. It was my first time on the main stage of this particular conference. They had given me a five-minute window to speak in which I had to be funny, insightful, interesting, and also introduce the next speaker – Dave Ramsey. 5,000 people, lights, cameras, introducing the owner of the company I worked for, no problem.

As I discussed the event with my friend, he held up his hand and stopped me short. He said, “What if we tried something? Let’s deconstruct our lives. Let’s each say something we’d miss if we lost it and why we’d be sad. I’ll go first.”

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