The Hoops Whisperer

I love everything about that.

Elton Brand was the first guy to pay Idan for his work. I’m not sure exactly how many guys Idan had worked with before Elton but it was a lot.

He had HUSTLED, working for free (!!!) and serving the athletes who came to him as profoundly as he could as he mastered his craft and poured his heart and soul into trying to help them catch their dreams. (I repeat: For FREE.)

He loved what he did so much he would have (and sometimes did) literally PAY to do it. And then he got paid to do it.

Can you imagine how amazing that must have felt?

He had spent years as an unhappy attorney trying to make that work then years as an un/underemployed attorney living with his parents trying to get a break in the basketball world—not quite sure how it would all come together but not giving up as he experienced rejection after rejection and took baby step after baby step after baby step in the direction of his dreams…

And, here we are. Awesome.

It reminds me of when I first read Michael Gelb’s How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci (see Notes). It was the summer of 2001. I recently left the company I sold my first business to. I can vividly remember doing the 100 Questions journal exercise I share in that Note.

I was struck by one of Gelb’s exercises in which he dropped this wisdom bomb: “The happiest people in the world ask, ‘What if I could find some way to get paid for doing what I love?’”

—> How could I get paid to do what I love?

Hmmmm… What did I love? I loved reading and optimizing and sharing wisdom.

How could I get paid to do that? (Over the years, I re-framed the question to “What do I love so much I’d actually pay to do it?!”)

Hmmmm… It took me a long time to figure that part of the equation out and I took many detours. But I also took baby steps and held the vision and, literally paid to do what I now get paid to do.

The last Note we did was on Cal Newport’s So Good They Can’t Ignore You in which he argues that skills trump passion in our quest for work we love. While that’s absolutely true—we MUST adopt a craftsman mindset if we want to create an enduring opportunity to do what we love, it’s not either or and passion isn’t just an epiphenomenon of excellence. It goes both ways.

Spotlight on you now.

What do you love?

How can you get paid to do it?

And, most importantly: How are you working like a craftsman to make that a reality?

(And, perhaps even more importantly: How are your fundamentals? YOU are your business’s most valuable asset and we need to make sure you’re dialed in. Best way to do that? Know and crush your #1 nonnegotiable self-care habit. EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.)

Here’s to getting paid to do what we love as we give our gifts to the world.

P.S. I love the way Stephen King puts it in his craftsman classic On Writing (see Notes): “One more matter needs to be discussed, a matter that bears directly on that life-changer and one that I’ve touched on already, but indirectly. Now I’d like to face it head-on. It’s a question that people ask in different ways—sometimes it comes out polite and sometimes it comes out rough, but it always amounts to the same: Do you do it for the money, honey?

The answer is no. Don’t now and never did. Yes, I’ve made a great deal of dough from my fiction, but I never set a single word down on paper with the thought of being paid for it. I have done some work as favors for friends—logrolling is the slang term for it—but at the very worst, you’d have to call that a crude kind of barter. I have written because it fulfilled me. Maybe it paid off the mortgage on the house and got the kids through college, but those things were on the side—I did it for the buzz. I did it for the pure joy of the thing. And if you can do it for the joy, you can do it forever.”

Wow. I’ve mentioned this before, but pretty much every book has a word or phrase that the author comes back to again and again and again.

Idan’s word? GREATNESS.

He only works with the absolute best. Those committed to GREATNESS.

With *that* as the shared goal, they’re both willing to do the things that most people aren’t willing to do.

Reminds me of Michael Phelps and his coach, Bob Bowman. Here’s how Phelps puts it in No Limits (see those Notes): “Bob’s philosophy is rather simple: We do the things other people can’t or won’t, do…. Bob is exquisitely demanding. But it is with him that I learned this essential truth: Nothing is impossible.

And this: Because nothing is impossible, you have to dream big dreams; the bigger, the better.

So many people along the way, whatever it is you aspire to do, will tell you it can’t be done. But all it takes is imagination.

You dream. You plan. You reach.

There will be obstacles. There will be doubters. There will be mistakes.

But with hard work, with belief, with confidence and trust in yourself and those around you, there are no limits. Perseverance, determination, commitment, and courage—those things are real. The desire for redemption drives you. And the will to succeed—it’s everything.

That’s why, on the pool deck in Beijing in the summer of 2008, there were sometimes no words, only screams. Because, believe it, dreams really can come true.”

What do you want in your life?

As you feel into that, remember Abraham Maslow’s wisdom (see Notes on Motivation & Personality): “If you deliberately plan on being less than you are capable of being, then I warn you that you’ll be unhappy for the rest of your life.”

Maslow told us that the need to fully express ourselves and to become that which we are capable of being is a FUNDAMENTAL human need—just like breathing and eating and sleeping.

This could take the form of being the greatest basketball player ever or the best parent you can be but that drive is real. And healthy.

We just need to embrace this impulse as an intrinsic drive, let go of comparisons and “shoulds” and stories about where we should already be in our lives and simply show up TODAY as powerfully as we can—knowing that as we diligently, patiently and persistently move in the direction of our dreams, over the long run (over the LONG RUN I say!), we are bound to be successful.

Here’s how Grandpa Abe puts it in his own words: “Musicians must make music, artists must paint, poets must write if they are to be ultimately at peace with themselves. What human beings can be, they must be. They must be true to their own nature. This need we may call self-actualization… It refers to man’s desire for self-fulfillment, namely to the tendency for him to become actually in what he is potentially: to become everything one is capable of becoming.”

Plus: As Maslow points out, in one individual it may “take the form of the desire to be an excellent parent, in another it may be expressed athletically, and in still another it may be expressed in painting pictures or in inventing things.”

How about you?

Here’s to optimizing and actualizing!

Two baskets: GOOD and BAD.

This also reminds me of Maslow. He told us that in any given moment we have a choice: Will we step forward into growth or back into safety?

Two baskets: GOOD and BAD.

+1 for the GOOD shots.

-1 for the BAD shots.

If you’re serious about optimizing and actualizing, we want to make sure we’re shooting at the right basket.

This is a really simple and equally powerful tool. As we know, our lives are determined by the aggregate of our moment to moment decisions. Let’s choose wisely.

Next time you’re about to take a shot, make sure you’re aiming at the right target.

That’s an exchange between Idan and his (awesome!) niece.

She must have studied Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra because he said the same thing: “‘This is my way; where is yours?’—Thus I answered those who asked me ‘the way.’ For the way— that does not exist.”

Important news flash: THERE IS NO ONE WAY.

Period.

We each need to craft our own path. Trusting ourselves enough to integrate the Ideas that resonate and dropping those that don’t. Experimenting with our lives as we refine our sense of truth and carve our own path.

Idan kicks off every chapter with a little wisdom burst.

Here’s the gem from this chapter:

ain’t no right or wrong way, just your way
#noformulasostopasking

Idan could literally be a case study in Ryan Holiday’s The Obstacle Is the Way.

We need to quit lamenting our challenges and see them as the FUEL to our greatness. As Joseph Campbell advises, we need to say “YES!” to it all.

What are you rejecting in your life? An illness? A broken relationship? Failed ventures? Delayed dreams?

How can you re-frame the experience and see it as the exact thing that is catalyzing your growth—making you stronger and more capable in ways you may not be able to imagine right now yet still remarkable?

Plato’s cave. Can you see it?

Nietzsche comes to mind again. He tells us something similar: “The higher you ascend, the smaller you appear to the eye of envy. But most of all they hate those who fly.”

Those who are stuck in the cave or stuck on the ground are often threatened by those who have stepped out and taken flight. It takes courage to embrace the fact that’s just how it works. Let’s remember Krishnamurti’s wisdom that “It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”