Ask yourself The One Question and your answers will help you go where you want to go. This is like “The Secret” except its not complete bullshit.
Story time:
Years ago I was single and going out to bars with a married friend. He would always want to hit on women, would rarely muster the courage, yet would always be my wingman. Excellent guy yet I couldn’t shake the idea of what the fuck was he doing by my side when he was married – His wife would work for several months out of state. So I started to ask him.
-”What do you think is going to happen now?”
-”I don’t know”
-”Do you think one of these women is going to like you?”
-”Yeah, of course”
-”Then what? What will happen after you talk to her?”
-”Well… Sex?”
-”So what will happen next is one of these women is going to go sleep with you tonight on a one-night-stand out of the blue?”
-”Yeah”
You can guess that never happened. Of course, if you try one million times, you’ll eventually get lucky. Yet luck needs a big helping hand. Beyond the point of this being a setup for him cheating – the sequence he was expecting was unrealistic. Sure, if you’re a PUA (Pick-up-artist) chances are high you’ll sleep with one that night. Yet thats not what my friend was saying or doing.
He was going from stumbling drunk in a bar to a one-night stand with a stranger without the intermediate steps.
This was many years ago. Ever since then I ask myself “What do you think will happen next” all the time – Because I don’t want to be a frustrated drunk bozo.
Forget PUAs and bars, though. This is something you need to ask yourself on every situation you face. Especially if you’re going into something where there is a preconception of results.
For example, you read in John Chow’s blog how he makes $40,000 a month and decide to set up your blog. You write shit, and nothing happens – Guess what, you’ve been Chowed. After you read the inspiring article from Chowderhead and decide to go his route ask yourself.
“And what will happen next?”
You see, even you can’t lie to yourself in the face that bad. Asking the question brings up the obvious: There is no more magic – Harry Potter fucked it all up.
“I am going to build a million dollar a month blog empire! I am signing up to WordPress.com right now”
-”What do you think will happen next?”
“Option a) the entire population of mainland China will click your ads tonight, next week you’ll be on Jay Leno telling the world how to bank with The Google and The AdZen in The Interwebz”
“Option b) You’ll have a brand new blog with a scribble for an article and robots for traffic.”
-”What do you think will happen next?”
-”I will write awesome articles on raising snails”
-”And what next?” “Option a) You’ll start to develop a community or Option b) You’ll get a $50,000 check in the mail from SnailFarms for promoting their product so well”
The idea here isn’t to discourage yourself out of things – on the contrary. The idea is to have realistic expectations about what you are about to see next and what you will do after that. The idea here is to have a plan. To understand “What happens next”.
If you don’t ask yourself that question, you’ll always be surprised of the results no matter what they are – and in most areas of life the result will be disappointing simply because an enormous expectation is being built around everything and every experience by marketers such as myself.
