Like the Nothing that rolled over Fantasia, like the fatal quick sands that brought down Atreyu's horse Artax (clearly I'm on a NeverEnding Story kick right now)...the Zone, the ripening, is quick to settle and fatally permanent. That is, if you don't stay alert, if you don't stay green.
School was meant to prevent this Zone. School was the antithesis of Inertia, an establishment with a fighting corps of teachers and mentors, meant to ward off the evils of idleness, of mental incapacitation, of voluntary self-crippling by virtue of laziness. It's not until people are out of school, out of this regiment of organized study and learning time, that the Inertia fully unfolds. Next thing you know, you're five years out of school and realizing that the last book you can remember "reading" was only 150 pages long and luckily you read the entirety of three pages of Cliff notes only to retain blurry memories of Holden Caulfield being a duck in pursuit of a prostitute with a baseball bat. Wait, that doesn't sound quite right. Nevermind, because somehow you remember getting an A in the class so you must have learned something...
Dr. Thompson taught me that 90% of human life falls within the Zone. Ten percent will make it. That ten percent will drive the changes in this world. That ten percent are the people we easily call great and leaders and impossible; us ever so willing to turn over the responsibility and accountability of change and influence to someone else so we can continue to be the 90% comfortably resting on our laurels, ripening, rotting. And the Zone remains through and through, widely defined, measured either by intellect or just purely by the will to change one's life.
A decade ago I was learning in my Saturday SAT courses, not about how to score high on the test, but how to make it in the terrifying out there-ness of bills and bosses. I was taught not simply how to focus and study those horrible hours of 100 words a day and quantitative math problems, but a deeper approach to priming oneself for survival in the quick sands of life. A ten-year lesson in the making. A ten-year constant pruning and daily reminder of mental upkeep and heart felt responsibility of growth. Self discipline is meant to break down, and free form can be dangerous if misguided.
I've spent the last six months in somewhat of a rut. I just woke up yesterday. And only today I realized that I have unknowingly slipped into this Zone, wallowing in circuitous self pity for 24 glorious weeks over not being able to accomplish my goals in record time or not being the five different success stories I want to be at once. I'm beginning yet another book this week in addition to my current 3-5, and it speaks of tapping into all of our entrepreneurial genes, how ever our DNA may be programmed for success. I'm learning bit by bit again how to come out of this fog and reminding myself that the first step to success is taking one step at a time and not stretching myself too thin. I am remembering that resistance to change is debilitating...most often when we are at rest, not always when we are in motion. Most of us are in the Zone and think we're being productive, chugging day in, day out in the same mindless job that no longer is gratifying or satisfying.
Most of us are at rest. When will YOU wake up? What will YOU do to change your life?
This Week's Picks:
- 1Q84 - Haruki Murakami
- Instinct - Thomas Harrison
