We’re going to talk about that in just a second…
I want to talk about why the most successful people are extremely delusional and practical at the same time.
There’s an interview with P. Diddy where Diddy says,
“One of the things I say to young people that want to follow in my footsteps is that you actually have to be crazy. You can’t believe in the reality that’s presented in front of you. You have to believe that you’re going to be as great as you can be.”
And then the interviewer says, “What inspired you? What got you going?”
And Diddy says, “I was probably crazy.”
And they laughed. And they interviewers says, “You’re talking about risks? You’re a risk taker?”
And Diddy says, dead seriously, “No. I’m talking about crazy.”
You have to realize how crazy it is to accomplish great things when you’re not in a position to do it. If you’re broke and you want to be a millionaire, that’s crazy. If you have no business experience and you want to build a business, that’s crazy.
The definition of crazy is: In a state of mind that prevents normal perception.
Think about that. You’re in a state of mind that prevents normal perception. You literally don’t see the world the way everyone sees it. You’re crazy.
And when they world around you is saying, “Hey, you barely have enough money for rent this month. You’ve never started a business. You don’t know how to hire someone. You don’t have the money for this. You don’t have the time. You get home from work and you’re tired.”
And when the world around you is saying all these things. True things. I mean, you really don’t have the money or time or whatever. The world around you is saying all these things to you. And you’re thinking, “So what. I’m going to do it anyways.”
You’re literally crazy. You’re in a state of mind that prevents normal perception. And because you’re crazy, that’s why you make it happen.
If you don’t believe 1st, there is no 2nd. You have to believe in yourself to a point where it doesn’t even make sense. You believe so strongly that it literally doesn’t make sense. And then you get really practical about how you’re going to make it happen.
Great people don’t accomplish great things by thinking average. Great things are accomplished by believing in yourself first, believing that you’re the one who’s meant to make this thing happen. After that, after that part of believing you’re great, then everything else starts to happen.
And when you get more results, it feeds your confidence and you only become more delusional because it’s backed up by competence.
There’s an interview with Bobby Fischer where the interviewer says, “Don’t you think it’s arrogant to say you’re the best chess player in the world?” And Bobby Fischer says, “It’s not arrogant if it’s true.”
He can back up his state of mind because he really could beat anyone. And it feeds into his state of mind even more. Now of course Bobby Fischer really did go crazy, but that’s beside the point.
If you look around, and listen very closely to what extreme achievers say, then you’ll see the small clues that demonstrate their belief system. Most of them hold back because they know how crazy their thoughts are, and we’ll talk about that in just a second. But there are always signs of this insane level of believe in themselves.
And when I say that you can see small signs of it, here’s an example with MIchael Jordan.
Reggie Miller, who’s also a great basketball player, was playing against Michael Jordan in an exhibition game. And this is Reggie Miller’s rookie year, but Michael Jordan is a veteran. And the veterans don’t like playing in exhibition games because they prefer the real thing.
Reggie Miller is excited because he’s now in the NBA, and he’s playing against Jordan. But Jordan is just going through the motions, he’s not taking it seriously. And it’s only the first half of the game. Reggie Miller has 10 points, and Jordan only has 4 points.
And a person on Reggie Miller’s team says to Reggie, “Can you believe Michael Jordan. Everyone’s talking about him. He’s supposed to be able to walk on water. And you’re out here killin’ him Regg. You should be talking trash to him.”
So Reggie Miller is like, “Yea you’re right. And he says to Michael, ‘Michael, who do you think you are? The great Michael Jordan. That’s right, there’s a new kid in town.’”
And Michael Jordan just looks at him and starts shaking his head and he’s like ‘ok, ok’.
And in the second half of the game, Jordan ended up with 44, and Reggie Miller ended up with 12. So Jordan only allowed him to score 2 more points, while Jordan scored 40 more points.
And as Jordan is walking off, he turns to Reggie Miller and says, “Don’t ever talk to Black Jesus like that again.”
Now that’s pretty funny but I want you to pay attention to Jordan’s state of mind. Even though he said, “Don’t talk to Black Jesus like that again.” Think about how highly you have to think of yourself to compare yourself to God.
And it’s not just Jordan. You see signs of this in EVERYONE who’s extremely successful. Even if they don’t say it in that way, they will say things like, “I literally feel like I’m creating the world around me.”
The Andrew Carnegie quote from earlier where Carnegie says, “Be a man who in his secret thoughts believes himself to be superior to most men, thus deserving of great wealth and power.”…That quote demonstrates how highly you need to think of yourself to accomplish great things.
Inside, you feel like there’s nothing you can’t accomplish. There’s an inner story you tell yourself. And that story is that you’re born to win. You’re born to make things happen. This inner feeling is what propels you forward but it doesn’t just stop there.
You develop a belief system that knows you’re brilliant, different, and maybe even destined to change the world. This special sense of destiny evolves into a delusional state of mind. You feel like a God.
Extreme Achievers don’t just feel like they’re born to win, they make it so it’s inevitable that they will.
The first thing is your belief. The second thing is extreme practicality. Now these seem like complete opposites but they’re not. If you just stop at the belief, you are officially crazy.
The only difference between successful delusion and crazy people delusion is that successful people are practical about their delusions. Crazy people are delusional about what they think will happen and then they stop their.
Crazy people say they’re going to be the greatest in the world and then they don’t work on that greatness.
But successful people say, “I’m going to be the greatest basketball player in the world and then they practice basketball every day. 24/7.”
The extreme achievers say, “I’m going to put people on Mars.” And then they learn how to build rockets and the science and everything that goes into making it happen in a practical way.
On one hand, you have to be extremely delusional and on the other hand you have to be extremely practical.
You’re delusional about what you want to make happen, but you’re practical in how you go about making it happen.
This is what most of the ‘law of attraction’ people seem to forget.
It’s not enough to just think you’re going to accomplish something, you have to get extremely practical about how you’re going to accomplish it.
You need to figure out the steps to make it happen.
Elon Musk is the perfect example of being delusional and practical at the same time.
It’s delusional to think that you can put people on Mars. But the way he’s doing it is very practical. And he’s so practical that when he started it, he thought that he was going to fail. But he went ahead with it anyways.
The part of him that thinks he’s going to fail was the extremely practical part. Because there are so many obstacles in the way that it’s like a 99% chance that he would fail. And the practical part in him knows this. It would be stupid not to understand this.
But the delusional part in him says, “Oh well. Let’s do it anyways.”
First, you have the belief, then you figure out how to make it happen.
You should have no desire to be average. You should have no desire to think and act like everyone else if you want to accomplish great things.
You can see signs of this in everyone who accomplishes big things. But it’s hard because they don’t want to reveal it. There’s no advantage in revealing how you think. If anything, it makes it harder for you to accomplish something.
When you tell people that you’re Black Jesus, people will look at you like you’re crazy. So, extreme achievers don’t say anything.
They just have this insane level of, “I’m destined to do this” inside of them and they don’t tell people about it because the world will chastise them for thinking they’re better than someone else.
There’s a great quote from Merianne Williamson that says, “We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? Your playing small does not serve this world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that others don’t feel insecure around you.”
We have gotten to a point where we chastise people who believe themselves to be great and destined to accomplish something. And because we make people feel bad for having these extreme thoughts, they close up. They only think those thoughts to themselves.
And when someone like an Elon Musk, Michael Jordan, Bill Gates, or whoever comes along, and accomplishes something great, we don’t see how it happened. And they don’t tell us the extreme thoughts they have because of what people will say about it.
You have to believe that you’re a God in the world you want to create. You have to believe that you are great, bigger, than the world around you. And no matter how many people make fun of you, no matter how many people make fun of your insane level of belief, you realize that they’re just making fun of it because they don’t have that belief in themselves.
You’ll never hear someone like Elon Musk to tell you NOT to think highly of yourself.
Thinking highly of yourself is the first step. After that, you just get extremely pragmatic about how you’re going to accomplish what you want to accomplish. You think about the steps, the how-to, and you make it happen.
Successful people are delusional because that’s what makes them great.