#1 Fun is a serious thing
There is no doubt that fun and results go hand in hand. Do you think this is obvious? But how many hours in your working week do you usually enjoy your work? That’s not a matter of what kind of job or task you are doing, it’s all about how you progress. The Ikigay method describes productive fun, like an experience of flow. It is something where you are involved just a bit, a process challenging enough to feel satisfaction, and a good way to stay minimally far from your comfort zone.
Lesson: Cultivating your passion for success means more than just performing well technically. It is important to turn productivity into fun.
#2 The multi-rocket theory
Some entrepreneurs face extremely challenging times. They want to disrupt the market, but they are practically alone with co-founders and sometimes with their professional network. Collecting money from investors, designing products, thinking about marketing strategies… and what else?
How can they prevent feeling scared about the future, planning unreachable targets? They proceed step by step. The challenge is divided into short aims, small accomplishments, and simple task segments. That’s an excellent strategy when you are overwhelmed and called “the multi-rocket strategy”. Like a satellite that requires several rocket propulsions at the right time to reach the moon’s orbit, we need to complete our path step by step.
Lesson: If you want to cultivate your passion at the highest level, try to divide the challenges into complexity into simple tasks and keep working.
#3 Perseverance is lightness
At the time, I had a gig with my band in 2002. We play original compositions, but we were inspired from 70s. So we decided to make this music influence clear offering a famous Led Zeppelin song. I was the singer and it was a nightmare to manage the responsibility of singing so memorable and iconic songs. Years later, I encountered the same problem in assuring my startups’ monthly budgets. Then, after some stressful years, I discovered constancy, since staying consistent is essential to manage your big challenges rationally and with sustainable stress. Suddenly I realized the real difference between being hyper committed and consistently following through. I now have the monthly budget under my eye every day for just ten minutes, the perfect time to make micro-corrections. Regarding “impossible songs”, I would have just needed to sing them twice or three times every week to gain confidence.
Lesson: Deep focus results are for short time. Cause your mind burns and you live a heavy life. Perseverance is the key.
#4 The meaning is in the path
OK, it’s likely that someone believes that a business career is made by unique success. But this is not the meaning. A company’s development from scratch to zero involves many challenges, successes, and failures… without a narrative. The beauty is in the path, in overtaking a problem and looking around for the next obstacle. That’s business, maybe life… no endpoint, just a stage.
Lesson: The meaning of passion for me is to make me a better and happier person. The endpoint is not included in that.
#5 Problems arise when you look for opportunities
Imagine two people living in two contiguous houses. They live quite similar lives, but the first improves the house every day by crafting, designing and working. The second one is satisfied and spends all day sitting out in the shade of the patio. They still have a similar life but the first house is more and more beautiful than the second one. Parallelly, the first owner faces daily difficulties in crafting and designing solutions. Who, between those, do you want to be? Business and passions cannot be led by people who don’t want to change things and solve problems.
Lesson: If you do something in an innovative way, you will change. If you change, you will face problems. See problems from a different angle, they are a good indicator of your courage.