The 50th Law - 50 Cent [72]
There is, however, another possible relationship to boredom and empty time, a fearless one that yields much different results than frustration and escapism. It goes as follows: you have some large goal that you wish to achieve in your life, something you feel that you are destined to create. If you reach that goal, it will bring you far greater satisfaction than the evanescent thrills that come from outside diversions. To get there you will have to learn a craft—educate yourself and develop the proper skills. All human activities involve a process of mastery. You must learn the various steps and procedures involved, proceeding to higher and higher levels of proficiency. This requires discipline and tenacity—the ability to withstand repetitive activity, slowness, and the anxiety that comes with such a challenge.
Once you start down this path, two things will happen: First, having the larger goal will lift your mind out of the moment and help you endure the hard work and drudgery. Second, as you become better at this task or craft, it becomes increasingly pleasurable. You see your improvement; you see connections and possibilities you hadn’t noticed before. Your mind becomes absorbed in mastering it further, and in this absorption you forget all your problems—fears for the future or people’s nasty games. But unlike the diversion that comes from outside sources, this one comes from within. You are developing a lifelong skill, the kind of mental discipline that will serve as the foundation of your power.
To make this work you must choose a career or a craft that excites you in some deep way. You are creating no dividing line between work and pleasure. Your pleasure comes in mastering the process itself, and in the mental immersion it requires.
In the hood, most of the jobs that are available offer low money and the kind of menial work that leads to no real skills. Even hustling is tedious and not really a path with a future. In the face of this reality, people can go in one of two directions—they can seek to escape this reality through drugs, alcohol, gang activity, or whatever immediate pleasures can be had; or they can get out of the cycle by developing an intense work ethic and discipline. The types who go in the latter direction have a deep hunger for power and a sense of urgency. Nipping at their heels at all times is the possibility of a life of crap jobs or dangerous distractions. They teach themselves to be patient and to practice something. They have learned from early on, through their jobs or through hustling, to endure the long, boring stretches of time that are necessary to master a process. They do not whine or seek to escape this reality, but instead see it as a means to freedom.
For those of us who do not grow up in such an environment, we do not feel this urgent connection between discipline and power. Our jobs are not so dull. Some day they may lead to something really good, or so we think. We have developed some discipline at school or on the job, and it’s enough. But we are in fact deluding ourselves. More often than not our jobs are something that we endure; we live for our time off and dream of the future. We are not engaged in the daily activity of the job with our full mental powers because it is not as exciting as life outside work. We develop less and less tolerance for dull moments and repetitive activity. If we happen to lose our job or want something else, we suddenly have to confront the fact that we do not