Lessons Learned:
“Sure, there may be billions of frogs, but sometimes I’ll notice there are only ten different kinds of frogs. So that’s a good second tip: you should kiss one of these, one of those—but don’t try to kiss every possible frog. First figure out how many kinds of frogs there are and then see if you can kiss one of each kind.”
“Life will keep hitting you over the head with the same lesson until you listen.”
“There’s the First Door,” I told Matt, “the main entrance, where the line curves around the block. That’s where ninety-nine percent of people wait around, hoping to get in. “Then there’s the Second Door, the VIP entrance. That’s where the billionaires, celebrities, and the people born into it slip through.” Matt nodded. “School and society make you feel like those are the only two ways in. But over the past few years, I’ve realized there is always, always…the Third Door. It’s the entrance where you have to jump out of line, run down the alley, bang on the door a hundred times, crack open the window, sneak through the kitchen—there’s always a way. Whether it’s how Bill Gates sold his first piece of software or how Steven Spielberg became the youngest studio director in Hollywood history, they all took—” “—the Third Door,” Matt said, a smile spreading across his face. “That’s how I’ve lived my whole damn life.”
“I’d always seen success and failure as opposites, but now I could see they were just different results of the same thing—trying. I swore to myself that from now on I would be unattached to succeeding, and unattached to failing. Instead, I would be attached to trying, to growing.”
Action Items/To Think:
- What is the Third Door to a challenge I currently have?
- Who can I ask for help about this challenge?
Arabela Navarro 