Just Fucking Do It (The Cure For Resistance)

“Henry Fonda was still throwing up before every stage performance, even when he was seventy-five. In other words, fear doesn’t go away. The warrior and the artist live by the same code of necessity, which dictates that the battle must be fought anew every day.” –Steven Pressfield, The War Of Art

My last post talked about Resistance. This post will talk about making Resistance your bitch.

Two years ago I read a little book I’ve mentioned, oh, a time or two on this blog – The 4-Hour Work Week. Whereas before I was content to chug along a predictable path of school –> work –> more work –> retirement, now I felt like there was another option.

I realized that for people who had the motivation and drive, there was a different path. There was entrepreneurship. I felt totally motivated and inspired to start my own entrepreneurial journey and create a “lifestyle” business that would stop the need of work for work’s sake.

I then proceeded to do absolutely nothing for the next year.

Yes, I diagrammed numerous business ideas in my moleskin notebook with multicolored pens (the use of a color coded pen system is a highly nerdy vestige of my medical school days). I read countless books and blogs about business. I brainstormed all the things I would do when I had a giant passive income stream coming in that supposedly wouldn’t require any work to maintain.

So, basically nothing got done.

Around the end of 2010 I felt a change. I was working on my new years resolutions (which I do every year, which my multicolored pen system, naturally), and I thought, “Why the hell am I taking no action when this is something so important to me??”

I resolved to make 2011 a get shit done year. I decided to just fucking do it.

In the last eight months, I’ve:

• Built three affiliate websites.
• Learned web programming and web design.
• Made a chunk of change building a website for someone else.
• Went from writing posts once a month to once or twice a week.
• Built up this blog up from 100 monthly views to over 1400.
• Outsourced part of my business to freelancers on elance.
• Got my motorcycle license (that one was just for fun).

Oh, and lest I forget to mention, at the same time I was also working insane hours as an intern. Snap!

It started when I bought AffiloBlueprint – a course that teaches how to build affiliate websites – and built up my first site within a few weeks. I now have three sites in various stages of progress that have netted me a few sales here and there.

I turned my attention to this blog, which I had been “meaning” to build up since I started it early 2010. I joined the A List Blogger Club, made blogging friends and devoured information like it was my day job. I started writing more regularly and writing higher quality content.

Despite the fact that my blog is still small, a few weeks ago I decided to pitch a guest post to blogger I admire with over 15,000 subscribers. I did it because I’m on one of Ramit Sethi’s email lists (he’s the genius behind I Will Teach You To Be Rich) and he sent an email saying to question my assumptions and take radical action to get awesome results.

So I thought, what the hell, I’m going to spend 20 minutes writing a pitch email to this big name blogger and see what happens. You know what she said? “Sounds interesting, send it over.” So I wrote the post up and emailed it to her and she said, “Great, I’ll post it on Wednesday.” That one post has doubled my subscribers, and the numbers keep growing everyday.

When this year started I didn’t know the first thing about the technical aspects of making a website. Out of sheer necessity I taught myself web programming and web design, including Dreamweaver, Photoshop and WordPress customizations. Just last month I made $1200 creating a website for my cousin’s urology practice.

I decided making $1200 for not very much work sounded like a good idea, so I decided to start a freelance business doing web design and development for doctors who need websites. I started generating leads of doctors in my area who either don’t have websites or don’t have good ones. Every day I’ve been cold-emailing a few people on this list. Nothing major has happened yet, but it’s a start.

I realized that when I get home from work I’m not very productive,  so it’s better for me to work on my writing and business projects in the morning. I started setting my alarm for two hours earlier than I would need to get up for work.

To help myself get up so early, I wrote an inspirational message on an index card and taped it to my clock so it’s the first thing I see when my alarm goes off. It reads:

Do you want to sleep? Or do you want to *HUSTLE*.

See where I’m going with this? The motto is JUST FUCKING DO IT.

Every inch of my being resists when I start a challenging project outside of my comfort zone. I’ve written the book on procrastination. I’ll check email, read too many books, watch too much TV, sleep in too late. But I feel like no matter how much my body has wanted to resist my brain has wanted to succeed even more.

A while ago I wrote about about my first sale from one of my affiliate websites. I showed the following graph (taken from the blog Freedom Ideas) charting this guy’s income over time:

At first there was a lot of work but no money. But eventually he hit a tipping point where there was massive reward for continued effort.

Eventually I will hit the tipping point where there will be tangible reward for all the work I’ve put in. It’s inevitable as long as I keep making progress.

So have big goals. Act even when it’s hard. Keep going even if you feel like you’ll fail. It’s the only cure for Resistance.