Happy Monday
One idea, one quote, one question. 90 seconds.
The Idea
When you were 17, you believed you could do almost anything. By 25, most of that was gone. Not because you failed. Because life started filing down the edges. Heartbreak, a job that didn’t work out, someone you trusted telling you to have a backup plan. The backup plan slowly became the plan, and the imagination that used to feel limitless started operating inside a much smaller box.
Wallo267 put words to this on the podcast last week. He spent 20 years in prison, came out at 37, and built a media empire, including Million Dollaz Worth of Game, one of the biggest podcasts in hip-hop. But the idea underneath his story is what I keep coming back to. He calls it a fortified imagination. His argument is that prison accidentally protected his ability to dream because life couldn’t do to him what it does to the rest of us. He came out still believing in what he believed as a teenager. He looked at everyone walking around free and thought they were the ones in prison, because they had access to their dreams and still weren’t going after them.
He told me about a friend who had a business idea, the money, the blueprint, everything ready. Came back two weeks later and said he was going to hold off. He’d talked to his mom. Wallo’s response: why are you asking someone about business who worked in a factory for 30 years and never started one? Love and business are two different things. The people who love you the most are often the least qualified to advise you on your ambition, and their fear shows up dressed as wisdom.
Quote
“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.” — Pablo Picasso
Question
What did you believe you could do at 17 that you’ve since abandoned, and who convinced you to stop?
Listen
Wallo267: The Conversation You’re Afraid to Have With Yourself. The fortified imagination idea is the one that stuck with me, but Wallo also gets into his “3 and 9” framework for structuring work (3 months all in, 9 months coasting on what you built) and why saying no creates more opportunity than saying yes. Different episode than what you’d expect from someone with his story.
Read
The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. Pressfield puts a name to the force that kills your ambition. He calls it Resistance. It’s not laziness and it’s not fear exactly. It’s the invisible thing that shows up every time you try to do something that matters and tells you to do it tomorrow instead. If Wallo is talking about what happens to your imagination over time, Pressfield is talking about what’s doing it to you every single day.
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— Scott