Photo booth moment with the homies. Bert (Musketon) and me are still jet lagged and looking plain exhausted; Justin, a photographer, managed to bring his game face like usual.

World Domination With A Smile.

I am a big fan becoming the best version of yourself, and always try to have the biggest positive impact on the world you possible can. The only limit to what you can achieve is your own ambition.

Even early on, long before our careers actually took us across the globe, we used the term ‘world domination’ to describe this mindset. While I recommend everyone to adapt this mindset, and to be highly ambitious, there are some pitfalls you want to avoid.

Keep your energy levels up.

The challenge is to keep yourself pumped. Make sure you have enough energy to overcome any difficulty you have on a daily basis. When you don’t encounter big, almost overwhelming, obstacles on daily basis you aren’t aiming high enough.

Keep in mind world domination doesn’t come overnight, as the world is a pretty big place. Which means you will need to be able keep this up for years without depleting your batteries.

It’s like a Nokia 3310 versus an iPhone. You could be the Nokia, stick to the basics, don’t really excel and just recharge every weekend. Maybe go party or have a hobby. Or you could be the iPhone, be able to do all the things all the time. Which means though you will need to find a way to recharge daily or you will run out of juice pretty soon.

For those who were wondering, this Nokia seems to be Swedish or Norwegian, as these are the only languages where meny translates to menu. You are welcome.

Make sure to get your drive and energy from the right sources, or you will crash and burn.

Compare it to the whole climate change issue; yes, you can build a great world economy fuelled only by burning fossil fuels, only downside is that is you will destroy the very world you live in.

With the world being you, and your mental/physical health, in this metaphor.

For those who don’t like the earth. You can compare it to trying to run a marathon as a sugar junkie. The sugar might help you through first miles but you will crash halfway as you burned through all of it.

The big challenge is finding the right energy source. I get my energy and drive because I’m passionated about the things I do on a daily basis.

There are also alternative energy sources, they might keep you juiced up, but also make you very unhappy in the end.

1. Your goals are the direction you are heading in, they should not be what drives you.

Big goals are great to keep your focus, help you decide what is important and what you can ignore. Big goals also mean that it will take you a long time to reach them, if you ever get to reach them. When you are only driven by reaching your goals, waiting to finally get that promotion or get to buy this fancy car. Best case scenario is that you are going to spend a long time being unhappy. More likely scenario is that you run out of energy, before even getting there.

You gotta learn to love the grind.

If you are writer you need to start loving the struggle with a blanc paper, if you are developer it’s finding that one nasty bug, if you are a sales learn to love being rejected because now you know what to do better next time.

I found you a perfect example from Gary Vaynerchuk. A well known fact about Gary is his desire/goal to one day buy the New York Jets, an NFL team. I let him take it from here.

Gary, like wine, is an acquired taste. He might come over a little obnoxious at first but once you get used to it, his high energy level will work contagious.

2. When money is WHY you do it, you will fail.

I do believe if you are making money this is an indication you are something good.

1. It will impact the work you do.

You will start prioritising everything that makes money which isn’t necessarily what is are important or will make you happy.

2. Money and stuff devaluates very quickly.

It only takes a little while before you get used to a certain standard of living. When it is only money that drives you, the same amount of hard work is going to give you a fraction of the satisfaction as it did before.

There is also always more, bigger and better. No matter how hard you work you will always feel like you need more. This is a battle you can’t win.

Stuff is boring anyways, here is something that is way more valuable than money, friends.

This is us just seconds after the first picture, surrounding yourself with the right people is key to not lose your drive.

3. Learn to ignore likes/shares/follows/views and opinions in general.

Like money, there is value in getting a lot of interaction. It means you did something good, kudos to you. Be aware of making this into your main energy source though, because it is outside your control.

When you are trying to please everyone, you will end up with something really bland.

It is not only size that matters. There is also a big difference between width and depth. You might get 1000 likes because managed to make people chuckle for a second. Or you get 10 likes but you just changed the lives of those 10 people.

Two reasons where you need to be careful.

1. Other people have no idea whatsoever.

It’s your grind and your mission. You are the only one who sits in the control room, and sees the whole picture. Even if they love you to the moon and back or are really qualified, their opinion doesn’t really matter aslong you believe in what you are doing.

When you are only happy and driven when others are excited for you, you are living their dream not yours.

2. Avoid riding the high of ‘fame’, because at some point it will go down.

While it is great that this interaction pushes, you to do better next time. Make sure to not to let your happiness depend on it’s growth. It’s impossible to only keep growing. Doesn’t matter how great you are or how much harder you are willing to work. Math will tells you it is impossible.

The interaction you get is not an representation of how good your work is or how hard you worked. It depends on so many factors which are out of your control.

• The time you post it.
• The platform itself. Compare the interaction on Facebook pages now to 2 years ago.
• What else is going on in the world. Did somebody just posted a cute kitten?

These are my own Medium stats. I successfully used Reddit to get some extra traffic, after which it is back to business as usual. If views was my drive I would be disappointed and demotivated for every next post because it’s going to take me a long time to top this.

How I keep myself motivated.

I’m just in love with the process. It’s like a wood sculptor, you need to get your energy because you love chipping away at that tree.

Not because the end result looks amazing. Not because somebody is going to give you a lot of money for it once it is ready. Not because somebody is going to tell you it looks amazing.

You better love this picture because it took me about an hour to find one that matched the imagine in my head.

I’m excited to write my blog posts on Sunday, do that midnight overseas Skype session, write yet another pitch, be in traffic for hours to get to that meeting or struggle to get my inbox to zero again.

I’m aiming for the stars, but at the same time I’m really happy with the place I am at right now, confident I can keep be doing this for years.

I often meet people who make much more money, achieved bigger things but still are very unhappy and struggle to find energy to keep going on.

My takeaways :

1. Make sure to get your drive and energy from the right sources, or you will crash and burn.
2. Your goals are the direction you are heading in, they should not be what drives you.
3. When money is WHY you do it, you will fail.
4. Learn to ignore likes/shares/follows/views and opinions in general.

Thanks so much for reading! If you enjoyed it, would mean the world to me if you shared it with someone. :)