Speed Up

Most people move really slowly.

It’s not because they’re actually slow – they’re keeping up with the pace of traffic.

In other words, people say, “X takes Y amount of time…” enough that it becomes accepted as reality.

If you want – head to some entrepreneurial message board.

Tons of people on there saying, “I want to try out my idea ‘someday’,” with lots of people agonizing over business plans, concept art, naming, what their mascot is going to be, etc.

But, if you want to start a business – it’s not nearly that hard:

• You can set up an entire website in an hour.
• You can test a business idea in a week.

The people on the message boards are just doing the things they’re told they’re “supposed” to do rather than the things that make a difference in running a business.

But it’s not just tied to business. You can change your entire mentality and entire day in 5 minutes. You can change your nutritional strategy in 2 weeks. You can see a major fitness difference in yourself in a month.

But people are reluctant to move faster because, “if everyone else is moving slower, there has to be a reason, right?”

Wrong.

Here’s a couple examples:

Go to the airport. Watch the security line that everyone gets in. Chances are, at the terminal you’re at, the ones on either side of the terminal are likely much shorter. The reason everyone is going slower and the line in the center is so long is simply because it’s there. It’s easy, it’s obvious and it “seems like the thing to do.”

Or, the next time you’re at a public event watch how everyone tends to follow each other around a specific pathway around the place. It’s not necessarily the fastest route but it’s the way the crowd is going so everyone unconsciously moves along with it.

If you dare to go off to the side or look for another entrance, you’ll find that the masses aren’t really that good at finding the fastest or most effective route – they’re just doing the most obvious route.

Once you start noticing this – it’s incredibly interesting to see it happen in real time. Mob mentality is incredibly powerful at numbing people to the reality that people are just people. Sometimes, there’s no other logic to what people are doing or how fast they’re moving than “it’s what everybody else is doing.”

Once you see this play out, you see it everywhere. And while spending 15 extra minutes in a security line isn’t the end of the world – it gets a lot more dangerous when that mentality seeps into the language those same people use for why they’re not changing their life quicker.

Some examples:

• “It takes 4 years to graduate.”
• “You only get a promotion after X amount of time.”
• “You can only lose X amount of weight.”

Can you think of some more?

The truth is, not only do you not have to do what everyone else is doing – you don’t have to go at the same speed as them either – you can go faster.

Pretend you never heard how “hard” something is or how long something is supposed to take, and just try it.

There’s no speed limit – so go as fast as you want.

See what happens.