Archive for the 'Purpose' Category

Cracking iPods at 22

Published on 13 February, 2009 in High Performance, Purpose and Science and Technology. 4 Comments Tags: .

This kid is a genius. When he was 15, he cracked the copy protection on DVDs, allowing millions of people to make backups and share DVDs around the world. Now, at 22, he’s cracked the Fairplay code that Apple have been using to try to preserve their monopolistic position in the music player market… it’s even better than an anti-trust suit against them!

You have to wonder what drives this kid… but you can be sure that it’s not the money!
Great work, DVD Jon!!! For the full story, have a look here…

Daniel Smith

High achievers do this…

Published on 6 February, 2009 in High Performance and Purpose. Closed Tags: .

As I looked a little further into motivation, I came across Greissman’s interviews of highly successful people. He found the following commonalities:

  1. They love their work.
  2. They become highly competent in a speciality.
  3. They commit themselves to their work, giving it their time and even their life.
  4. They meet most of their needs through work.
  5. They long for recognition and self-fulfillment.
  6. They focus on their work to the point that they ‘flow’ with it, loosing themselves in the work.
  7. They have few regrets.

This is a post-hoc analysis, rather than being proscriptive, but I have to wonder how long it would take you to become highly successful if you were demonstrating these behaviours.

Talent matters… but not as much as determination.


Interesting note on Lincoln… whereas most Presidents since have chosen their supporters to be on their cabinet, Lincoln chose his rivals. Seward became Secretary of State, and had been governor and Senator for New York; Chase later became Treasury Secretary and had been governor of Ohio; Bates became Attorney General and was an accomplished judge. But to do this, he had to keep his ego out of the situations by focusing on the real goals…

Daniel Smith

Doing what you REALLY want to do

Published on 19 January, 2009 in High Performance and Purpose. Closed Tags: , , .

Listening to a Stanford podcast from the founder of Tesla Motors, I made the following notes that I thought worth writing down…

  • Do something you’re passionate about
  • Do something meaningful
  • Be bold
  • Think your ideas through
  • Build your company while you build your product
  • Face reality everyday
  • Hire the best
  • Aggressively follow all leads

Makes a nice snap back to reality after yesterday’s session with China NLP on values…

Daniel Smith

Limitation disengage

Published on 4 January, 2009 in Change, High Performance, Personal Growth and Purpose. Closed Tags: , , , .

A few minutes ago, I received the following message:

Fear and resistance arise when you don’t trust that where you are going is better than where you’ve been. What would you create right now if you knew you wouldn’t fail?

While there are a few of us who live a life of purpose and passion, most of us are not. And one of the few people that I know who says that he is, actually just lies to himself and everybody around him!

As I consider this sort of question, I feel it challenges you to look beyond the big idols of the modern world…

  • What would you do if nobody was watching?
  • What would you do if you couldn’t get the credit?
  • What would you do if you didn’t need the money?
  • How would you impact the world if you might die tomorrow?

Some suggest that we can only begin to live once we have faced death. This was part of the code of honour by which the samurai lived; part of many Mystery traditions in the East and in the West; and it remains, I believe, part of the cure to modern society’s materialism and affluenza.

For many, this relies upon listening to the voice within – as per the Daoist “not do” attitude, to surrender.

We each have our unique song to sing, and it’s not about having a bigger car or a bigger ring or more holidays, but rather it’s about living, loving, laughing and leaving a legacy.

For me, it’s making genius a choice rather than leaving it to chance… but what is it for you?

Daniel Smith

Personal Excellence?

Published on 31 December, 2008 in High Performance, Personal Growth and Purpose. Closed Tags: , , , , .

I’ve been fascinated by genius and personal excellence for almost 15 years now yet there is still very little of a satisfactory definition. Last night I was speaking with some friends on the subject of personal excellence and we really struggled with the very definition of the term. Somebody said it was getting above 80% (or 90% or 95%) – because that’s what it is at school. But that’s just a number – and not a very reliable or useful number at that!

Excellence has to be more than ‘good’ – being good, or even very good. Being very good is so common that it doesn’t even rate a mention these days: anybody can do it.

For me, excellence has something to do with finding your voice. Finding that part of yourself that is unique and developing yourself so that you can share it with the world. There are countless pathways to finding your voice… from NLP to work to psychotherapy to karate to mysticism to religion to intimate relationships and even sex itself.

I find that we are all drawn towards finding our voice. We are pulled towards what we enjoy and pushed away from that which we find painful. Sometimes, our conditioning or external conditions lead us to ignore these messages – that’s why we need to shut up and listen as my friend Jason says – but ultimately the message is still there.

Once we have enough excitement and diversity, enough security and stability, enough power and enough love, most of us are drawn to two higher needs: to expand and to impact. To expand is to learn and grow so that we can become greater; to impact is to leave an impression and a contribution in the world.

Personal excellence can come back values. While reviewing my NLP Master Practitioner materials yesterday, I was reminded of the ‘levels of consciousness’ concept. This model holds that individuals and societies and even the world progresses as it changes its way of thinking.

Daniel Smith

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