by 50 Cent
Reversal of Perspective
We generally experience boredom as something painful and to be avoided at all costs. From childhood on, we develop the habit of immediately looking for some activity to kill the feeling. But this activity, if repeated often enough, becomes boring as well. And so for our entire lives we must search and search for novel amusements—new friends, new trends to latch on to, new forms of entertainment, new religions or causes to believe in. This search might lead us to change our careers and set us on a path of meandering here and there, in search of something to dull the sensation. But in all of these cases, the root of the problem is not boredom itself but our relationship to it.
Try to look at boredom from the opposite perspective—as a call for you to slow yourself down, to stop searching for endless distractions. This might mean forcing yourself to spend time alone, overcoming that childish inability to sit still. When you work through such self-imposed boredom, you will find your mind clicks into gear—new and unexpected thoughts will come to you to fill the void. To feel inspired you must first experience a moment of emptiness. Use such moments to assess the day that went by, to measure where you are headed. It is a relief to not feel that constant need for outside entertainment.
On a higher level of this reeducation, you might choose a book to overcome your boredom, but instead of reading being a passive process of diversion, you actively mentally engage the author in an argument or discussion, making the book come to life in your head. At a further point, you take up a side activity—cultural or physical—that requires a repetitive process to master. You discover a calming effect in the repetitive element itself. In this way, boredom becomes your great ally. It helps you to slow things down, develop patience and self-discipline. Through this process you will be able to withstand the inevitable empty moments of life and convert them into your own private pleasures.
NOW THERE ARE…INDIVIDUALS WHO WOULD RATHER PERISH THAN WORK WITHOUT TAKING PLEASURE IN THEIR WORK; THEY ARE CHOOSY…AND HAVE NO USE FOR AMPLE REWARDS IF THE WORK IS NOT ITSELF THE REWARD OF REWARDS…. THEY DO NOT FEAR BOREDOM AS MUCH AS WORK WITHOUT PLEASURE; INDEED, THEY NEED A LOT OF BOREDOM IF THEIR WORK IS TO SUCCEED. FOR…ALL INVENTIVE SPIRITS, BOREDOM IS THAT DISAGREEABLE “LULL” OF THE SOUL THAT PRECEDES A HAPPY VOYAGE AND CHEERFUL WINDS.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
CHAPTER 9
Push Beyond Your Limits—Self-Belief
YOUR SENSE OF WHO YOU ARE WILL DETERMINE YOUR ACTIONS AND WHAT YOU END UP GETTING IN LIFE. IF YOU SEE YOUR REACH AS LIMITED, THAT YOU ARE MOSTLY HELPLESS IN THE FACE OF SO MANY DIFFICULTIES, THAT IT IS BEST TO KEEP YOUR AMBITIONS LOW, THEN YOU WILL RECEIVE THE LITTLE THAT YOU EXPECT. KNOWING THIS DYNAMIC, YOU MUST TRAIN YOURSELF FOR THE OPPOSITE—ASK FOR MORE, AIM HIGH, AND BELIEVE THAT YOU ARE DESTINED FOR SOMETHING GREAT. YOUR SENSE OF SELF-WORTH COMES FROM YOU ALONE—NEVER THE OPINION OF OTHERS. WITH A RISING CONFIDENCE IN YOUR ABILITIES, YOU WILL TAKE RISKS THAT WILL INCREASE YOUR CHANCES OF SUCCESS. PEOPLE FOLLOW THOSE WHO KNOW WHERE THEY ARE GOING, SO CULTIVATE AN AIR OF CERTAINTY AND BOLDNESS.
The Hustler’s Ambition
LET ME POINT OUT TO YOU THAT FREEDOM IS NOT SOMETHING THAT ANYBODY CAN BE GIVEN; FREEDOM IS SOMETHING PEOPLE TAKE AND PEOPLE ARE AS FREE AS THE WANT TO BE.
—James Baldwin
Curtis Jackson’s mother, Sabrina, had one powerful ambition in her life—to somehow make enough money to move her and her son far away from the hood. She had had Curtis when she was fifteen, and the only reasonable outlet at that age for making any good money was dealing drugs. It was a particularly dangerous life for a female hustler, and so she built up an intimidating presence to protect herself. She was tougher and more fearless than many of the male dealers. Her only soft spot was her son—she wanted a different fate for him than hustling. To shelter him from the life she led, she had him stay with her parents in Southside Queens. As often as possible, she would show up with presents for the boy and to keep an eye on him. Some day soon they would move to a better place.
As part of a drug beef, Sabrina was murdered at the age of twenty-three, and from that moment on, it looked like Curtis’s fate in this world had been sealed. He was now essentially alone—no parents or real mentor to give him a sense of direction. It seemed almost certain that the following scenario would play itself out: He would drift towards life on the streets. To prove his toughness, he would eventually have to resort to violence and crime. He would find his way into the prison system, and he would probably return for several stints. His life would basically be confined to this neighborhood, and as he got older he could turn to drugs or alcohol to see him through, or at best a series of menial jobs. All the statistics on parentless children growing up in such an environment pointed towards this limited and bleak future.
And yet in his mind something much different was taking shape. With his mother gone, he spent more and more time alone and began to indulge himself in fantasies that carried him far beyond his neighborhood. He saw himself as a leader of some sort, perhaps in business or in war. He visualized in great detail the places where he would live, the cars he would drive, the outside world he would some day explore. It was a life of freedom and possibility. But these were not mere fantasies—they were real; they were destined to happen. He could see them clearly. Most important, he felt that his mother was looking after him—her energy and ambition were inside him now.
Oddly enough, he would follow in her footsteps with the same plan—to hustle and get out of the game. To avoid her fate he forged an intense belief that nothing could stop him—not a gunshot, the schemes of other hustlers, or the police. These streets would not confine him.
In May of 2000, Curtis (now known as 50 Cent) somehow survived the nine bullets that a hired assassin had pumped into his body. The timing of the attack had been particularly poignant—after years of hustling on the streets and in music, his first album had been about to come out. But then in the aftermath of the shooting, Columbia Records canceled the album and dropped him from the label. He would have to start all over. In the months to come, as he lay in bed recovering from his wounds, he began to reconstruct himself mentally, much as he had done after the murder of his mother. He saw in his mind, in even fresher detail than ever, the path he would now have to take. He would conquer the rap world with a mix-tape campaign the likes of which no one had ever seen before. It would come from his intense energy, his persistence, the even tougher sound he would create, and the image he would now project of an indestructible gangsta.
Within a year of the shooting, he was on his way to making this vision a reality. His first songs hit the streets and created a sensation. As he progressed on this path, however, he saw one very large impediment still blocking his path: the assassins were looking to finish the job and they could show up at any moment. Fifty was forced to keep a low profile and stay on the run, but this feeling of being hunted was intolerable. He would not live this way, and so he decided that what he needed was a group of tight-knit disciples who would help protect him and overcome his sense of isolation.
To make this a reality, he told his closest friends to convene a meeting in his grandparents’ house in Southside Queens. They were to invite his most fervent fans in the neighborhood—the young men whom they knew to be loyal and dependable. And they should all bring guns to help secure the street before Fifty showed up.
When Fifty finally entered the living room of his grandparents’ house the day of the meeting, he could feel the energy and excitement. The space was filled with over twenty young men, all ready to do his bidding. He began by painting for them his precise vision of the future. His music now was hot, but it was going to get a lot hotter. Within two more years, he was certain to land a major record deal. In his head, he already could hear the songs for his first record, visualize the cover and the overall concept—it was to be the story of his life. This record, he assured them, would be an astronomical success, because he had figured out a kind of formula for how to make and market hit songs. He
was not the usual rap star, he explained. He was not in this for the bling or the attention, but for the power. He would take the money from the record sales to establish his own businesses. This was destiny—everything in his life was meant to happen as it did, including the assassination attempt, including this very meeting that afternoon.
He was going to forge a business empire and he wanted to take all of them with him. Whatever any of them wanted, he would provide, as long as they proved themselves dependable and shared his sense of purpose. They could be rappers on the record label he would establish or road managers for his tours; or they could go to college and get a degree—he would pay for it all. You are like my pack of wolves, he explained, but none of this will happen if the alpha wolf is killed. What he asked for was their help—in providing security, in keeping him in touch with what was happening on the streets, and in doing some of the legwork for the promotion and distribution of his mix-tapes. He needed followers and he had chosen them.
Almost all of them agreed to the proposal, and over the years to come many of them stayed on to gain important positions within his expanding empire. And if they ever stopped to think about it, it was uncanny how close the future had come to resemble the picture he had painted so many years before.
By 2007, after the tremendous success of his first two records, Fifty began to sense a problem looming on the horizon. He had created an image for the public, a Fifty myth that centered on his tough and menacing presence and his indestructibility. This was projected in his videos and interviews, and the photos of him with his glare and tattoos. Most of it was real, but it was all heightened for dramatic effect. This image had brought him a great deal of attention, but it was turning into an elaborate trap. To prove to his fans that he was still the same Fifty, he would have to keep upping the ante, engaging in more and more outrageous antics. He could not afford to seem like he was going soft. But it was not real to him anymore. He had moved on to a different life, and to stay rooted in this past image would prove to be the ultimate limit to his freedom. He would be trapped in the past and the prisoner of the very image he had created. It would all grow stale and his popularity would wane.
In each phase of his life he had found himself challenged by some seemingly insurmountable obstacle—surviving on the streets without parents to guide him, keeping away from the violence and time in prison, eluding the assassins on his heels, etc. If at any moment he had doubted himself or accepted the normal limits to his mobility, he would be dead or powerless, which was as good as dead in his mind. What had saved him in each case was the intensity of his ambition and self-belief.
Now was not the time to get complacent or have doubts about the future. He would have to transform himself again. He would have his signature tattoos removed; perhaps he would also change his name again. He would create a new image and myth to fit this period of his life—part business mogul, part power broker, slowly withdrawing from the public eye and flexing his muscles behind the scenes. This would surprise the public, keep him a step ahead of their expectations, and remove yet another barrier to his freedom. Reinventing himself in this way would be the ultimate reversal of the fate that seemed to await him after the death of his mother.
The Fearless Approach
YOUR OPINION OF YOURSELF BECOMES YOUR REALITY. IF YOU HAVE ALL THESE DOUBTS, THEN NO ONE WILL BELIEVE IN YOU AND EVERYTHING WILL GO WRONG. IF YOU THINK THE OPPOSITE, THE OPPOSITE WILL HAPPEN. IT’S THAT SIMPLE.
—50 Cent
When you were born, you entered this world with no identity or ego. You were simply a bundle of chaotic impulses and desires. But slowly you acquired a personality that you have more or less built upon over the years. You are outgoing or shy, bold or skittish—a mix of various traits that defines you. You tend to accept this personality as something very real and established. But much of this identity is shaped and constructed by outside forces—the opinions and judgments of hundreds of other people who have crossed your path over the years.
This process began with your parents. As a child you paid extra close attention to what they said about you, modeling your behavior to win their approval and love. You closely monitored their body language to see what they liked and didn’t like. Much of this had a tremendous impact on your evolution. If, for example, they commented about your shyness, it could easily strengthen any tendencies you had in that direction. You suddenly became aware of your own awkwardness and it stuck inside you. If they had said something different, trying to encourage you in your social skills and draw you out, it might have had a much different impact. Either way, shyness is a fluid quality—it fluctuates according to the situation and the people you are around. It should never be felt as a set personality trait. And yet these judgments from parents, friends, and teachers are given inordinate weight and become internalized.
Many of these criticisms and opinions are not objective at all. People want to see certain qualities in you. They project onto you their own fears and fantasies. They want you to fit a conventional pattern; it is frustrating and often frightening for people to think they cannot figure someone out. Behavior that is considered abnormal or different, which may very well be coming from somewhere deep within you, is actively discouraged. Envy plays a role as well—if you are too good at something, you might be made to feel strange or undesirable. Even the praise of others is often designed to hem you in to certain ideals they want to see in you. All of this shapes your personality, limits your range of behavior, and becomes like a mask that hardens on your face.
Understand: you are in fact a mystery to yourself. You began life as someone completely unique—a mix of qualities that will never be repeated in the history of the universe. In your earliest years, you were a mass of conflicting emotions and desires. Then something foreign to you is placed over this reality. Who you are is much more chaotic and fluid than this surface character; you are full of untapped potential and possibility.
As a child you had no real power to resist this process, but as an adult you could easily rebel and rediscover your individuality. You could stop deriving your sense of identity and self-worth from others. You could experiment and push past the limits people have set for you. You could take action that is different from what they expect. But that is to incur a risk. You are being unconventional, perhaps a bit strange in the eyes of those who know you. You could fail in this action and be ridiculed. Conforming to people’s expectations is safer and more comfortable, even if doing so makes you feel miserable and confined. In essence, you are afraid of yourself and what you could become.
There is another, fearless way of approaching your life. It begins by untying yourself from the opinions of others. This is not as easy as it sounds. You are breaking a lifelong habit of continually referring to other people when measuring your value. You must experiment and feel the sensation of not concerning yourself with what others think or expect of you. You do not advance or retreat with their opinions in mind. You drown out their voices that often translate into doubts inside you. Instead of focusing on the limits you have internalized, you think of the potential you have for new and different behavior. Your personality can be altered and shaped by your conscious decision to do so.
We barely understand the role that willpower plays in our actions. When you raise your opinion of yourself and what you are capable of it has a decided influence on what you do. For instance, you feel more comfortable taking some risk, knowing that you are always able to get back up on your feet if it fails. Taking this risk will then make your energy levels rise—you have to meet the challenge or go under, and you will find untapped reservoirs of creativity within you. People are drawn to those who act boldly, and their attention and faith in you will have the effect of heightening your confidence. Feeling less confined by doubts, you give freer rein to your individuality, which makes everything you do more effective. This movement towards confidence has a self-fulfilling quality that is impossible to deny.
Moving towards such self-belief does n
ot mean you cut yourself off from others and their opinions of your actions. You must take constant measure of how people receive your work, and use to maximum effect their feedback (see chapter 7). But this process must begin from a position of inner strength. If you are dependent on their judgments for your sense of worth, then your ego will always be weak and fragile. You will have no center or sense of balance. You will wilt under criticisms and soar too high with any praise. Their opinions are merely helping you shape your work, not your self-image. If you make mistakes, if the public judges you negatively, you have an unshakable inner core that can accept such judgments, but you remain convinced of your own worth.
In impoverished environments like the hood, people’s sense of who they are and what they deserve is continually under attack. People from the outside tend to judge them for where they come from—as violent, dangerous, or untrustworthy—as if the accident of where they were born determines who they are. They tend to internalize many of these judgments and perhaps deep inside feel that they don’t deserve much of what is considered good in this world. Those from the hood who want to overcome this pronouncement of the outside world have to fight with double the energy and desperation. They have to convince themselves first that they are worth much more and can rise as far as they want, through willpower. The intensity of their ambition becomes the deciding factor. It has to be supremely high. That is why the most ambitious and confident figures in history often emerge from the most impoverished and arduous of circumstances.