Book 145 - A Year of Magical Learning (Part 2/3)

Reflection Title: Find Your Jazzy Jeff!

Book – Will by Will Smith and Mark Manson (Reflection 2/3)

Book Description: This memoir is the product of a profound journey of self-knowledge, a reckoning with all that your will can get you and all that it can leave behind. Written with the help of Mark Manson, author of the multi-million-copy bestseller The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, Will is the story of how one person mastered his own emotions, written in a way that can help everyone else do the same. Few of us will know the pressure of performing on the world's biggest stages for the highest of stakes, but we can all understand that the fuel that works for one stage of our journey might have to be changed if we want to make it all the way home. The combination of genuine wisdom of universal value and a life story that is preposterously entertaining, even astonishing, puts Will the book, like its author, in a category by itself.

Reflection:

When Will Smith was young, his mind was filled with imagination and dreams of being the best rapper in this newly exploding underground society. He wrote rhymes every day, he practiced rapping in the mirror, he was always searching for his next rap battle as he went about his day…he was obsessed. For whatever reason, rapping had immense meaning to him and allowed him to express his values in ways he had never experienced before in his young life.

As his skills began to improve, his ambitions for growing in this newfound love become greater and greater. His friend group slowly began to fill with others that loved rap and hip hop, he joined a rap group that fizzled, and he went to more and more battles to refine his craft. Unfortunately, it was clear that those other people surrounding him didn’t share the same obsessive love of hip hop that Will did and he found himself slowly plateauing with where this newfound meaningful work could take him in his life.

Then…he met a guy named Jeff, DJ Jazzy Jeff to be more specific.

Through a serendipitous meet up at a house party at a shared friend’s house that Jeff was DJ’ing and his MC no showed, Will was thrown into working the crowd and the 2 hit it off instantaneously. The connection, as Will described it in the book, was something he had never experienced before. It was like they were magically on the same page and helping each other enhance what they were already doing. A lifelong partnership was formed that night and we all know the rest of the story from there.

YOU CAN’T DO IT ALONE!

It doesn’t matter how much you love something, how talented you are, or how much grit you think you have to persevere through all the challenges that will get thrown in your face. If you want to leave your dent on this world, you will not be able to do it alone!

It wasn’t until Will found Jeff that the real magic started happening in both of their lives. In each other, they found someone with an equal amount of deep meaning in the shared work they were producing together. It is when we find others that value what we value as well that fireworks really start to happen, and that was no different for Will and Jeff.

Humans are unique creatures in this world. Most animals either supremely selfish (wolves) or ultimate team players (bees and ants), not us humans. We are still selfish, but somewhere on our evolutionary timeline we discovered that if we work together, we can accomplish anything. The meaningful work is a universal binder in something we can all gain from intrinsically. It is a calling to create together, and it has changed the world.

Think of all the great pairings we’ve learned about on our journey thus far that wouldn’t have been possible without the help of someone else. Carl Bosch and Fritz Haber, Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe, Santiago and the Alchemist, Scott Harrison and his Wife, Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf, Him and Haw (Who Moved my Cheese), Maria Konnikova and Eric Seidel, and Will Smith and DJ Jazzy Jeff.

THANK GOD I FOUND TRIEU! I could feel the same thing that Will felt when he met Jeff the first time. We were equals that both passionately cared about finding balance in our lives and living a life of values. It was an instant connection and the meaningful work we are producing together will keep us both entertained for a lifetime.

Eventually, others will begin to take notice of the art the 2 of you are creating. 2 will turn into 4, 4 into 8, 8 into 16, and so on until one day you find yourself immersed in a movement and you all have collectively left your dent in this world with a legacy of meaningful work and a lifetime of amazing memories.

The biggest personal lesson I’ve learned in the past few years is to Never Do It Alone! It is why it is on my core values list to always remind myself that we are better together than we are apart. The key is to find someone that equally values the same things you do and you will never run out of steam toward whatever you want to create.

Find Your DJ Jazzy Jeff and let the universe do its thing!

Question: Who is your DJ Jazzy Jeff?

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Links:

What is The Year of Magical Learning? An Introduction

YOML Podcast Discussion - Coming Soon

YOML Bookstore - Will by Will Smith and Mark Manson