🐴 You're not a one trick pony

Breaking free of the "too late" mindset, and branching out into new terrain

A brief story

My brother attended the “H-school” for college. The kinda old-ish one, located just outside of Boston. Perhaps you’ve heard of it before.

It’s the one with a student body saturated in rare and extraordinary individuals. Internationally titled Rubik's-cubers. Childhood Grandemaster chess champions. Heirs and heiresses to pure bloodlines of Norwegian royalty.

And maybe a few normal kids sprinkled in there too.

Or like, mostly normal — apart from their 4.1million GPA, and immaculate SAT scantron, devoid of even the faintest, errant eraser residue that might resemble a second guess and sour what is still a perfect set of correct answers.

Such things are baseline requirements for entry into the “H-school.”

That is — if you don’t have a particularly elite pedigree. Or play the tuba.

Acceptance to the H-school is quite an achievement. Indeed, something to be proud of. But in spite of my brother’s many academic accolades, Justin has always had a Harry Potter-esque sort of energy. Someone kind and self-aware — who just happens to be wicked sharp. He also has a bit more inherent coolness than my homeboy, Harry. So, think less egregious mustard-and-maroon-striped Griffindor garb; more perfectly distressed black Levis. Less Quidditch practice on the weekends; more casual kick-flips at the skatepark. A proper, humble, Hogwarts-hearthrob with a relaxed sense of humor and understated swag. The Sorting Hat would’ve surely struggled to assign him to a proper house given his rare alchemy of traits.

It’s because of that, that my brother often refers to the "H-school” as such — or better yet, avoids referring to it entirely unless asked point blank where he attended college. He prefers not to conjure up all the wickedly elitist Ivy League assumptions that come with referencing the Voldemort of higher education.

Plus, most people don’t want to be name-dropping jerk-faces.

Most.

I, however, am a shameless sister. So yea. We’re talking about Harvard.

One Sunday evening during my brother’s senior year at Harvard, he made one of his weekly phone calls home. It was during the Fall semester, when every student was dutifully finalizing their post-college plans 9 months out. The goal, of course, being to ensure that the time window between shaking the Dean’s hand after being handed your diploma, and plopping into your desk for day 1 of your new job, is no more than 3 seconds in delay.

After all, we’re all about protecting the sanctity of a highly streamlined life trajectory here.

During this weekly phone call home, it was clear that Justin had something important to share. Justin was an Econ major. The major of: I don’t know exactly what I want to do, but it’s probably business stuff. So indeed, “business stuff” he applied to: Investment Banking, Management Consulting, MegaTech. We waited, with bated breathe, for him to tell us what final round interviews he had landed. What job offer he was planning to accept. Which cosmopolitan city he’d be moving to, to kickoff off ~the fast life~ as a young, hot, working professional!

But then, the call went something like this:

Justin: “So, I’ve been thinking. And… I think I want to take a year off after graduating to pursue professional racing.”

I’ll let that sink in for a moment.

And whilst doing that, allow me to insert a brief clarification: the “racing” that we’re talking about here is specifically racecar driving.

Like, Nascar. Like, Formula 1.

Like — what the hell are you thinking throwing away 4 flippin’ years of magical momentum from the heinously expensive Hogwarts of higher education?

Of course, being the loving, sensitive, nurturing family that we are — we didn’t say that aloud. Instead, we reacted with the upmost enthusiasm, of sorts. If not, necessarily, of support.

We freaking guffawed.

We howled like he had just announced that he was going to open up his own exotic beetle reserve in Botswana. We cackled and cracked jokes like he had just proclaimed that he was going to aggressively pursue bobsledding, just in time to qualify for the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics.

We weren’t trying to be entirely wise-ass, soul-sapping, dream crushers. We were merely trying to protect him. We were merely trying to be reasonable.

We were merely trying to “be realistic.”

And what a terribly myopic thing to be.

A more thoughtful approach to “being realistic”

Interestingly, if we were actually being realistic, we would’ve actually taken 2 seconds to internalize the depth of my brother’s desire and pattern matched across all of his existing habits to date.

My brother was the type of guy who’s “casual reading” involved pouring over detailed articles on the physics of internal combustion engines. He could spot a sports car a half-mile ahead of us on the highway and rattle off the make, model and custom exhaust modifications. He even paid a pretty penny to install a professional-grade racing simulator in his bedroom, complete with a bucket-style racing seat, steering wheel, stick-shift and pedal pad. A costly set-up for his finances; a more costly set-up for his female dating prospects.

And ladies — if for some strange reason, this isn’t a complete, deal-breaking, libido repellent lifestyle decision for you in a grown man, hit me up.

So sure, it was an unconventional proposition to take the passion to a professional level. But, it didn’t come entirely out of left field. It matched the pattern of personal investments that he had already made with his time, energy and money.

And that pattern was proof alone that there was something real here worth registering. Something real that made all of our “be realistic” business the least thoughtful, least helpful, and least realistic advice of all.

Because if we had actually been realistic ourselves, we would have readily served up a long list of possible approaches to test out an aspiration as ambitious and unconventional as becoming a professional racecar driver. Something like: suggesting that he get a part-time job post-graduating and pursuing racing school in parallel, before gradually ramping up. Or perhaps, taking a semester off now to test it out, and returning later to graduate, if needed. These would’ve all been highly reasonable, relatively low-risk approaches.

But, again, that’s not what we did. Instead, we encouraged him to maintain the entirety of his momentum on the corporate path.

I mean, hell, he went to the H-school after all.

The irrational insecurity of thinking you’re too late

We’ll come back to the conclusion of Justin’s story in a bit. But first, a few more clarifications, for those of you that don’t know:

Racing is the kind of sport where you're pretty much “too late” to start no matter when you decide to. If you weren’t already running drills on your double-clutch technique two days post-conception in the womb, you're late. If you don’t practically projectile out of your mom like labor was the last lap in the drag race you'd been training for in utero, you’re late. And if you weren’t placed squarely behind the wheel of a racecar promptly after completing your first halfway decent cross-room crawl — you’re very, very late.

That’s part of the reason many professional racecar drivers are the babes of billionaires. Attaining expertise is expensive in more ways than one. And to actually be competitive, you better be bred for it from birth.

Instead, the extent of my brothers experience behind the wheel of a racecar was largely limited to the esteemed position of “Player 1” on Forza Motorsports 2. But button mashing your thumb on an Xbox controller in your basement, is a hell of a lot different than actually flooring the throttle at 100mph and less than 5 feet of buffer to the bumper of a solid object in front of you.

So yea: he was a complete, and utter, newbie. And late. Like 2 decades late to a proper racing career. But the risk with thinking, even for a split second, that you’re too late to pursue the things you secretly want, is that you won’t.

And that sounds pretty irrational to me. Simply because:

The only truly crazy, truly irrational, truly “unrealistic” way to operate in life, is to let your perception of time, timebox you. Indeed, more than time itself.

And — worse yet — when you think that way, what you’re really saying is this:

Stay a “one trick pony,” kid.

Ponying up (and out) of the “one trick pony” mindset

The problem with the “be realistic” philosophy is that it keeps you squarely planted in proximity bias to what you’ve always done, and a victim to the fear of lateness to do anything different. It’s a barricade to self-belief, masquerading as precaution.

Ironically, that mental model is often most acute in overachievers — people that have spent their entire life being at the front of the pack in their pursuits. They’ve already got a foothold on first place in their present domain. They’ve never known anything different. And they damn well don’t want to find out.

My brother had managed to overcome that twisted methodology. But, his dear’ol concerned family consulting on the matter, could not. Instead, we quietly projected our doubts.

We didn’t doubt him in every realm, of course. One rarely doubts themselves, or others, on everything. Instead, insecurity is often highly contextual. And our deepest desires are often dormant behind doubt in a foreign domain, not the familiar one that you’re already fluent in.

But, there’s actually only one thing — without a doubt — that will make you a one trick pony. And that’s secretly believing that it’s all you can be.

Trusting yourself, even when you don’t fully

Thankfully, my brother chose not to believe that. It took him a few years to change course, but he ultimately decided to dropkick our deadbeat advice. He picked up Spec Racer Ford racing just before turning 30, while working a full-time job. Most of the people beside him were either 18 year olds — again, people training for it from birth — or 50 year olds — people that had already invested many multiples of the requisite “10,000 hours” to achieve expert status.

Justin decided to do it anyway. And it went something like this:

• 3 years ago, he completed racing school and got his racing license.

• 2 years ago, he qualified for his first competitive race.

• 1 year ago, he started consistently placing in the Top 10 cars out of the 50 on the track.

• 9 months ago, he got a racing coach as his qualifying times were rapidly encroaching some of the track bests.

• 6 months ago, he won his first gold.

And look: I’m not saying my brother is going to be the next Lewis Hamilton or Max Verstappen. (And in the case of the latter, I honest to God hope not as that man appears to have a narrower spectrum of emotional color than cauliflower).

But, by any standard, that track record (pun intended), is pretty damn good. Justin is no one trick pony. He’s proven that he’s a pony with a hell of a lot of horsepower under the hood, ready to be unleashed in any direction he desires.

And we’re all, indeed, that pony, if we pony-up the self-belief. Because when you choose to trust yourself in the process, what you readily realize is this:

There was plenty of time all along.

Conclusion: Seek to widen your life, not narrow it

I’ll leave you with one final thought. And it takes the form of one of my favorite quotes from Earl Nightingale:

"The average person tiptoes their way through life, hoping they make it safely to death.”

There’s a lot of ways to process all the profoundness in that. But for me, it means this: if you have even the most modest inkling of desire for something — something that’s difficult, but thrills you to think of doing, and doing well — you’re already so lucky. You’ve been gifted a blueprint for bigger living. And to do anything, other than to do it, would be a disservice to that compass you’ve been given with clues to your due North.

The last thing you should do is let any friend, family, or (perhaps hardest of all to filter out), personal fear, pigeonhole your pursuits and pacify that pull into submission. Callings are often unconventional — and some might even require non-trivial confrontation. With other people, and ourselves.

But, any other approach to life is irrational. “Tiptoeing” is not a practical — or, dare I say, “realistic” — means of transportation towards joy. And staying in your lane with a finite set of gifts, won’t lay the foundation for a step-function change in your feeling of fulfillment.

Instead, feeding your soul is fast-tracked by fostering crafts — creating beyond the confines of your comfort zone. And feeding your soul, is actually fairly simple. It’s just about being, expressing and growing, more you.

So, when your doubt is driving distracting circles around your desire, a humble suggestion from your friend. A fellow pony — attempting to purge her own hesitance that sometimes hogs the attention on clues to a calling:

Be like Justin.

And just do the damn thing.