Anointed

There is a choice you have to make in your career.

Do things the “right” way, and hope somebody anoints you from above and brings you up to their level…

…or figure out how to anoint yourself, and pull yourself up to the next level.

Gatekeepers don’t want you to anoint yourself, so they will fill your head with tales about how people who anoint themselves are cocky, or arrogant, or breaking everything.

But that is because we don’t wait for them to tell us we’re good enough.

We don’t wait for them to tell us we’re ready.

Because we know they never will. They will never anoint you. They will anoint their chosen ones, but they will never anoint you.

If you wait for them, you’ll be waiting a long time. I know people who have been waiting for the agent for a decade.

I know people who’ve had their agent for a decade and they still haven’t gone out with a project.

I know people who’ve been going out with projects for a decade and never sold any of them.

They’ve been waiting to be anointed.

Meanwhile, I’ve released books, made money, and scraped every day to build my own audience…

…and I’ve anointed myself.

It was hard. It was grueling. Nothing about this was easy…except for me to keep going…

…because there was no other way.

Because I knew they would never anoint me, and if I waited I would be stuck in the cold, looking in, for the rest of my life. If you anoint yourself, though, you have to work hard. You have to work so hard, and you can’t wait. You have to pull yourself up, and make it happen.

I know so many people who say they are anointing themselves, but then they sit back and wait. You can’t do that. If you’re going to anoint yourself, you have to learn how to do it, brick by brick, until you don’t need them to pull you up, because you’ve built your own ledge.