Something wise(-ish)
I’m going to go ahead and guess that you probably go around with this thought in your head at all times:
Don’t be too much of a problem.
If so, congratulations! This makes you a healthy person.
You know who doesn’t go around thinking about that?
Narcissists. Sociopaths. Psychopaths. Entitled dicks. People who can’t stand my voice and write me seven-page emails complaining that I use the term “full stop” too much.
Any well-adjusted person worries about what other people think about them, whether they’re taking more than they’re giving. As they should.
But that impulse can also be a major obstacle in life.
It took me a while to realize:
If you want to achieve anything in life, you’re gonna have to be a little annoying.
You’re gonna have to ask people for things they don’t want to give you.
You’re gonna have to advocate for ideas they don’t believe in yet.
You’re gonna have to stand up to them when you disagree.
Anything worth achieving in life will require you to fight for resources — time, energy, attention, money, influence, trust — that are finite and precious.
If you want these things, you’re gonna have to do something most people will go to great lengths to avoid.
Look at entrepreneurs who build successful companies. I promise you: their competitors, their vendors, even their own employees — they all find them annoying sometimes.
Look at politicians who take up big causes. Their opponents and detractors obviously find them annoying. But even their own constituents and colleagues do too sometimes!
Look at public figures. You wanna make movies, be a talking head, build a lifestyle brand, yuck it up on late-night shows? You guessed it. Annoying a lot of the time.
Everyone who fights for a cause — big or small, practical or ideological, selfish or altruistic — they’re all, at some point, a bit of a nuisance.
Being a nuisance isn’t just a byproduct of going after what you want.
It is going after what you want.
So if you want to start achieving at a higher level, you’re going to have to get comfortable with this idea.
You’re going to have to learn to tolerate the feeling of asking for a little more than what people naturally want to give you.
You’re going to have to quiet the part of your brain that’s obsessed with making sure everybody likes you all the time.
We all know that the squeaky wheel gets the grease.
My invitation for you this week is to start squeaking.
A little goes a long way, I promise you.
And if that feels absolutely impossible for you, try saying this:
“Okay, I’m gonna be annoying for a minute, but it’s only because I really care about this” — and then make your play.
You might not get what you want every time.
But you will learn.
And if you apply what you learn, then you will eventually get what you want.
Seriously. Being willing to be a little annoying. It’s the least appreciated superpower on earth.
And if you’re interested in hearing how this idea played out in a listener’s life…
Check out episode #1,248, where we took a question from a medical-device entrepreneur who was struggling to build relationships with senior centers to provide her product to their residents.
This listener was coming up against this exact obstacle — she was afraid to bother people, afraid to be pushy, afraid to take up their time. Even though she knew that that wasn’t getting her noticed.
In our response, we talked about why this fear holds talented people back — and how to get to the roots of that anxiety, so you can learn how to appropriately take up more space in life.
Have you found this principle to be true in your world? Struggling to make use of it?
Hit reply and tell me about it. I’m all ears!
On the show this past week
1246: Mike Feldstein | How Bad Air Hijacks Your Brain and Body
1247: Eric Cole | Protecting Ourselves in an Age of Cyber Crisis
1248: Bitter Defamation Tests Small Town Reputation | Feedback Friday
1249: Rehab and Recovery | Skeptical Sunday
PS: Before I let you go, there’s something else worth “squeaking” about.
If you’ve been getting random calls lately, they’re… not random.
The BBC recently caught scam call-center workers on hidden cameras laughing at the people they were tricking. One even bragged about making $250k off victims.
And here’s the disturbing part:
Scammers don’t guess your number — they buy your data from brokers.
Once your info is out there, it can spiral into phishing, impersonation, even identity theft.
That’s why we recommend Incogni. They delete your data from those brokers, monitor for new risks, and keep following up so your info stays gone.
Try Incogni here and get 55% off your subscription with code WISERDEAL
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