Nobody is coming to save you
There’s a social media account I like called Nature is Metal. Their content is not for the faint of heart. Regularly, I’ll open Instagram to see a beautiful bald eagle tearing out the guts of a snake, or a baby hippopotamus getting torn apart by a lion.
Nature is Metal documents the stunning absurdity and fragility of life.
That is the natural world I grew up in. As a child, I scaled alpine mountains in the Sierra. In high school, living in the cloud forest of Monteverde, Costa Rica, I would run miles into the forest at dusk, knowing that if I fell and hit my head, nobody would find my body.
Nature is metal. It is an unsympathetic universe. Though we don’t often consider it, life is that tenuous. That humans continue to strive is magnificent, absurd.
A decade ago, my best friend told me, somewhat brutally, “Nobody’s coming.” That's shorthand for "Nobody is coming to save you.”
I’ve always wanted to believe that someone, somewhere would be there to support me. And I was fortunate enough to have people to support me early in life when that really mattered.
In 7th grade, in a deep depression, my parents took me out of middle school and homeschooled me for a year. Then, bored in high school, my sister found a Quaker school in the cloud forest of Monteverde and I spent a semester studying abroad.
Those two experiences came, in part, through the good graces of other people. At the time, it felt like someone literally saved me, but, of course, I also had agency in those experiences.
Self-reliance is complicated by the fact that humans are co-dependent. We need other people in order to survive.
But ultimately we are all responsible for ourselves. There isn’t anyone else. Ferocious self-reliance is a good thing. There isn’t anybody coming to save you – and there’s a lot of utility in that belief.
Nobody is coming in sales
I spent the last year selling, and writing about sales. In the months leading up to Responsive Conference I took several thousand meetings in order to sell out our summit.
There were many moments where I desperately wanted somebody else to solve the sales problem for me. At the end of a long day of 10 hours of meetings, I’d briefly wonder if someone would give me a magic bullet. (Hint: there isn’t one.)
Eventually, I came back to the realization that nobody was coming. I could ask for advice, but the solutions and work had to be my own.
This is always true in sales, and in business. There is nobody coming to help you build your business or to earn your money. Nobody will ever care as much about your business as you do.
The work remains yours to do.
Nobody can find you a great partner
I'm in an exciting, new relationship. But over the last 20 years, I’ve gone on a lot of first dates! I've tried hundreds of creative ways to meet potential partners.
I’ve tried new sports, asked business associates for personal introductions, hired professional matchmakers, and even paid for advertising.
Once, to win a bet, I went on 13 first dates in 48 hours!
Hearing about my new relationship, a friend recently asked me for dating advice. I told him that, as with business, there is no guarantee of a successful outcome. Continue becoming the best version of yourself and just keep striving.
Nobody else can solve this problem for you.
Eat what you kill
I suspect that Nature is Metal is popular not just because it shows stunning, graphic imagery from the natural world. The content highlights how harsh the world is and how insignificant we all are.
Nature is Metal is a reminder that nobody is coming.
May we be so fortunate as to have people to support us when we are too young or too frail to support ourselves. And may we all have the compassion to do the same for others.
When you believe that nobody is coming, you are forced to stop hoping that life will be fair. Entitlement falls aside. In the natural world, in business, and in life, you eat what you kill.
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3 things I’ve loved this week
Quote I’m considering:
"Write what you want your obituary to say, and work backwards from there." -Warren Buffet
Founded by journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin, DealBook Summit is a production of the New York Times. I’ve been listening to this year’s interviews, recorded on Dec. 4th, with influential people in business, government and culture.
The conversation with Jeff Bezos was fascinating; how he thinks about the future of Amazon and that he is spending 90% of his time working on AI. And it was reassuring to hear that even the GOAT Serena Williams doesn't really know what makes her great.
Book I’m reading: Sixth Column by Robert Heinlein
I’m on a Heinlein kick. I’m reading The Moon is a Harsh Mistress aloud to my girlfriend and Sixth Column to myself.
Sixth Column is classic Heinlein. He takes a hypothetical – in this case that the United States is overrun by a massive Asiatic empire. A small group of military scientists have simultaneously developed some powerful new technology and have to attempt to retake the country.
As I was discussing with someone on Twitter/X recently, I prefer anarchist Heinlein to hippy Heinlein and this book is a prime example.
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Books by Robin - I've published two books - so far! If you’re interested in learning to do a handstand, check out How to Do a Handstand. If you’re building a company or want to improve your company’s culture, read Responsive: What It Takes to Create a Thriving Organization.
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Until next week,
Robin