This is the Price of your Dreams

So last year I read a book, a biography of Leonardo da Vinci. I think he is one of the coolest characters, most interesting in all of human history. The. The breadth, the depth of what he understood. What he was curious about, I think, was top tier level of creativity and curiosity. Very few humans have ever made such an impact on the world as he has, and so many wide, diverse areas. Reading about him was fascinating, but one of the things the biography did not do a good job of, I think, was sharing Leonardo’s ideas in his own words. A lot of it was contextual history, and that’s fine.

That’s what comes with biographies. And this biography was by Walter Isaacson, by the way, I do recommend, it’s very good. But I walked away from that not really having a sense for Leonardo and Leonardo’s words. It’s kind of a bummer. And it stood out to me a couple days ago when I came across a quote that came from Leonardo. At least I think it was attributed to him as best as I could. It seems like it is attributed to him in some way, maybe not said exactly in this way. It’s probably said in Italian and then translated right.

But this is one of the coolest quotes I’ve ever heard. It’s so good. I can’t believe I haven’t heard it before. And it’s a real shame that it wasn’t mentioned. At least passing in this biography of Leonardo, it’s simply this, the price. Wait, let me try this again. God will sell you anything at the price of labor. God will sell you anything at the price of labor.
That is. Wow. That is an amazing thought. That is an amazing concept. And it’s true. It’s true that everything that you want in this life, with few exceptions, of course, there are things that are outside of our abilities. Pretty much anything that you set your mind to can be had. Anything that you, any goal that you want for yourself could be accomplished with the right amount of work.
Now, that might be an amount of work that you are not prepared to give. It might be an amount of work that you could not possibly give. That’s possible, too, but you could have pretty much anything for the cost of labor. And we know this because others have done it. We see examples of this over and over and over. Now, they might have different skills, different resources, whatever. You could say that. But I love this idea that the universe responds to inputs, and if we put the right inputs in, in sufficient quantity for a sufficient period of time, then we can have the things that we want from this life.
And maybe that isn’t technically true, maybe it’s not, I don’t know. But when we look at the horizon of the different types of beliefs we can adopt in our lives, whether that’s an empowering belief or a limiting belief, a limiting belief is the thing that holds us back from accomplishing our goals, regardless of whether or not it’s true. And we know that it doesn’t have to be true to limit us, right? Because we all have these limiting beliefs. I personally for a long time thought I couldn’t focus. My ADHD was a weakness, that it was the reason I wasn’t achieving my greatness, right? That was my limiting belief. And it was true because I chose for it to be true, not because it was objectively true, but because I chose in my subjective reality to make it true. Well, the contra of that is empowering beliefs, the beliefs that move us towards our goals regardless of whether or not they’re true. Who cares if they’re true or not? Your belief in them makes them uniquely true to you.
And this idea that God will sell you anything at the price of labor, it’s one of those empowering beliefs that I want so badly for everybody in the world to adopt because it puts the power in your hands. It gives you control over your destiny. And at the end of the day, you can either be the hero of your story or you can be the victim, but you can’t be both. And I think everybody deep down wants to be the hero. But you recognize it’s hard. It’s scary. There’s no guarantee that the hero wins at the end of the day. Worst of all, it’s the hero’s fault if he loses.
When you’re the victim, you have something to blame. It’s not your fault it happened to you. But when you realize that you could have anything in this life, that God will sell you anything that you want for the price of labor, then it simply becomes a math equation. What’s the work that I need to do? How long do I need to do it? It’s just that now I think the frame that’s really important here is to recognize it might take a lot of work. And in fact, it’ll probably take more work than you realize. The cost that God will enact of you, that the price of labor is going to be very, very high. But if you want it bad enough, you could pay it. If you don’t want it bad enough, then don’t pay it.

Most people don’t. They want it enough for it to cause them mental angst that they don’t have it, but they aren’t willing to move consistently over a long enough period of time to do the work necessary to pay the price. So I wanted to share this with you guys because I think one Leonardo da Vinci is a really rad figure in history. What he was able to accomplish in so many different domains is so mind boggling and cool, especially given the period of time in which he did it. That’s crazy. But his idea that God will sell you anything for the price of labor, man, that’s an idea worth branding on your heart. And keeping in mind that if you don’t have what you want in life yet, it’s because you haven’t done the work full stop. It’s that simple.

Again, regardless of whether or not that’s objectively true doesn’t matter for us here on this podcast, we hold beliefs that move us towards our greatness regardless of whether or not they’re true. We hold the beliefs that serve us, that do not limit us. That is the key. So hopefully this one serves you, and if not, we’ll try again tomorrow. But until then, stay happy. Focus, my friends.