The Ancient Scrolls

Before I started Outer Woods, the future didn’t look too bright. I was in a job that I hated, I was doing poorly at that job, and prospects for a new job looked bleak. I was slowly burning through savings. I had a head full of ideas, dreams, and pictures of what I wanted my life to look like, but I was trapped in my head. I wasn’t acting on anything. I wasn’t trying to change anything. I wasn’t actually putting in any effort to make life what I wanted it to be. I thought I would magically wake up one morning and I would be ready, the motivation would be there, I would want to act, to change, to make progress, but that day wasn’t coming, it never did, and it never will. I lacked motivation, inspiration, drive, vigor. I don’t think those are uncommon feelings, but we all put on a happy face and hope it will change one day.

Then I got lucky and I heard something. I heard a podcast with Matthew McConaughey. I’ll spare you some of the finer details, but in this podcast he mentioned how in college he had picked up a book one day while killing time. And this book moved him, and the pages kept turning the first time he picked it up. He then went on to say it led him to a journey of sorts, a quest, a challenge, and that challenge lasted the better part of a year. This challenge required daily work that you could not skip, and damn it he did not. He talked about being at parties, miles away from his home, and he would have forgotten this book that he needed for the challenges. He would sober up for hours, then head home at 4am to make sure he did not miss a day of this quest. And by the end, he was changed. He called his dad and said, “Dad, I don’t want to be a lawyer, I want to go to film school.” To which his dad replied, “...don’t half ass it”.

I can’t exactly tell you why it spoke to me, but I managed to drag my ass to a bookstore that day, and buy that book for around 8 bucks. The Greatest Salesman in The World. The next morning I started reading it, not a big thick book, the text or language is not intimidating, but it felt old. It didn’t feel new, or fake, or artificial, or cheap. It felt like it had some magic in it, something powerful and ancient. The first half of the book read like a story, it was an interesting story, but it really felt like it was leading you up to something, drawing you towards something bigger than characters in a book. Then you come to a page, about halfway through the book, took me no more than an hour to get to it. You become the main character in this book, and the journey, the quest, the challenge becomes yours. It is a daily challenge, and it changed my life forever. Now, I’m going to take a pause right here. If any of what I have said so far is relatable, and you want to set out on this adventure, skip the next few paragraphs and start back up at the *****START HERE AGAIN***** place, I don’t want to give too much away to you. You are also welcome to keep reading and then go on this adventure. The benefit does not come through my words on this blog. It comes through the adventure.

The story begins with a boy who is a lowly livestock caretaker in an old merchant caravan. He has no status, no money to his name, no friends or family. But he sees the great merchant at the top, and he sees everything that he so desperately desires, but not the slightest idea of how to obtain it. Somehow, and good on him for doing it, he summons the courage to talk to this grand merchant. He says look, I’m a nobody, but I want to be something in this one life of mine. I see you did it, how the hell did you do it, I’ll do whatever it takes to do it. And the merchant essentially replies, you think you have what it takes?? But he wants to give the boy a chance. 

He gives the boy the caravan’s trademark cloak, and marks it down on the ledger that the boy owes the merchant X amount of money. He tells the boy, go into the town, and sell this robe, sell it for the best you can, and you can keep anything on top of what you owe me. The boy takes off with the robe in hand to sell it and prove he has what it takes. But he can’t sell it. How do you talk to people? How do you take rejection? How much do you sell it for? How do you make a name for yourself as a kid? He has no money to stay the first night in an inn, so he finds a cave outside of town, and in it finds a mother and a newborn. It’s a cold night, and the mother has used most of her robes to warm the child, and she is freezing. The boy gives the mother this beautiful robe for warmth, for free. Tail between his legs, the boy returns to the caravan to tell the merchant he was right, he failed, he literally gave the cloak away and he will never amount to anything. But the merchant with a twinkle in his eye says that he has seen everything he needs to see. This boy has what it takes. The merchant does something wild and gives the boy his prized possession. He gives him 10 ancient scrolls. Tells the boy these scrolls are the reason that he is the person that stands there today. Tells the boy to take these scrolls, go into the city, and tomorrow morning open the first scroll and do exactly as it instructs. So the boy goes to the city, wakes up, and begins to read. Then, you, the reader, turn the page, and you find “THE SCROLL MARKED I”. You then become this boy with a wild and challenging quest ahead of you.

And The Scroll Marked I is simple: today, we are changing, it’s a new day, it’s a new me. I will read this scroll 3 times a day, for 30 days. After 30 days I will do the same with scroll 2. 3 times a day for 30 days. Then scroll 3. Then 4. All the way up to 10 scrolls. Don’t miss a day, don’t miss a reading. No matter what.

And McConaughey didn’t. And neither did I. For 300 days, 3 times a day. And in those 300 days I went from hating my job, apathetic about life, undriven to do anything of purpose, to creating Outer Woods and starting my dream. 

****START HERE AGAIN****

Since I have finished, I’ve been reflecting on this quest that I went on, and why it was exactly what I needed given all the things I was feeling, or rather not feeling. I kept waiting for when the motivation would finally come again, when the skies would part, and I would wake up feeling ready to kick ass once more. I firmly believe that very rarely happens. Motivation, drive, inspiration comes from within. It’s not a random event that happens, it’s a decision that you are going to start, no matter how you are feeling. It is not a flood that happens quickly and lasts for long. It’s small actions, tiny actions, repeated every single damn day, whether your heart is in it or not. But dammit you do it, no matter how you are feeling, because you have to, because if you don’t you will fall back to where you were. Today, you just have to decide that it is time. It can’t be tomorrow. It can’t be next week. It can’t be when this or that happens. It’s today. 

But the beautiful thing about this quest is that it helps you to do that. No one part of this quest is difficult. It is simple to read 3, 4, 5 pages of a book. It isn’t like a cold shower that literally doing once is difficult. Each step of this quest is simple. So for me, and maybe you, hard tasks were almost impossible to start, but this isn’t hard to start. The difficult part is doing it every damn day, no matter the hell what happens that day. But at the end of this quest, you realize what a phenomenal and monumental task you’ve just accomplished. You realize that the motivation doesn’t ever come from some great beyond, it comes from you, a decision you make even when you aren’t feeling it. You realize that the journey to where you want to be in life is not accomplished through one massive heroic effort that lasts a few days, it is accomplished through tiny tasks repeated no matter what happens. I mean no matter what. 

If any of this sounds relatable, email me, message me, anything. I’ll buy you the book today. It’ll get to you within a day or two, you can start all of this within a day or two. Or hell, go get the book from a book store. You are a badass, no matter what is going down right now in your life. No matter how lethargic, unmotivated, uninspired you are right now. I know you have dreams, and they could be anything, social, relationships, family, financial, physical, professional, hobbies, whatever. I was so deep in my valleys, but upon doing this adventure laid out by the book, I started Outer Woods. What will you do with that power?