Strive

Has success eluded you, no matter how hard you try?

Are you frustrated by trying to achieve your dreams by copying others? Internationally-acclaimed speaker and founder of the cutting-edge venture capital Amyx Ventures, Scott Amyx reveals how you can attain real success in your life, your way. His theory of Strive is a challenge to the conventional wisdom that has held so many people back from achieving their goals and enjoying lasting happiness. Scott rose from obscure poverty to globe-trotting success, and he invites you to share in his journey by adopting a new mindset towards your personal challenges: embrace them. Scott shows you how through stories of the most unlikely individuals who embraced difficult personal change to become outrageously successful. He helps you take stock of your own habits and practices to identify how your routine and misconceptions are holding you back. Fascinating insights from throughout history up through today’s cutting-edge research show how embracing discomfort fuels lasting success.

Shape your life in new, exciting ways. You can have control over your career, your outlook, your actions, and your priorities. This book helps you get a fresh start to begin building the successful life you want.

• Discover what really drives success---and how conventional wisdom is wrong
• Clearly identify your own personal challenges---and how to overcome them
• Delve into the latest research on high performance to create a better you
• Learn how high-achievers approach challenge, change, and success

Strive is an unconventional approach to attaining your dreams because it takes what makes you unique and turns it to your advantage. Have you been duped by common myths of success? Are you disappointed by the constant struggle in life? Scott reveals how only you have the power to change your trajectory. Strive is your handbook for getting comfortable with discomfort, embracing and enjoying new challenges, and achieving real, lasting success.

Introduction ix

Winning at Life

1 Strive 1

Popular Beliefs About Success Are Profoundly Wrong Strive for Real, Lasting Success

2 Are You Passionate Enough? 13

Passion Plays

Passion and Success: What Is the Connection?

Passion Without Innate Abilities

Passion Without Knowledge and Experience

Passion Without Economic Gain

Artistic Success: Get the Picture?

Famous by 30 or Bust!

Invest Your Money for Art School—Get an MBA

3 Practice and Opportunity 33

The Practice of Practice

Youth Sports: Gateway to Success?

Unequal Success Among the Equally Qualified

Unequal Opportunity Versus You

Brazil: Rising Above Race and Class

Rising Above

4 Are You Special? 51

The Idea That Only Exceptional People Become

Successful Is Wrong

Flight: Doing It “Wright”

Power, Money, and Failure

The Power of Being Nobody Special

You Can Achieve Greatness, Regardless of Who You Are

5 The Secret Things 69

The Idea That Successful People Have Hidden Advantages Is a Lie

Lucky in Life?

That Sinking Feeling

Lucky Lottery Winners?

The Impact of External Circumstances

Many Advantages, No Success

Ursula Burns, Risk Taker

The Real Hidden Advantage

6 Disrupt Yourself 87

Use Self-Disruption to Attain Success

Disrupting the Body: Building Muscle

Disrupting the Individual

Shooting for the Stars

The Power of O

Reinventing Your Business

Disrupting Your Nation

Starting Successfully

7 Abandoning Your Comfort Zone 109

Risk It

Comfort Zone Versus Twilight Zone

Risk-Taking Impacts the World

Journey to America: In Search of Religious

Freedom

Risky Business

Amazon

Personal Risk, Incredible Growth

Into the Light

8 When the Going Gets Tough 127

Pairing Risk with Perseverance Is Necessary for Your Ultimate Success

Staying the Path, Eyes Ahead

Insights Help You Reassess Your Goals

The Blind Man Riding on the Back of a Blind Tiger

A Cinderella Story

Insights Help You Persevere

Taking the Long View and the Long Road

Coming from Nowhere, Going Somewhere

Fail Again and Again

Into the Heart of Darkness

Passion Play

9 Verify and Magnify Your Success 145

Periodically Check to See If You Are Meeting

Goals and Stretching Yourself to Achieve Success

Verify

Personal Growth

Quantification of Outcomes

Are You Coasting?

Magnify Your Success

The Magnifier

The Platform Effect

Network Effects

Now What?

10 Enhance Yourself 163

Success Without Self-Care Is Failure

Hacking the Body—By Any Means?

Biohacking

Future You

Busy = Better?

Good Health—Do You Measure Up?

Boost Your Brainpower

Stress, Rest, and Your Brain

Meditation Can Rewire Your Brain—For Good

Some Final Words

Epilogue 185

Your Personal Journey to Success Will Be Entirely

Unique

Should Success Be Measured Only by Money, Status, and Power?

The Ethics of Strive

Striving, for Life

Striving Together

Index 203

"I would recommend this book to anyone who feels in a rut or at an impasse in their lives. It could be the kick-start you need to fulfill your goals and accomplish the things you may have thought are out of your reach." (Financial Adviser, August 2018)

"A fascinating read for your summer holiday." (PQ Magazine, June 2018)

Scott Amyx grew up an impoverished immigrant who was frequently told he would amount to nothing. Today he is an internationally recognized thought leader, speaker, and author on the Internet of Things and emerging technologies. He received the Cloud & DevOps World 2016 Award for Most Innovative and was voted Top Global IoT Influencer & Expert by Inc. magazine. He also was named Top IoT Authority by the Internet of Things Institute, and Speaking.com's Top 10 Global Speakers. In addition, Scott has been nominated to the World Economic Forum as a committee member for the Future of the Internet and nominated by global luminaries for TED Talk.

What is the key to success?

Is it all a matter of hard work and practice, practice, practice? How about being born with loads of talent? Maybe the trick is coming from the right family and having great opportunities dropped in your lap? Then, of course, there's the quintessentially American belief in the power of positive thinking—because, as everybody knows, the Universe bends to the will of she who maintains a positive outlook, come hell or high water.

Let's face it, if all the "surefire" success formulas really worked, the world would be populated with nothing but successful people—and if diet fads really worked, we'd all look fabulous in Speedos.

The hard truth is that the world is replete with spectacularly talented failures, positive- thinking flops, and hardworking people who made all the right moves only to have success elude them. You won't hear their stories in any of the motivational books and seminars crowding the self-help market. That's because, as the old adage says: "Success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan."

In this thought-provoking book, Scott Amyx, an honest-to-goodness, rags-to-riches story in his own right, proposes an alternate theory of success. Drawing upon the stories of dozens of successful individuals throughout history—everyone from Leonardo da Vinci to Bill Gates, Thomas Edison to J. K. Rowling—Scott shows that, while hard work, talent, and positive thinking may have played a part in some people's successes, they weren't what put them over the top. He persuasively argues that the one factor that matters most to a person finding success is his or her willingness to go outside their comfort zone and sacrifice the safe, the familiar, and the tried-and-true in pursuit of their goal.

But Scott doesn't just talk the talk, he shows you how it's done with his original S.T.R.I.V.E. approach to achieving lasting success. You'll learn how to set a clear, achievable goal, devise a plan for getting there, overcome your fears and embrace risk, monitor your progress, and keep yourself physically and mentally fit and prepared to realize your plan and to enjoy your success once you've made it.

Strive doesn't offer you any guarantees of success. What it delivers is an approach that, regardless of your background, upbringing, talent, time, or education, enables you to use what you've got to work with to take your best shot at real, lasting success.

WHY EVERYTHING YOU THOUGHT YOU KNEW ABOUT SUCCESS IS WRONG AND WHERE THE KEY TO SUCCESS REALLY LIES

In this controversial new book by internationally-acclaimed tech wizard and venture capitalist, Scott Amyx, you'll find out why everything you thought you knew about becoming a success is wrong. More importantly, you'll discover what you can do to dramatically boost your chances of realizing your goals and living the dream.

Amyx, a bona fide rags-to-riches story himself who overcame a hardscrabble upbringing as a poor immigrant to become an internationally acclaimed visionary businessperson, tells his own story and the stories of dozens of individuals throughout history who beat the odds to become outrageously successful. In the process, he reveals the shortcomings of conventional wisdom about success and explains why following it just may be what's holding you back.

ADVANCED PRAISE FOR Strive

"Strive. Pushing through our limits, doing the hard thing, and focusing on constant and never ending growth and improvement is the ticket to impact and fulfillment!" —Tony Robbins, World-Renowned Business Leader and Peak Performance Strategist, Best-Selling Author of Unshakeable, Money Master the Game, Unlimited Power, and Awaken the Giant Within

"We all know or have read stories of people who seem to rise from the ashes or come out of nowhere to achieve success. Strive points out that most of these individuals were not extraordinary by nature but extraordinary by action." —Forbes

"The true alchemy of Strive is that it combines, great storytelling, great anecdotes, and some pretty profound insights. No question Scott Amyx's key takeaway is to get comfortable being uncomfortable … or perhaps find yourself a different journey. Learning to live perpetually outside your comfort zone is perhaps a condition precedent for success—the special sauce for cooking up ideas that will change the world." —Tribeca Film Festival

"Strive teaches us to embrace discomfort and achieve success in this exponentially changing world." —Singularity University