SUMMARY
Pro Tip: NOT!
- Steal his clothes and wear them while you mutter to yourself about innovation.
- Drain the petrol from your neighbours’ cars and fill the tanks with packets of AAA batteries while they sleep.
- Literally, change your name to Elon Musk.
- Remove tiles from your neighbours’ roofs and smash them repeatedly with heavy objects.
- Over Christmas dinner this year, tell your in-laws that we are all living inside of the Matrix just like in the movies!
- Set off fireworks in the parking lot of Facebook Inc. like right outside their windows and inform their security guards that you’ll launch an investigation into how it could have happened.
- Release weekly updates on your 10-year pizza consumption plan in the form of an email blast to your loved ones and co-workers.
- Read lists of conflicting morning routines that Elon Musk may or may not have ever actually followed and then tweet that shit at various celebrities like maybe Snoop Dogg!
- Only wear a turtleneck and embarrassing jeans. Or maybe that’s someone else. I’m not sure. You’re shooting for genius here, not all of your answers have to be right.
- …or alternatively, try thinking like you. Only you. Because the fact is, you’re not Elon Musk or Steve Jobs or anyone else. When people promise they can make you think like them, it’s bullshit. And it wouldn’t be useful anyway.
In Conclusion
You can learn from your idols. You can learn some incredible lessons. You can learn how to build a business, live creatively, do the greatest work of your life. But you can’t learn how to think like them.
Elon Musk is incredibly impressive. I love what he’s done and how he’s done it. Unfortunately, it’s a waste of energy trying to be him, for any of the rest of us. Our greatest accomplishments have to come from who we are and our unique way of seeing the world and its problems.
That’s what I know for sure.
[This post by Jon Westenberg first appeared on Medium and has been reproduced with permission.]
