Ryan Daniel Moran reflects on a recurring internal struggle between "hard work" (grinding to force results) and what he calls misguided effort—trying to force outcomes that don't align with his true desires. He describes a cycle: exhaustive effort leads to overwhelm and giving up, which paradoxically frees creativity and authentic momentum; he argues that true results come when people pursue what genuinely aligns with their unique gifts rather than model others (citing Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Whitney Herd as illustrative contrasts). The clip also briefly includes an archival exchange with Scott Pelley and Elon Musk highlighting public criticism of commercial spaceflight.
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I've been battling with this internal struggle, I'd say, lately, but I think it's actually something I've been struggling with for a long time. It has sparked a debate among myself and some of my entrepreneur friends about whether or not hard work is required in order to be really successful. Nobody, you know, has actually created success without working their face off. And there's this difference between what you might call hard work and what I would call effort. This idea of trying to force things to move in the direction that you want to go. And I noticed this internal struggle with myself where I put so much energy into the trying, into the effort, into the, into the trying to get momentum on something, of being motivated towards something. And I make these long to do lists and these incredibly complex ways of getting things done. And then I get overwhelmed and things don't go nearly as fast as I want them to. And so I add more to my to do list and I'm. And I'm working even harder and longer than I used to and I'm getting less and less results until finally I just strategically give up. I throw up my hands and I just say, I can't do this anymore. And this comes in waves, like once a year, more. So lately, more frequently lately there's the idea of just like throwing up my hands and wanting to give up. And the strangest thing happens, as soon as I give up, I get creative. And as soon as I get creative, I get these new ideas and I get these new ideas in this new momentum, this new excitement. And that's where the danger comes in. Because as soon as I get the excitement and the momentum, then I make it hard by creating these long to do lists of things that I don't want to do. And I have discovered, or at least surmised about myself that all of that effort, all of that trying happens when I am now forcing a result that I don't really want. So what I want to share with you in this video is hopefully just a peek, an insight into what it is that you really want. Because if you know what it is that you really want from the get go, you won't build a complicated path that takes years for you to accomplish. Instead, you can have what it is that you want really, really quickly. And most people, especially success minded people, people who are driven for something more, end up building these long paths to something that isn't what they really want. And that's why so many successful people end up unhappy and also not getting the results that inspired them to start out. On the journey in the first place. I'm discovering that for myself right now. And I think that I have the opportunity to catch it and to correct it before I get too far into my career. And I hope that you can learn the lesson a little bit earlier than I did.
We often look at the world's most successful people, like Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk, or most recently, Whitney Heard, who is now a billionaire. She's younger than me. It's easy to make those comparisons and to feel this gap and then to try and close that gap with really hard work or just deciding that you want to be like Jeff Bezos and so you make this commitment to have the results like Jeff Bezos. It's this temptation in our world to try and be those people. If you look at those really successful individuals, none of them got to where they are by trying to be something else. None of them got to where they are today by trying to model somebody else. They got there because they had an internal guiding principle. They had something unique to them that they wanted to bring to the world. And if you look at all of them, there were people in their lives who thought that they were crazy. They thought that they were being ridiculous, they thought they were being dreamers, or they thought that they were doing something that didn't make sense in the marketplace. And so there were more critics against these individuals than there were cheerleaders.
You know, there are American heroes who don't like this idea. Neil Armstrong, Gene Cernan have both testified against commercial space flight in the way that you're developing it. And I wonder what you think of that.
I was very sad to see that, because those guys are.
Yeah.
Those guys are heroes of mine. So it's really tough.
The truth is that each of them had something extremely unique that they brought to the table. They weren't trying to model what was already working or who they looked up to in the world. So why would I do the same thing? The truth is that my desires. The truth is that my unique skills are very unique to me. And to try and stuff them down in order to get a result would be a really unhappy way to live my life. And I've observed that it's when I get the least amount of results, too. The truth is that comparison only happens when you are looking at external results versus internal desires. External results are things like money, status, number of followers. It's the things that we can measure. And we've got this story around the results of that meaning something or adding significance to our lives. But those results come because people are being themselves. Those results happen because an individual is tuned into who they are and their unique gift to the world. The results that people get are a direct reflection of someone being tapped in to who they are and where their unique gifts are that are valuable to other people.
So what do we do about this? How do we actually play this dance between having the experience that we want and getting the results that we want? Well, I've experienced in my own life that I get more results when I stop trying so hard. When I am trying and when I am stressing, it's usually because I'm over emphasizing the strategy rather than the experience that I want to have. I did not get into this game of entrepreneurship because I wanted to work 16 or 18 hour days. I didn't even get into this game because I wanted to make more money than that person. I wanted the fun creative expansion that entrepreneurship can bring. It can also bring stress and overwhelm and sickness and I don't want that side of it. I want the expansion, I want the fun, I want the creativity. And so if I focus on the emotional experience that I want, it just so happens that I end up making decisions that amplify my fun and my growth and my creativity. And it also makes sense that more creativity and more fun and more growth will eventually lead to more money. It doesn't have to though, if I'm detached from the results. So the primary thing that I remind myself and I would like to invite you to consider is that you don't really want the results. You want the emotions that the results will bring you or that you think they will bring you. It's very rare that you have a happy ending to an unhappy journey. Many of us think that if we just work a little bit more, if we grind it out a little bit harder and we get that million or 10 million or 100 million, then we'll be able to ease off the gas and enjoy our life. But the irony is that when you enjoy your life in the first place place the creative ideas come to you that end up being the million, ten million or hundred million dollar ideas. There's one energy tank that is of lack in comparison and not enoughness. And so that drive is to take and to extract and try to get as much as possible. But then when you're satisfied and you're happy and you're content now the drive is coming from a different place. It's coming from a place of wanting to share. It's coming from a place, coming from a place of wanting to create. It's coming from a place of wanting to give. It's coming from a place of wanting to expand. And that's when real unique ideas start to flow. That's when you start treating customers and partners and employees the way that makes them want to expand, that makes them want to create, that makes them want to give. You're no longer tied to this idea of trying to get as much as possible. You're married to this idea of wanting to expand and create as much as possible. Not because it will bring better results, although it will, but because it's fun, because it's the better journey, because it's the better experience of this entire game. And when you can operate from that place rather than the place of extraction, that's when you become Jeff Bezos. That's when you expand. Like Elon Musk. If you look at those entrepreneurs, they didn't set out to become the richest person in the world. They set out to create something that they wanted to bring to the world. They were paying themselves almost nothing at the very beginning. They were losing money for years. That would put most of us out of business. That would cause most of us to give up. But they had a guiding principle. They had something that kept them going. And it wasn't money. It was the joy of the game. I'm Ryan Daniel Moran and my business is capitalism dot com. Thanks so much for watching the video. If you found value in it, hit the subscribe button. I'll see you on the next video.
