The Art of Self-Creation: Lessons from a Music Legend

What I learned from reading Chronicles: Volume One by Bob Dylan.

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[0:51] No one could block his way and he didn't have any time to waste.

[2:38] Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself. —Bob Dylan

[3:01] The best talk on YouTube for entrepreneurs: Runnin' Down a Dream: How to Succeed and Thrive in a Career You Love by Bill Gurley

[3:21] Estée: A Success Story by Estée Lauder (Founders #217)

[7:52] Billy asked me who I saw myself like in today's music scene. I told him, nobody. I really didn't see myself like anybody.

[8:12] We may be in the same genre but we don't put out the same product.

[16:34] What really set me apart in these days was my repertoire. It was more formidable than the rest of the players. There were a lot of better musicians around but there wasn't anybody close in nature to what I was doing.

[18:00] Bob spends a lot of time thinking about and studying history.

[20:34] I'd come from a long ways off and had started from a long ways down. But now destiny was about to manifest itself. I felt like it was looking right at me and nobody else.

[21:27] I walked over to the window and looked outside. The air was bitter cold but the fire in my mind was never out. It was like a wind vane that was constantly spinning.

[21:45] It is incredible how much reading this guy is going to do. He takes ideas from everything that he reads and applies it to his work.

[22:30] Towering figures that the world would never see the likes of again, men who relied on their own resolve, for better or worse, every one of them prepared to act alone, indifferent to approval—indifferent to wealth or love, all presiding over the destiny of mankind and reducing the world to rubble. Coming from a long line of Alexanders and Julius Caesars, Genghis Khans, Charlemagnes and Napoleons, they carved up the world. They would not be denied and were impossible to reckon with—rude barbarians stampeding across the earth and hammering out their own ideas of geography.

[26:29] Alexander the Great: The Brief Life and Towering Exploits of History's Greatest Conqueror--As Told By His Original Biographers by Arrian, Plutarch, and Quintus Curtius Rufus. (Founders #232)

[29:37] I don't think there's been another human invention that can evoke deeper emotions than a great book —than great writing.

[31:17] “What an astonishing thing a book is. It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic." —Carl Sagan

[32:35] On War by Carl von Clausewitz

[37:55] I knew what I was doing and wasn't going to take a step back or retreat for anybody.

[46:40] This idea of being completely separate from the outside world is a main theme in the book.

[48:00] Being true to yourself. That was the thing.

[51:11] After a while you learn that privacy is something you can sell but you can't buy it back.

[57:44] Too many distractions had turned my musical path into a jungle of vines.

[58:29] There was a missing person inside of myself and I needed to find him.

[59:53] You have to find ways to get out of your own head.

[1:01:47] At first it was hard going like drilling through a brick wall. All I did was taste the dust.

[1:05:14] Sometimes you could be looking for heaven in the wrong places. Sometimes it could be under your feet or in your bed.

[1:07:25] Decoded by Jay Z. (Founders #238)

[1:07:42] Somebody different was bound to come along sooner or later who would know that world, been born and raised with it. . . be all of it and more. He'd be able to balance himself on one leg on a tightrope that stretched across the universe and you'd know him when he came-there'd be only one like him.

[1:08:23] A new performer was bound to appear. He'd be doing it with hard words and he'd be working 18 hours a day.

[1:09:15] Advice from his Dad:

“Remember, Robert, in life anything can happen. Even if you don't have all the things you want, be grateful for the things you don't have that you don't want."

[1:11:54] I was beginning to feel like a character from within these songs, even beginning to think like one.

[1:12:28] Y’all can't match my hustle

You can't catch my hustle

You can't fathom my love dude

Lock yourself in a room doin' five beats a day for three summers

I deserve to do these numbers

[1:12:51] I played morning, noon and night. That's all I did, usually fell asleep with the guitar in my hands. I went through the entire summer this way.

[1:13:31] The place I was living was no more than an empty storage room with a sink and a window looking into an alley, no closet, a toilet down the hall. I put a mattress on the floor.

[1:15:22] Bound for Glory: The Hard-Driving, Truth-Telling, Autobiography of America's Great Poet-Folk Singer by Woody Guthrie

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ”

— Gareth

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast