Inspiration in the most unusual place. The buried life.

What’s the most difficult CEO skill?

Managing your own psychology.

-Ben Horowitz

I’m a big fan of inspirational tv shows and movies. They can be the fuel you need to get through just one more of the many down days you can expect when you start a new business.

There’s plenty of lists of movies and tv shows of this ilk that you can find online. Here are a few places.

So it wouldn’t surprise you that I’m always on the hunt for more.

I’m thrilled to point out there’s an entire series that is surprisingly inspirational. Why is it so surprising? Because it’s in the strangest place. It’s on MTV.

It’s called The Buried Life. It’s 4 guys that created a pretty long bucket list. And they go out and attempt to check off an item from their list each episode. These items are crazy. And I’m sure might rub a few people the wrong way. First few episodes are things like crashing a Playboy party, crashing a wedding and making a toast, asking Megan Fox on a date, etc.

But that’s not the best part. The good part is that for each thing they attempt to cross off their list, they go and find someone and ask them “What do you want to do before you die?”

They find teachers that want to improve their school just one more little way, or a father that would love to reconnect with his son after 17 years of not seeing him, or a young girl who all she wants to accomplish is to break her fear of heights by riding the roller-coaster of her dreams nightmares. And sure enough, these 20-something old guys make it happen.

You’ll find inspiration on a bunch of levels. You’ll see that they don’t let much stand in their way. But none of it takes herculean amounts of creativity or money.

They just have the grit and courage to get a task done no matter how crazy it is, like play basketball with the President of the United States.

So they do it and expect to accomplish it. Sometimes they fail. Sometimes they try again a different way, or they just move onto the next challenge with no less enthusiasm.

It’s all on Netflix and Hulu Plus. Of course like the fate of all my favorite shows (e.g. Firefly), it’s been cancelled recently, but they appear to be crafting a new show, and have a book out.

Setbacks are just setups for comebacks

-A sign from a school in The Buried Life