The answer is yes.
You heard me! It can be done. Many people have done it before you. They’ve written books about it and movies were made to glorify their life stories. You look up to such people and you simply think: Wow!
But when you close the book or shut down the TV you can’t help but feel that tiny bit of sting deep down inside that these guys managed to do it, but of course, you can’t.
Now that was your second lie. The first was that the pain was only marginal and not a deep existential agony that eats you up from the inside every day you look at yourself in the mirror.
Dude, you sometimes catch yourself dodging looking yourself in the eye because you’re dreading that judgemental look.
Your second sin against yourself was uttering the words “I can’t.”
Even if you just thought it, even if you glimpsed at it with your mind with an unvocalized look of acknowledgement, it’s a huge mistake.
“Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you are right” Henry Ford.
Oh, and don’t you even start with that self-pity shit you’re about to start just because you just read these couple of paragraphs and you thought less of yourself just for not recognizing these obvious truths on your own.
Shut The Fuck Up… and give yourself a break.
Not everyone in the world knows what they’re doing. You have to understand that everything makes perfect sense and looks like a supremely intelligent plan only in hindsight.
Most of these folks were just treading in darkness and praying to all the gods that whatever they’re doing is going to work and hit a homerun.
You have to also understand that you need to have a sit down with your judgemental self and have a god damn intervention or something, because, buddy! you need to forgive yourself.
“That which you are seeking is seeking you.” Rumi
Success…
You’re not going to get it from the first go.
Actually, you’re not going to get it right from the 200th go either.
You gotta get comfortable with failure and rejection and check your ego at the door on your way in.
You’re going to spend a whole lot of time sloshing around in mental sewerage and creative refuse until something finally gives.
It doesn’t even matter what you’re agonizing about it.
You understood what I’m saying without me even explaining what it is.
The process is the same for everything you think will add meaning to your life.
The one thing that is the true difference between a smart person and a stupid person is not knowledge.
No sir, they’re both ignorant.
The real difference is in the effort expended in trying to obliterate that ignorance.
So, get out there and get after it with everything you’ve got.
Your effort, focus and dedication will determine the rate of progress you will achieve.
First thing, you have got to put in the time investment and put in the necessary effort every single day.
Success is a habit you need to develop.
Success is also a hobby you need to develop.
Above all, success is a skill you can develop.
This guy made the analogy of taking the time to work on your personal project is like finding money on the street.
Every single time you pass up a chance to work on your skill, your creative project, you science experiment, your book, your YouTube channel, your online business, your body shape, your meditation, or your whatever, and you don’t take it, it is exactly like someone who looks at their feet and sees the chance of getting an extra $100 in their pocket, but they don’t bother picking it up because they’ve got more important places to be and more important things to do.
Perhaps, your main problem is that you’re prioritizing spending from your limited resources of time and money to get some transient relief or to numb out the reality of your situation over actually investing your most important and most scarce time resources into some effort that will payout in the long term.
Look up the “Marshmallow Experiment” and you’ll understand that one of the strongest predictors of success is the ability to prioritize delayed gratification.
You’ll need to think long term and make long term plans and have *gasp* a vision!
Time is the most scarce of resources.
It’s the one non-renewable resource that they’re not making more of.
You must realize that it can be your most loyal friend, or your worst enemy, and it all depends on your relationship with it.
If you use it wisely, it’ll compound your gains and multiply your value. If you don’t, well, you get the picture.
Drop your age out of the equation. No one cares how old you are, and neither should you.
Age is just a number. It doesn’t matter how old you are, you’re not too young, or too old to do something, or to achieve something.
Want to know why?
It’s because the real joy and happiness you are ever going to taste doesn’t reside at the stop at the end of the line. It’s rather something you feel in every single step you walk along the way.
Your life has meaning only through your attempts to do something meaningful and every single drop of sweat and every single night of passionate engrossment into your quest for mastery is only another moment of bliss that you’re going to feel only when you repeat the effort.
Endings and achieved goals are ephemeral and fast fleeting like a hit of sugar rush in the aftermath of that delicious bite of honey cake.
So why does it matter if you’re 14 or 40? Why does it matter that you’re going to embarrass yourself mercilessly with your fumbling missteps and amateur-hour galore when you’re just starting out.
There’s no shame in being a beginner at something worthy.
Shame only lies when you give up, and you’re the only one that’s going to be left out feeling it because, and listen to me on this, NOBODY CARES!
Everyone is busy thinking what will other people think of their very own mistakes and embarrassing errors to look for yours.
Even if they do notice and give you the occasional immature childish sneer, so fucking what? Fuck them and the horse they rode in on. No one’s going to walk in your own shoes but you.
Ego is your worst enemy. Let it go.
People who play status games always lose to people who play value and leverage games.
So don’t you go chasing these shiny gold-plated titles and labels that, in the bigger picture, mean absolutely nothing.
So, your best friend managed to graduate from med school/law school/Grad school or whatever and is living a dream life, right?
Well, you do know that not everyone with a diploma aced all of their exams with a perfect score right? You know that in order for a person to achieve something noteworthy they only had to give it as much time as they put value to it.
You may only compare your effort to those of someone who shares your value systems.
Better yet, drop the comparison all together.
We’re each trapped in our own head fighting our very own little wars that the rest of the universe knows nothing about.
So, quit judging other people by your own metrics and don’t pay attention to those who judge you by theirs.
Figure out your highest value and invest all of your available time trying to attain it.
Aim high and fire at will.
Ideas are a dime a dozen, execution is everything.
Every single good idea in the world means nothing if it is not accompanied with good execution.
There are certain rewards for being first and being the only one and being in a niche of your own in an empty virgin territory where you can reap the fruits of monopoly.
But there are also rewards in trying your hands at a proven concept and competing for the ripe rewards of masterful execution.
You know that Google wasn’t the first ever search engine, right?
What it takes to become really good at something is to start to do it, do it often, do it a lot, and become better than anyone else at it.
To get 10X results, you’ve got to put in 10X efforts and aim for that hockey-stick of exponential progress and compounding interest.
What it takes to become the type of person who would achieve all of that is actually to start believing that you actually can become that person and then start to behave like that person until you’ve achieved the results that only said person can achieve.
Be, do, have.
And if you don’t know what that means, you really need to listen to the Tim Ferriss interview with Terry Crews or read the Master Key system book.
But to put it crudely, let’s say you want to become a professional athlete, an olympic swimmer for example.
Well, first of all, you think of yourself as capable of becoming a professional Olympic athlete.
This alone puts your preparation and conditioning timeline in the span of years!
Next, you start to behave and make the choices that a professional Olympic swimmer would make regarding nutrition, sleep, training, conditioning, etc.
That’s it!
The rest is not up to you.
Success will eventually find you, not the other way around.
Success is a slow moving bus that finds you when you put yourself on the road where it makes its regular stops to pick up people.
It’s not just that you got to be standing at the right stop at the right scheduled moment to be picked up, you can actually walk the road and hop in.
Worst case scenario, you’re at the right station, but you’ve just missed it and it’s moved on to pick up someone else at the next stop.
The thing you need to know about busses is that they always come back, and there’s always the next bus to pick you up.
All you got to do is walk the road and enjoy every single step.
Your most powerful aid on that journey must be a healthy appreciation for first principles.
You should never take everything on face value. You must make it a habit to question everything.
It’s well established rule of success is that successful people have a tendency to question how things are and to have an aversion to abide by established norms.
They challenge and question authority and find no qualms about bending a few rules here and there.
If you think exactly like everyone is thinking, you’re going to do what everyone is doing and that automatically means you’ve already lost.
Be… Do… Have.
Be who you want to become in your own mind. You must reach that place with your mind first.
Do the sort of thing that person would do to be congruent with their identity.
Have the results you’ve wished for chasing after you, not the other way around, because that’s the only way to have it.
Kill your Ego.
Put in the time.
Take pride only and purely in masterful and repeated execution.
Go big or go home.
It can be done.
Just do it.
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