the most annoying thing about figuring things out before everyone else does is that you look like an idiot when no one else can see the logical chain, but then by the time you’re proven right it becomes so obvious it was inevitable that everyone retroactively decide it was always obvious.
if you want to be the exception then go be one. the exceptions are ordinary people who refused to accept an ordinary outcome and then behaved accordingly for years, in rooms nobody entered, on mornings nobody remembers, long past the point anyone was watching.
if you spend all day at a fish market, you’ll leave smelling like fish, even if you never touched one
but spend your day in a perfume shop and you’ll carry the scent even if you didn’t buy anything, that’s how environment works. it rubs off, whether you realize it or not. stay around complainers and everything starts to look negative. stay around excuse makers and growth feels optional but get around people who move with purpose, you’ll feel it.
get around people who live in gratitude, you’ll start to see differently. the scent of your environment will always follow you.
Be extremely good at something. Art. Music. Writing. Cooking. Fashion. Just be good at something, my friend. I promise you no one can take this from you. In this dark place, it'll be your light.
it is an unwritten rule of life that after every prolonged period of hardship and uncertainty, there is going to be a period when you are going to achieve quantum leaps across multiple areas of your life. the only requirement is that you do not give up on yourself
What happens when you die:
They divide up your shit.
They summarize your life in 500-1000 words.
People who knew you less say sorry to people who knew you more.
Everyone eats, drives home, and wakes up the next day and goes to work.
Whatever you’re worried about won’t be in those 500 words.
You can dare greatly or not at all, but you’re gonna die either way.
Might as well squeeze every motherfucking drop out.
BREAKING: Two people have climbed to the top of the Empire State Building in New York City, holding a banner from the skyscraper's antenna reading, "When the power of love beats the love of power, the world knows peace."
As of now it's unclear how the pair reached the top of the building as police work to get them down from the spire, 1,454 feet above the ground.
Most genuinely talented people i have ever known share the same pathetic affliction, this whingeing reluctance to use what they have dressed up as decency. they tuck their abilities away in some grubby mental corner and convince themselves this is some kind of noble self restraint, when in reality it is plain gutless flinching. ive watched brilliant people rot for years because they were too cowardly to admit they were brilliant, and too comfortable in some small, squalid version of themselves they assembled out of other peoples opinions. your talent is not yours to bury. you didn't earn it and you don't get to decide it should be still. either it gets used or it eats you from the inside. there is no happy middle ground where a talented person sits on what they have and lives to any fucking satisfaction, ive never met one who pulled it off
I'm 26. All I ever hear is "You're young, You'll see."
I see today. I see hundreds of humans who never thought for themselves. Who have sucked down a concoction they never wanted to drink. Who blame the world and lack agency and point fingers and are so down the rabbit hole that this mindset is second nature. Not even malicious. Simply buying an idea being sold by other doomer carrot danglers. I see hundreds of humans who blame genetics and have optimized for the wrong thing and are now sad complaining cave hobbits.
You're right, I do see. I see hundreds of humans showing me exactly what I refuse to become.
You need to adopt this mindset now. Today. Believe in it with every fiber of your being. Refuse to pretend that you can't mold the world. That you can't live the life you want or spend your days doing what you enjoy. Refuse it. Never become the kind of person who looks down on youth and outwardly projects your insecurities and regrets so as to discourage them from ever trying to pull the sword from the stone themselves.