this is insane. i genuinely don't understand why ambitious people aren't shown this lecture before their careers start consuming their entire lives.
clayton christensen spent his career studying why successful companies collapse. in his final class, he asked students to apply the theory to themselves: if you keep allocating your time the same way, what life are you actually building?
he had already seen the answer in his own harvard mba class. everyone looked successful at the fifth reunion; by the 10th, 15th, 20th, and 25th, many were unhappy, divorced, and living far from their children.
work shows you the score immediately. close a sale, ship a product, finish a presentation, earn a promotion, get paid.
an hour with your child may produce nothing you can measure today; it may take 20 years to understand what that hour built. so the next free hour goes back to work, one rational decision at a time.
this is how people build lives they never planned: through hundreds of right decisions that lead in the wrong direction, day after day.
money, titles, and headcount are easy to count. christensen believed a life should be measured by the people who became better because you were there.
he died in 2020.
one question remains: if someone saw only where your time, energy, and attention went this year, what would they think actually mattered to you?
the full 19-minute lecture is in the video below.
learn to go where wealthy people go. you don’t have to spend like them, you just have to stop feeling like you don’t belong there.
i remember when i couldn’t afford the lifestyle i wanted yet.
every friday evening, i’d walk into a high end hotel lobby, order one coffee, sit in the same corner and open my laptop like i belonged there. nobody knew i was going back to a small brokie apartment after 😂 all they saw was someone comfortable in that environment. week after week, something changed.
i stopped feeling like an outsider. i studied how people spoke, how they carried themselves, how deals were discussed and how confidence looked in real life.
one night, a man approached me cos he assumed i was a regular. that conversation opened a door to an opportunity i wasn’t qualified for on paper but i carried myself like i was. do you know that months later, my reality caught up with that environment i had been exposing myself to. nothing magical happened. i simply stopped seeing that world as theirs and started seeing it as a place i belonged too
i will repeat this again;
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. the scent of your environment will always follow you.
wealth starts with familiarity before it starts with money. your mind has to accept a reality before ur life can build it. learn something, buena suerte.
My income is constantly increasing.
My income is constantly increasing.
My income is constantly increasing.
My income is constantly increasing.
My income is constantly increasing.
My income is constantly increasing.
My income is constantly increasing.