tupac recorded 501 songs, but only 2 became top ten hits.
van gogh painted 2,100 paintings and only sold 1 while he was alive and it was 6 months before he died.
sabrina carpenter released 67 songs and five albums over the course of 10 years before she had her big hit "espresso."
glen powell spent 19 years trying to become an actor before "top gun: maverick" made him a star. 19 solid years.
and connor story spent 8 years waiting tables and he was ready to quit acting for good. and the day he almost got fired, he got an email and he found out that he got the lead actor role in "heated rivalry," the biggest acquired hbo show in history.
and you are giving up because you tried twice? or maybe 10 times?
look, a winner is just a loser that tried one more time and that's just it
winners lose more than losers even try.
Marcus Aurelius was right when he said the soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts. Think trash and your life becomes trash. Think like a king and watch what happens.
i know it sounds kinda stupid. but regardless of how simple it is you have to embody being a delusional optimist. youāll open unexpected new doors and effortlessly 10x your quality of life. thereās no reason to be a self sabotaging pessimist.
Are you depressed? Or are you just sitting indoors all day, not exercising, sleeping horribly, eating hyper processed foods, getting 4000 steps a day, and not working on anything important to you?
I watched a guy on the bus today. 6:45 AM in the morning while jogging, His eyes looked heavy, like he was carrying the weight of an entire lineage on his shoulders. But immediately he sat down, he brought out his phone and started scrolling TikTok.
āAs a Biomedical Engineer, I wanted to snatch that phone from his hand.
āSee, let me tell you the bitter truth nobody wants to hear.
Most of you are not lazy or "unlucky." You are chemically sabotaging your own destiny before you even brush your teeth.
āThe first 60 minutes of your day is a war zone. Your brain is begging for direction. It runs on dopamine, thatās the fuel for your motivation. But what do you do?
āYou wake up. Your eyes haven't even adjusted to the darkness of your room, and gbam, you pick up your phone.
āYou check WhatsApp to see who ignored you. You check X to see who is fighting. You check Instagram to see your mates buying cars you can't afford yet.
āYou think you are just "waking up," but scientifically? You are flooding your brain with cheap, unearned dopamine. You are frying your reward system. By 8 AM, your brain is already tired. It has consumed "content" but produced nothing.
āAnd let me speak to the men for a second.
āI write about men a lot because I see what you go through. The pressure is much. You wake up and the first thought is Rent, School fees, the woman you want to impress.
āIt is terrifying.
āSo, you grab your phone to escape. The phone is your pacifier. It numbs the panic of the morning. But that comfort is a lie.
āWhen you start your day with cheap dopamine, actual work feels like torture. You have programmed your neurochemistry to be a consumer, not a king.
āYou are training your brain to be weak in a world that eats weak men for breakfast.
āHere is the hard truth (and you can drag me if you like):
Your morning mood doesnāt determine how your day goes. It determines your capacity to suffer for your success.
āIf you canāt survive the first hour of the day without a screen, how do you want to survive the economy?
āProtect your first hour.
Don't touch that phone.
Stare at the ceiling. Pray. Do pushups. Go for a morning jug or walk.
Let your brain starve for a bit so it learns to hunt for the hard things.
āStop feeding your destiny to the algorithm.
A lot of depression is just choosing instant gratification to relieve the discomfort of not having chosen delayed gratification and getting stuck in a vicious cycle.
In 1938, Harvard began the worldās longest happiness study.
They tracked 724 teenagers for their entire lives.
85 years later, the results are in.
Hereās what actually makes people happy (backed by science):
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