The best advice I've ever heard is to go hard at everything you do. But not in the way most people assume.
When it's time to work, lock in fully.
When it's time to have some fun, do so without remorse.
Rigidity to ambiguous rules of professionalism drains your vitality.
Remember that your professionalism has a hedonic side that you cannot suppress. And if you never integrate it, it will consume you.
The coming storm does not wait for the raindrops to settle.
All the events transpiring within your lifetime build an inevitable momentum.
That momentum is indifferent to your preferences.
It may lead you to glorious places, but it could also shatter you without remorse.
Most people have failed to grasp this reality until the bitter end.
Their remains cannot be found.
They are forgotten; taken by the storm meant to propel them.
Radical adaptability is the only solution.
The ability to adjust to any circumstance.
A common trap for "high-IQ" individuals.
And this phenomenon has prevailed for ages.
The supposed "superintelligent" end up never quite being able to get what they want.
Because they are trapped.
Their intelligence is constrained to the conventions of the system they operate in.
That produces a good worker, but not a successful and independent individual.
The gilded cage will naturally seem more appealing.
But that does not change its nature.
To succeed in life, kill your ego.
By far one of the most misguided sentences ever spoken.
Killing your ego is the act of skinning your psyche, boiling it down to an abstract layer permeable by even the tiniest semblance of adversity.
The result is not "more confidence."
Nor is it "self-acceptance."
It is a false humility. Not from virtue but from misguidedness, stripping yourself of the ability to carve a healthy ego.
The cautious man loses more consistently than anyone else in life.
He assumes that caution implies the absence of risk.
It does not.
Caution is the conscious act of accepting smaller losses in exchange for a false feeling of safety; a tranquility stemming from inertia.
The real costs were the lost opportunities and the changes that shifted while you were still preparing for them.
Playing not to lose is a strategy. It just happens to be the losing one.
Nobody loses more than a person trying not to lose. Nothing in your life is exempt from this.
Game theory proves that the person who controls the narrative wins the game, even when they're less competent.
The payoff matrix won't reward the best work.
But it does reward the best story.
That's because it cannot distinguish between fact and story, so the narrative acts as a multiplier.
Politicians are living proof that this can change everything.
Suddenly, mediocre outcomes are perceived as fantastic simply due to their underlying narrative.
Yet, most people pour everything into execution while neglecting the story itself.
That's not how it works.
The truly successful deliberately craft the story first, then let their execution reflect their story.
The greatest reward stems from being believed.
Btw, your "gut feelings" are a genuine sign that your nervous system believes something to be wrong.
That's because your gut is lined with more than 100 million nerve cells.
And it communicates directly with your brain through the vagus nerve.
Whenever your gut tells you something's wrong, investigate.
That should be your duty.
Game theory explains why working harder inside a broken system is the worst response to that system. Because a system is never truly broken. It's just producing exactly the outcomes its own incentive structures were designed to produce, whether intentional or not. Working harder inside this system increases your output in the payoff matrix, but it simply won't change the actual structure of the system's matrix. Thus, the correct response is not more effort. Instead, you must aim to identify whose interests the current structure serves and position yourself in favor of those interests rather than against them. Change the game, or play the game that is actually being played. Either way, you must stop optimizing for the game you wish it to be and start acting realistically.
I have seen highly intelligent individuals fail, and they all shared one trait:
Lack of charisma.
The brain assigns social rank before it evaluates capability.
A genius who cannot sedate the threat-detection system of their peers never gets their competence processed.
Your influence is a product of your intelligence and your ability to be trusted with it.
The unemployed sensitive young man types into his phone ”easy to win when you don’t lose” and hits post while sitting down on a bench in random city park with exactly 2$ to his name. One could argue he had never won at anything. But maybe the freedom of having nowhere to be and to enjoy the wind pass through while taking cover in the shades of trees planted long before his birth was indeed a kind of success richer men had never tasted. And as the phone buzzed with notifications of likes and comments he simply turned it off and looked up to the clouds, grateful for his body’s strength and his youth not going to waste. In that moment he was a winner unlike anything the world had ever seen.
@7vww_ It's not the truth, it honestly sounds like you're being a loser. Let that sink in.
No interesting and self assured man, while sitting with their brothers' and sisters' family would feel left out.