People will constantly attack you in life.
One of their main weapons will be to instill in you doubts about yourself – your worth, your abilities, your potential.
They will often disguise this as their objective opinion, but invariably it has a political purpose – they want to keep you down.
I'm of two minds about whether to mention this, but a teenager who built something his friends could use to circumvent the UK's social media ban would probably end up with a very rapidly growing startup.
.@danawhite says one of the keys to longevity is to block out all negativity:
“It never even crosses my mind that something's not going to work. I just keep going until it does work.”
“There's this Bruce Lee quote where he says, ‘Never say negative things about yourself or what you're working on even if you're joking, because your body doesn't know the difference.’”
“I never take in any negativity.”
If you are a beginner at anything and you want to get results as fast as possible, don't try to be smart.
1. Instead, get a coach or good training from someone who knows what they are doing.
2. Then model (not copy) what they are doing as much as you can.
Once you are successful, you can start trying out your own ideas.
Be visibly competent.
If you have skills but others do not know about them, you will never get the opportunities you deserve. Make your abilities visible, and ensure that what you bring to the table is impossible to ignore.
The advantage the old have over the young is experience. The unfortunate thing about experience is that you can't carry it back into the past and apply it. The advantage of youth, on the other hand, is strength. May that strength not be applied to destructive affection.
A founder kept saying "if only we had money we'd do X."
Money is not the fire. Money is gasoline you pour on a fire that already exists.
You don't have a funding problem. You have a "people don't want it yet" problem. Go make the first fire.