Some life alpha:
If you are determined, ambitious and hardworking, life will give you a lot of opportunities to succeed by allowing you to find spots in which you can press for an advantage.
You can think of your day to day as mostly being uneventful as you press yourself up against the wall of opportunity. Months go by and often nothing happens.
One fine day, without warning, a crack on the wall will appear and you will be able to reap what you have been sowing for the past couple of months/years. The time from pushing to reaping is indeterminate, random and extremely frustrating.
Most people will give up long before it happens - for 2 reasons:
1) their patience is finite, fragile and thin and
2) they are easily distracted by the things that don't actually matter. (hint: MOST things in life don't actually matter ex-post)
When you are chasing an outcome, you will find a hundred distractions in your path and conjure a million reasons on why you should give up.
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But if you are earnest about your goals and have the patience of a monk and the drive and tenacity of a warrior - the wall will break. Reality will crack under your will.
Everything else is a distraction.
The older I get, the more I realize your standards decide your future. Every time you let something slide “just this once,” you train yourself to accept less. That’s how goals erode. That’s how principles slip. Set your standards. Hold the line. Especially when it’s hard.
"People are strange: they are constantly angered by trivial things, but on a major matter like totally wasting their lives, they hardly seem to notice." – Charles Bukowski
My most hippy belief I think is true is that changing your vocabulary changes how you perceive reality. You're just prompt engineering your brain. Try shuffling out these 5 words:
1. Decision —> Experiment
2. News —> Groupthink
3. Problem —> Puzzle
4. Relax —> Energise
5. Failure —> Data point
A major cheat code in life: Raising the energy of every room you walk in. Stand tall when others shrink. Optimistic when pessimism reigns. Present not distracted. Enthusiasm is rare. Contagious. And a choice. Be the one who elevates everyone else. Let your energy be magnetic.
What's the most woo-woo hippy idea do you think is probably true?
Here's mine: Language shapes reality WAY more than most think. Swapping the word "problem" for "puzzle" moves me from anxiety to curiosity. Problem activates my amygdala and puzzle activates my prefrontal cortex. Just David Ogilyv'd my reality by changing the copy.
Underappreciated advice: Get friends who are significantly older than you. There's no mimetic competition. Just decades of wisdom they love to share. This was normal for most of your ancestors.