When you have a goal, you need to stick to it. It sounds incredibly cliche, but you need to focus. You need to focus to the point where you’re in your own world, and other people’s words do little or nothing to sway you. This is because the bulk of your success is highly likely to come after people stop believing in you. This is for a multitude of reasons. But it’s true a lot of the time. Unless you’re a top 1% talent, you’re often going to have to work beyond the point at which many or most people will have given up on you to achieved outsized results, even if it’s by a few months. Here’s why that is, and how you can go about setting your own benchmarks and creating good fortune and success in your life.
Strong early indicators set inflated expectations
If you’re a child prodigy in any field, you may or may not have experienced this. You find a way to create success, but you can feel people’s eyes burning a hole into the back of your head, simply because they don’t understand what it actually takes to be successful. In their mind, you should be doing things faster than humanly possible, because they have faith in you. To make matters worse, people tend to believe inflated numbers if they come from people they like. The person being bragged about never has to confirm.
Creative work is the most lucrative kind of work, and it’s very difficult
Being creative is winner take all, because it depends on ideas. When an idea catches and works, it works very well. People tend to adopt it, and whoever executes on the idea is well remunerated. But while you’re tinkering, experimenting, playing around with the process of trial and error…it’s tough. Generally speaking though, creative work is the best work in the long run. When it clicks, it really clicks. The lifestyle you can create when you apply yourself creatively is beyond your wildest dreams.
Wealth is created via equity, and starting a business is uncertain
This means that while you work, people are not necessarily going to be on your side. You are going to struggle a lot, so that you can get to the point where you’re adding something to your bottom line. At this point, you’re better than most at whatever activity it may be, but you usually aren’t good enough to run a full business. In order to run a full business that really works, you’re going to need to be in the top 1% of people when it comes to your equity building skills. Starting a business is uncertain.
People don’t temper their expectations
People don’t really understand the day-to-day of doing anything that they don’t already do. People have narrow views of the world and only understand what’s around them. They generally speaking, only understand outstanding results, and failure. They also only want immediate results. If you don’t deliver fast, you don’t exist. This isn’t how wealth is built though. Keeping people on ice is about tempering people’s expectations as much as possible, while working your butt off to exceed them. The average person is completely irrational. There’s nothing to be done about this besides work around them.
People don’t know what it takes
This goes hand in hand with people not tempering their expectations. Most people have never met anyone who’s in the top 10% of anything, let alone someone who’s actually an elite performer. The most elite performers most people have met are in the top 5%. It’s another 2 or 3 gears to push your way into the top 1% of asset holders. If you actually do your best at making something great happen for yourself, you might end up getting more than a few funny looks. This is because generally speaking, people don’t know what it takes to succeed. This is why doing your research is so important. If you know what it takes to get to the top, a few years of isolation, boredom, or brokeness won’t bother you. It will scare the crap out of normies though.
Exponential growth is a real thing
If you do creative work, you’re going to have to do a lot of groundwork before you experience exponential growth. People won’t understand this at all. As far as they’re concerned, there’s a whole lot of nothing happening. You might look very crazy, and people might begin to wonder or worry that you might not be so bright.
Slow and steady wins the race
Generally speaking, you want to own something that has the potential to pay you forever, if you’re smart. A lot of people do things with the now in mind. They look for cash businesses, or perhaps even do illegal things to make money. Or, they look straight to the high paying job, and take on a bunch of student loans. Slow and steady wins the race. Think long term. Build real businesses. Avoid debt. In the long run you’ll find that life is a lot better when you plan things properly. In the short term, you’re going to look like you’re a bit slow to start. Just make sure you work hard and hit your own benchmarks.
People live beyond their means
This means that people end up always needing a bunch of money. Because people live beyond their means, they can’t imagine spending a lot of time on something long-term and unstructured. The negative cashflow would be totally destructive. If you don’t have a job, people stop believing in you. This is in spite of the fact that many people are perfectly willing to gamble four years of their lives and hundreds of thousands of dollars attending University. A lot of the time when people lose faith in you, they’re projecting their own faulty thinking onto you. Press onward if you’ve done your research along with the work.
People need money now
This includes you. A lot of people live at home with their parents and are moochers. They need money in the short term in order to succeed. This is in part because they live beyond their means, but also because most people live in family units where people don’t make a lot of money. This means there’s always something to be done on the financial front. I would say this is all by design, but we really are all operating with minimal resources. Unless you’re one of the rare lucky few that are born into money, you probably don’t have a lot of physical or mental breathing room. So it’s rational that people stop believing in you if you don’t have a job.
Outsized success is contrarian
Oftentimes, you have to go against the grain and do what most people think is wrong in order to achieve great success. This is because the key to being in the top 1% is doing things that those in the bottom 99% of people won’t do. To achieve outsized success, you need to become a massive contrarian, but also do your research. Don’t focus on putting people down. Focus on finding their blind spots and acting accordingly. When you’re doing something contrarian and are forced to press onward for a while with no results, people will lose faith in you. Don’t blame them for their irrationality. If you’re thinking clearly, it means you’re on the path to success.
A supportive person is an important person
Generally speaking, you’re going to want to ignore most people. But stick to the supportive people, and respect the fact that they’re supportive of you. It takes a lot of people a long time to learn that burning bridges is unproductive. Learn this fact quickly and learn to tell when people are in your corner. Sometimes this can mean that you have to accept different mindset and ways of living in order to get the support you need.
Some bridges aren’t worth burning
Some people just don’t understand what you’re up to. This doesn’t mean you should treat them badly. Some people are negative people and should be excised. But some people are on your side and just can’t understand you or have a different outlook. These people should be kept around, because they have your best interests at heart. If you can make the feeling and connection mutual, you have a functional friendship that can last through thick and thin. The right family and friends should be kept around, no matter whether or not they believe in you. If someone really puts you down or disrespects you, you can cut them off and take your revenge by doing the following.
The best revenge is success
If someone disrespects you, the best thing you can do is work really hard. That’s because the only real way to get back at them is to live really well and have a really good life. If you try to hurt your enemy, you might hurt yourself. This can happen through any number of unintended consequences to your behavior. But if you succeed and create a great life for yourself, you’ll always be happy.
If you have a plan, goal, or mission, get used to working alone and in silence. Get used to people poo-pooing your ideas. Get used to not being trusted, or perhaps even being seen as a scammer. Get used to working hard, and make it your goal to succeed and live your dreams. Don’t worry about what other people think. That stuff can only drain you as time goes on. The masses are fickle, and they believe in whatever they believe in.
Thanks for paying attention.
