For myself, it all comes down to courage.
How can you encourage yourself more?
The first thought, I think it means to allow yourself to become more ratchet, less civilized, more savage.
The second thought, maybe it means to think to yourself, “I was not born for the basic. I was born and destined to do, attempt, and create great things.” When I think about myself, my greatest benefit is being born in America in 1988, growing up in the open minded liberal bay area, and also, having the most encouraging mom of all time.
Ultimately, I think 99% of a child’s future is predicated on a combination of how they were trained, parented, and the standards. For example, Seneca is only two years old and three months old, yet I treat him like he’s 12 years old. As a consequence, he rises to the occasion.
Encouragement and courage for the sake of what?
I think a lot of us have certain dreams, aspirations, and things we would like to do, achieve, make or build. Yet, when we share our ideas with others, other people tell us how we will fail or how our ideas are stupid, rather than actually helping us strategize how to make those dreams a reality.
Therefore, maybe the first step is this: simply edit out people who are naysayers. You know who those people are. Family, extended family, “friends“ etc.
The difficult thing is that to brutally edit out people, especially when they are family members, extended family etc., is seen as evil and immoral. No.
The tall poppy syndrome
One of the most interesting things that my friend Simon taught me when I was in the UK is that there is the notion of something called a “tall Poppy syndrome” in the UK. That is, when you see the guy driving around in the Lamborghini, you try to discount his or her success by saying, oh, he probably has a small dick, or, that’s probably her boyfriends car.
America is interesting, because when you see the person who is super rich and successful on TV, it is mostly an aspirational thing:
Oh wow, if I work as hard as that guy, maybe I could become as successful and rich as that guy.
Think of a Mark Cuban on TV, Shark Tank.
Is it good idea to have dreams?
I think so. When you have certain dreams and aspirations is good in so far much as you have something to aspire towards.
For example, myself, I had a lot of dreams. When I was in high school, my friend Eric Moon taught me how to build custom computers, and as a side hustle, I started a side business building custom computers, ordering the parts on Newegg, building them, and selling them to friends family and other people at school for a small profit, maybe around $200 to $300 in profit.
I also had a dream to go to UCLA, it was my dream school. And therefore I hustled hard in school, maxed out all the AP and honors classes, even though I only got B’s in all of them, and also I knew that becoming an Eagle Scout was a good idea, and loading up on extracurricular activities. I think that’s what helped me get into UCLA as an undergrad, even though my GPA was only at 3.9, and my SAT might’ve only been a 1950 out of 2400.
Later dreams
Also, some of my dreams being able to become my own boss, being able to transform my passion of photography into a living, traveling the world, etc.
What do you do once you achieve your life goals?
I think the final stage is towards philosophy, and entrepreneurship. Also innovation. Why?
Philosophy is interesting, because it gets to the deeper root of things. For example in America, it seems a lot of people aspire to become more “successful”, but nobody actually has a really critical definition of “success” in America.