I've weathered many failures in my life, I'm not embarrassed to admit (most of the time). These range from professional and academic, to personal and internal. For the most part, I always strive to view my failures as harsh classrooms, there to show me what not to do the next time as I continue (and I always continue) on my way towards realizing my goals.
It's been a long road arriving to where I am today. That's not to say that I am so completely head and shoulders over my peers (although often times, in many facets of life, that seems to be the case)--rather, it's to illustrate just how far behind I was for the first third of my life thanks to laziness, low self-esteem, lack of social capital, etc.
Growing up, I had absolutely no sense of self-esteem or pride, especially with regards to my physical appearance. I made a concerted effort to get that taken care of, and I did.
I also had no clue how to effectively interact with people in general, and women in particular. I had no understanding of why people act and respond in the way they do. When it came to women, I was absolutely oblivious to how to even begin associating with them. Once again, I made a choice to get that area of my life handled, and I did.
Thanks to a combination of an absence of role models in my life and my own innate dark tendencies, I wound up early on in a lifestyle that could have only ended in addiction and despair. I decided that that wasn't the life I wanted to look back upon from my death bed, and so I made a decision to uproot my life as I knew it and join the military while I was still young enough to turn things around. Once again, I made a conscious decision to improve myself, and I followed through with it. So, I went from a street urchin to a world-traveled professional in roughly six years.
Unfortunately, as I've come to discover, there is a large contingent of humanity that has extreme difficulty effecting any sort of self-motivated change in their individual lives. Since taking control of their own existence on this planet is so completely out of their realm of imagination, when I speak about my life experiences, what they hear is something like this:
My Reality: "It took a huge amount of effort and determination, a lot of sacrifice and heartache, and a decent amount of failure, but I'm at a point now where I'm in a pretty good position professionally."
What 'they' hear: "I'm in a pretty good position professionally, and you're not, so allow me to rub it in your face (because of course the situation is totally out of your control)."
My Reality: "I made a lot of poor decisions early on, which resulted in me having to implement some serious damage-control later on in life. However, they do make for some interesting and hilarious stories, so I'm glad those bad choices were at least good for something."
What 'they' hear: "I have had such an interesting and zany life, and you haven't, so allow me to rub it in your face (because of course you never had a fair opportunity to do anything interesting with your life)."
My Reality: "Thanks to a lot of poor advice and my own natural-born clumsiness with females, I spent the first 20+ years of my life getting flat-rejected and laughed at by more girls than you or I can count. Since then however, I've made a focused effort to study up on human interaction, humbly solicit advice from those guys I know who are successful with women, and start taking pride and care with my physical appearance. As a result, I've managed to improve my lot to the point where I've been lucky enough to successfully land several very beautiful girlfriends, a scenario I could not have even imagined not so many years ago."
What 'they' hear: "I get so many beautiful girls all the time, because I've just got it like that and you don't (and once again, of course, the situation is completely out of your control).
I've found that the specific lessons to be learned from this phenomenon are (1) find and keep friends who have a similar world view to yours when it comes to decidedly setting and accomplishing goals in all (not just one or two) facets of life; and (2) when circumstances such as work, school, etc., dictate that you must interact with those passive-aggressive type individuals who do not share your world view, e.g. that, for the most part, we are all directly responsible for our own destiny, in those situations just keep your mouth shut when it comes to any topic outside of the objective one at hand.
Differences in opinion when it comes to politics, music, culture, religion, etc., are (usually) wonderful, and in that sense I relish the opportunity to be around those who think differently than I do. When it comes to how you run your own life, however, if someone isn't prepared to accept the fact that even the smallest choices they make are directly connected to the life they live day in and day out, then from this point on I have no interest in bringing someone like that into my reality. We may work together, study together, or even be related--but that's where it ends.
Like 50 Cent's grandfather used to tell him when he was a kid: "In life, you'll get as far as the muthafuckaz you talk to for no reason." From now on, I'm taking care of who I talk to.
No comments:
Post a Comment