Things About Life I Underestimated for Far Too Long
If you're looking for common ideas then these aren't it.
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Most people waste the majority of their time on bullsh*t.
This doesn’t happen out of idiocy. No. It happens because unless you consciously start to notice the patterns in your life, it’s hard to gain wisdom.
Over the last week, I’ve looked back at the ideas that have helped me gain progress in areas of life that many people can take decades to find.
These ideas are the building blocks for everything I do. Now I’m more aware of them, I can be proactive at using and exploiting them more often.
These ideas produce uncommon momentum and I’ve underestimated them for far too long. At least one of them will help you.
The power of one game-changer connection
A few years ago my career stank.
I was going nowhere. Stuck in a call center on minimum wage with nothing but dreams and empty pockets. All I knew was I wanted to break free.
But first I had to do the hard work.
I worked in sales so to get ahead I had to land 1-2 big-name clients that nobody else could. I’m not that smart so I knew I didn’t have an information or strategy advantage.
I couldn’t come up with some complicated business idea and win.
I barely knew anything about banking and didn’t have a finance degree. So finding advantages with, say, a derivatives strategy for a client while hanging out in the bank’s dealing room, wasn’t going to happen.
My keycard didn’t even get me into the dealing room LOL.
The only other option was to be friends or to connect with more interesting people. I won’t bore you with the story …. other than to say I figured out, to sell to tech companies I needed a powerful venture capitalist behind me. I found one.
He was Richard Branson’s right-hand man.
So I began work trying to get in touch with him.
I’d DM people on LinkedIn to try and get an intro. On the few times I did get an intro, the influential man didn’t reply.
After 6 months I got nowhere.
Then a random woman I messaged replied and said “he only answers on Facebook Messenger.” So I got an intro via there and he replied.
I thought I’d won.
I was ready to pop the champagne bottles. But he’s an in-person guy. He’s not interested in getting more internet friends.
So I had to fly from Australia to San Francisco.
The trouble was my employer wouldn’t pay for it or give me time off. So I turned the trip into a holiday. I went to San Fran for two weeks. I met all the big tech companies and did some sightseeing.
On my final day in San Fran I was supposed to see this venture capitalist. But ever since I landed in America, he wouldn’t return my messages. I still had no meeting booked. It was my last day in SF.
It was now or never.
With only a few hours until I had to leave, I sent him one final message. At the last second he replied and said “come right over.” I was already on my way to the airport and had to turn the Uber around to go back.
That one meeting went well. He liked my style and the balls it took to fly all the way to see him without a meeting.
For the next few years every sale I made in banking was attached to him in some way. He got me in front of anyone I wanted and elevated my career. I sped past my colleagues and got promotion after promotion with big bonuses in between.
Takeaway
Many people try to attract thousands of people to their work or they pitch as many people as they can via emails and DM. But…
One great connection is worth a thousand lousy ones.
What you want to find is a connector in the field you seek to excel at. I underestimated this idea for a decade until I learned the lesson the hard way.
The role psychology plays in everything
The challenge with humans is we’re always thinking about ourselves.
This reality misleads us. To succeed in any field you have to understand psychology because humans are irrational. We do dumb stuff because of our primal instincts. It’s why s*x and fatty, sugary foods are so hard to avoid.
Your mind can be a fortress but your instincts will almost always take over.
I’ve succeeded online because I learned copywriting. That taught me the basics of human motivation. And I mastered social media because I understood “platform psychology.”
That is, how humans behave on a business platform like LinkedIn (where their boss is watching) versus how they interact in a premium newsletter like Substack that has Mercedes Benz perceived quality.
In business, I realized the only thing I know is the psychology of how my customers think. In banking, the word “fees” makes people go nuts.
In the online education space I work in now, the busyness of life and how it impacts people’s ability to learn drives buying decisions.
If I’d known how psychology worked in my 20s, I’d be much further ahead in life. Instead, I got angry when people didn’t do what I wanted, which is far too common in modern society.
Takeaway
Learn psychology. Read books by people like Tony Robbins. Read the work of psychologist Nick Wignall. Know what makes people tick.
Here’s the key: don’t use human psychology to exploit people, use it to help them.
That’s where people go wrong. They act shady and become selfish when, instead, mastering psychology should help you become more selfless.
Honesty always destroys dishonesty.
The effect family has on your overall happiness
Families are complicated organisms.
I was born into a naturally divided big family. Certain parts don’t talk to other parts. And some topics with certain members are off the table.
I played this game for ages and it upset me. Where we come from is so crucial to where we’re going. Family rubs off on us. Issues we face can often be genetic and we only learn that through talking to family.
So a few years back I said “f*ck it, I’m talking to everyone and they all get auto-forgiveness.”
It felt like a 10 Ton Mack Truck had been lifted off my shoulders. Forgiveness wasn’t the only thing I underestimated.
I was also a workaholic. I stayed back working in the bank until late at night.
Overworking was a badge of honor and the Boomer bosses loved to see me slave away and sweat, while they drank their almond milk lattes and had their personal assistants book their skiing trips to the Swiss Alps.
The long hours hurt my family. I never saw my parents or brother. Any girlfriend I had at the time would disappear fast. Only after the final breakup that ended in the middle of a busy intersection and the slam of a car door, did I have an epiphany:
Family is a glass vase that once broken can’t be repaired.
Takeaway
Working long hours is the dumbest way to stand out. I know that now.
What makes you different and more employable is having specific knowledge and being highly creative. Creativity comes from rest.
Your heroes aren’t over-workers, they’re smart workers. They’re flow state workers.
A career is so much damn easier when you give a sh*t about what you do
Interests are lukewarm.
“Passion” is overrated and most people can’t even decipher what that means. I fell for these traps too. Then last year it hit me. The things I succeed at aren’t habits, passions, or interests. Nope.
They’re obsessions.
I can’t *not* do them. They’re automatic. My google search history reveals them every time. That’s when I realized my obsession is writing online.
I think about it every day. All my friends are now writers/creators. It’s the topic my wife says I talk too much about. My “couple friends” tell my wife that I should talk less about writing. They’re sick of hearing about it.
When you build a career around obsession, it’s hard to fail. I don’t need to be motivated to work. I don’t need a coffee or coaching or a morning routine or a woo-woo habit or a kick up the ass from Tony Robbins.
All the complexity is gone. Your career becomes simple. All you have to do is execute because the source of your inspiration is automatic.
This is what most people miss. It’s what I couldn’t see for years. And it’s hiding in plain sight if you’ll only see it.
Takeaway
Piss off with all this passion nonsense.
Become hardcore. Take what you can’t *not* think about and do it for the rest of your life. Who gives a flying hoot what anyone thinks. Who cares about having a plan.
Work you’re obsessed with doesn’t require holidays, sick days, weekends, or long service leave. All you want to do is be around it.
The power of this driving force would have stopped me wasting my life rotting my soul in the basement of a bank while drinking filthy $2 cow milk cappuccinos and mooing my way to nowhere.
Don’t make the same mistake. Never underestimate your true obsession. I don’t give a crap how bizarre or different it is.
The internet has made any obsession able to become a full-time income.
Get obsessed.
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LOL: "I should talk less about writing". You ought to try going out for an evening with a friend who just got a job changing tractor tyres!
I got on the psychology boat, specifically, following the multiple lockdowns. The more I delved in, the more I was able to peel some layers and find some internal peace.
Loved this writing and that line "Family is a glass vase that once broken can’t be repaired" brought me tears.
Forgiveness seems to be the hardest of them all.