I asked for strength and God gave me difficulties to make me strong
I asked for wisdom and God gave me problems to solve
I asked for courage and God gave me dangers to overcome
I asked for love and God gave me troubled people to help
Everything that happens is good for you. Good and bad. It’s all good for you. So rest easy with the knowledge that it will be ok, and it is already ok. You are fine. Rest Easy.
A rich person might be able to spend $1,000 per month, and a poor person might be able to spend $100 per month, so when they both try to buy something for $10, the experience is very different.
Reason 1: $10 is 1% of a rich person’s budget, and 10% of a poor person’s budget. When you’re spending 10% of your entire budget for a month, you need to be more careful.
Reason 2: The rich person will be thinking: is this item worth the $10? Let me judge the quality of the item, and compare it to other items like it to make the best decision for myself. Judging the item is a sign of being in control.
The poor person will be thinking: do I really need this? Let me judge myself to see what I deserve. Being judged is a sign of being out of control.
Reason 3: The rich person will also be thinking: should I treat myself now to this item or later? Or should I buy something completely different with this money like saving up for vacation or investments? Or should I save the money?
The poor person will be thinking: if I don’t spend this money now, some other problem is going to take this money away. Saving is not an option because I have so many problems that are needs not wants that it’s going to be spent for sure somewhere. I should seize this opportunity now to spend it and fix a problem right away.
Reason 4: The rich person is thinking: there are so many options that will improve my life and I just need to pick the right one for me.
The poor person is thinking: I have more problems than money to solve them so I need to pick the kind of problems I want to suffer through right now.
Personal Story: My mom and I grew up very poor, and my mom was always working so I grew up basically alone. From 7 years old to when I left home for college at 18, I saw my mom for maybe 3 hours a week, during which it would just be work and not talking or quality time. As a result, I would try to spend as little money as possible so as to reduce the burden on my mom so that she might have more free time to spend with me. For example, I would starve myself every day to save money. Then, when my mom notices she has spare cash, she would go and make an impulse buy and blow through the cash and it would make me so angry because I was starving every day for the hope that maybe I could get another 10 minutes with my mom, and my mom would just spend the money that I helped her save on material things, and I would continue to not spend any time with her.
This is why I hate negotiating price. I know that I could fight someone for another $1-$5, but I also know that $2 per purchase adds up to $200 over 100 purchases. And $200 could be two month’s budget for some people.
Here is what I learned this year.
Pure selflessness and self sacrifice makes me depressed, unhappy, and resentful. Choosing to lose win when I can win lose is not sustainable for me. Take the win lose, then be gracious as the winner. Don’t take the lose win, and then beg as the loser.
1. win win
2. lose win win lose
3. win lose lose win
4. lose lose
Trust yourself more than anyone else. Work on yourself so that you are worthy of that trust.
Other people can and will help, but remember that they can only work with what you give them. You must communicate comprehensive honest details if you want others to be able to understand and help you.
If you communicate with bias, you will get biased help. If you use a happy tone for one option and a unpleasant tone for another, you signal to the other person what you want and will get a biased answer. If you do not use the same dimensions to describe your options, you will get a biased answer. If you talk a lot about one option, and very little about another option, you will get a biased answer.
Everyone is biased. Remember the background of the people you talk to and ask for help from: They are biased to recommend their own choices.
Do not mistake good intent for good advice. They can mean well and still not know what is right for you. You must be the final decision maker. You must retain your control over the circumstances by exercising your decision making power.
Do not give into emotional people. They have lost their self control, don’t follow in their footsteps. Only you can protect yourself at the end of the day.
Be honest with yourself. Video record yourself talking. Look in the mirror. Your body language will reveal to yourself what you really want.
Example: Everyone told me to pick Option A. I secretly wanted Option B and I was not honest with myself because I was afraid to go against everyone else. I video recorded myself talking about why I would choose Option A and why I would not choose Option B. The flat tone, disinterested body language, made it clear I was not honest with myself. I recorded a video of myself explaining why I was going to pick Option B over Option A, why I would go against all my advisors. I was smiling energetic passionate certain relaxed and honest and true to myself.
Use videos of yourself to find the honesty you’re too afraid to share with yourself.
(The following is personal to me:) I have completely freed myself from all external forces that have held me back in the past. I am a free man today. At this point, if I’m not happy now, it is due to the accumulation of my own choices. I have earned this opportunity now to build the future that I want. Do the following:
Focus on the present moment, do not focus your spending. When you do something, be focused on what you’re doing. When the time is up, move on to the next different thing. Don’t spend 24/7 on the same thing. Spend 8 hours on sleep, 8 hours on work, etc. Live a balanced life. Express your focus in the moment, not by giving up everything else.
Find good work, not good reward. You want a job where, if you get a reward, you want to go back to your job the next day. You don’t want a job where you can’t wait until you get your reward so you can stop working that job. Do the work you want more of, not the work you can’t wait to get rid of.
(Personal Anecdote: When I was at my peak and winning awards nearly every week, I barely had time to attend the awards ceremony. In fact, when my math team won 1st place for the first time in 4 years, I was on a car to my next competition and my co-captain had to accept it for me. That’s how dedicated I was to the work–I didn’t even care or think about the ‘loss of reward opportunity.’ I didn’t care at all. I had work to do, and I was focused and excited about moving on to the next thing to work on. )
Managing Insecurities.
Looking back for opportunity is living a mindset of regret and negativity. I look back because I’m afraid of losing an opportunity when instead I should understand I already lost it because it is in the past. I look back because I think I won’t find anything better when instead I should trust that the best is yet to come, so look forward for the better. Looking for a better life in the past is living a life of regret: I don’t want to have a tone of regret hovering over my whole life attitude. It’s also not possible to go back in time so looking back is a fundamental flawed and failure approach to life.
