Why Is Everything So Expensive

WHAT DID YOU LEARN FROM THAT MISTAKE?

My Diary June 19, 2021

“Let me tell you something. One day I won't ever have a job. I’ll have a calling. I’ll challenge myself every day. When I get knocked down, I’ll depend on my passion and perseverance to get me through. I am an artist who looks at the sky every morning and sees a variety of really brilliant colors where others would just see grey. I am someone who won’t ever fall apart when things aren’t going my way. I’ll get better. I’ll never be satisfied.”

Grit is the greatest predictor of success. It seems like the younger me even knew this. Our potential is one thing. What we do with it is quite another.

Can You Reprogram Yourself To Become An Outlier?

Outliers are remarkable in three ways: ability in combination with exceptional zeal and the capacity for hard labor. Compared with what we ought to be, we are only half awake. Our fires are damped, our drafts are checked. We are making use of only a small part of our possible mental and physical resources.

There is a gap between potential and actualization. Without denying that our talents vary, the human individual usually lives far within his limits; he possesses powers of various sorts which he habitually fails to use. He energizes below his maximum, and he behaves below his optimum.

Of course, there are limits to us, but these outer boundaries of where we will eventually stop improving are simply irrelevant for the vast majority of us: The plain fact remains that men the world over possess amounts of resource, which only very exceptional individuals push to their extremes of use.

Focusing on “talent” distracts us from something that is MOST important: effort. We tend to label people as being “superhuman” or “way beyond our levels” when we can’t understand how they managed to achieve that standard of excellence. Yet we miss the thousands of hours of practice that were spent refining the many individual elements whose sum creates excellence.

High Levels of Performance Are An Accretion of Mundane Acts

“With everything perfect, we do not ask how it came to be. Instead, we rejoice in the present fact as though it came out of the ground by magic.” - Nietzsche

No one can see in the work of the artist how it has become. We prefer seeing people with their excellence fully formed. We prefer mystery to mundanity. Our vanity, our self-love, promotes the cult of the genius. For if we think of genius as something magical, we are not obliged to compare ourselves and find ourselves lacking… to call someone ‘divine’ means: ‘here there is no need to compete.’

In other words, mythologizing natural talent lets us all off the hook. It lets us relax into the status quo. However, great things are accomplished by those people whose thinking is active in one direction, who always zealously observe their inner life and that of others, who perceive everywhere models and incentives, who never tire of combining together the means available to them. People acquire greatness.

When you consider individuals in identical circumstances, what each achieves depends on just two things: talent and effort. Talent—how fast we improve in skill—absolutely matters. But effort factors into the calculations twice, not once. Effort builds skill. At the very same time, effort makes skill productive.

To do anything really well, you have to overextend yourself… You have to do something over and over and over again.

You also have to fail and keep going.

I feel as if I am failing a lot right now. There are so many things I don’t know how to do and so many decisions I am making that could very well be too risky for the amount of cash I have saved up.

But what is life without risk?

I started taking testosterone yesterday.

I have a new social media strategy with a UGC brand ambassador and it is incredibly expensive. I know it is what will take me to the next level. I also don’t know how I can afford it.

I’m studying the human mind and neurochemicals more than I ever have before.

I have a software that is so expensive I am bleeding cash out and I’m also not good enough yet in sales. I need a 70% close rate at least.

I have a beating heart. I get to wake up every day in the United States as a woman and know I have freedom. I have all 10 toes and all 10 fingers. I get to decide how I attribute meaning to my life and I have a purpose worth fighting for.

I have the ability to smile, to breathe fresh air, to make others around me smile. There is so much in life I am blessed with and I have to consciously decide where I place my energy and absolutely NOT feel sorry for myself.

I am exactly where I need to be and I can and WILL succeed no matter what.