[quote]Benanything wrote:
[quote]flipcollar wrote:
Oh grow up man. No one wants to throw you a fucking pity party. You think you’re the only person who’s ever had obstacles to overcome? Jesus Christ dude. You’re 21. When I was your age (actually I was 22), I was a 130 lbs drug addict, a college dropout, on the brink of homelessness, facing felony possession charges.
10 years later, I’ve got a comfortable 6 figure income, the body I want, a beautiful wife, my own house, and 3 nice cars. And 6 chickens, for whatever that’s worth. You can turn things around if you commit to it. Take your drama queen bullshit somewhere else. When you started this thread, I thought you were earnestly asking for advice, which you’ve received. You’ve misled all of us.
[/quote]
Enough with that, I would rather hear life advice from you Flip. Whatever it is, you did something right and I want to know what that is. I’m sure I’m not the only one here thinking that. From drug addicted skinny college dropout to the guy living the american dream, how did ya do that?[/quote]
So I believe that you can make a lot of mistakes in life, and still be successful. You just have to get a handful of things right.
For me, it started with getting clean. I was going nowhere when I was a coke addict. My life was becoming more and more unmanageable. I was also an alcoholic. I was literally throwing up at bars several times a week, and trying to live that way. I couldn’t hold down any sort of job. I was getting by through playing cards. I went through about a year and a half of court-appointed rehab, varying in intensity throughout the program. I was making at least 5 AA meetings per week.
The above is obviously not something everyone has to go through, but it served me in more ways than just getting clean. It taught me how to dedicate myself to a purpose. I’m a really smart guy by any metric, I’ve always scored genius-level on IQ tests and such, aced the SAT (full academic scholarship to an expensive private school, which I squandered), so that benefited me a great deal when I got clean. When I finally put that together with a reasonably good work ethic, I was able to improve my life the way I wanted to. This applies to work and gym.
I’ve also cultivated a winning personality, something I didn’t have growing up. I learned to make people laugh, which is something that can take you very far, socially and otherwise. This may have taken as much, if not more, effort than anything else. Paying a lot of attention to how people react to me, learning to smile at people all the time, listening to people and engaging them appropriately, finding ways to talk about myself without being self-indulgent. It’s really a lot of work, but well worth it.
This obviously isn’t everything, but at the end of the day, I guess I believe in working hard and working smart. And learning what makes me actually happy, not trying to fit a mold that doesn’t work for me. Learning to embrace my passion (lifting) when I have essentially no support from people close to me in that regard. Performing work tasks that I really don’t like, because I see a bigger picture beyond what I’m doing in the moment.
Hopefully this helps some. I think most of this is pretty generic, and it seems easy enough. Conceptually it is. The difficulty in being successful is that it requires practice and patience. Daily. And it takes time. I know some people who were successful at 21, but not very many. But if you spend a decade or more pushing yourself towards success, I think there’s a very good chance you’ll find it. It doesn’t have to be financial either. I’ve learned how un-fullfilling the acquisition of capital can be. If you’re not pursuing something passionately outside of work (or making your passion and work the same thing), you’re gonna have a bad time.