50 Cent Might Easily Have the Best Life Advice I’ve Ever Seen
From dealing drugs on the streets, he built a $40M hip-hop empire
As 9 bullets from a 9mm sprayed into his face and body, 50 Cent almost lost his life — and career.
Long before he was “50 Cent”, Curtis Jackson was a drug hustler.
Orphaned at 8, he grew up on the streets—eking out a living dealing coke to fretful addicts.
Hounding police. Cut-throat fellow hustlers and gangs. Whimsical customers. Pesky informers with unsuspecting smiles.
It was a tough life — despite or because of this, his segue into the hip-hop industry was a fat success.
But at the cusp of his career, an assassination attempt brought his career crashing down.
What sane producer would want to deal with a man entrenched in crime?
Dealt such a blow, most would have wallowed in self-pity and resigned themselves to a slow death of alcohol and bitter cribbing.
But 50 Cent isn’t most people — life in the streets had injected fearlessness into the blood coursing through his veins.
“Having a brush with death, or being reminded in a dramatic way of the shortness of our lives, can have a positive, therapeutic effect. So it is best to make every moment count, to have a sense of urgency about life.”
― 50 Cent, The 50th Law
Dropped by Columbia records and low-balled by the rap industry, 50 released a storm of mix-tapes — which bagged Eminem’s attention and a $50 million deal!
50 Cents morphed a literal death blow into a life-changing boon.
Sh*t Happens — That’s Life
Our biggest problem is we wish for an end to problems.
Be it Jeff Bezos swimming in his billions, Obama in his cushy retirement home, or Dan Bilzerian with his hired bikini models, every human has problems.
Different in intensity, nature, and magnitude, but problems they all are.
Life’s a conveyor belt of problems — the moment you solve one, another takes its place.
Reality isn’t kind. Reality isn’t fair. But it is reality — we can either face it or try to run away from it.
The latter will only make your problems grow meaner and bigger.
“The firmer your grasp on reality, the more power you will have to alter it for your purposes.”
— 50 Cent, The 50th Law
Having lived a life of hardship and danger, 50 Cent has fallen in love with reality — in a world where people get high on fantasy.
Rather than wishing for problems to go away or avoiding suffering, wish for a better ability to deal with suffering and problems.
Don’t just wish, but work on it.
The True Power of Alchemy We All Possess
We, humans, are pompous enough to assume the universe gives a f*ck about us.
That things happen to us — as if the cosmos bothers to notice our nano-second existences.
Things simply happen. Period.
Our minds interpret events as positive or negative — so by shifting our perception, we can transmute things from good to bad.
This is perhaps what the alchemists of old symbolized in their hunt for the philosopher’s stone — the ability to turn our lead-like perceptions into those of gold.
Thanks to our negativity bias, we lean towards a negatively tinted perception—reverse this.
Broke your elbow in a normal sparring session? It’s a chance to rest and rethink your training style. Fired from your job? It’s a chance to upskill yourself and land a better one.
When you think life’s given you sh*t, think of Curtis — had he succumbed to the mental black hole of despair?
The legend we call 50 Cent wouldn’t have existed.
The Greatest Life Lesson Ever?
Neither avoid nor fear your reality.
What’s incredible about that simple sentence is it encompasses every piece of self-help advice and life lesson on the planet.
When reality is all there is, where’s the sense in fearing it? Or avoiding it?
Or even worse, running away from it?
To face reality, we need to get rid of our utopian notions of life—kill the “should be,” “could be,” “wish it were,” and “hope it will be” from your vocab.
It is. Period.
Accept the chaotic reality of reality — only then will you be able to shape your life the way you want.
“Behind me is infinite power. Before me is endless possibility, around me is boundless opportunity. My strength is mental, physical and spiritual.”
— 50 Cent