How to (Actually) Get Ahead of 99% of People
Imagine this. You wake up in the morning next to your dream girl. You put on a navy blue linen button-up, stroll down a flight of beautiful mahogany stairs, settle into your desk, and open your laptop.
You check your bank account.
You made $1000 overnight.
It was a good night.
You wonder —
“Where would I be if I never took that chance.”
Although I had big dreams of starting a content creation business and achieving financial freedom —
I never could get myself to pull the trigger.
I always played it safe.
My mind just couldn’t get passed the “what ifs.”
What if I don’t make enough money?
What if nobody likes my work?
What if…
This was my curse.
It went beyond starting a business.
Working out, asking out my crush, trying out that new restaurant…
I convinced myself that I was better off being a pessimist than a Don Quixote.
But I was wrong.
You wanna know when I found out?
Summer 2020.
I was down bad.
Really bad.
Despite doing all the “logical” and “right” things, I again found myself with no money, no job, and no girlfriend.
Why wasn’t I winning?
That summer I ran across a podcast series titled “How to Get Rich” by Naval Ravikant.
I’ve probably listened to it a dozen times by now.
In one segment of the podcast, Naval discusses how humans have an evolutionary bias to pessimism.
Think about it.
Our cavemen ancestors lived in a world full of predators.
Unlike today, we were not at the top of the food chain.
It was a precarious existence.
Just imagine —
The year is 60,000 B.C (or something)
You’re foraging alone in the jungle for berries until you hear a loud rustling in the bushes.
What do you do?
Run, right?
Because if you were an optimist and continued foraging, there’s a good chance you would be Simba’s next meal.
It made sense to be a pessimist.
But in the modern world, no one is actively trying to eat you.
It’s all good.
So how do we act like it?
You need to learn to be a rational optimist.
A rational optimist is someone who sees the upsides in every opportunity, but also identifies the risk for ruin.
Another way to think about it —
Take opportunities that have a big winning potential.
Unless it can lead to death, bankruptcy, or a prison sentence.
Then you probably don’t want anything do to with that.
Here are a few examples:
- Starting an online business — death, bankruptcy, or prison?
- Asking out that new girl — death, bankruptcy, or prison?
- Betting all in on black — death, bankruptcy, or prison?
- Going money heist on a bank — death, bankruptcy, or prison?
The game of life has changed since the days of our ancestors. But our brains are mostly the same — hardwired for pessimism.
In order to turn blanket pessimism into rational optimism, you must recalibrate the meaning of ruin.
Risks in the modern world are not usually life or death.
You NEED to get used to making smaller, more frequent failures.
Why?
You become resistant to self-doubt.
In doing so, you increase your winning potential.
Let’s say you’re writing articles on Medium.
(# articles you write) x (% of articles that succeed) = (your income)
You write 50 articles.
Your average success rate is 10%
(50) x (.10) = 5
You will have 5 articles that succeed and generate income.
Sure, 45 of them totally failed.
But the 5 that win will turn you into J.K Rowling.
Over time you iterate and improve.
And with the law of exponential growth, the numbers only go up.
The hook to this article can be your reality.
Seriously.
Unless you prefer flannels instead of linen shirts.
Then maybe this isn’t for you.
Jokes aside, this also helped me go from a pessimist to an optimist:
- Breath meditation for 10 minutes daily
- Gratitude journaling for 5 minutes weekly
- Positive thinking (what’s the best thing that could happen)
- Spending time with optimistic friends
- Embracing discomfort (doing things you hate)
Create the environment. Create the mindset.
You’ll be ahead of everyone, including the old you.
