Signs of Manipulation

1. When they hurt you or embarrass you in public — they act like you are being sensitive.
2. They distort the reality — which will make you question your memory and sanity i.e. gaslighting.
3. When you have a problem, they will minimize it and come up with their own problems — they will do anything to keep the attention on themselves.
4. They will guilt trap you into doing things even when it’s inconvenient — usually will remind you of the times they helped you.
5. You are too kind, emotional and a people pleaser — usually the type manipulators look for.
6. If you are angry with them or acting out — they will ignore you until you have sorted your feeling out.
7. They act differently with you in private than in public — they want to keep a specific public image.
8. They want to appear more intelligent than you — so they will make up facts or over-explain to make it seem like they are an expert.
9. They will tell outrageous lies about their accomplishments — If you confront them about the lie, they will brush it off.
10. If you are being manipulated then leave — you don’t have to put up with this.

Your ultimate goal should be to

Be as Independent as possible and not depend on anyone

To not go home to a person you can't stand ( ie do not marry such person )

To not go to work at a place you cannot stand

To be able to come to the assistance of any loved one without any strain

Baby elephants learn to be submissive by chaining them to a post.

 Baby elephants learn to be submissive by chaining them to a post.

At first they’ll fight with all their strength to break free, but as each day passes by they’ll eventually give up.

When these elephants become adults they will no longer need strong chains to be tied and stay there… a thin rope will do.

Of course, a powerful adult elephant has the strength to break free of a thin rope; but after their childhood experience they’ll be fully convinced they can’t achieve this and they will NEVER try again in their lives.

To answer your question, what is the most fundamental skill for success in life?

Setting ourselves free from the lies of the past and knowing which are our true strengths is a fundamental skill needed to achieve success in life.

Can you identify the “ropes” that are currently limiting your freedom around in your mindset?

Identifying these “mind ropes” and breaking free from those lies is the most important skill you need to achieve success in life. This is why you need to take extra daily care of everything that is currently influencing your mind.

-Hector Quintanilla 

I’m 22. Is it too late to go to college and make something of myself?

 

22 isn't late at all. You have the whole life ahead, 22 is nothing! You can easily apply for colleges. If you take up a 3-year or 4-year course, you'd be 25 or 26 by the time you graduate. That's still young. You can get a job by the time you turn 26 or 27 and you would still have plenty of time to rise up to the top ranks and make good money.

You are never too late to start! The best time might have been three years back but the second best time is today! Don't sit back at home and worry; just go and apply for your colleges. Study sincerely, work hard and you'll be successful in life. You have nothing to lose afterall. Worst to worst, you won't be successful in life, which I am guessing you aren't right now either. But look at the other side, what if you go to college and build a career out of it? Your life would be something else!

It's never too late and 22 is absolutely nothing! Having said that, I would still advise you to consult with some career counsellor if you need help and you need to have an answer prepared if they ask you about the career gap since you passed out of school. If you have a proper reason, getting into a good college won't be that difficult. And once you are in, you need to worry less and study more.

-Shaunak Bhattacharjee

20s to 30s

Luigi was furious, “I hate this job, Mario! Either you give me a raise or I will quit!”

 Luigi was furious, “I hate this job, Mario! Either you give me a raise or I will quit!”

“Calm down, Luigi. Why are you so mad?” asked Mario.

“I work hard and you don’t pay me enough!”

“Ok, calm down, let’s find a solution before your emotions get you into trouble.”

Luigi took a deep breath and sat down, “OK, what do you suggest, Boss?”

“Let's first understand the root of the problem. Tell me, why do you get paid here at the arcade?”

“I sell tokens to the customers. I work eight hours per day, I hardly ever see you here and you make more than me! That’s not fair!”

“Luigi, I don’t mean to be rude. Let me explain how this works. How difficult is your job?”

“Not much.”

“How many people can do your job?”

“Well,” Luigi paused, “many, I guess.”

“Could I buy a self-service token machine to do your job?”

“Yes, I’ve seen those before,” answered Luigi.

“My friend,” Mario patiently explained, “when we have a job, we get compensated for the value our work delivers to the world. I appreciate your work, and we will renegotiate an increase, but we've got to find ways for you to deliver more value to your work. This cashier position is not worth much more than what you are compensated for.”

“So, if I quit, you don’t care?”

“I do care for you my friend, but your position can easily be replaced by someone else. If you want to make more money, you need to increase your delivered value, in anything you do.”

“Then why do you make so much money if you’re NOT doing much work?”

“Do you see all these customers?” Mario pointed to the group of people playing video games. “Each time a customer plays a video game, he or she receives value from me — even if I’m NOT present or actively working at the arcade. The more customers the business gets, the more value I deliver to the world, which means I make more money. I don’t sell time, I sell fun.”

“So, Mario, do you think entrepreneurship is the best way to escape poverty?”

“Yes, because if we get it right, entrepreneurship allows us to scale our delivered value to the world. Entrepreneurs don’t make money linearly, they are not tied to the paycheck formula to increase their income.”

“Can you explain?”

“A paycheck is equal to the skill we deliver to the job multiplied by the hours of work we actually work. (Paycheck = (Skill x Time)).”

“Ohh, I understand how I’m limited by only two variables for increasing my income. Either I increase my skill or increase the number of hours worked.”

“Correct, Luigi! No worries. We will continue to learn about this to help you break the time barrier. Rule #1: NEVER stop learning!”

- Hector Quintanilla 

Are you ready to make more money than your teachers and your parents… combined?

Not so fast…

First you need to overcome the hundreds of EXCUSES you have in your brain.

I don't have enough money

My business plan isn't perfect

The timing just isn't right

There's too much competition

I don't have the skills needed

It’s too difficult

My parents won’t support me

I don’t have time… waaa waaa waaa…

Come on! You’re a teenager, you don’t sleep at night anyway… so don’t tell me you don’t have time!

Okay, once you overcome all the negativity in your brain, dress nicely and get out of your house! Don’t forget to take your best friend with you…

… No, not that lazy friend you’think I’m thinking of… I’m talking about your smartphone!

Next, go to a shopping mall and visit EVERY single business… You’re searching for these kind of people:

Yes… your target market is un-up-to-date people!

Next, use this sales pitch, “Excuse me, Sir, how much business are you currently attracting from social media?”

“Huuuhhh,” the business dude will most likely say — that’s when you will see $$$$$ pass through your eyes!

“Seems like you’re still using traditional media for your marketing. Am I correct?”

“Huuuuhhh?” Now you got him!

“Sir, what’s your current marketing budget? How effective do you find it? Are you happy with the results? How effectively are you reaching your target audience?”

“Huuuuhhh? Well, hmmm, let me think. Last month we spent $3,000 dollars on marketing,” he may say.

“Ka-Ching!”

Okay… NO, don’t say that in front of him. You just think it and DO NOT show your excitement. Keep it cool!

“How many customers did that budget bring you last month? How are you measuring results?”

“Huuuuhhh? It’s not easy to say…”

“Sir, I know I’m a teenager, but I was born with this.” You show him your smartphone. “So, naturally, I’m an expert in social media. Are you aware that the trends are increasingly clear — attention is on these devices?”

You show this graph in your smartphone and say, “This trend won’t stop anytime soon. Would you like to start growing the social media presence of your business?”

“Huuuuhhh? But, but, I don’t even know what a hashtag is… what should I do?”

“Sir, that’s what I do. I can start proving you results with a fraction of your current marketing budget. You pay only for results. No results, you owe me nothing!”

“Huuuuhhh? For real?”

Now you got him!

Okay, now get to work… you’ve got the idea!

No money needed, no special hours, office or location to work, no degrees or fancy MBAs — JUST A PROBLEM TO SOLVE!

Manage their social media marketing campaigns and day-to-day activities.

Get creative! Help them develop relevant content to reach the company's target customers.

Create, curate, and manage all digital content (images, video and written).

Monitor, listen and respond to the business customers in a way that cultivates leads for the company and ultimately lead to sales.

Your goal is to show results and build a long-term relationship and trust with your new clients.

Once you deliver results to one customer, repeat this process — the sky is the limit!

- Hector Quintanilla 

Steps to develop Grit

1: Invest in Pain

The first step to develop the grit, therefore, is to reverse the natural desire of seeking pleasure and accept pain as the tool to achieve goodness in your life.

2: Avoid Instant Gratification

There are many things like tasty food or sex that provides instant gratification and thus consumes your energy. They are like nectar in beginning, but become poison later. Learn to avoid them as much as you can.

3: Develop a Purpose of Life

Most of us don’t know what we wish to achieve in life. When you don’t know where to go, you are likely to waste your time roaming around and reaching nowhere.

You must develop a purpose of your life. Your purpose should be worthy of pursuit as it is not carved for your own benefit, but for the benefit of society as well.

Once you know where to go, you have already done half of the task.

4: Develop Perseverance

All things that are good takes time to bear fruit just like a mango seed takes years to become a tree and bear fruits.

You can’t eat the mango in your own orchard unless you are willing to invest considerable time, money and resources for it.

You must be ready to work hard for long time to achieve the results because there is no shortcut to achieve long term goals.

5: Learn from Failure

It is never easy to accept failure. However, failures are inevitable if you are planing to achieve a worthwhile goal. Be mentally prepared to accept failure as part of life. You must learn your lessons from the failures and become wiser rather than cursing yourself or others for failing.

6: Ignore Popular Opinion

The world is never encouraging to people who strive for greater things in life since most people don’t have the courage to take challenges in life and prefer to lead a risk-free life.

They even secretly hope that you would fail and they will not feel their own smallness and meanness.

You must learn to avoid popular opinion since what is popular is rarely good or worthwhile to follow.

7: Never Lose Hope

When you fail repeatedly, you tend to lose faith in yourself, God and even in the world. You want to avoid challenge and live a normal life like other people.

You must not lose faith in yourself and hope for the future.

Only by keeping your hope alive, you can achieve your long term goals and achieve true happiness in life.

The American author Angela Duckworth said wisely, “Grit is living life like it's a marathon, not a sprint.”

-Awdhesh Singh Ex-IRS, IITian

Why are we legally forced to learn so much which isn't even needed to know regardless of what job you choose?

You teach a robot or a slave exactly what they need to learn to do a specific job, and then expect them to toil at that job all their waking hours. If you want you and your children to be treated like slaves or robots, that’s all they need.

If you know more than the minimum possible, you can do multiple jobs. You can choose the job that pays best or that gives you the most satisfaction. You can even change jobs if advancing technology makes your job go away.

Learn enough about art, music, and literature, and you can even have an intellectually pleasing life outside of work. Learn enough about history and politics, and you can avoid demagogues who think you only need to know the minimum needed to do a specific job.

-Kurt Guntheroth

Live by Principles, Not Feelings

 1. Living by Principles, Not Feelings

The first and simplest way to be a better person is to live your life based on principles, not fleeting emotions.

Here’s the thing…

You’re a human being.

And like all humans, your brain evolved to keep you alive, not to make you happy or ethical or “good”.

All too often, our brains lean toward instant gratification instead of the principles we KNOW will make our lives better.

It wants you to feel good… not do good.

And the ONLY way I’ve found to get around this is to create a list of personal operating principles by which you live and adhere to them religiously.

It doesn’t matter if you really WANT that drink at 2 pm on a Tuesday afternoon… what are your principles?

It doesn’t matter if you WANT to skip your workout and sleep in… what are your principles?

It doesn’t matter if you WANT to ignore that family member or friend who needs your help… what are your principles?

Principles are the first and most effective way to become a better person…. but it’s up to you to determine which principles you will follow and then do it.

2. Educate Yourself on the Things That Matter

It’s great to educate yourself about business, health, finance, etc…

But all too often, people today are one dimensional in their education.

They know nothing of the real problems facing the world (beyond the fear bait news headlines).

They know nothing of history, of philosophy, of science, of humanity.

They simply know about their bubble.

But to be a better person, you must expand your interests.

You need to understand the world around you to have a clearer understanding of your fellow humans, the problems in the world, and how you may be unintentionally complicit in many of them (e.g. buying iPhones that were made in a factory where the owners had to install nets around the ground to ensure that their workers couldn’t commit suicide anymore…)

The average person is grossly undereducated on how the world works and what problems we’re facing.

And if you’re willing to stick your nose in a book that doesn’t directly benefit you, you’ll be taking an important step toward becoming a better person.

3. Know Thyself

To be a “better person” you must know what kind of person you are right now.

You need to know your strengths, weaknesses, temptations, obstacles, and patterns.

The biggest problem plaguing the world today isn’t any of the injustices we see in the media… it’s the gross lack of self-awareness held by the average person.

For most people, there is no disconnection between their impulses and actions.

There is no reflection or introspection.

There is no questioning or analysis of thought or deed.

They simply live the way they’ve always lived without questioning WHY.

To be a better person, you must start by understanding yourself. Understand your strengths and weaknesses so that you can use them for the good of humanity.

Understand WHY you feel and think the way you do about certain things instead of assuming your feelings are correct.

The more self awareness you have, the kinder and better you will be.

Awareness is the solution to almost all problems…

Things Not Worth Your Time

Openness coupled with critical thinking

 Openness coupled with critical thinking.

The simple truth is, most of the people around you are as good as dead. I don’t mean physically, but spiritually and emotionally.

The masses tend to adopt whatever half baked ideas and beliefs their parents had and then continue to live inside of those beliefs for their entire life without ever questioning their assumptions or challenging the premises.

They live their entire lives in a box. They identify with their beliefs so strongly that challenging them is tantamount to blasphemy.

But to live a good life…not just a life of luxury and wealth, but a meaningful, passionate, and fully engaged life… you must open yourself up to new ideas and ways of being.

The world is a big place. Filled with billions of people, almost all of whom have different beliefs, ideas, and ways of being than you do.

To shut yourself off to these ideas is a form of spiritual suicide. You stop growing and hold yourself back from experiencing some of the best this life has to offer.

To be truly successful and happy, you must be open to new ideas. You must be willing to test every assumption, to ask yourself, “Is this true? And if so, how can I know that it’s true?” You must be willing to take your most cherished beliefs and dash them against the rocks to see if they break.

Constantly seek out the truth and don’t be afraid to follow where it leads.

The more willing you are to be open to new ideas, the faster you’ll learn, grow, and evolve into the person you want to be.

However…

Be sure that you don’t take this to the extreme. There’s a difference between openness and gullibility. Consider every new idea and belief with the same critical eye and scrutiny you do your existing beliefs and always, always, always, seek the truth.

Because in the end…it will set you free.

Stay Grounded,
Andrew

This might hurt but you should know....

Why not you ?

 

My father hated.......

My father hated watching me lie back and watch TV, living in my comfort zone.

One day he told me, “Son, if you expect to have an easy life and always be ‘fed’ in your mouth like a baby — EXPECT to be treated like a baby for the rest of your life. So don’t you dare complain about those results!”

I must admit, back then I HATED my dad’s tough words — but today, I get it. My father would continuously push me so I could learn how to be fully accountable for my life.

Today, it’s pretty common to find millions waiting for others to solve their problems:

• Waiting for and expecting the government to “bring back the jobs.”
• Waiting for and expecting someone to fix the economy.
• Waiting for and expecting someone to give them an opportunity.
• Waiting for and expecting someone to solve our outdated educational system for our kids.

When will this happen?

Who will do it?

Here’s my point: even if someone does manage to solve OUR problems, don’t ever expect these solutions to be “free!”

NOTHING in life is free.

Nothing! Even if we don’t have to pay for something, there’s always a hidden intangible price to pay.

We get what we deserve.

I’ll never forget my father’s words:

“If you want to experience true freedom in life — you must EARN it.”

---

Now, to answer your question, how would you define 'true wealth'?

To me, true wealth is NOT monetary — True wealth is the privilege of experiencing the fullness of freedom in life.

Where to start?

Freedom starts not with the absence of work, but by us taking full accountability for our lives.

If you can’t manage yourself, you will always need to be managed.

You, and ONLY you can make it happen.

Freedom starts from within yourself.

#BeBusinessSmart

 -Hector Quintanilla

How to be Best At Study & Academics

 I'll speak on behalf of a close friend of mine, who attended an unknown university from where I am from (Lima, Peru), and got accepted for a fully funded PhD to work with the world-leaders (including Nobel Laureates) at Systems Biology and Computational Biology at Harvard, UC San Francisco and Rockefeller.

I'd like to add, that he beat his competitors at interviewing for Grad School from MIT, Harvard, Caltech, Stanford, Yale, and other top institutions. It's one thing to go to get a PhD at MIT because you did your undergrad at Caltech, but its a completely different story if a kid from a developing country who went to a no-mans-land university beats you at grad school and got to work with a Nobel Laureate. This guy was the deal, and he went from zero to hero.

His success story:

1) Discipline: He had no Facebook during his undergraduate years, and probably only went online for doing homework, assignments or coordinating projects. This reduced his distraction span to zero.

2) Emotional Intelligence: He could control his emotional and sexual impulses. He was very socially intelligent around diverse groups, but he had in mind that having a girlfriend during his undergraduate years would be a major distraction. Both he and I when we were freshman knew that we wanted to go to USA for a PhD, so we were lifelong buddies who always noticed the good and bad things about each other. While I would sometime complain that he didn't go out on weekends (because he never did), he would always complain that I cared too much about appearance, partying and personal marketing. He was not socially handicapped as some people might think a 'nerd' would be, he was actually a very mature person who could talk about anything.

3) Sacrifice: We came from a place where dogs literally walked inside our classroom, and cockroaches would on occasion crawl in our backpack in class. He didn't let any of this get to him. He actually used the poor infrastructure of our engineering building as a motivation, something like "one day I'm going to get out of this hell hole, and do something great for science". He also had a great sense of patriotism.

4) Stellar passion and motivation: The first semester, I found out that he had the highest GPA of the whole class, and I immediately called him by the phone. I didn't understand a thing of what he said because the signal was low. However, the next day he seemed very depressed and told me that his grandfather had passed away. His grandfather was like his father to him and he never got the chance to tell him that he achieved first place in his engineering class. Little did we know, after a couple of weeks we realized not only was he the first in class, he was first in the entire campus achieving the highest GPA (grades in Peru are from 0 to 20, and with no curve). He graduated Summa Cum Laude 2 years ago, and got the highest GPA at our university over the last 30 years. The other person previous to him was Barton Zwiebach, a renowned Peruvian string theorist and Professor at MIT.

5) No pain, no gain: He went overkill sometimes to achieve his goal. I'm talking things like not having lunch to study an extra hour, sleep 4-5 hours a day at least 5 days a week, sleeping on the bus to get extra sleep time, and most dazzling thing of all was that most of the time he didn't go to class. He just stayed studying in the library and was at least 2 or 3 weeks ahead of the professor. Even if he did go to class, he rarely paid attention, he would go over his books to see what methods other authors would teach. He would buy and download at least 5 different books per subject and read them all to learn and to study for the test. He would go over all the proofs and learn them, study them, do them, sometimes reinvent the proofs or see if he could grasp the concept in anticipation of what the book would reveal.

6) Selecting friends: His paradigm for selecting friends (or colleagues) was impressive. He didn't care if it was me (a spoiled rich kid), or the son of a blue-collar family that was a national math Olympiad. He valued people for their ideas and it didn't matter to him where they were from, but where they were going.

7) Becoming a preacher: He was never reluctant on teaching. Whenever anyone would ask him something he would go over the concepts and explain it to him. This was really beneficial for our closed group of friends, as we each learned different concepts and he checked with us or we discussed any doubts we had.

8) Be ambitious: All of his life, he was the best at everything he did. Before enrolling at our engineering school, he was making around $3000 a month by only winning Magic The Gathering Card competitions, and he was Peru's #1 player and Ranked in the top 10 world wide. *Not bad for a 16 year old, at that time.

9) He majored in Robotics Engineering: So yes, he did learn Optimal and Digital Control, Fourier Analysis, Triple integrals, differential equations, etc.. We didn't have computers for our programming tests, they were all done on pen and paper.

10) He was incredibly humble.

He started graduate school at 22.

 -Arturo Deza