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.
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.
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.
One of the common mistakes I see people making in every area of their life is to assume that most things are an “either/or” equation.
But they aren’t.
More often than not, they’re “both/and.”
And to answer your question, the BEST thing you can do with your life is to develop a wide breadth of skills and knowledge (a jack of all trades) AND devote yourself to mastering a single skill or trade.
Or to put it another way, “To build a T Shaped Life”
Let me break this down for you…
Mastery is said to require at least 10,000 hours of disciplined effort.
Which means that you can realistically MASTER one skill every 5 years (assuming that you’re mastering your primary profession and working 8 hours 5 days a week with a few holidays).
So, if you’re 30 right now and you live to be 70, it’s possible for you to become a true master of 5–8 different disciplines throughout your lifetime.
But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
To become “World Class” at something (in the top 5% of the world), you rarely need more than 250–500 hours of practice.
So…
Assuming that you’re only willing to devote only 3 hours a day to secondary skills—whether it’s reading, writing, playing the guitar, doing yoga, or training jujitsu—you can become highly competent at 2–3 MORE skills every year.
In a given decade, you can master two skills and become world class at 20–30 more.
Pretty crazy, right?
The trick is to become more disciplined in the way that you use your time.
Most Americans waste 6+ hours a day on social media, porn, TV, and video games.
And if you’re willing to cut back on these vices and invest those extra hours into more fulfilling pursuits, you can quickly build your own T shaped life where you are a master of 2–3 AND a jack of all trades.
If you are not able to understand the most of the question itself at all then only do these two step otherwise skip these : (1.Puzzles Solve Karo 2.Comprehension Badhao )
Subproblems me socho Brute Force Lagao
Optimize karo :
Sorting
Space ka use karo
kuch na ho raha ho to hint dekh sakte ho
Atlast na ho to Editorial Dekho , Par Step by Step dekho sab mat dekho ek step dekho next agla sochne ki koshish karo
Read other's solution and learn from it
Solve atleast one random question from random topic
The first question to ask oneself when spending money for anything, be it rent, clothes, gadgets, travel & leisure, etc., always ask before - can I afford to spend this much money?
The second question - Will I have enough for other needs?
The final question to ask is - I am getting my money's worth?
If the answers are - Yes-Yes-Yes - then it makes sense, else not.
Optimism or “Seeing the world through rose-colored glasses” can be one of the biggest mistakes a person makes.
Optimism can cost you time, money, even your life (think: being overly optimistic about a global pandemic and deciding that you don’t need to prepare or listen to the warnings from officials…)
What is truly productive is this…
An unwavering belief in your ability to solve the problems presented to you by life.
And unshatterable pragmatism and realism as you attempt to solve those problems.
Self-belief is not “optimistic”. It’s based on sound evidence.
Other people who are no better, smarter, or more advantaged than you have found ways to succeed and live exceptional lives… so can you.
BUT…
It will require hard work, sweat, sacrifice (maybe a smattering of blood). Things probably won’t work out in the short term.
You will fail. You will lose money. People will break up with you. Friends will betray you.
Shit will happen.
That’s just a part of life.
This is not an admonishment to be pessimistic and think that just because the worst can happen, it will.
Rather to be brutally realistic.
Take, for example, entrepreneurship…
The optimist says, “This’ll be great! I’m going to make millions with my first idea and take care of everybody I love!”
Challenges arise, setbacks occur, and failure strikes and the optimist gives up.
The pessimist says, “I’ll never make it work. 80% of small businesses fail anyway. I might as well just stay in my soul sucking job.”
Thus, the pessimist defeats themself before they even begin.
But the realist says, “This is going to be challenging. I’m going to encounter failures and setbacks, but they’re just part of the process. If I am resilient and resourceful enough…if I learn from the right people, avoid making stupid mistakes, and put in the hard work necessary to succeed, I will eventually make this work.”
Mike Tyson earned up to $30 million per fight at the peak of his career. Some estimate he made over $300 million throughout his career.
After living an extravagant lifestyle, in 2003 Mike filed for bankruptcy with over $27 million in debt.
So, to answer your question, is money greater than knowledge?
We may learn from multiple stories as the one above. Most of them will lead us to the same conclusion: people may possess generational fortunes but if they lack knowledge they will destroy their wealth.
On the other hand, with knowledge you can make money and most importantly keep it.
The conflation of these two terms is, I believe, the source of much of our modern misery.
We live in a world where every conceivable luxury and convenience is available to the vast majority of the population.
Luxuries once reserved for the elite are now freely and readily available to nearly all of us.
Food that is delivered to your doorstep with the press of a button…
Homes with climate control and running water…
Cars that can take us from one end of the country to another…
Phones with more processing power than the computers that put a man on the moon…
These are but a few of the many things we take for granted in our modern time.
And yet, despite the relative opulence of our modern lifestyle and the unrestrained convenience with which we can live, our nation is more depressed, anxious, and isolated than ever before.
The reason is simple…
We’ve confused happiness for pleasure, and unwittingly sold our souls to the gods of hedonism and instant gratification.
Pleasure is too readily available and too easily accessible.
Alcohol, sugar, technology, porn, drugs, even money…
The quick hits we receive from these substances and activities act as a shallow and fleeting substitute for the things that drive true happiness…things that money cannot buy.
Close friends whom you trust and admire deeply…
An intimate relationship with a lover who shares your vision…
The pursuit of a worthwhile mission that supersedes your fragile human ego and inconsolable sense of inadequacy…
The joy one achieves through struggle and suffering, through the conquest of worthy goals and the triumph over moral and social injustices…
The development of skills, the attainment of wisdom, the willingness to embrace stillness and simply “be”…
These are the things that make one truly happy.
Money and success are nice. So too are luxuries and conveniences and creature comforts.
But happiness is not something you can “earn” or a goal you can achieve or a thing you can buy… no matter how many clever marketers tell you otherwise.
Only pleasure can be bought. And the problem with pleasure is that it’s fleeting and fickle mistress to whom so many of us recklessly give our lives (think: drug addicts, workaholics, and social media fanatics).
