I’ll fully admit that it’s pretty rich for someone like me to write a post like this when I’ve failed at most things in life. But it’s because of those failures and being able to look back that have allowed me the perspective of understanding how I could’ve succeeded with those things.
To start, you have to fully believe that everything, at its core, is simple. It’s when we throw on many different layers that things begin to look complex.
But if you believe that everything is truly simple then you can start to see how you can succeed at anything because the truth is everything and everyone reacts to something else for a specific reason.
Men chasing women is a perfect example.
One man will get a nice car and say the reason I got it is because I want to get chicks. Their belief is that women like nice cars and so it will be easy to get them.
When they pull a woman the other guys think it’s because he has a nice car. But is it really that (for some women it might be but let’s pretend that isn’t the case).
The truth is that the woman sees the car as a sign that the man is able to take care of himself financially and therefore take care of her. That’s attractive to her.
But that’s just the first step because if the man is an asshole or insecure the woman will bounce. Now the man is thinking this isn’t right, he has the nice car, why isn’t this working?
They walk away thinking that women are complicated and so they go off to find the real solution.
Let’s try another example.
You’re under the belief that if you want to get a promotion at your job you need to work hard so that’s what you do. You put in the best performances and yet someone else gets the promotion. It doesn’t make sense.
But you’re ignoring the fact that they go to lunch with the boss. They form a better relationship. They are more relatable and at the end of the day, the choice for promotion is a human choice.
And humans work off of emotion first. So the other dude played the game correctly while you played the wrong one.
Figure Out the System
Everything in life has an underlying system. Figure out the system and then you can figure out how to win.
When you think the system is something that it isn’t, you claim that life is unfair. It’s like the musical artist who believes they are the best singer in the world, but the system for finding acclaim and success isn’t built on how well you sing.
Sure, that’s a great benefit, but there are other things at play and if you don’t understand those then you won’t achieve what you want. You’ll claim the system is broken and how everything is unfair.
But it’s perfectly fair when the system is out in the open. Either you take the time to figure it out or you hope that you get lucky and apply the right tactics to make the system work for you.