It’s been said that you should always bet on yourself! But what does that even mean? What exactly can you afford to bet, especially if you were not born into it?
It’s been said that you should always bet on yourself! But what does that even mean? What exactly can you afford to bet, especially if you were not born into it?
1 Assume they are wrong and you are right.
Most people you will met are morons… You can see something they can’t.
Some people have this superpower… They can look at reality and see what’s missing.
Some see WHAT IS…
Some see WHAT COULD BE.
The second one has the power to alter reality. When people doubt your vision, it is because they can not see what you’re able to see.
This is why most people will tell you not to even try, because to them, what you’re talking about feels like a nonsense, just talk… craziness.
Deep down, you know you’re right though…
Deep down, you know what you’re capable of.
Then act accordingly! Show them proof by doing! You have some people to prove wrong, don’t you? So assume they are wrong and show them the reality that you can create.
This belief in one’s ability to craft things through effort, brains, discipline, balls! And creativity… is how you’ll win the bet on yourself game!
2 Spend money acquiring equipment that saves you time or increases the quality of your desired goals.
Trade your time to generate income, but don’t spend it poorly.
Use the money to buy time-saving tools!
This will allow you to maximize the return on your investment.
The more tools you acquire, the higher your ROT (return on time) will be.
It’s easy to look at professionals and see all the tools and gadgets they have around to make their lives easier.
The problem is, you’re comparing a level 70 full-stack paladin with your level 1 character, who barely made it through the tutorial.
The more you progress, the more complex you become. The growth will be gradual, as will the acquisition of all these tools.
In time, you will do quite extraordinary things others wish they were able to do, but it all starts with one step.
3 Bet on yourself by designing a life you are committed to making a reality.
It turns out that most people are actually pretty good at hitting their goals once they know what they are.
What most people are bad at, is figuring out what the hell they want out of life. Because they never take the time to break down expectations, desires, and what a good life would look like for them.
So, what happens? Other people make that decision on their behalf. Once you know where you need to go, make it explicit. Most people think they know; they say things like, I want to be rich!
Well… what does “be rich” mean to you?
What does your day look, your house looks like?
What do you do for a living or in your spare time? Who do you have around you?
At this point, there are all kinds of questions you should answer to create a real image of the life you want to create.
Once all that is sorted out, you can begin closing the gap between where you are right now and this dream reality.
Betting on yourself means going after what you want in life, not what others have in store for you!
4 Be in minds, places, rooms or beds you have no right to be in.
Send emails messages, tweets, text… beyond your proverbial “pay grade.”
Send or show your work to people who are levels above you…
In fact, bet on yourself and be memorable! Be a Savage!
Create anything you can that lives in the minds of others, be it through your work or who you are as a person.
Recruit people to build this video you have for the reality that we discussed as number 1 on this list.
Get your foot through the door and then get yourself into the room.
As long as you live, please remember the following concept, for it will change the way you think about life.
Let’s say you want to eat cake.
There are three ways to go about it:
The hardest way
Look for a recipe, find all the raw ingredients, and acquire all the tools—the spoons, the ovens, etc.
Then proceed to implement the recipe, bake the cake, decorate it, and eventually cut yourself a slice and enjoy it.
The medium way
Instead of doing all those requirements, you figure out one skill you have, trade it for money, and then take the money and buy yourself a cake… And then you enjoy it.
The easy way
Be in the room when the cake gets cut!
Sometimes being in the right room at the right time is destiny-altering.
So many people spend most of their lives in the pursuit of ingredients and tools when they would be better off designing the room they’re in!
Some of you might know who David Choe is.
The graffiti artist more recently starred in BEEF on Netflix, but few people know how David got rich.
When he was on the come-up as a graffiti artist, he was commissioned to do a mural for a start-up. The pay was $60,000, but the founders offered to give him stock instead of cash.
David said yes.
That start-up was Facebook. The day Facebook was listed on the stock market, David’s stock was worth over $200 million.
The room was more important than the work.
5 Bet on yourself by spending money acquiring skills.
At number 2, I talked about acquiring tools that make your life easier and help you progress faster.
This is progress brought on by external factors. You’re leveraging technology to add productivity to your time.
I put them in this order because there’s something of greater value than tools, but there’s a catch: it will require time for you to master.
I’m talking about your SKILLS. – what you know and how well you know how to do it.
A professional photographer with 30 years of experience will crush someone with the latest camera in a photography contest because of all the little things they have learned over the years.
Framing, lighting, shadows, positioning, and knowing when to click the shutter. These are all things you become better at through repetition, analysis, and improvements.
You can’t cheat your way to mastery and an #alphalife!
What you can do is acquire multiple skills and allow them to stack on top of each other.
For example, being great at photography and being great at selling will allow you to market yourself or your products differently than others.
Most people are single skill focused.
This is a remnant of the industrial past, where if you specialized in a single task, you eventually got really good at it.
Today we live in a time where everything is everywhere all at once – and yes, that was another movie reference.
The more skills you have, the more you can compound them and escape competition.
Once you master a skill, you will forever be able to monetize it, and it will stick with you for the rest of your life.
6 Don’t expect others to be your ticket out mediocrity.
The fundamental rule of betting on yourself is knowing: You are the only one responsible for your future!
Most people expect and wait for others to be their ticket out; open the door for them or hand them the opportunity and the keys to the castle.
The inheritance will not come in. Your boss won’t retire and give you his business. The Nigerian prince won’t send you any money.
It is only too late in life that they realize that nobody’s coming to save them.
Nobody will give you the life you dream of; nobody will make you healthy; nobody will make you rich.
You have to do all of it yourself.
7 Every obstacle you face can be overcome if you gather the right tools, items or ingredients
Remember the video game reference I made earlier?
Well, the more you progress in the game of life, the harder the challenges you will have to face, but all of them are within the realm of achievement with either new tools or new knowledge.
Life, as an evolutionary experiment, is trying to make you stronger so that the next generation continues to thrive.
This means life will put you face to face with the level of hardships your generation will have to deal with in order for us as a group to overcome them.
For the Neanderthals, it was food, shelter, and fire.
For the industrials, figuring out how to distribute food and products to a fast-growing population.
For me, it’s mental toughness, tech and design, and spiritual Christianity fulfillment.
You wouldn’t call it strength if it wasn’t hard!
On an individual level, you’re fighting your own battles, but rest assured that there are solutions out there; all you need to do is figure out the right tool for the job and acquire the knowledge of how to use it.
Speaking of evolution…
8 Bet on yourself by trusting your fucking gut!
You are the product of hundreds of generations of genetic heritage.
Inside of you, there’s a pool so deep of gene memory that it’s hard for our small brains to comprehend.
Think of all the lives your ancestors lived through, think of all the challenges they’ve overcome time and time again.
That’s the gene set you’re carrying in your body right now. They all won; otherwise, you wouldn’t be here.
The greatest gift they left you with is your gut feeling. That’s their ancestral gift to you.
In fact, if something feels right, or it doesn’t, you’re probably right. Use this feeling to bet on yourself!
You know you should do something. In any case, there’s a call out there for you.
It also works on the defensive side of things: you feel it when something’s fishy. The more you use your “gut feeling” or intuition – call it what you want – the stronger it gets.
Lastly, the more you use it and analyze the outcome, the better your decision-making will become, and we are all the end product of our decisions.
Trust your instincts with people, you will rarely be wrong.
9 Don’t fall for shortcuts or distractions
At any point in time, other people will disguise the outcome as an opportunity.
If your outcome is the desire for wealth, they will sell you get-rich-quick schemes.
If your desire is health, they will sell you weight loss products that work like magic.
If your desire is beauty, they will sell you make-up and magic creams.
Deep down, you know Pepsi won’t give you a six-pack.
Deep down, you know joining a pyramid scheme will not make you rich, no matter what the triple diamond-emerald member told you at the hotel meeting.
There are no shortcuts to any place worth going! And you know it.
10 Bet on yourself by investing in yourself and committing to the process.
What does it mean to actually invest in yourself?
It means:
Spending time, effort, and money to increase your own value!
For something to be called an “investment,” it should appreciate in value over time or turn a profit.
In my past career as a federal and multi-state licensed Mortgage Banker, I spent well over $270,000 on licenses, continuing education, assistants, tools of my practice and clients over 23 years.
That $270,000+ investment paired with the time to learn, refine and solidify my practice, take notes, and then apply what I learned made me millions of dollars. About 3.75 million over 23 years according to social security…
But I didn’t stop there. I went to events, 1st time buyer seminars, Homeromas… I purchased new state licenses, taught homeowner workshops, and was married to Realtor, doing the same!
This is what I mean by betting on yourself.
In total together, we spent between $6000,000 – $1,000,000 on self-development as individuals over two decades.
I know for some of you this sounds like a lot, but we got 100X+ on that investment when accounting for everything.
This is a common mistake people make when they hear these kinds of numbers: you don’t spend all of it at once.
You start with a $15 study book. Then you buy an online course for $200.
You go take a class or online course for as much as $500…. And then you scale up as you see it pay off.
11 Go for non-linear outcomes and embrace asymmetric risk.
Asymmetric risk is the secret to why a small percentage of the population massively outperforms the rest.
First, betting on yourself means doing the work knowing that the results will eventually be there.
Take entrepreneurs vs. employees as an example.
An employee goes to work and gets paid the moment he starts working. Two weeks in, they get their paycheck.
With entrepreneurs, it’s different. VERY DIFFERENT!
You decide to start a business today, so you get to work for the next couple of months with barely anything to show for it.
And even when things start happening for you, it’s still just a speck when you compare it to how much effort you’ve put in. But while the employee has linear outcomes, the entrepreneur has the potential for non-linear results.
The employee is the red line, and the blue line is the entrepreneur.
Notice how in the first part, the entrepreneur deploys all that effort and time and doesn’t earn much. Whilst the employee gets paid immediately and maybe, with time and effort, gets a salary increase.
But once everything is in place, the entrepreneur can scale up the business. In the end, all effort deployed leads to exponential results. In time, the blue line shoots up to the heavens.
That’s what it means to bet on yourself even when the other option is safer, to begin with.
And speaking of employees:
12 Instead of making your boss richer, do it for yourself.
Unless you own a % of the company you work for outside of your salary, you are not creating any value for yourself.
Most people go to work, generate value for their boss, then come home and watch TV. Years go by, and then they realize they didn’t do much with their lives and don’t have much to show for it.
If you need a job to make ends meet, sure. Do it.
But betting on yourself means using everything at your disposal to help yourself escape the rat race.
This is a great moment to ask yourself what % of your time you are spending creating value for others and for yourself. If it’s 0 for you, you might want to reassess that.
A golden nugget of information that ties really well into the previous point is: Pay attention to what happens to the money you earn!
If the money you earn goes to someone else, you will never be rich!
Your earnings are not supposed to be spent on things that do not increase in value or at least hold value over time.
13 Admit you have a problem and get help.
Sometimes betting on yourself means being truthful about what’s happening in your life and where it’s going.
If it’s not going where you want it to… Maybe it’s time you found help.
It takes someone truly strong to realize what they’re doing to themselves and those they care about and to admit the problem is real and that they do need external help.
Bet on yourself, on your ability to change. Then work through the process. Go through the steps.
Allow yourself to be a comeback story, and life will open up once again.
14 Drop out, quit your job, and do the thing you were meant to do
If there’s a burning desire inside of you to do something else if reality seems bland, boring, even obnoxious…
If, when you go to bed at night, there’s a happy place in your mind where you go, where you’re doing something else, where you’re doing something you wish you could be doing in the real world… Then quit and do that.
Become that person. Moreover, go all in while you still can, especially if you’re on the younger side.
Life is meant to be an adventure!
Live in such a way that the story you tell is worth listening to!
The moment will pass you by…
And this boring reality you experience right now will always be there waiting for you if you want to return to it, but the moment you get just a little bit of a taste of what life on the other side is like, where you do what you were meant to do… you will never want to come back.
15 Stick to what you know: If you don’t understand it, don’t invest
Lastly, betting on yourself means betting on things where you control the outcome.
If the win is not in your own hands, don’t take the bait, because that’s what it is. Someone is baiting you to separate you from your hard-earned money.
People will bring all sorts of “opportunities” to you, many of which they don’t understand themselves.
As a long-term rule, stick to what you know, what you understand, and what you can control.
Control over the outcome is the most important part of designing the life you want!
Know your limits
Betting on yourself only works if you do it smartly. Check all the boxes… be mindful… Be an alpha!
Going headfirst into a wall, hoping that it’s going to be like the Harry Potter scene, will result in quick and brutal consequences in the real world.
Life is a continuous game where you push reality just a little bit at a time to see where the edge is…Push the limits until you find them and then play the game within those constraints.
Most people never know where the limits are.
They spend their entire lives in a self-designed cage and never know just how much there is out there.
The thing about limits is that you can’t find them sitting, you have to go out there and test them. This applies both externally and internally!
Even though these are some of the most powerful ways to bet on yourself and WIN big, make sure you apply what you’ve learned here today. Remember, knowing without doing means nothing.
#alphalife #savage
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