The Truth Doesn’t Require Consensus
True in life, and very true in business
When you I look at my bank account before, it was almost empty. The reality is that I was tired hustling in my work. You go to work early and then, I would drop in the couch.
"Let me check the weather today”, you told yourself as you fished out the phone from your pocket. You wanted to know the weather tomorrow. You are preparing for what wardrobe to wear tomorrow.
If the weather is cold, you may need to bundle more. You don’t know. You said “hi” to your wife as you took the tea from the counter top. You unwind in front of the television. It’s Thursday. You still have to work tomorrow.
Minutes later, you are commenting on a funny cat video your friend Mark posted in Facebook. You squinted to check the time. 10:30 PM. You turned off the television and proceeded to the bedroom. You took a shower, brushed your teeth and say goodnight to your wife. Tomorrow, it will be the same again.
And I bet you are running this pattern, again and again. Remember, you only wanted to check the weather using your phone, but you wasted the whole night doing nothing. Several years from now, you look at your life and say, where did all those time go.
What I described above is how we go on with our routine, Although having routine is perfectly fine and normal, it is not okay anymore when we are suck to a place of not moving forward.
Have you ever been to a circus?
I was once in a circus with my family. What I noticed is that a huge elephant is sometimes tied to a peg in the ground. The peg is not strong enough to hold the elephant. But do you ever wonder why that elephant never pulls the peg on the ground?
One word: conditioning
When that elephant was still small, it was tied to a stronger peg. The small elephant resisted, tried to pull himself but can’t. He tried again but can’t. For several weeks this pattern goes on and on and eventually, the baby elephant gives up.
Later on in his life, even though the elephant is huge and strong, the elephant still thinks it can’t, so it never bother to pull the rope and the peg.
You and I are like that baby elephant.
I would wake up in the morning, go to work, work hard, hoping that someday in the distant future, you will be a manager of the people you worked with.
Isn’t that our ambition?. It was sure mine.Unless you do something else.
You are tired of being tired, but you don’t even know how to start. That was the story on my life too.
I lied to myself that the company I worked with was still going strong. But in the inside, you can see, they let go of personnel one by one. I knew I was next but resisted the idea that I was next.
Then when it was my time, I tried to look for another job. Luckily, I found one. Then I realize, why do I need to work for somebody else when I can build a business?
The “truth” that I was fed was that you need to work for a company and save for retirement. It was the consensus.
I was thankful for a guy, a co-worker of mine who was kind of a Maverick in this regard. He left the job we had together and traded full time, as a currency trader.
Mike, the guy who I worked with was a newly chemistry graduate. He’s smart. We would talk about chemistry (my major is chemistry too.) for hours. But one thing that stick to my head, and he told me this before he left, was that:
“People think that the only way to make a living is to work for somebody. That’s the consensus, but not the truth.”
At that time, I was trying to build a business with Amazon private labeling, and he was going full time with currency trading.
My business failed. I lost money, but I am still working for another business to grow. I use sales funnel to sell my information products (I sell chemistry and math tutorial).
Currently, I still work for somebody else, but sooner or later, I will be working on my business full time.
The elephant should be aware that the chain is there and the peg can be pulled out from the ground. This is the sole reason you are not rich and unhappy and tired.
The chain is the reason.
The chain is “the truth or the consensus of the society”. I was bound in the chain that say, you need to work for somebody else.
