Everyone is different and no two people have the same life path – although sometimes it is staggering the choices I’ve had to make in life, and the ones that I can say truly altered my life in ways that were unexpected.

Since you cannot see the future, all you can do is make the best choice you can at the time, with the information you have. If you can always say that you did that – no one can ask anything more. You did what you could. That doesn’t mean things will work out for you – but you don’t have to worry about the “what-if” game, since you can be content that you always did what was “best” at the time. It may turn out to have been a monster – blunder, but as long as you can look back and say you would do the same thing again, with the information you had at the time – that is all anyone can do.

That is how I have lived, and my life is completely different from what I expected it to be. I can’t say it’s better or worse – just very different, and it’s always been fun. So who could ask for more?

amazing.

*this* is the question that is not asked enough in the community. how to become a better man is not just game, frame control, posture, and big top hat — it’s identifying our unique talents, working hard at maximizing them, taking chances, failing, taking more chances, succeeding — and capturing value by mastering a marketable skill.

*this* is the key to becoming successful and becoming a true alpha.

again, it’s like susan said, four words:

passion, talent, mastery, anal sex with teenage groupies.

One problem for people deciding which of their talents to pursue is that talent can make something difficult seem easy. We think to ourselves, “This can’t be a big deal. It’s not hard to do so it’s nothing special.” Of course, it’s easy for the person who has that talent but difficult for everyone else. Better to ask someone else, “What do think I’m good at?” As in your post, others are often better judges of our best talents than we are.

Ha ha. They do say that all the time.

Phemonal post btw, perhaps your best one this year

I was a some sort of slacker or bohemian myself, and had a composition containing zero percent financial ambition. Mostly I was into meditation, so much so that I found my way to living in a Buddhist monastery, and even living as a meditating hermit in remote forest cabin.

At that time I had a passion and direction, but it was unrelated to income. People asked me how I managed. And other people answered for me – if you want it bad enough, you tend to find a way to do it. It may not have been the wisest life script in terms of financial planning, but I’m grateful to have had the opportunities for lateral drift.

Since that period I drifted into a hellish 2 year marriage with a BPD woman, left her after my sanity finally crumbled, then built up and crashed several businesses. It’s been serial monogamy and serial businesses, and parallel monogamy and parallel businesses ever since. Another form of drifting, but after that marriage, it was from then on drifting like a race car drifts as you maneuver it around a corner. A controlled drift with only me at the wheel.

If I knew then what I know now, the only thing I think I’d change is try to let go of failing business and relationships before they drag me down with them. It would be so much easier to ride from crest of success to new crest, rather than have to oscillate. However overall I find that controlled drifting was a lifestyle that suited my temperament. Something I had to do. Even if it included much failure and occasionally horrendous poverty. I always had irrational trust that despite chronic struggle and frequent business failure I’d do well. And now I am, and can look back on a life I’m glad to have lived. I did it my way.

I doubt there is any advice in there for anyone. I’m basically saying that I was too lazy to fit my temperament into some mold that felt constraining, and am glad for my willfulness. That would probably be stupid advice to give anyone else. But I’d still give it to my young self.