Today I was preparing to progress in the reading of my first book for this month; I set out to read two books a month this year, that would totalize 24 books at the end of the year. We are in November and I should have read 20 books by now but in my accounts I am three books behind that. The book I am currently reading talks about how to implement Lean Six Sigma processes in you company. Is a book that resembles the one’s I have to read in college and in some parts it gets dull and repetitive. I am making an effort to read every book to the end. So , I was there, sitting in my bed getting ready to some two hours of useful learning and eventual boredom when I decided to check some of my favorite sites. I checked facebook to see if my girlfriend said something , checked twitter, youtube to see if Pomplamoose had anything new and finally, when I was almost ready to leave, James Altucher’s blog came to my mind.
James Altucher always cheers me up and makes me happy because it is not common to find someone who writes well and so simply. Every time I visit his blog I am amazed by how good he chooses his headlines. Titles like “What’s It Like to Date a Super Model” and “How to be the luckiest guy on the planet in 4 easy steps” are easy to be found among his posts. He has a book called “I was blind BUT (in red) now I see”. That’s such a good title! I am dying to read it.
So, there was I, reading Altucher’s thoughts and thinking: “Well he is really good, what a pity he is broke”. Then it downed on me: All through his writings he emphasizes that if you want to be happy you should not base your feelings of importance only on the amount of money you have saved. Warren Buffet, one of the richest men in the world, himself once in a court, responding to charges of breaking SEC laws against Salomon Brothers, said that people who base their happiness solely on the size of their bank accounts sooner or later will have problems. All that looks really beautiful, but when you are a young adult, still in college, and your future can be anything on earth just depending on what you do right now, I assure you it is fairly frightening.
James Altucher (Not Austin Powers)
I don’t give in on my wishes of better financial conditions. I’ve carefully analysed both sides and I can guarantee you will prefer being well-off, but I agree that that shouldn’t be the reason for your happiness. If you do what you like you will do it well, and when you do it well done you will soon be paid to do it. So, what I really need right now is not a bundle containing a million dollars, but rather be really good at something I love.
I can tell you that what I love is Entrepreneurship. That is my greatest passion and I am fascinated by it. Entrepreneurship is hard, is advancing by yourself, is thinking different, is more than seeing what others don’t see, is doing what others are too lazy to do. I love it, and it makes me fight my laziness. So, as Altucher, a real entrepreneur victim of the bubble .com, said, you don’t have to be perfect at something to start doing it, in fact you get good while you’re doing it. And you don’t have the unbearable burden of finishing every single thing you start, maybe you start something and you don’t finish it. It is better to start something and then stop than not to start anything. As you may see, English is not my primary language. I am Brazilian and my native language is Portuguese. I also speak Spanish but I chose English exactly to improve my skills, and because I prefer it over Spanish. Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about not wasting my time and making it count. Hence, when I am writing in English I feel that I am exercising my brain rather than just venting my thoughts in a senseless blog.
You MUST do something, you can’t go through life doing nothing, accomplishing nothing. Your accomplishments give you the feeling of worth, and the pleasure to look back and say: “I did something”. When you are doing something that really adds value to your life you are progressing, moving forward. The place where you can get to depends on how much you have progressed. You will never get anywhere if you are not qualified. And if you were really qualified to be where you want to be you would already be there. If you want to get somewhere don’t stop. “Work hard and be nice to people” is a good motto. It doesn’t matter what you do, at some point you will have to work hard if you want to reach your goal, but if you get used to working hard (never forgetting to rest) you can reach your goals much faster and then achieve bigger goals…
Entrepreneurship is never giving up on your dreams, it doesn’t matter how many times you fail.
So, well, that’s why I started this blog. I plan to write something here every day. Of course most texts won’t be long, maybe they won’t even be. I will try to write a list of 10 things every day, or a part of a big post, so I make my brain think a little bit and practice my writing. I want to expose ideas and maybe unburden myself a little bit too.
And that’s all for today, tomorrow there will be more.