Happy New Year!!!
Huh, I might be a tiny bit late with this, right? Yeah, I know, it’s been many weeks and I haven’t really been writing, and the beginning of the new year passed by without my content creator self noticing it, exploiting it.
The truth is, I have been chilling, enjoying the holidays, time spent with family, loved ones, and my precious mountains. And given that this whole website should be about me introducing my life philosophy, I thought that I would grab this occasion and finally introduce one of the many principles I would like the world to embrace with me.
I see myself as an ambitious kid. Don’t get me wrong, this is not a cryptic announcement of my future presidential bid, but I do occasionally play with the thought of venturing into politics and business and becoming the very best in both fields. And for these dreams one could write me off as somewhat lazy. Like, if you think about it, I just took 2-3 weeks (I don’t even dare to count) off from my website which I just started, and which might need way more attention from my part to increase the audience attracted to it.
So, yes, one may reasonably ask: “What the hell am I doing?”, as the suspicion might arise that I’m just doing nothing, or at least definitely not what it takes to succeed.
On my skiing trip, my friend, Huba, though not directly and specifically, but was nevertheless circling around the same notion as we were exploring the world of social media in our slowly ascending ski lift. We had to realize that what was driving likes and clicks was not necessarily a gripping story or a well-written opinion piece but social media influencers posting super frequently about their crazy adventures and the glamorous company of other celebrities they spend their time in.
His recommendation was, based on me podcasting and writing, that I should do the same. That, on the one hand, I should increase the frequency of my posting, and on the other hand, I should add crazier content because that’s what people in today’s world perceive as appealing. And my immediate gut feeling was that I didn’t like it because that’s just not me and that’s not at all what I would like to be doing.
What Connects This Little Anecdote With Me Writing No Article in the Past Few Weeks?
The temptation in both cases to bend the knee and adjust one’s dream journey to what it supposedly takes to succeed. In other words, nothing is easier than seemingly following your own dreams while in reality only doing other people’s bidding.
Yes, if you want to achieve something, you will have to work for it. You can’t just expect the universe to bless you with glory and riches only because you yourself are convinced that you are amazing. You will need to put the work in, you will need to do something else than what the rest around you is doing because otherwise you will not be outstanding. The old adage is indeed true: no pain, no gain, and there’s no way around this.
I’m not even trying to contest this. Quit quitting is a cute new trend, if you prioritize your mental well-being and your relationships, you should definitely go for it. However, obviously, if it is success you cherish, then you will probably have to make a few sacrifices along the way.
However, it is essential that we always keep things in perspective. There’s a difference between putting in the much-needed amount of work and shifting towards hated fields which we undertake only because we feel like that must be done to succeed.
The very essence of true success is that we are doing what we would like to be doing. That we have managed to free ourselves from the pressures of society, that we have managed to escape the hamster wheel of pointless working, and we are following our own path and ways. That is, my friend, an uncompromising story, because the moment you stray away from it, the moment you bend the knee, believing that for the greater good, for some subsequent gains, initially you need to swallow your pride and do even things that are not at all to your liking, it’s no longer your dream you are living. It’s just, once again, you being influenced by a world that you didn’t get to design nor pick.
I might sound a bit too stubborn, uncompromising, and probably idealist here if I actually believe that one can truly succeed without ever getting his hands dirty, without ever having to do things that are opposite to his liking. But what happens when we drop this idealism and hesitantly accept what the world is whispering?
One moment, it’s indeed merely a pragmatic advice admonishing hard work as a prerequisite for succeeding, something we should indeed heed. However, the next moment, the very same pragmatism might begin justifying ugly means as the only way the game can successfully be played.
We are smart beings, but there’s no such a thing as compartmentalizing. We might manage to theoretically draw the line, but we always end up overstepping boundaries. And as a result? When it comes to the broader picture, the effect of so-called pragmatism is always the same – a lack of imagination, excuses, and a world with so much suffering because we couldn’t keep doing what we actually enjoyed doing.
It’s because of this slippery-slope effect that I’m so adamant on only doing what I enjoy doing. I might be editing a website where I publish my opinion pieces, and yes, in this field, success means that there’s a bigger audience eagerly waiting for the next time I publish. So, it could seem like a legit recommendation that I venture into marketing and do everything I can to increase my audience size, even if it means me spending more time on social media than I would prefer doing.
However, when I started out, my dream was to publish whatever I felt like saying, whenever I felt like saying it. Not at all to spend hours on social media posting carefully edited pics and other supposedly engaging forms content, activities I, for the moment, don’t like doing. I just wanted to pave my own journey, be super fond of what I’m doing, and while the other day this involved spending even the weekend in the library writing, around Christmas, this meant putting everything on the side and just being with family.
And at the current stage, this might feel like unnecessary nitpicking, me being obsessed with my idealism, and maybe even the dearth of what it takes to succeed. As if I was looking for a grand story for why I’m unwilling to pull off a prolonged period of 70-80-hour work weeks.
But when I enter politics or decide to pursue a serious business, it will be the same uncompromising mentality that will say no to embracing ugly means.
Under today’s terms, we all accept, for instance, that ambitious politicians have to pull off dirty tricks, that in business to grow like Bernard Arnault did, one must be predatory. But this is just mafia talk, House of Cards shit, prospective joiners justifying why they are betraying what they stood for originally. And as we all adjust our ways in order to succeed in a game the current incumbents have rigged, we all become supporting pillars of the very system we set out to abolish.
So, regardless of the magnitude of the situation, whether one is merely in the beginning of an unfolding journey or already deeply involved in something cool or crazy, we must always stay on the path we would truly like to be treading, without adjusting to other, undesired ways, because that is the trick towards building that world which we can genuinely enjoy living in.
And that world, to me at least, is not an unimaginative place which doesn’t let you go on holidays, which requires your grind constantly, which tells you what to do at each specific stage, but which instead has the flexibility and understanding to provide you with the freedom to design your own journey.
If this is the kind of freedom I believe in, the sort of luxury to always act according to my own wish, then to achieve it, every single second I will have to live by it. I personally have to be the representative of it, the living embodiment of it. Because that’s the way we can actually enact change, we can truly make the type of difference in the world we would like to see. Any other direction rich in compromising and incorporating today’s techniques will somehow maintain today’s flaws in the future’s DNA.
This doesn’t at all mean that we can just sit back and be all lazy, that’s not what I’m vouching for here. I’m just saying that we do have to force a sort of understanding on the world which leaves us alone and let us pick our own path and do what we actually enjoy doing.
If for some that enjoyment comes from a 70-hour work week or seeking constant adventure to have consistently engaging content on the newsfeed for the sake of a riveting marketing strategy, then be it, it’s for each one of us to identify our unique little niches. It’s this authenticity and tailored-to-the-self journey that plays the central role in the new equation we are creating here. The idea that, while being hard-working and productive, we can chase success under our own terms, in our own pace, and altogether, derive fulfillment and joy 24/7 out of it.
Disentangling Confusion Towards a Conclusion
You may accuse me of fusing everything, including the most trivial and ordinary, with a grand ideology as if that could provide an excuse or reason for every decision I make. Maybe, I’m actually just lazy on certain days, I don’t have what it takes to succeed as I’m unwilling to have those early grinding years when many other people’s prosperous future is built. Maybe, I have just concocted this idealist story to deceive myself into believing that even when I do nothing, I’m actually doing the right thing and that’s exactly how I will succeed.
However, even if I’m not yet that convincing, I will respectfully disagree with the idea of self-inflicted delusion here because I do believe that everything is indeed connected, that the world can indeed only change positively if we add the dose of transformation from the earliest of stages, and that is when we get started, during our student years, when we just lay down the foundations of a business and enter our journey. There, from the first moment onwards, we do things differently, put our own unique method into practice, and that’s how the seed of change is planted.
So, with an elegant delay, I’m so thrilled to wish you all a Happy New Year. I’m personally super excited here because we just put one of the most important principles out there to heed.
Pursuing a story written according to our own authentic wish. Constantly doing what we enjoy doing instead of bending the knee and doing other people’s bidding.
This is the Dragon’s Alliance’s way, the way we make it big. And time devoted to yourself, even when you have the most on your plate, is part of this story. Not necessarily because we deserve it, but because the world itself needs it. It needs the understanding and flexibility in society that will let you get away with it.
So, drop whatever you hate, and get in the business of only doing what you enjoy doing because that’s how the world will change. And if those around you are not yet ready to take it? Well, that’s exactly why we have a dragon to assist us on our journey:D
