What is your story of going from zero to hero and changing your life completely in the face of failure?
I saw an answer request for the following question, on Quora.
I though about it for a while. It seemed shallow. Someone was looking for nice stories to feed their procrastinating, motivation-searching, lazy ego.
Then I thought some more. I remembered something Jordan Peterson mentioned, related to Carl Jung : If you can’t figure out a person’s motivations from the conversation, look at the outcome and infer their motivations. So I looked at the answers. Not too many, no interaction from the person who asked the question. I thought I’d share my 2 cents and see what happens.
Here’s my answer:
Everybody is looking for this kind of story, aren’t they it? I remember I used to look for stories like this, myself. But at the end of the day all the pretty pictures of the underdogs who were down and had nowhere to go, and all the CEOs who took a risk, followed their dreams, and made it big from their parents’ garage, are just that, stories. To be precise, they’re only part of the actual story. In real life, it’s a struggle. It’s an ongoing battle you have to fight day-in, and day-out. And you don’t have to win every day, you only have to pick yourself up more times than you were put down.
That’s winning at life, in my opinion.
Life isn’t just something you figure out at one point and then you get to live the rest of it in peace, and winning every time. It is rather something you have to figure out day by day, all along figuring out the people around you, and figuring yourself out so you can get to live another normal day.
If you find yourself in dire straits, in a situation you find it hard to get out of, you just have to push through it.
I know it’s easy to see this from position of advantage, privilege. I don’t have your problems. I don’t know you. But you just have to take it for what it is. To win at life, you don’t have to win once and win good, you have to try to win every day. If that fails, just get yourself back together and try it again with a different strategy, because the alternative is horrible.
Cheers!