Life is not fair:

Life is not fair. Never has been. You are born into families you can’t control with parents you didn’t choose. You don’t have a choice of where you’re born or what skin colour you’ll be or if you’ll have a genetic condition at birth. That’s all up to chance. When you understand that, you appreciate how lucky you are to be where you are. So many great people like Buffet, Jay Z, Chamath, and Elon talk about how lucky they were to be born into the situations they were.

What did they do with their circumstances? They took risks. They bet on themselves. They learned over and over again. They used every disability they had to their advantage. Recently I've gotten into Chamath’s talks a lot more these days and to hear his stories about how his alcoholic parents and situation in Canada turned him into the person today is so refreshing. He got to where he was not in spite of his circumstances but because of them. The feelings he had as a child and the experiences he was fortunate enough to have in Ottawa with Terry Matthews shaped his perspective of the world and gave him the drive to do something with this life.

You have the utmost respect for those people because although things outside their control dictated a lot of their life, they put themselves in positions to be lucky. I keep thinking about this concept from Naval on different types of luck. In his eyes, there are 4 types

1. Blind luck: dumb luck that you have no control over

2. Luck that comes to you through persistence – ‘fortune favours the bold’

3. Spotted luck: ‘chance favours the prepared mind’

4. Luck that finds you

There’s something to be said about all of them but the last one is super interesting because that comes down to you being you. Building enough character and reputation through learning and experience where your character becomes your destiny where you can take advantage of opportunities that people may think are lucky, but you know it wasn’t. The example he gives is about Buffet on how people offer him deals and the ability to buy companies because of his reputation.

I’ve seen this with my own dad as well. Given he had a successful career as a banker and was well respected in his field, he’s now getting offers on his doorstep that he has a hard time choosing what to do. These only have come because he’s built his character over 25+ years and people know his reputation. That luck takes time to build, but it comes down to you building your character and becoming a reputable person.

You can talk about how reputable you are till the cows come home but your words don’t mean anything. Talk is cheap. Show me what you do. Show me who you are. People who talk about their great reputation are probably not that reputable. Show people who you are by being you. By becoming a better person every day. All this learning you’re doing about yourself will eventually pay off.

It won’t pay off in the short term, although it might with certain opportunities, but it will eventually. The amount of knowledge you’ve compounded just in the last few years since leaving medicine is unbelievable. The way I see the world now is sooooo different than what it was when I was in school, and a lot of that was through books. Yes I had great life experiences in between that time, but I’ve learned so much more than I anticipated through reading.

About myself. About investing. About dieting. About exercise. About patience. About psychology. About personal finance. About celebrity culture. About Tiger Woods. About a lot of things.

As I was reading these things, I was never sure it was going to pay off. But now looking back, I know it has. Yet, I still feel like I’m at the beginning of this journey. Eventually my dream is to make enough money to be able to take months/years off at a time to read and just visit random places around the world. Hopefully I find someone that wants to live like that as well, because I can’t keep doing the rat race. I’ve only just started and all the learning I’ve done has taught me you don’t want to run it my whole life.

The search for titles and status and higher pay won’t make you happy. It’ll improve your social standing in other people’s eyes, but it won’t really make you happy internally. Happiness has to come from within and that comes from living life on your terms. Right now you have to play the game of life that is the rat race. This is like a level in the long RPG game. You’re just at the beginning but through learning, you can expedite the level. You only expedite it by taking asymmetric upside bets when they present themselves because if some of them hit, it could be life changing. Remember, if you lose 1 but can make 5, and you do that 5 times, all you need is one of them to hit to recover your money. But if you’ve done your homework, you increase your odds that over time could prove to be exponential.

It’s interesting because all of this writing I’m really doing as a reminder to myself. Yet because I’ve chosen to make this public, other people are learning through my learning. They get to see who I am at this moment in time and hopefully learn something. The whole goal this year was to write for myself and whatever positive things happened were a plus. But it was always for me. To be able to show myself I could do something I set out to do and beat a goal. I told myself 100 pieces of content and I’m already at 100 if I include all the journal posts that are coming out later this year.

Yet I have no plans of stopping. You realize as you write everyone has so many more ideas than they give themselves credit for. You don’t know how smart you are and what you can accomplish until you start doing something. Think about this – at an average of 2000 words per post, which is almost definitely higher than that and putting out 200 pieces of content this year, that’s 200,00 words you may write this year. That’s crazy! But that’s just working on something over and over again day in and day out. Consistency.

All the success in life comes from compounding. Yes asymmetric bets and great opportunities may present themselves in certain circumstances so you do have to pounce on them when they arrive, but otherwise it’s a slow process. It’s learning every day. It’s taking risks. It’s studying people and businesses and industries. It’s being endlessly curious because life is so interesting.

The world is such a cool place. There’s so much to learn and understand. Everyone in the world knows something you don’t and the sooner you figure out what that is, the better off you’ll be. People underestimate the power of learning and being a student. We have too much pride as adults to demonstrate that we think we know everything that’s going on.

Newsflash, no one has any idea what’s going on. The only reason we look at the people that have accomplished anything is because most of them are old. They’ve had the benefit of time and experience. They’ve experienced ups and downs and if they reflected on their experiences, they’d be able to position themselves better next time that circumstance arrives. That can hold them back in some ways because the future, particularly through the 21st century, is going to be unlike anything we’ve ever seen. The people that are going to be the success stories in the next few decades are going to be the people who understand the Internet better than others. Who see opportunities that others can’t see.

The other thing to pay attention to is understand your circle of competence. Sure you can expand it over time, but don’t over stretch yourself. Know what you know and know what you don’t know. For things you don’t know, don’t go into those situations because then you’ll be a patsy. Sure you can bet a small amount on things to better understand what’s happening, which is exactly what you did with the stock market, but don’t overextend yourself.

For example, the crypto market. It seems like a complete minefield. Yet slowly I’m starting to learn more and more about it. I know there’s tremendous opportunity in what certain people are working on but cutting through all the noise and BS is difficult right now. Everyone is too happy with how much money they’re making. Money is not usually this easy to make. Obviously it makes sense because of stimulus checks and zero percent interest rates, but it’s a frothy time. Be patient. Wait till the correction happens and then jump back in.

But this is a great example of how you should take the bets. Do your homework. Learn about that specific thing you’re interested in for a little while. Do your due diligence to understand exactly what’s going on and then enter that market. Take your time. Be patient. Chance favours the prepared mind. Remember, “luck is like a bus. There will always be another bus coming by but if you’re not ready to jump on, you’ll always miss it.’

Be ready to jump.