Entrepreneur

Different strokes for different folks. People have the individual inalienable right to prioritize their lives however they choose. There are tradeoffs depending on what you choose to prioritize.

Yes. What is there for the dog, cat, lion, polar bear, crocodile, orca, etc, to eat to survive on? Would the lion, tiger, leopard, crocodile or polar bear not happily eat a human for any random meal any day of the week? Humans are animals too and are designed to eat whatever type of food they choose. Some thrive more on plants instead of animals. Some thrive more on animals instead of plants. Many thrive on both. The entire argument of people should eat this not that is just a selfish human trying to impose their will and desires upon another instead of respecting the other person's freedom.

Why do some people hate plants so much that they eat them exclusively? Doesn't the cabbage deserve to live too? Yet you will eat its head. Doesnt the carrot deserve a chance to thrive in life as much as you? Yet you pull it from its home, behead it, and then eat the rest of its body. Think of all the cruel ways you torture other life on this planet. How enlightened are you really, if you can't hear the plants screaming as you pluck them from their homes and chop them into bits for your own selfish pleasure! All of this shameless murder gives you good vibrations? Shame on you vile human.

Receiving a financial windfall without having to earn it is a recipe for misery in life, believe it or not. That is why Warren Buffett is not leaving his egregious wealth to his children and is giving it to charity instead. I promise you that whatever happiness you think you would get from a financial windfall would be short-lived because you didn't earn the money through your own efforts. You would be even more miserable when you went broke after having all that money. So stop searching for that path and instead accept that fulfillment is something you must earn for yourself through serious effort. If you rid yourself of your existing mentality and consistently point your mind in the right direction, you will get where you want to be. If you started doing that today, in as little as one month, you could look back and recognize that you are already more successful and on your way to accomplishing whatever goals are meaningful to you, financially or otherwise. The inner feelings of success, self-esteem, optimism, and fulfillment are only a month away once you make the switch. Then you build on your minor progress and savor life along the way, knowing in full confidence that your life is going to keep getting better. Is one month too long a time for you? If it is, you are effed.

I love this post! When I was a kid, my school bus would drive past my grandparents' farm. My 70-something widow grandmother would be outside splitting wood by hand so that she had heat for that big old farmhouse and fuel for her wood cookstove to cook meals with. Some of the kids on the bus would make cracks about her as they watched this wrinkled face, tiny old woman swing her splitting maul over a block of wood and send the split pieces flying in opposite directions. This is the curse of living in a first-world country that has seen immense technological progress. We take things for granted and don't realize how good we've got it compared to most of the rest of humanity. You could call your work "wage slavery". By adopting that paradigm you may envision it as something you are being forced to do by some evil entity. Or you could call it an "income opportunity" where you can earn an above-average wage, have plenty of time off, and work with people who are relatively easy to get along with. Just imagine if you had to get home from your "wage slavery job" and you still had to do everything else that these earlier generations had to do just to have food in their bellies and heat in their homes. Instead, many of us just pay peanuts to have all those other things delivered to us and think about how we are still "unfulfilled" in our lives and how unfair it is that we are "forced" to work for someone else to be able to afford them. We are spoiled. On average, we have conditioned ourselves to become mental, emotional, and physical pussies compared to those previous generations. Just imagine all of the things we all probably take for granted. What phrase do you suppose those previous generations used to describe all the other work they had to do just to survive, in addition to whatever work they did to get paid for? Did they call that "slavery" or did they just call it "life"? What should we call it when we have to do our laundry, cook a meal, wash the dishes afterward, make the bed, mow the lawn, etc? Why is the work we get paid to do called "slavery" compared to all the other work we have to do that pays us no money? What is that work called? Isn't all this other work (we must also do) even worse than our day jobs, since we don't get paid for it? What do you call work that is even worse than slavery? Maybe using the phrase "wage slavery" to describe blue and white collar jobs in a first-world country is the wrong phrase?

Isn't it just a choice? What is stopping you from working 10 hours a day right now if that is what you want to do?

You could imagine it as if life on Earth is a game being played by God, where humans act like chess pieces on a chessboard that are self-conscious and can make their own decisions. If this is the case, then things like physics, mathematics, anatomy, biology, etc., are the rules of the game. So, if you are going to play the game, those are the rules. If you ingest viruses and bacteria, it can kill you and end your game. So, you try to avoid it by not eating rotten meat, among other things. As we progress through the game, we keep discovering previously hidden rules that apply to it (a new scientific discovery), and occasionally uncover hidden Easter Eggs that make it more fun.

There is a lot of good advice in this thread. AI is going to replace many entry-level jobs in various fields of computer science. It will certainly not replace them all. And the demand for this field continues to rise. I think you will be well-positioned for long-term employment with your degree. You will still be able to find a job, and that job will likely pay above average. Instead of AI replacing your job, it is likely you will be required to use AI during your regular day job to make you exponentially more productive. The work you will do that may have taken you a month to do without AI will take you a few days now. So, you are in an excellent position compared to most people to be able to leverage the potential of AI to be so productive at your profession that you will make yourself a very highly desirable and highly compensated employee. Plus you will be at the leading edge of tech for a while. This positions you to have the potential to be able to produce some product or service in the tech field that could create a financial fortune for yourself. Make friends with other smart and ambitious people while you are in there. Look for practical private-sector projects you can try to make you guys money.

This video fails to explain how this LVT is any different from the existing property taxes all property owners (at least around me here in my part of the USA) are currently paying. The current property tax system takes into account the full value of the land as well as the full value of any structures on it as well as the full value of any minerals or mineral rights. I still don't see how the LVT is in any way meaningfully different or superior. In fact, the existing property tax system seems likely to generate more revenue, in a more equitable manner, than LVT would. If it was going to solve so many of society's ills, as is suggested in this video, wouldn't the current property tax system already being doing that? The fact that it doesn't, in my opinion, provides concrete proof that the promises made in this video are unrealistic and not even close to reality. In my opinion, the entire concept of LVT as it was explained in that video lacks practical wisdom and is not thought out very well at all. No thanks.

Sounds like you are working low-value sales jobs. Either that or you simply don't understand the value in the products or services you have been selling. There are many sales positions where you can sell products and services that legitimately benefit the customers. These types of sales positions can be both personally and financially rewarding. I have been selling for decades and have zero issues asking for a sale because I know the products and services I sell truly benefit customers and improve their lives. If you like interacting with people to help them solve problems, then you should look for a sales position with a company that sells something you really believe in, that also doesn't demand you use high-pressure tactics. If you are selling an excellent product or service for an excellent company, you don't need to force or trick anybody into buying anything. You just help them. Many people avoid the sales profession because they have become jaded after being exposed to sleazy, high-pressure sales tactics. But, you don't have to be sleazy or unethically manipulative if you are selling valuable products and services to customers who need what you are selling.

How is LVT different from property tax? They seem the same to me. Where I live, we already pay a hefty property tax and a school tax that is based on the value of the property. The property value includes the value of the raw land plus any buildings. The property tax gets paid to the local county to pay for the services the county provides to the community. Part of it gets kicked up to the state to pay for Medicaid, which is a federally mandated State taxpayer-funded healthcare welfare entitlement for low-income earners. The school tax goes to the local public school district to pay for public education. Are you suggesting a Federal level tax on property in addition to the local property taxes people are already mandated to pay? Please elaborate.

I watched this Alex Hormozi video this morning and instantly thought of you and this thread. This video is perfect for you. I can tell you from experience of being in business more than 3 decades now that the information he shares in this video is legit and the "real deal". I agree with it wholeheartedly. In case you are questioning whether he honestly knows what he is talking about, I am just one little voice on the internet, and you certainly don't know me or know if you can trust me, but I will tell you anyway that it is hard to find better, honest, truthful advice on the internet about business than Hormozi delivers, especially in this specific video. I don't worship the guy or agree with 100% of what he says all the time, but this video is as good as it gets. He mentions how all the older successful business owners he knows will tell you that a lot of what they had to do to get where they are at completely sucked while they were doing it. And, it sucked for way longer than they ever thought it would. Yet they kept at it anyway. Some call it grit or perseverance. I call it work ethic. And I think it is a keystone habit of success in life, truly one of the most fundamental characteristics a person needs to develop or be gifted with by their parents in order to succeed at a high level.

Thank you for the accolades. I sincerely appreciate it.

Here is an exercise that might help you find the answer you seek. Which of these statements seems closer to the truth? 1) Within the next month or so, I am going to think my way out of having to do any type of work I don’t want to do for the rest of my life. Then I won’t have to “grind” and I will be happier. 2) I am probably always going to have to do some things in life that I don’t want to do just because “not” doing them will impact my life negatively in a major way. I should just accept some amount of it and work at minimizing how much of it I have to live with. Maybe one of those statements is true. Maybe neither are true. I suggest you seek the truth (whatever you end up deciding it honestly is) and take whatever action you need to take to live in alignment with it. Once you have honestly convinced yourself of what is true, you will know what the right action is for you.

So you are no different than the rest of humanity then. Many people who think deeply about something eventually arrive at a viewpoint that they have convinced themselves is the "accurate" perspective. I have one uncle in particular whose intellect I admire deeply. He is a very wise, happy, and successful man, who disagrees with me on a number of topics, especially political ones. Instead of just thinking the man is an idiot and obviously wrong, I find myself questioning how he and I have arrived at such radically different perspectives on these topics. It makes me admit to myself that my perspective on the topic might change in time as I acquire more wisdom, knowledge, and life experience. It also makes me realize how each individual's experiences in life shape their opinion, convictions, and beliefs.

There is absolutely NOTHING wrong with your desire for life structure. There is absolutely NOTHING wrong with your desire for security. (This is a fundamental human "need") It is expressed differently and looks different to different people. The reason everyone has to work is to earn an income to provide a basic income for themselves which then provides basic securities for their life such as food, clothing, shelter, transportation, etc, Every normal person feels the same urge for some level of security even if they don't talk about it, say it, or admit to it publicly. You are just saying it and admitting it out loud, which is perfectly fine. There is nothing wrong with it. You are acting in alignment with human nature itself. Your preference for being "told what to do" does NOT make you an over-the-top "people pleaser". It is understandable that you would rather have someone tell you what the right thing is you should be doing when you don't feel like you have that figured out just yet. That is something entirely different than being a people pleaser. What is absolutely awesome about you that you perhaps have not yet realized is that you already know and can articulate some very specific things about yourself that other people take much longer to figure out for themselves. For example, you readily admit that you are not a huge "gambler". You don't want a constant "hustle". You don't want to start a business, become an entrepreneur, be self-employed, or anything like that. There is nothing wrong with that mindset. You are maturing, gaining wisdom, and making decisions about what you "don't" want, which is a normal part of the process of figuring out what you do want. You aren't supposed to have all the answers when you are a young adult. I know people in their 50s who have spent their entire adult lives working in a career they are still questioning and seeking a better alternative to. They have lived excellent lives nonetheless. You can live an outstanding, excellent, and satisfying life without having all the perfect answers early in life. You just make the best decision you can with whatever information and knowledge you possess at the time. This is all any of us can do.

I don't think its anything like Hitler-Stalin or the Hitler-Stalin pact. I think it is about hegemony. The US has it and doesn't want to lose it. Russia lost it around 1990 and Putin wants it back. And Putin is willing to send as many of his people to their death as necessary to get it back. Putin is pissed that old Soviet Union collapsed and wants to rebuild it and even expand it for the glory of Russia and for his own demented lust for history to see him as a powerful Russian Tzar. The US currently enjoys some level of hegemony over individual European nations on an economic and military basis, but it is waning with time as the world continues to flatten. Russia is already a "has-been" empire as is shown by its recent attempts to flex its military muscles.

During my workday I tend to experience intervals of high productivity surrounded by moments of immediate recharge. If I am fully engaged in some mentally challenging work for a couple of hours, I will typically take a break for maybe a half an hour, sometimes more or less, of doing literally anything other than mentally challenging work. That helps me recharge. I approach physical activity the same way. I take breaks to recharge in between. I balance my extroversion and introversion the same way. If I am around too many people for too long, I will follow it up with a nice chunk of alone time and vice versa. My days are intentionally structured where I get a mix of all those things. I just adjust during each day as best I can according to how I feel at the moment. I have gotten better at doing that over the years. I have also implemented structure into my life to allow me to hit my "close to ideal" amounts of those things by default. As a result I don't often get to where I feel I have been experiencing "too much" of any one thing.

I want to thrive in life to my maximum capability experiencing as much eudaimonia and hedonia as reasonably possible. I try to accomplish that by investing effort into the specific areas of life that I have chosen as my top priorities over years of deep contemplation. These include many practical things such as seeking knowledge, love, deep relationships, health, self-esteem, financial abundance, meaningful work, contribution, etc.

Every company I do work for here in the US utilizes numerous contractors to accomplish whatever needs to be done. Many of these contractors are business owners performing work for the company, yet not direct employees of the company. For example, a business wants to expand and add additional building space. They hire a building contractor to accomplish it. The building contractor hires an electrical contractor, a plumbing contractor, and HVAC contractor, a drywall contractor, and IT contractor, etc. Often times, these individual contractors are tiny businesses themselves being operated by one person or small number of partners. Some of these small contractors hire other small contractors. For example, an IT contractor might do work for all of those other contractors. You have massive amounts of collaboration without having your employees do the work. Another example: Here in the US it is common for salespeople to be independent contractors working with the companies they sell for. Each salesperson is a one-person business. They are responsible for doing everything for themselves that a business typically does for their employees - things like health insurance, income tax withholding, etc. Yet they collaborate on the goal of maximizing sales for the company. None of them are employees. People collaborate as independent contractors, not just as employees. And it is a far more efficient system of allocating labor.

The fundamentals of capitalism allow a person the potential to be rewarded lavishly for their levels of ambition, ingenuity, skillfulness, and intellect if applied in the right way to reach that outcome. It also allows a person the potential to be rewarded lavishly for the quality of their decision-making in regard to predicting the outcome of their actions and efforts. Any civilization that implements these fundamentals in the right way will be at an advantage in direct competition against other civilizations that don't implement them. If enough potential for reward exists, the innate nature of humans will drive a certain percentage of the population to outproduce, outwork, out-engineer, and outcompete a civilization that somehow fails to ignite those same human motivations. In a world where countries compete economically and militarily, the fundamentals of capitalism, properly applied to the citizenry, will help one country become more competitive than it otherwise would be. It also provides hedonistically motivated people with the potential to experience higher levels of hedonistic satisfaction according to their own level of desire.

I agree completely. For me, every time I give myself a logical reason, I feel like it triggers my emotions just a tiny bit - maybe one tenth as much or even less. Then, if I dwell on those reasons and think deeply about them, it will stir up more emotion. So by stacking the logical reasons and thinking about them deeply enough for long enough repeatedly over enough time, I can deeply "convince" myself of the importance of whatever it is - like in the case of daily exercise. Eventually, I reach a tipping point where I know I am convinced without question that this new habit must be part of my life. I then have conviction in my decision. I must make the time for it. My day will suck if I don't do it. For a big change like daily exercise, the process can take months or even years depending on how much time and effort you put into convincing yourself. It also depends on how big the change is and how much resistance you currently feel toward making the change. I think of these periodic efforts to make the positive change as being tiny monetary deposits into an investment account that is going to pay off over the rest of my life once I start drawing on it.

My life purpose is to evolve. So I engage in activities that align with it and try to help myself evolve. In my mind, to evolve means to first survive and then thrive. So I engage in activities intended to help me survive and thrive to the fullest of my capabilities. My profession is a business owner in the IT services field. But I spend a substantial amount of my "professional time" managing my investments. The rest of my time I spend doing various things that contribute mostly to me enjoying life and getting as much satisfaction from it as I possibly can. I believe evolution is mankind's default purpose as it is for every other living creature on earth. Every plant, insect, animal, etc. is here to evolve. It makes sense that humans are here to do the same. Since adopting this mindset, I have acquired more mental freedom, increased my level of peace, life satisfaction, and happiness. I encourage others to explore it if they are seeking an answer to that question.

One method: What problem can you solve for someone? What problems do you face that you wish you could pay someone for a solution? Is there significant demand for this problem to be solved? Is anyone else solving it well? Is there a business opportunity here or not? Another method: What desire does a person or group of people have that you can satisfy for them? Is there significant demand for this desire to be satisfied? Is anyone else satisfying it well? Is there a business opportunity here or not?

In my opinion, it is not so much the field you work in that really matters. It is the position within that field. Just because you work in IT does not mean you will be writing code, configuring network hardware, or designing cloud infrastructure, etc. Those are all very technical things that take a certain personality type to enjoy. There are also other positions within the IT field that suit other personalities. For example, extroverts might like a sales position selling IT services or software products of some kind. The IT field needs managers who can also understand the underlying technology. It needs technical writers. It needs customer service professionals. It needs teachers and instructors. It needs testers. It needs many things that really don't involve being overly nerdy or technical. Yet they require a deeper understanding of such things. Just food for thought. You can apply the same type of thinking to physical education as well as other areas like health, nutrition, physiology, anatomy, etc. I mentioned to someone else in another thread that taking a Myers Briggs type of personality test was exceptionally eye-opening for me. It helped me realize there are certain positions within many different fields that would suit me quite well. It might help you a lot too, if you are still questioning yourself.