Fear of Failure: Are You Lying to Yourself?

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself – and you are the easiest person to fool. – Richard Feynman

Why do some people accomplish great feats like Elon Musk whereas, most others lag behind? Its true that the law of averages dictate that most people will have average lives and only some will live a truly outlier life. Yet, it remains true that almost all of us have the necessary tools to make our lives better. Then where does it go wrong?

(Follow me on YouTube- RaihanRiad)

Have you ever wanted to help someone else? To turn someone else into a proper human being? Probably your own children, or someone else you are responsible for? Well, no matter who that is, you are at most 50% responsible for how their lives turn out to be. You know who you are 100% responsible for though? That would be you, yourself. Yet why is it that we find it hard to conjure up enough motivation to do something about our own lives?
It’s becuase of fear of failure. It would suck if you tried to do the right things and then failed. You’ll be 100% responsible and you will feel miserable. Fear of failure is one of the worst internal enemies that each of us battle with regularly. It lies to us and makes us work on projects where we can shift the blame on other people.
For example: how many people would say they want to solve humanities biggest problems? Better yet, how many people think that they could actually do better than the people currently responsible?
Yet when you look at their personal lives, maybe one of their parent is fighting with depression. Don’t you think that person should try his/her best to solve that problem first? What about your big aspirations that you gave up on when reality became unbearable? Don’t you honestly think, if a human can climb Mount Everest, walk on the moon, make a space shuttle company with only 100 million dollars (i’m thinking Elon Musk) then a human, namely you, could also break into the music industry or learn about Artificial Intelligence, or become a heart surgeon (or whatever your dream was that you gave up on)?
You are a very special being with incredible powers of neuroplasticity, adaptability and resilience. Don’t sell yourself short. Fear of failure will make you shift focus to other people’s problems and justify that by saying that its nobler. But the reality is, deep down you are just afraid.
Tackle the problems that would immediately make your life better. Stop cowering behind projects that would either take an eternity to complete or where you can easily shift the blame of failure to others. That’s how you beat fear of failure.

How to be a superstar in 5(or more) years

Elon Musk, Mr Beast, Bill Gates, Lionel Messi what do all of them have in common? Keep on reading to find the answer.

I think I have one formula for superstardom. Definitely there are other ones too. Like- be born in a rich family who can sponsor you (*cough* Kylie Jenner *cough*) or have a famous father etc.

But my formula is for the noobs of the world, for people who have nothing (but want everything). To understand the formula you have to listen to me rant for a minute… got the time? Good. Here it goes:

1. The Almighty Macro:

What is macro? Macro is whatever’s bigger than you (Your industry or platform). If you are an YouTuber, then macro is YouTube. If you are an actor, then macro is the film industry. If you are a student, then macro is your school, or the degree you are after.. you get the idea, right?

By the way, you are the micro.

When the macro is booming, the micros in it also boom. If the stock market is doing well (its called the market index), then individual stocks do well too. When the internet started booming; Google, Facebook became billion dollar companies.

You know why gaming channels did so well on YouTube? Because, the YouTube algorithm loves them. Why? Because gamers post long videos and they post often. Think of a channel like ‘Film Theory’- their videos are hard to make! Those need a lot of effort. So, MatPat can’t post everyday! But gamers can, and YouTube algorithm loves that.

Thus, the macro supported gamers, and they boomed. PewDiePie and other gaming channels rode this wave, and became so big. (PewDiePie had some other advantages too, check out this video by MatPat How PewDiePie conquered YouTube )

 

2. The SnowBall effect:

Mozart Started composing before his teenage years,
Elon Musk started programming at the age of 11,
Warren Buffet also bought his first stock when he was 11!

Almost all of world’s greats had a headstart like this. Messi, Bill Gates, Thomas Alva Edison.. you name it.

Mr Beast Started his channel on 2012. But only started getting serious views from 2017.

What does all this tell you? Nobody becomes famous overnight. It takes time and patience a lot. You have to lay the groundwork for year after year.

We only see people’s successes, but if you dig deeper, you will see toil, sacrifices, heartbreaks and patience.. a lot, lot of them. It is rare that somebody is an overnight success.

 

The Formula: Get in early

So, to be a superstar, you have to find a macro that is going to boom (like the internet did), or favor your style of doing things (like YouTube did to gamers). Then, before the boom even starts, you have to get into the industry and start putting in regular work.

According to Elon Musk (in his JRE podcast), these are what’s gonna boom in the future: Bioengineering and Artificial intelligence. Other promising industries are renewable energy, space travel, nanotechnology, data science etc.

Find out an industry that you love, but also hasn’t matured yet (like smartphone industry). Then start putting in work. A lot of work. When the boom comes, you will be ready to ride the wave and be a superstar!