Business vs. Love Part 5

You know the feeling.

Friend calls you up to go out, there’s an event at a bar. Same scene, same girls. You wonder if you should muster up the courage and energy to go out, or decide to stay in and make some progress on that website you have been trying to launch in the past 6 months.

Scenario 2 – you have been doing well at work lately – new job and new promotion. 2% salary raise. Yeh. You decide to go out more this week with your friends. You get a few number closes, but none of them return or pick up when you text/call. You wonder where your game has gone wrong, and after a while decide “fuck it” and focus on some other area in your life. Maybe you’ll muster up the anger or motivation to call up a few PU friends and ask for their advice, but ultimately, the game dynamics go back to you.

You go back to focus on work, but you realize that you are working your ass off for your company and they are making all of the money. The constant ass kissing and power maneuvers at work get to you. You decide to start your own company on the side. You do some research and work, but really have no idea where to start. You write a business plan.

A friend’s birthday comes up – you decide to go. You hit it off with this girl, and decide your game isn’t so bad after all. You go out a few more times over the next 2 weeks – some nights are good, some night are not. A lot of effort is being put into this and the results of lays is not showing.

If the above 5 paragraphs sound remotely familiar, that is because I have experienced it first hand. I have been writing these “Business vs. Love” posts for…. 1 year now!

It took a some simple advice from one group member, a Stanford PhD student at our MasterAlliance meeting to wake up me, “R, maybe there are just excuses? I mean, when I didn’t want to work out, I was throwing out the exact same reasoning as you. These are just excuses that stand in your way. Maybe I am wrong, but think about it.”

He’s right. The truth is, if it came down to it, I would choose love over money. Because love transcends material things, even this life, money is only a tool we use to trade things of perceived value in this world. But achieving both often means going after something the right way. You want to pickup a girl? Focus and learn from each set’s mistake. Don’t over analyze your sets, and focus on your skill set. Film yourself if you have to to see your flaws.

Waiting for that business plan? It is not going to write itself. Stop watching porn and if you are going to blow off your friends, make a commitment to finish 20% of that plan by the time you go to sleep. These are things that are definite and require energy, but the fact is sometimes this pain of exerting energy is better than the pain of mind-numbing and time passing that comes from doing a lot of things that are 1. half assed and 2. not significant anyway.

“With Scarcity comes Clarity” – Sergey said recently in the economic downturn, and this is another sage advice that I am lucky enough to see working at Google.

For Business or Love Part 4

You guys know I had this challenge for a long time. Matador was able to shed some light onto this. Whenever I start writing a business plan, I go back to reading pickup material or rattling my brain over girls. Why? Life is so short. What is it all for in the end?

Matador, on day 1 of bootcamp:
“I was a loner. I didn’t think I needed anybody. I didn’t think I needed any friends. At the same time I had a very strong father, who was very disciplined and who I thought brought me up very well. I went to school, I studied computer science, I went to business school after that… and then I worked for some top tiered consulting firms that were internationally known. So I had a good career. I had my health, wealth fully intact by age 23. My first job was 30k a year and I built myself up. To be fair, I built up in the dot come boom so it was easier, but that’s where I started.

Over time, it got worse and worse, because I did focus on the relationship part of my life, and it started to suck to motivation out of me from even working harder, because what is it all for? Thoughts like that started creeping into my mind.

What did I do this for, dad? I’ve been cheated. Fuck you telling me to stay out of trouble of these years. I didn’t sign up for this! I was miserable. From 16-26 were the dark periods of my life. Not to get too personal, but I was a depressed person. 26, I started stumbling into this thing.

C&F worked a little, but it didn’t work …. I made millions of blunders, I did some stupid shit…

But man, I am going to make statements to you today and I can back it up 100 and fucking 10%. By understanding what I am about to teach you, which you will now get, you will get a night and day difference over these 3 days by believing that in the pure mastery of this WILL make you feel like you have superpowers. Do you guys believe that?

It is going to require CHANGES. It is going to require EVOLVING… I feel… AWARE. That is all I can promise you, a moment of awareness. (To go the rest of the way)

48 Laws of Power

Power is a measure of a persons ability to control the environment around them, including the behavior of other persons. The term authority is often used for power perceived as legitimate by the social structure. Power can be seen as evil or unjust; indeed all evil and injustice committed by man against man involve power. The exercise of power seems endemic to humans as social beings. – Wikipedia

Robert Greene refers to power as the “closest thing humans have to becoming Gods themselves”. While I have read his book 48 laws of power a long time ago, the lessons never ingrained in my mind, as I find myself through recent events in a position of no power, of other people having power over me. Only through extremely hard work and effort, as well as the power of those who befriended and helped me (did the right thing) did I narrowly escape an otherwise ugly event that could have resulted in me looking for another job, or worse yet, working for a boss who had power over me and despised me.

In light of these events, I went back to thoroughly study “power”, not for the purpose of controlling others – that was never my goal. Rather, to understand it, so that others cannot control me. In gaining a certain amount of reputation and power, I will be able to thwart those who attack me, as well as launch counter attacks when necessary. Right now, I can only hurriedly try to defend myself.

Niccolo Machiavelli on Fortune and how to treat Her

This passage from “The Prince” was a “a-ha!” moment for me in my journey in life:

“To be brief, I say that since Fortune changes and men stand fixed in their old ways, they are prosperous so long as there is congruity between them, and the reverse when there is no. Of this, however, I am well persuaded, that it is better to be impetuous than cautious. For Fortune is a woman who to be kept under must be beaten and roughly handled; and we see that she suffers herself to be more readily mastered by those who so treat her than by those who are more timid in their approaches. And always, like a woman, she favors the young, because they are less scrupulous and fiercer, and command her with great audacity.”