Irrational ConfidencePursuing the impossible is often about possessing irrational confidence in yourself.
Pursuing the impossible is often about possessing irrational confidence in yourself.
There is a fine line though to which society, and human nature, accepts that fervor as either confidence or cockiness. I’d go further than cockiness and say that sometimes, being driven can be perceived as being an asshole. Ignorant. A jerk.
That cockiness is a bad thing. You should not strive to be like that. It makes it hard to have friends, be successful, do the things that you want to do.
There is, though, a way to be successful without being loud. Media just likes to advertise the loud people — which skews the reality of being successful.
Watch a young Elon Musk talk about the future:
My initial reactions:
- He likes money
- Money is not his only motivator
- He is confident in himself, and in the future
What do you think?
I think the thing to note here is that it does not really matter what I think about the way Elon Musk thinks about things or talks about money. Right? He is moving the world forward. There are different ways you can go about changing the world. I think there is a misconception that in order to change the world you have to be a dick. Why? Because media and society have popularized the people in society that are doing great things, who happen to be assholes.
False correlation here between being rude and being successful. There is no causation. In fact, most assholes are just failures. It’s actually harder to be successful if you are rude.
What you have to admire about Musk, though, is his irrational confidence in the future. Call it ignorance, call it rude. Call it whatever you want. Regardless, he is passionate about driving (or self driving) the world forward.
And I have always been a big fan of people that are passionate about things. To me, it does not matter what that “thing” is, it could honestly be anything. Horseback riding. Cooking. Photography. Whatever it is, I want to surround myself with the people that are most passionate about it.
I think the majority of people do not display their passion about anything. They do not fervently pursue anything.
This is fine. But it’s not as rewarding, to me. You cannot make as big of an impact if you are not pursuing something wholly with all your power.
I must be careful about what it is I want to pursue , because I know my personality will put 110 percent effort into it. If you care about what you do, then you will automatically beat out those who do not. Caring is automatically a competitive advantage. If you care about something, you will make it happen — regardless of any other factor.
Originally published at www.jordangonen.com on October 8, 2016.
By jordangonen on October 8, 2016.
Exported from Medium on February 17, 2018.