Leo Gura

Passion means your work is highly meaningful to you. Imagine the most meaningful work you could possibly do for mankind. That's what I mean.

That's a good attitude. But that is not enough, you also need to pair it with intelligent pragmatic strategy. Do you have a realistic business plan for success in rap? If not, then that requires your focus. You can't just hope that success befalls you by luck, you need a practical plan to make it happen. Luck is not a strategy.

Not in my world. Attitude. Fankly, many of you have the attitudes of losers. You cannot succeed with such weak attitudes. Success screens and self-selects for people with abnormal self-belief. You guys want success, but I can tell just by the way some of you word your posts that you will not succeed because success requires much more seriousness than that.

It is not a matter of odds, it is a matter how much you are willing to work for it and how creative and strategic you are able to be. It's a matter of attitude too. For me, not following my passion is simply an unacceptable way to live. I live that attitude. I cannot imagine living otherwise, which is why I have the career I have. If I didn't have this attitude I would have settled for a comfy 9-5 job and you would never know about me. Very successful people have a different level of attitude and seriousness than average. And I don't know how to give you my attitude. But my attitude is not even that hardcore as far as business goes. Serious businessmen have very hardcore attitudes which figure out how to solve any problem. You can't succeed in business without an ability to compete and outwit others. Business is like a sport.

I know that. Of course they are against you. What do think the odds were that I would succeed at YT? Very low. By definition, anyone trying to be very successful has very low odds. But it's not a lottery, it's much more in your control than that. But looking a pure statistics, 90% won't make it.

@Ramanujan Of course you can grind through life. But that's not what I can teach. You are talking about a way of life that is not acceptable to me. People have different standards for what they will accept.

I understand your frustration. Advice does not work for everyone and requires customization. However, the average guy living anywhere will be mediocore. Being really successful at your passion is rare and difficult everywhere. Yes, 3rd world is harder. But most people who take a course will not become successful. Those are just the statistics of success. Success requires exceptional effort, and yes, some luck too.

Dancing in this case. Or do your disabled thing but be the manager of it, not the programmer. Building technology is engineering and programming, which is totally different from helping disabled people. Your passion here would be the helping people, not the engineering. You can find other ways of helping people than with engineering.

The truth is that you do not know and you are trying to use other people to compensate for that void. But the more you do that the more mistakes you will make because you can't be sure who to trust. Direct experience is always true, but only in what it shows, not in your extrapolations and interpretations. The entire Earth being flat is not a direct experience, it is an extrapolation. If you are careful you will notice that your direct experience works with many different shapes of Earth. You cannot turn all human knowledge into direct experience. The solution to all this is to be very precise about when you truly don't know a thing, like the shape of the Earth. Just say you don't know. That is the truth.

Look, all success assumes intelligence. You can't succeed in anything if you do it stupidly. You actually need to have a valid and accurate model of how the world works, how business works, how people work, how capitalism works, etc. If you have delusional or fantastical ideas of how that stuff works, you can work for 20 years and get nowhere. The key to success is knowing what you're doing. If you can't figure out how stuff works, then you need to work for a boss who will train you. Not everyone is cut out to lead. If you are not good at leading, become a good follower of a good leader. If you want to get good a rap, you need a very accurate understanding of how the music industry works, the business side of it. You need to not just be a good rapper, you need to be businessman. Learn rapping, learn business, learn marketing, learn how to be a celebrity, etc.

I never agreed with his philosophy. I'm a follow your passion guy. To me, not following your passion is a recipe for mediocrity. You cannot be great at something you don't love. For me, love is not a luxury. I need it to be great.

You need more urgency and efficiency than that. You can't spend 20 years screwing around! But do the best you can from today forward. 20-25 To be very honest with you, I don't feel that you are serious enough to make that work. It could work, but you'd need to have a much more serious attitude about it. I am not discouraging you, I'm just being very real about what success requires. You need to be real honest with yourself about how serious you are. If you don't want to be that serious, pick an easier goal.

Look, in this domain especially, you must err on the side of action. There are not guarantees against self-deception. You must play the game and play it well. If you fail, you can play the game more than once. If you deceive yourself about crying, then A) That's really weird, and B) You can learn your lesson and find a genuine cry instead. You are better off taking action and making mistakes than sitting around doing nothing or worrying. You will course-correct as you go by being conscious of feedback.

One good metric is, Does it make you cry? If it can't make you cry, then you're probably not passionate about it. Would launching a rocket make you cry? If not, what would? Do that instead. But if you're young, you may not have enough experience yet to know what would make you cry. In which case, experiment with stuff to find what will make you cry. What is the thing that is most interesting to you? Start there and upgrade it if you find something juicer.

Working your passion is a luxury that most people never want bad enough to earn it. Working your passion is EARNED by working extra hard, and extra clever. Working your passion is not something you can have by default, since then everyone would have it. Working your passion is an act of CREATION. You have to create that kind of lifestyle, which requires that you really want that kind of lifestyle and willing to bleed for it. It is like having a family. How do you get a family? You CREATE it.