Weโve all been underestimated and counted out.
In those moments, we felt like it was over.
But itโs when we were given no chance, that we somehow found that last bit of strength to keep fighting.
And then we did what no one else thought we could.
Not even ourselves.
We came back from the impossible.
From being broken.
We found a way when it seemed hopeless.
We came back when we should have been long forgotten.
And we did it time and time again.
Right now, weโre fighting for something much bigger than a win or a championship.
But if weโve learned anything from sports, itโs that no matter how far down we may be, weโre never too far down to come back.ย
This is an amazing talk byย Curtis "Wall Street" Carroll. Curtis taught himself to read and trade stocks while in prison, and shares a simple and powerful message, that we all need to be more savvy with money.
Financial illiteracy is a disease that has crippled minorities and the lower class in our society for generations and generations, and we should be furious about that. Ask yourselves this: How can 50% of the American population be financially illiterate in a nation driven by financial prosperity? Our access to justice, our social status, living conditions, transportation and food, are all dependent on money that most people can't manage. It's crazy. It's an epidemic and a bigger danger to public safety than any other issue.
He also cofounded a program to tackle this โdiseaseโ, called โFinancial Empowerment Emotional Literacyโ (FEEL) that teaches how to separate emotional decisions from financial decisions.
4 timeless rules to personal finance:
Proper way to Save
Control your cost of living
Borrow money effectively
Diversify your finances by allowing your money to work for you instead of you working for it.
Currently reading Tribe of Mentors by Tim Ferriss. Below are 11 questions he chose for the interview. I thought it would be nice to pause and answer them myself before I continue.
1. What is the book (or books) youโve given most as a gift, and why? Or what are one to three books that have greatly influenced your life?
2. What purchase of $ 100 or less has most positively impacted your life in the last six months (or in recent memory)?My readers love specifics like brand and model, where you found it, etc.
3. How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success? Do you have a โfavorite failureโ of yours?
4. If you could have a gigantic billboard anywhere with anything on itโmetaphorically speaking, getting a message out to millions or billionsโwhat would it say and why? It could be a few words or a paragraph. (If helpful, it can be someone elseโs quote: Are there any quotes you think of often or live your life by?)
5. What is one of the best or most worthwhile investments youโve ever made? (Could be an investment of money, time, energy, etc.)
6. What is an unusual habit or an absurd thing that you love?
7. In the last five years, what new belief, behavior, or habit has most improved your life?
8. What advice would you give to a smart, driven college student about to enter the โreal worldโ? What advice should they ignore?
9. What are bad recommendations you hear in your profession or area of expertise?
10. In the last five years, what have you become better at saying no to (distractions, invitations, etc.)?
11. What new realizations and/ or approaches helped? Any other tips? When you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, or have lost your focus temporarily, what do you do? (If helpful: What questions do you ask yourself?)
Professor Legasov, if you mean to suggest the Soviet State is somehow responsible for what happened, then I must warn you, you are treading on dangerous ground.
Legasov: Iโve already trod on dangerous ground. We are on dangerous ground right now, because of our secrets and our lies. They are practically what define us. When the truth offends we lie and lie until we can no longer remember it is even there. But it is still there. Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later that debt is paid. That is how an RBMK reactor core explodes. Lies.
When I was just a little girl, I asked my mother, โWhat will I be? Will I be pretty? Will I be pretty? Will I be pretty? What comes next? Oh right, will I be rich?โ Which is almost pretty depending on where you shop. And the pretty question infects from conception, passing blood and breath into cells. The word hangs from our mothers' hearts in a shrill fluorescent floodlight of worry.
โWill I be wanted? Worthy? Pretty?โ But puberty left me this funhouse mirror dryad: teeth set at science fiction angles, crooked nose, face donkey-long and pox-marked where the hormones went finger-painting. My poor mother.
โHow could this happen? You'll have porcelain skin as soon as we can see a dermatologist. You sucked your thumb. That's why your teeth look like that! You were hit in the face with a Frisbee when you were 6. Otherwise your nose would have been just fine!
โDon't worry. We'll get it fixed!โ She would say, grasping my face, twisting it this way and that, as if it were a cabbage she might buy.
But this is not about her. Not her fault. She, too, was raised to believe the greatest asset she could bestow upon her awkward little girl was a marketable facade. By 16, I was pickled with ointments, medications, peroxides. Teeth corralled into steel prongs. Laying in a hospital bed, face packed with gauze, cushioning the brand new nose the surgeon had carved.
Belly gorged on 2 pints of my blood I had swallowed under anesthesia, and every convulsive twist of my gut like my body screaming at me from the inside out, โWhat did you let them do to you!โ
All the while this never-ending chorus droning on and on, like the IV needle dripping liquid beauty into my blood. โWill I be pretty? Will I be pretty? Like my mother, unwrapping the gift wrap to reveal the bouquet of daughter her $10,000 bought her? Pretty? Pretty.โ
And now, I have not seen my own face for 10 years. I have not seen my own face in 10 years, but this is not about me.
This is about the self-mutilating circus we have painted ourselves clowns in. About women who will prowl 30 stores in 6 malls to find the right cocktail dress, but haven't a clue where to find fulfillment or how wear joy, wandering through life shackled to a shopping bag, beneath those 2 pretty syllables.
About men wallowing on bar stools, drearily practicing attraction and everyone who will drift home tonight, crest-fallen because not enough strangers found you suitably fuckable.
This, this is about my own some-day daughter. When you approach me, already stung-stayed with insecurity, begging, โMom, will I be pretty? Will I be pretty?โ I will wipe that question from your mouth like cheap lipstick and answer, โNo! The word pretty is unworthy of everything you will be, and no child of mine will be contained in five letters.
โYou will be pretty intelligent, pretty creative, pretty amazing. But you, will never be merely 'pretty'.โ
โI haven't got a speech. I didn't plan words. I didn't even try to I just knew I had to get here, to stand here, and I wanted you to listen. To really listen, not just pull a face like you're listening, like you do the rest of the time. A face that you're feeling instead of processing. You pull a face, and poke it towards the stage, and we lah-di-dah, we sing and dance and tumble around. And all you see up here, it's not people, you don't see people up here, it's all fodder. And the faker the fodder, the more you love it, because fake fodder's the only thing that works any more. It's all that we can stomach. Actually, not quite all. Real pain, real viciousness, that, we can take. Yeah, stick a fat man up a pole. We laugh ourselves feral, because we've earned the right, we've done cell time and he's slacking, the scum, so ha-ha-ha at him! Because we're so out of our minds with desperation, we don't know any better. All we know is fake fodder and buying shit. That's how we speak to each other, how we express ourselves, is buying shit. What, I have a dream? The peak of our dreams is a new app for our Dopple, it doesn't exist! It's not even there! We buy shit that's not even there. Show us something real and free and beautiful. You couldn't. Yeah? It'd break us. We're too numb for it. I might as well choke. It's only so much wonder we can bear. When you find any wonder whatsoever, you dole it out in meagre portions. Only then until it's augmented, packaged, and pumped through 10,000 preassigned filters till it's nothing more than a meaningless series of lights, while we ride day in day out, going where? Powering what? All tiny cells and tiny screens and bigger cells and bigger screens and fuck you! Fuck you, that's what it boils down to. Fuck you for sitting there and slowly making things worse. Fuck you and your spotlight and your sanctimonious faces. Fuck you all for thinking the one thing I came close to never meant anything. For oozing around it and crushing it into a bone, into a joke. One more ugly joke in a kingdom of millions. Fuck you for happening. Fuck you for me, for us, for everyone. Fuck you!โ