How Did They Get There ? - The Biography of Successful People

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Recipes for Success

Motivation 

A uneducated motivated student is still more successful than a demotivated scholar. 

A long list of accolades won’t make a person successful unless they have the motivation to change their living standard - because even if a person is born into royalty, with all the wealth at their disposal, there is no guarantee that they will be any more successful than someone who started from nothing to build their empire. Albeit the royal may have a more easier path, but without the drive to step on the gas, even the best car wouldn’t move. 

Persistance 

consistency is the key. At the start, it’s perfectly normal to not be good at the things you are doing, the key is to continue doing that said thing. Just like how it is easy to start a book, it is more difficult to continue reading the book when the plot gets boring. Similarly, starting a project is easy but it’s not always easy to continue when the job gets repetitive. 

This can be applied to anything, starting your life as an instagram blogger, a baker, a trader. What matters is the consistency in your actions - the constant posting, the constant orders, the constant learning. 

Perseverance 

success is only known to those who have experienced failures - as much s this has been said over and over again, there is a reason why this is a cliche. Because it is important. How many times have someone abandoned a project when things got hard, how many businesses or start ups had failed when the funding wasn’t enough - all of these failures are very common, especially in the entrepreneurial sector. If facebook, amazon, google, microsoft and etc gave up after their first try - they wouldn’t be in Forbes billionaires list. 

So yes, failures suck - but at the end of the day, we all have to face failures once or twice or maybe even 10 times in our lives before we hit the jackpot. 

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Definitely !!!! 

check out more inspirational stories here 

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✨ Affirmations For Success ✨

✓ I always succeed.

✓ I am destined for success.

✓ I am a magnet for success.

✓ I emanate success every day.

✓ Being the best is easy for me.

✓ Reaching the top comes naturally to me.

✓ Success comes to me easily and effortlessly.

✓ It is easy and effortless for me to show up as my best.

✓ I love excelling professionally and it is effortless for me.

✓ My accomplishments, skills and knowledge are valued, recognized and applauded.

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Reblog if you agree !! 

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The next “it” job

Considering that no professions are safe from automation, what are some professions that would be in high demand when flying cars, holographic iPhones and AI maids are our new “normal”? According to the book “21 lessons in the 21st century” - the main profession would be philosophy.

Even if most professions that require innate human “gut feelings” have been translated and coded into machines, there are still some grey areas that machines cannot decode. Machines learning allows AI to develop tremendously through past experiences, essentially learning from their own mistakes and coming up with different possibilities that humans may not even be capable of, this is what makes AI so terrifyingly powerful. However, the aforementioned grey areas include ethical dilemmas that have no right or wrong answers such as the infamous trolley problem.

For example, imagine a self-driving car with one passenger about to collide with two unfortunate pedestrians, the car needs to make a decision between swerving and killing its owner or collide with the pedestrians. I am not going to further indulge in the right or wrong answer for this problem but my point is, these sort of philosophical scenarios may have simply been just that, scenarios when we did not have self-driving cars capable of making split-time decisions. The normal driver would not have the time or emotional capacity to debate on whether to crash or to swerve, many other factors like stress and capability would have easily made the decision for them. However, with self-driving cars devoid of human mistakes, these scenarios may become reality.

In the future, with more development of AI “care-rs”, there is a need for philosophers who can come up with these scenarios so programmers can somewhat “solve” and enter into code which decision the AI needs to enact.

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What technological and biological advances mean for the 21st century

Though many biological advances were made possible with technological advances, the reverse impact of biology on technology has recently made groundbreaking inventions.

1. Computers with emotions

Due to discoveries regarding how emotions impact the body via increased heart rate, sweating glands, and other hidden biochemical reactions that occur within the body. It is now “possible” for machines to identify the complex behaviours and emotions of humans. This contradicts the previous theory that machines will never be able to replace humans in professions that involve human communication. As a matter of fact, it seems more logical now to replace all lawyers, bankers and social service workers with machines as this reduces the chances of deceit and human error.

2. It is a constant cycle

The advances in technology allow researchers and biologists to explore more about the body’s hidden mechanism. In turn, this allows technology to advance even further by applying this knowledge to computer algorithm codes.

3. What does this mean for future jobs?

The continuous advances mean that in the future, no professions are safe from automation. Even the jobs that require the most human connection or so-called human intuition such as private detectives will easily find their jobs replaced by AI robots who can detect even the slightest change in the suspect’s heartbeat.

In my personal opinion, all of this may sound intensely scary (what will happen to my future job?) but we humans will always prevail, as we have done previously during the agricultural/industrial evolution. Who knows? Maybe in 50 years, jobs such as policemen and drivers would be professions of a long pastime and what replaced them were drone operators and gene designers.

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Men’s role in discussing the patriarchy - a discussion following Sarah Everard’s death

The recent media coverage and awareness raised around women safety and sexual harassment after the death of Sara Everard has really showed the UK and largely the World the every-day struggle that women disproportionately face. It is appalling that women live in an unsafe world, a world whereby they are fearful of walking home alone at night, having to fake phone calls, thinking carefully about how they dress. And yes, predatory men are responsible for it.

Whilst many spoke out in support of Everard and called out the sexual assaults that still happen on the street, hashtags such as #NotAllMen surfaced with some men thinking that they were entitled to disregard the significance of the issue so long as they were not responsible. On a personal experience, a friend of mine posted, on his Instagram story, a short video of a women being sexual assaulted, followed by another post of a man being sexually assaulted. He then later said that “I’m just trying to show that assault happens on both sides, and that’s it”.

Truth be told, it is rhetoric and opinions such as these that are problematic. The portrayal that both men and women face harassment and assault on the same level as if it was a 50-50 odds is exactly what prevents society from recognising that abuse be it on the streets or at home, have victims who are disproportionately women and that the patriarchy is still prevalent today.

The Office of National Statistic (ONS) has found that there were 4.9 million women who were victims of sexual assault compared to 989 thousand men in the same period of time. This statistic isn’t obviously used to say that women don’t care about male victims or that the experiences of men who face sexual assault have a diminishing value, but it is used to show that there is an inherent problem for women and just like any other piece of statistic, it would show that there is an association between gender and assault.

So the appropriate role of men within this discussion starts from them acknowledging the statistic and realising that it is an issue that women disproportionately face and are sicked and tired of. Just because you as an individual male isn’t responsible for the issue at hand and treat women with the dignity and respect they deserves, doesn’t mean that you have or should have the power to shift the discussion to hashtag #NotAllMen. Women are aware that not all men are sex predators or contribute to the patriarchy but the space of discussion after something like Everard’s case has to be focused on women and calling out men who are predatory. It is the focus of the decisions, we want lawmakers and the community to do something, to prevent future victims.

Men do have an important role to play to help raise awareness to this issue is by reposting the experiences of all sexual assault victims and by educating ourselves about the unique problems and fear that women have to face surrounding assault.

Note: This is an opinion piece written from a perspective of a women who has been simply reflecting on her past experiences and conversations with male friends.

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The concept of microfinancing

What is Microfinance

whilst in certain instances, it may not eradicate poverty or reduce it to a desired level - it is still in my opinion successful as it gives poorer individual greater opportunities and options in which they can potentially take, it has helped families deal with emergencies when they are on unstable income, it provides an alternative to payday loan

Obstacles to Microfinance

Part of that story is that people very often use microcredit for their day-to-day needs, rather than for business loans. They may have a need for cash to meet emergencies, or for a big purchase, or even just to provide an inflow of money to put food on the table when income fluctuates — and Microfinance helps to meet that need

thus short-terminsm may not be a bad thing

Success of Microfinance

if we were to shift to a loss model then it would mean that we would need large amount of cash and unfortunately we live in a world where absolute poverty affects billion of people and we simply don’t have the cash or more accurately, we don’t have enough people contributing to this - we have been seeing a trend where foreign nations are not fulfilling their 0.7% target to foreign aid

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The stories of successful people - Steve Jobs - Ep 3

How it began?

Jobs dropped out of Reed College. He felt that his parents’ money were being wasted on his college education and admitted that, “It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made.” When dropping out of College, Jobs slept on the floor of his friend room, he returned Coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to finance his food expenses and he would walk 7 miles to the Hare Krishna temple to get a “good meal” once every week.  

In 1974, Jobs landed a job as a video game designer at Atari Corporation. The job allowed him to reunite with his high school friend, Stephen Wozniak. Both of them decided to start a business together, operating in Job’s garage, after Wozniak’s initial design of the computer logic board was turned down by his own company. 

Their achievements with the Apple I soon became acknowledged by the technology industry. This was reflected when in 1981, his company recorded the largest IPO in history at that time. 

Jobs had always had a strong opinion and insisted that things were done to his liking. He would reject models on the basis that they were “unattractive”. But when he first introduced the Mac, it didn’t do well in sales as it was overly priced and the functions were limited with very few applications. Such failure and his slow response in solving the issue led to Apple’s board of directors removing him. 

During that time away from Apple, Jobs founded NeXT and worked with Pixar. NeXT was soon acquired by Apple (who was at the time struggling) in 1996 and Jobs returned to Apple. 

In 1998, he introduced the iMac which due to its high-speed processing recording the highest PC sales at the time. Jobs continued to pioneer, innovate and engineer designs at Apple, doing so successful, until he passed away in 2011, due to pancreatic cancer.

His advice on how to live life 

You cannot connect the dots looking forward. Jobs gave an example to illustrate this by showing that during his time at Reed College where he had dropped out, he took on calligraphy lessons that all came back to him when he was designing the first Macintosh computer. He never knew, at the time, that he took the class, that he would be able to practical apply it in life. 

              “Trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.”

Only settle, when you’ve found something you love. Question yourself everyday by asking yourself “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?. And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.” 

There are always silver linings in the darkest clouds. It wasn’t easy for a founder like Jobs to stomach the fact that he was kicked out of his own company. But he later admitted that the time off had benefitted him as “The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything.”

Be honest to yourself. Your time is limited. “Don’t let the noises of others’ opinions drown out of your own inner voice.” Always trust your heart and your intuition as they already have the power to know what you truly want to become and thus everything else is secondary. 

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The stories of successful people - George Soros (Pt 1) - Ep 2

Who is George Soros 

This infamous man renowned for his numerous economic and political impacts throughout not only America and Europe but throughout the world is one of Forbes wealthiest man and a very generous philanthropist. Here is his life story 

He was born in Budapest to two middle-class Jewish parents in 1930, he lived a modest childhood until the second world war when he and his family were forced to escape and live under false names. After the war, Soros moved to the UK where he studied philosophy (both undergraduate and a master) in LSE and where he met his influencer, Karl Popper. 

Then he moved to New York to pursue a job in finance, after spending some time as a souvenir shop salesman - he thought of bigger things and wrote to every investment bank in London before moving to Singer & Friedlander to start his first big firm - financial job. Throughout 1954 -1959, he worked various jobs in the various big named firms whilst pursuing his theory of reflexivity. 

Theory of reflexivity 

Unlike many of his economical contemporaries, Soros believed that the economic situation of the country is derived from not just the fundamental market mechanisms but also the fallible ideas of the participants. Therefore implying that investors do not base their decisions on facts but their perception of the facts in a process that tends towards disequilibrium. As prices continue to rise or fall below reality - this results in the boom and bust of the economic cycle {To know more - check out https://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/reflexivity.asp}

In 1969 - George Soros started dabbling in hedge funds to implement his trading strategies, initially, he started with $100,000 of the firm’s money before setting up his own “double eagle hedge fund”. In 1973 - the hedge fund had around $12 million which formed the basis for his “Soros Fund Management” later renamed the Quantum Fund. In 2011, Soros returned all outside investors funds and instead invested his own $24.5 billion family fortune - by 2013, the Quantum Hedge Fund made highlights being the most successful hedge fund in history making $5.5 billion in that year alone. 

The man who broke the Bank of England 

In September 1922, Soros had been building his short position in pounds sterling after recognizing the conflict UK had in the European exchange rate mechanism (high inflation, high interest rates and low assent prices). Thus in 16 September 1922, the black Wednesday crisis - Soros’s fund sold short more than $10 billion in pounds, earning him $1 billion profit when the UK withdrew from the EERM and thus devaluing the pound. 

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The Stories of Successful people: Jack Ma - EP1

His Earlier life

Ma grew up in the city of Hangzhou where ever since a young age, he had a passion for English. With his third try, in 1988, he obtained an English degree from the Hangzhou Teachers College. He later though at Hangzhou Dianzi University for a period of time.

In 1995, Ma was granted the opportunity to represent the Hangzhou city government to a trip to the US. On this trip, it was Ma's first time to come upon the internet and quickly realised its true potential in China. When he returned, he started his company that helped Chinese businesses create websites. The startup soon came to a fail, due to the overly saturated market and big players within it.

Beginning 1998, Ma headed a government backed Internet company in the city of Beijing but realised that working for the government would limit his freedom to explore the potentials of the Internet and extract the economic opportunities available.

Ma persuaded some of his colleagues to join him with his new startup, Alibaba.

Which slowly gained its recognition and trust from small businesses and now has expanded into one of China's biggest online commerce company.

His Outlook on life

Be optimistic. "When you are optimistic, it's always an opportunity"

Appreciate inexperience. "The best asset that you have is that you are young."

Serve the consumers. Always ask yourself is there an area where I can make a difference?

Don't worry about money

"Money follows people and people follow dreams. "

His share of failures

Ma had experience his share of failures before his well- known success. He applied for Harvard for 10 times and had been rejected from the University ever single time. He could not borrow from the bank to start his own business as he didn't have the necessary credits. He didn't earn a single dollar revenue from his business for the first 3 years.

His advice on how to live life?

20-30 years old: work for a small company. It is important that you can shadow a boss and learn how to be responsible for many different things at once. It is all about who you learn from.

30-40 years old: be entrepreneurial, if you want to! If you want to do something for yourself and work for yourself, go for it! "You still can afford to lose"

40-50 years old: stick to what you are good at! It is at the later part of your career so it is better for you to do something that you love and something that you are already good at as oppose to exploring a new industry.

50-60 years old: invest in the next generation! Work with the young generation, invest in their companies, train them and be their employees as they are the future after all!