Episode 291： Stoicism- Ancient Philosophy for Entrepreneurs
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Summary
In this episode, I talk about Stoicism and how it can help you as an entrepreneur. Stoicism is an ancient philosophy that was founded by a guy who lost everything and had to figure out a way to think better so he could re-engage and rebuild his business.
Transcript
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I'm Patrick Bedevi, your host of Value Team, and today we're going to talk about philosophy.
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We're going to talk about stoicism, an ancient philosophy that helps you as an entrepreneur.
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So what most people don't know about stoicism is the fact that it got started by a guy who
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was an entrepreneur that lost everything, and then he had to figure out a way to think
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better so he can re-engage and rebuild his business.
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Back in the days around 303 BC, his business was, you know, he is shipwrecked, he loses
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everything, he has a loss, comes back at that time, the guy that everybody was studying was
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Through Socrates, a few different philosophies were branching out skepticism, cynicism, stoicism,
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and Seneca was kind of leading the stoicism, and the next thing you know, all these other
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And the whole idea about stoicism is really four different things.
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So what I'm going to do is I'm going to explain to you what those are and 10 things that you
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as an entrepreneur, you as an entrepreneur can pick up to think like them that helps you
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So when you look at stoicism, you're looking at four ways of thinking.
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Seneca once said, some periods of time are snatched from us, some are stolen, and some
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Yet the most shameful loss is the loss due to carelessness.
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You know, so many times you lose time not because of you, because something else happened to
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But the one part that you have to be fully upset about is when you lose time because
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And a lot of times that happens for a lack of preparation.
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So the second one has been a master of emotions, a big part of business is your emotions are
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There are three Greek words that Stoics follow.
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Number two is ataraxis, which is state of tranquility where your emotions become impenetrable.
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And last but not least is ataraxis, which is your ability to maintain inner freedom.
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The whole idea is as you're building whatever you're building, you have to figure out a way
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Because nothing, I'm telling you right now, 90% of the things that you're trying to do
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when you build a business, it happens out of nowhere.
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You don't know what's going to be taking place to you.
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If you don't have control of your emotions, you won't know how to handle them.
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And he said, yeah, this guy was doing this and he was doing this and he was doing that.
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This guy had a lot of money back in the 80s and the 90s.
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He walked away from virtues, lost everything, is facing 72 years in prison because he started
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So if you're walking the path of virtue, you eliminate start stops.
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I lose everything because I try to take a shortcut.
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But if you build your business based on the right virtues, right values, right principles,
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you are continuously compounding your momentum there.
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You're having a last but not least, a self-mastery.
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Now, for some of you that want to take this concept of Stoicism deeper, there's four guys
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There's a lot of books you can study, but I suggest you go study these as individuals.
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So those are some of the basic four things I'm talking to you about.
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You'll also hear about wisdom, temperance, justice, courage, and a bunch of different
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Having said this, I wanted to share with you 10 ways Stoics think that helps you as the
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CEO, executive, entrepreneur, intrapreneur, to better handle these issues when they come
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Number one, a Stoic looks at things from the stand of worst case scenario.
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If I make this decision, what is the worst case that could take place?
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Well, if we do this, we could be out of business.
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Or, yeah, if we do this, we could be out of business.
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Well, if we don't do this, what's going to happen?
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Because there's a risk as a businessman anyways.
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But they at least know that if they make this risk, there's a 10% chance they'll be out
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And what it does is, by far the biggest thing that it does, by far the biggest thing that
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You know how sometimes when you go to the doctor and the doctor gives you a shot and they'll
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You anticipated it and it didn't hurt you because you kind of knew what's coming.
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Versus if they don't tell you, then you're like, oh my gosh, what was that all about?
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Just like that, they like to go to negative visualization, worst case scenario.
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Earlier today, I sent a tweet out and a tweet said, if your goal, if your main goal in life
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is to chase millions, you will eventually slow down.
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But if your main goal in life is to chase mastery and experience mastery, you will never
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slow down because there's no such thing as slowing down, right?
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There's a lot of people online that they get the house, they get the car, they get the
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There's a lot of guys that get the money and they think life's going to be so much crazier.
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And then all of a sudden they're surprised and they're like, oh my gosh, I thought it
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Now, what is a million times better isn't the material things.
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What is a million times better is that idea of mastery, the way you process things, the
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way you look at the world in a whole different way than everybody else thinks about.
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Seneca, again, once said, wealth is the slave of the wise, but master of the fool.
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Listen, wealth is the slave of the wise, but master of the fool.
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Meaning, money controls the fool who doesn't realize money can be your slave.
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You tell money what to do, not the other way around.
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He told money what to do, not the other way around.
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So number two is the idea of wealth versus mastery.
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The more you can get in the state to say, I honestly have no idea what they went through
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Immediately, everybody wants to say, it's his fault.
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And look at this guy and what took place with him.
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No one knows what the whole idea is and all the stories that took place.
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So for them, because they avoid judging, they don't consume their brain thinking about
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somebody else's reason for failing because they are so much consumed about trying to
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When you judge, you have to start thinking about what other people did and why they failed.
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They avoid judging to the best of their abilities.
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In the world of business, you have to have emotions, but you have to also understand
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If you don't constantly talk about the emotional aspect of why you started your company, the
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vision, the cause, that lowers your social capital.
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Social capital, when bad things happen, you sit your group down and say, listen guys, let
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We built this company because we said we can do X, Y, Z better.
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And I know we're going through this right now, but let's not forget what we did.
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But the leader, the CEO, the entrepreneur, the intrapreneur, internally needs to understand
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When you do that, you make better decisions, sound decisions, better investments, better technology.
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You reason better because everything is based on data, numbers, predictive analytics, trends.
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Nothing is about just, oh my gosh, I feel good about it.
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By the way, VC folks, money folks, any of these guys that give money in that world, private
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equity guys, they're all rational, logic, perspective is where they're at.
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Number five, less hate to your competitors, instead understanding.
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Meaning, when I was initially coming up and my competitors were bashing me nonstop, I couldn't
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I was like, how could you say such a thing about what we're doing?
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But the moment I started studying a bit of stoicism, I started realizing, I understand what
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Their number one job when they wake up in the morning is to put me out of business.
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They need my market share and I'm taking it away from them.
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Again, once I understood this concept, I stopped being upset at them.
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Our relationship actually became better because I know what they were trying to do.
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Very simple relationship, if that makes any sense to you.
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Okay, so number five, you actually understand your competitors better.
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This is kind of strange on what stoics will sometimes do.
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So for instance, what they mean by willpower is a stoic will sometimes sacrifice something.
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Let's just say you've already made your millions or you've made money and you can afford to
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go first class or you can afford to do certain things.
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They will sometimes sacrifice what they can afford to remind them of what it was like to
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Because as you start making money, you start believing your own hype.
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Everybody around you tells you how amazing you are, how special you are.
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Or they will step away and put themselves in situations to sacrifice what they can easily
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afford to remind them what it was like to have nothing that produces the feeling of
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And it obviously ends up producing better relationships and people stick around with
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Okay, so number seven is stoic is driven by the freedom to think for themselves, right?
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So as you're building a business, everyone gives you an opinion.
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Everybody all of a sudden becomes an expert, right?
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It's like when you get married, everybody starts saying, when he doesn't have a kid,
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So for me, whenever somebody gets married, one of the first things I'll say is I say,
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listen, just so you know, your in-laws and your in-laws are immediately going to
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start saying, when are you going to have a kid?
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And then if you don't have it for a year or two, they'll start saying your stuff doesn't
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Anticipate it and stop them in the beginning and just tell them, we're not planning on having kids
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for a few years, even if you're planning on having kids, if that makes any sense.
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If you don't get pregnant, no one's putting you to pressure there, right?
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Henry Thoreau once said, to a philosopher, all news, as it is called, is gossip.
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And they who edit and read it are old women over tea.
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To my Armenian friends who are watching this, there's a phrase they call keskenik.
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If you know what keskenik means, you know exactly what this means.
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Like in the Armenian community, you would see, you know, your auntie and your grandma and
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they would sit, 70-year-olds are having coffee.
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That's what this guy's trying to say, Henry Thoreau, he's a philosopher.
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The point is, you cannot consume too much biased content.
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One of the reasons why, if you can figure out a way to avoid watching the news, rather read
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it from a writer or somebody that is unbiased sharing what took place.
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Not the ones that add their own twist to it, right?
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You watch Fox, you know what they're going to say.
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You watch CNN, MSN, you know what they're going to say.
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And when you have somebody saying it, they're adding their emotions into it.
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Rather, I have three news emails I read every morning.
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This is what happened with such and such yesterday.
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Facts, facts, facts, facts, facts, facts, facts.
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Facts, facts, facts, facts, facts, facts, right?
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And then you and I have the opportunity to decipher between the stats and say, you know
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I think that I'm good because you want to think for yourself.
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In the world of business, you have to figure out a way to think for yourself because many
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times you will make a decision that nobody will support, but you have access to all the
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If after making a decision, you're still consuming all the content from other people that are naysayers,
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Like you're not going to play offense, you'll be defensive, you'll be a little bit hesitant.
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That's what it means by they were driven by freedom to think for themselves.
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Point number eight, they're overly protective of their environment.
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I mean, when I say overly, it's like overly obsessive, protective, like get away from me
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Epictetus once said, above all, keep a close watch on this, that you are never so tied to your
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former acquaintances and friends that you are pulled down to their level.
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You must choose whether to be loved by these friends and remain the same person or to become
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If you try to have it both ways, you will neither make progress nor keep what you once had.
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I mean, there's nothing complicated about what he said.
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What he's trying to say is, yeah, I want to go be successful, but I still want to party
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Yeah, I want to go be an entrepreneur, create my own business, but I still want to be my
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A couple of your friends may have said, I also want to go here.
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What Efectidas is saying, you want to go here, but your friends are pulling you back
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You want to change the ways you think because the old ways of thinking is not going to get
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And if you don't cut this off, you ain't going to go and get the distance of winning.
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So you have to anticipate that part and be protective of your environment.
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Let me explain to you what they mean by authenticity.
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You'll keep hearing about phrases of, you got to model this person, model his behavior,
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model her behavior, model this person's behavior, model this person, that person, this person.
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But if you model too much, you don't even know it, you all of a sudden imitate.
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And if you imitate, you all of a sudden lose your own uniqueness.
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Now, some people model because they're uncomfortable with their quirkiness, with their own flaws.
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Like for me, you know how many times I say certain words and you say, Pat, that's not proper English.
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Oh, Pat, sometimes you say the sentence and it's a run-on.
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But I'm not trying to model to speak like somebody else.
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If you were to go out there and say, well, Pat speaks like this person, you wouldn't be able to say it because I don't know how to speak like anybody else.
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Accept the fact that you have quirks, differences.
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Don't make it something like you try to avoid doing certain things because what if somebody finds out about your quirks?
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Number 10, last but not least, adapt and move on.
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Epictetus once said, if you are defeated once and you tell yourself that you will overcome it, but carry on as before, know in the end you'll also be so ill and weakened that eventually you won't even notice your mistake and will begin to rationalize your behavior.
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Okay, so if you just told yourself, Pat, that sounded good, but I have no clue what the hell he just said right there.
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What he's trying to say is, okay, so I did something, I made a mistake, but I want to move on, but I'm still clinging to my old habits and ways that I try to solve the problem this way, and I face another issue, and I'm still trying to solve in a method that I solved before.
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Don't expect anything to improve because you haven't yet adapted and moved on.
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Adapting means I tried away, it didn't work, I adapted, made adjustments, have a different approach to it, then I advanced.
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So you'll see a lot of people that have hit a wall, right?
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And then they'll make a decision that didn't work, that wasn't the best decision, they'll go down.
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And then they get to the same wall again, they make the same exact decision again, they keep falling back down.
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Like so many people, for example, say you are wired to be an entrepreneur, and you're a very great entrepreneur.
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You try four or five times to become an entrepreneur, it doesn't work for you, and you realize, I'm going to do it again, I'm going to do it again, I'm going to do it again, that's fine.
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You know, you try to go out there and reposition yourself to do something you're not good at, and you keep fighting, fighting, fighting, you're not adapting.
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You have to understand what your strengths are, you have to understand what your abilities are, and the more you're playing to that, the more you can make adjustments.
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But if you don't make any adjustments and adapt, you'll keep going back and getting the same results, and nothing will change.
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And eventually you hear this phrase, business just wasn't for me, I just couldn't do it.
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This guy has changed industries ten times, and every time he changes industries.
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This is the one that's for me, and then again, that doesn't work, but this is the one for me.
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Everything you do, when you reach an issue, if you make the decisions, the same exact approach you took before, nothing's going to change.
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