Posted on 09/13/2014 4:36:16 AM PDT by Kaslin
I once knew a guy who wanted to be a singer. I didn’t think he could sing very well, but in all fairness, that never stopped Justin Bieber. In any case, I inquired as to whether he was in a band. He said, “no.” I asked whether he had a demo tape. Nope, he didn’t. I wondered if he was regularly performing anywhere or getting lessons. Uh-uh, he wasn’t. Baffled, I asked him how he expected to become a singer without doing any of those things. He told me that he was hoping to be “discovered” by someone in the music industry.
A lot of people might think that sounds perfectly ridiculous, but don’t we see it in the movies all the time? Isn’t that what happened with Harry Potter and the Percy Jackson series? Doesn’t Professor X do that in the X-Man movies? How about Star Wars?
In the real world, it seldom works like that. Chances are, no one who can really change your life for the better is going to “discover” you because 500 other people who do the same thing as you are already trying to get their very limited attention. As Abe Lincoln said, "Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.”
Of course, other people assume that they won’t be discovered because the really exceptional talents are so inherently amazing that they stand out in a crowd. To them, great ability is a gift. This is the theme of The Bourne Identity movies, Frozen, Ender’s Game and almost every super-hero movie other than Batman along with an almost unlimited number of other movies where we see people who practically have super human levels of ability despite never seeming to train, practice or do anything to hone their skills.
Many of us buy into this idea because of professional basketball and football players. Obviously, the players who make it have certain genetic gifts that allow them to compete. But, is that really why they made it? Roughly 1-in-25 high school football players make it to college and then 1-out-of-every 14 college athletes eligible for the NFL draft each year get picked. The odds of making it as a pro-basketball player are just as daunting. Roughly 3 in 10,000 high school players ever make it to the pros – and those are two of the sports where physical skills have the biggest impact. In other words, there are loads of players with as much athletic ability as Kobe Bryant of Peyton Manning who never even cut it as bench warmers in the pros.
When you get beyond a very small number of sports, raw genetic talent has a very small impact. The people who are the best at a profession are typically the ones who like it enough to outwork, out study and out hustle the other people in their profession year after year. The most genetically gifted surgeon, salesman or teacher who graduates from the best college isn’t in the same league as the person with middling natural talent who has been working diligently for a decade. Thomas Sowell was right when he said, “Experience trumps brilliance.”
Worse yet, Hollywood has moved beyond the incredibly gifted savant who’s great to the “average” guy with no particular talents who somehow manages to save the day despite having no appreciable skills. The hero in Kung-Fu Panda likes to eat a lot and somehow that helps him become the “chosen one.” Even if Hobbits are generally stealthier than other creatures, Bilbo Baggins was utterly unremarkable and there was nothing about him that should have given Gandalf the idea that he could be the linchpin of their group. Then there are movies like Rando, The Lego Movie, or one I just caught this week, Ride-Along. After failing to show the most basic skills in every situation related to police work, Kevin Hart breaks a huge case and saves a tough, competent cop from an impossible situation using skills he gleaned from playing a video game.
There’s nothing wrong with playing video games. It’s fun and there are even some people I know who’ve made a living in the industry as game designers or believe it or not, even professional gamers. But, guess what? Those people aren’t just having a blast with their friends playing their favorite games, they worked their behinds off, day-in and day-out to make it in a competitive industry. There are an awful lot of people out there, playing video games, partying and goofing off who think they have oodles of untapped potential. Maybe they’re right about that, but the sad fact of the matter is that someone with great untapped potential will probably fail if they don’t spend enough time preparing for the day they get an opportunity. Movies love to play up “heart,” but in the real world, “heart” loses to preparation 99 times out-of-100.
That’s particularly relevant because Hollywood portrays thriving corporations and successful businessmen who’ve risen to their top of their fields as evil so often that it’s practically a cliché. The Umbrella Corporation from Resident Evil series, Weyland-Yutani from the Alien series, Omni-consumer from the Robocop series, Gordon Gekko from Wall Street, Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg from the 5th Element, Ebeneezer Scrooge from A Christmas Carol, etc., etc., etc., from here to infinity. To be a rich, successful businessman who put in long hours working his way up to the top in the movies is to be unethical, a drone or a greedy sociopath who’d kick a puppy down the stairs to make 5 more dollars.
This is the mentality that makes people think that the “rich” and “successful” must either be lucky or alternately, they must have done something wrong by default. Meanwhile, in the real world, those are the guys living great lifestyles, marrying the hottest women and providing people with every product they love from iPods to Coca-Cola – and the truth is that most of them deserve it.
Recently, PNC Wealth Management conducted a survey of people with more than $500,000 free to invest as they like, a fair definition of “wealthy,” and possibly “millionaire” once you begin including home equity and other assets. Only 6% of those surveyed earned their money from inheritance alone. 69% earned their wealth mostly by trading time and effort for money, or by “working.”
The truth is, the American dream is still out there if you’re willing to educate yourself, work hard, work smart and save your money. It’s not about doing the right thing, it’s about doing the right thing every day, over and over for decades. It’s about working as an intern without pay, working two jobs if it needs to be done and foregoing the flashy car because you want a bigger cushion in your bank account.
Hollywood isn’t going to celebrate you for doing that. In fact, they may cast people like you as the villain and some Hollywood actor like Sean Penn may complain that YOU aren’t “paying your fair share” when you finally start making some serious money at fifty after a lifetime of working your fingers to the bone. Cher will tell you that you’re “greedy” for being upset that the government is taking so much of your money and giving it to people who don’t work half as hard as you do. Michael Moore will have a press conference outside one of his mansions to declare that people like you are ruining America because when your small business took off and you made a fraction of what he makes off of one of his films, you didn’t pay your employees what he considered a high enough wage.
What it all comes down to is that when you start to feel as if Hollywood is shaking its knobby finger directly at people like you, that’s when you know you’re on the right track.
I'm sorry, that's so far from the truth, it pains me to read what you said.
Working hard, striving for excellence in what you do not only leads many to success, but those who don't reap big financially (and there are some) reap in spades the developed character of honesty, loyalty, and the capacity to deal with life in a whole different dimension. Developed character is its own reward.
Long ago I heard this quote from George Gobel (successful entertainer at the end of his life): "It took me thirty years to become an overnight success." You might want to think about that for a while........
When I was younger I changed jobs every now and then just for variety and also exposure to different skill sets in the medical career I was in and also for increasing pay but money wasn’t always the sole factor.
My one regret is not investing more wisely at a younger age or having the knowledge much earlier. Although currently I’m financially sound but my overall wealth could have been so much greater today from better habits started earlier in the area of investing. Perhaps that’s true for most of us.
>>69% earned their wealth mostly by trading time and effort for money, or by “working.”
It is worth noting they also attained that wealth by living below their means enough to accumulate those investible assets.
It does seem that people who are career successful are successful early in life. I’m not sure if this is a credit to nature or if as one ages their energies are diverted elsewhere (e.g. being a successful parent).
Then again, perhaps we only read about the young successful and their IPOs (not that success needs to result in a need for investors or selling your business to shareholders, but it is a visible metric) as it is considered more newsworthy.
That's an envious statement, which is leftist loser thinking. Envy is a side-effect of excessive vanity. Many higher on the economic food chain are surprisingly humble people, humble enough to do the work and suffer the failures to get there. They have little to do with their excess wealth but wisely allocate their capital to create jobs and opportunity for others. Their wealth may or may not bring them more happiness. If you want to experience more moments of hedonistic euphoria than a rich person, become heroin addict.
“Early to bed, early to rise, work like hell and advertise.”
Thanks, I make my money in the stock market by expecting stocks to move in a way that has no relationship whatsoever to how hard the people there are working, what their product is, or how much they sell it for.
Hawkins forgot to mention black politicians. Some of them (Colin Powell, B. O’Bummer) easily affirmative-actioned their way to the top.
That statement came across as something I would expect to hear from someone who saw the movie but never read any of Tolkien's books.
And what should be the most outrageous insult of all, your community organizer/president will tell you that,
"You didn't build that!!! Someone else did!!!"
TOTALLY agree! My husband has three children from his ex liberal, socialist works-for-child-protective-services-in-NY shrew.
The oldest just barely graduated high school with a 1.7 GPA and is a pot fiend (which Mommy denies). Mommykins has helicopter, coddled and medicated all three into oblivion.
She fills them with pipe dreams—she’s told the oldest he’s going to be the next X-Factor or American Idol discovery. The kid has NO musical talent and sounds like a cat with his tail on fire. She sends the two boys off to Rock Star Camp every year without fail ($500 a week per person).
Now we’ve found out through facebook that she’s shipped off the oldest to live with his alternative lifestyle Uncle and his “spouse” who are known to have pot/booze parties with minors. No plans for the future—that is until he turns 20—she’ll cram him into community college to collect the extra child support that can continue well past the age of 21 here in biomom-centric NY. (search engine: Age 29 Law)
She’s made the daughter, almost 16, a quasi lesbian, militant feminist who manages to play tonsil hockey with a 19 year old GUY. All with mommykins approval.
And because this is NYS where men have ZERO rights to their own children, absolutely NOTHING can be done about it withoug incurring six figures of legal fees.
Talk about the failed self esteem movement!
Plus, their children were raised to be similarly industrious, shrewd citizens. Their children turned out better than the children of rich parents who gave their kids everything and didn't expect much out of them. Many of the rich, lazy kids who were simply given a lot of money without having to work for it soon spent their inheritance and didn't know how to make money.
Yes, but working hard for something gives you a much better chance for success than sitting back and waiting for things to come to you.
No, not everybody who wants to get rich and works hard for it becomes wealthy. But I'll bet on that person to have a better life than people who sit on their backsides giving as little effort as possible blaming others for their situation.
“Although currently I’m financially sound but my overall wealth could have been so much greater today from better habits started earlier in the area of investing. Perhaps that’s true for most of us.”
Well, I HAD planned carefully, did everything right from a young age and STILL got snookered by my ex (I refuse to give him the title of ‘husband’) who systematically drained our retirement savings (hundreds of thousands of dollars) and left town with another woman.
So, starting over at 50 wasn’t easy, but I’m in better shape than most.
Still sucks, but Karma is going to give him a big, wet, sloppy KISS on the lips one day, and I hope I’m around to witness it! :)
I think one thing that happens is that the ‘hopefulness’ of youth becomes replaced by the anxiety that one is running out of time. Running out of time to enjoy and be happy in life (and therefore less willing to put everything into your job). Running out of time to make those changes in direction and take the risky moves that are part of great success. Etc. Add to this that you feel (for good reason) that you are looked upon differently by others as you age, one has less of that ‘nothing is going to stop me’ optimism that drives you. I think it's important to bring carry-over early successes into later years in life. That provides a bedrock that keeps the ‘hopefulness’ alive - and keeps you ambitious. That doesn't mean you can't start late and do great things. It's just harder.
Many years ago Burt Reynolds posed nude for Cosmopolitan magazine. George Gobel said, “I posed nude once...and that’s when people found out why they call me “Lonesome George”. It was one of the funniest things I have ever heard. America lost a real treasure when Lonesome George passed on at the early age of 71. Hard to believe someone so lovable came out of Chicago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqiS_U9erTE
“Thanks, I make my money in the stock market by expecting stocks to move in a way that has no relationship whatsoever to how hard the people there are working, what their product is, or how much they sell it for.”
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I would not be surprised at all if you are doing quite well at that. I have seen some absolutely worthless stocks go up like rockets, usually they come down just as fast but it is all in the timing.
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