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One of my youngest memories include my auntie tucking me into my top – level bunk bed.
“What do you want to be when you grow up?”
My ambitions as big as the sky, I told her I wanted to be a firefighter who got to arrest bad guys. As I got older my ambitions shifted to become more “realistic”; until High School hit. It’s funny how when you’re younger, you just want to be older, you just want to grow up. As you grow up and reach the ages you desired to reach though, you look back on your childhood and wish for the youthful age once again.
A young mind, is a mind full of possibility. As we graduate into the “real world” we’re met with failures, controversies, hardships and obstacles; vs. the protective, nurturing household of our parents. The “real world” is full of people who want to succeed, and this keeps most of us from following the dreams that we’ve always wanted to.
One of the fundamental laws of Social Dynamics is that “Relationships = Life”. What is a relationship? A relationship is anything where there is an exchange of value between two entities. You can have a relationship with anything; buy a TV and it gives you entertainment. Put gas in your car and it drives you places. Make your bed and it’s comfy and warm when you get back into it.
The past year has been spent developing relationships with people in my life, and it’s been over the course of the past couple of months that I’ve come to the realization that the most important relationship that you develop is a relationship with skill sets.
What is Success?
Success comes in this life is when preparation meets opportunity. Preparation means that you’ve developed a relationship with a skill set, exchanged enough value over time that when opportunity comes; you’re able to seize it. If you ever receive an opportunity, and you’re unable to capitalize, it means that you weren’t prepared enough. Most people see this as a failure, and they won’t look for the lesson in the missed opportunity. Every missed opportunity is a chance to get better, becoming more aware of how to seize future opportunities. This idea can get lost when the opportunity at hand seems so large.
The strength of any relationship is based on the amount of value exchanged, over time, between two entities. Value is based on emotion. If your emotion grows stronger and stronger over time with your relationship, you’ve developed a healthy relationship with an equal exchange of value. Your current TV can only give you so much value, until the new one comes out and you feel the emotional need for your new TV. If you don’t really take care of your car, you won’t have that much of a relationship with it.
On the other hand, think of the guy who religiously works on his 1969 Oldsmobile on the weekends. The relationship with his car is so strong, because there’s been a value exchange over a prolonged amount of time, and the car keeps looking better (giving him value) because he keeps working on it (giving the car value). The relationship grows stronger.
Skill Set Development
Everything in this life comes down to skill set, and the skill set you choose is a relationship that you build. Becoming an engineer is a learned skill, becoming a professional baseball player is a learned skill, becoming a warehouse worker is a learned skill. We live in a world where you need to work to survive, you cannot simply sit at home and have your food and water provided for you. You need to develop a skill set to a level where it provides you with the necessities for survival (at the base level) and gives you extreme abudunance (at the highest levels of your skill sets). Think of an amateur league basketball player, vs. Kobe Bryant.
That being said, if you go to school for 4 years to become an engineer, when you graduate from school there’s no questions asked that you’ll be a good engineer. That’s what you paid for! You invested $40,000.00 and four years into the skill set of becoming an engineer, and as a result, you came out of school with the wisdom of practical application and learned knowledge that prepares you for any opportunity that comes up in the engineering market.
Success = PREPARATION + OPPORTUNITY
School being the only option is for the individuals who don’t know how to prepare on their own. Part of real – life preparation is the realization that opportunities are going to come when you’re not ready yet; when you haven’t developed a solid enough relationship with your skill set. When you’re in school, you spend 4 years developing the skill set of engineering before any opportunities arise for potential jobs. That means that there’s almost a 0% of failure, because when a job comes up after you’re done school, you’re more than qualified. The relationship with you and your skill set of engineering is strong; you’ve given the skill set $40,000.00, four years of your life and invested countless hours into learning the skill set, and as a result, the skill set has given you unlimited knowledge in the field of engineering.
In real life though, that safety net doesn’t exist. There will be opportunities that arise when you’re not ready for them. Just like school, you must find a way to invest in your skill set. For some of us entrepreneurs, that investment means quitting your job and jumping into doing what you love. For most people, they invest into Social Dynamics, because Social Dynamics shows you how to build a relationship with everything (friends, family, strangers, your environment, your world), skill sets included.
In the real world, failure means that you’re one step closer to success; as long as your learning your lessons and are dedicated to the process. Dedication to process means that you CANNOT fail, because success is part of the process of developing relationships with skill sets. Every day you’re building relationships in your life. Do you choose to build a relationship with your couch and your TV, or healthy foods and the gym?
My Investment Into My Skill Sets
One year ago today, I made my investment. I was paying $300.00 a month at my 5 bedroom house in Whitehorn. I was living comfortably, with enough money to spend on whatever I wanted. I was making around $2000.00 a month, working 45 hours a week.
Cam offered me a place to live in the Downtown Core of Calgary. The place that he offered me to live was $1850.00 a month, $625.00 more than I was paying at the time. At first I was resilient, but I ended up giving in and accepting his offer. Here I sit in my Downtown Condo, reminiscing on the year and the lessons that have come with it. My year’s biggest lesson was the relationship I was able to build with Social Dynamics, as a result of my investment in the skill set.
$7500.00 is my investment over the course of the past year; but as a result I’ve grown beyond anything I ever believed to be possible. I’m making more money now, working two nights a week, than I was working 9 hour days, 5 days a week. The relationships in my life have never been stronger; including the relationship with my skill sets of Social Dynamics and Writing.
Life is all about relationships. You don’t need to go to school to build any relationships; you simply have to invest in the skill set. You can have a relationship with anything, your relationships are not limited to people. This world does not function properly without relationships, because a seller without a buyer is a person stuck with product.
Social Dynamics teaches you not only how to develop relationships with people, but with anything; including skill sets.
Start Investing, or Live with Unfulfilled Potential
Go ahead; go to school for 4 years, invest $40,000.00 and countless hours developing a relationship with a skill – set comfortably; or you can choose to invest in Social Dynamics. Social Dynamics is the smart option, because $40,000.00 and four years of your life limits you to one skill set, one relationship… whatever it is that you go to school for. Social Dynamics teaches you how to develop a relationship with anything, without the $40,000.00.
Guaranteed you’ll be a good engineer after 4 years and that large of an investment. How good of a singer would you be if you invested 4 years and invested as much energy into singing as it takes to invest into the skill set that you go to school for? Dancing, writing, painting, photography, internet marketing, inventing, innovating. Developing skill sets is a process, and if you’re learning the lessons of every failure; dedicated to the process of improving your skill set, every failure is one step closer to success.
Every day that you live, you’re developing and improving a skill set. What skill sets are you choosing to improve, and build a relationship with?
I could not agree more Brian!
I have many thoughts and opinions on those who follow the “socially-cultivated” path of high school–>post secondary–>X, especially when X represents an unknown destination or undefined goal. In those cases (as you mentioned), I think that there are other skill sets and uses for your time that could be much more valuable to you as an individual to not only further enhance your quality of life but also to better understand yourself.
Being an individual who attends university, I am constantly in contact with individuals who either don’t know what they want to do with their degree, don’t know what they want to do with their life, or sometimes even are going to school because their parents want them to…yikes.
If your parents asked you to marry away 32 months (plus many more if you need to raise the money to attend post-secondary education) of your life *FOR SOMETHING YOU HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO INTEREST IN DOING*, in what way does it make sense to pursue that path? The accumulation of very specific knowledge in at most a few fields really doesn’t seem to match up to living a life with passion and enjoyment where you will no doubt learn lessons along the way via a more enjoyable life-path.
Always a pleasure reading your articles,
~Mr. Shark
Solid article Brian Mark! You deserve a high five and a sexy cookie <3
I forgot to include that in some cases, the highly specified knowledge IS highly applicable and the investment into that degree/career path IS more than worth the investment (similar to my time invested as a student of social dynamics under the schooling of Kingpin Social… ;)). As long as the investment is in line and congruent with the individual as a whole, I think that university can be a great institution of learning (beyond textbook knowledge, etc).
Hi Brian!
You have a point. However, as with Myke and me, not everyone does good at what they study or invest in. In our case, we did what we did because there was a sense of responsibility. A sense of “should do’s”. We did it based on other people’s expectations and did not have enough time or life experiences to reflect on the choices that our parents or well wishers made for us or influenced us to do. Hence, an investment could either be well played, calculated approach, or a pure gamble on faith.
I also learned an important lesson from Timothy Ferriss. “The opposite of love is indifference, and the opposite of happiness is boredom.” I used to think sadness is the opposite of happiness, and hatred is the opposite of love but they are merely part of the same coin. This perspective has been valuable to me. Excitement is happiness. It pleases me to know the definition of happiness now.
LIKE!!
Hey guys! I apologize for the delayed response, moving’s been hectic.
Michael Sharkowski – I find that alot of the people that I know who are going to university are going to university because it seemed like the smart option at the time. Most people don’t have the luxury of finding themselves at a young age, so they go to university hoping it’ll fill this void for them.
For some, this works, but there are times where the individual graduates with a degree and does nothing with it over the long term.
Is this to say that university is a bad option? Absolutely not, if you’re certain of your life path. Uncertainty though, can lead to a destination unknown. A destination unknown while you’re marrying away 32 months and $40,000.00 of your life and money isn’t an option.
Myke Macapinlac – Thank you sir, I’ll have my cookie and eat it too.
MD – I can understand the sense of responsibility, especially if you’re raised in a household of high – expectations. A youthful mind unsure of his path who is being pushed in a certain direction is likely to walk in that direction, even if he is unsure that it is his path.
This isn’t necessarily the fault of our parents or peers that push us in that direction either, because they only want the best for us and they push us in the direction that they know to be the best (based on their reference experience).
Yeah bro. Even fear and happiness are the same emotion; you face your fears and you feel the happiness. You run from your fear and you run from your happiness.
Boris Rubil! Thank you sir. 🙂
Great article, Brian! I need to have a sit down and have a chat over this – sometime soon! I was thinking the same idea, earlier – kind of on the way of what you had to say.
Cheers!