A Student’s Guide to Mastering the Universe

I LOVE getting messages from readers who’ve benefited from the things I write, people who have shared passions, and those who seek further advice for how they can get the most out of their lives. (Note: I actually file a LOT of these emails into a special folder for when I need motivation and positive reinforcement!) Today is my birthday, and especially this week, I’ve been blown away by all the incredible feedback I’ve received about my writing, birthday wishes from around the globe, and incredible questions from all the awesome friends I’ve been fortunate to make through this site! So I’ve been brainstorming all week to come up with some way I can say “Thank You” for being part of what I’m building here at Thrilling Heroics. If you’re not already subscribed to my newsletter, take a moment to jump on my exclusive email list. You’ll immediately get a couple cool freebies, and over the next few days I’m going to be working on offering something really special STRICTLY for subscribers to the newsletter.

How to Go from High School Student to Master of the Universe

Today I want to start off by answering one particularly good question I received, here on the blog, because I think it’s definitely something that could benefit a lot of people. This is especially relevant for 18-year-olds recently out of high school, but I hope my thoughts will be useful to people in all stages of life. This comes from reader Binbin here in Bangkok:

Dear Cody,

First off, kudos to you for breaking free!!
I am truly inspired by your lifestyle. My question is…what would you tell your 18 self about earning money and opportunities with your current knowledge?
I want to explore the world but need to start earning money top fund it. How should I begin??

Best regards,
Binbin.

If I could jump into a time machine and go talk to my 8-years-younger self, there are all kinds of things I’d tell me:

A Winning Mindset:

The first step in dominating the world is to cultivate a strong mindset. This is one of the many things you won’t learn in school. The first valuable belief to instill in yourself is that you truly can achieve anything. What most of our parents told us as kids—that we can be anything we want to be when we grow up—is still true; there is no goal that is out of reach, no person you can’t speak to, no place you can’t go, no possession you can’t have, nothing you can’t be. If you really invest your time in understanding your desired end results, break that goal down, and do what’s necessary.

You can bend the rules of reality. We’re mostly limited by fear and traditional “rules” that we think apply to us. (Subscribe to my newsletter and you’ll get a 1-hour recording about how to overcome fears and live a remarkable life, by the way!) Start challenging assumptions. You don’t have to go to college, graduate within four years, take a desk job, stay close to home, get an MBA, climb the corporate ladder, or anything just because it’s what society tells you it’s what you’re supposed to do. Your life is your masterpiece, and you are the painter.

Find people who’ve done what you want to achieve successfully, and “model” them. Everything in life is pretty much a game—relationships, business, money, politics—figure out the rules and adopt the most empowering beliefs that will get you where you want to go. Follow people who are really passionate about something, and have broken the rules of “reality” to achieve great success. A few people that have done their own thing and become wildly successful at it: Chris Guillebeau, Tim Ferriss, Gary Vaynerchuk.

Continuing Education:

Parents may not like my advice here, but if I could go back and do college over again with the knowledge I have eight years later, I would have made some very different decisions. First, you need to ask yourself if a university degree is even worthwhile for you at all. A lot of universities provide a tremendous amount of value, and college life will give you experiences that will help you grow in many ways—but there are also plenty of skills you won’t learn in school (see Mindset above, for one). Some of the most successful business leaders today were dropouts: Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, Bill Gates, Larry Page, Michael Dell, Jerry Yang, Mark Zuckerberg, Kevin Rose, and so on. And I know some wildly successful people personally—some of the most brilliant young entrepreneurs I know, and people who’ve been successful in the corporate world—who didn’t get degrees. That’s not to say that dropping out guarantees success—but there are other things you can invest your time in that might be more valuable than putting those years, and all that money, into traditional education.

I’d say that college is a good decision if you know what you want from your career. If you know what line of work you want to get into, and it tends to require a degree in order to be successful, or open doors, then go for it. If you’re just window shopping though, and you’re not sure what you want your life to look like, take a year and travel the world instead. Or take an interesting internship; experiment with entrepreneurship and fail; or even just read books! As much as I enjoyed and got a lot out of my college experience, I’d say I had no idea what I wanted, I had little direction, and could have made a lot more progress if I’d just gathered more life experience and gone into a degree knowing what I wanted out of it. If you’re going to go to university, pick up some hard skills—mathematics, science, economics, a business degree. Like Marc Andreessen says, “Graduating with a technical degree is like heading out into the real world armed with an assault rifle instead of a dull knife.”

Whether you go to a university or not, that’s not to say education is overrated. Either way, you’ll need to take initiative to learn a lot on your own if you want to be successful. You can almost get the same education from one of the top schools—without the diploma—on your own. Look at open courseware and things like the Personal MBA program. It’s important to keep your skills sharp, stay competitive, and continue learning throughout your entire life. Most people don’t read a single book after college. Don’t be like them.

If you want to see the books that have been most influential in my life, check out the Required Reading section at the top of my resources page for my top-10 most important books.

Purpose and Goals:

As stated above, you can do almost anything in this life, despite what the haters will tell you. But the fine print is that you have to be willing to give something in exchange. Our mission here on earth is to provide value of some sort or another to other people. Napoleon Hill said that you need to get clear and realistic about what what value you intend to share with the world in exchange for the success you seek out of life. You need to figure out what your purpose is—what drives you and what you want to build; to share with the people around you.

Once you figure out who you are and what you want, you need to create a roadmap for yourself to arrive at your destination. Most people don’t clarify any well-thought-out goals for themselves. But if you spend time figuring out what few goals are most important for you—whether you set new resolutions once a year, or come up with your own system—even if you don’t achieve everything, simply making the plan in the first place will make you about sixty percent more likely to follow through on the action. Check out how to set SMART goals or New Year’s resolutions—but this is useful any time of year. USE IT.

Now that you know what you want, you should surround yourself with like-minded people. Take a good look at your friends, seek out people on social media, blogs, meetup groups, and at networking events for others who want to do similar things as you. Build a support group for yourself—you’ll find simply by hanging out with people that are doing what you want to do, have the things you want to have, and are the way you want to be, you’ll begin to change. One of the best decisions I ever made was to build a mastermind group with a small group of friends in college where we met weekly to hold each other accountable to our goals.

Entrepreneurship & Location-Independent Work:

If you truly want to be in charge of your time, your location, and the projects you get to work on, then self-employment is for you. Even if you work for someone else, if you want to become “location independent”, then take all of the lessons I’ve given above, and focus all your energy on limiting distractions and making enough time to invest and concentrate on your own projects. Creating value for others and finding ways to give back are the most important things you can do, but it is far too easy to allow yourself to be overwhelmed with other people’s agendas and never make any progress towards your own goals.

I’ve been asked a few times if lifestyle design can work for people in the “developing” world, and my answer is a resounding YES! Just like anyone else, you need to take stock of your skills, your abilities, and what you’re passionate about—and identify the things that others find valuable (i.e., worth paying money for). Anyone who is like Binbin, living here in Asia, I actually think you’re especially well-positioned to take advantage of geoarbitrage and the global economy. If you can identify ways you can provide value, especially if you can work online, look for unconventional ways to take advantage of those skills. Can you start doing freelance work for firms in the US or Europe, rather than just doing business locally? Can you sell your services online, to a global market, at a higher price that will allow you to work fewer hours and leverage your time to do more of what you love? Even just start part-time, as a side job. But get started.

Blogging:

Like my friend Sean Ogle, probably the most life-changing thing I ever did was start this blog. Go start a blog and start talking about the things that interest you! Blogging gave me a good excuse to keep reading, keep learning, to talk about the current events, ideas and technologies that interested me. Blogging also gave me a means to reach out to interesting folks from all walks of life, ask questions, and make friends with people around the globe. I’ve expanded my network of friends to include people I would never have imagined; I’ve made friends on the other side of the globe, landed clients on five continents, had incredible mentors, become involved in great collaborative projects, gotten into conferences, been interviewed in papers and massive media sites, had free business books sent to me, gotten access to countless great information products, and been involved in organizing incredible events—all because of this blog.

Additionally, on the social web, the barriers are very low. There really is almost nobody that’s out of reach—entrepreneurs you look up to, your favorite author, who knows! If you find yourself especially inspired by someone—start a conversation with them! If you need an excuse, simply take Karol Gajda’s advice and thank them for their writing. This really is the best way to pay a blogger without having to spend any money.

###

On that note, I hope you will leave a message for me, and as I said, I always enjoy getting great questions from readers. Your feedback keeps me going most days, and it’s what keeps me creating useful content here! The best way to get in touch with me is to ask your questions in the comments or leave your comments on my Facebook fan page.

Feature photo by andresrueda.