#057 – Gods & Immigrants

Bringing 5 interesting ideas to your inbox every Thursday morning to ignite your curiosity and drive your growth.

read online on my website 

read time 3 minutes 

#057 at a Glance:

• Quote that will get you thinking: The glory that is going to be revealed to us.

• Podcast you should listen to: Why immigrants often make great entrepreneurs.

• Mental Model: Your heroes aren’t Gods.

• Hack you should try: The not-to-do list.

• Tweet I liked: Mr Beast’s office bedroom.

Quote that will get you thinking:

Podcast you should listen to:

The Mentor with Mark Bouris #392 – Ruslan Kogan

Ruslan Kogan is the founder and CEO of Kogan.com, one of Australia’s largest and most prominent online retail companies. Founded in 2006, Kogan has not only survived but flourished across numerous economic cycles and technological changes.

But what I found most interesting from this episode was Ruslan’s perspective on why immigrants often make excellent entrepreneurs. Heralding from a “shithole village in Belarus” (his words, not mine), he has established himself as a highly successful entrepreneur and he attributes his outcomes to the characteristics which many immigrants possess when moving across the world in search of a new and better life:

Grit, resourcefulness, determination, courage, persistence, and a healthy appetite for risk and adventure.

One of my favourite episodes of The Mentor to date.

Listen or Watch on Spotify here. Listen on Apple Podcasts here.

[Podcast Length: 51 minutes]

Mental Model:

Your Heroes Aren’t Gods 

An important reminder from Chris Williamson:

“This week, I’ve been thinking about the price people pay for the success they have.

This insight seems to be the best solution for jealousy that I’ve found.

The people you look up to aren’t human-wide examples of admirable traits.

They’re usually extremely competent in a very narrow domain, but outside of that, they’re just totally normal, deficient or embarrassing humans.

Tiger Woods - GOAT golfer but quite a suboptimal husband.

Alan Watts - life-changing spiritual teacher who died of alcoholism.

The people you put on a pedestal are dealing with the same erectile dysfunction, self doubt, un-peaceful mind, existential crisis and daddy issues that you are.

They just happen to crush at a singular pursuit too.

Sure, you might want to play some of the greatest golf in history, but do you want your ex-wife to chase you down the driveway with a golf club while the press watches?

Sure, you might want to reach the edges of enlightenment and be able to communicate it to millions in a gorgeous British accent, but do you want to die young due to alcohol poisoning?

The price you’d need to pay to be the people you admire is often one you wouldn’t be prepared to foot the bill for.

Your heroes aren’t gods, they’re just regular people.”

Hack you should try:

The Not-to-Do List

Came across this awesome concept courtesy of Tim Ferriss' blog this week: The Not-to-Do List.

It feeds into the idea that when we're looking for ways to boost our performance and efficiency throughout our daily lives, we often search for things to ADD to our routines.

New tools, new habits, new systems, new methods.

However, Tim makes the (very convincing) argument that we shouldn't look to do so before firstly erasing these 9 things from our day-to-day.

The ones I've made a conscious effort to implement this week are numbers 5 and 7.

You can check out the full article here.

Tweet I liked:

Thanks for reading! Grateful for your support.

Stay hungry, stay humble, stay curious. ⚡

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