Starve and you will seek
Today I experience another paradigm shift.
If you remember, I have mentioned in my past blog that Steve Job once said that all the small things that happen in your life will start to make sense when the dots are joined together. Today is such a day where I have joined many small dots in my life to form another meaningful line in my life.
1 year plus back, a successful boss told me that his formula to success is to buy things he can barely afford and force himself to earn more money to pay for the things he have bought. My brother has a friend that run into a 6 digit debt and managed to make a come back and start earning 5 digits per month after he has cleared his debt. My mentor told me that a company must have proper operating expenses. I went Genting and saw a person who bet $5000 on one hand of poker and was stressed like hell, and a person who gave $2000 to his wife and told her to enjoy herself in gambling while he go to other table to gamble.
So what is the relevance? The first 3 examples are actually pointing to the same fact and that is, when a person is hungry and starving, he will find means and ways to feed himself. The hungrier he is, the more desire he will have to look for more food. For a person who has starved for one day, he will learn to store food for 2 days to avoid hunger. For a person who had starved for 10 days, he will look for food in the future to make sure he will be able to sustain more than a month. The boss is telling a story of a person who forces himself to starve so that he will think of ways to afford his lifestyle. The brother’s friend is forced to look for money as he is already starving and desperately need food or else he will face a life that is near death. The mentor want our company to feed the director more than just well so that the director will know that in order not to starve the company, the company must start looking for more “food” so that it will have a huge fund to sustain its appetite.
So what is the last story telling us? It is simply telling us the fact that do you wish to choose a life where you are starving and have to fight desperately for survival or you want to live a life of abundance where you can spend whatever you want but still being able to sustain your hunger as you already know how to look for lots of food to sustain your appetite? If a person is starving involuntarily, he will fight desperately for food and behave irrationally. If the mindset is wrong, he will eventually die of starvation. If the mindset is one that is determined, rational and carefully strategizes, the person will learn how to get more and more food and will never starve again.
So from a standard human perspective, they would rather be comfortable and try not to starve and learn to save some food for a rainy day. These people will always have the mindset that as long as the life is simple and they get to see food the next day, everything should be fine. These people will have enough to eat but not enough to give to others and have to scrimp and save in order to sustain their lifestyle. Never starving yet never full. That is the state of my company right now as the company has enough funding not to starve the employees and the shareholder, yet it is not maximizing the rewards of everyone as we are in a state of comfort as we know we are able to sustain ourselves. We have forgotten the feeling of starving which made us complacent, however we have also forgotten that in the first place when we started business, it is never meant to be for us to live a comfortable lifestyle that is similar to people who are employed, we started business in order to be wealthy which is why we are taking the risk!
Hence today, I fully understand what these events are all telling me. First, I did not start a business because I don’t wish to starve but rather I want to be filled and having more than enough to sustain my lifestyle, eating whenever and whatever I want. Second I will need to understand what is the lifestyle I want and in order not to starve while living the lifestyle I want, I must know that the reality of starving is not far if I do not start to fight harder and start looking for food more fervently. Third, it is a company mission and not a personal one hence everyone in the company should not live at subsistence level but rather live luxuriously yet fighting hard to sustain the lifestyle.
This might be a preliminary thought but I am documenting it down as it is the direction that I will work towards to set the company financials and sales right by not operating at subsistence but rather operating as a highly profitable company with everyone having a clear goal that they should fight hard enough for food and enjoying the maximum reward of the fruits of labor.
“Starve yourself, feel and know how it is to be starved and start fighting to live an abundant life never ever to be near starvation”
~ James Tan ~
If you remember, I have mentioned in my past blog that Steve Job once said that all the small things that happen in your life will start to make sense when the dots are joined together. Today is such a day where I have joined many small dots in my life to form another meaningful line in my life.
1 year plus back, a successful boss told me that his formula to success is to buy things he can barely afford and force himself to earn more money to pay for the things he have bought. My brother has a friend that run into a 6 digit debt and managed to make a come back and start earning 5 digits per month after he has cleared his debt. My mentor told me that a company must have proper operating expenses. I went Genting and saw a person who bet $5000 on one hand of poker and was stressed like hell, and a person who gave $2000 to his wife and told her to enjoy herself in gambling while he go to other table to gamble.
So what is the relevance? The first 3 examples are actually pointing to the same fact and that is, when a person is hungry and starving, he will find means and ways to feed himself. The hungrier he is, the more desire he will have to look for more food. For a person who has starved for one day, he will learn to store food for 2 days to avoid hunger. For a person who had starved for 10 days, he will look for food in the future to make sure he will be able to sustain more than a month. The boss is telling a story of a person who forces himself to starve so that he will think of ways to afford his lifestyle. The brother’s friend is forced to look for money as he is already starving and desperately need food or else he will face a life that is near death. The mentor want our company to feed the director more than just well so that the director will know that in order not to starve the company, the company must start looking for more “food” so that it will have a huge fund to sustain its appetite.
So what is the last story telling us? It is simply telling us the fact that do you wish to choose a life where you are starving and have to fight desperately for survival or you want to live a life of abundance where you can spend whatever you want but still being able to sustain your hunger as you already know how to look for lots of food to sustain your appetite? If a person is starving involuntarily, he will fight desperately for food and behave irrationally. If the mindset is wrong, he will eventually die of starvation. If the mindset is one that is determined, rational and carefully strategizes, the person will learn how to get more and more food and will never starve again.
So from a standard human perspective, they would rather be comfortable and try not to starve and learn to save some food for a rainy day. These people will always have the mindset that as long as the life is simple and they get to see food the next day, everything should be fine. These people will have enough to eat but not enough to give to others and have to scrimp and save in order to sustain their lifestyle. Never starving yet never full. That is the state of my company right now as the company has enough funding not to starve the employees and the shareholder, yet it is not maximizing the rewards of everyone as we are in a state of comfort as we know we are able to sustain ourselves. We have forgotten the feeling of starving which made us complacent, however we have also forgotten that in the first place when we started business, it is never meant to be for us to live a comfortable lifestyle that is similar to people who are employed, we started business in order to be wealthy which is why we are taking the risk!
Hence today, I fully understand what these events are all telling me. First, I did not start a business because I don’t wish to starve but rather I want to be filled and having more than enough to sustain my lifestyle, eating whenever and whatever I want. Second I will need to understand what is the lifestyle I want and in order not to starve while living the lifestyle I want, I must know that the reality of starving is not far if I do not start to fight harder and start looking for food more fervently. Third, it is a company mission and not a personal one hence everyone in the company should not live at subsistence level but rather live luxuriously yet fighting hard to sustain the lifestyle.
This might be a preliminary thought but I am documenting it down as it is the direction that I will work towards to set the company financials and sales right by not operating at subsistence but rather operating as a highly profitable company with everyone having a clear goal that they should fight hard enough for food and enjoying the maximum reward of the fruits of labor.
“Starve yourself, feel and know how it is to be starved and start fighting to live an abundant life never ever to be near starvation”
~ James Tan ~
posted by James at 11:44 PM
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