I just turned 19 a couple of weeks ago, I want to share what I did in the 18th year of my life. This is an exciting year for me, because of the definition I gave to my reality.
Defining my Game
Well, humans need motivation, drive & dopamine hit to do specific actions and rewards from those actions. To be in the game of life/reality, one must define their own game. The 18th year of my life has all been defining my game depending on the situation and the circumstance that I'm in.
Starting off with acceptance. I accepted I have very little wisdom, I don't have full control of my brain, need to face the consequences of my action. To have skin in the game one must accept themselves.
Having a good understanding/clarity of my end goal. This is the first step to play a smart game. My goal will not only keep my foot on the game but also it will keep nudging me to do the smaller subsets of my end goal.
In my teenage era, I was aware that humans can't decide/define who they want to be, humans are social creatures. "You are the average of the 5 people that you hang out with". The society or group or (for a better word) environment that we live in defines who we are. If I'm aware of what my end goal is, it would be impossible that I would be in a group/environment where I don't get any benefit/advantage to my end goal. So indirectly I can define/decide who I want to be. Smart move 101
Emerced in the game with the small goal - sub-goals of the end goal. I created small goals so that the feedback loop is short, getting rewards/dopamine hits and making the difficulty level higher & higher. Why validation/feedback loop of mine is short? In some ways we humans are sort of like a ML algorithm called Reinforcement learning. Now keeping the feedback loop short will make our decision/actions more optimized and allows us to iterate faster. Or else I would easily get sucked out of my game and eventually find distraction and blah blah.
Deep understanding of my tools. Everyone has different tools, my tool is my smart device and my brain. Smart device (phone & laptop) is a window for me to see the entire world and my brain facilitates me in seeing that world in an unbiased view. To survive in a game one must understand how the world works, especially in the world where we live, we need to have an end-to-end understanding of our world, let that be an advancement in technology, how the economy works, finance, and general human psychology. "Specialization is for insects" - by Naval Ravikanth. Not many people understand this but to survive in this world one must be resilient enough, those who don't understand what Priming is, it will become the biggest enemy of yours.
Wisdom to truly understand your circumstance and Common sense. I see many people lack an understanding of the situation and have no common sense. From the age of 7-8, I was aware of my circumstance. Although I did get distracted and ignored my circumstance from 13 to 15 of my age but never neglected it. Fast forwarding to now, because of having an understanding of my circumstance influences 70% of the decisions and actions that I make.
Conclusion - Moral of the journey
Learned to be street-smart.