(09-27-2016 03:05 PM)Agastya Wrote: Anyone ever gone from being super extroverted to fairly introverted? I used to be a party animal who could bang girls and make friends with relative ease, but now for some reason I have little desire to socialize and would much rather be doing something productive.
I've never been
that extroverted, but something similar occurred to me several years ago after I graduated from college and began working full-time.
Having landed a rather lucrative sales job, I began reading books on investing, in order to best make use of my new cash flow.
Two of the concepts that immediately stood out to me were
spending money versus investing money, and
compound interest. I imagine most people reading this won't need extended explanations of why those are important ideas.
The real game-changer, the one which dramatically affected my personality and lifestyle choices, was the realization that these financial concepts can also be applied to
time.
It's easy enough to understand the trade-off between spending money (buying a truck) and investing money (buying Ford stock). Plug a few numbers into an Excel sheet, and you can calculate the exact opportunity cost of putting $500/month into a car payment instead of into your 401k.
What's not so easy to see are the trade-offs involved in spending time (watching Netflix every night, drinking all weekend, playing video games) instead of investing time (hitting the gym, building a business, practicing a skill). And just like the exponential effects of compound interest only become apparent after an extended period of compounding, the effects of invested time (mastery) really only start to show after thousands of hours of focused effort.
Once I realized the path to achieving those goals came primarily from an intelligent investment of my time, I became unable to enjoy many of the things I used to, like watching football or reading fiction. Real enjoyment came from pursuing my goals and improving my skill set.
(I still enjoy occasional pleasant distractions, like a movie or vacation, but aim to structure my life so that 80% of my time was invested and only 20% spent.)
While taking the red pill encouraged me to pursue lofty goals, I've found that most people in life are happy with a comfortable mediocrity and will never aspire to greatness (financial or otherwise). They'd rather
spend their time distracting themselves with drugs and alcohol, television, professional sports, and so on, rather than consciously
invest it in creating a better life.
The last few years has seen a dramatic whittling down of my social circle, as I began spending more time with like-minded men (mostly RVFers) and less time with the blue-pilled public. Most of my time these days is spent reading, growing my business, lifting, day gaming, and networking with a small number of high-quality men.
Initially it felt strange, becoming so isolated from most of the world. I constantly doubted myself, wondering if there was something wrong with me for not wanting to act like the rest of the sheeple.
But after a few years the time invested is starting to pay dividends. While many of my college buddies are fat, broke, and involuntarily single/divorced, I'm in great shape with a big pile of money in the bank and an increasingly successful ability to bed hot college girls.
Perhaps one day, once I've achieved a few of these goals, I'll restructure my time portfolio so that I'm spending more and investing less. But for now, seeing my success begin to turn exponential has only increased my desire to invest my time in achieving my goals, and I've never been happier to be checked out of mainstream, blue-pill society.