After reading the biographies of several of the most successful people in history, I've become convinced that unshakeable self-belief is the most important tool a man can have. The ability to "think oneself already successful" and truly believe that you can grind yourself out of any problem with enough grit and self-determination is the closest thing humanity has to a superpower, and the men and women who can summon this power at will are essentially demigods among mortal.
And I'm also convinced that this sort of thing is mostly genetic and almost impossible to teach to the average person. There are people who have absolutely nothing going for them, not even a bit of money or a good education, and who are still going to achieve most of what they want in life because they just believe hard enough that they were meant to.
OP obliterated
Alexander conquered the entire known from ancient Greece to the Indus River by his 35th birthday without losing a single battle. Napoleon was a minor noble who became the most powerful man in Europe and put the entire continent under his heel through military and political brilliance for the better part of two decades. Hitler was a failed Austrian painter and felon of zero prestige who became the leader of Germany, fixed its economy, and (initially) steamrolled most of Europe.
Why does this author think that psychopaths can't also be geniuses? Genius psychopaths like Julius Caesar, Genghis Khan, Oda Nobunaga, or Vladimir Lenin are usually some of the most accomplished geniuses of all because they are completely uninhibited by moral trappings in their quests to achieve their goals.
alexander's cutting the gordian knot was an offence to tradition. he believed it was his defiance of ancient custom that brought ruin on the greek civilisation.
on the next page
Because the author is using psychopathy wrong, psychopaths are "cold-blooded" social chameleons whose greatest tell is their ability to be insincere and unauthentic. Typically when not in a position of power, they tend to be sychophants to their superiors, and then after having obtained power, use manipulation and fear tactics to their direct underlings. All of these people were pretty direct on what they actually wanted even though being vocal about it made them unpopular, something a psychopath would never do because "revealing your autism" is considered an unoptimal move to them.
>Alexander conquered the entire known from ancient Greece to the Indus River by his 35th birthday without losing a single battle.
And that's good or cool or admirable how?
>Napoleon was a minor noble who became the most powerful man in Europe and put the entire continent under his heel through military and political brilliance for the better part of two decades.
And that's good or cool or admirable how?
>Hitler was a failed Austrian painter and felon of zero prestige who became the leader of Germany, fixed its economy, and (initially) steamrolled most of Europe.
And that's good or cool or admirable how?
The only things those people have achieved is imposing their will on others, which only a psychopath would find desirable or admirable. Why would you ever want to have nations under your thumb, squirming, oozing blood and continuously refusing to adhere to your grand designs until you are left alone of a shitty island or in a damp bunker cursing your generals and ministers and the whole nation and race that you spent your life subjecting to your violence? What's desirable about that?
Temujin at least got some mad poon out of it. Those three guys didn't even get any good poon.
Napoleon wasn’t a psychopath and neither was hitler. Whoever wrote this garbage has never encountered a true psychopath
, Napolean, and Alexander the Great were psychopaths.
>First 2 are wrong
You didn't address Alexander. Was Alex a psychopath?
Redpill me Alex.
Maybe don’t enough about him to say
Yeah I misspoke he was just lazy and didn’t do enough research on the two men.
fought in wwi and went to an english private school he must've ran into a couple
Oh, he was a Bong? And from the WW1 generation no less? Lol no wonder he thought Napoleon and Hitler were both psychopaths. Probably lost a few sons and/or nephews to the Germs in WW2 and stayed bitter about it until he died.
he was half german
absolutely embarrassing
I hate this pop science surface level view of psychology so much. "psychopathy is when someone is.... le bad"
I don't think these three men were psychopaths at all. Being capable of causing great harm to others does not make you a psychopath.
To rise to power one needs to be a psychopath
What an absolutely small-souled take. Holy frick, who wrote this? I guarantee he never achieved anything great in his life.
Jorge Luis Borges called him “a soul above.”
Napoleon was certainly a genius, so that just sounds like cope to me.
The reason is because the author has to make the connection between ambition and psychopathy to then probably bring down modern day capitalists or something along those lines. It’s just a reductive argument caused by political myopia.
Who gives a shit what the word meant. Do you know how language works or are you moronic? What is a fetus?
what we now call 'genius' cannot be wholly separated from its original roman sense.
You want me to consider this more, give me the books name.
i'm curious - this would help you how?
he could read the book -.-
if anyone wants to read it, it's robert graves essay on genius
> -.-
wow
Genius comes from Γένος. What kind of fricking idiot is this book written by?
Latin comes from Greek anyway.
Etymological roots are important, quite self-explanatory
gene- is obviously greek. the word 'genius' is latin.
the author is robert graves.
>Alexander Napoleon and Hitler were psychopaths
Uhh wtf I love psychopaths now?
D E S T R O Y E D
picrel
>t. Neville Godard but less systematic
If your mind is vacant and have zero utility from leisure, obsessively grinding out the rubbing of pennies to breed in large quantities is trivial. An artist that is similarly a spiirtually malformed hunchback of proportions will produce a virtuoso, but a complete one is the only one that will produce real quality that last the test of time. Don't overspecialize, be anagogic with it.
Irrelevant take
Ah yes neoliberal capitalist mythologies beyond any other nightmare, the winner billionaire had infinite willpower
The most important tool for success is a mogen clamp, to cut off your foreskin, perferably when you're just a baby.
Meh, he succeeded in his 60s.
That's actually even more impressive when you think about it. How many dudes peak at retirement age?
>yeah bro you just need to work work work, have no hobbies, no friends, no social respite, no family time. All you got to do is grind work, man, just keep grinding and eventually you'll end up like me!
I hope when you're 40 and not a billionaire you appreciate wasting your life grinding for a pipe dream literally invented to keep the 1% richer and the rest of the 99% overworked and stupid so they don't start asking the wrong questions.
Must be nice to believe in shallow corporate dreams.
What do you gain out of demotivating others from attempting to achieve their ambitions? Like, how does how hard anyone else works affect you personally? Why not just sit back and watch them run themselves ragged in the rat race if what you believe they're doing is so stupid and just "shallow corporate dreams."
It's not even like the guy in OPs book became rich because he worked hard. In fact, working hard did very little for him. He was a rat until he saw an opportunity and took it, fricking over whoever got in his way.
In some ways it's similar to the wolf of wall street: some ruthless motherfricker who used his brains to get rich.
Seneca said that "Luck is when preparation meets opportunity." You downplay all the early years of Kroc's grit, but that seemingly fruitless grinding phase in the restaurant business for those initial years is what allowed Kroc to learn the management and leadership skills and establish the blueprint for McDonald's that he would later use to take over the world (figuratively speaking). And what's so bad about opportunism anyway? Should you NOT take a good, ripe opportunity for greater success when it comes to you? Lmao anti-Capitalists will literally look a gift horse in the mouth and then sour grape about it later.
did you ever watch citizen kane
Sorry if I sounded like a homosexual. Yeah, his hard work ethic kept him afloat, he was already successful (a house, a nice wife), he could have retired if he wanted to.
It is true that nothing in the world can beat persistence. Cunning too. The McDonald's brothers were doomed to fail or be someone else's prey.
Maybe we won't ever hit it big like he did, maybe we won't have the cold blood or the vision for it, but you never know.
The redeeming quality of people like this is that they are anchored to reality, they do whats good for them. It's not bad advice to tell a teenager to work hard so they can afford a place to live and afford a family eventually. But too much focus on the material detracts from human qualities that should not be forgotten, I suppose a balance can be found.
>What do you gain out of demotivating others from attempting to achieve their ambitions?
If it was just one moron with one belief I wouldn't care, but I have everything to lose from large amounts of morons believing something moronic.
American work culture is so moronic as workers have been psyop'd so hard by their handlers. If there's something wrong in your life or in your job the answer is always work harder, hustle, and grind.
>Show up to work early, work hard like a dog, have an unnatural inhuman smile on ur face 24/7, kiss manager ass, pick up all those shifts, never use sick days or vacations, pick up more responsibilities and do the work others don't want to do as it'll help you look better compared to the others!
When everyone believes this shit all those things just become the norm and we end up in the modern US.
And they pay us so shit for working like dogs because we've been psyop'd so hard into accepting it and they know they can import third worlders to replace us as those conditions are unfortunately not as bad as third world working conditions.
Instead of going on strike or making union for better pay or better conditions Americans would rather pick up 'side hustles' so they can work more outside of work. Do u know how many doctors and nurses nonstop talk about their side hustles during work? Even 30/hr and 100/hr don't go as far today as they've done in the past.
I just don't want to get worked like a dog and want better benefits when it comes to sick days, vacation, maternity leave and so on like Europe has.
This only applies to morons, autists, or adhd neets. Everyone I know has found decent success in their life and is making much more money than they originally imagined because of their intelligence and ambition. Sucks to be you I guess.
Or most third worlders. They’re fricked 95% of the time.
Proof that social skills triumph looks
t. actual autist
More Capitalism than "Da joooz!!!"
>and women who can summon this power
>women are so stupid they'll believe anything
>therefore self-belief should also be easier
>Coupled with this,
>in actual practice they face fewer obstacles than men and men will gladly ease those obstacles for free
Ipso facto, women can achieve whatever men achieve better, chuddie :3
Holy frick the cringe from this reply gave me cataracts
This thread is pozzed to fricking hell.
These people are broken inside. They will literally achieve nothing in their lives because they can't believe in themselves.
It's not about le capitalist psyop to work harder in the wage cage, it's about willpower and drive. But of course, these people have been brainwashed into becoming harmless, docile animals.
No, I made it very far inside the prison. I left voluntarily.
I would agree if the thread had another image, lol. Like art, instead of corporation.
I'll achieve personal success, goy. Wanting to be a soulless millionaire and contribute to the level of greed in the world isn't as noble of a goal as you think. You've simply been brainwashed
you conflating strong self confidence with psychopathy and greed is just proving his point.
Yes, that’s completely right. Always have a winning mindset.
>After reading the biographies of several of the most successful people in history, I've become convinced that unshakeable self-belief is the most important tool a man can have.
Correlation does not equal causation.
Many an unsuccessful person had an unshakeable belief in himself -- but out of 100,000 such persons, we only hear about the small handful who were successful.
Yes it’s the most important in term of achievement. Not even self belief, just belief something is possible. And no, it has nothing to do with genetics at all. Usually the people who develop successful beliefs were people that had less than others which motivated them. You’re likely projecting your own limited beliefs, no offense
>and I'm convinced
There's advantages in disadvantages
Gladwell wrote about the phenomenon in David and Goliath
>What is survivorship bias?
Not op, but "unshakeable self-belief is the most important tool a man can have" =/= "if you have unshakeable self-belief you WILL be successful". I don't think there's a single factor or quality that can guarantee success besides extreme luck. But I also think it's worth trying. Set realistic goals that make you happy and try as hard as you can.
Okay. So, let's say a bunch of guys from roughly the same background m all start up their own businesses in major US cities. Statistically, only 1% of them will have their businesses be immediate and exceptional successes. The type of things that become national or even an international brands. Another 4% won't see the same breakout success, but they'll be able to build something with similar respectacle strength and longevity. Something that could easily become a franchise. 40% will stay afloat for a while, only having moderate success and before eventually having to close up shop within a decade or so. The remaining 55% will fail almost immediately within the first 5 years of starting their business, with 20 to 25 not even making it to their second year of operation.
What grindset guys that
is talking about it get wrong, is that they think the goal is being in the top 5% from the jump. That is ridiculous. Unless you're the only guy selling fresh water in the desert, the developer of some disruptive new technology, or you made a lightning in the bottle product that hit the market at just the improbably specific time for it to sell like gangbusters, the chances of you dominating any market from the jump is slim. This is surface level thinking and why the average person who looks at this shit think it's all a survivor/selective bias-based grift. The ACTUAL goal is to be the guy who can grind his why out of the upper 95% or who can endure and bounce back from the setbacks he'll encounter as part of the lower 95%. That's where "unshakeable self-belief" comes in. True success is rarely a sprint. Rather it's a marathon, that will often demand exceptional hardship and sacrifice out of a person. Success is a gauntlet. Most people who pick up self-help books or attend seminars (and honestly most people who write and give them) don't want to go through the gauntlet. They want to learn the trick that's gonna "make them achieve their dreams" without any of the effort and resoluteness that it actually requires.
>Greatest super power
>Being able to achieve "what you desire"
IDK Anon, wouldn't introspection and being able to determine if what you desire is truly good more important?
McDonald's ultimately became the stand in name for "low quality job where employees are poorly treated and poorly paid," whereas the product is synonymous with an epidemic of obesity that has made people ugly, unhealthy, and miserable.
Think of it this way. We mere mortals might simply have desires for McDonalds. We might even be able to actualize this desire. But the question of "is it good that I should do this?" and "do I want to have this strong desire to eat McDonalds?" seem pretty important.
You aren't free because you can mindlessly pursue whatever pops into your mind due to extreme self confidence. Dogs do this too. You're free when you can determine what actions are truly good and then make yourself do them.
That's because you're a sucker.
Know what you don't get out of those hubristic exercises in vanity? The fact that for every one of them who succeeded, tens of millions did the exact same thing and failed. Those succeeded started with the money that they always somehow fail to mention, and had a lot of luck along the way.
No shit. You act like that isn’t the case for most things people try to do in this life. You either try and fail or fall into deeply painful mediocrity. Same case with being a basketball player, musician, whatever. But, that is the beauty of it all. Attempting things until we find our place in the world. Sometimes, where we end up isn’t very special, but at least we tried.
Give the list of biographies you absolute homosexual
Sure. I'll post later.
Washington: A Life - Ron Chernow
Grant: A Life - Ron Chernow
Michael Jordan: The Life - Roland Lazenby
Grinding It Out - Ray Kroc
My Life & Work - Henry Ford
Bolivar: American Liberator - Marie Arana
Tamerlane - Harold Lamb
Peter the Great: His Life & His World - Robert K. Massie
Made in America - Sam Walton
Hustle Harder, Hustle Smarter - 50 Cent
Theodore Roosevelt trilogy - Edmund Morris
Edison - Edmund Morris
Julius Caesar: Man, Soldier, and Tyrant - J.F.C Fuller
Hitler: A Study in Tyranny - Alan Bullock
Return to the Little Kingdom- Michael Moritz
Sengoku Jidai. Nobunaga, Hideyoshi, and Ieyasu: Three Unifiers of Japan - Danny Chaplin
Honda: The Man and His Machines - Sol W. Sanders
Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher Columbus - Samuel Eliot Morison
The Wright Brothers - David McCullough
Napoleon: A Life - Andrew Roberts
Disraeli - Stanley Weintraub
The Armada - Garrett Mattingly
Total Recall - Arnold Schwarzenegger
Your taste in women is better than your taste in books.
Aside from Washington, Grant, Ford, Honda, and the Wright Bros this is just a list of megalomaniacal confidence-tricksters like
said.
>Washington: a Life- Ron Chernow
Only acceptable biography on Washington is John Marshall's. Chernow is a propogandist who diminishes how much Christianity and Faith meant to Hamilton and Washington. Hamilton wanted America to have an official religion and wanted it to be Christianity. Washington actually oppossed him. This is never mentioned in Chernow's biography. He's a propogandist of the highest order in that he propogates beliefs and positions held by historical figures that are not fully accurate or true.
what a bibliography
whats next, rod stewart's autobiography?
I try to avoid celeb bios unless the subject did something spectacular like become the absolute best as their craft (Michael Jordan) or their life is especially eventful (50 Cent). I still might add his to my reading list though.
You've fallen victim to the survivor bias.
I argue that there are plenty of people who had unshakeable self-belief and still did not achieve what they set out to do. The problem is that these people don't have books written about them.
To say that 'thinking oneself successful' makes you a demigod ignores the people who did exactly that without result.
Not taking a side, just stirring the pot.
>After reading the biographies of several of the most successful people in history, I've become convinced that unshakeable self-belief is the most important tool a man can have.
it's nepotism you idiot
If you don't believe in what you're doing, you're never going to acheive it. This is what most anon's lack: having the belief that what they are doing is right and that it is going to work out for them in the end.
It is genetic because you have to have a certain combination of intelligence and crudeness otherwise you will crash and burn either to stupidity or sensitivity.
Most grindset guys don't have unshakeable belief in themselves, they are insecure downwardly mobile strivers. It's not about the work, it's about having a near delusional belief in one's own vision for the world.
Selective bias