To follow the right person and do the right thing, only with a perfect mindset can efforts be rewarded. Otherwise, one would just be stubbornly clinging to the old and become foolishly diligent, the kind that would definitely fail and never be employed by Napoleon. Following this topic, the author and the baby started discussing the establishment of a mindset, the idea that character determines fate, and even touched upon religion and destiny. During the conversation, both of them admitted that the family is where a person's character is cultivated. The formation of a mindset, and the framework of thinking about the extension and connotation of being and doing things, always bear the imprint of the family's growth environment. Character determines fate, mindset determines development, and a person's opportunities determine everything.
It is the same baby who, when in a relationship with Lili, walked into a dead end. But after changing his girlfriend, the baby is now thriving. This is the most dramatic life of a senior fellow among the author's friends, classmates, and colleagues. The baby is still the same baby, but meeting different people, especially the most important other half in life, has made his life develop into two extremes, which is the most shocking to the author. The baby is lucky in life because of his wife, his father-in-law, his wife's uncle, and his wife's father's friends. The author agrees that the baby's wife is his lucky star, a somewhat metaphysical conclusion. But the facts are there. The baby once struggled for almost two years and could hardly stay in this city. But with the help of his wife, the baby has become a well-known lawyer in this largest city in China, known as the "Pearl". This is an example that contains an element of destiny. The baby is undoubtedly lucky, but many of the baby's law school classmates, as well as many of the author's friends and classmates, are still struggling. However, the baby's persistence in staying and his endurance are the basis for his later turnaround. The baby's character and his solid qualities are also his greatest advantages that are worthy of recognition. But thinking about this, the author is confused. Is it the baby's ability that plays a decisive role, or is it the good fortune brought by the baby's wife that plays a decisive role?
The author once asked Brother Baby: Will you hate Lili? Thinking about that seven or eight-year love period, that feeling of swearing under the moon with a guitar to marry no one but you, and it ended up like this. Will you hold a grudge in your heart? Brother Baby replied to the author like this: No, not at all! Lili's family situation is similar to that of the baby. At that time, Lili was also confused about life, completely at a loss, and had no idea where life should go at that time. For the pressure of poverty and the cruelty of reality, it is understandable that a person, especially a woman, instinctively chooses to quit when facing these pressures. It is a completely different concept for the baby to emotionally find it difficult to accept and to understand Lili's initial choice to break up. At the same time, the baby also told the author: Now that we are both fathers, when our children are facing love and choosing a marriage partner, how should we choose? I said, of course, we should choose someone like the sister-in-law, someone who is helpful. Love is too pale and nothing in the face of reality. It is as fragile as a wet piece of paper in the face of material things. The author also hopes that friends who have not yet married and are reading this post will think about the baby's two situations before making a choice in marriage.
During that conversation between the author and the baby, they talked about how to avoid making mistakes, how to make one's life path more smooth, how to improve oneself, and how to further perfect oneself. That night, we talked about those role models, those heroic figures we admired in our younger days. In fact, both the baby and the author made such a mistake when we were young. I hope to share it today so that everyone can learn from it, and I also hope that parents can learn from it and not make this cognitive error. Every child has an admired figure from childhood to adulthood. Every parent and teacher also emphasizes these success stories at home or at school in a stereotypical way. For example, Hong Kong businessman Li Ka-shing, Taiwan's Formosa Plastics boss Wang Yung-ching, and also those leaders, as well as some like Bill Gates, Apple's Steve Jobs, and even the current IT newcomers in China, Jack Ma, Robin Li, Charles Zhang, and so on. Although everyone's story is different and the industries they are in are also different, what the author heard since childhood, and even what children hear now, is that these people once came from ordinary or even poor family backgrounds, but they have all become the most successful figures in ancient or modern times.
Many parents and teachers educate their children in this way: These people are now so rich, but they were once so poor. The concept they convey to children is that no matter how bad the family is now or how difficult the situation is, because of these examples, you can learn from them, use them as role models, and comfort yourself. Maybe you will become one of the role models in the future. For adults, the current corporate culture training, and even the countless success studies in bookstores, as well as those hysterical training lecturers, are all emphasizing these stories. In the author's opinion, what you can learn from the success of these people is their excellent qualities. Other than that, you can only use the stories of these successful people for self-comfort or to imitate them. Using this as psychological comfort or even using it to justify your dissatisfaction with the reality will only make you more unsuccessful. Because every successful person and every successful opportunity has the background of the era, social development opportunities, and personal opportunities as a powerful assistance to form the brilliant life of these outstanding figures.
For example, when talking about these life mentors like Li Ka-shing, it is generally talked about how poor Li Ka-shing was in his childhood, and then it is his achievements after success. What the author wants to say is that Li Ka-shing's father-in-law, that is, Li Ka-shing's uncle, was already a very successful businessman in Li Ka-shing's youth. Li Ka-shing's wife, who is also Li Ka-shing's cousin, provided great assistance to Li Ka-shing's later entrepreneurship. This kind of assistance can be referred to as 10,000 times that of the baby's story. But the vast majority of parents and even success training will not tell you how much assistance Li Ka-shing received from his father-in-law and how much it played a role. They only tell you that Li Ka-shing was very poor in his youth, and then he was an apprentice, and then he got rich, and then he became the boss of a plastic factory, and then he became a real estate tycoon. This kind of truncated description is the most harmful, ignoring the key points inside. They only tell you what they want to say. Even some parents use this kind of truncated story, a success story that they themselves do not understand, to educate their children. On the one hand, they cover up the reality that they have not created a good foundation for their children. On the other hand, they instill in the children some truncated success stories that ignore the necessary factors for success to inspire the children and cover up their own deficiencies.
As for Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Michael Dell, it is because at that time, the environment of the production relations in the United States had developed to a time of great leaps in computer hardware and software. These figures, because of their hobbies, the technology they mastered, or because of their interests, made this epoch-making opportunity manifest in them. Their abilities made the development of the IT industry an inevitable factor. They achieved world-class success, and this is a major factor. It is a turning point in the development opportunities of the world era. Even in the United States, a first-class country system, if you want to replicate the success of these people, even if you are an IT genius without that era background, you cannot achieve great enterprises like Microsoft and Apple, which are as great as a scientific revolution.
The stories of Robin Li, Jack Ma, Charles Zhang, Pony Ma, and Ding Lei are the same. They sound very inspiring, and the wealth is dazzling, but they cannot be replicated at all. Because when China's Internet was advancing by leaps and bounds in the late 1990s, these people's opportunities, study abroad backgrounds, and the well-developed technology in the United States were brought to China, creating the Internet legend in China and making them the new tech tycoons. But in the same historical period, they met, with vision, ability, technology, and various advantageous factors contributing to their success.
In the author's opinion, the success trajectories of these successful people include the opportunities of the era's development, the social development situation, personal opportunities, personal abilities, and many other situations that have made their success. But this kind of success cannot be replicated at all. Because if you carefully analyze this success factor, it is no less than a rigorous mathematical model. If you just blindly emphasize personal effort and the effort of not giving up, it is just like emphasizing one letter or one formula in a mathematical model, which is taking things out of context. Letting children or adults who hear these stories imitate success along a truncated concept is a big mistake. For these successful people, we ordinary people can only learn their personal qualities. Other than that, those success stories are just for listening and then combining with our own situations for rational analysis. If what you accept is the truncated concept that one had an ordinary or even poor family in childhood and became a great success through hard work in adulthood, ignoring the key characteristics of social development, the background of the era, personal opportunities, background factors, and other non-replicable success factors, and still talking about it a lot, it is destroying children and employees.
That day, that conversation, we talked a lot. It was also after the end of that chat that the author had a feeling of a complete overthrow of his mindset. His old mindset began to be broken, and the author also gradually began to summarize, observe, reflect, and understand from the lives of the people around him what life is. Still, that sentence: Maybe this post is all nonsense, but I hope that you who read this post can see one or two useful sentences that can give you a rational understanding in choice, cognition, and mindset, so that you can take fewer detours, be more stable, be simpler, and be more smooth... (The full text is over)