Would be interesting if you can dwell a bit more on what books /persons /ideas have shaped your current approach to life and how it has evolved, in a future post.
--RetailTrader
I was a bit lazy to do this post, cos it's quite hard for me to list down things that has influenced me.
I take a lot of lessons from my surroundings and I take a bit out of everything to learn and cut and paste into what I am...
People I see, observe on the streets, I think a bit about what they do, whey they do it.
People I know, I will try to learn from their mistakes and what they do. I don't only learn from their positives, I also learn from their negatives. Like, there was a manager which I didn't really like, so I took note NOT to do the stuff they did, or certain other leadership skills from other managers which I appreciated and I learnt how and what they did.
I also learn a lot from shows... It's quite common to see me deep in thought after a show/movie, cos I'm analyzing the show and what I can learn from it, I don't merely watch it for entertainment. Actually, I get bored of a show which I can't learn anything from... I'm not talking about just documentaries... (I'll give an example later.)
Books is a bit tough, I don't really like to read books much. They tend to be too draggy. They usually have a few good points but they elaborate it into a 200-300 page nightmare. I like short key points where I can learn the idea and not have to read long explanations about the examples. So I tend to like to read summaries online, or read Wikipedia about such topics.
The list that I mention are by no means a complete list, cos I don't really list them down and it's kinda hard to recall what has influenced me cos I take lessons from so many different places.
Top of the list, the easiest person to remember, who has shaped me is probably my dad. He taught me to save and be frugal. As I've mentioned before...
Don't upgrade your lifestyle unnecessarily. If you don't upgrade your lifestyle in good times, you won't need to downgrade your lifestyle in bad times.
- ERSG's dad
He taught me this when I was really young... Although as the years went by and when I grew up, I saw that this was hardly the case for himself. He's fussy about food, drink, lifestyle inflation, etc... But hey... the lesson is what is important.
It was irritating to watch cos this lesson was taught to me when I was very young so I was always aware about saving and being frugal at a very young age, and as I saw what my parents did, it was kind of contradictory to what I was taught.
A book which influenced me is "Rich Dad Poor Dad" by Robert Kiyosaki.
Once again, as time went by, I realized that the book is fiction and all dreamed up by the author.
This is also an example of a draggy book, the idea behind this book is simple. Don't be a mindless worker, try to create passive income by investing or starting a business... Robert Kiyosaki has come up with many many books all with the same underlying concept.
Nonetheless, although the book is pure fiction, the ideas behind it are not. And I think Robert Kiyosaki presented it very well for many readers who might not be financially inclined.
A really good movie which I watched and learnt a lot from is "Catch Me If You Can" starring Leonardo DeCaprio, it's about the story of Frank Abagnale. He's a con artist, fraudster, counterfeiter.
Most people watch movies just for fun. I tend to like to take something back after the show, not just being entertained for 2 hours. So I tend to look deeper into most shows. I don't appreciate shows like "Transformer".
Anyway... the key point that I took away from this show is that you have to be confident in what you do. If you act like you are right, people will doubt themselves and think that you are right.
It's quite an important lesson, to learn to do things naturally, be confident, even if you are doing something wrong, people may not notice it.
Another person whom left a strong mark on me is a guy from my Secondary School.
I asked him once, "Why are you so popular?"
His reply was, "You all make me popular."
The lesson I got here was that popularity is given by the audience. He behaved in a certain way and people naturally gathered around him...
Have you ever been to a gathering where not many people know each other? Whatever the event is, you see the folks all blur and not knowing each other, and everyone is quiet or whispering cos no one wants to stand out?... Then maybe someone comes along and starts talking a bit louder (actually normal sound cos he's not whispering), and he acts like he knows everyone and knows what's going on and talks to people? Then suddenly people start to gather around this person, the area around this person becomes the hot spot cos it's the fun place?
This lesson is very highly co-related to "Catch Me If You Can".
A lot of people are clueless and want to lie low, don't want to stand out, they may have self doubt, they may be afraid of the unknown, they want to have a leader to follow, someone comes along and acts like they know what they are doing, and is charming. It's an easy way gather people around you.
MMM definitely made an impression on me.
He made being frugal pretty cool, he had an attitude and wrote about being frugal well. Although his posts have somewhat dwindled... I think it's the same as for many of us, we don't have much to post about anymore, cos... what more is there? Just spend less and save more.
I think he gave a lot of us confidence in retiring early, cos it can be done. Hmm... maybe he's applying the above principles as well... cos he just sounds so confident about it.
Oh and my wife really did shape a lot of my life.
She is a lot more chill with life than I was... She didn't have as much expectation and ambition about where she wanted to end up after graduation. She really takes life as it comes along. And I've learnt to relax a bit more due to her influence... she dragged me to buffets, overseas for travel, biz trips. Stuff that I would never have done due to my frugality.
But due to this, I've eaten a lot of good stuff. And that's important, cos... then I can make a decision that, we've eaten a lot of good stuff in our lives, been there done that... we can live frugally on normal days and sometimes eat nice stuff as well. By having the experience, this also allowed me to make an informed decision... we've eaten a lot of the good stuff, how much MORE good stuff can we eat? Do we really need to go to ANOTHER Michelin starred restaurant?
Same as traveling, I never really liked traveling, then she dragged me on holidays, and this allowed me to see more of the world. To understand that in every other country, it's all the same, the people are all the same, they are "suffering" like everyone else, they wake up, go to work, go home, sleep and repeat. It's not like Japan is all about Sakura and Mt Fuji like everyone thinks. That's just the illusion of what they want tourists to see.
She has made me understand that people CAN love their jobs. She is happy to go to work. Genuinely happy and excited. It baffled me at first but it's one of those things. I'll probably never know it existed without seeing how she enjoys it.
She also made me realize that frugality for the sake of frugality is just stupid. (This sounds like a good post for tomorrow.)
There needs to be a balance between being frugal and being spendy. If you are frugal for your whole life and save up $20 million by the time you die... what's the point? Just to pass the money on to your descendants? I'll elaborate more about this point in tomorrow's post.
The idea of freeganism is probably the most recent thing which has impacted me.
The idea that many things can just be obtained for free due to the excessive wastage by society and how the capitalistic economy works.
As I've written about in my numerous previous posts on freeganism, the very idea that ALL our daily necessities to survive are available for FREE is mind boggling. It really broke the mental structure I had about how the economy worked and what I had been working for.
There's probably many other people, shows, ideas that have shaped me into who I am, but I really don't keep track of them, cos I take so many bits and pieces and dump the ideas that just don't work for myself, and keep the good ideas and integrate them... so much so that many of the origins of the ideas are lost cos I pick them up from the smallest things that may occur in my daily life.
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