The Truth About Success… Part 1 (Rant)

2 years ago when I was 21 years old, I decided to drop out of College. It was honestly an incredibly difficult decision. I have always been an extremely goal oriented individual, and have always known that one way or another I wanted to be very successful and be able to afford all the nice toys when I grew up… 🙂 And these truths didn’t make dropping out of college any more simple. 

Could I overcome the setback of not having a College degree and still reach my goals? Would I be missing out on some huge part of many young adults lives which shape them as individuals? Would this decision haunt me forever?

These are the questions that were running through my head day and night, and I honestly had no answers. 

I’d talk to one ultra successful person after another, and they’d all give me different advise… some very much so praising college, while others were open about their feelings toward college and the “corporate ladder” style mindset being old and ineffective.

I’d go back and forth and back and forth depending on who said what when, with my mind constantly flip flopping through the Pro’s and Cons of each scenario.

But it was time… and after heavy consideration, and much consultation, I decided to at-least see what it felt like for a while to not go to school.

My family needed the funds that I was sinking into school (much of which I felt was being wasted) in order to support the well being of another family member, and I felt as if 85% of my classes were more or less wasting my time… So I made the decision. After just about 2 years of school at 3 different campus’s, I dropped out.

I was scared. I was uneasy. I didn’t know if I had made the right decision… And I had no clue what the future would hold for me.

But I also did one thing very well. I didn’t give into the thought process that was trying to tell me I had NO CHANCE of doing anything now that I had dropped out of school. I didn’t let the fact that I wasn’t going to get my degree limit me. I simply gave those thoughts zero energy. 

You see, while my various consultations with the wealthy Maui retirees  hadn’t made my decision about school any easier or harder, it did show me one thing definitively: That successful people come from all different backgrounds. From different countries with different education systems, some with college degrees, some without high-school diplomas, some black, some white, some skinny, some fat, and so on. And while I’m not 100% sure… I would actually bet that the majority of the people I talked with who were easily all millionaires, actually WEREN’T college graduates.

And this lesson was EXTREMELY VALUABLE… 

It allowed me to keep an open mindset to potentially being successful, and it kept me from feeling too sorry for myself and thinking about my situation in a negative fashion too much.

Too many people tell themselves that they can’t do something because of X-Y-Z, where in reality the only reason they can’t, or won’t do something is because they don’t believe they can. But that’s a lesson for another day.

I kept at the grind, keeping my eyes and ears peeled, my mind open, and attitude positive, and it wasn’t long before I was pitched my first Network Marketing opportunity by a friend. 

And while I didn’t join, that put in motion a series of events which lead me to Internet Marketing which I now do full time… which allowed me to crack the $9,000/month mark this past month for the first time, and allows me the ability to live anywhere in the world, and travel pretty much whenever I want.

I honestly wouldn’t trade it for the highest paying 9-5 out there.

But what am I getting at here? Whats the lesson?

Well, todays lesson is very simple: Do yourself a favor, and realize that if I were to have gotten negative when my college situation fell through I would have never even found Internet Marketing. I could have very easily let the situation beat me, and retired to the idea of working a $10-15/hr job at a surf shop for the rest of my life… And to be honest, if I wouldn’t have talked to all of the well off individuals like I did, I probably would have missed the fact many successful people don’t necessarily fit in the system, and I wouldn’t have given myself a chance either. Thank god it didn’t work out that way.

But anyway, realize that it’s not about what degree you have or where you’re from. It’s not even about who you know. It’s about you as an individual. It’s about your level of personal work ethic. It’s about your ability to model others (more on that in part 2) and take instructions. It’s about you firstly giving yourself permission to try something different, and then making yourself take accountability for the completion of certain action steps which will return a certain result.

Realize that somewhere in the world (usually just a Facebook message away), there’s an individual who has done exactly what you’re now dreaming of doing. Somewhere there’s an individual who can answer your toughest, most complex questions about your business. Somewhere there’s the perfect individual to guide you on your journey…

.. And one of the large aspects of being successful is all about learning how to become resourceful and creative enough to tap into other people’s lessons and apply them in your business and life. Every mistake you could possibly make in your business has already been made by someone else, and you don’t necessarily need to make the mistake yourself in order to learn the lesson. Find someone who has what you want, and focus 100% of your energy on completing the same action steps they did, and your results are bound to be comparable.

That after-all is the fastest way to become proficient in any activity.

To Success, Yours and Mine. 

Misha Wilson

P.S. Be sure to come back tomorrow to learn the second lesson the rich Maui peeps taught me. 😉