This article is about a very personal topic to me…a topic that helped me to become one of the best in almost everything I start… or you can think of it as some kind of philosophy that guided me all along the way.
That’s not a joke. This simple philosophy I will explain to you in that email is what determined 98% of the achievement I got up to now.
I am sharing it with you because I know that you may need it one day (If you are not already doing like me)
Now, that’s not something “Fancy” and that’s why you will hear very few people saying that…
So, Here’s the thing…
But first, I need to tell you why I am doing all what I am doing so you understand my motivation.
When we are young, we all have those big dreams…right?
You know…
Becoming an astronaut…. or a firefighter….
You probably had one of those too.
Well… my dream had always been to become and engineer, because I wanted to build things that would make the life of people better.
(I talked about it in a previous article in which I am talking about the 3 skills engineers should have)
I knew it would be difficult… but I just couldn’t help to dream about becoming one of the best engineers in the world.
Now, I am an engineer, so you can say that I achieved partially my dream (Still very far from being the best in the world though… but I keep trying every day ;-) )
I didn’t know it at that time, but I discovered that if you really want to succeed and go closer and closer to what you want to be, there is a simple choice that can guide you every day.
In my life, up to now, I did a lot of unconventional choices.
- Studying japanese just because I liked manga and the “asian culture”
- Going into an engineering school and then choosing to go and get a double diploma in China
- Learning chinese opera and actually going in chinese television 2 times
- Going to work in South Korea for a Korean FEA software company
- Making a blog to teach FEA to a lot of future engineers
Everyone of those choices may seem foolish, but there where all part of what I wanted to do and become.
How did I do all that?
Actually, when I tell the story of how I did those choices, some people just think I am crazy, haha…
For exemple, when I was in China studying civil and geotechnical engineering in chinese, I suddenly started to learn Korean and meet korean friends… for no “obvious” reason.
Other foreign students in my circle who were already having difficulties with chinese then told me:
« Why are you doing that? You will never use Korean! Korea is such a small country, learning korean is useless… »
What did I do after hearing that?
I laughed and I continued…
When I REALLY want to learn or do something, I am unstoppable!
(I believe in learning using serendipity…here is what I mean if you are interested)
…But, because of such people, I generally don’t explain in details why I chose to do all that…
Here, this is my newsletter, so it’s different, I feel we are all part of the same family in some way.
So I’ll explain it to you now:
Here’s the philosophy that guided me since I was very young.
I believe that whatever you do in life you have always 2 paths.
The first path is the easy path, the one without real danger or challenge and also the path that most people take.
The second path is the difficult path, the one that has a lot of obstacles and challenges and also the one that no one is willing to take.
Common sense will say that you should take the easy path because in that way you can « enjoy » life every day as you will not be challenged.
What’s the problem with that?
If that’s common sense and everyone wants to do that, then you will just follow everyone. If you follow everyone, you will become no-one.
If you want to stand-out and get opportunities that are better than anyone else, you simply cannot follow the crowd, you have to do things differently, you have to show your individuality and bring some new skills to the table.
Now…choosing the difficult path is a hard choice because you know from the start that there will be days you will have to work hard, sometimes harder than anyone else… but you know also that this hard work will pay.
Hard work is the price that you pay to improve.
Surmounting challenges everyday makes you resistant to difficulties, it creates endurance in your personality and it forges your individuality.
It requires of course courage to do that, so choosing this path will also make you more bold and courageous than everyone else.
By doing unconventional things, you learn things that no one taught you before and you will go out of the beaten bushes.
That’s just a statistical problem… if you collect skills that very few people have, you become the intersection of those skills and you become very valuable for anyone that would need someone like you combining rare (but useful) skills
And no… I am NOT talking about collecting stamps… ;-)
I am talking about FEA + other skills
Anyhoo…
In my opinion, that’s the definition of a life well lived.
Someone who strived to do his best to discover and gain new insights and then made more people aware of those insights is a hero and deserves to be rewarded for this mental attitude.
Because of this philosophy, whatever I do, I always take the difficult and hard path that very few people choose to take.
Taking the hard path that no one takes had allowed me to build my own individual character and traits that I am using now to help others doing the same with my FEA blog and courses.
Now the question that I wanted to ask you since the beginning is the following:
What path do YOU chose?
Let me know your answer by email. I would like to know the unconventional choices that you did in your life that led you to become better and get more opportunities
—Cyprien « Taking the unconventional path » Rusu
