I am a regular reader of Mark Cuban’s blog. Every once in awhile he has a post that is absolutely brilliant. Mark slices ideas in ways that only a few other people I know can, and this makes for some unique content.
About a month ago he wrote a post on finding out “what you are destined to be.” Destiny is a bit misleading because of the connotations associated with the word. A better explanation of what Mark describes as “destiny” is the role that, given a person’s skill set and tastes and interests, a person is best fit to play in the giant system that is the world. Finding this role (or roles) is an evolutionary process.
Each person has a different skill set. One should try many different jobs and activities, change environment and learn constantly, search for unique experiences, and gradually eliminate jobs that are not enjoyable (at least in some capacity) and that one is not very good at.
Some questions from Mark:
Do we know what we are destined to be, or do we find it through experiences? Are each of us really good at something, and its just a matter of finding it? Do we all have something that we would love to do every day and do we inherently know it, or do we have to find it? Will what you love to do always be what you are great at?
His experience and some thoughts on college:
Personally, I always have enjoyed business, but I never knew that I had an aptitude for technology until I got a job at Mellon Bank that lasted all of 8 months. But during the many hours of boredom, I found myself sitting in front of a mainframe teaching myself a scripting language called Ramis and loving every minute of it. Which lead to me buying a TI/99A I think it was, for 99 dollars, attaching a tape recorder as a drive (how is that for dating myself) and teaching myself basic. Which led to… You get the idea. I loved every minute of it. Maybe I wasnt the best programmer in the world, but in combination with business and sales skills, I found something that was a blast to me that I could and did do 24 hours at a time and not miss a beat.
Personally, I don’t think people “know” what they are destined to be until they try it for the first couple times.
Going to college should be about experiencing as much academically as you possibly can, but more importantly, it should be about learning how to learn and recognizing that learning is a lifelong endeavor. School isn’t the end of the learning process, its purely a training ground and beginning…
On obligation and debt as dream killers:
Of course there is always a caveat to destiny, and thats obligation. The greatest obstacle to destiny is debt, both personal and financial. The more people you are obligated to, the harder it is to focus on yourself and figure things out. I’m a big believer that getting married is about finding yourself first, which makes it a lot easier to find the right person. If you can’t stand on your own, it’s impossible to successfully be part of a couple.
I’m also a big believer that financial debt is the ultimate dream killer. Your first house, car, whatever stuff you might want to buy are going to be the primary reasons you stop looking for what makes you the happiest.
How crazy is it to settle for a house , car or ?? over what it is you would like to do on an hourly or daily basis ?
Never Settle and there is no reason to rush. If you aren’t happy with where you are at, simplify your life and go out and try as many things as it takes to find what you may be destined to be. If there is such a thing…
The rapid growth of the human population leads to quite a problem. We might be outgrowing this planet. Many have begun looking to space for answers — from the epic scifi stories of Star Wars, Star Trek, and Battlestar Galactica, to the real world investments of entrepreneurs Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, and Elon Musk.
