Have you often found yourself wondering how lucky other people are and how simple their lives have been?
I have more often than not found my mind wandering in this space and realized again and again that it's a futile and wishful thinking. Grass always looks greener on the other side and that is why we always think that the other person's life is more interesting than ours. What we don't know at times is that the other person might also be thinking the same about you..
I was watching Elon Musk story on TV today. From outside, his life appears to be the perfect life one can have. To all those who doesn't know who he is, he is the founder of Paypal, Tesla, Space X and SolarCity. A simple google search will show his net worth to be in excess of 6 billion $.Phew, sort of perfect life .Right?
This was my thought until I watched his documentary and realized one simple thing: Life on the other side is always not as rosy as we might think it to be. To put things in perspective, here are few pointers:
- While his first company was sold for 307 million$, there was a time when he had to invest all his savings in Tesla to ensure that it was not shut down. Remember, no one else wanted to invest in Tesla and everyone predicted it to be a doomsayer.
- He had a week worth of cash left for his other company SpaceX* and was on the verge of collapse.
- His personal life story has not been great either.
*For people who don't know about SpaceX, to give an idea it was started by Musk so that humans can travel to Mars and Moon easily and live on inter planetary colonies.
*Tesla is an electronic car company which was established in Silicon Valley to take on the likes of General Motors, Toyota etc.
Many times during his fascinating career, Musk had to take decisions that meant his entire earnings collapsing in front of his eyes, but still he put all in risking everything and even admitting that in 2008, he was closest to getting a nervous breakdown.
So as soon as the documentary finished, I was lost in my own thoughts. I kept wondering wow, what will I do if I was asked to put all my investments on what I believed in? I guess I am too much of a chicken to do something that he did because all along life, we have always been taught how to save for future and be risk free.
The two lessons that I learnt was that although things might look glamorous to us as an outsider, the truth might be far from it.
Also in order to become more successful, you really need to be gutsy and have the courage to go all in. Tough times comes in everyone's life but only those who persist on their road, ultimately go on to be the Famous people that we end up seeing on television. If you are ready to take the risk and dive 100%, then congratulations you might have a chance to appear on TV but if you are not, then be happy to live a life full of things that doesn't involve the turbulent times of the riches:).
If you have any questions, you can contact me directly on apekshaha@gmail.com.