Javier Castellon Villanueva’s Reviews > Principles: Life and Work > Status Update

“People often worry more about appearing to not have problems
than about achieving their desired results, and therefore avoid recognizing that their own mistakes and/or weaknesses
are causing the problems”

“By and large, life will give you what you deserve and it doesn’t give a damn what you “like.” So it is up to you to take full responsibility to connect what you want with what you need to do to get it, and then to do those things—which often are difficult but produce good results—so that you’ll then deserve to get what you want.”

Changed font size. Pg 36 on paper font w/ certain size.

“You must approach these as distinct steps rather than blur them together.
For example, when setting goals, just set goals (don’t think how you will achieve them or the other steps); when diagnosing problems, just diagnose problems (don’t think about how you will solve them or the other steps).”

“Successful people know that nature is testing them, and that it is not sympathetic”

SHEEEEESH

“Blaming bad outcomes on anyone or anything other than one’s self is essentially wishing that reality is different than it is, which is silly.[37]
And it is subversive because it diverts one’s attention away from mustering up the personal strength and other qualities that are required to produce the best possible outcomes.”

“By contrast, people who choose what they really want, and avoid the temptations and get over the pains that drive them away from what they really want, are much more likely to have successful lives.”

“I believe that the way we make our dreams into reality is by constantly engaging with reality in pursuit of our dreams and by using these encounters to learn more about reality itself and how to interact with it in order to get what we want—and that if we do this with determination, we almost certainly will be successful.”

basically: build, feedback, iterate.

“There are many people who have made a lot of money who never made making a lot of money their primary goal. Instead, they simply engaged in the work that they were doing, produced what society wanted, and got rich doing it. And there are many people who really wanted to make a lot of money but never produced what the society wanted and they didn’t make a lot of money.”

Please God don’t let me be the latter

“1) working for what I wanted, not for what others wanted me to do; 2) coming up with the best independent opinions I could muster to move toward my goals; 3) stress- testing my opinions by having the smartest people I could find challenge them so I could find out where I was wrong; 4) being wary about overconfidence, and good at not knowing; and 5) wrestling with reality, experiencing the results of my decision”