When you want to do anything new, you have to go against the flow, and this is psychologically very hard.
When I decided to quit my job and create a company I went against everybody. My parents, my girlfriend, my friend, all them thought I was crazy quiting a good position for something so risky.
E.g My girlfriend told me that if I was doing my company the relationship was over, so I said to her, ok, go away. The next week she wanted to come back, but I preferred to risk this alone.
Of course, when whatever you did works, everybody believes you are a genius, and they always remind you how much they KNEW that. Success is contagious, and once the media says that, you are a genius for everyone.
People like Newton, who was a geek, had to suffer isolation all his life in order to do what he felt right.
Fortunately today there are two differences with Newton's time:
1-There is Internet. Whatever you do you are not alone. There is a 1 per cent or 1 per thousand people like you, and with Internet you can find them, meet them. In the past getting enough critic mass was only possible in cities, with millions of people.
2-We know a lot more about psychology, you have amazing educational materials to improve your live, be happy and not getting in holes like suicidal thoughts.
Your point about genius and success is well-taken, but the reality is even more complicated. There is a strong feedback loop between people believing you're a genius and success, not just one-way causation.
Convince a few influential people you're a genius and the odds of your success goes up. Then as you become more successful, the threshold for convincing people you are a genius goes down.
It can even happen posthumously: Herman Melville was a nobody loser when he died. A few decades later his work was "discovered" and he became a genius overnight.
Bootstrapping this process is an unsolved problem, although the kind of blatant self-marketing that characterizes Jobs or Edison certainly helps (although self-marketing still has to be backed with actual capabilities, as it was in those cases.)
Any advise for a person who had success, then had compound PTSD surface, get mingled with the concept of ego, leading to a negative sorts of ego death, and is still trying as hard as they can to become genius? I can't get the concept of being past my prime, out of my head, and I think that is precisely what is holding me back.
Start actively looking deeper into yourself to discover your fears. Your mind has built up a bunch of reasons why you can't do something, and you've become so accustomed to them that you don't even think to question their validity. At the core, it is your fears that hold you back, and those "reasons" exist only to mask that fear. You must dig deeper and expose the ugly fear underneath. Then you must face and walk into that fear, alone. You must discover that you are not a victim. A victim has no power over their circumstances. A victor controls their circumstances. This transition is VERY HARD to make, and it's not too uncommon to fail on your first few attempts. Good luck.
This resonates with me to an extent. I squandered some serious talent early on. I'll never know the answers to all those "what if's".
It's easy to be bitter or resentful of circumstances and opportunities -- I think of all the people entering the job market in the past 10-12 years. Get the wrong year in the wrong industry and you'll stagnate at just the wrong time.
For myself, I do not regret the past. I accept responsibility for not capitalizing on my talent, which is itself a talent. I am not bitter for not being luckier in opportunity as I have been luckier than so many. Today, I will sit down and accomplish what I can.
My company's CEO passed away last week. During her memorial I found out that she was 70 when she died, and had founded the company 25 years ago, when she was 45. Which I think shows that people's "prime" actually comes a lot later than they think.
The way I look at it is that if you start a business in your 20s, the odds are against you. You may be young and full of energy, but you don't know shit about the world yet and will make a ton of mistakes. If you do it in your 30s, the odds are neutral. You are more seasoned and possibly have some domain experience under your belt that you can leverage. If you do it in your 40s, the odds are in your favor. You probably have significant domain expertise as well as connections you have established earlier in your career that can help you. It's only in your 50s that you can justify feeling like you're past your prime. Then again, that hardly stops some people.
"Suffer" may be a bit overstated - if he was isolated, it was largely self-imposed; and if he was persecuted, it may have had more to do with his behavior than beliefs.[1] Best to think of Newton as the real-life "House" character: impossibly brilliant (did most of his heavy lifting on light, gravity, and calculus in one summer), but also incredibly abraisive.
When I decided to quit my job and create a company I went against everybody. My parents, my girlfriend, my friend, all them thought I was crazy quiting a good position for something so risky.
E.g My girlfriend told me that if I was doing my company the relationship was over, so I said to her, ok, go away. The next week she wanted to come back, but I preferred to risk this alone.
Of course, when whatever you did works, everybody believes you are a genius, and they always remind you how much they KNEW that. Success is contagious, and once the media says that, you are a genius for everyone.
People like Newton, who was a geek, had to suffer isolation all his life in order to do what he felt right.
Fortunately today there are two differences with Newton's time:
1-There is Internet. Whatever you do you are not alone. There is a 1 per cent or 1 per thousand people like you, and with Internet you can find them, meet them. In the past getting enough critic mass was only possible in cities, with millions of people.
2-We know a lot more about psychology, you have amazing educational materials to improve your live, be happy and not getting in holes like suicidal thoughts.