Life is hard, this video will help.

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Transcript

00:00

Life is difficult. This video will help.

Now you might be wondering what is this guy living in his beautiful penthouse overlooking the beautiful ocean knows about suffering. Well, let me tell you my story or rather like a TLDDR of my

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story. So you know that I'm a master of suffering.

So at the age of 3 years old, we moved from China to Singapore and then my mom was an immigrant. So, we came here, we were living in poverty, we were staying in a second uh two-bedroom home that is super duper cramped.

The walls sustain that is this odd smell,

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you know? Everything was like quite [ __ ] growing up, right?

Like having like a McDonald's meal was like a privilege. Cool.

Nothing too crazy, right? Just born in poverty.

So what, right? And then growing up, I'm always the shortest kid and the most scrawniest kid in class because I was malnutrition since I

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didn't get access to food like my my bodies were getting access to. So as a result when I go to school, whatever school I go to, I always end up getting bullied, right?

Because once again, always the shortest kid, the scrawny kid, the weakest kid, can't really do anything, can't really fight back when

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the bullies actually start to shove me around, start to kick me in my face, slap me in my face. Uh yeah, I'll never forget when I was on the bus ride home.

There was two seniors from this school that I was going to. It was known as like a school that is filled with delinquents, right?

So I was just

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sitting in front and then they just slap me in the face. And back then I was like 13 years old.

I can't do anything because I was weak. I was f.

And then after that I started getting into trading. I think at the age around like 16, 17.

Okay. No actually before that.

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Yeah. I think at the age of 16 I got super depressed because of some family issues that I was facing.

My dad was having like this mental illness and at one point of time we I literally just bought like a new bicycle. It was like literally all I had and then

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he threw it away the next day because he was suffering from either bipolar disorder or schizophrenic. I forgot isn't one of them.

So at the age of 16 I cried myself to sleep every single night while lying next to him on the bed and I will always think about unaliving myself

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right wondering what's my purpose in life so at that point of time I genuinely almost died I was like diagnosed as clinically depressed so that was 16 years old okay so you can see life sucks until 16 years old and then later on I got into trading lost money blew accounts almost lose my

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family savings but luckily that didn't because if it actually happen that will be a life of real tragedy. After that at the age of 8 19 I enrolled into the military right served the military for like two years and I think six months into the military I was selected as the

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machine gunner even though I was not the strongest the tallest or the biggest guy in the platoon but my sergeant selected me because of my mental toughness and when I was made or rather when that position was

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announced to me I was [ __ ] surprised I'm like what bro that machine gun is like this big and it's heavy as [ __ ] It weighs like 12 kg. Bear in mind like a normal rifle weighs around like 4 kg, right?

So the freaking machine gun is

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like three times of that. And on top of that, you have to load it and carry like this 200 rounds.

200 of 7.62 rounds. So that's another 5 10 kg.

It's like Yeah. So that is like a big boy gun for like a guy who's not so big, right?

But yeah,

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throughout the entire military, I got habituated to carrying the machine gun around, right? So, at first it was [ __ ] hell.

It was like a pain in the ass. I hated every single minute of it.

But then as time passes, I realized that it's only making me stronger, not just

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physically, but mentally. And eventually, I get habituated to it.

And I was able to carry and walk long distance from 2km to 5km to 10km having like 40 kg, 30 to 40 kg worth of load. Right?

I bear in mind that I'm 60 kg, right? So that's like half of my weight

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in like I'm carrying half of my weight. So that's the military, right?

And bear in mind that throughout the military, there were times where, you know, the business was going wrong, the trading gig was going wrong, someone had just made like a hit piece on me, you know, like uh people were like trying to ruin

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my reputation and then yeah, it just there's so much [ __ ] throughout this past 22 years of my life that I've just gotten used to suffering. And I view suffering as a tax you have to pay in order to live because only the dead

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doesn't suffer. Now if you think about it fundamentally only the dead is free of suffering.

So suffering is pretty much a constant in life and you might as well learn how to suffer because it's always going to be there. So yeah throughout my past 22

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years I've really learned how to suffer well right no matter how difficult my life is. just bite the bullet and just go on.

And by the way, I forgot to mention that, you know, I was working as a waiter as well. You know, there was alcohol like getting spilled all over me and then I was like working until 2 a.m.

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And then there was other times where I was working as a temperature screener in the coid9 pandemic and then I was also working as like a guy giving out flyers, right? So I pretty much suffered a lot throughout my entire life.

So that's pretty much my life journey or

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rather like my my short little life journey in summary of rather all of the suffering that I've pretty much faced still right now. Obviously I'm still young.

There is going to be more suffering. I have no doubts about it whatsoever.

But what I've done really well is learn

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how to actually embrace them rather than run away from them. Instead of running away from pain nowadays, I tend to run towards pain.

Which brings me to my first point. Okay?

Because I was actually like sitting on my balcony uh sitting outside my balcony

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last night, right? Just overlooking like the sea and like the city view.

And then I was thinking about man, life is [ __ ] difficult. Like if you do not know how to deal with hardship and suffering and pain and challenges and obstacles and adversities, you're going to crumble and you're going to die.

you

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are not going to last long in this infinite game of life. So, I actually wrote down a list of things which pretty much helped me throughout the past 22 years.

Helped me carry the bloody machine gun when I'm in the jungle. Um, famish, fatigue, and thirsty.

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And it also helped me to go through my losing streak in trading where I'm blowing accounts after account saying no way out. And it also helped me when um everybody was doubting me and nobody believed that I will ever succeed.

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Right? So yeah, that's that man.

There's just so many things that you guys do not know, bro. But anyways, first thing is like I said earlier, since unchoosen suffering is a constant in life, the only way you can prepare

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for unchoosen suffering is by choosing suffering every single day. And what I basically mean by that is that you have to do hard things.

[snorts] Because when you are doing hard things every single day, you are training your mind, your body, your soul to prepare for the hard

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things that life actually throws at you. Because life is always going to throw [ __ ] at you.

And the thing is when you are in the ass whooping season, when life is whooping you in the ass and this thing has just went wrong and this next thing will start going wrong and then suddenly it feels like the world is

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against you because like everything is just going wrong. And when you're in that particular period, if you don't know how to suffer well, you don't know how to handle the unchoosen suffering, like I said, you're going to crumble.

You're going to give up. You're going to throw in the towel.

So it's very

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important that you actually choose suffering on a daily basis. And you do that by pushing your body to the limits, pushing your mind to your limits and just pushing your soul to the limits.

And for me nowadays, I'm actually on monk mode, right? So to me, I don't think monk mode is like a phase you are

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in. To me, it's more of like a way of living now.

Like right now, every single day I wake up around like 5 to 6:00 a.m. because I go to sleep early like around 9 to 10 p.m.

Once again, this is good for your body and your mind. And then I'll wake up.

First thing I'll do is

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I'll do like a cold shower which is about like 5 minute of like coexposure once again so that I can train my mind to just go when I actually ask it to go instead of like h I don't know. I don't know whether I can do this.

No, you just step in the freaking cold shower, turn it on, let the water pour to you. And

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after that's done, I meditate for about like five minutes. Okay, five minutes every single day.

That's it, right? I don't sit there for like freaking one hour.

Just five minutes. And you can see these sort of activities, right?

But I forgot to mention, but I also go to gym, you know? Uh and then sometimes I also run like long distance.

So I pretty much

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train I think like six days a week. Yeah.

So you can see these type of activities pretty much prepare your mind, your body and your soul for suffering. So when the suffering actually arise, guess what?

you are mentally strong and physically strong

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enough to handle it. And the thing is when you actually choose suffering on a daily basis, it pretty much reduce the likelihood of unchoosen suffering.

Here's what I mean. If you choose to sacrifice short-term

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gain for long-term gain, which means you go to the gym, you work out, you stay fit, you stay healthy, you eat clean food, you drink enough water every single day. Guess what?

you're pretty much reducing the likelihood of illness

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of you getting some disease because your immune system is too weak to actually handle it. And then if you read books every single day, guess what?

You're getting wiser. You're growing smarter.

And once again, this

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reduce the likelihood of you getting C on your English paper. So it's like by choosing suffering every single day, you are pretty much reducing the unpredictable unchosen suffering that tends to arise in your life.

Okay, once again you can't avoid it, right?

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But you can pretty much reduce it. So fall in love with pain.

Instead of running away from the pain, run towards the pain because everything that you want in life is on the other side of pain. Which also means that if you can endure more pain, you can go to the

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distance even though everybody is like out of breath, everybody is like stopping right now, then you're going to win. Then you're going to out compete everybody else.

And the last thing is just expect the worst so that when the worst actually happens, you're never

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surprised. It's like for example back in the military.

So when we had to go on like a mission, I always knew that it's going to be [ __ ] Like no doubts. Whenever I have to go on a mission, we have to go on

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training uh day after day and then we have to go into the jungle and then we have to eat these combat rations which tastes like absolute dog [ __ ] And then you will have to um sit in the jungle sometimes with a snake right next to you. Sometimes with a bunch of freaking

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insects flying around. Sometimes with the wild ball coming to actually tear apart your your rock sack and just taking away all the rations, you know, like there's always [ __ ] happening when you're on a mission, right?

But the thing is, if I can actually prepare my

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mind for it, if I can rather anticipate it, then guess what? When it actually happens, like it's not so bad because you pretty much expected that to happen.

So when that actually happens, you actually laugh. I'm like, h kind of expected this to happen.

But if you're not expecting it, then it's going to

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suck and you're going to be surprised. So yeah, just expect the worst so that when the worst actually happens, you're never surprised.

It's the same thing with trading as well. If you're expecting you're going to potentially lose this next trade ideal, lose this next trade that you're you're just about to enter in.

Then when you actually hit

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your stop- loss, guess what? You're not surprised.

You move on to the next trade idea. And the next advice I would have to give to you is when hardship comes, reframe challenges as opportunities.

Every single

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good thing, be it a virtue or a benefit, it always comes from something that feels difficult in the moment. There's something that feels like [ __ ] in the moment.

Your six packs comes from you

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working out every single day for the next 30 days and ensuring that you're eating clean. Feels like [ __ ] in the moment.

But when you actually do get that six-pack, well, feels amazing. And you reading books every single day, right?

You don't want to do it, but you do it anyways. 30 days from now, your

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vocabulary skills increase. You're able to think better.

Your thoughts flow better. Once again, feels like [ __ ] in the moment.

Feels good in the long term. So instead of thinking that a difficulty, an adversity and a hardship

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or a challenge is bad, why not just view that situation as an opportunity for you to grow, for you to get better financially, physically, spiritually, mentally, intellectually, whateverly, use it as an opportunity to grow because

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remember that God will never ever give you a challenge that you can't handle. The reason why you're in this [ __ ] situation right now is because God knows that you can handle it.

And you need to have faith and trust in him to know that you're going to make it through this

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particular situation. You're going to overcome this adversity.

And when you do, you're going to come out much more stronger, much more well prepared for the next difficulty that actually arises. So another interesting reframe is the

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more difficult the challenge is the lesser people can handle it which automatically means that more results for me. It's like what David Gorgan saying.

Okay. It's like when he's put into a situation where he have to run

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100 kilometers in this freaking heat in like a sauna type of heat with like a broken leg. K knows that no one else is going to do what he does.

And that's because that's like a freaking difficult. That's like a level 100 boss

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that he has to overcome. And guess what?

More for him. More for him.

So it's like the more difficult something is, the lesser people are going to do it, which also means that the outcome is more likely going to go

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to you. The benefits is most likely going to go to you.

you're going to be able to get more of the laurels if you can just conquer the challenge. And another thing that I use is what I

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call the five-ear test. Whenever I'm put in like a difficult situation, I ask myself this one question.

Whether me in 5 years time thank me for not giving up or regret for quitting.

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It's like don't do this for you. Don't do this for today.

Do it for your future self. Will this particular situation if overcome allow you to become the highest version of yourself or rather one step closer to the highest version of yourself?

Will it

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allow you to develop the virtue or the quality that you need to actually get to the next level? If the answer is yes, then perhaps you should just endure it out.

Like I said, it might suck in the short term, but it's going to allow you to

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grow in the long term. It's going to benefit your future self.

So ask yourself, when this will my fiveear self thank me for not quitting or regret for giving up. That's the fiveear test.

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And the next thing which really helps me out a lot is this mantra that I hold dear close to my heart. Like this is the mantra that I always think of like I said when I'm in the Brunai jungles when uh rain is pouring every single day you

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know and then I have I'm so tired after walking like 5k after tracking rivers and jungles where some of some parts of my skin are carts my feet have blisters [clears throat] my uniform is drenched with sweat uh and also like the rain

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water in a mix and then there's also like this gunpowder smell in that particular situation Whenever I find myself in that sort of like difficult situation where nothing seems to be working out, I tell myself this one thing,

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this one phrase, these two shall pass. Whatever difficulty, whatever adversity or hardship that you're facing right now, no matter how difficult it is, no matter how insurmountable the

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challenge is, no matter how the odds are heavily stacked against you, these two shall pass. At the end of the day, the day ends.

Okay? Like at the end of the day, the day ends, which also means that this mission is

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eventually going to end. this challenge is eventually going to end.

Eventually, I'm going to get over it. Eventually, I'm going to grow from it.

These two shall pass. Now, it doesn't just apply for bad things.

It also applies for good things as well. Like whatever good things, whatever wins

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that you have accomplished recently, whatever high that you are feeling right now after you have purchased your dream apartment or your dream car or your dream watch or you know whatever state of happiness that you're feeling right now, these two shall pass.

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The good things will pass, the bad things will pass because nothing is ever impermanent in this life. Nothing is in no nothing is ever permanent in this life.

Everything is impermanent in this life. Whatever material possessions that you

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have acquired right now, guess what? You can't bring them to the afterlife.

When you die, you're going to have to leave them all behind. The car that is parked under your garage right now, the house that you're living in right now, your kids that is playing in the next room right now, they're not going to

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follow you when you die. You're going to have to leave it behind.

So, you're not the owner. You are simply the tenant who's renting these things, right?

So, why be attached to them? [snorts] Anyways, basically like I said, no matter how bad

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the situation is, when you're in the [ __ ] eating phase where everything feels like going wrong, just remember that these two shall pass. It might last for one day, it might last for one month, it might last for 3 months, but no matter what it is, it will always pass.

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I've never seen a person who is stuck in a [ __ ] eating phase for their entire life. Like yes, you can be like the most unfortunate person in the entire world.

You know, you are homeless. Uh you have nothing to eat, you have nothing to drink, but eventually you're going to

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have like one good thing that actually comes out. Someone comes here and offer you money.

Someone comes here to offer you like a shelter to stay under like eventually there is going to be something good that actually comes out of it. Right?

These two shall pass.

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And the next thing that really helped me is if you feel like you are in a bad situation right now, think about a worse place than the current bad situation. That's such a like a strong one.

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Like for example, right now, you know, I'm chilling my penthouse right here and then every single day I eat meal prep, right? Which is pretty much like this frozen food that is in this like black little container.

And I have to like microwave it. And it's usually like this nutritious healthy food that is filled

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with protein, less carbs, you know, like healthy sort of stuff like beef, chicken, salmon, rice, peas, um vegetables, all that stuff, right? But the bad part is like it's frozen.

So I have to like microwave it. And the reason why I do it is because it save

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time and it save me money and it also allow me to be healthy at the same time. So it checks off a lot of box.

So, I think a few days ago, I I took out one of these boxes, put it in the microwave, and then hit up for like 5 minutes, and I started having one bite, and I'm like, "Okay, this is this is a [ __ ] one."

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Okay, it's like there is meal prep that is good, there is meal prep that is bad, and then there's meal prep that is [ __ ] This one was a [ __ ] one. Soon as I sit there, you know, I was like eating right there on like my balcony just looking at the sea while eating, right?

I was like, hm, this this doesn't taste so good.

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Okay. So, at that point of time, I can't help but just slap myself in the face.

I'm like, "What are you freaking thinking about, Brad?" One year ago, you were stuck in a jungle

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with no food to eat because the enemies have stolen your foods. Like, what that was literally our final mission in the military.

We had to stimulate a condition where the enemy has literally stolen our food. So for one entire day after climbing mountains with my

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freaking machine gun, after walking long distance, after traveling on a boat for like hours, everybody was like tired and all that [ __ ] The enemy have stolen our food. And man, like the food wasn't even nice.

It's like Russian, right? Once again, the combat rations, they taste like [ __ ] But yeah, the enemy has

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stolen our food. So for one day after long training when I'm hungry as hell, I have no food.

That was one year ago, right after my last mission before I graduate from the military. So that's when I realized that man, you

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need to be grateful, Brad. Yeah, this might not be the best tasting food, but like it is still food.

It can still fuel your body. It can still allow you to go back to your air conditioned room and continue working.

So maybe you shouldn't complain, Brad. So it's like whenever you find yourself in a [ __ ] situation,

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think back about a situation that you had it worse and you will automatically be more grateful. And the thing is sometimes we get so caught up in chasing what's next that we fail to appreciate what we have accomplished, what we have

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overcame. Like chances are if you're on the journey of self-improvement or the journey of getting better as a human trying to reach your fullest potential, every single challenge that you face, it just get harder, right?

Because you are

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always progressive overloading yourself. So this situation that you're in right now, this challenge that you're in right now, it's probably 10 times more difficult than the challenge you find yourself in 5 years ago.

And instead of lamenting and blaming how

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difficult it is right now, why not be grateful of it? Because you shouldn't be complaining about your plate being full when your goal is to eat.

It's like, okay, you should be grateful of this big challenge because the only reason why you are facing this big

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challenge is because you've grown as a human. So no [ __ ] it's going to get more difficult.

And when you're in that particular situation, think about like the level one challenge that you conquered like 5 years ago. It's like if you can conquer that, you're potentially going to be able to

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conquer this. And once you conquer this one year, guess what?

There's going to be this next challenge which is 10 times more difficult. Maybe next year, maybe next month, maybe tomorrow.

That's the unpredictable nature of life.

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So, be grateful that you're dealing with this challenge because you might not even realize this, but this could be a challenge that you use to pray for. Like right now, I'm in the works of building ad flow, okay?

My my software company right here. And we haven't

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launched it yet, but like I'm a guy with very high expectations. So, I expect every single UI to be completed nicely.

the entire user experience to flow seamlessly. You know, every single feature, every single nuance of each

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little feature of the execution platform to be perfect. So, a few weeks ago, I pretty much looked at our entire trade execution platform and I decided that it was not up to standards.

So, we pretty much redo the entire thing. We rebuild the entire thing.

Now, bear in mind that we were supposed to launch like last month, right? At least launch like the

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the minimum viable product, which is like the first version of the product itself. but I just can't launch a [ __ ] product.

So instead of launching and trying to cash out, you know, get some money from my audience, I was like, [ __ ] no. This is not an app that I will use myself.

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And if this is not an app that I will use myself and it's not up to standards, guess what? We'll do it over over again until we eventually get it down perfect.

Because once the app is actually perfect, then we can launch. And right now, I've literally invested six figures into building the app itself.

And I've been spending so much time for the past

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one year building it and we haven't launched it yet which means we are in the rate right like we are pretty much not profitable right now and the thing is recently I just felt this uncertainty like don't know whether this will actually work out or not like I don't

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know whether people will actually want this app or not so when that actually happens I realized that [ __ ] this is my room like Brad when he was 17 years old would

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wish that he have this problem right now because that's a million dollar problem right there and if you actually solve that problem you will potentially make a million dollars because you have produced something that the marketplace doesn't know it needs yet but you actually do have a solution. So, it's

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like that's a million dollar problem. And that's something that younger bread couldn't even fathom, okay?

Because he's busy thinking about what he's going to eat the next day instead of thinking about a decision which could potentially change not just

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his own life but the millions of life or even the entire trading industry. So that is when I realized that you need to like really just stop and be grateful.

Like this might sound really stupid but like you need to be grateful of the challenge

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because the only way you are in this particular situation is because you're growing. And if you're growing and you're getting better then of course it's going to become more difficult.

And the thing is if you overcome it

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you're going to get stronger again. That's just life, you know.

So, yeah, don't complain that your plate is full when your goal is to eat. All right?

Don't complain your plate is full when your goal is to eat. So, those are

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pretty much some principles that I have in terms of dealing with suffering and hardship. Like I said, life is [ __ ] difficult.

Life is always going to filled with pain and suffering. And I hope these principles which will

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allow you to kind of handle the suffering battle will allow you to kind of habituate to the suck to actually embrace the suck and actually do the work necessary in order

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to grow because my goal here isn't to just spit a bunch of information to allow you to me mentally masturbate here. Okay?

No, I'm trying to change your behavior. And that's what I'm doing with Edge Flow itself as well.

It's like to change a trader's behavior so he can become profitable faster so he can do

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the things that suck in a less suckly manner and remove all the roadblocks that is preventing him from becoming profitable. That's all we're trying to do here.

That's my mission in this life. So yeah, I hope this serve as like a great guide for you to deal with

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suffering, to deal with adversities because like I said, God will never ever give you what you can't handle. All right.

So, I will end off like with this little serenity prayer, which

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I always say whenever I'm in like a sucky situation, when I'm whenever I'm in like a [ __ ] eating phase or like a ass whooping phase, which basically states that may God give me the serenity to change the things which can be changed

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[gasps] And [ __ ] I forgot what's the entire serenity prayer. I I'm I've literally written it down my notebook.

Let me think about it. I'm I'm tired, guys.

Literally just did like a legs workout. All right.

Like

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like I said, I'm a type of guy who chills suffering every single day. And the leg workout I did just now was absolutely brutal.

May God grant me the serenity to accept the things that I can't control.

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The strength that I need to accept to change things that I can control and the wisdom I need to discern the difference.

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Okay, it was not like word for word that. All right.

But it's something along the lines of that and I think that's good enough. Okay.

So, may God grant me the serenity to change the things that I have control over and the strength

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to accept the things that I don't have control over and the wisdom to discern the difference. You can find exact words online.

All right. There's tragedy for a reason.

So, yeah, there's that. There's no better way to end it than that.

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Focus on the things that you can control and whatever that's outside of your control, outside of your locus of control, you can do your best to control them by choosing suffering every day. So always remember your journey is your

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edge. The setbacks are part of the story that we one day tell.

Keep showing up and you'll win in the end.