[Story Index] [Discussion Thread] [The Asylum]
Your attitude is your direction
By Ats
2000-11-22
This is an article about acquiring various skills, because that is one of the things I enjoy most.
I remember two persons whose interviews I have seen before they achieved what they wanted to. One was Mika Häkkinen who won the Formula One championship two times recently. I remember seeing his interview a couple of years before that, where he said that he was sure that he could become a world champion, that it might take some time, but he could do it. At the time I thought he was just a bit arrogant. And I remember seeing an interview of the lead singer of the band HIM, when they weren't very well known. He said that he was going to become a famous rock star, and that is what he is now. Yet another example: I read a story which told about the rock band Hanoi Rocks before they got famous. They said that they wanted to become world famous, and afterwards they did become quite a cult band, although a bus accident made them break up. An example outside Finland: I read that Bill Gates said that he was going to make his first million bucks when he was pretty young, and he made it too.
Now that I think of it, I don't remember seeing anybody with that kind of determination, who hadn't achieved what he wanted. Of course, you need to be realistic goal, keep a calm mind, you might have natural talent for some things and not for some others etc. But I think that the most important thing that determines whether you will achieve your goals or not is your attitude. All the time your experiences change you into a slightly different person. But in the end what determines where you are going is your attitude. If you believe that you'll get good at something, your mind will automatically start to make it true. You'll start thinking about what when you get there. Your priorities might change. You may realize that it isn't such a big deal as you imagined it might be. When you get there, you won't be thrown off balance, because you've already been there.
When I started programming when I was about 10, I wasn't confident enough. I wasn't sure that I could ever become like the people whose work I admired. I wasted time getting stuck on little details. If I had started with the knowledge that I would become a good programmer, I would have got here much faster! I would have worked on many different projects at a time, always finding something interesting instead if I got stuck on meaningless details. I would have worried even less about comprehensive school, because I would have realized that most of what they taught there wasn't going to be very useful to me at all. I would have spent much less energy worrying about what other people think about me, and more time learning things.
When I was about 16, I started reading some "positive thinking" books, by Wayne Dyer, Anthony Robbins, etc. Although maybe a bit cheesy at times, I think that they contain some really good advice about self-improvement. I was also learning to compose music and play the guitar at that time, and I noticed that my attitude really affected it. If you play with the attitude of a maestro-in-training, you play much better than if you think you aren't going to become good at all. Right now, I can play the guitar pretty well. I could probably become a professional musician if I really wanted to, but I just don't have time for that. I have started studying physics and mathematics instead. I used to think that I wasn't somehow "smart enough" to become a good physicist, and things like that, which made it much harder for me to make progress. Of course, my other problem was that I somehow thought that I should "make up" for my weaknesses by becoming really smart, and silly things like that. I was paradoxically arrogant and dependent on other people's opinions at the same time. But I think that if I had had a different attitude, I would have had to face those problems a lot earlier, too, realizing that I can't escape anything about myself.
So now my goal is to just learn things. I worry less and less about university course requirements, but I seem to be learning more and more and my studies go better the less I worry about them. When I was younger I wanted to be rich and famous. Now I just want to become a genius!