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A few days ago I wrote about the latest Tesla Model 3 electric car and how I thought it was going to mark the beginning of the end of gasoline cars. While doing my reading about the newly launched car, I came across several interviews of Elon Musk, the man behind the company.

Elon Musk has always been an inspirational figure for me and the more I read about him and watch interviews of him, the more I am left with a brighter and positive outlook towards the future.

There is no doubt that he is a visionary with his role as CEO at Tesla, SpaceX and Neuralink and also as chairman and co-chairman of SolarCity and OpenAI respectively, all of which are doing some really groundbreaking work. Even if only one of these companies go on to be highly successful, he will have changed humanity forever. Imagine if all of them reach their full potential.

Throughout his life, he has always tried to challenge the status quo and despite harsh criticisms and skepticism, he has repeatedly done what most thought impossible. There’s no doubt there are a lot of lessons that you can learn from his life and apply it to your own.

Nothing Beats Hard Work

As I mentioned above, Musk is handling the work of three companies as CEO. That demands a lot of time, energy and focus. You can only imagine his work week and how hard he must work.

It is true that there is no substitute for hard work. If you want to achieve success or anything for that matter, hard work is the way to do it. Very rarely do we see people get lucky and achieve success overnight.

In an interview, Musk says, “If others are working 40 hours a week, and you are working 100 hours a week and even if you’re working on the same things, you will achieve in 4 months what they achieve in a year.”

The road to success is a long, arduous one and one filled with obstacles at every corner. It takes blood, sweat and tears to reach the pinnacle but once you do, it will all have been worth it.

Do What You Love

This may sound like a cheesy motivational line and something that most people do not even consider to be an option in their lives but trust me, you should be doing what you love in life.

Only then will you care about what you do and put in your A-game every single time. When you wake up in the morning, you wouldn’t feel forced to work but you would wake up with a sense of satisfaction about what you do in life.

Each one us is passionate about one thing or the other and we owe it to ourselves and our future to at least give it a shot. The beginnings are always the hard part but when you get past that, I think you will be proud of yourself.

Life is too short to get stuck in something that you don’t believe in and keep doing it over and over again just for the sake of having the security of a job. In my own opinion, you should at least try to give your dreams a chance.

Hardships Are Not Full Stops

Nobody’s life is a perfectly smooth experience. There are potholes, twists and turns and sometimes there isn’t even a path to walk on. There are good times and bad, sunshine and rainfall, day and night as they say.

The hardship in life are not full stops but rather commas that transition you to the next bit. Elon Musk himself has faced a lot of failure. At one point, he faced so many at once. SpaceX had three rocket failures in a row, Tesla almost went bankrupt and he got divorced.

Still, every time he has managed to defeat the harsh circumstances and shown to the world that failures do not mean the end. They are just temporary blips in the road.

In fact hardships are important in a person’s life because they help you improve, they shape you into a better, stronger person and get you ready for the future and what’s to come.

Constantly Question Yourself

Questioning oneself is something not many of us do. Rarely do we sit and question every single meaningful aspect of our lives and put them under the magnifying glass to be examined.

Doing so is absolutely important however. It’s an ever evolving world we live in and the only way we are going to maintain the edge is by constantly evolving ourselves, becoming better versions of our own selves.

Even Elon Musk, who has already achieved so much in his life is not settling and is constantly striving to improve himself. In his own words, “It's very important to have a feedback loop, where you're constantly thinking about what you've done and how you could be doing it better.”


Images used are taken from the public domain.

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