Ayodeji is an author, writing coach, and digital marketing Director at MLT Group – A Minneapolis SEO Services & Web Design Services Company.
The only things between you and the life you want to live are the right information and the willingness to use it.
Is there something you don’t know about and you want to find out how to do? Maybe it’s learning how to play the guitar, speak French, become a writer, or build a business?
I have found the solution to every single question in the grand specter of questions one can ask.
Just Google it.
The Magical Power of the Internet
Lack of information and resources is no longer a valid excuse in 2018. It just isn’t. If you have an internet connection, you have access to the most powerful tool in human history.
It can be used for an infinite amount of learning, or it can be used to watch videos of cats, doing cat stuff. Your relationship with vast amounts of information dictates what you can do with it. What you do with it dictates the results you get.
For people who spend so much time on the web, it’s astonishing to see how helpless people act in our society. I don’t say helpless in an antagonizing way. Certain circumstances can make life more difficult to navigate.
If you lack money, connections, talent, and even luck, you are starting at a position further behind others. But the internet is the great equalizer. And you’re only a few questions away from getting what you want, if only you asked.
Just this week I read a free article on putting together an advertising campaign on Facebook and Google to drive traffic to both my websites and websites my clients own. I didn’t have to pay thousands of dollars for a marketing program at a business school.
I just needed to click a few buttons, carve out a few hours of my time, and follow through with the information I found.
On top of the free articles I use to learn new skills, I’ve spent thousands of dollars on online courses and I’ve made more money than I invested or developed a skill that paid dividends in the long run.
Once you realize you don’t have to be clueless, you see how much of a privilege it is to have the internet, to have google, to have a bevy of resources both free and paid that can literally help you accomplish anything you want.
The question is — with all of the free information out there, why aren’t people taking their futures into their own hands and wielding the wonderful powers of the world wide web?
The Myth About Learning and Success That Seriously Needs to Die
Lots of you are starting to see the light. You read insightful articles on places like Medium, Google questions you want answers to, and toy around with trying out the cool ideas you see online.
Yet in still, a lot of us still hold an outdated view of education and success. Through years of — for lack of a better word — mental conditioning, you’ve been led to believe ideas about upward mobility that are rooted in fear and scarcity.
You must go to college or you’ll be out on the street. If you can’t afford a traditional education, you’re screwed. Credentials matter, and if you don’t have them, people won’t trust your skills and expertise.
There are enough contradictions to this way of thinking to make all of the above statements definitively false.
In some ways, of course, it helps to have a degree; but once you are out in the field it doesn’t matter as much what your background is. If you’re able to perform the duties required in your industry you will get ahead.
Let’s say you’re a hiring manager at a tech company who sees an applicant who doesn’t have a degree, but instead, they send you a link to a portfolio website they built — filled with different mini projects like websites, apps, and video games.
Their portfolio site explains they’re proficient in javascript and they display certification logos from a coding boot camp they attended. In their outreach, they say they’d be willing to build out a site or utility based on your specifications to prove they know how to code.
As the hiring manager, you’d be dumb not to hire that person. As it turns out, many of the worlds top tech companies — an industry known for containing the best and brightest minds in the world — don’t require or care about college degrees.
A piece of paper is nothing more than a signal of competence. In 2018, there are better, easier, and cheaper ways to build those signals.
Build Your Own Education and Build a Better Signal
The three words you can use to build a better life are ‘Just Google It.’ In one sense, the theme is to simply ask better questions to get what you want faster.
It’s analogous to wandering around the store looking for something instead of just asking one of the employees where the item is.
People can find themselves wandering through life — wanting to make it better — without ever actively seeking information to improve it.
With today’s tools, you can learn and build insane levels of skill.
Right now, with a few clicks of a button, you can watch recorded lectures from Yale. From Yale. You can go on places like Lynda.com and access a library of thousands of hours of content for the price of a restaurant meal each month or find credible information for free on YouTube.
Naval Ravikant, angel investor, and CEO put it best when he said:
“The best teachers are on the Internet. The best books are on the Internet. The best peers are on the Internet. The tools for learning are abundant. It’s the desire to learn that’s scarce.”
The desire to learn is scarce.
There is this collective negative psychological reconstruction of reality rooted in helplessness that says people are held back primarily by circumstances.
This is not true. The internet decoded the Matrix. You can’t say I can’t do [x] because I don’t have a degree or a loan from the bank to start a business anymore.
If you’re being honest with yourself, the only truthful thing you can say is you’re not looking for the right information or you’re not applying it.
There are many ways to build signals of competence now. Build a portfolio of side projects. Exercise your writing skills and improve your thinking by publishing right here on Medium (‘aspiring writers’ I’m talking to you). Do work for free and collect testimonials and referrals in exchange.
Maybe personal development wasn’t as relevant a few decades ago. You did need credentials to succeed. You did need a factory and six figures of capital to start a business. You were held back by circumstances and realities present in the world.
Not today. Not tomorrow. Not ever again.
Until you accept and apply the thinking of the new paradigm — the one where you have infinite routes to a better life — you’ll stay stuck complaining about your lack of resources.
You don’t lack resources. You lack resourcefulness.
The world is yours for the taking. Click ‘x’ on this article, go to Google, and start building your evil empire right now.
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Originally published at medium.com