As If

Act as if,
Believe as if,
Plan as if,

You can and will succeed.  There is no reason not to.

One has heard the reframe: Follow Your Passion.

Follow your passion is too vague, and incomplete.  Yes, of course, Follow Your Passion, duh!? Don’t we wish.

But that is TOO PASSIVE.  The World is not designed for You.

You must ACT, BELIEVE, AND PLAN as if.  And that is hard to do, well, but that’s life.

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Act as if,
Believe 
as if,
Plan 
as if,

She did succeed.  She worked at it, hard.

But let’s get into the details.  The Finer Points.  Because without those you will, won’t succeed.  You will get in your own way.

In other words, don’t half ass, your own life.  Own it fully.

karen_finerman

“Act as if, believe as if, plan as if, you can and will succeed.  There is no reason not to.” — Karen Finerman

Of course, everybody should listen up too, even guys.  Life is tough for everybody, nobody gets a free ride in life, including those who have to overcome a lot of material wealth and functional poverty.  Nobody is born with the skills and knowledge to be happy and successful in life.  You got to learn it and earn it

Some Finer Points

finer_pointsKeynote Address by Karen Finerman, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Metropolitan Capital Advisors, Inc. at W!SE 9th MoneyPOWER Conference for Financial Literacy

Keynote Address by Karen Finerman, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Metropolitan Capital Advisors, Inc. at The 9th MoneyPOWER Conference for Financial Literacy brings together educators, leaders and experts in the field of personal finance education. The conference helps to further the shared mission to educate young people so that they can graduate high school with the knowledge and skills they need to be financially capable adults.

With the bankruptcy and financial decline of the West, relative to the East: the fate of the West is in the hands of financially and politically incompetent adults.  Karen wants to educate her children, at least.  Many children in the West will have great difficulty in obtaining a job.  Today, having even a university education does not help searching for a meaningful or a paying job.

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Karen Finerman, Crafter Artisan, is an American businesswoman, philanthropist and television personality. Co-founder of Metropolitan Capital Advisors, Inc., she is also President of the firm. She is a board member of the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research and trustee of the Montefiore Medical Center. Her first book, Finerman’s Rules: Secrets I’d Only Tell My Daughters About Business and Life was published on June 4, 2013. [Wikipedia, revised]

Some finer points:

1) The Challenge of a First Job

“You may have a misanthrope boss who is displeased by your mere presence. And there you have it— an instant lesson in how not to lead. You may be part of a team of overworked, underpaid assistants who always need to be on call. There is a camaraderie in that bonding experience that can make for lifelong friendships. You can even learn about customer relations from a summer job scooping ice cream. But learn you must. That’s the key— learning. There’s something there for you, if you pay attention and seek it out.” [Finerman’s Rules]

2) You are in charge of yourself, whether you like it or not.

“Our career paths aren’t always linear. Every time we need to make a change, it takes a lot of energy and nerve. It takes invention and reinvention. Yet as hard as the change is, it’s better than the alternative, which is being stuck and waiting. You can bemoan it and wish all the opportunities coming to others were coming to you, or you can regroup. As I always remind myself and my children, life is not a contest to see how well you can live someone else’s life. It’s about living your own.” [Finerman’s Rules]

Artisans are the temperament with a natural ability to excel in any of the arts, not only the fine arts such as painting and sculpting, or the performing arts such as music, theater, and dance, but also the athletic, military, political, mechanical, and industrial arts, as well as the “art of the deal” in business.

Like all the Artisans, Crafters are people who love action, and who know instinctively that their activities are more enjoyable, and more effective, if done impulsively, spontaneously, subject to no schedules or standards but their own. In a sense, Crafters do not work with their tools, but play with them when the urge strikes them.

Artisans, particularly Crafters are very observant of the real world.  Realistic and practical.  Brutally frank at times. GET THE JOB DONE.  No punches pulled.

A reviewer of her book said:
I appreciate the frank way she addresses failure, even though she is wildly successful now, she has made many mistakes. She deals with them head on, and moreover she says you will fail too. She has a whole chapter on failing well, failure is inevitable – don’t let fear of failure stop you.  As I read the book I kept thinking of people I wanted to give the book to. The only thing is, while I loved the finance part of the book, I can imagine a lot of people skipping over those parts. Resist! There are some wonderful lessons in the finance parts, if you are tempted to skip, skim instead, you will understand the lesson even if you don’t understand the specifics.”

Other examples of Crafter Artisans include:  Clarissa ShieldsChelsea BakerLarry BirdKatherine HepburnBruce LeeJay-ZMickey RourkeLisa PresleyTatum and Ryan O’Neal and Michael Jordan.

10 thoughts on “As If”

  1. Playing the game, playing the game. The Crafter investors I know love playing the game, pitting themselves into it, getting the deal, competitive. What a GREAT example of Crafter here! Karen is a ringer for my cousins partner, she an elite sports athlete. I must show you the photo of similarities. Love this blog. Lot to learn from her.

    1. Lisa Marie Presley is incredibly insightful like this too, (about temperament.) I wondered if it is their contentiousness that gets their brains pondering over ‘stuff’. Some of these really smart Crafter’s are interesting.

  2. Goodie, that’s interesting that Lisa Marie is good about understanding temperament…show me where you read that? I’d love to hear a Crafter go at it! I find they’re the *worst* at temperament understanding (or giving a rip!)

  3. Ha–I guess if you can call reading the *obvious* being a gut feeling! Seriously–that’s kind of obvious they were the same.

  4. I must get this book, this sounds just like my daughter, age 19. As an idealist counselor myself, I love her enthusiasm , but her impulsiveness terrifies me at times!

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