Having Faith in Yourself

I really am not sure where this thought came from, but it just popped in my head. I wrote a while back about having determination and discipline in order to succeed, but as I work longer and continue to climb up in the corporate world I realize there is a stronger underlying theme, and that is having faith and believing in yourself.

I've had to overcome extreme odds over the years. Getting into a top public school in itself was extremely difficult for me, as I did not even get over 1300 on my SAT (that was when it was out of 1600). Then, somehow immaturely, I did horribly in school while trying to pay myself through, but lucked out getting into a boutique bank to do IB, even though I didn't know what IB was until the summer between junior and senior year. Now I am at the exact same crossroads, in the midst of MBA applications and ready for the next stage of my life.

Throughout all of this, I have wavered almost every single day on whether I can be doing better, or if I just somehow lucked my way into where I am today. There are extreme highs and lows, but at the end of the day you need to believe in yourself. You also need to be positive and surround you with optimistic people, because as they say, you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. So surround yourself with smart, bright, driven, and most important of all, people that have faith in you.

 
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You know, I was thinking the same thing today. I learned this morning I got into Santa Clara's MSF program. I feel so fortunate and feel that my past troughs (15 failed interviews,poor GPA, poor decisions and 810 out of 1600 SAT score) prepared me to learn how to succeed. Though I've had a fair amount of success since then, I've been working close to a year to break into a full time finance position and learned so many life lessons through this process. I technically still haven't broken in but just taking one step further has made me so much more thankful than I would have been if the road was easy.

But you're right staying positive and believing in myself has got me through some rough times. My friends have been supportive as well but I truly thank God because in my opinion, it is really (His plan) or luck that really got us to where we are. There are so many variables as to why things could go much worse.

As I continue to believe in myself, I wrote my speech today for when I graduate from SCU. My goal is to graduate at the top of my class and lay out my thoughts on life, financial capitalism and the power of finance. Experiencing the lows, I'm never going back again.

 

Hah, 12 years ago I was living on a farm, in a tiny Russian village which didn't have a single paved road. We used to walk about an hour and a half to school each day. Winters used to last a solid five months. My best friend and I used to steal shit from the government run farm to build a new stable for our own horses.

That stuff is crazy to think about, especially when comparing it to my life today. I'm not a fan of god or any other mythical creature, but I do think there was a bit of luck involved and definitely some support from my parents in getting here. The rest of it I attribute to me being a badass.

Under my tutelage, you will grow from boys to men. From men into gladiators. And from gladiators into SWANSONS.
 

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