“If you need approval to be who you really are, you’re going to struggle.” - I hear this from Tim Grover’s new book, Winning. It hit me a bit. So I wrote a short piece on this.

Do you want to be great? It’s a simple question and I think many people would say yes. But most people also want to be safe. Fit in. Follow outside expectations.

However, to be great you have to be atypical. By definition, you won’t fit in. You won’t really listen to others. You won’t be living a comfortable life somewhere in a small city. You won’t be safe.

When you realize you can’t both win big and be safe, you understand you have to choose one and accept its price.

It doesn’t really matter what you choose really. No one path is better than the rest. But it helps to choose consciously.

I think a lot of people (including myself, that’s why I’m writing this) forget the price of greatness and think they can just cruise along hoping for the best. Hopefully, this little article will help you choose.

You have to embrace both your light and dark sides. You can’t hold back in any way. Unfortunately, you can’t take people’s feelings and expectations too much into account.

The moment you start catering to others, suppressing your true nature, feel like ‘there’s something wrong with me’. All this is extra friction in your life that slows you down a lot. You lose your edge.

You have to be like ‘Yes, this is who I am’ and live from that place. You can’t be apologetic for who you are. You can’t play nice.

You have to dictate the pace of your life.

You will have to construct your environment in a way that is conducive to all of this. Where you don’t have limitations that suppress your authenticity.

Everything in your environment should amplify your power, not take away from it. Surround yourself with people that love and accept you for who you are, including your dark sides.

People that try to shape you to their liking and needs will cause too much friction. There is no place for negotiation, unfortunately.

I know how all of this can sound harsh. But it’s real, getting to greatness will not happen without sacrifice and an unconventional path, it will not happen by itself. When I came up the ranks of online poker from low stakes to the highest stakes, this is what my life looked like.

I let go of everything I had and moved to Malta to live with HS crushers. During the next years, nobody could limit me, tell me what to do, or have control of my time.

I had full ownership of who I was and what moves I did next. I only had a few people around me that accepted me for who I was. Sometimes they tried to fit around my schedule and priorities. They knew what I would choose if I had to choose between them and my path. It sounds tough, but a lot of people respect that.

As always, me articulating these ideas helps me and I hope they also give you some insight into chasing greatness. So I ask you again, do you want to be great?

“If you need approval to be who you really are, you’re going to struggle.” - I hear this from Tim Grover’s new book, Winning. It hit me a bit. So I wrote a short piece on this.

Do you want to be great? It’s a simple question and I think many people would say yes. But most people also want to be safe. Fit in. Follow outside expectations.

However, to be great you have to be atypical. By definition, you won’t fit in. You won’t really listen to others. You won’t be living a comfortable life somewhere in a small city. You won’t be safe.

When you realize you can’t both win big and be safe, you understand you have to choose one and accept its price.

It doesn’t really matter what you choose really. No one path is better than the rest. But it helps to choose consciously.

I think a lot of people (including myself, that’s why I’m writing this) forget the price of greatness and think they can just cruise along hoping for the best. Hopefully, this little article will help you choose.

You have to embrace both your light and dark sides. You can’t hold back in any way. Unfortunately, you can’t take people’s feelings and expectations too much into account.

The moment you start catering to others, suppressing your true nature, feel like ‘there’s something wrong with me’. All this is extra friction in your life that slows you down a lot. You lose your edge.

You have to be like ‘Yes, this is who I am’ and live from that place. You can’t be apologetic for who you are. You can’t play nice.

You have to dictate the pace of your life.

You will have to construct your environment in a way that is conducive to all of this. Where you don’t have limitations that suppress your authenticity.

Everything in your environment should amplify your power, not take away from it. Surround yourself with people that love and accept you for who you are, including your dark sides.

People that try to shape you to their liking and needs will cause too much friction. There is no place for negotiation, unfortunately.

I know how all of this can sound harsh. But it’s real, getting to greatness will not happen without sacrifice and an unconventional path, it will not happen by itself. When I came up the ranks of online poker from low stakes to the highest stakes, this is what my life looked like.

I let go of everything I had and moved to Malta to live with HS crushers. During the next years, nobody could limit me, tell me what to do, or have control of my time.

I had full ownership of who I was and what moves I did next. I only had a few people around me that accepted me for who I was. Sometimes they tried to fit around my schedule and priorities. They knew what I would choose if I had to choose between them and my path. It sounds tough, but a lot of people respect that.

As always, me articulating these ideas helps me and I hope they also give you some insight into chasing greatness. So I ask you again, do you want to be great?