Your Environment is The One Who Built You Up

I was researching my target university. One thing that I did was watching the commencement event and listen to the speeches by the president and honorable alumni. It was very interesting to watch the event, and I gained lot of information about the culture in the university.

I learned interesting knowledge from one of the speech:

Your environment is the one who built you up

The speaker said that the influence of people around you is the crucial factor that determines  what you’re going to be. You tend to follow your community into certain common characteristic. For instance, if you spend your time more with slackers, you will tend to become a slacker too. In the other hand, if you are within a circle of motivated people, they will surely motivate you toward good things.

The speech continued to his experience and his decision which changed his life

He is a notable start-up founder. He said that not long after his graduation, he started his own company that focused on SAT prep. The pace of the company was really slow, no growth at all, and he was almost drowned in frustration. Two years later, he moved in with his friends who were also building a start-up too. His first intention to move in together was to save cost, but it turned out that this decision drove him further towards what he is now.

He saw his friends gained their first investor for their start-up. He was surprised on how his friends easily gained investor within only 1 month after starting up. He then questioned himself, why he couldn’t do what his friends could do.

He stumbled upon a quote: A human only have 30.000 days in his life. Then he calculated his age and he was surprised that he already spent 9.000 days. He thought where had he been so long wasting time. He realized that it was because be was too concerned in perfection. So he stopped making his life perfect, instead, he started to make his life interesting. He said that in real life, there’s nothing wrong of being wrong. We only have to be right once, and everything will follow.

Moreover, having people around you who are good in their background will make you motivated to be as good as them. That’s why we have to look and enter the circle of people with positive attitude. If he had not done that in his life, he would never meet his friends who motivated him, therefore, there would be no Dropbox.

Yes, it is about Drew Houston, the founder of Dropbox.

And this is what I actually feel in my life, and have been done throughout my life, and will do in next phase of my life. I love to hang around with intelligent friends. Their motivation motivates me to be like them. I love to have friends to walk together to the same trail. Because I just don’t want to be alone in the top of mountain.

My decision to finally preparing to apply to university was driven by my closest friend who is now already in UK to pursue higher education. I had been worrying something unnecessary to worry about, for more than 3 years. This fear of being failed held me back for long and finally I am brave enough to overcome this fear.

Yes, I am still scared of failure. In fact the way I waste my time of thinking unimportant fear saved a lot of fears to deal with today. It is far heavier than it should. Only if I realized it earlier, perhaps I could save 600 days more productive in academia instead. Well, there’s no time to regret and I have to get going now.