Be Yourself, Because Everyone Else Is Taken |
Lessons on Confidence, Networking, Faith, and Human Connection from My Conversation with Chris Haroun
Today I had the privilege of interviewing Chris Haroun, entrepreneur, investor, MBA professor, and one of the world’s most respected online business educators.
Chris has taught millions of students in more than 200 countries how to build careers, launch companies, invest intelligently, and create lives of purpose and financial freedom. He earned his MBA from Columbia Business School and worked at institutions such as Goldman Sachs and Citadel. Yet despite his extraordinary accomplishments, including visiting prisons to help prisoners redeem their lives, is the simplicity and authenticity of his message.
“Be yourself,” Chris said, “because everyone else is taken.”
That one sentence captures a profound truth.
Too many people spend their lives trying to win the approval of others. They suppress their dreams, silence their voices, and conform to expectations that were never meant to define them. Chris’s message was the exact opposite. Real success begins when a person has the confidence to become who G-d created him or her to be.
During our conversation, we discussed what Chris calls the “confidence curve of life.” When we are children, we dream freely. We do not spend much time worrying about what others think. We imagine boldly and believe almost anything is possible. Then, as we enter adolescence and adulthood, many of us become increasingly self-conscious. We begin to ask: What will people think? What if I fail? What if they laugh at me? This is often the stage in life when people abandon their greatest dreams.
But later in life many people stop caring so much about the opinions of others. They rediscover the freedom they once had as children.
If you were to graph this phenomenon, the horizontal axis would represent age, and the vertical axis would represent how much we care about what other people think. The curve would rise sharply during adulthood and then decline as we grow older. The lesson is powerful: the less you care about external approval, the more freedom you have to fulfill your purpose. “Within........