5 Pivotal Moments in My Journey of Overcoming Extreme Poverty

Following My Curiosity Led Me to Important Breakthroughs in Life.

I grew up in a poor family in India.

We had no money. We lived on food from the government and help from our extended family members. We didn’t have a TV, fridge, phone, computers, or the internet. We never left our city or saw a movie in a theater.

Hence education was always the priority for my parents, they thought that would get us out of poverty. And I believed them.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t enough to get success in this world. I had to figure out a lot of things the hard way. And the funny thing is, I didn’t plan any of it. I tried one thing and ended up finding out something else.

In this article, I am recounting 5 of the most important discoveries in my life.

March 2016: Discovering the Possibility of Earning Money Online

When people say Facebook is full of bad stuff, I can’t relate to that. Because my life was changed in 2016 due to a Facebook ad.

This ad was for “Project Breakthrough,” a 14-day free course that promised to make me rich!

Unfortunately, I failed to follow through with the course. The initial excitement went away quickly when they shifted from motivational talks to complex affiliate marketing stuff. Instead of sticking to it, I spent months just watching videos on YouTube because I was scared to try anything.

Looking back, I see I wouldn’t have made it with that course anyway. The 14-day course had very little substance and was a way of upselling their higher-tier courses. Also, I had no money to try out different things.

But that one ad opened up a new world for me. Before everyone started working from home, I thought the only way to make money was to go to an office. I never imagined someone from far away could pay me for my work. Later in 2017, I decided to do freelancing and learned coding and design skills for that. I didn’t get any clients but got my first job and earned my first income.

January 2019: Realizing the Value of Communication Skills

Another Facebook ad showed me something new, from a man named Rahul Bhatnagar. He was selling a course on how to talk better for 6500 rupees (that’s like $100 in 2019).

I kept seeing his ad for a month, and then on 26th January 2019, I bought it for 5000 rupees, thanks to the Republic Day discount. That was a lot of money for me, so I was unsure about it.

Just two days after I got the course, my company informed me they couldn’t keep me after my learning job (internship) was done. I felt really bad about spending that 5000 rupees, but now I think it was actually a blessing. I wouldn’t have bought the course if I had lost my job earlier.

This story is a bit like the first one because I failed to stick with the course either. I was supposed to make a video every day and share it with the course group on Facebook, but that made me too nervous. I tried a few times and then stopped. But I learned that knowing just tech stuff isn’t enough to get success.

Rahul used to hold weekly webinars every week about lots of things like marketing, writing to sell, and talking to sell. I didn’t get better at talking, but I went to all the webinars and learned a bit about business. That helped me in 2020 when I did more than just coding work at my job, and my boss really appreciated it.

August 2021: Understanding Why I Worry Too Much

By 2021, things were looking better. I had a good job and was doing alright, but I still thought too much about everything. I thought that was just part of who I was until I read a book called “Unwinding Anxiety” by Dr. Judson.

The book said that worrying too much is something we get used to doing. It’s like our body’s way of trying to keep us safe, but we can learn to change it.

This was an aha moment for me. It made me see this problem in a new way.

I started to notice whenever I had a bad thought and I would write it down. But I couldn’t make them stop, even with the book’s help.

Later that year, a doctor told me I had anxiety, but the medicine didn’t help much either.

I didn’t find the answer I was looking for in 2021, but the idea from the book helped me look at human behavior differently. It led me to come up with my own way of thinking by mixing ideas from Cynicism and Geopolitics.

March 2022: Learning to Make Own Decisions

I never really knew how to make decisions on my own, and I didn’t even realize it.

This all started to change in 2020 when I read a book called “The Rudest Book Ever” by Shwetabh Gangwar. He talked about the difference between learning what to think and how to think.

Growing up, I just followed rules set by others, mainly my parents. I never made any choices by myself because I thought my parents always knew best. This made me always aim for perfection and rely too much on them, which made me doubt my own abilities.

When I first heard about “how to think,” I thought it was just a fancy idea. I looked for some secret rules that would suddenly make me good at making decisions.

In October 2021, I read “Thinking in Bets” by Annie Duke. This book showed me that the world is complicated, and we can’t always find clear answers. Hence you must make trade-offs.

Jumping to March 2022, I took a big step by getting a loan to buy a course called “Decision by Design” by Shane Parrish. He said decision-making is a skill you can get better at with practice. I finished this course, but I didn’t connect with the examples he used.

Around the same time, I started another course called “Linking Your Thinking” by Nick Milo. I had been writing in a journal for two years and wanted to learn how my notes could connect in a new way. This course didn’t click with me either, but one idea really made a difference in my life without me even realizing it at first.

The idea was about “Thing Notes” and “Statement Notes.”

“Thing Notes” are about broad ideas, like “Self-doubt” or “Motivation.” “Statement Notes” are your own opinions about these ideas, like “Self-doubt comes from lack of power”, “Doubting others comes from lack of trust”, or “You need two things to understand a human - Power and Motivation.”

Having my own opinion was new to me. I didn’t think much of myself and believed others always knew better. So why should I bother having my own opinions?

However I was naturally good at linking different ideas, so I started making lots of “Statement Notes.” Gradually, I began to value my own thoughts, which was the change I needed.

We often look for quick tips to get better at making decisions. But for me, I needed to start believing that I could make choices too. It was about trying over and over and getting better at judging things.

This change was big for me. Before, I always searched for answers from others for my problems. Now, I can think for myself and explain my views logically. Believing in myself more also helped me worry less like I talked about before.

The meta-skill: Becoming Self-aware

This is the most important discovery of all. And I can’t pinpoint any particular moment for this. Rather I developed the process of self-awareness over the years.

It all began in 2016 when I discovered Project Breakthrough. Everything was new and exciting to me, so I wanted to soak up all the information I could. But I had no ability to sift through the noise. I felt like I needed to learn everything about a topic before I started anything, which made me watch the same kinds of videos over and over.

Then, in 2020, when everyone had to start working from home because of the Coronavirus, I had to manage my own time in a more organized manner. I started using an app called Dynalist to maintain my work timesheet. That laid the groundwork for something great which I didn’t understand at that time.

Later I started to take notes from the videos I watched. This led me to organize notes on similar topics. I enrolled in the course “Linking your thinking” to improve my ability to connect ideas from different domains.

Earlier I discussed how I learned how to make decisions after this course. But there was another unexpected side-effect of that course.

Switching my note-taking app from Dynalist to Obsidian.

Your environment changes the way you behave. For example, if you’re always around people who drink a lot, you will start drinking soon. The same is true for note-making also. The app you use affects how you take notes.

Dynalist was a list-based app, whereas Obsidian is a document-based app which allows more room to write. Also using Obsidian’s Daily Notes feature, I began to write down what I was thinking. At first, I just wrote summaries of my day, but then I started writing about things as they happened, and I still do that now.

It took a lot of practice to get to a point where I understand my feelings and why I feel them and can handle my emotions well. Getting to know myself better also helped me understand others better, making me more empathetic and improving how I talk to people.

Summary: Following My Curiosity

When I look back at my journey, it’s still a mystery how everything fell into place. I had so many plans that didn't turn out the way I thought they would. But somehow, things ended up even better than I expected.

I also didn’t learn new things by sticking to one plan. I tried lots of different stuff at different times in my life, and that’s how I ended up learning important things. Take how I learned to make decisions, for example. I read many books and took different courses over time, and all of that slowly helped me get better. Then, in a course about taking notes, something just clicked.

This way of learning, by trying a bit of everything, might not have been the quickest, but it led me to discover really important lessons. Every time I tried something new, even if it didn’t seem related at the time, it helped me understand more and get better at things in ways I didn’t expect. This kind of learning is more about following what you’re curious about, so it's a lot more fun than just trying hard to learn something in one go.

“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.”

― Steve Jobs