Strength Revealed: The Trials that Shape Us

 Until death, all defeat is psychological.

What an unrestrained giant our emotions can become when they are poorly trained to obey our resolutions and values. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve came across super inspiring anecdotes of daring courage, infinite patience, and god-like humility from role models who encountered testing and crushing obstacles but who just maintained their self-control and did not allow emotions to take the driving seat.

Yes, these examples have never failed to inspire me to such levels of self-control until the moment of challenge — particularly when my self-image or ego is challenged and opposed, or completely disregarded.

One can never be sure of one’s strength until numerous difficulties have appeared on every side, or indeed until the moment when they have come quite close. — Seneca

It is when we are exposed that we should thoroughly evaluate our perceived progress — and this opportunity happens every day.

What annoys you masters you.

We all have countless examples of little and big, significant and insignificant worries and challenges that annoy and vex on our internal peace. I propose these are precisely invented to help us tame that emotional giant, which is imbedded within us from generations of human history, and become a little bit stronger and better prepared against it’s incessant attacks — which can truly break us if we’re weak and careless.

Fortune tests the spirits mettle. A boxer who has never suffered a beating cannot bring bold spirits to the match. It is the one who has seen his own blood — who has heard his teeth crunch under the first — the one who, though forced to yield, has never yielded in spirit, who after falling rises fiercer every time: that is the one who goes to the contest with vigorous hope. — Seneca

Written by:

Cancelo Alvarez

The Purpose of Knowledge

 The purpose of knowledge is not knowledge, but action.

Books, mentorship, school, and any kind of knowledge out there that is true and factual, is actually there to open your eyes — to see things not as you want them but as they are, and then you use what you see (and learn) to improve yourself, and your lifestyle.

This is why it’s crucially important and advantageous to learn from well-researched, well-informed schools and books, because it’s only too easy for the student to accumulate biased and distorted information, passed down from a different time and age, that has once evolved into something new and widely different.

Parenting may be the leading cause of distorted and biased mentorship. This is because parents and relatives can only preach what they themselves received and believe. And if the parents are not particularly skilled, disciplined, hard working, and mature, what they teach is most likely to be harmful.

As the child grows, they’ll encounter unique situations, and without great mentorship or genuine teachers prepared in advance, they have nowhere to go but back to their parents or worse, society, who are supposed to help the child maneuver successfully within these testing obstacles. The truth, again, is that parents will advise what they know and believe, not, in most cases, what is true and progressive. Because most likely what’s truly progressive is often uncertain, risky, and challenging.

To close, I am not shunning parents or schools — I am merely saying you have to do better than to receive information at face-value. To be a thinker, you have to appreciate the complexity and abundance of opinions in the world — and research, and then earn, what’s true and valuable for you — for your spirit.

A thinker is like a filter, in which truths as they pass through leave their best substance behind. — The Intellectual Life

College vs Work Ethic

 “You don’t need college - in fact you don’t even need High School.” — Elon Musk

It boils down to work ethic.

If College hasn’t taught you to think on your feet, than it hasn’t taught you much.

To think on your feet is:

• To see opportunity in problems,
• To find strength in pain,
• To celebrate smalls wins in the midst of crushing losses,

You see, you get success, you don’t claim nor wait for it - it’s not given, it is worked for — in short, earned.

Earned through ceaseless effort, effort after effort — bursts of energy and drive — childlike excitement - self-belief.

What truly matters is not what or where you’ve studied but what you can do—and how much you’re willing to learn.

Cancelo Alvarez 

The Test of a Student

 “The test of a student is not how much he knows, but how much he wants to know.”

The extent of his will to embrace embarrassment by openly acknowledging his ignorance when he has detected it — to truly embrace the ordinary lessons and discoveries that connect the pieces to the extraordinary. For life is so designed that unless we have understood the basics, we cannot appreciate, comprehend, and realize the complex. Indeed, it is similar to opportunities. Which, like information, will imperceptibly pass you by in broad daylight simply because you are not trained nor equipped with the resources to realize it.

When we know something, we feel valuable, if not superior, and there is nothing wrong with this. What is wrong is when our superiority is threatened by the detection of ignorance along the path. 

When we’re well informed, we are useful, and even life-changing to those who do not know. When we refuse to acknowledge our ignorance, however, we are destructive to our own selves. And then we pollute our environment with our ego — which then spreads to affect everyone, including those who truly look up to us — our children and associates, which creates a society of know-it-alls. A society that perceives the detection of ignorance as weakness, not as opportunity to grow and explore further.

A student is not distinguished by age or time. We are all students of the game of life. And so, let this be your daily guide.

Modesty in your current abilities, curiosity towards this immense universe, and an acceptance of your flaws.

Cancelo Alvarez

Self-Awareness & Introspection

 Self-awareness allows you to self-correct.

How do we build self-awareness? There are many ways — but I’d like to mention a few that have stuck with me.

If you’ve just had a bad day, the default behavior is to want to forget about it as soon as you can, to avoid any detail that might remind you of the experience, to either close yourself in your private space and distract yourself away or get out to seek outside distraction, bad or good for you, to do whatever you can to forget.

But, that isn’t how we build self-awareness. Quite the contrary, self-awareness requires you to precisely go against your default or conditioned behavior. Your conditioned response, firstly, is to avoid pain. Secondly, to protect your ego from being attacked, and thirdly, to avoid challenge. But, without self-awareness we tend to repeat mistakes and bad days. 

Self-awareness, that humble, curious, and persistent attitude within every person is actually there to support and guide us away from avoidable mistakes — it is there to ask the confronting, painful questions very few are ready to face:

Self-awareness will ask you:

• Apart from what he or she did to you, what did YOU do that led to this mistake or bad day?
• Apart from what you were not given, what did YOU do or not do to make things better for yourself?
• Yes, people are selfish, but why did you trust another person more than you trusted yourself?
• Yes, money and jobs are scarce, but what skills have you developed to make yourself better than you were last month?

You get the point. And the point is that a humble and curious attitude allows you self-correct and therefore improve yourself, regardless of how bad or hopeless the situation has become.

A humble and curious attitude enables you to examine, persistently, the bad days as they come.

A humble and curious attitude encourages you to turn pain into strength, loss into opportunity, defeat into progress.

Self-awareness allows you to self-correct.

Cancelo Alvarez

The Challenge of Personal Finance

A Reflection on Healthy Choices

By Cancelo Alvarez

This past weekend, I once again examined my personal finances. After five years of reading and self-development, I’ve finally grasped the root challenge people face with money management. It’s the same challenge people face in looking after their mental and physical well-being.

As Scott Peck writes in The Road Less Traveled, we all have a healthy self and a sick self. And because life is designed with an inevitable end, many have adopted the sick self, almost as a way of damning existence. They’ve given up on living with purpose, values, or a positive outlook amidst the certainty of death.

However, unlike mental or physical well-being, neglecting your financial well-being hits you immediately. Let me explain. Skipping exercise this week won’t make you unfit, skipping a book won’t lead to a lack of inspiration, and skipping deep breathing won’t lead to disaster. But skipping your savings this week will leave you unprepared for an emergency months later. Buying fast food today ensures you’ll have fewer resources in the kitchen in a couple of days.

In other words, financial decisions are among the most critical choices you’ll make. They determine whether you live in poverty or tranquility.

Four Essentials for Managing Personal Finance

As you reflect on these, think about how far you’ve come with each—and feel free to share any strategies you’ve found helpful.

1. Investments: Are you building investments that will one day replace your salary?
   Think of real estate, shares in stocks, or even side hustles that gradually grow over time.
2. Income: Do you have a reliable income from valuable skills you’ve developed?
3. Savings: Are you saving aggressively? Are you saving at all?
4. Expenses: Do you track your spending? Do you know how much you’re spending on recurring expenses each month?

Many struggle financially because they neglect one or two of these essentials, usually savings and investments, and then wonder why they never have enough to live the life they want.

Investments are hard because they require sacrificing instant gratification. Instead of buying a new car or wardrobe, you put that money into something that grows over time. Savings are equally difficult because life’s unexpected turns can always shake your discipline. Yet, in the long run, those who save and invest consistently find themselves more successful and secure.

Ultimately, it’s not just about surviving—it’s about thriving financially, by making every decision today a step toward your future freedom. So, which of these essentials are you mastering, and which ones still need work?