Interesting article... makes you think. What do you think?
Source: Beijing's Agenda MagazineWho are you?
Dirty Gary...
Where are you from?
My ethnicity is Persian. But I am a citizen of the world.
What do you do in your life?
work hard. build. communicate. travel and play.
what do you want to do with your life?
live it to the fullest. see all there is to see. do all there is to do. SUCCEED and ACHIEVE.
How?
Succeed how? Strive in life. Constantly keep on improving and updating, and staying valuable. And most importantly, take my opportunities, and milk them of everything they got.
How will you live your life to the fullest?
Take the possibilities available to me and make it- to the end. I will be Iranian president in the future. I will own my own expanding, lucrative firm or business. I will be an executive. I can play semi-professional football, box amateur, be part of a music band, speak four languages. And why not? I will never be able to do everything. But I can do somethings that come my way. I am an international employee- how can you not be an international worker in this age of globalisation and multiculturalism? My degree doesn't restrict me to one sector. My passports don't limit me to one country. My birthplace doesn't confine me to London.
Is it sustainable?
You settle in life for what you think you are worth. Of course, there must be some sacrifices. And there are risks. But you only live once. And the rewards are great, The other option is the easy way: work in the office, process somethings, take my salary, get married to a childhood sweetheart or co-worker, go in debt for gratification, a house, car, an Ipad, and other consumables, and die forgotten, as a nothing. like everyone else. The life i was expected to live.
Whats your vision?
Be president of my country by the time I am 50.
Started and expanded my own firm by 35.
Before then to have travelled and worked extensively across the world and its financial capitals, on behalf of my employers.
I wrote a detailed plan of how I will achieve this after I graduated from university. But anyone can write a plan. The challenge is to not allowing exploiters to deviate you from it, and committing to it. Have a vision. A direction, your life choices will be dictated by this.
whats your story?
My parents are from Iran. they migrated to London for a better upbringing for me, and a more stable life in a developed country. my upbringing was all a happy child could have hoped for, and more. I was clever, top of my primary school academically.
High school came, and so did puberty, and i started to think about other things. Competing in sport. My looks. popularity. girls. Even so, i was intelligent, and did what i needed to do in school to get through. And university. The bare minimum. i then ran my parents SME for a year, and dreamed of a glamorous MNC job. I got it in Xerox. Two years in the office and it was nice and comfortable. Good salary. But deep down i yearned for freedom, and it came out in the holiday time I used to go travelling. New York. Lisbon. Vienna. Iran. And then Beijing, which was a game changer. The energy and development of the place took a hold of me in that 2 week holiday.
After two years, and witnessing lives being wasted away in front of a monitor in Uxbridge, I wanted out. So i quit and decided to go to China and Asia for a year. Do some sightseeing. Work abroad, and then maybe go back to start the life expected of me, of everyone.
what happened next?
Beijing 2011 turned out to be the best in my life. I knew it was before I had even got into April. The freedom, the lack of expectations. The people i socialised with. The girl i went out with, of the quality who made me upgrade myself in terms of thinking big and successful. The places i travelled. And the money i earned! i was earning more here than i ever did in the MNC.
And at the end, on the day i was arranging my things so i could go back to UK, I met some successful, famous UK executive. He persuaded me to join his Human Capital start up. I worked there until the end of the year and the pay was ****e. £350 a month basic. Commission was £1000, mind, but i wasn't making any of it. So I quit hastily. But in the long term, it was all there: Work hard, succeed, learn from him, get business into the company with his assistance, manage my own branch in another city, and get equity for when he sold it on. It would cost me 5 years of my life, on tops i would be learning Mandarin. And thats when i was at a cross roads.
how so?
My parents wanted me back. Go back to Xerox, or another recruitment company in London. +20k salary, £30k within 5 years. Mortgage for a House. Wife. BMW. Have a kid. Stability. Developed, comfortable country. i could have had it. The same life they lived. The same life the ordinary lives. But i didn't want the same life they wanted. i wanted more. I wanted extraordinary.
How did i want to spend the next 5 years of my life? The last 5 years, an SME, Xerox, China. Looking back, i hadn't built anything. I hadn't invested in anything. Why? I was earning good money in Xerox, so what had happened? My money was being pissed on travels so I could get out. Going back to an MNC, a +20k job in an office. 30k after 5 years. Get a wife. Get the house. GET TIED DOWN. What would be the meaning of my life? The meaning would have then shifted onto my kids, the way most young people feel after becoming parents.
That's just being selfish?
if thats being selfish, then I would rather be selfish than unhappy. A kid. A wife. Responsibilities. And a list of lifelong mental dreams and hopes not so much put on hold, but completely discarded. Most people discard their dreams and work hard, unfulfilled. Unhappy. A few men then abandon the families they started, or couldn't support, and go off to follow their dreams anyway. Thats irresponsibility.
It was then that i considered my life in the long term. if i even wanted to go back to London? Or because it was expected of me...
To live and die in London?
England till I die?
No.
How did you come to your decision?
The truth is, i could chase the ideal life style, and go in debt for it all because it was expected of me, or work on my own dreams and success and assets- and that includes knowledge- and the world would chase me. Live your life and things will come to you anyway. Live by someone else's life, and its your fault if you don't like where your at.
What advice can you give to the young?
it takes courage to reject the easy path. Reject the expectations you've had shouldered on you your whole life. To follow your own path, ideas.
If i fcuk up, it falls on me. IF. But at least i did it my way.
Who are your influences?
I have been blessed in a way. My father was always at work. I never really saw him. This meant I grew up reading about leaders, either on the internet, or in books. Successful people were my role model. People like Barack Obama, Alan Sugar inspired me. I read a lot of this blogger called Pook. You read in these successful entrepreneurs autobiographies, they all turned down the life expected of them, and they were looked down on at first by their families. Losers. And thats what made them strive to success.
Thanks for your time.
Thank you sir.