Me vs Elon Musk or Me vs I?

All of us — especially those of us close in age — always look up at big people. Rich people, people we look up to for whatever reason. We follow how they live, what they did, and we're constantly comparing ourselves to where they are now. There's a question almost everyone's asked themselves at some point: what's actually different between me and that person?

I don't want to talk about the obvious answers — where they started, what kind of life they had, what country they were in, how much money they had. All of that is true. People's circumstances are different, and what someone can do at what age depends a lot on that. That's not what I want to get into.

What I actually think about is the way different people think, and how they see life. How we think, how well we know ourselves, how we look at life — that, to me, is the real difference between an ordinary person like me and someone who's extremely successful in every sense.

If I break that down — and this is purely my own opinion, no scientific backing at all — I think it starts with how well we know ourselves. How honest we are with ourselves. How aware we are of what we like and dislike. How close we actually are to ourselves. That self-knowledge matters a lot, because when we're about to take a step, it lets us predict whether that step is the right one — since every decision we make is shaped by how we think about it. If we know ourselves, we can take a step in a way we know will actually fit us later, that will cost us less down the line, and move forward faster and better. So the first thing, I think, comes down to self-knowledge.

The second thing is understanding that luck matters a lot. You've heard that before too — but I'm not talking about good luck or bad luck. I'm talking about things happening. Things that can be predicted, or can't. I don't want to get into that debate. What I want to say is: things happen. Some are good, some are bad. And it's human nature to want to control everything — not for a sense of power, but because that's what the mind needs, to keep us alive as much as possible.

That's what the brain does to protect us: it tries to stay somewhere it already knows, tries to push back against everything unknown, tries to pull you away from the unknown for any reason it can find — because the unknown lowers your chances of survival, since it doesn't know what's coming. So a mind built this way tries to trap you, tries to control everything, and refuses to accept that some things will happen that we simply have no way of knowing about in advance.

We don't know what those things are. But because this mind wants everything under control, it ignores that part of reality entirely and puts the whole weight of it on our shoulders. And when we see that huge pile of responsibility, we think: okay, I can't do this, or I'm worse than others, or weaker than others. But here's the thing — from my own experience, more than a hundred times, things have shown me outcomes I never expected, things I had no idea about, and turned out — I won't say a hundred percent, but at least ninety percent of the time — for the better. Call it coincidence, call it luck, call it the existence of God, whatever you personally believe in. The point is: these things are out of our hands, out of our control, and we need to learn to let go of that need for control and let part of our path happen on its own.

In short: if we think we can't do something, that's a very natural feeling. But we need to understand that if we actually do the work, part of it will move forward on its own, through chance, through luck, through whatever you want to call it. So when something feels too big and we feel like we can't control it, we don't need to just let it go — because from some point on, whatever needs to happen will happen, shaped by things we have no idea about. So we don't need to hold onto that much control.

The last, and most important thing that comes to mind, is just doing the thing. When the scale of something feels too big in my head — when I don't see myself as capable enough to control it, bring it into being, manage it, carry it forward — I don't do it. Not because I've told myself outright "you can't." Maybe I wouldn't say it that bluntly. But my brain, through the stories it builds, quietly writes it off, and finds ways to justify that feeling of not being capable.

But from my own experience, from what I've read and thought about — and maybe I'm wrong, I don't know — I feel like just doing the thing is what causes the big outcome. I've always believed that people who did something big never actually set out to do something big. It was never that big in their mind. They just did a thing, and then, step by step, through what they kept doing and the path they kept walking, it grew like a snowball. It kept rolling forward, getting bigger and bigger, until it became a giant snowball. We look at it now and assume that giant snowball was in their mind from the very start, and that they walked straight toward it. I don't think that's how it happens.

To me, becoming something, growing in any field, is actually simple: you just do the thing. You do the work and let it move forward on its own, and take your brain out of that controlling mode — loosen its grip so it doesn't try to control everything so much. Whatever the conditions, you keep doing it — small or big — and over time it gets bigger and bigger. Somewhere along the way it might break. That's fine. It was part of the road. For whatever reason it broke, and you can pick up a small snowball again and start rolling it once more, until it grows big again. But you can't start with a small snowball and expect it to become a giant one after just one roll.

And like I said at the start of this — we always begin with a small snowball in our hands, while in our minds we're already picturing the giant one. So of course, looking at that small snowball, it feels like it could never measure up to the big one in our head. But if, instead of falling into that need for control, we just put the snowball down on some snow and start rolling it, slowly, at some point we look at it and realize it's become something enormous — maybe something we never even imagined.

That's why I think doing something big requires passion, requires love — so we don't just get tired halfway through. If we're rolling and rolling this snowball, out of breath, exhausted, legs aching, back aching — we shouldn't stop rolling. And that, I think, comes from the love we have for that snowball. If we have that love, the most important thing after it is simple: just keep rolling. Don't stop.

But we also shouldn't feel like the rolling itself is some kind of torment, something we only get to feel good about once we finally see the giant snowball. Because the same feeling a small snowball gives you — multiply it, and it's the same feeling, just bigger. So a giant snowball probably gives you the same feeling a small one does. But if we learn to enjoy every millimeter that snowball grows along the way, and actually live inside that progress, then by the time it becomes something giant, it won't really matter whether it's small or big.

The real difference is that you look back and see that this whole time, you carried that snowball. You tried not to let it melt. You tried not to let it break. And you kept rolling it, and rolling it, until now it's turned into something big — something a lot of people can probably use. For all these reasons, I believe anyone can do anything. We just need to figure out how to fix the way our mind works, and point it toward the path we actually want to walk. Anyone can do whatever they want to do — the only real difference between people is mindset, and the way they choose to think.

— Armin