Will of Steel: Building Bulletproof Confidence

One month has passed.

You look in the mirror. You can still make out the bruising around your left eye and the cut down your cheek. The memory of getting roughed up by the bullies is fresh in your mind. So was having your head pushed into the toilet bowl and wondering if you were going to drown. Then getting punched in the face and slammed against the wall. 

It’s Monday again and you shiver at the thought of having to go to school. For some reason, you have been the target of bullies for as long as you can remember. Even the weak kids have always picked on you. You still have three more years until you finish high school. You wonder how you will get through this eternity. I promise I will work to get stronger, you think to yourself. 

Two months have gone by. During this time, you have been going to kickboxing classes three days a week and supplemented this with weightlifting and cross-country running on the remaining days. You dealt with the bullies three weeks back. One of them tried to take your wallet but you grabbed him and jammed the locker door into his face. At least fifty other people saw, but you didn’t care. No one has messed with you since and you notice your confidence picking up a bit. 

It’s results day for college admissions. You didn’t get into Penn or any other Ivy League school. You didn’t even get into any one of your target schools. You lie on your bed with your eyes closed and cry. Loud. You check your phone. Your friend has just messaged you. He has been accepted to Wharton. You throw your phone out the window and hear it splinter into a million pieces. You close your eyes again. The crying intensifies…

You have completed your freshman year of college. You kept your head down through most of that time and have a 4.0 GPA to show for it. You have also been going to the gym every single day for the past year. Last week you benched 190 and got down to 11% body fat. You walk on the boardwalk at Brighton Beach one warm summer day and notice that for the first time in memory girls are starting to pay attention to you. You are still short on money even after working two-part time jobs over the past year but you don’t care. Everything else is working out just as you wanted. You gain a little more confidence. 

You’re midway through Year 2 of college. You found out three weeks ago that your mom lost her job. Your financial aid package only covers half of your tuition, and now you must come up with the remaining $15K within three months. But you are already working 30 hours a week on top of your classes. You quit your $10/hour job in the school cafeteria, pick up a bucket and sponge, and go house by house around your neighborhood offering to wash cars. People turn you down. Some tell you to get f***ed. One guy even pushes you onto the ground and threatens to shoot you. You get up, pat the dust off your shirt, and go home. You decide it’s time to revisit your business strategy. You change into your nicest Polo shirt and khaki pants and make the hour-long commute to the wealthy part of town. Your new pitch is a drastic 180 degree shift: Instead of charging $15 per car, you offer to clean the exterior for free, and each client can decide to tip you if they want. You get politely turned down at the first two doors, but the third prospect bites and gives you a $100 tip. By the end of the afternoon, you have accumulated $800 through tips. You finally see a light at the end of the tunnel…

You’re feeling incredibly stressed. You’re almost done with Year 3 now. You have lost all the muscle you built because you are now working two finance jobs on top of washing cars for 20 hours a week. You are also going to every single networking event hosted by your school. But you haven’t received any interview offers yet. Summer is coming up soon and you need that internship from an investment bank. But you’re not getting anywhere. You wonder if you’ll end up with no internship and be stuck washing cars all summer. You have missed 80% of all your classes. Your grades have dropped to mostly Bs. You get an email: Numerical Analysis midterm grades ready to be picked up during office hours. You collect your exam paper and see the C+ in big red ink. You feel your chest ache and your lungs contract. It hurts to breathe. Suddenly your phone rings. You answer. A boutique firm is calling, and they have offered you an internship for the summer. You feel your confidence suddenly spring back up. 

You clock 110 hours, a new record.  You have been working 90-100 hour weeks for the last two months, and have broken the firm’s intern record for the number of hours worked. You thought this would be easy, but the physical and mental grind is on another level compared to anything you’ve done before. Your friends are posting vacation photos from the Mediterranean, and you can’t help but think about whether your sacrifice will pay off. What if you don’t get the job? What else could you do? 

Fall semester of senior year. You get a phone call. The boutique bank was impressed by your work as an intern and gives you a full-time offer. Just as you are preparing to accept it, you get another phone call. A more reputable bulge-bracket investment bank has also made you an offer. It’s a no-brainer and you jump ship. Your confidence goes up more. 

It’s now Week 1 as Investment Banking Analyst on the M&A team. You look around and feel intimidated. You are the only guy from city college; everyone else in the room comes from a top-tier target school: Ivy League, Duke, U of Chicago, NYU Stern. You are on the receiving end of condescending sneers. People glance at you and whisper to each other. Others ignore you. Someone makes fun of your cheap suit. But you don’t pay attention. The market is fiery hot, and you stay focused and clock in more 100 hour weeks. The months go by and the others get burned out, but you remain steady as a rock. You get the attention of the senior bankers and they bring you in to support them. They are impressed by your strong Excel skills and eye to zoom in on details, so they let you take care of financial modeling and valuation. The random Admin tasks are delegated to the Ivy Leaguers who were making fun of you. A year goes by. Then two years. Your boss comes to you and tells you that they plan to move you to Associate. You smile to yourself. You have made the jump without needing to do an MBA. Your confidence goes up more. 

It’s now three years into your IB career. You are doing well and your bonuses have grow substantially YoY, but you are getting tired of taking orders. You are looking for the opportunity to work on your own investment ideas, so you reach out to headhunters to learn more about the hedge fund industry. The hiring process is extremely competitive and after a few months you are finally contacted for an interview with a large fund. You learn from the interviewer that you were selected because your resume was on the top of a stack of four hundred CVs. You meet the portfolio manager, who gives you a retail case study to present. Instead of scanning the 10K/10Q and writing a generic report like everyone else, you buy a drone and count traffic. You completely blow away the portfolio manager with your pitch, and he gives you an offer on the spot. Your confidence goes up even more.

Your confidence is now sky high, but your ego is starting to get a little out of control too. You have regained your muscle and are now physically in the best shape of your life. You expect to break $800K this year and $1MM the coming year, so you move out of your studio in the village and sign a lease for a penthouse on the Upper East Side. You buy a Porsche 718 Boxster. You’ve got three girlfriends on the side, all of whom are aware of your player lifestyle. You spend $5K at the club one night, then drop $10K the following night. 

Another six months have gone by. You get into a fight at a club and your hand is broken. A recession hits. You’re down over one hundred million and have exceeded your limit. You are fired. No other hedge fund is looking to pick up an Analyst. You move out of the penthouse and back into a tiny studio. Your girlfriends leave you. 

Things get worse. On your way home one night you get robbed at gunpoint and give up your $50K Omega watch. You land on someone else’s foot during a pickup basketball game and fracture your ankle. You learn from your dad that your mom has cancer. She ultimately loses the battle and dies. You are crushed. All of the confidence you have accumulated over the years is gone. Mentally, you feel like you are back to being that weak and timid fifteen-year-old who people picked on. 

You look at your life. All of the effort and sacrifices you made suddenly seem worthless. You are back in the same place again. Nobody is hiring. No one wants you. You remember how you got the very first job. You pick up your smartphone and go through your contact list one by one. You put on a suit and tie and head back to your university to attend those networking events once again. I’ve been through this before, you think. And I’ll get through this again.

You line up a few interviews. You get an offer- Associate. It is with a small boutique firm but the pay is still pretty good. You show up early on Day 1 and put a framed picture of your mom on your desk. You think back to those early days when it felt like everyone in the world hated you… Except for her. She never knew anything about you getting bullied or having your face slammed into the toilet bowl. You never told her because you didn’t want her to worry. You wanted her to always think that you were doing fine. She is watching me right now and she wants me to be happy. You sit down and start grinding away, as if all the horrible things in the world never happened…

Some time goes by and everything is improving bit by bit. You make Senior VP at age 27, setting a record as the youngest SVP in firm history. For the first time, you break into seven figures on annual comp. You pay the tax man and then invest most of the remainder into undervalued stocks to hold for the long-term. You are back in the gym at 4 am every morning pumping iron. You find some new girlfriends who are even more attractive than your previous ones. But this time you don’t tell them anything about your car or personal finances. You learned your lesson the hard way last time, and you’re not about to repeat the same mistake twice. 

Your weekly workload has fallen a bit. For the first time in years you find yourself free on weekends. You decide to take up a new hobby: paragliding. You have always been afraid of heights, but the flame inside you is stronger than ever. You break your own records flight after flight. A thousand feet, two thousand feet, five thousand feet, then ten thousand feet. On your way back down one Saturday afternoon a strong gust of wind sends you crashing straight into a tree branch. Your nose and your arm are broken. A giant gash of blood streaks down your leg. You cry in pain as you try to untangle yourself from the chute. I’ve been through this before, and I’ll get through this again. 

You stop by the hospital. You watch TV and let the medical staff examine your arm. Scenes from a war movie depict some Middle Eastern city getting shelled by combatants. A mother lies dead and motionless as a five-old-kid futilely tries to wake her up. You bite your lip and look away. To you, the scene feels equally relatable and distant, but it reminds you of an important message you learned during the height of your struggles: As bad as I have had it, someone else has it much worse. 

You are cleared by the doctor so you head home. You’re getting ready to sleep for 8+ hours for the first time in almost a decade. As you lie in bed, you think about how far you have come. As you drift off to sleep you remember how every single time you experienced adversity you always found a way to bounce back and land somewhere higher. 

Your final thought: I don’t need this job anymore. I hope they lay me off…