Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish

It is a fact that when you stay hungry, stay foolish for things, the more knowledge you acquire, and the better you get at succeeding. But the more you learn and do, the more you feel like you do not know much. The reason is that there is too much to possibly know. But in that is your power.

So, what is the meaning of staying hungry and foolish? How can you keep these desires alive? Why should you consider these traits to be valuable?

Well, these behaviors are literally the source of your strength when you recognize that your journey is one of learning. The genuine love of discovering, reading, striving, and creating, when cultivated, is a superpower. While the means of learning are abundant, it is the desire to learn that is scarce.

But if you get that desire, cultivate it, and accept that you are in this world that is by far too big for you to understand every piece of it. And in recognizing that you do not know everything, you grow. By putting yourself on the quest to learn more, obsessively, get better, and fall in love with the actual process of gaining knowledge, you develop a greater advantage for success.

And if you stay hungry and stay foolish for that at all times, keeping a growth mindset instead of a fixed mindset, you will undeniably flourish and succeed.

He who knows best knows just how little he knows. ~ Thomas Jefferson

Spend Time on Self-awareness

While staying hungry and foolish, you must know and follow your true purpose because it will get you through the tough times while on your journey. It then becomes your reason for waking up every day and doing what you need to do. And it is important to know what your mission is since it is very easy to fall back into a comfort zone.

Anyway, it is the only way you can make a positive impact in the world. If you do not know what your mission is, you have to work on developing your awareness. You have to listen to your gut, your heart and not your head. Go into discovery mode and focus on you first. Spend less time on social media and more time meditating.

Moreover, take more walks, and more time to stop and think. Spend also more time reading, self-reflect and be more open-minded. Give your undivided attention to what matters to you. Only then will the answers begin to become clear. A new path will create itself. You will have less fear, less regard for your comfort zone and more focus on what you want in life.

Stay hungry, stay foolish. ~ Steve Jobs

The Meaning of ‘Stay Hungry Stay Foolish’

Let’s, for a moment, break down the meaning of these two traits:

Stay Hungry

The first part is to stay hungry. It means you must keep ambitious. Too often, people who become successful have a tendency to relax and cruise on previous success for the rest of their lives. They sell their companies, take it easy and retire from doing anything else.

But others like Elon Musk, the late Steve Jobs, and quite a few more, for example, keep going and find ways to develop other ideas, despite the fact that they are millionaires. So, this kind of burning desire, persistent ambition, to continue challenging oneself even after they achieved success and are on top of their game is the meaning of hungry.

Also, it is often said that good is the enemy of great. The reason is that when things are going good, the temptation is to become satisfied, say “it is good enough” alone and forget that you can do more. It is only through your relentless drive to overcome this temptation that you can achieve greatness.

Stay Foolish

The second part is to stay foolish. It is about taking risks. How often have you heard relatives, friends or counselors tell you to play it safe? They say to follow the long-established path like “Go to school, have good grades, and get a good job.” But those who are crazy enough believe that life can be bigger, more interesting and more far-reaching than that.

So, you, taking risks that other people find irrational are a necessary part for any great success. They say: “Being a dropout and start a business is foolish.” “Becoming a professional musician is impossible.” “Devoting your life to solving a worldwide problem that no one else can is crazy.” But the world would be boring and unchanged if nobody took these risks, and realized these feats.

Yet, most people believe that they cannot change the world. But it does not stop the ones who do from trying. When you do not know what the limit is, then you do not have a limit. So you must gain knowledge and have a mindset that challenges the common standards, not to accept them. And so more often than not, you have to stay hungry, even stay foolish to challenge the status quo.

Make a Difference

Stay foolish, stay hungry means advice on how ideally you should live, always being on the lookout for issues that you can make a difference on. Do not be afraid of failing or being ridiculed for what you believe in. It is good advice for anyone, but mainly for young people about to enter adulthood and their independence.

So, go out there in the world. Leave the cocoon of home, keep your dreams alive, fall, rise again, move forward and fight for it. Be hungry, keep foolish. Take risks. Think big. Change things for the better. And if it does not work, try something different but keep going.

Do not ever be satisfied with just having a job or a mindless routine. Remember, you can leave a dent in the Universe, or at least try and so there will not be any regret later in your life.

The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits. ~ Albert Einstein.

Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish

So, stay fresh, naïve, hungry and foolish to really learn and grow. Then you truly obtain power. As you take on the knowledge, one thing after another, those skills will have practical application. And it is that use, born of an understanding of how little you really know, that allows you to become far more powerful than the people that think they know.

Because when they think they know, they stop learning and growing. But when you think you know nothing, have to learn things, see if something works and if it gets you the results, then those skills become real. You become boundless because you are always trying to find that next thing.

Therefore, never be self-satisfied, keep your eyes on where you want to go, and ask what skills you need to acquire to get there. And knowing that each one of those that you get, brick by brick, builds a real path to achieve what you want to do.

My Final Recommendation

So, my last advice is to stay hungry, stay foolish as it is a timeless call to action. I challenge you to pursue your wildest ambitions with tremendous enthusiasm, without regard for the status quo. It is about the desiring strive towards solution no matter how crazy the idea may sound. It also means to never be satisfied, therefore having a constant hunger to achieve better in your life.

And fall in love with the idea that you know nothing. Realize that when you ‘stay hungry stay foolish,’ it can help you get where you want. Understand that learning is a superpower. Desire that hunger every day. Never be tricked by the need to be self-satisfied or great now. And never fool yourself into thinking that what you are today is who you can become.

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