watch this if you think life is UNFAIR

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Do you think that life is fair? Compare yourself to people who are highly successful—people who have money, fame, respect, and everything you can imagine. Compare their lifestyles to yours. Compare the education that they have, the families or the countries they live in, the opportunities and mindset that they possess. Does it look similar to yours? You probably can see some differences—or maybe major differences—and you might start to feel bad about yourself or bad about your life. The answer is yes, life is unfair. Indeed, life is really unfair.

If you have ever read self-help books or joined the productivity community, there is something that is praised more than it should be, and that is the hard work hustle culture. If you read a couple of books, I think the common theme they share is that you should work harder, work harder, harder and harder, until you achieve it. It's no time to rest; it's all about hard work, dedication, motivation, discipline, and all that stuff. But when it comes to reality, it's not about working harder; it's actually about working smarter—working the system.

Because let's say you work super, super hard, but when you work in the opposite direction from your goals, then what is the meaning of hard work? If you don't know what you're working for, how you're working, and if you don't know the system very well, no matter how hard you work, it can mean absolutely nothing. The thing that we should do is stack the deck in our favor and not think that hard work is the only way that we can achieve success.

Before starting this video, I want you to stop this video and buy the book "Unfair Advantages." This video contains a lot of quotes and is basically made out of that book. There are so many areas that I cannot talk about in this video, so I will put it in the description below so you can buy it.

When it comes to financial success and wealth, there are two leading narratives or mindsets that we have. Either we believe that rich people deserved it and that rich people worked for it—this belief is called meritocracy—or, on the other side of the spectrum, there is fatalism. According to this mindset, rich people got rich only from the luck that they had, from things that are out of their control, for example, luck, opportunities that they had, timing, talent, fate—or this stuff, things that they cannot control, but they are born with.

Maybe we like to think that "I don't come from a very wealthy family, or I didn't have that education, I didn't do it when I was growing up, so that's why I am not successful like them. They had this, and this, and this. Of course, they will be successful." The thing that we should do is not compare ourselves to them and moan, but actually find the unfair advantages that are unique to us—the unfair advantages that we can use.

Before explaining and talking about the main unfair advantages, let us talk about the properties of unfair advantages in order to understand these better. The thing that I want to clear out is that we all have unfair advantages. It is impossible for you to not have an unfair advantage. Your unfair advantage can be where you were born, the way you were raised, the amount of money that you had, or maybe the education. Even the negative things—growing up poor or in an undeveloped country—can be your unfair advantage.

So you might say, "I don't have money, I didn't get a good education. How can these be unfair advantages?" But they can, and I'll explain that later. Your unfair advantages can't easily be copied, and both your set of unfair advantages is unique to you. Yes, you can improve some of them, but you cannot easily copy them from someone else. The last thing is that unfair advantages are a double-edged sword. As I said, if you know how to use them, they can be life-changing. If you don't know how to use them, even something that is positive can damage you.

Everything in life—even the most simple thing—can be your unfair advantage. I've been trying to build a website for my upcoming merchandise, for my memberships, and for my online courses using Squarespace, and Squarespace is definitely my unfair advantage when it comes to building an aesthetic website. It's unbelievably easy to build a website with Squarespace. Even if you don't understand anything about design, like I do, you can basically go through the templates that they have, pick one, and start from there.

They have different features that you can use, for example, an e-commerce feature where you can sell your digital products, services, subscriptions, and all that stuff, which I'm going to use. Having the opportunity to use Squarespace and make things is also an unfair advantage since I'm going to release quite a lot of things in 2022. Stay tuned! Squarespace is my buddy on that. If you want to launch a website and if you're ready to launch, head to squarespace.com/hamma to save 10% on your first purchase of a website or domain using the code. Thank you, Squarespace for sponsoring this video.

So let's talk about the main unfair advantages. When it comes to unfair advantages, there are five categories of them. In the book "Unfair Advantage," the authors called it the MILES framework. Let's start with money. Having a lot of money is obviously an unfair advantage. Once you have money, it’s easier to make money. But I also think that being able to make money is unfair—even if you don’t have money. If you have the opportunity to make money, that’s also a huge unfair advantage.

Let me give you an example from myself. When starting this channel, I think I spent around $1K to $2K for the setup that I had in the beginning. I made this money from the part-time work that I had in Japan during the summer holidays. I was working at a restaurant, making around $10 per hour. Since I was working five times a week for five hours a day, it wasn't really hard for me to make around $1K to $2K during my summer holiday, and I decided to invest it in my YouTube channel.

So, if you're coming from a developed country, you can probably work part-time and make around maybe $6 to $10 per hour. But if you're not coming from a developed country—for example, Turkey, which is a developing country— the Turkish currency has a very low value against U.S. dollars, Japanese yen, or euros or any currency that has high value. Even doctors in Turkey, new graduates, don’t make more than $1,000 if they are working for somebody else. New graduates in Japan probably make around $5,000. In Turkey, you cannot make even that. If you're watching this, and if you are living in a developed country, think about that. Even if you don't have money, you can work part-time and make money, and that is a huge unfair advantage.

If you are coming from an undeveloped country, the thing you can do is to launch a business or do things that don't require money to start. For example, you can maybe learn some skills online, even from YouTube—maybe editing videos—and make money as a freelancer. If you're coming from an undeveloped country that has a high currency, these dollars will probably be valuable in your country. If you believe in your business, and others will believe in you, you can actually raise funds, collect money from there, and start your business. But the thing that I would recommend is to learn marketing and sales. These days, you can learn everything online, even for free. So I would highly recommend you to do that, or you can learn coding for free online and maybe build websites and make money.

So let's talk about the next unfair advantage category, and that is intelligence and insight. When talking about intelligence, a lot of people think about it as IQ, you know, like book smarts. But when it comes to intelligence, there are actually a lot of types of intelligence: social intelligence, emotional intelligence, and creative intelligence are things that we should actually consider. When it comes to book smarts, you probably guessed it right—these are the people who probably perform well in school and understand theoretical things and are able to absorb large amounts of information and keep them.

It's probably easier for you to understand if you are book smart or not. If your grades were super good in school, you're probably book smart. But it’s actually not all about the things that we learned in school. If you were not interested at all, it might be hard for you to focus on that area. So even if you were not really successful in school, there's actually a chance of you being book smart if you can find something that is really, like, super interesting to you. You might absorb the information way faster than the other people around you.

But have you noticed that the smartest kids in school are actually not always doing very well in life? Just because you graduated from a good university with a good degree, it doesn't mean that you're gonna make a ton of money or be really, really successful. The next one is emotional intelligence. Social and emotional intelligence is knowing which questions to ask, how to ask those questions in a way that gets you the answers you're after, building trust and relationships, and being assertive—common sense. Knowing who you can trust, who you should approach and getting a sense of different trends and demands for different things, also deduction—knowing when people are trying to screw you over, reading their intentions, and having a sense of where their incentives lie.

If you are a highly emotionally intelligent person, that could actually be a huge unfair advantage, especially if you’re doing business that makes you directly communicate with your customer. For example, my brother is a dentist, and he communicates quite a lot with his patients. The ability of his communication skills really helped him until this day because he can understand the other person, their needs, and he can build trust easily.

The other intelligence is creative intelligence. When talking about creative intelligence, it's not about writing poems or anything. The creativity that we use in day-to-day life and business is about connecting unrelated dots and creating something out of it and feeling the need of an industry. For example, when it comes to Steve Jobs, when he was at university, he learned how to create beautiful, proportionally spaced letters and fonts. He connected calligraphy—design—with technology, and he created these Apple products that I'm a huge fan of. If Apple products didn't have this beautiful aesthetic presence, I don't think they would be as popular today.

If you don't have the unfair advantages, the thing that you can do is to partner with someone who has the unfair advantages that you don't have, so that you will cover the parts that both of you lack. Let's talk about location and luck. We have a Turkish proverb saying that "Location is your destiny," and I kind of find it true. We’re strongly influenced by the environment. It's said that you become the average of the five people you spend your time with. Therefore, who you're surrounded with—the type of people that are around you—is really, really important.

Let me give you an example from my life. I was born in Japan, but I grew up in Turkey. I'm half Japanese and half Turkish, and it allowed me to see the differences between Japan and Turkey. Japan is a highly developed country with a very stable economy—one of the biggest economies in the world—and Turkey is a developing country. Financially, citizens are not really stable. In Japan, we have a basic income, which is an income that is unconditionally granted to all individuals, whether they're employed or not. So even if you don't have a job, even if you have some sort of problem in life, and even if you did something wrong, you probably won’t end up in straits in Japan. Of course, there are some cases, but most of the time, in Japan, there is a societal safety net.

But at the same time, it can be bad because Japan is a highly developed country, and due to the safety net, the thing that I see is that the people there are not as ambitious as my Turkish friends. Let's say you might think Japan is a much better place than Turkey, but it's actually not the case. Living costs are much lower in Turkey. Yes, Turkey is not a cheap country for Turkish citizens, but if you're making U.S. dollars, Japanese yen, euros, or any currency that has a high value, actually Turkey is a pretty great place to live in.

Because let's say you make $500 from freelancing or maybe from YouTube—in Japan, you cannot survive on $500; it’s nothing. But in Turkey, you can have a decent quality of life. Food is good, the environment is good, and people are really nice and friendly. Yes, there are some problems in the country, but if you're making U.S. dollars, probably Turkey is a paradise for you. If you're only making $500 in Japan, you cannot really do anything as a foreigner. So it really depends on how you use it and under which conditions you use it.

Now let's talk about luck. When we think about luck, you might think that you cannot really control your luck, but actually, according to psychologist Dr. Richard Wiseman, it's largely a matter of mindset. In other words, if you think that you're lucky in life, you will actually start to be lucky because you will be able to see the opportunities. If you want to increase your luck, you should take more action; you should put yourself out there.

After creating this channel, after starting to make videos and putting myself out there, I connected with a lot of people that I would have never been able to if I hadn't had this channel. I connected with my heroes, made really good friendships, and talked with a bunch of people from different places around the world. Me getting to know Izzy and Matt in PTYA was luck, but at the same time, it was because I put myself out there. Therefore, you can increase your luck by taking action.

When it comes to this location and luck, there's something I want to add about looks. I think outer looks of someone else is also an unfair advantage. For example, when I'm in Japan, people assume that I'm a foreigner, and in Turkey, people realize that I'm not from Turkey. I know that I'm attractive; people say it. There’s a statistical basis for it, but I'm not going to talk about this video. Anyway, having great, or having unique looks, or maybe being an attractive person is actually also an unfair advantage.

Though I was about 10 kilos heavier when I was in middle school during my exam period, the amount of attention and the way people treated me versus now is completely different. I don't think that it's only because of looks, but when you have good looks or when you fit into these beauty standards, I feel like it’s also an unfair advantage. As an influencer or a YouTuber, let's say you put yourself out there, like you’re in the thumbnail, you’re an attractive guy or girl—people are more likely to click there because it is so normal for us to treat attractive people better.

However, I think that what makes looks an unfair advantage is not only about the outer looks, but actually the confidence that you gain from looking that way. You know, let's say you hit the gym and you're in shape, and you got abs and a nice body—because you know you look good, and because you think you look good, you start to act more confidently, which grabs people's attention. I think that also changes the way that people treat you.

So, therefore, if you are unhappy with your looks, the thing that you can do is to maybe work on your looks—like even getting a proper haircut, doing your nails, doing your skincare, and getting in shape can totally change your looks and positively affect you.

Let's talk about education and expertise. If you think that education is only what you get from school, you're totally wrong. Education goes throughout your life. Education is not just about memorizing the facts that we don’t care about in school, but actually learning skills and improving and increasing your knowledge. These days you can learn anything from online, so it's not really clever to say that "I didn’t have any chance to learn anything," because currently online, courses, and YouTube, you can find so much valuable information out there. The only thing you have to do is go there and grab that information.

For example, when it comes to me, an expertise—I learned editing from YouTube videos, or I learned English from YouTube videos that were completely free. If you're currently able to watch this video, that means that you have a connection to the internet and access to devices to watch these videos. Therefore, it does mean that you can learn these skills—even if you don't have a good educational background, maybe you didn't graduate from a very prestigious university, you can actually learn these skills and gain expertise.

So education and expertise are unfair advantages—you can easily work on them. The last one is status. Your status is basically your personal brand—how you act, how you’re perceived, how you talk, how you dress. It's your social standing, your appearance, your age, maybe your race. High-status people turn heads; they receive attention. We want to spend time with those people who have high status.

In addition, there's something called inner status. This is essentially how you perceive yourself—your self-confidence, self-love, and self-acceptance. When people have confidence, they can see it. Sometimes, people have preconceptions about you based purely on your skin color, ethnicity, gender, age, accent, religion, sexuality, name, and the class and subculture signals you give off.

If you think you don't have this unfair advantage, there’s good news: being an outsider—being someone outside of these high-status people—is also an unfair advantage because you can see things differently than those people. You can create diversity in that platform. Throughout my life, I've always been an outsider in the community because in Turkey I'm not Turkish, and in Japan I'm not Japanese. I loved both of the countries, but I never felt I belonged there.

Throughout my childhood, yes, I felt the loneliness of that, but it actually gave me insights that both of these people don’t have. Because I’m an outsider, I can see things differently. I can see things from the outside, and I use this, for example, on my channel. I talked about these on my channel, and people were relating to that. I think it made me more interesting because of this unique insight; I always had something to talk about, which allowed me to make friends easily in school because I always had something to discuss.

So let's go to the conclusion: everything can be your unfair advantage, and every advantage that you have can also be a disadvantage. It's all about how to use them and knowing how to use them. Even the bad experiences that you have can turn into an opportunity, and even the good experiences that you've had can turn into a disadvantage.

If you want to learn more about this topic and if you want to discover your unfair advantages, you can check out the book "Unfair Advantage." I'll link them down in the description below. Thank you, Squarespace, for sponsoring this video! If you have any questions about this topic, let me know in the comments down below, and let us discuss our unfair advantages and what is unique to you. See you in my next video! [Music]