The Wolf of Wall Street

 Artikel oleh Alicia Juwono

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Success is within the mind of individuals. A large portion of one’s life is spent working to attain success. It is undoubtedly the case that parents give tremendous pressure to the children to work extremely hard in order to strive to be the best.  However success takes many different forms. It isn’t a rigid concept as the definition of success varies. Different people have their own interpretations of what success means to them. For some, success is measured by wealth and material possessions, but for others success can be measured in other ways.

Jordan Belfort, “The Wolf of Wall Street” is one of the inspiring entrepreneur icons. He was born in New York, on 9^th July 1962 and possessed a remarkable talent of being a good salesman at very young age. He graduated from American University with a biology degree and pursued at University of Maryland School of dentistry, but he didn’t successfully complete the degree.

Belfort humbly started as a door-to-door meat and seafood salesman in New York as his early ventures. Unfortunately, his business failed and he went bankrupt. He persisted to become a trainee stockbroker at L.F. Rothschild. After that, he set uphis own investment company called “Stratton Oakmont” two years down the line. His business unexpectedly flourished. His company, as a part of this malicious scheme, sold its ownership on these stocks and reaped tremendous profit. The United States “Securities and Exchange Commission” decided to bring an end to the devious stock operation of “Stratton Oakmont” in 1992 and claimed that the company had been manipulating stock prices and defrauded investors. Belfort was out of his scheming brokerage business just two years later. In the end, Belfort was required by the court to pay back an amount of $110.4 million and was sentenced to imprisonment for several years. After he was acquitted from prison he became a motivational speaker and a consultant in over 50 public companies. He also wrote books “The Wolf of Wall Street” and “ Catching the Wolf of Wall Street” that depicted his struggle and agony after he was arrested.

We can gain extensive insights from Belfort’s successful experience. We shouldn’t merely set our goals, we need a vision. A goal is something that oneaccomplishes, while vision is something you see. To create our vision, we need to step into our goals and ask ourselves what our world would be like. For example: If you make a million dollars, how will your family’s health improve? Next, we must learn to manage ourstate because it allows us to access the resource that we have.The higher your state, the greater your resources. The lower your state, the scarcer your resources. The most important state that we need to control is 3C: Certainty, Clarity, and Courage. Manage the way you feel in the moment. Third, manage your beliefs and eliminate limiting beliefs.Just like Belfort’s saying: “You are not your past; you are the resources and capabilities you glean for it. That is the basis for all change. If you survived the worst of the worse and are still breathing, you can learn from that.”The more crap from your life that one survived, the more likely that one will become great. Individual must change the way they look at their past. View the past as a prelude to your vision for the future. Fourth, individual must have a good strategy. The way individual manage their goals, visions and time is the most important things in order to be success. Last but not least, we must raise our standards because we will never settle for less than what our standards are.

In this rigorously competitive realm of business, people endeavor to be the best to gain success. However the term success transcends wealth and material possessions only, since the term success means pursuing one’s passion as portrayed by Jordan Belfort who persevered in his passions as a stick broker. Therefore success to him is a more enriching journey rather than the ultimate goal itself.