Kobe Bryant’s $600 Million Fortune Was Built by the Investment He Made (for $0)
When He Was Just 13 Feel like you don’t fit in? Science says that can be your success and achievement superpower.
The late Kobe Bryant was clearly a successful investor. He invested in himself, working tirelessly to improve his basketball skills. He invested in startups like BodyArmor. He invested in his own multimedia content company.
It’s hard to imagine Bryant ever feeling like he didn’t fit in. Success attracts: People tend to shape themselves to fit in with someone much more successful, not the other way around.
Yet Bryant was the odd man out on his first Lakers teams. Veteran players thought he was arrogant, cocky, and aloof. For a time, his 5 a.m. workouts made him the odd man out on the 2008 Olympic U.S. men’s basketball team. Then there’s middle school.
From Alienation to Empowerment
After living in Italy for eight years, his family moved back to America when he was 13. (He spoke Italian better than English.) As Bryant explained in his 2005 documentary, Kobe Bryant’s Muse:
I didn’t understand the slang. I was a little Italian boy. I didn’t understand the fashion. I couldn’t spell, and the teacher told my mother I was probably dyslexic.
I didn’t know anybody. Sitting at a lunch table all by myself, no friends. I was upset that I had moved. I had all this resentment and anger inside of me that I hadn’t really let out.
In short, Bryant felt like an outsider.
But instead of dwelling on feeling like he didn’t fit in, instead of wishing and hoping he could somehow fit in, he used those feelings as fuel.
The Outsider Advantage
Most people feel like an outsider, at least some of the time. Moving to a new city. Changing jobs. Even something simple like joining a gym when you’ve never worked out before.
Most communities tend to exclude rather than welcome, especially at first.
Maybe that’s why Plato argued that trying to blend into an unfamiliar culture was damaging to your sense of self, and influential psychologists like Maslow, Erikson, and Rogers agreed.
But science says they were wrong. A 2018 study published in Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology shows people with more multicultural experience tend to be more resilient. A different study published in the same journal found that being raised in at least two cultures tends to lead to greater psychological and emotional well-being and higher social competence. In a broader sense, a study published in Journal of Counseling Psychology found a negative association between acculturation and depression, anxiety, and sadness.
Sum it all up, and feeling different is a good thing – depending on how you use those feelings.
From Outsider to Insider
Bryant saw feeling different – more specifically feeling anger and resentment caused by feeling different – as a feature, not a bug.
As Bryant said in Kobe Bryant’s Muse:
It was never viewed as, “I’m going to control [my anger].” It was, “I’m just going to push it to the side, and then use it to my benefit for what it is that I love doing, which is playing the game.” Once I discovered that, everything about the game changed.
No matter what affected me, no matter what happened in life, I could always step on the basketball court and let my game speak to that. Step on the court and absolutely erupt.
While my accomplishments in no way compare to Bryant’s, I do understand feeling like an outsider, and no matter how painful, I wouldn’t trade that experience for the world. I was so shy in high school that I walked home for lunch to make sure I wouldn’t have to sit by myself in the cafeteria. I went to zero parties. Zero dances. I can count on one hand the number of times I did something with someone outside of school. I got good grades, played sports—but I was an outsider.
Investing in Yourself
The same was true in college, but that’s when I started using those feelings to my advantage. I worked full time in a factory, and I used feeling like an outsider there as fuel. (Think the “college boy” doesn’t know how to work hard?
I’ll show you.) That led to a different manufacturing job after graduation, and while I made lots of friends, I still didn’t really fit in.
Now I wear that like a badge of honor, albeit one visible only to myself. I can mingle with CEOs after a speaking engagement, but I’m equally comfortable chatting with – and working alongside – tradespeople when my wife and I renovate houses. I can share a glass of wine with academics and a beer with Navy SEALs who sometimes train on the beach in front of our house.
Feeling like an outsider fueled whatever I have accomplished, and oddly enough also makes me feel like an insider. I long ago lost my fear of feeling like I don’t belong. I know, with a little time and effort, I can belong.
Doubling Down on You
Bryant did the same thing. He didn’t choose to be an outsider in middle school. But after that, he saw learning to navigate being an outsider as an investment with a remarkable payoff. At first, he didn’t fit in on the Lakers. He didn’t fit in on the 2008 U.S. men’s Olympic basketball Redeem Team. He didn’t fit in as a startup
investor, author, and multimedia producer. He learned to use those feelings as fuel: to work harder, to work smarter, to work longer.
The same can be true for you.
It’s impossible to always feel like you fit in. What’s more, you shouldn’t want to always feel like you fit in. Being different is an advantage.
Doing what others aren’t willing to do, thinking in ways others aren’t willing to think, going against rather than with the crowd—to achieve differently from other people, you have to think and act differently from other people. Otherwise, you live their lives.
Want to fit in? Want to feel like you belong? First work to fit in with yourself, with your aspirations, your goals, your dreams. Be who you are, and work to be who you want to become. Use feeling like an outsider as a competitive advantage.
Because when you do, you’ll find you no longer need to find ways to fit in with other people. Other people will want to find ways to fit in with you.
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