The Right Kind of Stubborn

Has someone in your life ever told you that you're too much? Too ambitious? Too intense? That you need to "just be realistic" and be happy with what you have? Or that your life is better than it was for those before you, so you should just be content where you’re at?

I want you to hear something that maybe no one has said to you yet: You were never meant to play small.

Wanting more out of your life doesn't make you ungrateful or selfish. It makes you ambitious. And it makes you relentless. And there's nothing wrong with that, no matter how many people around you seem uncomfortable with it.

I hear it too. Every time I call my dad and vent about work or something frustrating in my life, he hits me with the greatest hits: "It could be worse." "You should be grateful you have a job." "At least it's not as bad as..."

And look, he's not wrong. Gratitude matters. A lot. But somewhere along the way, "be grateful" gets misconstrued into "stop wanting more." And those are not the same thing. You can be thankful for where you are and still refuse to stay there. Those two ideas can live in the same room.

That tension right there, between "be grateful" and "I know I'm meant for more" is exactly why I started this newsletter.

I'm Crystal from Small Town USA. Self-proclaimed finance nerd, business owner, crypto and AI aficionado, mom of two teenage boys, and someone who spent 20+ years figuring out life’s rules that nobody taught me (or I wasn’t ready to hear at the time). Rules about money, about building things, about how to think when everything around you is noise. Most of the best frameworks that changed how I operate? I didn't learn them until my 30s and 40s. Every single time I came across a solid mental shift, I thought, "Wow, this would’ve been really good information to have a decade ago."

So I’m creating the field guide that I wish existed when I was your age.

Rising Elite is the playbook for people who are ready to take action but don't know what they don't know (yet). I'm part cheerleader, part big sister who's already made the mistakes and wants to give the next ones coming up an actual advantage. Think of me as someone who's a little further down the road, pulling you up the ladder and handing you the cheat codes I had to find the hard way.

And a lot of what I'm going to share with you has nothing to do with school or grades or what career to pick. It's about how to think. First principles thinking. Mental models. The kind of tools that help you recognize patterns everywhere: in money, in relationships, in business, in decisions you make every single day. Once you start seeing those patterns, you stop guessing and start navigating. That knowledge doesn't just help you once. It puts you on a smoother, more direct path to wherever you're trying to go.

So what can you expect from me? Total honesty. Total transparency. I'll share stories of my failures and successes, what worked for me and what to avoid. I'll challenge you when you need it and cheer for you when you don't even realize you're winning. Most importantly, I want to share everything I've learned with people who are hungry for more — people like you.

Alright. First issue. Let’s lock in.

I'll be honest, this one is personal for me. It drives me nuts when I watch my kids start a task or project, hit one roadblock, and just... stop. It's like their mindset is stuck in Monopoly: do not pass Go, do not collect $200. Game over. They take their ball and go home. One moment of "I don't know how," and their brain jumps straight to "well, I guess I'll just give up."

But that's not how any of this actually works.

I have high standards, both for myself and for the people around me. And one thing I know for sure is that improvement in your life is never a straight line. It's not some smooth, up-and-to-the-right trajectory. It's jagged. Two steps forward, one step back. Sometimes three steps sideways. It's messy.

But you need to be directionally accurate. That's the key.

Think a year down the road. Two years. Ten. Where do you see yourself? What does your everyday life actually look like? Now look at where you are today. There is a path between those two points, but it's not a straight one, and nobody is going to draw it for you. You have to keep looking at your own compass and course-correct along the way.

And that's where most people fall apart. Not because they're not talented or they don't want it badly enough. But because they treat every "no" like a dead end instead of a detour.

When a door closes, you don’t camp out in the hallway waiting for it to reopen. You treat ‘no’ like a GPS recalculating: wrong turn, rerouting, different angle.

I call this the "right kind of stubborn,” fixed on the destination but flexible on the route.

The mindset shift that changes everything is going from "I hit a wall, so I'm done" to "Okay, that wasn't the right path, which means I need to try something else." Recalibrate. Go a different route. Try again with new information.

Here’s what most people get wrong: they think stubbornness means ramming the same door over and over, getting progressively more frustrated, until they either break through or give up bitterly.

The right kind of stubborn person looks different.

It’s the entrepreneur who gets rejected by 50 investors, but each rejection teaches them something new about their pitch. It’s the athlete who doesn’t make the varsity team as a sophomore, so he uses that season to study the upperclassmen who did. It’s the student who bombs a test but then reflects on why they bombed it instead of just deciding he is “bad at math”. The difference? They’re not just trying again. They’re trying smarter.

When you hear "no" in your life, that doesn't mean you stop pursuing your path. It just means you need to take a side quest. A detour. The world isn't ending. What's actually happening is you're eliminating unsuccessful paths. You're narrowing your focus. Now you have three fewer routes you need to explore, because you've already learned they won't lead where you want to go — or at least not in the way you expected.

Let's say you don't get into the college you'd been hoping for. You can either throw the proverbial baby out with the bathwater, or you can stop and ask some real questions.

Is there a way to get in next semester? Next year? What would that actually look like? And more importantly, is it something you're willing to commit to?

Because here's what nobody frames for you when you're young: life is hard. Every path is hard. Every option has a cost. The question was never "how do I avoid the hard stuff?" The question is: which hard are you choosing?

Which hard is worth the struggle to get where you're going? And which hard lessons aren't worth it — because they don't even lead somewhere you want to be?

Say you wanted to go to Duke because of the legacy basketball program. But your actual end goal is to make it to the NBA. If Duke says no, does that mean you give up on the NBA? Of course not. It means your path to the NBA runs through a different school, a different route. Not Duke. Still the NBA.

The destination didn't change. The door did.

But here's the part most people leave out: sometimes you hit that roadblock, look at the alternative routes, and realize — you know what, I don't actually want this anymore. Maybe the path to the NBA without Duke means a school across the country, away from your family, with a program that doesn't feel right. Maybe you look at the "hard" that's now in front of you and decide it's not one you're willing to take on.

And that's okay. That's not quitting. That's mental maturity in choosing.

There's a real difference between giving up because something got hard and making a conscious decision that this particular hard isn't worth what it costs. Only you get to decide which "hards" are worth fighting through, and when it's time to set your compass in a new direction, toward a path with challenges you're actually willing to take on.

The right kind of stubborn isn't about never walking away. It's about never walking away on autopilot. Every time you hit a wall, you make a real decision: push through, find another route, or redirect the whole mission. All three are valid. The only wrong move is doing nothing and pretending you never had a choice.

Nobody tells you this at 15 or 18 or even 22: the rejections you're getting right now are the cheapest ones you'll ever face. The stakes are the lowest they'll ever be.

Got turned down for a job? That means it wasn’t the right time. Someone said your business idea was stupid? Good. Now you know who not to ask for advice. Didn’t make the team? That stings today but it’s not the story of your life, it’s just one chapter.

Think of it like baseball. You need to take a lot of pitches before you start recognizing which ones are worth swinging at. Every strike, every "no," every failed attempt is actually you building your eye. Learning what a good pitch looks like so that when the right one comes, you don't hesitate.

The people who figure this out early have a ridiculous advantage. While everyone else is frozen after their first "no," you're already exploring paths #5, #10, #20 collecting data, adjusting, moving. And it compounds. Every rejection you process well in your teens and twenties builds a kind of emotional muscle memory. By the time the stakes get higher with real money, real careers, and real relationships, you've already trained yourself to respond with curiosity instead of collapse.

You're not being delusional. You're being persistent with information, which is a big difference. So embrace the Right Kind of Stubborn, and you will go farther, faster.

Each week this newsletter will include a small challenge for you to improve just 1% over who you were yesterday. Here is your mindset rep for this week.

Think of one thing you stopped pursuing because someone said no, or because it felt too hard, or because you tried once and it didn't work.

Now ask yourself three questions:

Set a timer for 10 minutes. Take that smallest step.

You don't have to finish anything. You just have to prove to yourself that the door wasn't locked; you just stopped knocking. And being self-aware enough to recognize this in yourself is another powerful mindset that will serve you well your entire life.

See you next week.

Rise > Repeat.

— Crystal

P.S. If you found this useful, forward it to one person who needs to hear it. That's how we grow this community, one ambitious mind at a time.