When people give you advice based on what worked for them (or someone else) in the past, either it’s useful to you or it’s not. If it’s useful, use it. There’s no need to treat it like a religion or a law of physics that everyone else needs to believe in. If it’s not useful…
Category: Broaden Your Horizons
The Difference That Makes The Difference
You can make a much greater impact by hitting the gym or hitting the books than you can by hammering the doubters and naysayers in your life with long-winded arguments.
If It Works for the Opt-ins, It Works for the Opt-outs
If you’re going to be an advocate of philosophies like “be true yourself” and “don’t compare yourself to others” and “as long as you’re happy with your life, don’t have any regrets,” just make sure you don’t arbitrarily move the goal post when you run into someone who meets all those conditions without being a participant in tradition schooling.
The Danger of Discipline without Direction
The value of finishing a task is relative to what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. If finishing a task makes you a better human being and you genuinely believe that it’s the right choice for you, then you should finish what you started even it’s uncomfortable. If sticking with a task robs you of your time, your money, your health, your joy, or anything else that really matters to you, then it’s self-defeating to keep going merely for the sake of proving to others that you’re a disciplined person.
“Be True to Yourself…As Long as You Go to College”
When college opt-outs say things like “I don’t want to go to college. Instead, I’m going to try starting a business or I’m going to pursue this creative venture I love”, everyone loves to whip out income statistics about having a degree.
The Cost (and Rewards) of Generosity
A life of service forces you to pay the price of abandoning your scarcity mindset and all the sympathy that comes with it. When you walk around with an “it’s just little ole me” attitude or when you carry yourself as someone who doesn’t have enough to share, no one expects anything of you and they extend pity in your direction.
Generosity is a Permissionless Enterprise
You don’t need to have a credential in order to meet a human need. “Love thy neighbor as thyself” was not prefaced with “if you have the proper certification.” You don’t have to go through an audition, an application process, or an adjudication committee to find problems that need solutions. Generosity is a permissionless enterprise. You…
Regret, Remorse, & Resistance
No matter what you choose to do, it’s possible to get stuck in the trap of believing you would have been much happier, healthier, and richer if you had taken the other path. We usually work very hard to avoid regret before making big decisions. “I could do this really practical thing over here, but I’ll regret it forever if I don’t try that really artistic thing over there.” The real work, however, begins after you’ve ran all those calculations.
Freedom Through Sacrifice
There are two ways to be free: You can be free from something or you can be free for something. The first way is about being liberated from constraints. The second way is about having the ability to create a result that matters to you.
Do You Really Deserve to Question Your Own Worthiness?
Before you were born, were you worthy of being born? How could you have been worthy of receiving the gift of life when you didn’t even exist yet? What exactly did you create or achieve before you were conceived to get to a point where you deserved to exist? Maybe life is a gift that we receive not because we deserve it, but because we live in a universe of abundance and possibility.