What do you do when miscommunications, misunderstandings, and misconstructions are present in your thought processes? To accept the freedom to think for yourself is not without its responsibility.
Observation, feedback, and therapy have their limits. What hope do you have to correct flawed thinking, trained assumptions, and mistaken beliefs when there is no concrete evidence of their existence?
The Choice to Grow Up
Suppose you are lucky enough to get that old, you take the reins for your personal growth at some point in your life. It might be far too young, but circumstances required it, and you stepped up. It was unfair. You should be proud of yourself, and we should honour a child who was asked to be an adult too early. An adult who stays a child, however, that’s something we need to question.
As someone raised a Liberal, becoming an adult myself meant unlearning assumptions taught from birth, and tuning into my own voice of morals, justice, and values. I had to question everything, and I’ve documented the lessons I’ve learned along the way for anyone who finds themselves in a similar predicament.
I sought to please parents, teachers, managers, advisors, and the like, but I was depressed. In my evaluation, they didn’t seem that pleased either. To continue trying would be insanity. Flipping my orientation from people pleasing to self-pleasing was difficult work, but what was the option? I did consider options, and I’m happy to report making it to the other side with lessons to share.
I used to think we should introduce a licence for parents, not to gatekeep them, but to ensure they were educated and supported to succeed before they showed signs of trouble. Today, I shudder to think what a sinister government could do with that system in place.
The government already controls what children learn. Instead of controlling the parents, empower the children. Teach them how to think for themselves and the nature and limits of their rights, including what their parents should be doing, eliminating the need for further bureaucracy.
Ending the Trudeaucracy
I’m afraid the Liberal government did not and would not train children to think for themselves. They would train them to be weak, lazy, and dependent on the government for advice on how to live. They might even teach the principles of Basic Income without addressing the implications.
With the education system, they train a generation of voters to grow the government and demand payment in the form of taxes to take care of these citizens.
My assumptions on what an education system should do are those of a card-carrying Conservative. I believe everyone deserves equal freedoms. However, not everyone will have the desire or gumption to read about and pursue them. That’s okay, I know not everyone voted for Pierre Poilievre either.
I wore my “Pierre Poilievre for Prime Minister” jacket in the lull between advance voting and election day. Some people side-eyed me as they read it and walked past without comment. Three people asked me where I got the jacket. I told them of my pain-soothing strategy of buying stuff every time there was a scandal, “and now I’ve got a whole wardrobe.”
As a taxpayer, I don’t want my hard-earned money to go toward anything unnecessary. I am naturally frugal, trained, and opinionated about what waste looks like in its many shapes and forms.
I am freely sharing those trainings and opinions in line with my Conservative nature, which believes first and foremost in helping people help themselves. As a Liberal, I might be a consultant and charge big bucks for telling you what to do and more for leading the transformation as well, but I’ve been there, done that. Today, I cheer Pierre’s cry to axe the consultants.
Building the Foundations
No matter what happens, I will proudly wear my political stripes, as I worked hard to earn them. I had to question what I was told, evaluate what I was taught, and distinguish between what I knew and felt.
I believe there were seven levels that I needed to pass through to find and hold steadily onto an unwavering truth, even if the foundations have yet to be proven or discovered by science. Henry David Thoreau said, “If you have built castles in the air, that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”
The foundation is What Could Be. What Could Be if you only knew.
If you believe that hard work makes a difference, it’s this work that can yield the ultimate reward: understanding your mind and how it’s working. To evaluate its performance, if you will, as you would an employee.
Knowing better doesn’t always mean doing better, but knowledge is a game-changer, whether or not you decide to do your homework. Your homework is the practice of learning, reflecting, analyzing, and planning because there is no app for it; it’s all up to you.
Knowledge is power. Knowing how your mind works is harnessing all the power at your disposal. When you do that, you can achieve your full potential. In my utopian world, we are all doing this and helping each other do so.
Liberating the Oppressed
While that sounds liberating to the oppressed who have been waiting for the key to their shackles, it sounds scary to the protected, the kept, and the untested.
Never fear; what’s frightening is being the first to test out a flying contraption, but today, air travel is commonplace. As with freedom, many have been there, tried some things with various degrees of success and failure, and left a wide, well-worn trail for the rest of us to follow.
When you become aware of the science of what’s going on with your thinking, anyone’s thinking, you can sound smarter, act faster, and be better than you have ever imagined. You can do better and aim higher, or use the information to push agendas, manipulate audiences, or do other desperate things often done by desperate people.
You have the freedom to decide what to do with the information. With freedom comes great responsibility. It’s your responsibility to determine what to do, and it’s up to you.
Lessons Learned Too Late
As a problem solver, what problem are you solving? It’s a question about what you are moving away from. When we stop and think about the consequences of our intended actions, we become willing to reconsider our plans.
Stopping and reconsidering where we are headed before we arrive is the gift of time and consciousness. Consciousness is essential because we are busy; only the human brain can do it. We are busy in seconds, using rules of thumb and other shortcuts to get through life.
Similarly, we are busy in minutes, hours, and days. We have plans and launch into action far before considering what other problems we may also cause. Sometimes, our visions for the future are so disconnected from our current reality that they should be called pipe dreams. Indeed, bankruptcies, recalls, and layoffs happen.
As a child, visiting my grandparents was a singular lesson in having time. My great-aunt told me about having the time but not the money. Another person said to me about money and time, not ability. Elders told me something about having regrets; they seemed mired in limitations. And they had nothing but time to sit around and think about it.
Learning Lessons, the Better Way
Freedom became my ultimate goal. God grant me wings, not serenity. These elders told me it wasn’t money, title, status, power, or even your friends. If you are lucky enough to make it so long, these things disappear or become hollow.
I read that Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t optimize for fun. You are headed for regret if you don’t know what you are optimizing for.
Optimizing for other people’s happiness didn’t work for me. I worked for the pride in the company I worked for until I realized that it was an amorphous entity that won’t be there to back me up like a person might, should you need it. It certainly can’t write a letter of recommendation.
Judging for myself wasn’t something I was trained or supported to do, but it’s a necessary skill for happiness. Life’s too difficult to take without joy, so you could say that it’s an essential skill for life, but not something we are all trained or supported in doing. What Could Be is your missing manual.
If you keep working on defining what you want to optimize for in your head, heart and soul, it prevents you from getting caught up in other people’s agendas. Because there are people with agendas. As far as I was concerned, it is okay if we are co-playing and both getting what we need, but if you are and I’m not, I’m the one who needs to take action.
Sometimes, that action is to get up and leave. Sometimes, that action is to focus on your why and double down on your effort. Frequently, there is a crucial conversation that needs to be had. All of these require both time and consciousness. You are gifted with both, but how you use them is up to you.
Tuning into You
There’s always time to learn, safe places to practice, and easy ways to get started. When starting with anything, your only objective should be to fail fast and learn quickly.
My pre-graduation co-op experience allowed me to be hyper-efficient at crossing things off my list that I might want to try. Access to people and places, and I could get close enough to imagine it for myself. Not to sit back and naively judge, but to look past the marketing and travel brochure.
Only when you know what action is right for you can you tune into your thinking and ensure it’s not your parents’, friends’, teachers’, society’s, or mine. Think for yourself and learn how to do it if you realize you might not have done that yet. Ask for all the information you want, but avoid asking for advice.
When I wanted to quit corporate security and go forth on the value of my ideas and merit, I wanted someone to back me, just one person to say I would be okay. I asked career advisors, financial advisors, life coaches, and even my father. My doctor said, “If you don’t, I fear for your health.” That’s a pronouncement but not a vote of confidence.
Frustrated and unsure, I wrestled with my anxiety while I mowed my lawn. And there it was, a four-leaf clover. I went to pick it, which led to spying on another and another.
There were 23 four-leaf clovers, two five-leaf clovers, and one six-leaf clover. I handed them out to all my new ex-colleagues on my last day. Less than a year later, I was named Best Potential Realization Company—Canada.
Finding Internal Facts
You don’t have to justify your reasons, thoughts, or desires to anyone but yourself. We all want someone to walk with us on our journey because we think the alternative is loneliness. However, I know much about being around many people and feeling lonely. I know about people thinking they know you and being completely wrong. That’s the world today.
You can try to correct the perception; you can manage the perception, but do not let the reality of your truth fade from your existence. Please keep it all you want, but don’t keep it to yourself.
Be your parent, best friend, and ally first, so you are available for the other people who haven’t had the time and haven’t unwrapped their gift of consciousness yet. We all need help sometimes, and it’s the perfect stranger who is ready, willing and able. Sometimes, it is just proximity at work; we all get to be perfect strangers.
However, we should never be strangers to ourselves. Yet, when our time is occupied with the activities that take up our daily lives, we forget to pay attention to this person who goes with us everywhere. We ignore what they want and need because it’s inconvenient and indulgent.
The truth is that the easiest person to say no to is yourself. Through these pages, you might change your mind about some of the answers you’ve been giving and living. The point is, it’s up to you to discover what freedoms you may have given away and which you’d like to reclaim. Your will is your way, although it may yet become apparent.
The objective of What Could Be is to expose the drivers of your behaviour so that you can take back control and live life your way, especially by defining what that would look like.
Asking Better Questions
Have you wondered, “What is the meaning of life?” Today, there are so many answers that it requires finding your philosophy. Requires? Well, only if you’d like a chance at reaching your full potential, for unthinkingly following anything immediately limits your leadership.
If you take religion instead of philosophy, many people leave some stuff in and take some stuff out, which is the same as finding your philosophy in it. Whether spiritual, logical, or statistical, it’s up to us to find a meaning in life that supports our growth without causing damage or harm to anyone else and limiting our damage or harm to anything else. On that basis, may we all find our meaning for existence.
The journey to meaning requires finding your answers, trusting your gut, and acknowledging your truths. It’s the courage to go alone, the bravery to notice loved ones headed in different directions, and the wisdom to know that all aloneness is permanent and temporary.
The answers are within you, and often, many of the limits, too. Seeing something in others is much easier than seeing it in ourselves. When you spot it in the mirror, everyone else becomes much more understandable. Self-knowledge makes for resilient and fulfilling relationships.
The journey to meaning recognizes your thinking as treating it as you would the voice of a best friend – to know when to trust, when to laugh, and when to start with, “Listen, this might be difficult to hear, but…” You outgrew that. That no longer works for you. It never really was that way.
Your foundation of truth is built on some rickety ideas put there when you were a child, and you had no other choice. Today, your journey to meaning is about spying and repairing the holes in your foundation of truth.
Securing Total Freedom
Every master gets there through a process and time of testing, learning, discarding and climbing up toward a specific peak on one mountain. Doing that is necessary to get there, but it also means that mastery is open to two risks: disruption and forgetfulness.
Disruption, because another direction you had to ignore out of the necessity of focus, is a matter of time. Life has many mountain ranges; without that global view, you’re on one peak.
Forgetfulness, because you forget what you know as it becomes ingrained and natural. I learned early as an apprentice from a master: “I’ve forgotten more than you’ll ever know.” It wasn’t an insult or a statement of dominance. It was a fact. I was there to ask questions, probe memories, and help bring things up to date.
Zuckerberg talked about one of the most challenging times in his life. Just after growth had slowed, he’d been offered the incredible sum of 1 billion dollars.
Everyone advised him to take it, and he did. Or rather, he started to. Then, they wanted to change the deal, and he used the change as the chance to get out. Afterwards, those people were fired or quit. Repairing a relationship with someone after what feels like a betrayal and having to save yourself is challenging.
Symbiotic relationships are the ones that will help you become your best self, achieve your goals, and even help you realize what they are. They are not always comfortable, not easy, and not with the usual suspects.
Accumulate and prize those relationships that test and push you, and strive to own your end of the bargain by remembering that this is healthy, even if it’s rare and remarkable. It’s how you discover What Could Be. Download it now.
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