Anyone who tells you that you should always be yourself under any
circumstances does not have your best interest in mind. On the contrary,
placing yourself in difficult situations for no good reason will
prevent you from enjoying life and leave you little energy to develop
your talents. Being authentic is great, but not at any cost.
Minimise your risks and increase your self-confidence
When
it comes to pursuing your dreams, you will be much better off if you do
it the right way. Minimizing your psychological and financial
dependence on other people's opinion is a prerequisite for being able to
make your own choices without fearing dire consequences. My point is
that it is perfectly rational to avoid confrontation in situations from
which you cannot walk away.
Increasing individual independence
from third parties' opinions is such a fundamental skill that it should
be taught at school. The idea that only millionaires possess the means
to speak out their mind is false, although unfortunately, such an
argument is frequently invoked to favour conformism. The truth is that
everyone can take steps to protect his privacy and integrity. In my
experience, the following two strategies are particularly useful:
Keep private information private
There is little advantage in
providing details of your private life to strangers, colleagues at work,
employers, suppliers, or anyone who does not belong to your circle of
close friends. Why should you give anyone the opportunity to use that
information against you or the power to manipulate you in anyway?
Rudeness
is unnecessary to protect your private life and, to prying questions,
it is often wise to give a vague reply. In most cases, people will
accept your reluctance to provide personal details and change the
subject.
Create a financial reserve for bad times
Accumulating a financial cushion will do wonders to protect your peace
of mind and personal freedom. The temptation to engage into doubtful
business or professional practices can hardly tempt a man who possesses
enough savings. He will be able to used those to quit his job and spend a
couple of months searching for a new position.
Nobody needs to
be a millionaire to be able to do that. The real bedrock of
self-confidence is not magic or make-belief, but financial foresight. If
you save regularly every month, it should not take you too long to
accumulate a financial cushion that can take you through a rough period
in your professional life.
Make the decision to bring your
dependence on other people's opinion down to a negligible level. Find
polite ways to show your determination to protect your private life. It
is easier than you think and it will save you lots of problems down the
line.
Establish a reasonable monthly savings goal for yourself
and stick to it until you reach your desire level of safety. By adopting
these simple measures and implementing them consistently, you can
substantially enhance your well-being, peace of mind, and happiness.
For more information about rational living and personal development, I refer you to my book The 10 Principles of Rational Living
Text: http://johnvespasian.blogspot.com
Image by Stig_Nygaard under Creative Commons Attribution License. See the license terms under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us
Choosing conformity is tantamount to wasting your life in the middle of a
crowd after having rendered yourself unable to communicate anything of
substance. The alternatives, however, are tough, since most of us have
been brought up to view approval as a requisite of survival.
Proper
human life is impossible without independent thinking
Whatever rules
you are following, how can you be sure that there are no exceptions?
Even if you are willing to entrust your life to the wisdom of a leader,
how do you make sure that he or she is the right one? The answer is
simple: you just can't.
Individual courage to deviate from the norm
is the essence of all progress and happiness. Opportunities are
distributed without apparent order in the market and each of us
possesses more knowledge than we are aware of. In many cases, we are at
first unable to name the reasons behind our convictions, but then, after
some reflection, we come up with amazing insights.
Those who
think creatively are puzzled when they encounter someone who is
psychologically immobilized. "Why don't you cut your losses and move
on?" they ask him. The determining factor is not intelligence. If we
look around, we can observe self-defeating behaviour in all segments of
the population. Paralysing conformity affects the ignorant and the
educated, the experienced and the young.
Before you can move forward, you have to get unstuck
The key element in the
solution is that, before you can move forward, you have to get unstuck.
Before you can focus your vision, you have to open your eyes. Before you
can use your resources productively, you have to set your energies
free. Free from what?
- From tasks, chores, and activities that you don't like and that you are doing out of an obscure respect for tradition.
- From people who don't appreciate you, ignore you, or waste your time, with whom you put up out of excessive benevolence.
- From supposed challenges, goals, and objectives that are not really
your own, that you have picked up somewhere along the way and that are
preventing you from doing what you know you should be doing.
It is high time to drop all dead weight
A
day comes in everyone's life when we must choose between giving up our
dreams or dropping all dead weight. When that time comes in your life, I
am sure that you don't need anyone to tell you what to do.
Take
heart, I know how difficult it is to get out of the rut. Pick up a sheet
of paper and make a list of people to ditch, things to dump, and races
that you are no longer willing to run. As you begin to discard all that
doesn't work, you will be amazed how resourceful you become in pursuing
the few things that count.
For more information about rational living and personal development, I refer you to my book The 10 Principles of Rational Living
Text: http://johnvespasian.blogspot.com
Image by Magic Foundry under Creative Commons Attribution License. See the license terms under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us
