Advice To My Younger Self

During meditation earlier my mind began to wonder. For some reason it went back to some childhood memories, of moments that I thought I was the only one who thought something or experienced something.

You know the odd-looking air on the horizon of a road, it’s almost as if it was heat or some fume? When I asked anyone driving in the car with me if they saw it, they responded as if I was crazy. I believed them.

Or, to the extreme, thinking of jumping off a building you’re on. Everyone has thought it at one point, but in the moment we feel so alone, as if we’re the only ones who think these things and we get uncomfortable about it.

The advice I’d give to my younger self is “you’re going to think about a lot of things that you will think are unique to you. They’re not.”

The reason I’d say this to my younger self, and to you, now, is that we have thoughts, which we quickly dispel based on the premise that we think we’re the only ones to think it. It’s a tragedy, really.

You think you’re the only one who has come up with a spectacular idea, but you’re not.

Think Jobs was the only one to think of transportable music in your pocket? Think Gladwell was the only one to wonder about cockpit culture and why planes crash? The answer is yes, you do.

And we’re wrong in that thinking; they’re merely the only ones who acted on an idea. You can be them if you realize you’re not the only one who thinks about things differently, who has the thoughts you do, who has an idea that just might damn well work.

 

Stay Positive & Worth A Try Right?

Garth Beyer
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