I saw the other day a short YouTube video. I laughed with tears and then I thought about it and I did not know if to laugh or to cry.
It says: “Did you ever notice how many stupid people surround you? If you didn’t then you might be one of them in which case you can turn off this video and carry on with your life. It’s no secret that morons and idiots are the majority of the world’s population.”
How did we get here?
Many people want to grab a structure that’s offered to them, good or bad, getting results or not, and pull it around them and sit there like a rat in a cage. They want to go from A to B to C and feel the certainty of knowing it works every time. And most importantly they want to be told exactly how to do A and then B and then C.
Technically there is nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong at all.
But tell somebody “Use your own mind to think for yourself, learn how to find new solutions for new times, learn to change what does not work anymore” and say you want to teach them how to do that and they’ll say, “What’s the system?”
You say, “NLP. It tells you how your mind works, it shows you how to protect your mind from unwanted limitations and fears and anxiety and a big host of negative emotions, so you can think for yourself and really be successful.”
“Really, but why would I want to do that? I don’t know what you’re talking about”, they might say. “I do think for myself.”
“But did you notice” you say, “that your thinking is exactly the same as your mother’s, neighbor’s, co-worker’s, and everybody else’s?”
“I don’t understand” they say.
“Exactly!” you say. “That’s where we start. I say something and you don’t understand. Then we have a chance of changing something.”
They laugh sheepishly.
“No,” you say. “If you understand everything all the time, it means one of two things: either you don’t understand anything, or you think you understand everything and both lead to the same conclusion.”
“What’s that?”
You lost yourself. You are a not-you. Your individuality has disappeared. You are just a replica of several million other people just like you. A copy. A biological machine. Not an original.
“We don’t think in this way in our family” they might say scratching their heads.
“No, but if you learn this, you might come up with a brand new way of thinking with new solutions and new ways of being successful you never dreamed of.”
“That they might understand. Hazily”
“But,” you continue, “I don’t really expect you to understand now.” When you do think for yourself, you don’t need anybody else’s system to tell you what to do. Courage, intelligence, skill “all seems to be there. They’re part of you. And so much more.” The notion of lack and unfulfilled dreams, self-denial and lack of self-confidence will become a joke. They’ll be gone.
“The words creativity and success will be what you embody, and then you can finally take off and discover that your mind does not particularly like to be manipulated into despair and mediocrity. It does not like to sit around looking at non-possibilities. Up to you!”
Be well.