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1) You Have Zero Control Over Someone Else's Opinion of You: |
Poet Mary Oliver asked this question in her poem, The Summer Day: "Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" I don't know what your answer to Mary Oliver's question is, but I do know this: Whatever it is that you plan to do, other people are going to have an opinion about it. |
People will have negative opinions about you and there is absolutely nothing you can do to change this fact. When you allow your fear of what other people think to stop you from doing what you want to do, you become a prisoner to other people's opinions. This fear impacts every aspect of your life. It makes your procrastinate. It makes you doubt yourself. It paralyzes you with perfectionism. It's the reason you overthink. |
It is impossible to control someone else's thoughts. Therefore, fearing what other people think, or trying to control their thoughts, is a complete waste of your time. You will never feel in control of your life, your feelings, your thoughts, or your actions until you stop being consumed with or trying to control what other people think about you. |
The fact is, adults will have negative opinions about you, no matter what you do. Why? Because adults are allowed to think whatever they want. It is physically and neurologically impossible for you to control what someone else thinks. The average human being has about 70,000 thoughts a day. Most of which are random and cannot be controlled. Starting today, you are going to grant people the freedom to think negative thoughts about you. Let Them. |
2) Keep Showing Up: |
You have a beautiful and amazing life to live. You have potential beyond your imagination. You are not limited by where you live, or the circumstances you are facing, or the aspects of your life that you believe are limitations. |
If you can be honest with yourself about what you truly want, and take responsibility for creating it, you will. You don't have to be special. You just have to get up every day, put one foot in front of the other, and work hard to do a little better, and be a little better, than you were yesterday. And one of these days, you are going to wake up and realize that you not only changed yourself, but you are in the middle of living the life you were once jealous of. |
Let others have their success and leverage it to fuel your own journey. Other people's success is evidence that you can do it too. By turning inspiration into action, you begin to build the extraordinary life you deserve. |
"To simplify before you understand the details is ignorance. To simplify after you understand the details is genius." ---- Most inventors find that they need to keep 'just trying' things. Tolerance of error is therefore critical. Of all the lessons of innovations in the book, I think the most relevant is Thomas Edison's. Edison understood better than anybody before, and many since, that innovation is itself a product, the manufacturing of which is a team effort requiring trial and error. He tested more than 6000 plant materials till he found the right kind of bamboo for the filament of a light bulb. 'I've not failed,' he once said. 'I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.' | ||||
Starting his career in the telegraph industry and diversifying into stock-ticker machines, he step up a laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey, in 1876, to do what he called 'the invention business', later moving to an even bigger outfit in West Orange. He assembled a team of 200 skilled craftsmen and scientist and worked them ruthlessly hard. Edison's approach worked: within six years he had registered 400 patents. He remained relentlessly focused on finding out what the world needed and then inventing ways of meeting the needs, rather than the other way around. The method of invention was always trial and error. In developing the nickel-iron battery his employees undertook 50,000 experiments. | ||||
Invention, he famously said, is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration. Yet in effect what he was doing was not invention, so much as innovation: turning ideas into practical, reliable and affordable reality.
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