Contents
- 1. While I have not chosen anything, all the possibilities, the whole world are available to me
- 2. Someone else knows what to do
- 3. If you do not make serious choices, there will be no fatal mistakes.
- 4. “I’m 50, it’s too late to change something” or “I’m 50, I still have everything ahead of me”
- 5. The main thing is to do something, and then we will succeed
- 6. Why change something if everything is fine anyway
- ***
Stereotypes are great helpers of the psyche. You can not spend precious energy on making small household decisions, but concentrate on the main thing. But often the main thing imperceptibly falls under the influence of the stereotype. We automatically miss the important, and then regret the unattained.
What to do? Know the enemy by sight and use effective methods to deal with him. We have something to fight for — our own lives are at stake. Let’s figure out what kind of stereotypes-traps that interfere.
1. While I have not chosen anything, all the possibilities, the whole world are available to me
This approach is fundamentally wrong: in fact, opportunities open up only after your choice, before it they are just assumptions and dreams. It is the choice that allows you to take the first step and get “feedback” from reality, which will either destroy the illusions or help you move in the chosen direction. It’s about choice as about introducing a fundamentally new thing into life, about a way to create the future: about starting a business, having a child, or a new round in family relationships.
2. Someone else knows what to do
Why do so many of us love personality tests, horoscopes, fortune-telling and look with childish delight at those who confidently explain who we are and what we should do? Where does this belief in an “outward miracle” come from? The question is rather rhetorical, but, you see, you probably would like to get something like Jack Sparrow’s compass, which always shows only one direction: exactly where he, Jack, needs to go. But only we ourselves can know where we are going.
3. If you do not make serious choices, there will be no fatal mistakes.
The other side of the coin, called “he who does nothing is not mistaken,” convinces us that it is safest to do nothing. But the fact is that the goal is abstract, and concretely only a means of its realization. Let’s say you want to open a business — this is your goal. The means of its implementation will be a specific advertising agency that you create. And even if at first you can’t make it profitable, it’s not scary. You will be able to choose a different, growing and less competitive market, buy a successful franchise and get the missing business skills.
Having chosen a goal and moving along the path of its implementation, you will understand what the difficulty is: in a means or in the absence of the necessary skill. Both are not fatal, it can be corrected.
4. “I’m 50, it’s too late to change something” or “I’m 50, I still have everything ahead of me”
It would seem that the messages are opposite — why did I combine them into one point? As long as we are alive, we have time and resources. The question is how many, what they are and how to activate them and use them as efficiently as possible. And it doesn’t matter how old we are and how much is left until the end of our lives.
The ability to make choices is built into us genetically as a way to realize the best available opportunity.
Life is a period limited in time and resources. It is a mistake to think that you can let everything take its course, because there is still a lot of time ahead or not enough. The question is how we want to live the rest of the time and what we want to achieve.
5. The main thing is to do something, and then we will succeed
Fuss and aimless activity (what is called “shooting sparrows from a cannon”) rarely leads to a result. You may achieve your goals — the question is whose and at what cost. Do not rush to “do something”, first choose from the possible and desirable, set a goal. Then all your actions will be accurate, and there will be enough energy for everything you need.
6. Why change something if everything is fine anyway
Just imagine what will happen to your beloved home if nothing is changed in it for ten years. At the very least, it will dilapidate and become completely different from what you loved it. Nothing in the world stands still. Lack of development inevitably leads to degradation. Even if we want everything to remain as it is, we will have to put effort into it. And since efforts are still needed, why not just maintain life, but also regularly bring something new to it? The effort is the same, but the result is much more powerful.
***
How to get out of these traps? Trying to bypass them is useless. The best way is to learn how to make choices. This will allow us to expand the boundaries of life so much that we will outgrow the old limitations and delusions, and therefore the problems associated with them.
I’m talking about choosing something new, something that will not come by itself, without effort. The choice we dream about but are often afraid to make because it will change our lives. The ability to make choices is built into us genetically as a way to realize the best available opportunity. You just need to activate this ability in yourself. Let your life be bright and filled with those realized opportunities that you have chosen yourself.