Life advice is insanely personal.
There is no single universal truth or objective reality. There are only what uniquely works for you.
Every personal experience is entirely different and unique. By all means, learn from others but don’t stop there.
Put every life lesson, advice, principle and to the test.
Think about how they can be applied successfully in your life. And if they don’t, give yourself permission to abandon them and keep learning.
Kant Immanuel explains beautifully, “Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed nonage. Nonage is the inability to use one’s own understanding without another’s guidance. This nonage is self-imposed if its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in indecision and lack of courage to use one’s own mind without another’s guidance. Dare to know! (Sapere aude.) “Have the courage to use your own understanding,” is therefore the motto of the enlightenment.”
Many people don’t know how to think for themselves. They blindly accept what they’re told and rely on others for direction. You need to know what you want in life and think about it critically to get there.
There can be many reasons why people don’t think for themselves; the most common is that they’re too afraid to make a wrong decision.
If you think through your options by considering causes and effects — first, second and third-order consequences for every possible choice, the path will be a bit more clear for every decision you make.
For every decision, there are options, and your choice is not the only one available. If you never take risks, you will never learn anything new, and you will never grow as a person.
There are only two ways to go about most things in life when you think about it. You can either do something out of blind faith or do it with reason.
Blind faith is one of the easiest ways to live because your decisions are predetermined for you, leaving very little thinking required on your part.
On the other hand, if you want to think for yourself (and apply valuable advice objectively), you’ll have to work pretty hard with your mind.
Many people don’t want that. They want quick outcomes, so they would rather not think.
“Few minds wear out; more rust out,” Christian N. Bovee said.
When was the last time you questioned life advice from someone you respect? Daring to think means you are prepared to acquire knowledge, scrutinise advice, facts and options and make your own deductions.
People of influence should not replace your personal judgement
“A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.” — William James
You don’t have to reinvent the wheel to think for yourself.
There are a lot of valuable life lessons, principles, advice and rules out there. It’s our responsibility to find and use those that make sense to our personal experiences and goals.
I deeply value learning from people smarter than me. I’m leaning almost all the time. But I take the application of knowledge through a personal filter.
It doesn’t matter who the advice came from: it has to work for me; otherwise, it’s a waste of valuable time.
I’m curious about what works but, most importantly, what will work for my circumstances, experiences and personal journey.
Almost all forms of learning follow a pattern:
- Find the knowledge you want or need.
- Ponder over the ideas (which many people rarely do).
- Apply what’s relevant to your life or career and repeat the process.
If you are a lifelong learner, you put the process on autopilot and keep experimenting with useful lessons.
Many people have an abundance of knowledge at their disposal but don’t dare to think. They take for granted the thinking part of the learning process.
They search for good knowledge but jump the thinking process and aim to apply what they find immediately, especially if advice or knowledge comes from an authority.
Voltaire was right, “No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking.” Knowledge is not enough; we must think through them.
But only through selective application of knowledge can we learn what works best for our personal circumstances.
Blind application of sound knowledge is not enough; we must learn to interpret them ourselves. We have to construct our own opinions, thoughts, beliefs and solve problems based on our ability to think.
Thinking for yourself isn’t as easy as it sounds, though.
In a world where we are constantly being told what to do, how to behave and what to believe, thinking for yourself can seem daunting.
But fortunately, if you are conscious about your information diet, you can also be deliberate about using life advice.
It pays to be more mindful about your thoughts and your decisions. Thinking for yourself is totally worth the effort. Your future self depends on it.
Finally, remember what Steve Jobs once said, “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.”
Find your true direction by thinking clearly and rationally.
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This post was previously published on Thomas Oppong’s blog.
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You may also like these posts on The Good Men Project:
Escape the Act Like a Man Box | What We Talk About When We Talk About Men | Why I Don’t Want to Talk About Race | The First Myth of the Patriarchy: The Acorn on the Pillow |
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