Live to Inspire:

Inspire. That should be the goal on your deathbed. If you made an impact on people’s lives and inspired them to be better, you did your job.

We’re all going to die at some point. Could be tomorrow. Could be 50 years from now. We don’t know. Our existence on this earth is meaningless in the grand scheme of things. Even the people we talk about in history like Da Vinci or Napoleon or Isaac Newton or Socrates, people eventually forget about them.

At some point in the future, most people won’t even know who you are. Your existence, just like mine, doesn’t mean much.

Yet it’s so liberating. It means that you can be and do whatever you want on this earth. You have the power to completely change your circumstances, more than any time in human history. Why? Because the Internet.

The Internet has completely democratized information. It has allowed anyone anywhere to learn about anything from any time in history. Problem with that is the choice paradox. It’s like when you look at a Netflix screen and you spend 30 minutes trying to decide between you and your friends what you want to watch and then eventually you go back to the things you’ve always picked before.

Most people look at the Internet the same way. They don’t know where to start. That’s ok. The point is start. Start looking up and reading about things that interest you. They don’t have to be what your friends are talking about or what your parents do or what that Instagram influencer was talking about, they can be about whatever you want. Once you start, see where your interests take you. 

Wikipedia is a great place to start. As much as we were told in elementary and high school not to use Wikipedia to source information, it’s one of the most reliable sources on the Internet. Everyone can add their ideas and fact check it with other sources, so it’s a great place to start.

The issue in today’s society is the desire to learn is scarce. Schools don’t teach us about the value of education. They teach us about a curriculum that a few people have decided are what we should know. The problem with that is everyone’s different. Learning about the structure of a cell or what chemical reacts with what other chemical is not relevant for everyone. You know what is relevant when you’re an adult? Budgeting. Taxes. Personal finance. Relationships. Human psychology. Working in teams. Stress management. These are all concepts that every child should learn about because they’ll have to deal with these things as adults.

School trains us in this way to regurgitate the information we read and memorize facts for tests so most people stop learning once they’re finished school.

Really, that should be the time when you start. When you’re an adult, you have a bit more life experience and have a better understanding of the world that you didn’t have as a kid. Pairing the reading you do with your own experiences better informs you on how the world works. Those that only read and never act don’t get anywhere. Those that only act but don’t read can become really successful, but a lot of the lessons and failures they learn along the way can be learned much earlier from reading.

Reading genuinely feels like a cheat code. It informs you like nothing else. I’m not talking about the latest news articles but specifically non fiction books. The information that is timeless. When you read something, think about if you could read the same thing 10 years ago and 10 years in the future, would it still be relevant? If the answer is yes, then it’s a good piece. If it’s no, then I’m not saying you shouldn’t read it because it’s good to be informed, but that knowledge is unlikely to help you be a better version of you. Sure it could help you in the very short term, but it’s not going to give you those timeless principles that people from thousands of years ago have already figured out.

Was watching a bunch of Nicolas Nassim Taleb interviews today (for those who don’t know, go look him up) and he talked about reading history. History gives you the best answers for making sense of this crazy world we live in today. If people from those times figured out concepts about the human condition that still feel relevant to the world today, you know it’s timeless wisdom. There’s so much of it out there. The problem in today’s society is how do you sort through the noise, because there’s a lot of noise.

The news, social media, your friends, your colleagues, your family, all of them are battling to get their ideas inside your head. How do you sort through all of it? My take is to start meditating. You need to quiet your mind. 

Imagine your brain is like an inbox and your thoughts are emails. Every second of every day, there are tons of emails just flying into your inbox. It seems like your thoughts never stop. So you need to quiet your mind. You need to spend the time to sort through all your emails and pick the most important ones. The problem is no one else can help you do that. You have to find that on your own.

That comes with time and life experience. When you’re a kid or young adult, you’re so caught up in what’s happening around you in school and university. What your friends are saying on Snapchat or Tik Tok, or what people are watching on Netflix. After doing that for a while, then what? For me, I came to the realization that all the time I was spending on these apps was not doing me any good. I wasn’t becoming a better person, I wasn’t learning that much more about myself or the world, I was just killing the time.

The thing is, time is the most important resource you have, especially when you’re young. The problem is most people don’t realize this until they’re far into adulthood and they realize how much time they’ve wasted. If you’re a young person reading this, don’t waste that time. Use some of it to work on yourself.

I’m not telling you to stop watching Netflix completely or not spend time talking to your friends on Instagram but don’t spend as much time. Right now go look at your screen time, figure out where you’re spending most of that time, and put restrictions on apps. Most people won’t take this step because they think they’re in control of their phone use, but you’re not. We’ve all become slaves to our phones. Control your phone usage and use that extra time to work on yourself.

Don’t waste the time you have when you’re young. 

Use it to better yourself.

Live life on your terms.

Live to inspire.