Writing is hard:

Showing up every day to write something, whatever it is, is very difficult. Particularly when you’re trying to share it in public. Yet it’s so liberating because you’re able to clarify your thinking. To be able to put your thoughts on paper in a way that makes sense to you and the reader is hard. It seems like your thoughts are consistently going between many different things, but to clarify and write them simply is really hard.

Didn’t think writing this much would be as tough as it is, and although I have ideas already for what I can write, it’s tough. To be able to sit down, research and get them all on paper. It’s nice to be able to write this for someone, but it’s also hard. Particularly when no one will read it.

To be honest, it’s actually better that way. Then there’s no expectation. Because once you get to become somebody that people look to, they’re constantly waiting for the next thing. ‘What is this person going to say about something next?’ So enjoy not being known. It’s helpful and better that way. You can write and do what you want without judgement. It’s all within your control of how you want to be. As soon as there’s other people relying on you or waiting for you to say something, your words carry different weight.

Remember though at the end of it it’s all in your own head. You don’t have to withhold an expectation to anyone. You don’t owe anyone anything. You’re running your own race at the end of the day, so you can’t let people’s opinions of you dictate what you want to do. You need to make decisions for yourself. Take responsibility for your actions and hold yourself accountable. Be the person you want to show people, and that only comes with action. Not with talk and writing. That stuff is cheap. Anyone can write and say anything, and there are lots of amateurs out there who feel empowered with their voice when they only have 1000 strangers following them on Twitter.

In some ways, you should act like those people and not worry what others have to say or think. Just do you. As long as you’re making the right decisions and constantly learning, you’re good. In fact it’s good to show your failures and mistakes in public, it holds you even more accountable. It shows you’re not perfect like everyone else. No one is and everyone just tries to present the perfect version of themselves to the world. That version doesn’t exist in anyone. No one is perfect and will never be perfect.

The people you look to who you think are successful based on society’s standards are just as flawed as you and I. They’ve just had more time to do what they’ve done, but the same insecurities are the ones that drove them to get to where they are. Look at Zuck. He created Facebook to make friends at school because he wanted to be more popular. The desire to be wanted was so important that he wanted to create something that people could look at him and find a tribe. They could find common things to comment on. Initially Facebook was a ranking system for fraternities to rank how hot girls were. Obviously it evolved into this behemoth that has affected billions of people, but it started out with a premise that he wanted to create something so he could be part of the crowd. Part of something bigger than himself.

That’s the other paradox that’s sometimes difficult. One on hand, you want to feel like you’re part of a community or tribe that stands for something bigger than yourself. However, that leads you down a path where you tend to think and associate with everyone who thinks like that. It holds you back from thinking for yourself. It causes you to think in groupthink, a way of thinking that can be very toxic.

For example, do I really like Drake because everyone else likes him, or because I actually like his music? I think it’s complicated because he also represents so much more than his music. Here’s a dude from the same city I’m from that’s gone on to change the world with his music. He’s known everywhere and he’s made it as a success in his industry. He showed it was possible to reach the mountaintop in what you do. Yet his music is super catchy and been a part of your life for a decade. His music has been integral in moments with friends at high school, university and while you’ve started working.

That’s the other thing with music is it reminds you of moments. The more you play an artist’s music, the more they’re part of your memories. You remember music for the moments that happened when you listened to it. To give that up or say that you didn’t enjoy that is almost like saying you didn’t like that memory. That’s difficult when you have so many fond memories associated with that music. Like rapping headlines in St. Andrews whenever it came on and watching all your friends look at you while everyone was wasted. Those are great memories that will always be a part of me, and the same artist’s music was part of that experience.

With Drake, many people share those memories with you because I’m sure there are tons of people who have listened to his music for the entire decade as well. They associate his albums and music with different times in their life, and it gives you a shared experience.

Yet I can’t help but think if I actually like Drake for the way his music sounds, or if it was just because a lot of people were listening to him at the time and so therefore I listened to him as well just to feel a part of something. Now it’s definitely become I like him on my own accord, but for a long time it’s just an association.

I remember in uni for example when my friends used to play Kendrick, J. Cole, Anderson Paak and Mac Miller. When I first started listening to their music, I didn’t particularly enjoy it. I remember thinking why can’t we play Drake, Kanye or Childish. So whenever we listened to his music, I pretended to enjoy it as much as them. However as time goes on, you realize their music is actually great and I did come to enjoy it.

It’s like a lot of other things though in life right, that your environment you grow up in ultimately determines your interests. If you do or hear something over and over again for a number of years, eventually you may find you like it. Look at golf. Why do I like golf? Because dadda made us play it with him when we were growing up. In North America, golf is a rich man’s sport because clubs and memberships are so expensive. If I don’t have a parent that can afford to allow me to play, do I ever love the sport? Definitely not. But then I also have basketball on the other hand and we didn’t grow to love it because of dadda. Even my close friends around me, they didn’t LOVE basketball the way I did when we were growing up.

My brother and I used to play games to guess the full rosters of every single NBA team. We used to know every player on every team. A lot of that is because we played NBA 2k so much, but still. That wasn’t because of our friends and family. Really it was y l that got me into the NBA. But then eventually you decide if you like that enough to continue to follow and do it. And I did. Just like golf, I’ve now grown to love it. To be able to go on the course by myself, listen to the birds or a podcast, and swing a 300 yard drive is an incredible feeling. Particularly as you’ve gotten better at the sport. But that’s just a function of time and dedication. It shows you how much you have to put in to be good, but also the drive and work it takes.

It’s just interesting to consider that who you are as a person, your interests, your psychology, your decision making, how you process emotions, your self-talk, etc. comes from when you were a kid. Most people don’t recognize that the things they tell themselves come from their parents or the people they were around between the ages of 0-5. It makes sense when you deconstruct it because the process of becoming an adult involves a collection of experiences, observations and things you're told as a kid. If that’s internalized and you see that as normal growing up, you’re just going to consider that normal.

Look at Tiger and cheating on his wife with all those women. It’s exactly what his dad did and what he saw his dad do for years. It was so open and his dad basically got away with it his whole life, so even if he didn’t do it consciously, it was always there. In front of him, all the time. Eventually that’s going to change your subconscious and make you make decisions you don’t even really have much control over.

This is why unlearning is so hard. The people at peace and the ones that are happiest are the ones who understand their story and thoughts much better than anyone else does. They figure out why they make decisions and the real reasons behind them, not just what their conscious mind is telling them. It’s hard though because people don’t want to confront their own thoughts. They don’t like sitting by themselves and doing the difficult work of understanding themselves. To me though, if you don’t understand yourself, how are you supposed to make sense of the world? If you can’t take an objective look at yourself and understand how you look from the outside perspective, how are you supposed to trust your opinion on something? Because there’s bias that overlays everything you look at. You’re always looking at something through your lens and if you don’t understand your lens, how are you supposed to know it’s right?

The best way I think about it is imagine you have terrible eyes, yet you can’t afford glasses. Everything looks blurry to you but to someone else, that thing may be as clear as can be. However, if the way you see the world has always been blurry, how are you supposed to know anything different? To you, blurry is normal. So how do you break out of that? In my opinion, it’s endless learning. It’s understanding and listening to other people’s stories and how they see the world. It is about understanding their decision-making process, actions and stories. Because although it’s not the way you see the world, getting a lot of different inputs on how people see a certain topic is healthy because then when you come to a conclusion, at least you have a lot of data points.

Without the evidence, how are you supposed to trust a conclusion? You really can’t. So if you only look for evidence that already confirms what you’re seeing, you’re not really learning. You’re not taking a holistic view. The problem is most people think they’re seeing all the evidence to confirm their point of view. They don’t actively look for evidence that they disagree with. Disagreement though is the only way to be objective. Diversity of thought is the only way to progress. For example, if you see a cancer trial and there’s numerous papers talking about how well the drug works, you think it’s great. But if you don’t look for the counter-evidence from people who talk about how terrible the drug is, you’ll always believe the drug is great.

Actively looking for things that tell you you are wrong is scary. Because it some ways it feels like you’re challenging your identity. No one likes to be told they are wrong. But you have to take an objective look at the evidence and reality. For example, if you’re selling a product to 100 people and 90 people hate it, but 10 people like it, a lot of people will say my product is great because look at the 10 people that like it. But if you don’t look at the whole picture, you miss the 90 people. Objectively, 90% of people dislike your product. That’s what’s real. Not the 10 people that like it.

Examine the totality of evidence before you come to conclusions. The other thing is if you make a decision without all the evidence, which you have to do a lot of the time, you need to examine the process to get to that decision, no matter the outcome. Understanding the decision-making process is more important than the outcome because a lot of things will be completely outside your control. You can’t control everything, no matter how much you stress or are anxious about something. You can only control your reaction to something and your feelings. That’s within your control so that’s what you should focus on. But you can reflect on the process that got you to make that decision.

I wonder how much of this though is just being on your own a lot. Without other people around you. Thinking over and over again about how you think, and what you’re doing. Questioning your place in the world. As Ray Dalio says, the great paradox of being everything and nothing at the same time. In the grand schemes of things, you don’t matter more or less than anyone else. You’re just a blip in space-time. And yet to you, everything you do is the whole world to you. So you think the whole world revolves around how you see it. It’s hard to step outside of that and consider other people’s perspectives, particularly people that you don’t know and whose experience is hard to understand because it’s in a completely different part of the world or under completely different circumstances. Imagine you grew up in a poor part of India where the slums was all you saw every day. You wouldn’t know better that there’s a big wide world out there because you’re not exposed to it. How are you supposed to understand something you can’t see or experience? It’s hard.

This is why reckoning with privilege is hard. Because one on hand I didn’t fully deserve all the things I’ve been able to experience; I was born into it through no choice. I didn’t have any control over it, it’s not like God sat up there and decided where I was going to be born. But yet I did end up here. This is the only experience I know and my experiences are mine. What are you going to do with the privilege you’ve been given? Are you going to show up for other people and try to teach them the things you know? You should be because otherwise all these experiences and knowledge are gone to waste if no one else knows about it. Do something about it. Remember your purpose and why you’re doing what you’re doing. Everything is a means to something. It’s to living the life you want and experiencing your journey in all that it has to offer while also giving away knowledge for free as much as you can.