When was the last time you had an original thought? Something 100% your own idea. Think about that for a second before you answer.
I bet it’s harder then you expected (it was for me). Chances are, most of the opinions you formed and the recent decisions you made were heavily influenced by media, friends, family, preconceptions, and past experiences.
Sometimes it’s hard to form your own opinion. With the constant barrage of news, blog posts, tweets, ads, TV, radio, billboards, and sponsors it’s no wonder your own ideas on what’s good and bad, right and wrong all get completely squashed. Our point of view is programmed into us. We’re influenced on conscious and sub-conscious levels. It’s inescapable.
But, if we can find a way to push past the subliminal messaging and ignore the biased reviews of the media (as hard as it is), we give ourselves a great power, and an opportunity to think clearly.
This year I’m going to make a large effort to form my own opinions. It’s not going to be easy, but I’m sure I’ll be happier for it.
If everyone made more of an effort to form their own opinion instead of following along with popular belief then I’ve no doubt we’d all be a lot better off.
Ever watched The Truman Show? The 1998 movie with Jim Carrey as a man who discovers his entire life is a reality TV show. I watched it again recently and it struck a deep chord with me. Partially because for a movie made over 12 years ago (before Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare or even Google was storing tons of our information) it highlighted the issue of privacy, albeit in an entertaining way. But mostly it resonated with me because like Truman, without ever questioning it, we have accepted the world into which we have been presented.
The movie begins by showing how Truman Burbank became the first human baby to be legally adopted by a television network. And the network producers decide to run a reality TV show where Truman lives out his entire life in a mockup town constructed under a massive artificial dome in the Hollywood hills.
Everyone except him is an actor, everything around him is fake, and his entire world has been constructed by Christof, the omnipotent creator of the show.
For 30 years Truman lives out his daily life of routine without ever questioning his surroundings or the rules of his own world. He doesn’t push boundaries, challenge himself or others, and makes no attempt to break out of the mould into which he has found himself. Does this sound familiar to you?
Relating this back to our own lives I can’t help but feel that the same attitudes exist all around us, especially in our professional lives. For the most part, we believe what we see and we take it as gospel. We don’t question the state of the art, we don’t challenge it, extend it, or try very hard to disprove it. We simply accept it as fact.
This is a dangerous reality. How can we ever hope to do great things if we settle with for our present state of life?
For Truman, he starts to question his reality when an outsider named Sylvia, infiltrates the show and raises doubt in his mind about the circumstances of his life. From thereon in Truman begins to notice things. He begins to see behavour in people that doesn’t make sense, he begins to recognise patterns that don’t seem normal (even though he doesn’t know what normal is), he starts to question his surroundings and begins to push the boundaries created for him by Christof.
It’s this new heightened awareness that brings Truman to realise that his entire world is a lie and leads to his eventual escape from the artificial dome.
But without that element of doubt given to him by Sylvia, Truman may have spent the rest of his entire life trapped in a world where nothing is as it seems. For myself and for everyone reading this I think we should all try to be a little more like Truman, challenging our surroundings and questioning everything, because when we do that we can do truly remarkable things.
It struck me recently that I’ve never really defined who my heroes are. Unsure if this is a good or a bad thing, I’ll have a crack at listing a few of them now.
But before I do, I just want to make a quick observation I have on the significance of a hero through the eyes of the beholder.
To put some perspective on this, I want to include a quote by Oscar Wilde of which I was recently reminded. He wrote that: “Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation”.
The relevancy of this quote in relation to our heroes is pretty clear. If you define your hero, do you unwittingly replace your own hopes and dreams with those of your heroes?
It would seem so.
But that said, I have to say that I strongly disagree with this. Without getting too academic, I believe that admiration of success is a necessary ingredient in new success. In the same way that the evolution of language is based upon an existing set of definitions, personal success is based on an existing set of definitions as well. To put it one way, if we don’t know where we are in the world, how can we reach for the skies?
So, now that I’ve argued the relevancy of having heroes, I’ll have a go at listing mine in no particular order:
These are my heroes today. Tomorrow could be different, but for the cynics and elitists in the audience, I make absolutely no apology for any glaring omissions or vulgar inclusions they might think I’ve made. We all look at the world in or own way, no matter where our influences come from.
This is me. Age 4, having a picnic in the Phoenix Park with my family.
It’s the perfect day. Life is simple, anything is possible and the world is my oyster.
At that moment, I have no responsibilities, no worries, no debt, no issues, no unpaid invoices, no deadlines and no baggage. All I have is hope, energy and a desire to enjoy every day of my life.
I have no inhibitions, confidence is sky high and I truly believe I can do anything.
Yes, I’m naive, but that’s empowering. I’m too young to let silly preconceptions about ‘how the world works’ get in the way of my hopes and dreams. My potential is truly infinite.
That was me aged 4. Now I’m 26 and asking myself do I still feel like that?
The truth is, that I don’t.
So what changed?
Fear of Failure. And the Growth of an Ego
How come I don’t feel like that now? What has changed in my life? The answer is of course that I grew an ego. I became aware of what people thought of me and feared rejection from every area of my life.
An ego is a truly terrible thing. It debilitates us from achieving our real goals. It puts up barriers to innovation and prevents us from standing out and being different. Someone without ego has the power to change the world. It’s a strange phenomenon really. The person most likely to make a change is the person least likely to desire fame. And inversely the person most likely to desire fame is least likely to change the world.
Maybe that’s why we see so many ‘fake celebrities’ these days, famous for nothing except being famous. What happened to the real heroes?
The desire for popularity is a very complex beast and your ego drives it. It’s like a thirst that can never be quenched, and once you start drinking it, it’s very hard to stop.
Learning to Change
So, what can we do to reverse this? Should we ignore what others think and drive forward with our plans of success? Should we ignore the status quo and be the one to be different? Should we lose our fear of making a fool of ourselves?
Easier said than done.
But ironically, those that succeed in taking their ego out of the equation and losing their fear of failure are actually far more likely to be successful than those that don’t.
The trick is to try to make meaning, not wealth. I believe that wealth is a bi-product of doing something you love that others also want.
My mum always says: “do what you love and the money will come”. That’s one of my favourite pieces of advice. Another favourite is “stop trying to impress people and start being impressive”.
Now take those two key pieces of advice and I think you’ve got a recipe for success, and a road map to fulfilling the dreams you had when you were a kid. When nothing was impossible.
Be Inspired
The only thing left, is to be inspired. And you only have to look around you to get that. The web is teeming with people willing to take a chance, leave their egos behind and attempting to change the world in their own way.
This is what matters to me now.
Here’s a great video made by GrassHopper on what it means to change the world. [thanks Fin].
I was going through some old folders on my laptop this week, tidying things up and I found some old scans that I’d done of my school journal covers.
Channelled Expression
The journal cover was one of the few ways I could express my individuality in school. So, I made the most of it, and it’s amazing how creative you can be on such a small canvas when you’re restricted by so many [school] rules.
I think most teenagers have a natural urge to express their individuality and I was no different. It’s a pity blogging wasn’t around back then because I can only imagine the type of controversial, angst ridden rants that I would have put down. Especially after a tough day or a row with my parents. It would have been really cool to be able to look back on them now.
But, it wasn’t, so all I have are these scrap book collections stuck onto the covers of my old school journals.
These young bloggers don’t know how good they have it.
Forgotten Interests
Seeing these old covers also reminds me how much passion and I had for my hobbies at the time. Mostly mountain biking, dirt jumping, rock music and dry comedy. It makes me want to bring back some of those interests and use them as fuel for my life at the moment. Whether it be for fun, for work, or just plain living.
These quirky interests are what makes us different from everyone else. They make us us, and gives us our individuality. The Internet is a massive place and a world where everyone tries to create more noise, bigger hype and generate more interest then those around them (they might not admit to it, but they are) and it’s your individuality and quirkiness that will help you get noticed.
So if you’ve got some old school journal covers, works of art as a kid, silly old recordings, or funny moments caught on camera why not take them out and dust them off, because it’s those kinds of things that make you unique.
