Make your own opinions

"Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it."

Buddha

Everyone has an opinion, and most people are going to share their opinions with you.  This whole blog is meant for you to hear my experiences, my beliefs, what I have learned.  However, I purposely try to leave things open to your interpretation, trying not to prescribe a point of view for you, rather providing you perspectives to inform how you think of the world.

I have tried to live my life with openness to what anyone has to say.  As I wrote about in this post, whether or not I agree with it, or even if I wholeheartedly disagree with it, I want to hear what they have to say.

I want to take this idea one step further, to talk about the need to think deeply and intentionally when you are forming your opinions.  From the day you were born you will have myself and mom shaping your life, and by the time you read this, you will have come across thousands of personalities that can and possibly will have shaped the way you see the world.  My ask to you: Question me. Question mom.  Question yourself. Question everything and everyone.

Why? Because many people will tell you what they believe but few will tell you why they believe it and even more importantly, how they came to believe it.  Peel back the layers of that onion. Understand what drove people to think the way they do.  Sometimes you will find  extensively thought-out rationale or deep life-changing experiences.  Sometimes you will find agendas or possibly absolutely nothing.

Question everything. Ask the hard questions.  Have the deep conversations. Set aside time in your life to take it all in and think.  Revisit your conclusions as you continue to experience new things.  Never allow yourself to blindly believe something. Ultimately it is on you to understand and evaluate why you believe what you believe as those beliefs will shape your entire life.

I will end this with a something that I hope will never be the case for you, but was for me.   It is important to have someone in your life that will serve as a sounding board for you to think through some of life's questions -- illuminating where we might not have as good of an understanding as we might hope and without giving advice when we aren't seeking advice.  I probably had people throughout my life that could help me with this but sometimes thinking through things are just so personal that I was afraid someone would judge me, think differently of me, or something worse -- and as a result sometimes felt like I was on my own to figure life out.  Until I met your mom, I don't think I was ever truly comfortable really talking through my true beliefs and feelings and her being that for me is one of the many reasons that I love her.  

But I want you to know, if you ever need someone to simply listen to and help you think through some of life's tougher questions, know that you are never alone to figure out this crazy world by yourself.  I am here for you and always will be.

The danger of pride

"Pride is a tricky, glorious, double-edged feeling."

Adrienne Rich

Pride is generally seen with a positive connotation for most people.  I see it as a tool whose role can be just as negative as it can be positive.

The positive role it serves stems from the motivation it can bring to create/do things that you are proud of, and end satisfaction of accomplishing those very things.  This is very important and rarely will I fault anyone for finding ways to motivate themselves to do better, be better, or strive for better lives.  The positive role can be expanded on quite a bit, but for the purpose of this post, I want to focus on the danger that goes along with pride because I don't feel like it is talked about enough.

To me, pride it innately personal.  The things I am proud of I see as a reflection of myself; a reflection of the standards I carry as a person.  The people I am proud of are the people that live up to my standards.  Standards are a reflection of your own values, ethics, morals, philosophy and perspectives and ultimately set the bar for how you judge what is 'good enough.'  Because these are all reflections of what you think, they are naturally not necessarily a reflection of what other people think -- and this is where things get tricky.

The negative role that pride plays in society stems from the defensiveness that surfaces when your pride is hurt or questioned.  Most people have established their standards from experiences throughout their lives, and their standards can change as they experience new things.  Because of this, almost everyone's standards are different, and almost everyone thinks their standards are right -- at least in the moment they are questioned.  Either his standards are too narrow-minded or her's are too tolerant.  This type of thinking perpetuates people to lose one-selves humility, and pass into a sense of superiority.  "You think you're better than me?"

The honest truth is, when your livelihood is questioned, when your values are questioned, you are most likely going to react, and that reaction might or might not be rational.  But here is the thing: in the same way that you don't like your standards questioned, they aren't going to like theirs questioned when you react.

When your pride is hurt or questioned, take a second and think: is anything you are about to do (or not do) going to change what you think of yourself or what they think of themselves? Will your reaction help? Are you really "defending your honor" or are you sinking to their level?  I do think that sometimes it is worth it to fight for what you believe in because it can make a difference. I just urge you to ask yourself if it is a fight you can win -- and really think about what winning really is.

Pride can be an invaluable tool that motivates and amplifies satisfaction, but I have seen almost as many times, if not more, it forces irrational reactions.  Understand when to push forward and when to pull back -- use it as a tool rather than boundary.

You can be wrong

“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”

Aristotle

One of the most important lessons that I could ever share with you is the need to have an open mind. While I hope all of the lessons in this blog are helpful to you in one way or another, I will always respect your right to disagree with each and every one, with the exception of this one lesson.

Being open minded not only opens yourself to the endless opportunities that this world has to offer, but it also makes your views of the world deny hatred and discrimination.  I will save the latter half of that argument for another time, but right now I want to focus on the mindset of being open minded and what it does.

Your mindset serves as the lens that you see the world and is more powerful than you could ever believe.  As I discussed in this post, just believing can change your life completely, knocking down barriers that you never thought you could and achieving more than you ever thought possible.  The greatest thing I could ever wish for you is to have a strong and benevolent mindset.  To have a strong mindset, there is a balance between being firm on your values and adaptable to the changing world with adaptability being the most important piece in that puzzle.  As you continue to read these posts, I hope that you do not take them as fact, but rather as an opinion from someone who is trying to look out for you.  I could be wrong about everything I tell you, but my goal isn't to create your thoughts, but rather just provide you with ways to shape your own opinions.

A simple way that I have used to shape my views on everything in life is to know that I might be wrong -- I might be wrong about everything I believe. It is a scary realization to come to, but an important one. Start thinking about all of your opinions and beliefs and ask yourself how you came to each of them. Each was formed not from a simple experience, but by piecing together various experiences to form your current thoughts.  To assume that you know everything right now is ignorant and in the same regard, assuming everything you know is more than another person is equally as ignorant.  Never assume you are right.  This means more than giving another person a chance to speak, it means listening when they do, really listening and then deciding if you agree or disagree.

One thing that I am looking forward with this blog is the day posts start conflicting with earlier posts. The reason is that while there are things that I feel strongly about today, I hope I don't feel the same way about all of them throughout my life, because otherwise that would mean that I have learned nothing of worth since the time that I made my opinions. Stop and think about that. In order for you to grow, so must your thoughts and beliefs. I am not saying that you must constantly change your views or that growth requires you to change your mind, but it does require new experiences and additional context, and in order to grow your thoughts, you must have an open mind.

As you continue to build an open mindset, one danger I will warn you about is the perception that you are not confident in your opinions. Naturally, if you assume that you might be wrong, you are assuming that you might not be correct and in doing so it could change the way you frame your statements. Two topics that I plan to write about in the future is the idea of confidence vs. arrogance and the idea of perception vs. reality. Without getting into either in too much depth, be aware of how a mindset that is open to alternative views leaves something to be desired when people are looking for definitive statements. Just like many things in life, being self-aware can allow you to do wonders in believing what you want to believe and presenting yourself in the way you want to be appear.