174 – Our Need to Lead Ourselves

Everyone needs to lead, mainly lead ourselves.

You don’t need people telling you how to be you and you certainly don’t need people telling you how to be them. When people give you flack for doing things the way you do them in your life, the answer is to get them out of your life decisions and somehow help them to focus on leading their own lives.

No one knows how to be you better than you, God notwithstanding. While achieving the never-before-achieved, every achiever has friends who moonlight as naysayers saying, “You can’t do that,” and, “it’s not done that way.” Actually, they mean, “It’s not failed that way.” Achieving what’s never been done requires doing what’s never been done and doing those never-before-done things in a way that’s never been done that way.

People who’ve never done it haven’t figured that part out yet. So far, they have only “done”, not “done never-before-done”. They began with questions, learned to do things they way other people had already been doing things for a long time, sprinkled a couple pinches of “new ideas” atop the frosting, and decided how every master chef should invent a new cake recipe. The world does, indeed, have many people who need to learn what’s already been learned—including you to some extent.

But, doing what’s already been done didn’t bring us where we are. At some point, we need those one-in-a-million weird-o types, the trailblazers, the pioneers, the people who boldly go… anywhere they feel like. Trailblazers always take flack from friends who think that leveling new paths indicates a mental illness—and that they are the ones to treat it.

Think of yourself as a time traveler. Going back in time—to the situation where you are now—to the situation where people have never seen what you have already seen in your mind’s eye. Don’t try to argue with history and certainly don’t start any time paradoxes. Just shut yer trap, work, talk only with people who contribute to the controversial effort, and tell your other “volunteer therapist” friends trying to fix you, “I’d rather have you show me what never-before-imagined work only you could get done.”