Stop worrying

When successful people are asked what advice they’d give their 20 year old selves, they usually say something like, “Stop worrying so much. It all works out in the end.”

That’s nice. But how do you stop worrying?

What if worrying fundamentally changes who I am and what I do in the world? What if worrying was the only thing that made me successful? If these successful people gave their younger selves this advice, would they still have been successful?

I want it to all work out, but I don’t know how to stop worrying.

75 Clichés that are true

  1. Keep it simple stupid
  2. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder
  3. We’re all in this together
  4. There’s no such thing as a free lunch
  5. You’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with
  6. Don’t judge a book by it’s cover
  7. Never say never
  8. Waste not, want not
  9. There’s no time like the present
  10. The early bird gets the worm
  11. Take the road less traveled
  12. Time is money
  13. Actions speak louder than words
  14. Every rose has it’s thorn
  15. Love your neighbor as yourself
  16. Don’t hold your breath
  17. Good things come to those who wait
  18. Two wrongs don’t make a right
  19. Variety is the spice of life
  20. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure
  21. Where there’s a will there’s a way
  22. The grass is always greener on the other side
  23. All that glitters isn’t gold
  24. Everything is not as it seems
  25. Time flies when you’re having fun
  26. Laughter is the best medicine
  27. You can’t see the forest through the trees
  28. What goes around comes around
  29. The road to hell is paved with good intentions
  30. Time heals all wounds
  31. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step
  32. Quit while you’re ahead
  33. Eat more vegetables
  34. You can’t pour from an empty cup
  35. Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all
  36. Some things are better left unsaid
  37. A penny saved is a penny earned
  38. Practice what you preach
  39. Slow but steady wins the race
  40. Loose lips sink ships
  41. Easier said than done
  42. Hope springs eternal
  43. To err is human; to forgive, divine
  44. An idle mind is the devil’s playground
  45. There’s more than one way to skin a cat
  46. When it rains, it pours
  47. Honesty is the best policy
  48. Behind every great man is a great woman
  49. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink
  50. You win some and you lose some
  51. Don’t burn your bridges
  52. March to the beat of your own drum
  53. There’s a first time for everything
  54. Early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise
  55. Go the extra mile
  56. It is in giving that we receive
  57. Don’t cry over spilled milk
  58. You’re never too old to learn something new
  59. It’s what’s on the inside that counts
  60. Mind over matter
  61. Know which way the wind blows
  62. Necessity is the mother of invention
  63. There’s plenty of fish in the sea
  64. Absolute power corrupts absolutely
  65. Sleep on it
  66. Wear your heart on your sleeve
  67. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger
  68. Snitches get stitches
  69. Not with that attitude
  70. The best things in life are free
  71. Night is darkest just before the dawn
  72. The sky’s the limit
  73. You only hurt the ones you love
  74. Run like the wind
  75. Love is all we need

It’s really not complicated.

Unearned Wisdom

The following quote is from a recent episode of the Tim Ferriss show with Jordan Peterson titled: Jordan Peterson on Rules for Life, Psychedelics, The Bible, and Much More (#502)

Jordan Peterson: We need social institutions, but they become corrupt. And so we need creative revolution, but it can get out of hand. And so there’s this constant war between the structures of tradition and the transformation of creativity. And you can’t say who’s right, you can just talk it out. But the psilocybin, you take one dose and have a mystical experience, and you move from 50th percentile openness to 85th percentile with one dose. It’s a major neurological rewiring. It’s stunning. It’s stunning. And you could say, well that I’m sure there are things about that that are good. But Jung said, “Beware of unearned wisdom.”

Tim Ferriss: It’s a good quote. It’s a good quote. I mean, yeah.

Jordan Peterson: It is a good quote. Jung really puzzles me because it’s never clear to me how he knew the things he knew, and that’s one really good example of that.

Episode 502

There’s a lot of faux experts out there in the world today. Social media is littered with them. Don’t believe somebody whose only credential is a degree, a certification, a receipt for an online course, or worse–RAS (Recent Article Syndrome).

There’s also a lot of people looking for God, but instead of committing to a spiritual discipline for even a minimal length of time they head straight to psychoactive substances. That sounds like taking steroids instead of lifting weights. You ever see one of those guys with Popeye arms and no pecs?

“Beware of unearned wisdom.”

If you know anything about Jung, you know he earned his wisdom. He’s somebody worth listening to.

I think Mother Earth would agree with him, too.

What will remain

Imagine all the books in the world vanished. Audiobooks, too. Old books, new books, unfinished books–all gone for good. Disappeared into the ether.

How would we remember who we are? How would faith traditions endure? How would classes be taught? How would information be found and distributed? How would ideas be spread?

The answer is relatively simple: stories.

Without any fancy texts or comprehensive collections, humans would teach other humans through stories. Parents would recite bedtime stories from memory. Professors would lecture through stories of their lived experience. Businesses would operate based on human connection.

And when the time is right, the best and brightest of humanity would unite. They would share stories with each other and create a new curriculum. Age old information would be made new through this process of shared learning, and only the important, necessary knowledge would remain.

What would be lost? The irreplaceable books of poetry, fiction, and literature of the past. Textbooks could be rewritten, the Bible would surely be reliably pieced together, maybe even Shakespeare would be reassembled from memory. But if nobody memorized an ancient poem, it would be gone forever.

Perhaps we should spend more time on what matters–the stories of our history–than what can be easily replaced by experts. Why reinvent the wheel? Why rewrite a book on human anatomy?

Why not create a new story with your innate and irreplaceable wisdom?