Tag: decision-making

Make Up Your Own Mind

I wrote something exactly like the excerpt below lately. Being an adult means thinking for yourself. And acting on what you actually think. Not what wins you a popularity prize.

So I was pleased to stumble across this quote from Erich Fromm that validates my point of view.

We are all saturated in the cultural and familial ambitions we were raised in. For many, life becomes a series of dutifully and somewhat mindlessly following in someone else’s footsteps. Either by choice or by gentle – and not so gentle – coercion. “My son, the doctor!!”

It is one of life’s great ironies that we accept as real that which we learn from our environment. And more, we come to believe that we are making choices and decisions on our own. While we are conforming to beat the band.

“We”, in effect, become “they.” We believe what “they’ believe. We do – in the main – what “they” do. We think what “they” think. Or close enough to it to keep our membership viable at any one of a number of social settings.

I always had trouble with this way of thinking personally. I think a lot of current North American values simply suck. Inequities always jumped out at me. The stacked deck that shapes the lives of the rich and the not so rich.

The easy intercourse of hatred between different groups. The worship of money and raising its value above all else. Even, and especially, above human dignity and integrity.

Nikki Haley famously quoted Margaret Thatcher on the occasion of her withdrawal from the 2024 US Presidential race: “Never just follow the crowd. Always make up your own mind.” 

That’s a tall order these days as pressure to conform and consequences for not doing so are predominant.

Still, it is important to remind ourselves of our individual power and our own ability to work through a problem or issue and come up with our own conclusion.

So sayeth Erich Fromm. And fittingly on International Women’s day today, so does former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

Thatcher wasn’t known for mincing her words or pulling punches. A great female role model for our time.

Most people are convinced that as long as they are not overtly forced to do something by an outside power, their decisions are theirs, and that if they want something, it is they who want it.

But this is one of the great illusions we have about ourselves.

A great number of our decisions are not really our own but are suggested to us from the outside.

We have succeeded in persuading ourselves that it is we who have made the decision, whereas we have actually conformed with expectations of others, driven by the fear of isolation and by more direct threats to our life, freedom, and comfort.

Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom [ad] https://amzn.to/438Pn3g

Happy International Women’s Day!

Good News, Bad News

One constant I’ve come to rely on in life is universal truth. Certain stories circulate and resurface regularly on our radar because they hold wisdom or guidance that all humans can relate to. Writers who tap into universal truths often present more resonant stories because there are nuggets of truth relevant to all human experience.

A universal truth is something that resonates with all humanity. It’s something that others can relate to and/or can be a lesson that we’ve learned. We may sometimes recognize something as a universal truth but are not always able to understand it initially. Thus the belief that time increases wisdom as we see a universal truth repeated in different contexts over our lifetimes.

Universal truths reflect something essential about the human condition or key events in people’s lives, including birth, death, emotions, aspirations, conflicts, and decision-making.

Universal truths help us understand life better and also help us deal with emotional and psychological challenges. We may come to realize that much of what we encounter in life is not entirely what it seems at first – good or bad.

When my friend Anrael Lovejoy recently published a post about an old Chinese proverb colloquially known as the “Good News, Bad News” story, I was happy to be reminded of it. https://anraellightheartedvoice.substack.com/chat/posts/a0da9da1-bc2f-4207-92d5-75eee44a4344

For more context into its Asian origins, I present the story below as I found it on the internet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_old_man_lost_his_horse

The story is about a Chinese farmer who loses a prized horse (bad news) but the horse returns to him with many other horses (good news). His son breaks his leg trying to break one of the new horses (bad news). Then war erupts, and due to his impairment, the son is passed over for conscription (good news). And so it goes, in perpetuity.

We might recognize the essence of this story in our own culture as the platitudes of “clouds with silver linings” or “blessings in disguise.” The story becomes relatable when you apply it to situations in your own life.

For example, we are mid-move. A heinous process as many transitions are. So much upheaval and stress and not being able to find things and disrupting routines accompanied by a general disintegration of one’s sunny and steady personality. Speaking personally.

This week, a fridge was delivered and meant to fit between two existing cupboards. The fridge was a half inch too wide to fit in the assigned space. The modifications required to make it fit would have been amateur and tacky looking. Accch! We gave the problem twenty-four hours. And voila. We decided to take out the dysfunctional existing cabinet and plan to replace it with one that will be much more useful to our needs.

Earlier in the move, our painter tipped over a full gallon of dark blue paint on a light brown carpet. Acccch! I watched in horror as the deliciously dark paint seeped across and into the carpet. The funniest part was me bolting in a huff to a hardware store to buy “cleaning” products to remove the stain. Ya. That’ll happen. I returned the unneeded products the next day.

The solution? The carpet was eventually taken up and replaced with laminate flooring. It is a much more hygienic and sensible long-term outcome for our health and comfort. Our lungs won’t be aggravated by dust whenever we walk into a room. The “disaster” became a gateway to a better solution.

You may be thinking those changes cost money. You would be right. But here is another universal truth. Anything that makes your living space more comfortable and practical is an investment worth making over the long run. These changes add value. That is a win in my view.

In the case of both the ripped-out carpet and the dysfunctional pantry cabinet, the replacement will serve us much better. Our initial bad news became good news longer term.

Writer Rudyard Kipling summed up this phenomenon in our culture in his legendary poem, If, published in 1913. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If%E2%80%94 “If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster, And treat those two impostors just the same.”

One element of learning necessary lessons to achieve maturity, Kipling suggests. I most heartily agree with him.