Another IPS (Inner Peace Symptom):  an understanding that the wish for other people’s approval makes you about as sturdy as a block of jello.  [The balance for that seems to be knowing where you want to go and walking towards it, all the while looking for obstacles and for workarounds.  If you do that, you’ll be too busy to worry about what They think….]

Other people’s opinions are so important to you when you’re a young person.  It’s like everybody wants to tell you how to bend yourself into some kind of pretzel or other.

Very often, it’s all done with the best of intentions, but the real is all that listening to other people’s opinions and following what they say just bends you out of shape and makes you walk funny.

You forget who you truly are.  And sometimes you never really do find out.

WHY PEOPLE’S OPINIONS OF YOU AREN’T REAL

That video, “Learn to Crush Opinions”, is part of a weekly YouTube interview show, Impact Theory, that is hosted by American entrepreneur Tom Bilyeu, the co-founder of Quest Nutrition, a unicorn startup valued at over $1 billion.  It was uploaded in 2018.

Usually on his show Bilyeu talks with the world’s highest achievers (many of whom are his friends) about how they unlocked their own potential and massively impacted the world.  You can check out the Impact Theory site and find out more about Bilyeu by clicking on the button below.

My favorite takeaway from the video, which is built around thoughts from stellar performers like Les Brown, Booker T. Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Naval Ravikant (the co-founder of Angel List), was this Bilyeu thought:  “Your future must always be bigger than your past.”

The best thing about the video is that he breaks down how you can make it so.

FINAL THOUGHT

I think the underlying message of the video is an important one.  It seems to me that since the best and most valuable thing you can give the world is the real you, it is probably a good thing to find out who you are and go do that.

Here’s a poem….

---

NO LONGER YOUNG AND EMPTY

When I was young and empty,
Stirring awake from my womb dreams,
I knew the shallow dreams of youth,
The ones They told me were proper
For my age and my circumstance.

When I was young and empty,
My innocence intact,
I reached for the fool’s gold plate
Heaped with the very things They
Had dismissed or discarded.

When I was young and empty,
My heart a-gleam with legend,
They force-fed all Their pasty-livered axioms
Directly into my cranium ’til I waddled…
Stuffed with their dribblings and drools.

When I was young and empty,
Tender as a green, exploring sprout,
They filled me with Their chronic hungers
And old dreams, as though
It were up to me to make them work out right.

When I was young and empty….
But…
While I am no longer young,
I have become again empty….
I have vomited up Their convoluted hair balls,
Their tinsel-wrapped barbed wire knots.
I have spewed out Their old
And breathless rants and raves,
Expelled Their fruitless loops…..

Behind piles of detritus and debris,
The overflow of Other People’s Madnesses,
Is the door to my long-hidden, secret place,
The haven where the river of my
Own undying dreaming flow.

They wait for me there, the dreams,
Now that I am no longer young but am again empty.

by Netta Kanoho

---

Picture credit:  Sunrise, Sunrise by Chris Chabot via Flickr [CC BY-NC 2.0]

……

SOME OTHER POSTS TO EXPLORE

(Click on each of the post titles below and see where it takes you…)

• FOMO:  FEAR OF MISSING OUT
• WALK THE REAL
• PARADOX OF EXPECTATIONS

……

Thanks for your visit.  I’d appreciate it if you’d drop a comment or note below.