Tag: individual

Only one imperative

Why is it so difficult to just be yourself? I think there are two impediments to being you:

  1. We don’t know ourselves. We have spent so much time playing a role whether that be in your family or at work, we have completely lost touch who we really are.
  2. The second impediment is that society, in general, wants to categorize us by race, gender, ethnicity, profession, political party, and wealth just to name a few.

Impediment #1

We don’t know ourselves – If you are like me, you spend countless hours agonizing over what you do for a living, which means you become a role that you play for the majority of your waking hours. You become so focused on excelling at this role that your whole identity becomes wrapped up in it. Now if this role is aligned or a by-product of who you really are then you have hit the jackpot, but sadly for most of us, this just isn’t true. Instead of figuring out who we really are we just assume the role and spend the rest of our life living our life in that paradigm. Instead of pursuing our dreams we just assume the role of Doctor, Nurse, Data Scientist, Software Developer, Uber Driver, Mother, Father, Son, Daughter, or whatever. Most of our life is then spent living up to the expectations needed to fulfill that role.  It’s fucking madness and we do it day after day until we die. At some point, we realize this and become unhappy with these roles and begin looking inside ourselves for an answer.

Impediment #2

Society – In the United States, we like to think we are all born equal, with inalienable rights, to life, liberty, and happiness. Nice sentiment, but it’s mostly bullshit. Our society like the societies in most countries tries to categorize us by political affiliations like left or right, black or white, male or female, rich or poor, and so on. As people, we begin associating our identity to these groupings. I can say I am a Democrat or a Republican and as such, I believe this or that. You don’t even have to think about it just assume some group identity and you are set for life, and most people don’t think about it. Once you have been categorized you are more easily controlled and can be marketed to. Yes, you become a target audience for whatever propaganda the government or a corporation wishes to sell you. You might think I sound like some paranoid anarchist at this point, but hear me out. Look at your Instagram feed for a moment, notice how the advertisements are targeted at you based on your browsing history or Google searches. You, my friend, are a target market and Facebook or Google have already categorized you as someone who needs to see these particular ads.

The Door

What if there was a door that you could open that would help you find your true self and start living a life free from assumed roles and identities. The door is your own rational mind, your freedom of choice if you will. To begin exercising this freedom of choice you need to stop doing a few things:

  • Stop thinking of yourself as only a role – Yes, you may play roles, but don’t let those roles overtake a huge amount of your conscious mind. You are not a role, but you may perform a function related to a role, just remember you are not a fucking role.
  • Stop being categorized – People will try to categorize you as liberal or conservative, but don’t fall for that trap. Use rational judgment when it comes to any issue versus groupthink. I know it’s easier to just follow the herd and adopt their ideology, but if you make that choice you are abandoning yourself for the group. I don’t label myself as liberal or conservative and can still exist in this world. The more you affiliate yourself with these groups the less independent you become.

For me, you can’t just stop living as a role or allowing yourself to be affiliated with society’s categorization of you. If you don’t take action you will be pulled back into the Vortex or at the very least spend the rest of your life rebelling against it, and neither of those fates will help you know yourself. Finding yourself then requires you to start doing some things:

  • Spend time by yourself – Finding yourself often means that you need to be alone. This might mean you take long walks, practice yoga, read books, or try meditating. This time you spend with yourself allows you to think and also isolates you from outside influences. I started both meditating and doing yoga in the morning before work and it has had a profound influence on how I see the world, for you it might be just taking a nice long walk, listening to music, running, or whatever you can do by yourself.
  • Value your time – You can’t really become introspective and think for yourself if you spend countless hours watching YouTube, Netflix, or Hulu. The same thing applies to scrolling through Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. Let’s say you work 8 hours a day or more, then you spend the next 8 hours watching cable news, or one of the other forms of media I just mentioned. Each of these forms of media seeks to influence the way you think, and you know dam will that it does. You won’t learn anything about yourself watching all this shit, it will only detract from your goal of being yourself.

You are not a role, you are not some category, you are a unique individual that deserves to pursue things that interest you. Think for yourself, make decisions in your best interest. Do something today that will help you understand who you really are.

Namaste


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Fitting in

fitting in

I find it ironic as companies search for talent to fill roles in their organizations they tout a culture of innovation and risk taking. It amuses me that leadership espouses these principles, but the reality is often a culture of conformity. We hire for cultural fit more than looking for individuality. We want to find people who believe the same things we believe, and act the way we want them to act. What most organizations want more than anything else is people that will fit in and not question the most recent management fad implemented in their companies. Gone are the minuscule privacy afforded by the cubicle and in its place we now have the open office. Note that anyone that actually did any real work would know that open offices are a joke.

open-office

Now this is awesome, sitting right across from someone all day. 

It is no small miracle that employee’s search for solitude to work in a conference room or god forbid working at home. My guess is that any company that summons its workers to come to the office each day is losing anywhere from 25% to 50% in productivity and on top of that they are pissing off the workforce. Brilliant!

I predict that this conformity imposed by many employers will drive away the most intelligent people to somewhere else. Where will these individualist land; that is difficult to know. There is certainly a trend towards people leaving large corporations and striking out on their own, becoming self employed, but not everyone is inclined to do so. Is it possible that there are some intelligent enterprises that can allow an employee be an individual and work when and where they are most productive? Maybe but I wouldn’t look to an employer that has more than 1,000 employees and in most cases around 500 or less.

Asking people to conform to every rule or adhere mindlessly to every stupid process does have ramifications. Let’s just say you throw lots of money at your people so that they feel they really can’t leave because the golden handcuffs have them immobilized. The dirty little secret is that the primary incentive for them is financial, and the quality of the work suffers as the employee becomes increasingly resentful. Again brilliant!

Instead of a team of inspired individuals you now have a pack of financially driven robots that follow every command. Think of it, you got what you wanted, all your people fit in, follow your processes, and believe what you believe. One little problem is that all  this conformity and culture fit has left you with a workforce of zombies where the only differences are gender or ethnicity. Good luck being innovative or dodging the next bullet that the business world has just around the corner.

If every day you have to hold your tongue, swallow hard, and kiss the ass of some moron then good. You now have a reason to do something better with your life. Quit fucking yourself over; you have one life and you don’t need to spend it subjugating yourself to someone or someplace that tries to turn you into something you are not.

Think about it.

Namaste