Books don’t change people; paragraphs do, Sometimes even sentences.
— John piper
This whole article is built on that idea.
Five ideas. All of them worth sitting with longer than it takes to read them.
The ideas in this article changed the way I look at people, relationships, motivation, and even myself.
Maybe one of them will do the same for you.
People are not right or wrong. They just have a different view of things
Pull up any comment section on the internet.
Two people watched the same video, read the same article, and experienced the same event. One says it proves everything. The other says it proves the opposite.
Both are telling the truth. They both reported the things they saw. The issue is that no one sees the truth. We see our version of it, Filtered through every experience, every wound, every lesson, every person who ever made us feel small or made us feel invincible.
“The most dangerous form of blindness is believing your perspective is the only reality.”
— Friedrich Nietzsche
Once you really get that, once it’s in your bones, you don’t waste any energy trying to make people see just how wrong they are. Instead, you start getting curious about why they see what they see.
Huge difference. One will make you tired. The other is interesting.
When I first read The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, I was blown away by something he wrote in the novel.
“there is only one sin, only one. And that is theft. Every other sin is a variation of theft. When you kill a man, you steal a life... you steal his wife’s right to a husband, rob his children of a father. When you tell a lie, you steal someone’s right to the truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness... there is no act more wretched than stealing.”
― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner
We spend enormous energy sorting wrongs into categories. Murder over here, lying over there, cruelty in that one.
But stretch any of it a little and you get yourself back to the same spot.
Someone took something.
A future. A truth. A sense of safety. A fair shot. An item belonging to a person.
With this new understanding of morality, things become easier. Are you taking anything? Is it stealing from somebody, some way, somehow?
If yes, stop.
Before we move on! This post is public so feel free to share it.
The more comfortable you are being alone, the healthier your relationships usually become.
If something really annoys you about another person, there’s a good chance it’s something you don’t like about yourself.
Pay attention to what you complain about. Pay attention to what other people complain about too. The things people gossip about often reveal more about them than the person they’re talking about.
The more you try to control someone and keep them close, the more likely you are to push them away.
The harder you try to make everyone like you, approve of you, or admire you, the harder those things become to get.
The more you chase something, the more it seems to run away from you.
The more you push, the more life pushes back.
You think you own your possessions, but often your possessions end up owning you.
If you never have time to sit quietly with your thoughts, that’s probably when you need it most.
Sometimes the life operate on an inverse law.
The gym works best when you least want to go.
Silence helps most when you have no time for it.
Motivation shows up after you start. Never before.
The more you obsess over managing every minute, maximizing productivity, and organizing everything perfectly, the faster time seems to slip away.
People will always have opinions about your choices. But, most of them are too busy thinking about their own lives to care for very long.
So be yourself.
That’s enough.
Many people might recognize this quote from Carl Jung, but far fewer realize how much of their daily life it explains.
According to Carl Jung, If you don’t face your old habits and past stuff, it will control your life, and you won’t even have a choice then.
You’ll think life is just “bad luck” or “fate,” but really, it’s your past.
We all have unconscious Things we’ve pushed down, like:
Childhood pain
Fears
Beliefs about ourselves (like “I’m not good enough”)
Habits we don’t even notice
These thoughts just sit there.
Let’s say you keep choosing partners who don’t treat you well.
You might think, “Why does this always happen to me?”
But maybe deep down, you don’t believe you deserve love, because of something from your past. That belief is making the choice for you right now. Not fate.
So what can you do?
You have to notice these patterns first.
You have to ask:
“Why do I keep doing this?”
“What am I feeling?”
“What did I learn as a kid that might still affect me?”
In the first chapter of You Are Not So Smart, David McRaney talks about a really interesting idea called “priming.” I’ll try to explain it in the simplest way possible.
Two people sat across from each other and had to decide how to split $10.
One person got the role of making an offer. They could say things like, “We both get $5,” or “I get $7 and you get $3.”
The other person could either accept or reject the offer.
There were a few important rules.
First, if the offer was rejected, nobody got any money. So the offer had to be at least somewhat fair.
Second, only one of the people was a real participant. The other was an actor working with the researchers. The real participant was always the one making the offer.
Now for the interesting part.
Before the experiment started, participants waited in one of two rooms.
One room looked like a business office. It had things like briefcases, expensive pens, suits, ties, and pictures of people shaking hands.
The other room looked like a beach. It had pictures of the ocean, sand, sunshine, and a relaxed atmosphere.
The participants didn’t know it, but the room they waited in had a big effect on their behavior.
People who waited in the business themed room usually made more selfish offers. They often tried to justify getting a bigger share of the money. For example, they might say, “I get $8 and you get $2. That’s still better than getting nothing.”
People who waited in the beach themed room behaved very differently. Most of them simply suggested splitting the money equally, giving $5 to each person.
The takeaway is that the things around us influence how we think and act, even when we don’t notice it. Our environment is always sending us messages, and those messages can shape our decisions without us realizing it.
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