We go about our various lives like we know exactly what we’re doing, and what the next line of action should be. Like, we are sure that the very next move on our minds is the best thing for us, only for our plans to fall like dominoes when one little thing doesn't follow the script in our heads.
We engage in arguments about our perspective on different situations, using all the knowledge at our disposal to defend this perspective. But really, all we know is as a result of decisions we made at various points in our lives. Decisions we learnt to make, with the help of the people around us.
Whatever it is we know today, someone somehow played a huge part in convincing us about its truth.
In sports, the best teams play all season with strategies they feel work for them. If a strategy works after the first few games, they spend the rest of the season trying to perfect it.
In cases where it obviously doesn’t work, they try to adopt a different style of play. In cases where the strategy works, when their opponents notice what they’ve got going on, they too would try to devise ways - most times going against their normal style of play - to win. The truth about their superiority or shortcomings brought to light by teammates or opponents.
Think also, about the evolution of gay rights; people in the 40s and earlier would have sworn by the criminalization of non-heterosexuals. In the 90s, even after it was decriminalized, homosexuals still suffered hate and abuse because people refused to give up the “truths” they had been made to believe for the better part of their lives.
But as times changed, more people spoke up and made moves in baby steps to ensure that the hate comes to an end, and compared to the 90s, they've recorded huge successes in changing people’s beliefs. They changed my beliefs. What I thought was a fact earlier in my life has been debunked - and rightly so. That's another way our minds have been turned against what we used to think was right, by the people around us.
Since we mostly learn from other people and change our minds, we might as well learn from ourselves and consciously make more changes
When a grown child wakes up(or is forced to wake up) in the morning, he/she is faced with the decisions made by the adult on duty. These decisions made on most of the mornings of the week impact the way the child learns about itself.
If the morning routine is done consistently well enough, you find that the child gets used to waking up at that time. The adult won’t need to put much effort into getting them to wake up, and the child will be happier to get through the morning routine with the adult.
This child has now learnt to be happy about something that didn’t give them much joy in the recent past. And when they grow older, they could argue that waking up at the time they do, is the best.
Since all we do is learn from people and change our minds, we might as well learn from ourselves and consciously make these changes.We can assess our current daily choices, and try to find out what works best for us, instead of just going by tribal knowledge.
The wake of every morning is a chance to learn something new about ourselves, and our daily activities are tools to facilitate this learning process.
As an adult, when I wake up in the morning, I'm faced with a number of decisions that will determine the kind of morning I'll have, and what I'd learn from it. Whether I wake up to an alarm or not, I can choose to either check my notifications, spend about 15 mins on my favourite social media accounts or clear my inbox.
Whichever one I start with, I'll most likely follow-up with others on the list, before proceeding to take a shower. I can also choose to say a quick prayer, thanking God for another opportunity to be a better person, workout with some good music, before showering.
Regardless of the option I choose, l will end up at work either tired or fired up for the day. I can also choose not to do any of these and just go with the flow and not worry about how I feel at work every morning.
If I monitor my morning activities every day, I can determine which series of actions works best for me - thereby learning more about myself. All these are decisions I learnt to make from people around me. And from whatever findings I get from monitoring my activities, I could confidently argue about which is a better choice to make every morning.
We are all different in our own right. Our differences manifest in various ways. We all talk, look, act and react differently. We should take the time to study ourselves to know what's best for us as individuals, else we'd continue to make decisions based on others' perspectives, comparing our current state with theirs.
While it's totally ok to learn how to make decisions from other people, we need to know where to draw the line. We need to know where to say "ok, this is not for me". We may not always be right, and that's fine; we have a tomorrow to try to get it less wrong.
Life is not a perfectly written script, it's a continuous learning process mixed with all kinds of tests. The wake of every morning is a chance to learn something new about ourselves, and our daily activities are tools to facilitate this learning process.
Studying yourself also comes in handy when you're in sticky situations. Some people get in sticky situations and feel like their world is over. They feel doomed because they thought they knew exactly how their situation was going to turn out. They feel doomed because the script they had in their head doesn’t conform with the current reality. So they end up very clueless about their next moves.
If you’re in a sticky situation, keep trying out all the options you have from studying yourself, without harming others, to get out of it. If you run out of options, and you’re still alive, chances are you haven’t considered all options yet.
Asides taking your own life, there must be at least two more options left. You wrote that script in your head, so you have the power to rewrite it to suit your current situation.
If the rewrite doesn’t work out, you write another one. You keep re-writing and making detours until things actually work out. This way you learn what actually works for you, and what doesn’t. And just like the way people fail at something, and caution everyone they come across not to try the said thing, you too would have your fail stories to caution people with.
Nobody knows you as well as you know yourself, and nobody can dictate what you're capable of. Take the time to continuously learn more about yourself with the understanding that it's ok to not always know what to do next.
Lastly, if you’re going to engage in arguments about what works for you, argue with an open mind, because you just might learn something new.