Stop Being a Monkey

Humans are social animals. We gain our understanding of reality through shared experience and understanding.

I see my peers go to college, so I assume I should go to college too. I see cars drive when green, I know when to go.

We rely on mimicking each other to maneuver through the world.

While mimicking is important for creating a stable society, it doesn’t push things forward.

Our smartest minds got caught up playing the wrong game.

It goes something like this:

Study hard in high school to go to an Ivy League college. Work hard in college to get a top-tier job (banking, consulting, top tech company, etc.) Get promoted, do your job, socialize and climb the ranks. Why? Because this is what all your peers are doing and you naturally compete in this game with them.

Have you ever seen a group of kids playing with toys? Once one kid likes a toy, it seems all other kids want that toy now as well.

We mimic each other to know what we want.

This is lazy. Benjamin Franklin said:

If were all thinking the same, then we’re not really thinking.

We have to not only look deeper inward of what we truly want (without the dogma of other people’s thinking), but also to look back out the world without the media, our friends, the books we read, as a bias.

How can we cultivate truly original thinking? As this original thinking is how you can create transformational results for your life and the world.

Well, to start, stop being a monkey.