#dan pedersen

There once was a man who was very quiet. Because of his quietness, people thought the man lacked confidence. His quietness made others feel uncomfortable.

One day, a lady asked the man why he was so shy.

“Shy?” The man replied. “I’m not shy at all.”

“But you hardly say anything”, the woman replied. “Why don’t you come out of your shell, we won’t bite you.”

“I’m not quiet because of fear”, said the man. “I’m quiet because this is the natural state of man. It’s those who insist on a lot of chatter who are truly afraid. They’re afraid of silence. They’re afraid to be with their true self. They’re afraid of rejection. I’m afraid of those things too, but I’m conquering my fears through silence. The strong are considered weak and the weak are considered strong, that’s the way of the world, but it’s not the way of the spirit.”

You’re always going to make mistakes. The question is: what are you going to do after you notice them?

When beating yourself up over past mistakes, remember that the reason you’re beating yourself up is because you’re a good person. If you weren’t good, you wouldn’t care. And the fact that you want to do better, means that you probably will do better.

You can’t change the past, but you can change the future. You can be better than you were.

We don’t like to think we’ve made an inferior choice. We like to believe we’re smarter than most people. It makes us feel important. It’s not just about feeling accepted and valued though. It’s about wanting to be dominant, which I think has something to do with survival.

It’s a strange mixture of wanting to ensure survival and wanting to be loved. Ultimately, we want to be loved. This is even more important to us than survival. We struggle to maintain a balance between our drive to survive and our need to be loved.

The answer to this problem seems to be our own love for others. When we forget about self and put the needs of others before our own, the drive to survive and the need to be loved, fade away.

It doesn’t fade away forever though. It comes back eventually. Which is why love is a choice. A choice that we have to keep making. It’s the hardest thing in the world to do, and the most important. Love happens by giving it away.

A new car, a new house, a new job, a new relationship, they seem virtually flawless in the beginning. But as time goes on, we start to see the imperfections. And eventually those imperfections become so glaring, especially in relation to what we think other people have, we think about trading up.

The problem is, we’re comparing what we have intimate knowledge of, with things we only know superficially. Often, the grass really does look greener on the other side. And most of the time it’s not.

We keep fooling ourselves into thinking that perfection exists somewhere out there. We keep thinking we can trade up. But often we end up with a new set of imperfections that we must learn to tolerate or overlook.

How will you know if what you’re trading for is actually better, if the grass merely seems greener? And what happens after we make the trade and realize we were wrong?

We’ll either have to admit it to ourselves and try to go back. Though going back usually isn’t an option. Or we can justify. We can tell ourselves that it was “meant to be”. Which then leaves us prone to making the same mistake again.

Or, we can admit to ourselves that we made a mistake. And recognize that although going back may not be an option, we can at least avoid fooling ourselves the next time we’re tempted to trade up.

When we attach our self-worth to what we can do, instead of who we are, we set ourselves up for failure.

You’ll be tempted to follow the crowd. To not go your own way. Going your own way seems riskier. And sometimes it is. It may cause you to lose some relationships. It may invite criticism and persecution. It may require you to leave some money on the table. Maybe a lot of money.

But you’re not here to prevent those things from happening. You’re not here to impress people or to see how much money you can make. You’re here to learn something and to be something special.