Accept That Everything You Think You Know is Wrong

The Guide to Extraordinary Living Part 1

Everything you know is wrong. Yep. I’m sorry to be the one to have to break this to you, but you’re wrong. Totally.

I don’t just mean the kinds of things you think I mean. I don’t mean the correct spelling of pseudonym or how many miles it is to the sun (even though, if we were being honest, you probably are wrong about those things, too)*. I mean the important things, such as the basic assumptions you have about what is real that direct the decisions you make, and ultimately how you live your life.

Huh?

Let’s take the classic example. Take the entirely fictional case of Timmy. Timmy is in his senior year of high school, and he sure is excited. He has big choices to make. Which college to go to, what major to choose, who to take to prom. Good thing for Timmy, he’s a child genius, the star Quarterback and a 100 mph left-handed pitcher. So he has his pick of colleges and prom dates.

He’s managed to narrow it down to two. Colleges, that is. On one hand, there’s Yale. On the other hand, Lone Pine Community College. He sits on his bed with the acceptance letters to both laying on the covers in front of him. His eyes dart back and forth. Finally, they settle on one. His hand reaches for the letter. Which one does he choose?

The wrong one.

No, not the community college.

They’re both wrong.

How can they both be wrong? Because they’re both based on the assumption that if he goes to a good school, he’ll get a good education. And if he gets a good education, then he’ll be able to get a good job or maybe even start his own company. And if he gets a good job he’ll make a lot of money and then he’ll be able to provide a safe, comfortable life for himself and his future family. And then he’ll be happy.

There’s the problem. He assumes that a safe, comfortable life will make him happy. But it won’t. It will make him dull. Lifeless. He may have a semblance of a happy life, but that won’t be the extraordinary life that he is longing for in his heart. Safe and Comfortable are what the padded cubicle walls are built out of. Instead of being set free by riches, he is made a prisoner by them.

You see, we've all bought into this idea that we are to be successful, or pursue what is in our hearts, or be rich or famous. That, whether we are teachers or shoe salesman or Fortune 500 CEO's, we should be happy doing what we want and that we should achieve some measure of comfort and stability. It's a subtle way of turning everything that happens into something about you. It's totally inward focused. The key to success supposedly lies somewhere inside of you, where if you can just create the right environment, you'll trigger this thing called happiness and then: you will have arrived.

Which brings us back to the dullness of life. We can't always do things only for ourselves – sometimes we are forced to go to a job, or live somewhere we don't like, or be in close quarters with someone we don't enjoy. We make up for this by going on self-indulging binges whenever we have the chance. Movies, food, sports, sex, video games, hobbies, TV, even religion. We pour so much energy into making ourselves happy despite the fact that we're obviously not happy that we miss the most central truth to all reality: life is not about us.

Life is not about you.

Real life, I mean. Extraordinary life. Think about it for a minute. Think what would happen if you stopped doing all the things you did every day that were designed to make you happy. If you seriously consider it, you might start to realize that everything you ever do is done in an effort to satisfy this insane hunger to become happy.

I would humbly suggest that the path to extraordinary living lies in exactly the opposite direction. Instead of the world flowing inward to me, to satisfy my needs and desires, it should flow outwards. I should focus my attentions and energies on other people, and pour myself out to help meet their needs and desires.

A few steps down this path, and you start to realize how amazingly refreshing it is. Don't get me wrong – it's not all clouds and roses. In fact, it feels a lot like I imagine a heroin addict would feel during detox – crazy, unstable, and intensely hungry. When you're not gorging yourself on entertainment, your eyes begin to see things clearly for the first time, and that can really hurt.

When it happened to me, I realized several things. That I essentially suck at relationships. That I don't make any sort of impact with people. That I am weak and fearful and hardly ever do anything daring or bold. But I also realized how free I was – how much more strength and potential flowed through every second of my day. Since nothing was about me anymore, I had way more space to move about. I was no longer a slave to my comfort.

So, that's the first step to extraordinary living: Accept that everything you know is wrong. That life is not about you, it's about what you can do for other people. If you can grasp that, you begin to sense the limitless potential and dream of much bigger things than a nice house or big screen TV.

But that's the next step...

*The sun is approximately 93 million miles away from earth. See, I told you that you were wrong.