Yesterday, we talked about how you need to remain calm in order to be the person you are intended to be. And often that means giving your nervous system a break and allowing your brain to catch up. Your nervous system is like the internet. While your brain is like a library. Both contain large amounts of information. But your brain is a lot slower than your nervous system. So you have to take breaks to allow your brain to catch up and organize itself, aka your library.
You can allow your nervous system to take breaks by doing rapid eye movements. Which is just holding your head still and moving your eyes from side to side repeatedly. You will know when your brain has caught up to your nervous system when you feel calm. Being overwhelmed with information and behind in your work is stressful for anyone. The more often you give your nervous system these breaks to catch up, the less stress you will feel. You do not have to wait to feel overwhelmed before you decide to give your nervous system a little break. There is no sense in working your nervous system to death because that will wear you out in the end.
We also talked yesterday about how there is more information in the world than there ever has been available before. And it’s not like you have to always go searching for it. Information is thrust onto you everywhere you look and go. You are constantly being bombarded with information. This is why your nervous system needs breaks. And this is also why your brain is trying so hard to catch up and running behind. The modern world spews information on you and it can make you sick creating dis-ease in your mind and body.
So if you can’t turn off the information of the world and live your entire life in a sensory deprivation tank, what do you do? Well, you have to learn to filter information and decide what is important. It never helps to have loads of irrelevant information. It just creates a library of junk that will never be used. A library can be a junkyard when it’s filling with information that will never be used.
In the modern world, collecting information is not the main objective. When I was young the internet didn’t exist. Hunting for information was what I had to do in order to learn about the world. I lived near the country, without a lot of people, and the power would often go out. Books were the only real source of information besides living your daily life. However, in the modern day world we live in now, we no longer have to always hunt for information. Now we have to learn what to gather and what is valuable and useful to us.
Not everyone will need to gather the same information. The information you deem valuable may not be useful to someone else. We live in a world that is setup for specialization. If you try to be a Jack of all trades in the modern world, you will definitely be a master of none. You have to choose your battles. And that means you have to decide what is important to you and filter the information your nervous system collects accordingly. If you do not learn how to do this, you will be constantly overwhelmed and have a library full of junk. Basically, you will spend your whole life and existence working for nothing. You need to decide what is important to you and prioritize those things accordingly. You don’t need to read all the books in a library to be smart. You just need to read the books that apply to your life, goals, and interests.
You are a genius. You have just spread yourself too thin. You don’t need to know everything. You just need to know what is important to you. And what is useful in your life.
This means you need to decide what kind of a life you need and would like to live. This modern world has a lot to offer everyone. With remote work being commonplace, the sky is the limit. Dream your dream because you can find where that dream will fit in the world. Sure, maybe the people around you do not like what you like or what interests you. But I bet you anything there is a place online where you can find like minded people. And once you find them online you can figure out where to find them in the real world.
Life is about specialization. Even if you are an accountant who loves underwater basket weaving, I am sure there is someone else in the world like you. There are billions of people in the world. Yes, we are all very different, but we are very similar as well.
The information you collect with your nervous system and organize in your brain dictates who you become. Everyone spends their whole life building a library. But the utility of that library is what determines it’s value. And that value is your value. The better you are at determining what will add value to your library, the more your value as a human goes up. Life isn’t about knowing it all. Life is about knowing what is important and useful to you. Your value is dictated by your ability to know what is valuable and useful to you.
So, this leads us to the next predicament. What is valuable and useful for you? Great question, right? But I’m guessing it feels a bit overwhelming, right? The good news is what is valuable to you will constantly be changing. Sure there will be some subjects that you always are interested in collecting more information about. However, once you learn to filter information more effectively it frees up a lot of energy and space in your library.
If you want to learn how to make fried chicken, you seek out information on how to fry chicken. But once you know how to fry chicken and you are competent and satisfied with your fried chicken, then you never have to seek out more information on fried chicken. If a new recipe comes along or a new technique, it’s up to you to decide if that information is worth the space in your library. Maybe you decide to specialize and be a fried chicken expert. Or maybe you are content with the fried chicken you already know how to make. Life is like fried chicken, you either are satisfied with what you know how to produce or you seek more information to improve your product.
If you are constantly trying to improve all your products, you will become a jack of all trades and master of none. There has to be a point in time where you decide your fried chicken is good enough. Or you decide to become a fried chicken master. You have to choose your battles. It takes 5,000 hours to master something. That is about 5 years of working full time. Are you willing to invest 5 years worth of full time work into frying chicken? Because that is the commitment it takes to master something. If you can fry chicken good enough and you are not willing to dedicate 5 years of your life to frying chicken then you need to be content with filtering out the new information you get about fried chicken.
Many people say tunnel vision is a bad thing. But wouldn’t being stuck in a dark tunnel your whole life be worse? When you have tunnel vision you go towards the light, rather than fumbling around in the dark and getting no where fast. Sure there are probably people who make better fried chicken than you. But are you willing to live in the dark so you can try to keep up with everyone around you? I understand you only feel smart or important when you are surrounded by other people who value what you value. But you can loose everything in life if you start valuing everything that everyone around you is valuing and deeming important for themselves. You have to decide what is important to you and your life. That means letting other people be better than you at some things. Who cares if Norma makes better fried chicken than you, if you are specializing in rocket building. Will fried chicken change the world? Maybe for someone. But if you are specializing in rocket building than fried chicken isn’t going to do much of anything for you.
My whole life people have treated me like I was stupid because I do not value the same things as them. But my ability to filter the information my nervous system collects is what makes me a genius. On this revolution, I just changed the filter to the information I collect. It has been almost 3 years and I have nearly figured out this new world. It takes 5 years to master something. So I am well on my way to mastering this covert world and stupid imaginary game you all play. Honestly, I still see it all as a waste of time. It’s like fried chicken to me. But if I didn’t take the time to learn about fried chicken with you all, than you all would have killed me. Figure out what is fried chicken to you and what is rocket building. No one has the ability to know it all. Your job and duty is to know what is important to you and that will dictate what you need to know and what is important to fulfilling your purpose here on Earth.
Know thy self.