Last weekend I was planning on taking a little day trip to Madison to do some photography and as I was sitting there thinking about the choice of words I was using in my head I had realized that I was using phrases that were incredibly passive and didn’t hold much weight. Words and phrases like: maybe, might, I’ll let you know, I’ll text you later, etc. these words and phrases are all open ended, none are affirmative. I have a habit of doing this, mostly in my particular instance, it is because I have a remarkably horrible memory and often will forget to respond or do something, it’s nothing malicious just absent minded, however, sometimes it is simply because I don’t want to commit to whatever someone wants me to do. Like I said it’s a horrible habit, one I do subconsciously. In all actually I think we all have a habit of this and it’s socially acceptable, we want to give ourselves an exit in case things don’t work out as planned. However, it has a nasty consequence; we become flakey and unreliable. When we start doing and saying things passively we become passive people, people of inactivity versus people of action and responsibility. When I started to write about going to Madison in my morning creative writing entries (where most of this post came from) I had wrote, “I’m possibly going to Madison today”, seems pretty benign, right? The problem is, it was 8:51am and the decision needed to be made now without an option for an exit. The statement needs to be “I am going” or “I am not going” and if I’m not going there is no need to even write or read about it. Just stop and think about this for a second, we are so socially adapt to being passive and non-decisive that I was literally being passive with myself and not committing to what I was going to do that day.There was no second party to please or passively speak with, just me. It was fucking crazy, I was leaving an option open so that I could bail on myself!
Many people these days are passive people, flakey and unreliable and it’s not necessarily their fault. I believe it’s a generational thing and also the youthification of the older generations. I see it happening more and more often, people become less confident and affirmative in the words they say and the actions they produce. I personally want to be a man of action, integrity, responsibility, and reliability. When I say I am going to do something I am going to do it. However, even I fall short. Like I’ve said numerous times, I AM NOT PERFECT, and really I’m ok with that. I don’t want to be perfect but I also don’t want to be complacent. I see my faults and I work to fix them. That’s what makes me different, not better, from the many people I interact with on a daily basis. Everyone is too damned afraid to admit that they could be wrong and that they aren’t perfect. My flaws and failures have shaped me to become the person I am today. I wouldn’t change any of my mistakes, while I feel remorse for the pain and trauma that I may have caused to other people, the pain I have caused on myself is something that I would never change. My mistakes little or huge made me the man I am right now and honestly, there is no other man I would want to be.
If these are our faults then we need to work on them. We need to move from passive interactions and decisions then move into a more active and assertive trajectory. We can no longer be people of inaction and flakiness, it just doesn’t work, not to anyone’s benefit except for the active and assertive people. Being passive means our lives will always be dominated by external forces, we won’t be the master of our story but a slave to the destination, only to be let down at the end. The journey will fade away and our purpose will disintegrate until there is nothing left, a shell of our former glory.
We are not born being passive creatures, we aren’t meant to be passive creatures, it’s a nasty side effect of external manipulations and conformity. When we were born we were demanding, assertive, active, when we wanted something we demanded it, it’s the natural state of human behavior. We didn’t become the dominate species by passively sitting around while everything else around us evolved, no we took action, it was survival of the fittest and god damn are we the fittest. Nothing fucks with us, except for us. We may have been attacked and killed by other animals but then we regrouped, banded together, and we unilaterally crushed the competition. It’s what extremely successful people do, they embrace their former ancestry and they go after what they want and make it theirs. They unilaterally crush the competition.
This is something we need to think about, why would we ever want to just live a passive life and settle for anything less than what we deserve? We deserve greatness, we deserve experiences, we deserve anything that our wildest imagines can dream of but we can’t get any of it if we are passively living our life. Inaction is what holds us back from enjoying life.
Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.
~ Dale Carnegie
Let’s look at this quote, “inaction breeds doubt and fear”, pretty straightforward statement and from my experience incredibly true. Inaction allows us to be controlled by other people because we are afraid of doing something, even if the thing we want to do is the right thing to do. “Action breeds confidence and courage”, another straightforward statement from my experience is extremely factual. All my life whenever I set out to take action and control of my life I was excessively rewarded in courage and confidence. Everytime I set out and do something I say I am going to do the resulting effect of this is I get bolder, smarter, more experienced, more confident, and less afraid to try new things.
We live in a culture that says we can do whatever we want in life, however, we spend the first 18+ years of our lives being forced to conform to a system that beats down this notion. Instead this system brainwashes and force feeds us conformity and sedation, it tells us and trains us to believe that we can do anything we want as long as it aligns with the masses and conforms to society. Our culture does not massage the individuality of each and every person, it restrains us and molds us to be sheeple. We conform because we have been trained to conform which makes us passive. The people who are active and assertive are the people who ask “Why?”. Why should I conform to your standards? Why would you possibly want me to be like everyone else? Why shouldn’t I do my own thing and experience my own life, make my own mistakes, and build my own empire? The people who have been extremely successful have seen this landscape for what it is, mindless conformity. From this perspective they took advantage of the system and used their ability to ask “why” and think for themselves to obtain the things they wanted. Passivity breeds conformity, action breeds success. Break the chains, be a person of action.