I mean, do you know this? As in really know it, deep down?
Because it looks like we do have to get stuff right, doesn’t it? Otherwise there will be ‘bad’ consequences and… (and what? I don’t know. We’ll feel bad or something? Heaven forfend! 😆)
Now I’m not talking about brain surgery here, obviously (although, I’m sure every neurosurgeon could wax lyrical about the shades of grey they have to deal with every day).
I’m talking about day to day decisions. The choices we make. The paths we take.
So give yourself permission to be wrong! It’s just not that important.
I’d say 95% of right and wrong is mind- or society-created. There’s no book on a shelf anywhere that says, This Is How You Do It Right.
(The other 5% is probably enshrined into law, and you can do that ‘wrong’ if you like, but there will be fairly well documented consequences.)
I’ve seen this more and more, ploughing my own furrow since leaving medicine, nigh on 25 years ago. The choices made, the paths taken… how on earth am I supposed to say any of those were ‘right’ or ‘wrong’?!
Crackers!
And yet, when we’re in the middle of it (“it” being the mind’s chitter-chatter about our current circumstances) it all seems really important, doesn’t it?
🤨
Take the strapline for the new Daily Reminders website, that I asked my community for feedback on, the other week. At the time, it felt super-important to ‘get right’. I umm’ed and I ahh’d about it for ages. I weighed up pros and cons. I asked you!
What I’d chosen—Human connection in the artificial age—felt ‘right’ at the time, and then, after some feedback, I realised it wasn’t. (We’re back to a more direct ‘Think less. Live more.’ in case you were wondering.)
And that’s fine.
You don’t have to get stuff right.
It’s not on us, anyway
I can’t for the life in me remember which book I saw it in (either Susan Jeffers’ Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway, or Pam Slim’s Escape from Cubicle Nation; those two were my bibles, back in the early days) but there’s a diagram that at one point I printed out and had stuck to my computer screen.
I can’t find that, either, but I can remember it, because it’s etched into my brain.
It was simply a line, moving diagonally upwards in a vague direction, zig-zagging around and saying “Oops!” every time it went off course.
Here you go, I’ve reproduced it for you:
And to me, this is life. It looks like we’re in control and at each of those inflection points; that Giles is making a conscious decision to change course and ‘correct’ things.
But what if that’s not the case?
What if life’s living us, pulling us in a general direction that’s in keeping with our authentic desires, and then the mind’s looking in on all that stuff and bigging itself up and saying “I did that.”
When it really didn’t.
What if ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ and ‘correct’ and ‘incorrect’ are mind creations – just a story, or a set of rules it’s come up with for itself, overlaid on this amazing thing we call life?
What if…?
How would that make you feel, knowing that today? 🤔
Why not go do some stuff, and find out what happens.
🚀
Giles