Читать книгу System life. How to organize life to cope with uncertainty and achieve results without burnout - Семён Колосов - Страница 13

Your desires create not only motivation, which is the fuel of movement towards the goal, but also determine the vector of your goals. By vector I mean what many call the mission of life, destiny or vocation. Here is the same story as with motivations. Everyone is looking for their purpose in different ways, going through a bunch of articles and videos on how to find it. And still no one can find it. If you have a lot of fundamental tasks, you are in debt or there is no energy, then everything is simple if we are talking about the vector. You need to get rid of the stimulating conditions in order to get back on your feet and stabilize the situation. Then you can activate motivation, choose an ambitious vector, start the path to a dream and to great deeds. Consider that solving fundamental problems is like a slip before a sharp start. A journey of a thousand steps begins with a single step. Our task is to prepare the legs so that they can do it. The system life can be applied both to the slip and to further movement. Why do I call it a vector and not the meaning of life, a global goal, mission or vocation? I believe that there is no vocation. We were not born to be happy and successful. We are people whose goal is to get maximum pleasure and avoid pain. Stimuli help to avoid pain, and having fun has become a new difficult task for a person. To get it, you first need to understand what is delivering it to you. We no longer get pleasure from the fact that we don’t have to hide in a cave from predators, get food and do a bunch of other dangerous things of primitive man. These pleasures have lost their value. As in the law of diminishing marginal utility.

«As a certain maximum of saturation of the need for this good is reached, its usefulness for the buyer begins to decrease. This is because each additional unit of subsequent purchases of this good brings the consumer relatively less satisfaction than the previous ones»

For example, for a person without a car, the marginal utility of the first car purchase is higher than the second, the second is higher than the third. The tenth car may stop pleasing at all, and you will want a helicopter. Now you need to get new pleasures. Even more status, love, admiration, and so on. It’s difficult to get them, we can’t stop wanting them, and the modern world promises that a quick result is possible. Even they offer to learn English in 2 hours. Therefore, we are looking for our destiny to realize our super talent and potential. This is really very important. Especially when a person does not know, does not notice and does not look for his potential. Because he doesn’t want to, can’t, or doesn’t know how…

«The biggest misfortune in life is a mismatch with one’s own potential»

Yuri Bykov

But there is no ministry of talents in heaven, where a person sits and distributes abilities. There is no such thing as putting human embryos in front of them and saying: you will be a driver, you will be a musician, you are a born manager, you are a designer, you are a CEO, and you will transfer turtles across the road in Australia. Only you won’t know about it right away. You will search for your vocation for years, buy courses and marathons. All healthy people are biologically equal, but they develop differently, in different conditions, with different resources and their own solutions. People’s values are formed over a long period of time. If you do something, then you like it. If you like something, then you do it and improve. Not for profit, but for pleasure. Time passes, and you become a pro. Other people look at you and think, this is a genius, this is a pro, I would like that. Often in such situations they talk about the 10,000 rule. It says that in any field you can become an expert in 10,000 hours of practice. Violinist students participated in this study. Those of them who spent 10,000 hours on practice, became world stars. This is how they prove that you are not born genius, but become one. But in this context, the study is not entirely appropriate. I have no doubt that a person will become a pro in any business if he spends 5 years practicing it. Only a person should have the desire to spend so much time doing it. Then there will be natural motivation and enthusiasm. Someone will say that he knows how to do something well, but he doesn’t like doing it. Someone doesn’t know what they like. This is totally fine, only few people know that.

«And today, not everyone can see tomorrow. Rather, not only everyone can see, not everyone can do it»

V. Klitschko

We need to experiment and rely on values. For example, I’m good at getting on well with people. I could be great selling bricks or vegetables on the market. But I don’t like this job, I don’t want to waste time on it. No matter what mountains of gold the skill of 10,000 hours spent on it promises. You need to look for a job or hobby in what you really like. Perhaps not straight away. Any related or similar activity will do. The main thing is to fulfill your desires. If your desires are fulfilled, then your values will be satisfied. And the puzzle will work out. Do not confuse it with a pretentious expression: just do what you like, and there will be success. For example, I like football in addition to music. I am young, but I will not build a football career anymore. At the age of 33, football players are already finishing their careers. How do I do what I like? I can create a football website, open a school, organize competitions, create a startup or sell sporting goods. All this is an activity that I would enjoy. I always thought I was lucky because I always knew what I wanted. But in fact, I only thought so. The desire to share knowledge in education or solve the problems of companies in consulting was a discovery for me. Moreover, I didn’t like education before, and complex problems scared me. Therefore, I made a conclusion for myself. First you need to understand your values and start trying everything one by one. If you try correctly, then desires will quickly make themselves felt, even if you do not fully understand your values and first try things randomly.

The problem is that there are other people’s values that confuse us. Society demonstrates and imposes other people’s values on us. For example, the values of prestige and status. For the status, you need expensive clothes, a car and a bought place in a queue for a new iPhone, so that everyone can see what a rich person you are. But if this is the case, then why does Warren Buffett drive a cheap car and have breakfast in McDonald’s, even though he is a billionaire? Something doesn’t end up here. But for him, status and prestige are not his values. Watch a documentary about him and you will understand everything. You can read Mark Manson’s «The Subtle Art of Indifference». This will help to start a fight with other people’s values. At least, it will reduce the weight of some familiar, but useless values. Today we live in a society where people don’t want to be happy, they want to be happier than others. For everyone to watch and admire. The conveyor of show-offs works at the speed of light, and it is very difficult to stop it. In such a culture, there is no time to analyze your values or look for an emotional response in your activities. Even if you wish, it is difficult to stop and make a conscious analysis. This is how we get people who take out a loan for an iPhone for 1,800 $ instead of training, which can change their lives. Don’t do that. I hope this chapter becomes a speed bump for your thoughts to slow down and analyze the basic values.

«A person can go beyond his own limits only by relying on his own true nature, and not on ambitions and artificial goals»

Frederick Perls