Your Brain is Lying to You
When you settle for the same, you call it strategy, you convince yourself it’s the “smart” decision, the “logical “rational” decision. But that’s not what it is. Your brain wants safety and predictability, and that’s what it is convincing you to do.
Your head fights against your gut instinct that tells you exactly what it wants you to do next. Your gut instinct knows what looks cool, it knows what could be fun. It has a hunch, and that’s what it starts with! Hey, that looks cool! That place seems fun! Those people look interesting! Those are the feelings that lead to life-changing opportunities. Following your gut takes you there.
Following calculating ambition ironically leads to safety and predictability, because that’s what your calculating mind actually wants. It wants a safe and predictable environment and it will rationalize and reason however it can to convince you that you are doing the “smart” or “strategic” thing, rather than allow you to follow your gut instinct into an unpredictable opportunity.
I know because I have done this. I have allowed my calculating mind to convince me to play it safe when I could have had an amazing opportunity instead. When I was 24, I sold my first business with the plan to become a rockstar. I had two options for pursuing rock stardom.
I could move to Australia for a year and start an Aussie rock band and tour Australia.
I could stay in my area where I had connections and knew how things worked.
Unfortunately, I chose the safe and predictable option. My calculating, strategizing mind convinced me that I should take the less-interesting route (because rockstars are known for being less interesting, right?). I listened to my head and it convinced me that I should do what was safe and predictable. That I should keep everything within my control.
That’s really what’s going on. We’re control freaks. We can’t stand unpredictability. We can’t let go and let fate lead the way, we have to wrestle our trajectory back into our own hands.
The reason most people give up on their dreams is because they choose a safe and predictable route to them, and that safe and predictable route gets boring and frustrating. Nobody wants to do something that’s boring and frustrating, but that’s exactly what they force themselves into when they rationalize themselves into the safe and predictable route.
Your gut instinct knows what it wants you to do. Every big opportunity I’ve ever had came from listening to my gut instinct and taking a leap of faith. In Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, one of the tests he endures for the holy grail is a leap of faith. He has to jump from the Lion’s Head to realize that there is an invisible bridge, carved to mirror the canyon that catches him. That’s how opportunities are. They demand that you take a leap of faith before they reveal themselves.
When you settle for safety (and rationalize it by calling it “smart” or “strategic” or “wise”), you are closing yourself off to every unpredictable thing that could happen to you if you stepped into the unknown. Some of what could happen to you could hurt, and that’s why people choose not to take risks, but so much more will blow your mind and blow open doors for you, especially when you are following your gut instinct.
I heard Robert Downey Jr. call it the gentle tug of the thin thread of fate. That’s exactly what it is. A gentle tug towards something or someone or somewhere. You feel it ever so slightly. The more you tune into it, the more you listen to it, and follow it, the more you will become who you are meant to be.
I met a guy at a party once and he told me about his many layers of despair. Nothing mattered. Life was meaningless. He found no joy in anything or any reason to get off the couch. Coincidentally, he’d stayed in our hometown since graduation. He’d settled for safety and predictability.
I looked at him and I said, “You need to go on an adventure. It’s the only thing that’s going to fix this. You need to step out of your comfort zone and take a risk and do something that thrills you. Go somewhere that takes your breath away. You need to do something new.” I got home that night and I wrote a song called, “Go on an Adventure!
Your head is not for making decisions. I said, YOUR HEAD IS NOT FOR MAKING DECISIONS. Your heart / gut is for making decisions, your head is for working out the details. That’s it. All your brain is for, is working out the details to what your gut instinct knows it needs to do next.
Think about Forrest Gump. Does he make decisions with strategy and rationalization? No! He does the next thing that looks cool. Imagine being someone who went to high school with Forrest Gump, watching him on TV 20 years later. He thought college football looked cool so he played college football. Bubba thought shrimp boats were really cool and he liked Bubba so he became a shrimp boat captain. Then he liked table tennis so he played table tennis every day. Then he felt like running. So he started running back and forth across America.
In the movie, everyone is so impressed with Forrest Gump, exactly because he puts so little thought into why he’s doing what he’s doing. He just felt like running. That’s it. No strategy. No rationalization. No calculating mind forcing him to stay in safe and predictable environments. In the movie he’s supposed to be mentally handicapped in some way, but it’s really us who are mentally handicapped. We’re handicapped by overthinking. We can’t follow our gut instinct into the next awesome thing like Forrest because we’re too busy planning a strategy.
The best moves on the board happen by accident. They happen on a hunch. They happen on a feeling. And then everything opens up and you realize you’re standing exactly where you’re supposed to be standing.
The last thing you want to do is “rationalize” a career, or “calculate” a marriage, or “strategize” a lifestyle. That is a certain route to boredom and frustration. Because that’s what safety and predictability is. It’s %^#*ing BORING!
If what you want from life requires you to be an interesting person to get it, how is that gonna happen by choosing a boring route? That doesn’t make any sense. You’re going to choose a boring route to become an interesting person? The reason it doesn’t make sense is because your brain is tricking you. It’s tricking you into believing that “safe and predictable” is actually “strategic and wise.” It’s lying to you to try to keep you safe, and you allow yourself to believe it because deep down, underneath the ambition and the desire to be interesting, you’re scared.
But we’re not here to live boring lives in safety and predictability, we’re here to have fun, and meet new people and take risks, and enjoy ourselves, and follow our interest and our instinct into new and exciting opportunities that we never could have imagined.
We’re here to Go on an Adventure.
