The Enthusiastically Ignorant!
What's up happy people, Deji here.
This is Chapter 11 from my book "Perception is a Bitch."
The Enthusiastically Ignorant
If I am being taught how to live by people who live up to the limits of their points of view, then it is safe to assume that my life will be exactly like theirs, slightly different. This is what I also call living like a Noun or having your life be managed by perception. Look around you and carefully without judgments reflect on those people you call mentors and role models. These are the people whose words influence and create your mindset and rational thinking.
Without stepping on any toes, these people are your parents, your uncles, your aunts, your friends. They are people who probably care about you and in return you probably care about them. Enthusiastically but also ignorantly, they will offer life advice from their flawed perspectives. Surely, you know what I am talking about. Your mom and dad come from a pre-digital era. They have no context to how the new world works; yet they want to give you advice on how to work and date in the age of Tinder and TikTok. And you sheepishly follow. This is Enthusiastic Ignorance
They will lovingly offer you the same perspective, bias, perceptions, and definitions of their generation as complete truth, and encourage you to pass down the same dated thinking to your own kids. This is how most of us end up with the same bad money habit our parents and loved ones have or have the same mindset to relationships that they do. You are so excited to be mentored and coached by people you admire that you don’t realize the information you are getting from them is dated.
Even when you are trying very hard to not become like them, you eventually do. All you know about life is going to come from the sum of the interactions you have had. So, your point of view is being formed at the family get together, the Christmas and birthday parties etc.
In my life, my mentors were people who had been confined to the mediocre existence that mindsets and perceptions provide; a constant reminder that life is a flat circle. We are doomed to fall into the same pits as the ones who influence us consciously and unconsciously.
If I wanted insight as to how my life would turn out, all I had to do was just look at the financial and social lives of the family or friends I spent the most time around.
I knew I would live the exact same life. The difference would be context. I could not accept their conscious or unconscious mentorship. I did not want their life as mine. Remember that as a young person, your context of the world will be defined and framed by the habits of those around you.
The world to a young man is vague and without focus. And he is looking for context and a frame to make it make sense to him. Hence the saying, “show me your friends and I will show you who you are.” “The apple never falls far from the tree.” “Nothing is new under the sun.” “No matter how hard you try, you still become your father.” These are quotes warning us about the dangers to being enthusiastically ignorant.
If you begin to question and realize you do not want the same life you see reflected and lived by those around you, yet you keep taking life advice from those same well-meaning people, you cannot then be surprised when your life turns out the same. That is like asking someone for the recipe for a bad pie they made, and then being surprised that when you cooked it, it did not turn out any better. People want to assume that there is nothing wrong with the recipe; the other person just did not get it right. How arrogant. Sometimes the advice, the mentorship, the perspective…… It is just a bad recipe.
#tiktok #cfos #ceo #perceptionisabitch #thoughtleadership