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Compliance was designed into our society because it made sense.

It made sense 100 years ago.

When only a few were educated and could understand a system enough to organize those uneducated inside the system, just as if they were cogs.

Today, anyone trying to make someone else comply, or trying to comply themselves, is completely wrong because the industrial and social systems have changed.

It is a matter of survival.

If you are in school and that is the way they are teaching you, you won’t make it out there. The world will eat you alive.

And if you are in a job and they try to force you to comply, run as fast as you can, that company might as well call itself the titanic, it won’t survive.

If you are the founder and you are trying to make people follow your orders blindly, well, now you understand why people just can’t be loyal to you.

Now you should rebel against that kind of compliance, not because it is unfair (and it is), but because it is in your best interest not to behave that way.

Is all you have and all you’ll ever have.

Fill with hard work your days to fulfill the promise you made to yourself.

That is the formula.

And it is not about senseless hustle. It is about meaningful work. All day, everyday.

It means caring enough to devote yourself to keep showing up to that own assumed responsibility.

Fulfill that promise you made to yourself.

And if you haven’t promised yourself anything yet, well, there you go.

When I see a 90% discount on anything I immediately assume the real price is the 10%.

Two things happen when this kind of pricing is used:

1. The perceived value of the item is deroded automatically.
2. If you try to charge anything superior to 10% the client will get mad, storm out of the door (or webpage) and accuse you of trying to rip her off.

So be cautious. There is no turning back once you start using the huge bargain tactic.

And then you commit yourself to live with your choice.

Then choice-supportive bias will kick in.

It will drive you to think that your choice is the best choice you could have ever taken. But deep inside of you, you know you just blew it, didn’t you?

And still you won’t change your choice. Even further, now you like it.

It is OK when we talk about an ice cream flavor, or the color of the shirt you are wearing today. But when we talk, for example, about your career or your spouse, things are more serious.

Also consider this: whenever we decide not to act upon anything we should, we are accepting it.

It will leave you standing in a lonely reality.

If you develop a very deep attachment to anything (an opinion, a field of study, a credo, a politic view, a sports team…etcetera) you will find, eventually, that no one seems to really understand you.

Since our brains filter most of the data received, any piece of information that contradicts your belief will be left out. Even if it is true.

Then your brain will create your reality with the minuscule percentage of data that made it through, reinforcing that narrative.

That will deepen the gap between you and the actual world.

If you were driving a car, would you like to actually see the road or would you rather look at a beautiful painting in the windshield, blocking your view?

Whenever we have a recurrent choice and we can label the outcome as being better or worse, we are talking about skills.

You can eat garbage, or you can eat nurturing food. Eating is a skill.

You can get up and exercise, or you can binge watch series the next 3 hours. Being fit is a skill.

You can remain an average performer, or you can learn, practice and improve your results. Being better at being better is a skill.

What drives evolution and/or complexity? Our genes or our cells disposition?

Since we share almost 100% of our DNA with several species not as developed as ourselves, then it appears to be that the answer to our evolution and complexity is the result of our cells disposition.

But we can’t evolve any more since the size of our brains is limited by the birth canal. So unless we start growing all of our descendants in vitro, we would stagnate in evolutive terms.

As our cells determine our evolution, we as individuals, are part of a bigger organism: society. Civilizations behave like living organisms and it is more accurate for us to think about our society as an arrangement of cells.

We are one, together, we are all connected. But we are a huge mess.

Now, the question is: how do 500 trillion cells live in harmony in our bodies?

Nature is the model. Let us watch and learn.

In today’s world, if you have a question, you can ask anything and get an answer in an instant. For free.

You can also have at your disposal any song, movie, book, tutorial, for no money or almost no money at all.

What will you do with all that power?

You could become the most acknowledged person as far as series and celebrities is concerned. Or you could acquire a cluster of critical skills to perform at your area of expertise.

That kind of power is something unimaginable for people just 20 years ago.

And now, almost anybody have access to the power that comes with free education, free resources, free communications.

Those who harness that power are the ones shaping the future.

It is your dreamed gig: you, sharing the stage with your idols. Thousands of people cheering and chanting the chorus of that song you composed.

Then you wake up.

And you find yourself longing for that moment when someone comes out of nowhere and realizes all your potential, all your skills, all you can give.

Well you can choose to wait forever for somebody to call you up to play at woodstock, or you can take control and create your own waynestock.

There is no perfect gig out there, unless you create it.

If you are an actor and no one is hiring you, produce your own movie. Then hire yourself.

If you are a web developer and have no projects, create the most amazing webpage.

If you are a space enthusiast and no space agency is doing what you dream, build your own rockets or create a contest with other people’s money.

Now you can have party time, excellent.

That is my parents use to tell me when I was little.

It was kind of an excuse when something didn’t work just as I expected.

I wanted to put the jam in its place but it fell and crashed? Well, intention is everything. I tried to help but made things worse? Well intention is everything.

Then I ran into Chade Meng Tan’s book Search Inside Yourself and found fascinating how he sets an intention prior to any meeting or social interaction: the intention of making everyone in front of him happy.

Regardless if it is a business meeting, a social gathering or any other interaction.

He claims he has amazing results so I started recently exercising his suggestion (even though I read the book a few years back).

I can’t tell you yet if the unexpectedly positive outcomes are directly correlated or not, but definitely something is different. Good different.