Thinking is worthless if you don’t turn your ideas into action.
Most of us grow up trained to be uncertain. We are filtered through 12 years of compliance classes in school where we learn to give into authority or face severe consequences. You can see the result of this training all around you. When most people encounter the first sign of disagreement from their boss or an authority figure, they quickly give up their idea and fall in line.
We don’t learn to hold firm to our beliefs and we don’t learn how to trust our judgment.
It is not just in school that we are trained to give up our minds. For almost two decades in most homes, children learn through an endless stream of “because I said so”, that reasons don’t matter; power and authority do. Answers come from people why have been granted the authority to know. Parents, doctors, priests, “the consensus of scientists.”
We live in a murky world of doubt because we have abandoned our ability to use our minds. We have turned ourselves into authority obeying robots, treading water in the open ocean waiting for the firm foundation of an authority figure to save us.
What we forget is that we possess all the tools and materials we need to save ourselves. At any moment you can start using your judgment. You can choose to say no to your friends, to do what you want despite what your parents think, to speak up with your opinion at work.
Slowly over time and through the practice that Nathanial Branden would call self-responsibility and self-assertiveness, you can build back the belief in your ability to communicate what you need. You can create trust in your judgment and build your ability to turn ideas into action.
Once you do all sorts of doors will open for you. You will realize that while authority figures were opposed to you thinking, the world is desperate for it:
“Dagny’s rise among the men who operated Taggart Transcontinental was swift and uncontested. She took positions of responsibility because there was no one else to take them. There were a few rare men of talent around her, but they were becoming rarer every year. Her superiors, who held the authority, seemed afraid to exercise it, they spent their time avoiding decisions, so she told people what to do and they did it. At every step of her rise, she did the work long before she was granted the title. It was like advancing through empty rooms. Nobody opposed her, yet nobody approved of her progress.” – Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
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