Everyone always tells me that I’ll be no one without an ivy league degree. But after seeing folks go from MIT to working 9-5 jobs is it really the truth? Or just another one of the many lies society has brainwashed you into.
Mice love eating cheese
A penny dropped from the top of the Eiffel Tower can be fatal
You need to drink at least 8 glasses of water a day to stay healthy
We only use about 10% of our brains regularly
If you believe everything society tells you, you're inevitably going to waste your time, energy, and hard-earned money giving into these myths and lies. Worst of all, you think you’re abiding by all the rules by being a good and 'woke' citizen. Here’s your much-needed reality check.
#1: You’ll Be Happy Once You Have Materialistic Objects Society doesn’t want or need you to be happy. It wants you to chase fleeting highs through promotions, paychecks, celebrity inspirations, and luxurious cars. This feels good until you need your next hit of dopamine. It also distracts you from the real deal and can inevitably act as your downfall if you get too carried away.
Think about it like this, you work painstakingly for decades so you can keep up with the Kardashians, binge Netflix, watch anime, and eat the same junk food every single day. Does that really sound like the epitome of the 5-star life you envisioned for yourself as a kid? Most people are so sold on the system that they never even stop and question it because they can’t see beyond the little hamster wheel they call their life.
You can never buy true happiness, so why not quit the chase?
Clean up your past. Learn to enjoy the present moment, and try to make the world a better place.
"Life doesn't give you happiness, you bring it yourself."
#2: You Need a Degree To Be Successful The internet is literally the greatest thing to be made since sliced bread. Free information. The ability to connect with anyone in the world. Dog memes. Most of all, it has levelled the playing field for making money. All you need is a screen and an internet connection, and your whole life can be found in just a click.
Big universities aren't exactly fans because they can not justify hiking tuition prices to levels higher than Kanye if you can learn the same information and make more bucks using YouTube (for free). Students are sick and tired of spending years and insane amounts (hundreds of thousands) of dollars to obtain a piece of paper and mountains of debt You get an income source if you can provide value and solve a problem for people efficiently. That's how the world has evolved and come to be now.
#3: You Should Have Achieved X by Age Y Around 27, lots of people have settled into a job, gotten married, or had their first babies puke on their pristine white-collared shirts. A friend of mine had just quit her master’s program, sold everything, and bought a one-way ticket to London. And she couldn’t be any happier about it. Society tries to push you into a timeline because that is exactly how the system works. There needs to be a constant influx of numbers in the machine so that the gears keep turning.
People also tend to feel a false sense of accomplishment when they follow the same routine, and they hate seeing you succeed outside of it. Walk your own path, at your own pace. As long as it makes you happy, it doesn’t have to make sense to anybody else.
#4: You Should Always Listen to Older People with More Life Experience Older people know more about the world than you do — unfortunately, it’s a totally different one. My grandpa has fought wars for the navy. He's travelled hundreds of kilometres, trying to survive. You could boil down 99% of his life advice to one word: Safety. Back in his day, survival mattered because even if you had a roof over your head, someone could bomb it away. Fortunately, this isn’t the case anymore. This just shows the stark contrast between daily life and experiences.
The last 20 years have seen their own remarkable evolution, and the adaptation to society's new trends and ways of living has become a must. Today, you need to take risks if you want to be something great. My elders definitely mean well — just like all your grandparents and parents do. But the world they grew up in isn’t the one you live in now.