Here are 15 Uncomfortable ideas that make you think about yourself and the world around you!
Hello Aluxers & welcome back! As promised we’re bringing you another exciting article filled with ideas and concepts designed to make you think about the world you live in, about yourself and the way we look at life.
These are concepts we’ve came across in time that made us rethink our position and change the way we interact with others.
Exposing yourself to new ideas is the only way to keep growing and evolving and we hope this session does exactly that for you.
Pay close attention to all of them and even take a couple of moments to ponder the type of impact each can have on your mindset and your reality.
The goal is to find at least one nugget of gold which can nudge your life towards a brighter future.
If you missed it, you can enjoy part 1 here:
As always, here’s the video version of part 2 if you don’t feel like reading this long piece:
or listen as a podcast:
With that being said, here are 15 Uncomfortable Ideas to Think about, part 2.
Number 1: A million seconds is 11 days. A billion seconds is 31 years.
Think about it and let it sink in a little bit. That’s the difference between millionaire and billionaire as well.
It puts things into perspective doesn’t it?
You can use this type of mindset thinking to differentiate between the way most people go about things versus those who really play the long game.
It’s also an important moment to celebrate in your life. Happy 1 Billion seconds anniversary everyone!
Number 2: Teachers told you that if you don’t study you’ll end up a garbage man, without mentioning that garbage men earn more than them.
And it’s true.
Let’s take New York as an example: A teacher with a masters degree makes less than a Garbage Man with a HS diploma after 5 years.
A worker in the department of sanitation makes 70K base after 5 Years.
10 Years into their job and their salaries get close. It takes an average of 13 years of teaching to surpass the earnings of a garbage man or woman.
Not only teachers are paid poorly, but their relevance in the marketplace has decreased in the recent decades, mostly because the curriculum has not been adapted for the times we live in.
We loved tetris growing up, so we’re going to do 2 uncomfortable ideas based on the game.
Number 3: Tetris taught us that when you try to fit in, you disappear
That’s how you fade into mediocrity, be just another dot in a sea of dots.
We’re so many people alive, with everyone trying to scratch for the surface. It’s never been more difficult to stand out from the crowd than it is today, especially because we all have access to the same megaphone platforms.
Something to mention at this point: just because you’re different, it doesn’t mean you’re valuable!
Number 4: Tetris taught us that Errors pile up
There’s this phenomenon which fascinated us growing up called the linchpin theory, where one event leads to another and to another, very much like dominoes.
If you ever wonder how people end up with their lives ruined, there were a series of crossroads they had to take in life and they made poor choices one after another.
The more bad choices to make, the quicker your life accelerates towards failure.
Good news is, that the opposite is also true.
Number 5: You are experiencing your brain thinking about itself right now
Do you ever sit and think that everything that makes you, you, is inside of your skull?!
Your memories, your thoughts, everything you know about the world and how to interpret it, resides within a skull globe. It’s amazing that such complex ideas, dreams, goals, fears and desires, all form in this squishy part of the body.
Your brain is actively processing information and right not it’s processing itself. How crazy is that!
Number 6: If you’re not paying for it, you’re not the customer, you’re the merchandise!
It’s easy to get caught up in the freemium model. These days almost everything is for free & yet, somehow these companies are more successful than ever.
This has a cognitive clash with the older generation, because they look at platforms like Facebook & google the same way they look at the free snacks at the supermarket, when in reality the story is quite different.
To be frank about it, they’re more like animals being taken to the barn, provided free accommodation and free food. They love it, because they are unaware that they’re the actual product.
It will soon come a time where we, as consumers of the internet, will need to make a shift in the way we behave. In order to make the switch from product to customer, we will need to pay for our freedom. You can start today!
These companies track everything about you and have used this information to alter your perception and change your behavior for their own profit, but there’s a way to buy yourself the anonymity you’re looking for. We partnered with NordVPN, the company we personally use in order to secure our online activity to bring you probably the best offer you can get on the market.
Go to alux.com/vpn and sign up using the ALUX code at checkout. You’ll get 3 years of premium internet security for the price of 1. You want internet security? Well, you have to pay for it.
Number 7: If you don’t heal what hurt you, you’ll bleed on people who didn’t cut you
We love this, because we’ve seen it happen time and time again.
People hurt others because they got hurt themselves, knowingly and unknowingly.
The value lies in understanding you’re hurt and that you need time to heal, you need to care for the wound and not let it rot away.
This is such a powerful statement and unfortunately a lot of people get blinded by the pain and don’t see how much their hurting the ones they love.
Number 8: Lack of direction, not lack of time is the problem.
We’re gonna keep it real with you: You waste too much time on things that do not move your life forward, mostly because you lack a clear understand of where you need to go and what it will take to get there.
Most people have a vague idea of what they WISH their life was like, but never deconstruct the process of getting there.
We hate that we have to say this over and over again, but we all have the same 24 hours in a day. You’ve got the same minutes in a day like Elon Musk, Beyonce or The Rock, yet they’ve managed to use their time a lot more productively that you do.
If you’re still young, this might be a valuable wake up call to you, you’ve still got some time ahead of you, might wanna get busy!
Number 9: Destroy a country’s educational system and the country destroys itself
Earlier we mentioned how poorly teachers get paid and how poorly most curriculum are designed unable to provide actual value to the marketplace.
If the education in your country focuses on how much theoretical information you can remember, in an age where you have access to the largest library of information in the history of mankind at the tip of your fingers, your country’s educational system is failing.
Children have an incredible capacity for creativity and assimilation. In your early days, you act like a sponge for whatever’s in front of you. Fill your hard-drive with meaningless junk and one you finish your “education” you’ll realize you don’t have the right software to succeed either in your professional or personal life.
We believe that in our lifetime the way we get educated will dramatically change, we’re already learning more from content like this one than we’ve done in school.
Number 10: The magic you’re looking for is in the work you’re avoiding.
Want to actually make progress in your life?
Look at the things you know you should be doing, but you’re avoiding. The thing is, you actually know what to do most of the time, yet you prefer to postpone it until you’re forced to do it by circumstance or it eventually doesn’t matter anyway.
All the good things in life lie on the other side of your personal desire to procrastinate.
A while back we made a 2 part video called: RULES TO WIN AT LIFE. If this point sparked something in you we recommend you search for it on our channel – or you can watch it below:
Number 11: You never realize it but growing up you’re also watching your parents grow old
This has been a tricky realization and one that slips by most people. We’re so focused on getting our own success, our own families, our own future, that we fail to see that our parents are aging, they’re getting closer and close to not being anymore.
We are independent spirits but we always will feel that we could’ve done more.
If you’re watching this right now and your parents are still alive, give them a call or if you can, a hug, it goes a long way to showing that you still care and appreciate them for everything they’ve done for you.
Number 12: Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, your best just isn’t good enough.
This is one of our biggest fears in life, summarized perfectly by a quote from Picard
“It is possible to make no mistakes and still lose. That is not weakness, that is life”
Circumstances matter. Potential matters. Connections matter. Timing matters. Access to resources matters.
It won’t make a difference that your pedal is on the floor going top speed if you’re in a Lada racing someone in a Ferrari. Hate to break it to you, but some people are ferraris and other are Ladas.
What you can do, is make sure you make the absolute most out of the cards you’ve been dealt. You might realize you’re not actually racing the ferrari, but you’re racing the version of yourself that would choose to quit all together.
Number 13: A mistake repeated more than once is a decision.
Nobody plans to F* up. That’s why it’s called a mistake. You didn’t plan to do it, but it happened. Analyze, memorize, make adjustments and move on.
The tricky part is to make the adjustment.
People can say they change, but you see them doing the same thing over and over again. That’s no longer a mistake, that’s them making a conscious decision.
Number 14: It is the emptiness within the cup that makes it useful.
We’re going off the deep end here. Although you can see the cup, the material side of it, you can hold it, you can color it, it’s not the cup that serves the purpose, the utility comes from the emptiness within in.
Some people will click with this quote right away, while other might find it difficult to see how this fits with their own lives, it’s exciting to see how different people interpret this.
If this idea sparked some feelings within you, we can recommend you a very interesting book called: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
This book will have you look at life differently if you do finish it. Even better, you can listen to it for free if you go to alux.com/freebook and sign up, thanks to our friends at Audible.
Number 15: Eat with your friends, don’t compete with them. You are racing against poverty not against each other.
We’ve seen it first hand, how people would rather see you fail than join you towards success.
It’s a valuable lesson on how to choose your friends wisely.
Once you do make the right call, you’ll see that your friends not only want to join you in the boat, but they’ll also row with you.
Sometimes you might be going in different directions, but you can still eat together, you can still help each other.
You don’t need your friend to fail so you can feel better about yourself, you need a new set of values.
We’ve been through the 15 and now it’s time to shift the focus onto you. Which of these Ideas stuck with you for one reason or the other, which of the 15 made you think? Join the conversation in the comments and we’ll be there alongside you!
