The secret lies in shaping oneself

11 sept 2022

The secret lies in building oneself, in finding a mission, one’s own conviction. It is not particularly about accumulating knowledge. I am convinced that raw knowledge is not especially useful. It is necessary to shape one’s thinking, to file down one’s own limitations; true progress is built from those limitations, not in spite of them.

Memorizing is fine up to a point, as long as it serves understanding and the processing of that information, but the capacity to retain information does not seem decisive to me when it comes to finding a certain… well-being. In fact, we overestimate that superpower we have. Memory should be at the service of thought.

In building oneself, one must be able to discriminate what information to use, what to discard, what to refine, what to submit, and what to submit oneself to. The mind must transform itself, guide itself, and at the same time one must allow oneself to be guided. One cannot assimilate everything; that is the point: to select and take advantage of experiences, to optimize personal progress.

While it is good to avoid falling into an informational echo chamber, feeding on the same ideas and ideals again and again and becoming radicalized in an… unhealthy way, it is also necessary to be selective with the information one chooses to consume. The internet, for example, is almost the perfect tool for this task; one only needs good judgment and not to be so closed-minded. Memory is fragile and we need repetitions of the subjects we like so we do not forget them and can preserve their details. Our train of thought is virtually a single one, and of course we want to occupy it with the projects that excite us without stumbling over the contamination of irrelevant content. Be selective with the content you consume, and do not be afraid to face new scenarios. The only way to be selective is to cover enough ground to understand what you truly want and appreciate.

And behind all of this lies the subconscious, that part that comes almost installed within us but is not immovable. Perhaps the greatest challenge is manipulating the subconscious through the conscious. Although it may seem contradictory, it is essential for personal growth.

Do not be afraid to leave things for tomorrow. The phrase “don’t leave for tomorrow what you can do today” is common, and I would point out that it is valid for “…what you can do today.” There are things that simply cannot be done today; there are things for which our future self is undoubtedly better prepared. Yes, doing it tomorrow can be more efficient, healthier—tomorrow might be the ideal day. It is necessary to think about today in order to maintain productivity. Saying “tomorrow” is dangerous because one becomes accustomed to it and ends up taking countless detours around responsibilities and projects. One must do today what can be done today, because you might not have the opportunity to do it tomorrow. One must do tomorrow what can be done tomorrow, because you might not have the opportunity to do it today—and you might even harm the chances of doing it tomorrow.

The secret to well-being and personal progress is to work in such a way that if we were to lose everything due to those uncontrollable circumstances of life, we would not be left empty-handed. A clear and certainly mundane but very effective example is when a person who has worked for a good part of their life loses their material possessions due to a catastrophe. Something like that is always hard, but one must move forward and not lose sight of the fact that, despite everything, that time was not in vain. There was knowledge learned, experiences gained, projects acquired, thoughts matured… it is precisely in the worst circumstances that one forgets all that mental personal progress. Yet that is where the key is—and must be—to avoid falling. It is always good to remember and strengthen those fundamental values from which we are built.