YOUR EXPERIENCES ARE KING.

A simple life lesson I’ve learned:

Never trust the hearsay or the second hand talk of others.

Instead, place 100x more weight in your own experiences, your own thoughts, conscience, gut, and life.

Why not trust the experiences of others?

Several reasons.

First, most people tend to overexaggerate their successes and underexaggerate their failures. This especially happens a lot with money, finances and investments:

The gambler will brag about how he made $100,000 at the casino, but won’t ever mention how he lost $200,000 at the casino.

Why care for the experiences of others?

Another big thing:

Your preferences are different from others.

Which means:

A possibly good experienced for someone else might be a positively horrible experience for you.

For example for some people the idea of being at a resort and doing absolutely nothing is the idea of paradise. For others, it is hell.

My biggest regrets

Typically speaking my biggest regrets in life is when I put more weight in the advice and experience of others, than relying on my own “irrational” gut feeling and thoughts. Many “irrational” feelings are often not confirmed waaay later, in ways you cannot even know.

For example when touring the apartment I’m currently living in, my initial gut feeling was it was far too loud. Too much street noise. But I thought it would be “okay”, but a few months later I’ve realized my sleep and well-being has suffered tremendously as a result of this (tiny) bad decision. Had I just first followed my gut reaction (this place is too loud) I’d be far happier and better off. Tiny gut reactions can have huuuuuge changes down the line.

Morale of the story:

Become more stubborn and more faithful in your own feelings, thoughts, gut and experiences. Less faith and trust in the experiences, emotions and thoughts of others.

ERIC

PHILOSOPHY by KIM

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