This is everyone's first time living. No one came out of the womb knowing more than you.

Steve Jobs once made this powerful statement:

>When you grow up, you tend to get told the world is the way it is and your life is just to live inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family life, have fun, save a little money. That’s a very limited life.
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>Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact. And that is: everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use. Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.

This idea of not being intimidated by society is counterintuitive to what I saw growing up. But understanding it gives me the confidence to live life however I desire.

Tim Urban said most people think like this:

“This doesn’t seem right to me, but everyone else says it’s right, so it must be right, and I’ll just pretend I also think it’s right, so no one realizes I’m stupid.”

He likes to call them cooks. They respect the expectations and principles of authorities and society (known as dogma) too much.

He says that Chefs, on the other hand, lower their respect for dogma down to three levels.

1. Game-breaking: Have little respect for dogma. They change how the game is played.
2. Trailblazing: Have no respect for dogma. They go down their own path.
3. Groundbreaking: Understand that the dogma wasn't made by anyone more impressive than them. They are the transcendent disrupters.

In a sense, Steve Jobs was saying that we’re delusional about the wisdom of everyone around us.

We trick ourselves into thinking we can’t have remarkable lives because we over-inflate the people who do have them.

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This post was from my newsletter

I share ideas from great thinkers so we can stand on the shoulders of giants, instead of figuring life out alone