What are your dreams or big ideas? Let me know by leaving a comment. Mine is a world where everyone can do anything they want and be happy.
I always thought that is obviously a good thing that everyone also wants as well, but sometimes I have doubts -- war, violence, drugs, antisocial behaviors, hate, selfishness, etc. Why do people do all those things? Some can be explained by a lack of resources or unhealthy desire for more resources, others may be cultural, and some may not have a good explanation...perhaps just human nature -- we are biological and work not purely based on logic but emotions and perhaps other unknown factors.
Let's put unknown human nature aside as not sure what we can do about that at the moment. Let's focus on what we know and can do. Taking my dream example of having a world where everyone can do anything they want and be happy, how do we achieve that?
Before thinking about a solution, let's look at what are the problems:
- Human interactions, as listed before with example rationale but without considering the unknown human nature parts:
- War: Unhealthy desire for more power or resources
- Violence: Same as above, but also maybe hormone (physical/mental) imbalance?
- Drugs: Just curious, bored or got tricked/coerced.
- Antisocial behaviors: Maybe upbringing? Not sure, so toss it into unexplained.
- Hate: Upbringing and emotional.
- Selfishness: Upbringing and lack of resources.
- Not being able to be yourself: Disguising your behavior or keeping things inside to please others or out of fear.
- Mundane and unnecessarily complex things in life:
- Going to work for 8+ hours a day, 5+ times a week?
- TAXES!!: Seriously, why does it need to be so complex for a basic essential?
- Daily hygiene: Brush, flush, rinse, and repeat..at least twice daily. Shower daily. For the ladies, make up.
- Driving and sitting in traffic: So much time and productivity wasted...
- Buy food every week
- Pay bills monthly
- House maintenance: fixing broken things, cleaning
- Preparing meals 3x daily
- Rules/restrictions that you have to follow from programs is meant to make life easier (401k, FSA, etc). Did you forget your receipt? Oh ya, don't forget to pay taxes for money that you are saving for retirement...
- So many others that eats away our precious time and brain cycle
- Why do everyone keep doing the above when they are so obviously bad?
- We may not be taught for various reasons
- Lack of school or parents
- Most schools don't teach about life -- how to be a good person or live a better life
- We may not know how to properly teach or might not want to
- Kids may not listen even if you do teach...
- There isn't anything better yet. Many people are definitely trying to make things better.
- So many leaders promote bad ideas, and oddly, so many followers follow and help them
- Hitler leading WWII but so many followed as he couldn't have fought the world by himself...
- North Korea leader doing all those missile testing and what not, and so many people following or forced to follow
- US President Donald Trump pulling out of Paris climate agreement. Who voted for him? More than half of the electoral votes (about half of the population).
- There are also so many great leaders that have done many great things, yet we are still not there yet. I think it's not enough to have a few great leaders, but all of us needs to be.
I didn't intend to talk about CTL, but serendipitously, the above group of problems corresponds to:
- Compassion could solve a lot, if not all, of the human nature problems.
- Technology can solve most of the mundane tasks. Trust others more can also help with simplifying processes.
- Leadership -- Great Leadership -- can help with improving education and lead people to do the right things that make us all happy.
So it seems CTL is the overall solution -- I didn't even realize that until just now, LOL. :) I originally selected CTL as those are the things that I care about most and saw lacking in the world.
Now back to the topic at all, how do we turn the ideas of a perfect world into reality? Or your dreams or big ideas? Once we fully understand the problems and the solution, I believe it comes down to execution.
And execution is not necessarily fun. Sometimes, or most of the time, it can be fun. And it is best if it is fun, otherwise nobody will do it or do it well. Unfortunately, the other times, you just have to do it. Going to work from 9 to 5 after sitting in traffic for 30+ mins? Ya, until we come up with the necessary technologies to solve them, it's gonna happen.
Tired or feeling overwhelmed? Me too. So many problems, so little time, and sometime feeling like you are the only one fighting the good fight. Past 2 weeks or so, I felt so tired physically and mentally that I haven't felt like doing much, so just took it slow, do what's necessary, and rest a lot. I think that's good. It's important to rest. But don't rest for too long or give up. To realize your dreams, you must keep on going...even if it feels like at snail's pace. Like water that created the Grand Canyon, it is just a matter of keep doing it however small of a change.
Whenever you forget about where you are going or wondering what the heck you are doing, take a break, regroup, and re-think about why you are doing it and how it makes you happy. As long as we keep going, I believe we will get there. Do try to make it fun if possible or think about better ways of doing something that's not fun, so it is more fun.
In short, just keep doing it and try to have fun along the way! We will have a perfect world some day... :D
This is part of the Great Leadership series.
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