Today I want to focus on an article that one of my favourite online authors Mach Manson has written. Mach Manson in case you do not know off is the author of this really successful book called “Everything is F*ucked” and you should pick this up and read it. It’s a fascinating book, very funny, very deliberate, very perceptive.
In this particular article that I’m referring to the chapter where he speaks about the four stages of life and the first stage that he speaks about is the stage of Mimicry when we are all born when we were kids we didn’t know any better, we didn’t know the rules of the life.
We didn’t know the rules of what to live by, how to operate, we didn’t know any guidelines, we didn’t have any principles so all that we did was look at others and observe. What they were doing and mimic them. Just replicate their actions.
So someone’s making a noise, we make a noise; if someone’s dropping something, we drop something; someone’s saying something we begin to think that’s what the right thing is so on and so forth and that entire stage of life, the first stage of mimicry is all about.
No identity of yours, nothing that you truly can represent stand for everything that you’re doing is a reflection of the world around you. Everything that you feel is an outcome of what others are feeling on your behalf and all that you’re doing is just echoing those feelings those sentiments.
The author says that a lot of us end up living life in exactly this stage, for the rest of our lives or that tattoo is just mimic others all that they do is just reciprocate, reproduce, reflect what others are saying, thinking, acting upon.
There’s nothing that they have of their own there is no individuality. There is no identity, there is no cornerstone of what do they stand for! Everything has been built by someone else’s impression of what the world around them is and that’s sad.
Each time I go to a college to talk to students each time I speak to academicians principals Headmaster’s mistresses of colleges schools all that I tell them is that your job during the student life when you are learning when you’re in school when you’re in college is to do one thing and one thing alone “Identify what success and failure means for you”.
Don’t let someone else’s definition of success and failure become yours. Don’t let the world impose what you should be doing. Do not let anyone else define what you should be doing with your life because if you do that you’re essentially just mimicking someone else you’re not escaping phase one of life and you’re not allowing yourself to create an identity and become an individual that could be just you.
From first principles despite this a lot of us just end up in this state they end up in this state because it’s naturally comfortable, it’s just risk-averse, it’s safe, it’s someone else’s done, this someone else has already gone through this they’re telling me that this has worked for them, they’re telling me that this is where they are in life and I could be there and all I need to do is just replicate but we completely fail to understand that that is not our life it’s theirs.
What they have gone through, what their experiences are, what their outcome is a direct result of who they are and the circumstances in which they were raised or born and spent time in and that’s completely different from ours.
We do not stop and ask ourselves what my definition of success is, not my bosses, not my parents, not my partners, not my friends and family.
What is my definition of success for myself?
That is the most unfortunate state that you can be in which is you’ve just realized you spent your entire life living under someone else’s shade you spent your entire life living someone else’s life you spent your entire life, not as yours.
At that deep thoughtful moment, I wish you all the best for your life and may you define your own definition for SUCCESS.