Choosing to Be Yourself
PART II - SAVING YOURSELF
Choosing to Be Yourself
Doctors won’t make you healthy.
Nutritionists won’t make you slim.
Teachers won’t make you smart.
Gurus won’t make you calm.
Mentors won’t make you rich.
Trainers won’t make you fit.
Ultimately, you have to take responsibility.
Save yourself.
A lot of what goes on today is what many of you are doing right now—beating yourself up and scribbling notes and saying, “I need to do this, and I need to do that, and I need to do…” No, you don’t need to do anything.
All you should do is what you want to do. If you stop trying to figure out how to do things the way other people want you to do them, you get to listen to the little voice inside your head that wants to do things a certain way. Then, you get to be you.
I never met my greatest mentor. I wanted so much to be like him. But his message was the opposite: Be yourself, with passionate intensity.
No one in the world is going to beat you at being you. You’re never going to be as good at being me as I am. I’m never going to be as good at being you as you are. Certainly, listen and absorb, but don’t try to emulate. It’s a fool’s errand. Instead, each person is uniquely qualified at something. They have some specific knowledge, capability, and desire nobody else in the world does, purely from the combinatorics of human DNA and development.
The combinatorics of human DNA and experience are staggering. You will never meet any two humans who are substitutable for each other.
Your goal in life is to find the people, business, project, or art that needs you the most. There is something out there just for you. What you don’t want to do is build checklists and decision frameworks built on what other people are doing. You’re never going to be them. You’ll never be good at being somebody else. [4]
To make an original contribution, you have to be irrationally obsessed with something
第二部分 - 拯救自己
选择做自己
医生不能让你健康。
营养师不能让你苗条。
老师不能让你聪明。
大师不能让你平静。
导师不能让你富有。
教练不能让你强壮。
最终，你必须为自己负责。
拯救自己。
如今的许多事情，就像你们很多人现在正在做的——不停地自责，做着笔记，说“我需要做这个，我需要做那个，我需要做……”不，你不需要做任何事情。
你唯一需要做的就是你想做的事情。如果你停止去尝试按照别人的方式去做事，你就可以听到自己内心那个小小的声音，它想以自己的方式去做事。然后，你就可以做自己了。
我从未见过我最伟大的导师。我非常想成为他那样的人。但他的讯息却相反：做自己，带着炽烈的激情。
世界上没有人能在做自己这件事上打败你。你永远无法像我一样擅长做我，而我也永远无法像你一样擅长做你。当然，可以倾听并吸收他人的经验，但不要试图模仿。那是徒劳的。相反，每个人都在某些方面是独一无二的。他们拥有一些独特的知识、能力和渴望，是世界上其他任何人都没有的，这纯粹来自于人类DNA和成长经历的组合学。
人类DNA和经验的组合是惊人的。你永远不会遇到两个彼此可以替代的人。
你生命中的目标是找到最需要你的人、事业、项目或艺术。这个世界上有一些东西是专属于你的。你不该做的事情就是基于其他人的行为去制定清单和决策框架。你永远无法成为他们。你永远无法擅长做另一个人。[4]
想要做出原创性的贡献，你必须对某件事有非理性的执着