A Common Path

I have recently had some very interesting conversations with people about traditional, or conventional, wisdom. More precisely, the conversations centered around accepting the wisdom of the past without thinking and taking into consideration place and time.

These conversations were about how to best reach people who are seeking not only a connection to the Infinite, to God, but also seeking a better life. The general consensus was that the old wisdom of how to go about that does not meet the issue anymore. I thought it was most interesting to hear these people talk about what they thought and how like each other they were, although not together at the time or place.

I recently read something in a course on online SEO that I am taking from Dan Thies. What he said was that following conventional wisdom without thinking can lead to trouble. I thought this was a insight!
Albert Einstein said that insanity was doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. How is it that we look to conventional wisdom, that may have been very true at one point and not see that time, circumstance, and culture may make that wisdom less or completely irrelevant. It doesn’t matter what the subject.

I once worked in industry and had to deal with people coming into our shop and telling us how to produce product. These “customers” would try to force us into doing things their way when it was obvious to all that it wouldn’t work as well as what we already had. Conversely, there were times when a new idea worked very well, but the workers didn’t want to change because, “we’ve never done it that way.”

What is the insane thing you are doing over and over and expecting different results? How are you trying to better your life, but using the things you have done before and didn’t work? Do you even know where you want to go and what you want to do? Take sometime to evaluate your life. Are you going where conventional wisdom says to go, even though you feel strongly that it is not the right way? You are in charge of your life. You determine where to go and what to do. Don’t let faulty wisdom interfere with your goals in life.

Stephen

A Common Path

Tags: changing your life, Life improvement, Personal growth, Wisdom

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009 at 1:00 am and is filed under Self Awareness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.