Category: Becoming more than you were before

  • Being More Than You Were Before

    by

    Do I want you to be better?

    No.

    I want you to want to be better.

    There is a difference.

    I can encourage you.
    I can support you.
    I can tell you what I see in you when you can’t see it yourself.

    But I cannot want your growth for you.

    And neither should I.

    Because when I become more invested in your improvement than you are, something changes.

    Support becomes pressure.
    Advice becomes expectation.
    Love can quietly become control.

    Real growth begins when the desire to change comes from within.

    Not because someone told you that you weren’t good enough.

    Not because you are trying to earn someone’s approval.

    Not because you are afraid of losing someone.

    But because somewhere inside yourself, you have decided:

    I want to become more than I am today.

    That doesn’t mean you need to become someone else.

    It means becoming more fully yourself.

    Learning from your mistakes.
    Questioning what no longer serves you.
    Letting go of old versions of yourself.
    Choosing differently when you know better.

    And sometimes the most loving thing we can do for someone is stop trying to change them.

    Give them encouragement without demanding transformation.

    Give them space without abandoning them.

    Believe in their potential without making their potential your responsibility.

    Because you cannot carry someone into becoming who they want to be.

    You can walk beside them.

    You can hold the light.

    You can remind them that another way is possible.

    But eventually, they have to choose to walk towards it.

    And perhaps that is the greatest gift we can give another person:

    Not the demand to be better.

    But the freedom to want better for themselves.

    Click the link above to read Becoming More Than You Were Before. 

  • Popular Opinion Is Not Necessarily True

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    Most of us have heard the phrase:

    “If everyone believes it, it must be true.”

    But surprisingly, that isn’t how truth works.

    Millions of people can believe something and still be wrong.

    People once believed the Earth was the centre of the universe. Doctors once believed that bleeding sick people could make them better. Smoking was once considered normal and even glamorous.

    What people believed changed.

    Reality didn’t. Our understanding of it did.

    That’s an important difference.

    Popular Doesn’t Mean True

    Popular opinion is useful. It tells us what lots of people currently think.

    But it doesn’t tell us whether they are right.

    Social media makes this even more important. Something can become popular simply because it makes people angry, excited, frightened or curious.

    A video gets millions of views.

    People assume it must be important.

    A claim gets repeated thousands of times.

    People assume it must be true.

    But repetition isn’t evidence.

    Sometimes the loudest person isn’t the person who knows the most.

    They are simply the person everyone is listening to.

    But the quietest person isn’t automatically right either. Being unpopular doesn’t make an idea true any more than being popular does. Galileo was right against the consensus of his time. Countless cranks have also been wrong against the consensus of theirs. The test is not whether an idea is popular or unpopular. The test is evidence.

    During disasters and breaking news, false rumours routinely outrun corrections. A fake image, a misidentified suspect, or a misleading clip can circle the world before the facts have been checked. The loop is simple: attention creates the appearance of importance, and the appearance of importance creates more attention.

    But Don’t Assume the Crowd Is Always Wrong

    There is another mistake we can make.

    Just because lots of people believe something doesn’t mean it’s wrong.

    Millions of people can sometimes know something that one person doesn’t.

    Think about a crowd trying to guess the weight of something. One person might be wildly wrong. But hundreds of people making independent guesses can sometimes produce a surprisingly accurate answer. In 1906, the statistician Francis Galton watched people at a country fair guess the weight of an ox. The crowd was mixed—farmers, butchers, ordinary visitors. No single person was reliably accurate. But the median guess was within a few pounds of the true weight.

    The same thing can happen with science, markets, technology and society.

    But crowds are only wise under certain conditions: people must think independently, bring different information, and there must be a way to combine their judgments. When everyone simply copies everyone else, the crowd stops aggregating knowledge and starts amplifying error. The Asch conformity experiments showed that people will deny the evidence of their own eyes to match a unanimous group. Financial bubbles—tulip mania, the dot-com crash, the 2008 housing crisis—show what happens when imitation replaces independent judgment.

    So the answer isn’t:

    “Always trust the crowd.”

    And it isn’t:

    “Always disagree with the crowd.”

    It is:

    “Think about why the crowd believes it.”

    Expert Consensus Is Not the Same as Popular Opinion

    Expert consensus is not the same as popular opinion. It is a structured, provisional agreement among people trained to evaluate evidence. It can be wrong, and it has been wrong before. But it is not just a popularity contest.

    Treating experts as infallible is a mistake. Treating them as nothing more than another opinion is also a mistake.

    Popular Opinion and Legitimacy

    Popular opinion also matters for a different reason: legitimacy.

    A jury verdict or an election can legitimately settle a decision even if every factual claim made during the process was not correct. Democracy does not require that the majority be right about everything. It requires a fair way to decide what to do when people disagree.

    The danger is confusing legitimacy with truth: treating a majority vote as proof of a factual claim.

    Experience Changes What We Believe

    A thought begins as an idea.

    Then life gives us the chance to test it.

    You might think you’re good at something until you actually try it.

    You might think someone is a terrible person until you discover what was really happening.

    You might believe something about life because you’ve heard it from your parents, teachers, friends or the internet.

    Then experience teaches you something different.

    A thought becomes more valuable when experience gives you reasons to believe it might be true.

    But even experience isn’t perfect.

    Something working for you once doesn’t prove it will always work.

    We are constantly learning.

    And when that happens, the people best prepared for the discovery will be those who were never completely certain that they already knew everything.

    Common Sense Also Deserves Suspicion

    Common sense also deserves suspicion. It is often just old popular opinion that has survived long enough to feel obvious.

    Common sense once said the sun revolved around the Earth, that bleeding cured fever, and that women should not vote. It can be a useful heuristic, but it is not a final authority.

    Our Understanding of Reality Can Change

    This may be the most interesting part.

    One day, humanity may understand reality very differently from the way we understand it today.

    Future generations may discover things about the universe, consciousness, time or life that we cannot currently imagine.

    That doesn’t mean everything we believe today is wrong.

    It means our knowledge may be incomplete.

    Think about a map.

    A map can be useful without showing every single detail of the landscape.

    Our understanding of reality may be like that.

    We have a map.

    It works surprisingly well.

    But there may be a lot of territory we haven’t discovered yet.

    So Think for Yourself

    You don’t have to believe something just because everyone else believes it.

    But you also don’t have to reject something just because everyone else believes it.

    Both can be lazy forms of thinking.

    Instead, ask:

    What is the evidence?

    How do we know?

    What experience supports it?

    Could we be wrong?

    What would change our minds?

    Those questions are more valuable than simply asking whether an idea is popular.

    Because popular opinion tells you what people think.

    Experience can tell you what happens.

    Evidence can tell you what is probably true.

    Expert consensus can inform you, but it is not infallible.

    Legitimacy can tell you who gets to decide.

    And wisdom comes from understanding that even what we believe today may only be part of a much bigger picture.

    The goal isn’t to agree with everyone.

    The goal isn’t to disagree with everyone.

    The goal is to keep learning.

    Because one day humanity may discover that the world is very different from what we currently believe.

    Popular opinion can tell us what a lot of people currently believe.

    It can’t tell us whether they are right.

  • Perfect Today. More Perfect Tomorrow

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    Perhaps the strangest thing I’ve come to believe is this:

    You are perfect as you are today.

    And tomorrow, you can be more perfect.

    I know that sounds contradictory.

    How can you be perfect and still need to become more?

    Because perhaps we’ve misunderstood what perfect means.

    Perfection doesn’t mean flawless.

    It doesn’t mean you’ve made all the right decisions, understood everything, achieved everything you wanted, or become the person you imagined you’d be by this age.

    It means that you are exactly who you are at this moment.

    Click here to get the book

    You are the result of everything you’ve experienced, everything you’ve learned, everything you’ve survived, everything you’ve misunderstood, everything you’ve loved, and everything you’ve lost.

    You couldn’t have arrived here any other way.

    And tomorrow?

    Tomorrow, you get another chance.

    Not to repair today’s version of yourself.

    Not to become worthy.

    Not to finally become the person you should have been.

    But to become more than you were before.

    That’s the beautiful paradox of Becoming More Than You Were Before.

    #inspiration

  • Becoming More Than You Were Before

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    I’m Writing a Book. It’s Called Becoming More Than You Were Before. And I’d Like to Tell You Why.

    I’m 58 years old.

    My story is beginning again today.

    Not because I’ve accomplished everything I wanted to. Not because I have it all figured out.

    Quite the opposite.

    I think it’s beginning because I’ve finally learned something I wish I’d understood decades ago:

    What the Book Is About

    Becoming More Than You Were Before is not a book about fixing yourself.

    It’s a book about discovering who you might still become.

    That distinction matters more than I can say.

    Because most of us have spent years—decades, even—believing that in order to become better, we must first decide that who we were wasn’t good enough.

    So we look backwards and see the mistakes.

    The opportunities we didn’t take.

    The years we think we wasted.

    And somewhere along the way, we quietly make a judgement:

    I should have been more.

    But perhaps becoming isn’t about becoming more because you were once less.

    Perhaps it’s about becoming more because you are still becoming.

    The Journey of the Book

    The book moves through four movements.

    Part I — You Are Not Finished

    You were always worthy.

    Your story is only beginning.

    You’re at a stage in your life where peace matters more than before.

    And you can stop performing in the wrong room.

    Part II — Learning to See Clearly

    Acceptance is a foundation, not a grave.

    Understanding yourself is neither the beginning nor the end of the journey.

    Deep listening matters more than perfect recall.

    And sometimes—like the blackberry—you’re not failing.

    You’re just waiting for the weather to change.

    Part III — Taking Back Your Agency

    You’re not a victim anymore.

    You can shift your emotional centre.

    You don’t need unlimited freedom to change your life.

    If you can’t win by the rules, you can change the rules.

    Your mind is the greatest travel agent you’ll ever use—but you must learn to be your own travel consultant.

    And yes, we’re all living on a borrowed dime.

    That’s not our weakness.

    That’s our superpower.

    Part IV — Becoming

    We all deserve a human golden retriever.

    If you feel lost, you’re not lost—you’re exploring.

    Manifesting is only the beginning.

    The greatest revenge is forgiving yourself.

    And there will come a morning you will not see—which is precisely why the morning you can see matters so much.

    Why I Wrote It

    Because I’ve been the person who felt behind.

    Who felt finished.

    Who wondered whether the best chapters were already written.

    Because I’ve spent years learning that shame-driven improvement is brittle.

    It shatters at the first stumble.

    Witness-driven improvement is different.

    It bends.

    It observes the fall without panic.

    And it gets back up.

    Because I’ve discovered that a meaningful life can be built from surprisingly ordinary things.

    A conversation.

    A walk.

    A boundary you finally establish.

    A morning when you wake up and realise you are no longer trying to become someone else’s definition of successful.

    And because I believe—genuinely, deeply—that you don’t have to despise the person you were to appreciate the person you’re becoming.

    There’s Nothing and Everything Romantic About Learning to Love Yourself

    I’ve been thinking about this line a lot lately.

    There’s nothing romantic about learning to love yourself.

    It doesn’t look like the movies.

    There’s no candlelit dinner.

    No grand gesture.

    No one sweeping you off your feet.

    It looks like getting up when the alarm goes off.

    Choosing the tea you actually like.

    Saying no to something that would quietly diminish you.

    Putting down the phone and finishing your evening.

    Forgiving yourself for the thing you said three days ago that still makes you wince at 1:17 a.m.

    It’s unglamorous.

    Unremarkable.

    Often invisible.

    And yet.

    There’s everything romantic about it.

    Because it is the great love story.

    Not the one you were told to wait for—the one where someone else arrives and finally makes you feel worthy.

    But the one where you stop waiting for permission to be loved and begin the slow, patient work of loving yourself.

    That’s the plot twist nobody sees coming.

    The love of your life isn’t out there. It’s in here.

    The romance isn’t in grand gestures.

    It’s in the quiet ones.

    It’s in the moment you catch yourself being kind to the person you used to criticise.

    It’s in the evening you choose rest over proving yourself worthy.

    It’s in the morning you wake up and realise you are no longer trying to become someone else’s definition of successful.

    It’s in forgiveness.

    Not necessarily forgiveness of the people who hurt you—that may come later, or never.

    But forgiveness of the version of you who stayed too long.

    Trusted blindly.

    Didn’t know then what you know now.

    That’s the love story.

    Not a rescue.

    A reclaiming.

    Because it’s the only relationship you’ll have for the entirety of your life.

    The only one that will be with you in every room, every season, every morning you wake up.

    And when you finally stop abandoning yourself to keep everyone else comfortable?

    That’s not cold.

    That’s the most romantic thing you’ll ever do.

    What This Book Is Not

    It’s not a book that promises transformation in thirty days.

    It’s not a book that claims to have all the answers.

    It’s not a book that will work for everyone.

    It’s a book for the reader who is ready to sit with questions.

    To do the slow work of becoming.

    To be patient with themselves and the process.

    It’s a book that says:

    You are not broken.

    You are not behind.

    You are not failing.

    You are becoming.

    An Invitation

    Over the coming weeks and months, I’ll be sharing more from the book here—excerpts, reflections, and the occasional thought that didn’t make it into the final manuscript.

    If any of this resonates, I’d love for you to come along.

    Not because I have the answers.

    But because I’m still learning them too.

    And because I suspect that some of you are, as well.

    Your story isn’t finished.

    You are not finished.

    And the person you are becoming may surprise you.

    Keep going.

    You may be becoming more than you were before.

    And that is something worth looking forward to.