
Don’t Believe The Worlds Greatest Lie
Have you ever wondered ‘just what do I do next’? I mean you are sitting there and you feel lost, just what the fuck are you going to do next? This may come from a number of various situations. But at some point in your life you are going to feel hopelessly lost with no clue how to move forward.
I’ve read a lot of things regarding overcoming adversity, in the age of social media there are meme’s a plenty for hope and inspiration, but does this become a point of all blending into one, inspirational noise to the point where they all become pointless and lose their value.
It’s been a particular challenging week this week, for one reason or another. I certainly won’t be boring you with my tales of woe, just to say it’s been a fucker of a week that’s all.
So I’ve been in need of inspiration so to speak, to feel inspired, you have to come across something that is really meaningful to you at the time. Whether that is someone or something, I reckon the real point of inspiration is to find it when you need it most.
There are countless numbers of self help books and Guru’s out there, and how many of your friends on Facebook or Twitter are constantly putting up pictures and memes with inspirational quotes on. Till you’re thinking ‘oh my God not another one’
Its easy to get a bit jaded with the whole scenario, but at the same time I have come across a good few items or people that have found me just at the time I needed them most. Many of them being books, and I don’t mean self help books.
Though I have read a lot of personal growth books, not in the mould of ‘Chicken Soup for the Soul’, but more educational in whatever subject matter I have my head stuck in at the time. And I always found them to be really useful. Even if they where shit.
But for real inspiration, the kind that picks you up off the floor and gives you the power to go on, then that has most definitely come from books, fiction especially. One of these is The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
A story of a boy who goes on a journey to Egypt in search of treasure after a recurring dream tells him it’s waiting there for him.
There is a part in the book where he meets a an old man in the market who tells the boy ‘Santiago’ not to believe the world’s greatest lie.
“It’s a book that says the same thing almost all the other books in the world say,” continued the old man.
“It describes people’s inability to choose their own destinies. And it ends up saying that everyone believes the world’s greatest lie.”
“What’s the world’s greatest lie?” the boy asked, completely surprised.
“It’s this: that at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what’s happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate. That’s the world’s greatest lie.”
Paulo Coelho – The Alchemist
That really struck a chord with me at the time, I thought ‘that’s right, it up to me, no-one else’ and if you go around thinking that the path of your life is not within your control, subject to fate, then you may as well be prepared to accept whatever shit life throws at you.
There are always things that will go wrong, but the seed of the message is, ‘you can go a hell of a way to plot out your own path if you have the desire to act’, even when it gets really tough.
Which brings us back to the need for inspiration just when you need it most. Because there are always barriers, I used to work with a guy years ago that told me ‘ you always have to be ready to take it to the next level, and you always feel awkward when you get there initially’.
I thought that was great advice, because I have always found it to be so, you work hard to achieve a level of success and move up a grade in whatever that practice may be. But when you move to the next level, then you feel like a beginner again, awkward in your new surroundings.
But once you accept that level, and decide to push no further and resign yourself to that being the given scenario for the foreseeable future, then that’s when you’ve succumbed to the world’s greatest lie.
So the choice is yours, accept the shit or push on; it all comes down to grit, determination, and most of all belief.
Because if you believe you can, then you will. It may take time and great effort, but all goals are achievable if you can plot the correct trajectory, bite size chunks of affirmative action soon add up to become major achievements once you look back.
Don’t believe the worlds greatest Lie.
“It’s a book that says the same thing almost all the other books in the world say,” continued the old man.
“It describes people’s inability to choose their own destinies. And it ends up saying that everyone believes the world’s greatest lie.”
“What’s the world’s greatest lie?” the boy asked, completely surprised.
“It’s this: that at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what’s happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate. That’s the world’s greatest lie.”
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