The Futility of Absolutes

Gaurav Chande / July 04, 2012 (161 Words, 1 Minutes)

A friend recently shared a Derek Sivers TED talk on keeping your goals to yourself and was raving about it. I watched the 3 minute talk and I was quite disappointed because I just didn’t like it. Keeping your goals to yourself instead of revealing to others so that there is a better probability of achieving those goals? Really? Now, I really like Sivers and I learn a lot from his work but this is not about him or the topic of his talk.

This is about the absolute truths and extremes we all keep finding and believing. I’ll tell you what, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if 10 people became successful by following a particular method that you’re not following. It doesn’t matter if 20 psychologists have a theory based on how well it works. There are endless such ‘principles’ you would come across; many of them even contradicting each other. And there would still be exceptions everywhere, each time.

So what’s the point? The point is, there is no point in trying to believe in something that is not convincing enough to you just because someone like Derek Sivers approves it. There is no point in trying to find out “secret methodologies” to success. Because there aren’t any.

There are no absolutes. Even what you’re reading right now is not an absolute. You can choose to believe it or not believe it and it still won’t matter. Your belief in some principle is not going to decide whether you will make it or not. All of these speculations and philosophies are really hogwash after a point.

It all comes down to how badly you want something. How much are you itching to make that dent. How much are you willing to make the sacrifices that others are not. Everything else is just theory.

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Fun fact: I ended up emailing this post to Derek Sivers to get his thoughts. He actually said he liked it and followed back on twitter. :)