How To Decide Via Negativa

Get a pencil and three pieces of paper.

Get a pencil and three pieces of paper.

On the first piece of paper write NEVER.
On the second piece of paper write PROBLY NOT.
On the third piece of paper write. MAYBE.

Now plop down in front of the TV (or YouTube) and watch until you see enough stupid crap to fill up three pages.

What you do with your life is you figure out how to completely stay clear of the stuff you NEVER want to do, and away from people who are doing that same stuff.

Figure out what went wrong with the people who accidentally did a PROBLY NOT, and try not to make the same mistakes.

Don’t worry about the MAYBE. In fact, go do a MAYBE today. See how you like it. If you don’t, then put erase it and put it on the PROBLY NOT list. If you actually like it, well that’s one thing you can do in your life.

Keep the lists around. Memorize it if you can. Now ask other people about the things they would never do, or probably not do, or maybe do. Learn from their mistakes too. Pretty soon you will (probably) be making fewer mistakes, and respecting yourself more than you thought. You just never took the time to think about all of your standards. In other words, your whole life was full of MAYBE. But you’ll also learn if you’ve been sloppy and doing more PROBLY NOT than you should have. Adjust it the other way. Put those into MAYBE. Perhaps you didn’t know yourself as well as you thought.

The point is to keep recycling the list. You will make enough mistakes to really get to know what you do like and don’t like. Don’t expect that you will automatically get where you want just by putting things down on paper. But also don’t lie to yourself.

Success in life comes from discipline. When you discipline yourself, you gain control. If you lose control of yourself, others will discipline you against your will. Draw your own lines.