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To Shock and To Awe

Who doesn’t want to start their week off with some philosophizing? Currently, I’m in the middle of slowly powering throughSeneca’s “On The Happy Life,” and a specific piece stuck out to me as relevant for our work—and a testament to the challenge of shocking and awing.

The first excerpt has me reflecting on the importance of reigning in big vision. To accomplish something truly shocking, you have to push past the comfort zone of easily attainable and measurable goals. But before you start down the path to shaking things up, the end-goal is imperative:

“But as long as we wander at random, not following any guide except the shouts and discordant clamors of those who invite us to proceed in different directions, our short life will be wasted in useless roamings, even if we labour both day and night to get a good understanding.“

And to follow up with that. Those big visions won’t be accomplished by merely following the same path of those before you. You have to shake shit up. To challenge yourself to break the mold of normal and what’s come before you:

“It is harmful to follow the march of those who go before us, and since everyone had rather believe another than form his own opinion, we never pass a deliberate judgment upon life, but some traditional error always entangles us and brings us to ruin, and we perish because we follow other men’s examples: we should be cured of this if we were to disengage ourselves from the herd; but as it is, the mob is ready to fight against reason in defense of its own mistake.”

Roslynn Velasquez

@ShearCreativity: