Don't Judge

My biggest personal lesson in the years that passed is that everyone is just as unique as you.

Everyone has their ideas and their own personal feelings.

Everybody has goals and achievements that they are chasing.

Everyone has a family and themselves they need to feed and protect.

Everybody has an opinion and their way of thinking.

That is how life is. We are all unique and different. Some are more than the others.

Agree to disagree

The most important thing is that if one person has a specific way of thinking, that doesn't mean that you should have the same beliefs.

We are all different, and it is okay to disagree. We have our understanding of the world build up since we were little and bit by bit we got more and more understanding, and finally, we arrived at where we are now.

Every single encounter with another person and exchange of feelings and ideas affects our understanding. Either solidifying it even more or changing it.

Even if the change is not noticeable at first, it is still there. If it was a disagreement, a seed of doubt has been planted into your brain that will change you one way or another.

Some people get affected by others more, some less. What is common is that it is impossible not to get affected.

How do we stay true to ourselves:

If you would like to keep on being yourself and not get swayed into the wrong direction of thinking and feeling, then you have to choose what you consume and how carefully.

It all depends on the topic and your general knowledge already.

People are separated into 10 different levels of knowledge, in my opinion.

We all start at 0 with not knowing anything about the topic. And as we get more and more knowledge, we move to 10.

To put into perspective, 1 is to know what the topic is, but understand no details.

5 is to have read studies and to know details of the topic with solidified understanding.

10 is winning a Nobel Prize for this topic. To know everything on the topic, extended the topic and made a great contribution in advancing the topic.

I think that we are all somewhere on this scale in every topic there is.

Some are oblivious at 0, and some are strongly staying at 5.

Why this scale is important:

As an example, you are talking to your friend or a colleague about the North Pole and its harsh environment.

Your friend knows the topic at 1 as he knows what the North Pole is and knows that it is cold there. You, on the other hand, actually know about the temperature, expeditions, the vaults that are being created and its icebergs and effect of global warming on them.

Would you, a person at level 5 be interested in knowing an opinion of your friend about how should we deal with the humans destroying the ecosystem there? Probably not.

You could teach this person about it, but you are not actually changing or enriching your understanding of it straight away. And most likely this person doesn't even care and won't listen to your explanation.

This exchange has no meaning as you two were on completely different levels of understanding in the topic. The person wasn't actually trying to learn actively, and so you both just wasted your time.

My theory is that people can talk and help each other on anything if they are +- 2 levels away from each other.

As an example:

I am at level 2 about the coffee, and it would only make sense for me to discuss coffee with someone either at 0 level who would love to learn or at 1-4 level who would be willing to discuss and teach me.

It wouldn't make sense for me to argue about coffee roasts with a barista who is at level 6 already as we won't be even understanding each other, and he would just get annoyed of how oblivious I am.

Now that you got an idea of how this scale works for the topics I want to tell you about the ultimate theory I came up with.

The average on the scale. How to choose your friends.

If we look at the scale above for the topics we can see that some people would be able to be more knowledgeable than others and you would benefit from learning from someone, then speaking and trying to learn from people on a lower scale or same scale as you.

If you look at every single topic, a single person knows about, and where they are on the scale, you can create an average number of knowledge.

For example, for a kid, it can be 0,5, and for an adult, it can be 2,3.

The point is that some people learn, read and know more about the world and everything in it. Starting from creativity, art and music and ending and entrepreneurship, investing and money. We all have an average number.

As I said, you want only to have discussions with those that are +-2 of your current level. That also applies to averages.

Of course, you cannot discriminate and only talk to the smart and ignore everyone else.

But if your goal is to grow and become a better version of yourself, you only should have profound and mindful discussions about topics that you care, with those that have an average higher than yours, that way they will keep on pulling you up to succeed together with them.

All of us more skilled in some topics than in others and even if your average is 2 lower than the other persons, you can tell him and help with topics that you are better at. That way, everyone benefits.

Life right now

As we have seen through multiple studies, a human being can only have a social circle of 150 people to keep tabs on. Any more than that and the full understanding of the group washes away.

Also, we understand now, is that number of close friends cannot go above ten people. You cannot physically keep communication with more people than that.

That means that you need to choose those ten people. And you better choose wisely as those people will define who you are and who you will be in the future.

Look at your friends and ask yourself, do I want to be like them in 10 years? If your answer is yes, then you are on the right track. If your answer is no, then you got some thinking to do and hard decisions to make.

The most important thing is to always stay true to yourself. Doesn't matter the circumstances, you have to understand what is the path that you need and want to follow. That way, the people that surround you to help you will come themselves.

As always, I hope that you got something useful out of my post. Remember, agree to disagree.

Start now. Get Perfect later.

Klim Y