We each adopt life mottos from which we strive to build our lives. They can be as simple as No Bad Days or Honesty Is the Best Policy or as notorious as Wayne Gretsky's (Michael Scott's) You Miss 100% of the Shots You Don't Take. They can stem from philosophy, religion, pop culture, or the sayings our parents constantly repeated during our youth. We hang them up on our walls, place them on our cars as bumper stickers, and get them tattooed on our bodies. However deep, complex, or simple, our mottos tell the stories of who we were, who we are, and who we want to become. They give us insights into the choices we made in the past and serve to inspire the decisions we will make in the future.
Our mottos also serve a social purpose. Like the clothes we wear or the causes we advocate for, our mottos are pieces of our identity puzzles. We use them to express ourselves and align ourselves with the social world around us. The foundations and intentions of our mottos serve as an insight into our values, beliefs, and interests. This helps us to acquaint with and relate to others and can serve as a block in relationship building.
While useful motivation and social tools, mottos are not immutable. Our life mottos aren't meant to benchmark how perfectly we live our lives, but rather to serve as a daily inspiration to guide them. They are as unique as each of the individuals who adopt them, and most importantly, they are flexible. As we learn and grow and continue down our winding life journeys, our goals and aspirations change and the mottos which we live by adapt to reflect them.
It is important to evaluate our mottos every once in a while, for as much as they have the ability to inspire us, they also have the potential to become tools for detrimental rationalization. We shouldn't let commitments to happiness foster guilt for our moments of sadness and limit the range of our emotions. We shouldn't allow our dedication to challenging convention to drive unrealistic conspiracies. We shouldn't let our devotion to taking risks lead us to destructive life choices. Mottos are inspirations, guidelines, not absolutes from which we cannot stray. We shouldn't hold ourselves to unalterable mottos nor should we others.
The following are the unique philosophies that I have adopted at this moment in my journey. As a writer and a creator, I have sought to adopt mottos that promote learning, creativity, personal development, and an appreciation for the world and its diversity. They reflect my engagements with psychology and draw inspiration from the works of academics that I have interacted with in the past.
01 Seek Discomfort and Unfamiliarity
Our human nature compels us to avoid uncertainty and unfamiliarity by seeking comfort and safety. We minimize effort through heuristics and settle into the environments and phases of life that are easiest to navigate. We feel safe in knowing what to do, what to think, and in being able to predict what is to come next.
Contrary to this aspect of our nature, we as individuals grow and learn most when we abandon our bubbles of comfort. We learn not from being able to take mental shortcuts, but by being forced to observe the world and situations around us more attentively. When we immerse ourselves in the unfamiliar, we discover vibrant histories and ways of life that challenge our perspectives and change our perceptions of the space we occupy. These experiences empower us to think creatively, cultivate a deeper understanding of the world, and enable our ability to empathize with the realities of others.
Do not fear to be uncomfortable and uncertain, for when we embrace it we unlock the knowledge and experiences that have the potential to change our lives and inspire us to pursue greater adventures.
02 It's Our Duty to Challenge Convention
It's easy to get caught up in the routines of life and engage in practices for the sake of habit. It's uncomplicated to go along and believe in things just because they have always done that way, but sometimes we must challenge the status quo. When we fail to question habit and custom, we limit our potential to think creatively and innovate. Worse, our actions of habit can lead us to become blind to the effects they have on our lives and the lives of others. Our compliance with convention can lead us to blindly reinforce oppressive or inefficient practices.
Be conscious of habit and custom and do not be afraid to challenge it. We praise those in fields of the physical sciences who had the capacity to question conventions, such as Galileo who challenged the authority of the church in the name of scientific advancement. It's our duty to challenge convention, for many of the world's biggest atrocities and successes came at the inability and the ability to challenge convention respectively.
03 Surround Yourself with People You Wish to Be Like
The people whom we choose to surround ourselves with are reflections of who we were, are, and want to become. Today's modern professional and social environments significantly influence why and how we build relationships. Social networks and professional pressures turn our focus from building relationships of depth to cheap relationships of breadth and material value. Social media compels us to spotlight the quantity of our networks rather than the depth of those connections. Professional pressures compel us to overly focus on building networks that provide material value in the form of their potential to help our career advancement or success.
It is important that in this modern era, we do not let our material goals hinder us from surrounding ourselves with people who positively contribute to who we want to be in essence. We shouldn't forget to seek to surround ourselves with those who embody the qualities we wish to possess, for the presence of others naturally leads us to be more like them. We should invest in those who help us achieve our long-term goals, inspire our growth, and serve purposes beyond material value and superficial gratification. Seek relationships with people who challenge you, motivate you, and contribute to your long-term happiness and aspirations. These relationships take time and effort, but the long-term benefit far outweighs the instant gratification of cheap relationships.
04 Live Life Like a Traveler
When we travel, our perception of time and space changes. When we leave the comfort and familiarity of home and friends, we realize just how expansive and fascinating the world is and how little time we have to explore it. As a traveler, every day is an opportunity for laughing, learning, and living; for meeting new people and immersing ourselves in new experiences. We discover beauty in the mundane; in the daily activities that we often take for granted. Traveling opens our minds to life beyond our bubbles of comfort and daily routine and liberates us to become wide-eyed adventures with an unending curiosity for life.
Then we return home and our worlds once again become small and time becomes boundless and we spend our days failing to squeeze out everything life has to offer. We postpone plans and do the things that we enjoy most for the sake of routine and uninspiring obligations. We raincheck life by constantly telling ourselves that we will get around to living.
If traveling has taught me anything, it is that to live life is to seek and take advantage of the opportunities given to us for no other reason than because we have the chance to do so. We don't need expensive outings or long flights to enjoy and explore the world and its people. We can capture the essence of being a traveler in our daily lives. If we push ourselves to sacrifice a little routine and convenience we can discover adventure within our communities and the people we see every single day.
05 Seek Your Own Truths
The pace and complexity of the modern world around us lead us to tune out the intricacies of what goes on around us. The constant flow and unlimited accessibility of information force us to pick and choose what we engage with and how deeply we engage with it. Whether shopping, keeping up with news, or communicating with our networks, we use shortcuts to make navigating life easier. We use brand recognition to simplify our role as consumers, stereotypes to tailor our interactions with others, and figures of authority to benchmark the validity of information.
However, these shortcuts can hinder us from thinking abstractly in many situations where it is vital we do so. We form information bubbles that lead us to fall victim to fake news, propaganda, and dangerous patterns of confirmation bias. Ultimately, it can lead us to become disillusioned with the realities of our lives and the lives of others around us.
While not easy or effortless, we should strive to seek our own truths in life through inquiry; to make conscious efforts to read past headlines and hashtags and discover what lies between the lines. It obligates us to seek to surround ourselves with reliable sources, educate ourselves, and process information with an open and malleable mind. As technological trends lead us to a more complex world, more fake news, and constant immersion into environments of persuasion, it becomes more vital that we set out to seek our own truths.
The life mottos we adopt are powerful sources of influence. Like the clothes we wear or the music we listen to, are pieces of our identity puzzle: reflections of who we were and who we want to become. Like organizational missions or company values, our mottos play an instrumental role in defining who we are and our objectives.
While they serve a social purpose, we shouldn't seek to adopt mottos for the sake of satisfying the expectations of anyone but ourselves. Whether they are personal, professional, or artistic, we should seek to adopt mottos that motivate us to achieve our goals. Most importantly, we should adopt mottos that challenge and inspire us to be better.
I encourage you to take some time and consider your life mottos. Do you have some? Where do they come from? Are they a source of positive inspiration or detrimental rationalization?
I also invite you to share your mottos with others, for sometimes the inspiration we harness can serve as a spark of inspiration for others. Feel free to share a motto you have adopted in the comments section below, for who knows, maybe a few characters are just what another person needs to be inspired.
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