Today is one of those post where I'm organizing my thoughts and trying to build up the ability to connect what I'm feeling with where everyone is at
We all have limiting beliefs, some story we tell ourselves that keep us from reaching wherever it is that we want to go, or that slows us down or throws extra hurdles in front of us.
For many people it's that they aren't good enough. They think that there is something fundamental lacking from them that they will need in order to reach a certain goal. Maybe it's innate skill. Maybe it's rigid ideas about qualifications. Maybe it's the tendency to rely on others and avoid taking the initiative. Maybe they feel part of their personality doesn't match.
Often times there is a just a lack in the belief that that person has any influence over anything at all, which is always untrue, but for someone living in that paradigm, it might as well be true.
The stories we believe in have immense power over us, and if we don't actively rewrite them, they hold us back from becoming all we can become.
I used to have those beliefs that I wasn't good enough, and I changed my beliefs and now I think I'm pretty awesome. I feel capable and I can see myself improving at all the things I need to improve in. I also see how far I've come.
There is still one major blockage as far as the programs that lead me to see the world as I see it. I still think the world isn't ready for me. That's the story I'm stuck on. I think it won't welcome me. And I think that because that's been my experience.
I was early to almost any major world shifting trend you could think of. If I wasn't an active participant and supporter, at least I could tell you which trends would change things. Despite that, I never really got any credit for noticing what others didn't. Nobody came to see me as a trendsetter. No one trusted my judgement any more than they had before. Most didn't even realize I had been early to the trend. I haven't been able to establish myself as the curator I see myself as.
Here are some examples.
Many of the bands I liked as a kid were doing their first tours around the country to empty venues. Fast forward 2-3 years and so many of them had become household names.
I used P2P downloading software and torrents before most people knew what they were and before any of the scandals surrounding them.
I joined facebook when there were only a few thousand members and remember thinking that it was the beginning of a new era (and yeah, I already had myspace and friendster, I was early to those too).
I moved to East Asia and discovered lots of things here before the rest of the world did.
Finally there's crypto and web3 which I may have been slow to join, but I was very aware of even in 2011.
None of these are flexes. Just statements to prove a point.
I don't have any special ability to predict the future. If I'm more perceptive, it's merely because I don't buy into the noise and pay more attention to my own curiosity and instincts. I don't set out to find trends before they become popular either, and I think to do so would blind them from sight.
Curiosity is enough.
I'm always curious. Internet money that goes up 100x in a few years? Sure it sounds suspicious but what the hell is it? Let me understand it. Some new music genre comes up twice in conversation. I take a listen and it's not my thing, but I listen a little longer cause I want to understand. Some shifting values in society? I may not agree, but I want to understand.
I don't listen to Trap music or Vocaloid, but I was well aware of the culture impact of such things before they happened because I was curious enough. I don't get involved in conspiracy theory communities, but I always have an awareness of what kind of ideas are floating around. I'm curious.
Being early to things sounds like a flex to most people, because it's away to assert status in circles where everyone follows the trends. But when you exist outside of the world of followers, this kind of foresight doesn't always help you. There isn't always proof that you were early, and if you try and create proof, it's kind of like "so?"
There's a difference between seeing a trend early and actually investing in it, and an even bigger gap between that and helping to build on it.
If you are in crypto for 5-10 years you can see pretty clearly what I'm talking about. By the time everyone is talking about something, it's time to sell. You don't get any points for knowing about a trend before it got popular. You only win if you ride the wave, and you don't get any assurance that it's a wave worth riding and you might be too early and you might be too late, and it might be the wrong wave.
What most people still don't realize though is that we can make the waves bigger if we get involved enough. We can help add value to something and by investing our time and energy, we increase the chances that the wave breaks and that we can ride it.
This idiom has gotten a little far away from what I wanted to express, so I may have to revisit these thoughts again tomorrow. This was not a reference to crypto at all, and culture and ideas and crypto have a lot in common but they aren't exactly the same.
With ideas and culture, it's more about conviction in what you believe. That's the investment. The risk isn't as clear cut as a monetary value. The risk is more, "Will people still want to work with me if I dress this way and speak honestly?" "Can I shift the culture enough to where I can get away doing this and not suffer any negative consequence?"
The kind of trends I want to build up on is unfiltered creativity that is sculpted to have maximum impact, not through shock but through resonance....or a turn away from formal education, or the idea that we owe anything to anyone, or new ways of exploring the balance between individuality and collective consciousness. I want to normalize talking peacefully and having fun with people who have wildly different ideas and beliefs from you and learning what you can from each other without an insistence on changing each others minds or proving each other wrong.
Like in crypto, more support gives more momentum to a culture. Things like tattoos and nose piercings or men wearing nail polish or traditional religious values, whatever it is...if you find your people, you can make it work, but you gotta have enough conviction to find your people, and without building enough support, that culture might not survive.
Originally I wanted to write about how this belief that people weren't ready had held me back but in the end I couldn't get that far without getting too into the context about why that mattered. I hope tomorrow I can explore more about how the world IS ready for me and what I have to share, and how I'm starting to internalize that idea.
I guess the purpose of this post has changed. I've identified that Being early isn't a true flex, the real value and the real respect goes to those who build and try to make something succeed even before they know it's likely to succeed.
I'm on the right train, I just gotta let people know what we are doing and that we are leaving the station.