Day 12 - Are Your Thoughts Your Own?

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Felix Dennis once wrote, “Never trust conventional wisdom. It contains great nuggets of wisdom, but they lie alongside fool’s gold.” Conventional wisdom is rarely questioned. It becomes the default operating system people run their lives on.

From a very early age, most of us are placed onto a conditioned path built on these collective agreements. We absorb rules, expectations, and assumptions about how life is supposed to work, and we fall into line without ever consciously choosing them. While conventional wisdom is not inherently good or bad, it does have a very real effect on behaviour: it dampens initiative.

Rather than encouraging action, conventional wisdom offers socially acceptable reasons for inaction. It gives people permission to delay, to justify, and to explain away why now is not the right time. Over time, this produces a pattern where blame, excuses, and rationalisation replace responsibility and forward movement. Inaction feels reasonable because it is shared.

This conditioning also promotes lifelong sacrifice as a virtue. Work now, enjoy later. Obey first, question eventually. Stay in line, stay safe, and do not deviate too far from the path. This system is not designed to be malicious, and it is not necessarily wrong, but it is deeply limiting when viewed through the lens of purpose and personal fulfilment.

When you look closely, you have to ask whether this structure actually challenges you or guides you toward something meaningful. Does it help you develop clarity about who you are and what you want, or does it quietly channel you into predefined roles and outcomes that require very little conscious choice? More often than not, it does the latter.

Most of this conditioning operates through what can be described as the reflexive brain. Behaviour becomes automatic and habitual, driven by survival instincts rather than intentional thought. This part of the brain is fast, reactive, and ancient. It is excellent at keeping us safe, but it is not designed to help us live deliberately or purposefully.

True learning does not take place in this state. Real learning requires a purpose-driven mind, one that is self-directed and capable of reflection. It requires mental space, control over attention, and the freedom to choose rather than react. Most people never reach this stage because their mental energy is consumed by stress, worry, and constant low-level survival thinking.

As a result, many minds are not purpose-driven at all. They are scattered, reactive, and externally led. Direction is replaced by busyness, and movement is mistaken for progress. Without conscious direction, people drift rather than decide.

Real growth begins when you regain control over the activities of your own mind. When you are no longer driven purely by habit or fear, you can begin to choose intentionally. At that point, you are able to decide what the next best move is for you, not based on convention or expectation, but based on clarity, alignment, and purpose.

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