Make Yourself Obsolete

We all want to feel important and needed, but are we really?

For every profession I look at, I find myself wondering how necessary it really is.

Many of us are not truly working from the deepest, most serious part of our hearts.

Instead, we see it as just a job, just a way to make some money, just a temporary station on the way to something better.

Ask yourself, when something goes wrong with your work, do you care about this deeply? And if you do, is it because you truly care, or just because you worry that others will think less of you? Be honest and sincere here with your thoughts. I am asking you to reflect on these questions, not to feel the need to get defensive.

A few months ago, I spoke with someone in the Education field interested in developing a better curriculum for her students. I told her that she would succeed when the student no longer needed the teacher.

I felt that this was not what she was expecting to hear.

I advised her to make her job unnecessary.

Why would I do that?

I’m not sure it’s a success when students graduate to need another teacher, and another, and another. I’ve often heard that students decided to pursue the next level, whether it’s to a bachelor’s degree, master’s, or even a Ph.D. because they didn’t know what else to do.

Is that worthy? Is that success? Or is it futility?

On the one hand, ongoing learning is honorable. On the other, we keep learning more and more stuff and not having much to show for it.

Is it the contents in our minds that are valuable, or the power we have to make something happen in the real world? Many of us have been led astray or forgotten which of these actually mattered.

No one wants to hear that their job should be made obsolete. No one wants to think that success is in finding a way to make your job unnecessary.

We want to hear that we are essential, that society needs us, that society would crumble without our involvement. But that simply is not the case.

We need doctors so badly, you may say. Sure, but isn’t that because we have neglected our health, to the point that we have outsourced its care rather than taken responsibility for it?

The most common “solutions” offered are medicines, which to some degree, act as poisons with their side effects.

We need teachers so badly, you may say. Sure, but isn’t that because we never taught students to think from the beginning? We led them to become reliant on digesting specific curriculums and memorizing them, only to forget most of it anyway. And the material they remembered would become obsolete in a few years.

The most common “solutions” offered are more degrees and more courses, often with no clear path toward careers. And for the ones that lead to careers, there is no guarantee that such careers will still exist in a few years.

When the “solutions” keep us reliant on needing more and more “solutions” from the same place, are they truly solutions?

I have no problem with doctors or teachers. I have merely used these as examples. I could have used any other profession.

For any career I can think of, the motivation of that job is to keep you locked in. There is never a true solution to any problem. It’s just a treadmill that keeps you running but staying in place at the end of the day.

Whether conscious and done purposely or not, it seems to be a consistent theme across most jobs. The client becomes an eternal source of revenue – always needing to come back for something more.

We never arrive at some desirable end point. There is just this empty feeling of needing more.

I don’t expect anyone to take today’s lesson seriously. I expect you to read this and continue about your job the same way you always have, and I can’t blame you for that either.

You are one piece of a much larger system. If you talk to your boss tomorrow and tell him: “I realized we’re just running our clients in circles here, and I think I know a way to get their problems fully resolved, so they never have to come back,” you’ll probably get fired on the spot.

There is no profit in true solutions.

We fear becoming obsolete the most, but perhaps it was what we needed all along.

Somewhere, in the Amazon rainforest, there was probably a panacea (cure-all) plant that would have cured everything. And it doesn’t matter because it would have made no profit for anyone. The only profit would have been to destroy the plant to avoid competitors, make it into a patentable drug, and then sell it at a high price.

This is where we are.

We are more interested in making people need us rather than truly offering something worthy. The most worthy thing to offer would be that which would make us no longer relevant or needed.

No one wants to hear this.

I don’t even want to say it because I know no one wants to hear it.

No one will hire me to give presentations at a Fortune 500 Company to tell them that they should make themselves obsolete. They would laugh at the idea that they should look for ways to dismantle their job positions and the company they work for.

Instead, they are focused on growth.

But the more a company grows, the more it shows they haven’t solved anything. They have learned to make others reliant on them, is all.

But if [Insert famous product here] is so great, why do we need more of it? Why does it never satisfy us? Why do I need to keep buying it or keep doing it to get that feeling?

Mind you, this is a feeling which is fleeting and illusory anyway.

If it were truly the best product, I think I could buy it once, and I would never need it again.

Those products don’t exist, of course. The products and services we have are the ones that keep us chasing our tails, coming back for more, like strung-out addicts.

The “solutions” we have are those that work for a few minutes, maybe an hour, maybe even a day, but not much more. In a recent post, I said: “The problem with solutions is that they are all temporary fixes. No problem has ever been permanently fixed.”

Our whole lives, nothing ever worked, but we think: “Maybe this new product or service will do the trick.”

I hope my books and Thoughts help someone somewhere, but I don’t want anyone to feel like they need me, my books, or my Thoughts.

My goal is not to keep you on the line, needing more.

Some of the “best” writers out there are actually the worst. If I read someone’s blog post, and it’s so great, why would I feel the need to read all their books and posts? If they were so great, I wouldn’t need to. If they were that good, I could read an article or two, get the message I needed, and never return to them again.

But that is exceedingly rare.

These days, I am writing everything I feel the need to so that it wouldn’t matter if I were to die. Even if I die, you can still access all that I thought was ever worth saying.

There isn’t this sense of “I must write 100 books or 1,000 articles.” That is irrelevant. The point is, did I say everything I needed to say, to the point that if lightning struck me dead one of these days, it wouldn’t matter?

Did I make myself obsolete? If so, then that was a success in my book.

Again: I don’t need you to need me. If you can click away from this site, and never return and be better for it, then I have succeeded.

Here is a quick example of how making oneself obsolete can lead to success:

A friend of mine had a Master or Guide in his life. He provided direction and words of wisdom regularly. One day, that Master decided to move on. My friend had often received good counsel and friendship and was saddened by his departure. But after this, my friend grew immeasurably. He started to realize that he did not need that Master at all. Rather than following or abiding by the lessons taught, he was paving his own way. In being left Masterless, he was now finding the Master within.

The Master, Guide, Parent, or Teacher who can leave and make you something better for it is the truly worthy one. Don’t misunderstand me to condone abandoning anyone. Only you can decide the point where it is better to walk away, or give space, or leave and never come back. But know whether you do this selfishly or selflessly.

Make yourself obsolete. Make it so that even if you vanished, the world would somehow become better for it.

We risk being made (or revealed to be) obsolete by the natural order of things every day. We might as well do it ourselves.

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Today’s post may be a heavy dose of Truth for some of us. If you would like to dig deeper into Your Life’s Truth, you may wish to read a book I just published, Your Personal Truth: A Journey to Discover Your Truth, Become Your True Self, & Live Your Truth.

You can read the book on Amazon and other major retailers.

Remember Who You Are

Today I would like to share an excerpt from my book, Your Personal Truth: A Journey to Discover Your Truth, Become Your True Self, & Live Your Truth.

Remember Yourself

“Remember who you are and where you come from; otherwise, you don’t know where you are going.”
— Karolína Kurková

How can we remember who we are? The best way to do this is to listen to your heart. Now the key is to consider what that means. Essentially, the real you is not what we see, nor all that you have been taught to think and do. There is a deeper part of yourself.

I believe many of us get used to going against our spirit, and we have to remember who we are. This is easier said than done.

I have come to think that part of our human journey is that we lose ourselves along the way. Many well-meaning people in our lives teach us so much that we may lose our core, authentic self in time. We develop obsessions—whether making money, seeking fame, having a perfect figure, or an addiction to buying stuff or playing games. This is where the world is steering us, away from ourselves.

The modern world is excellent at filling our lives with distractions that do not necessarily lead to a truthful, meaningful place.

Notice that animals have powerful drives, which we call instincts. To me, instinct is just knowing who you are. You know that when something happens, you react in a certain way, and you don’t need to question it because it is a deep drive inside yourself—it is you. Yet, when placed in zoos, animals start to lose their instincts. Animals that may have had a killer instinct can lose it. They can lose who they are, trapped behind bars. This is because the zoo is an artificial environment, holding back their true, wild selves.

Interestingly, I have come to think that humans also have a wild side that has been lost. It makes sense, of course, for society to avoid any part of ourselves that may cause havoc or violence, especially without any good reason. But as all animals have a wild side, and we are animals, perhaps we have this side to ourselves too, and it is neglected.

As part of our domestication on becoming human, we go to school and obey a teacher’s instructions. Then, later on, most of us go to work and obey our boss’s instructions. If we are promoted to management, we continue to follow the lead manager’s instructions. We are taught from the earliest phases in our lives that we must respect order. We are just a tiny puzzle piece in a much bigger puzzle.

If we had a wild side, we tended to lose it. But it’s not a matter of “if.” Just look at young children and how wild and carefree they can be. Perhaps without society to teach them to be civilized humans, they would have grown into wild adults.

Think back: If you stepped out of line in your youth at any time, someone was there to correct you and show you the error of your ways. I can still recall being a child and constantly hearing the words “single-file line.” Of course, in elementary school, teachers said this to remind us to walk in a precise, straight line on the way to the bathroom. They did not want to see disorder.

And so we learned to stay in line, to be orderly, follow instructions, and the wild parts of us were stamped out. Maybe some of this is good, but perhaps not all of it.

If we can learn to appreciate the wild nature in the world, why shouldn’t we enjoy it in ourselves? Why shouldn’t we appreciate the wild side of humanity? Must we follow the rules and instructions perfectly all of the time? You may explore such ideas as you figure out your truth.

Every day we are led along certain paths. Our teachers showed us that we had to follow their instructions as they reminded us to “stay in line.” We are adults now, but perhaps not much has changed. We don’t talk back to superiors, say something that could make someone feel uncomfortable, or laugh at inappropriate times. This is just what adults do (or don’t do).

Consider this: Do you deny parts of who you are just to follow the expected order? Is that order worth it? Or are you making a personal sacrifice?

If you choose to deny your true nature every day, you may eventually find that you do not know who you are anymore. You may have been following the paths others laid out for you for so long. For example, those paths the people around you believed to be good and encouraged you to go on. Perhaps all that this will accomplish is introduce falseness in your life and lead you away from your truth.

Ask yourself: Have I forgotten who I truly am? Have I been masquerading as someone that I am not? Am I an imposter in my own life?

No one can answer such questions except for you. Only you know if you are where you were meant to be. Even if you are not where you wanted to be, then the key question is whether you are doing everything you can to find that path that you were meant to be on.

Are you committed to being your true self? Is this something you are willing to struggle for? To take seriously? Or will you calmly lose the battle for yourself and allow your mind and body to be guided wherever the forces of the world happen to take you?

If you have forgotten who you were, how can you recapture yourself and remember? You may contact childhood friends or family members that you have not seen in a long time. Or you could get in touch with some lost beliefs, values, or desires that you had long ago and had set aside.

When was the last time that you felt completely free to be your true self? Were you a child? A teenager? A young adult? Was it decades ago, a few years ago, or months ago? Is it just on the weekends when you’re alone? Or does it only happen when you are around close friends and family?

Sometimes remembering isn’t enough, and you must get in touch with who you were, at that last point where you can recall having been your true self. Maybe you have lost touch with family—and you must visit them. Perhaps you have lost touch with a topic or activity you loved, and you must do this again. Or maybe you have denied a part of your personality to please someone, and it is time that you go back to being your true self.

Remembering who you are doesn’t just mean revisiting memories. It involves recapturing who you are for yourself. When you remember, you can find your true self inside yourself, in your mind, and then you will know the right path for you.

Key Questions (Remember Yourself)

1. Did you used to be a different person? If so, did you change for better or worse?

2. Do you find that pretending, lying, or exaggerating is a regular part of your life? If so, why are you covering up who you are?

3. When you were a child, what excited you the most? Do you still gain some pleasure in this?

4. Have you stifled a part of yourself that is wild, rebellious, or spontaneous to keep the peace?

5. Do you feel like the true you is different from what you have chosen to show the world?

Take Action Today (Remember Yourself)

Action: Consider the last time that you felt like things were going your way. You were happy, you were loved, or you felt generally fulfilled in life. Embrace this positive feeling that you had at that time in your life. Then, ask why you felt that way. Was it because of the people you had in your life? Was it because of a particular event that happened? Had you just achieved a life goal?

If you struggle to think of such a time, it could help to talk to an old friend to discuss some memories or to look through some old photos.

When you have your memory, relive the experience in your mind. Consider: did you have a positive feeling because you had so much potential then? Was it a simpler time? Were you more sure of what you wanted?

Is there a way to recapture that feeling? Instead of just recalling a memory, can you revisit a location that connects to your heart? Or can you contact people who inspired you or perform an activity you used to love but had given up on?

Reason: The goal here is simply to remember yourself. It’s easy to forget who we are and how we got to the point we are at now. Sometimes, we need to step back and remember when things were going our way and we felt like our true selves.

Tip: Instead of just reconnecting with an experience in your mind, can you recreate it? Can you play the music that reminds you of a time and place? If something inspired you in the past, can you draw from that same source once again?

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If you are interested in reading more of Your Personal Truth, the book is available on Amazon and other major retailers.

To Pursue Truth

What would it mean to pursue Truth?

To pursue truth would mean to see that there is a personal element to Truth, as, in the end, only you can decide whether something is true or not. Someone else can tell you a “truth,” but if it is not true for you, then it is irrelevant. To think of this another way, something may be “true,” but only in a particular context that does not affect you.

To pursue truth would mean to open yourself to the idea that any assumption you begin with has wrongness to it.

Assumptions lead to assumptions. For example: “If I can assume A, then I can assume B, which leads me to assume C.” This is how we often think, which piles assumptions on top of assumptions. Yet, we have an air of certainty behind our words, which is falseness.

To pursue truth would mean to see that what you want to be true and what is indeed true are not the same.

It would mean to see that the ideas you obsess over do not correspond to the reality around us. The past is an illusory story we tell ourselves, rather than fact. Our desires or anxieties are thinking that something good or bad will happen when it has not yet happened and may not happen.

It would mean seeing that who we think we are and who we are is not the same. Are you defined by a set of actions or thoughts which were handed to you? No. Who we think we are is just a story and not the truth.

To pursue the truth would mean that you are willing to go on a path that leads you away from comfort and happiness if that is where it will lead. To feel otherwise will mean resisting truth, which will ultimately lead you away from it.

If you long for the truth, you will lead yourself to it or be led to it. However, your longing for it must be greater than your willingness to give in to distraction, nonsense, and delight.

The pursuit of truth will mean a return to something you once had and have lost along the way. We can aim to retain the aspects of truth that we have not fully lost while seeking to regain the ones that were lost. This would be a starting point.

It will mean perceiving that a tone of voice can ring false, a single word can ring false, and so can an intention. Even an action can be done falsely. We can train ourselves to see such falseness, which will allow us to see truth.

The pursuit of truth is actually to learn to see the falseness within and all around us.

In the pursuit of truth, we will learn to say to ourselves, “that is false” so many times per day that we will be surprised to see that there are few human moments where the truth is present.

To pursue truth would mean to let go of such notions: ideas present us with reality, people are valuable sources of insight, and the material world is what it seems to be.

To pursue the truth will mean to see that anything less than entirely true cannot be said to be true.

It would mean to let go of the idea that the masses, your neighbors, your family, or friends have grasped truth.

It would mean to look inward, to stop looking for someone to follow, and start on your path that no one else could have guided you toward.

In your pursuit of truth, you will find that your thoughts have led you astray – the thinking that you have used all your life was not conducive to revealing truth. Instead, it set you up for self-deception.

From the beginning, we were set up to fail in the pursuit of truth.

In seeking truth, you will find that you must be sincere, as anything else would be a lie. If you acknowledge the challenge of being sincere, then that is the beginning of sincerity.

The above ideas cannot lead us to truth, shine a light on the path, nor do anything for us unless we are ready to let the truth in.

But if we are ready, awareness of the truths stated will help us steer ourselves more toward truth and away from falseness.

Even if we become aware that we have been unable to grasp these ideas fully and have been led astray in our lives, this can be the beginning of our journey toward truth.

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If you are ready to pursue your unique path to truth and understanding, you may wish to read Your Personal Truth: A Journey to Discover Your Truth, Become Your True Self, & Live Your Truth.

You can read the book on Amazon and other major retailers.