It Only Pays to Be Stubborn When You’re Right!
Today, celebrating my 40th birthday, it’s time to pass on a lesson I learned when I was about 19. I had just learned how to run a bike up in Sweden – more precisely in a small village called Blentarp. Somw very close friends at the time had decided it was time I learned how to run a bike. I had never needed it before because I always walked to and from school, and had never needed any bike. Even more so, it was probably my dad’s numerous stories about his bicycle career that had stopped rather abruptly after a bike injury that annoyed me so much, I didn’t quite fancy getting my body destroyed for life. Whatever motivated me, it was at least only then that I took the time to get this done when Alan said: “Why not get this as part of your knowledge bank?”
Well, why not? 🙂
I started, as probably anyone does, by learning BALANCE on a small road where it was a challenge to stay on balance. Going ‘downhill’ would never be a challenge because physics would take care of that. After a couple of days, that was in order. The afternoon on success day one was a small drive around this forest – and this is where I learned a lesson for life. At the very first turn RIGHT, I wanted to show off. Most teenagers want to show off, so why should this surprise anyone? I wanted to race – and I picked up speed… But as the turn came closer I simply couldn’t TURN the steering wheel. I hit a fence and met gravel!
I could speculate for the rest of my life as to what and why I couldn’t turn the steering wheel, but at least one lesson stuck with me, and that was that cocky people (such as myself) should never be stubborn unless they KNOW they’re right!
I have used this in many ways, later in life. If I know something is a fact such as X0 being 1 couldn’t be true when X equals 0 pays off because I had a friend who passed math at Georgia University who still claimed that was a definition. It was only when I found a math book that indeed confirmed that this is only true EXCEPT when X was 0 that he could see the common sense of this definition.
Simple matters, maybe. 🙂
But nonetheless, logic relates to the fact that either you KNOW something or you BELIEVE it. Don’t ever think you KNOW something when you only have superficial knowledge. If knowledge is superficial, be curious…
I became stubborn recently when I say the approximately 300 books I have on my shelves. I have read maybe 1/3 of these. Now, I have started a blog where I review books with ONE purpose in mind. Forcing me to read ALL books on my shelves. There is one rule: either it’s a keeper or it’s a throw-out. If I don’t read it, it WILL become a throw-out. because sometímes you need to throw challenges at yourself if you want to increase even a high IQ by forcing yourself to put action into your life.
So the question today you are welcome to comment on is: How have you challenged yourself, and how has this contributed to your life lessons?