Take the Stairs, Not the Escalator Cover

Take the Stairs, Not the Escalator

When there’s an escalator with stairs next to it, which option do you take? I take the stairs. It seems like a small thing, but it’s a big deal. Embedded in this little, seemingly innocuous decision — do you walk or do you stand? — is a whole way of looking at the world.

People on the escalator lose time, momentum, and energy. They choose to wait then they could be choosing to do something. Of course, at times waiting is the right choice. Sometimes, you can use a bit of rest. Or enjoy the moment of quiet with your partner.

Most of the people on the escalator, however, don’t stand because it makes sense to stand right now. They stand because it’s their default to wait. They stand because they hope the world will magically carry them to where they want to go.

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7 Signs of True Wealth

We think of wealth in absolute terms — $1 million, $10 million, $1 billion — but the truth is wealth is relative.

Many people who achieve a high net worth number find they somehow still lack the freedom it should provide. Even if you build the habits to earn $1m/year, if you pair them with habits that cost $1.2m/year, you’re still in the red. You’re rich, but you’re not wealthy. You have money, but you’re not free.

That’s what wealth is really about. Freedom. Since wealth is relative, so is freedom. Freedom doesn’t come with a fixed price tag.

It depends on where your money comes from in relation to where it goes and how much of it flows through either channel. It depends on how much time and energy you spend acquiring it, and whether you use it to buy things that will require more time and energy in the future — or return some of those to you.

If you say you want wealth and can openly admit that you want to make a lot of money, that’s a great first step. You can’t demonize what you desire. Your subconscious won’t help you get there.

However, if you can’t think of any particular reason why you need whatever number’s in your head, except for a fancy and leisurely lifestyle, which, by the way, everyone wants, chances are, what you really want is freedom — and you could have that for a lot less.

A while ago, James Clear put out a great tweet on what true wealth — true freedom — looks like. I thought about his list of signs, and added some of my own.

Think about which of these you want, which of them you already have, and who you know who exhibits these patterns. Think about what it’d take to achieve them, and you’ll see you’re much closer to wealth than you think.

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12 Lasting Values For an Uncertain World

On May 1st, 2019, an event took place in Japan that hadn’t happened for over 200 years: The Emperor abdicated in favor of his son.

When a new emperor is crowned in Japan, he is presented with the Imperial Regalia as part of the ceremony. The regalia are three sacred treasures, meant to both legitimize and empower the ruler of Japan. They consist of the Sword of Courage, the Jewel of Benevolence, and The Mirror of Wisdom.

The ceremony isn’t public, and only priests and the emperor see the regalia, so no one knows what they look like, and no known photographs exist. However, when Emperor Naruhito succeeded his father this May, the press was allowed to document a brief, silent, public-facing variant of the handover process.

Emperor Naruhito takes possession of the jewel, sword, and two state seals — Image via NBC

If you look closely at the image, you’ll see one of the three holy items is missing: The Mirror of Wisdom, Yata no Kagami. As with their appearance, no one knows the exact location of the regalia, but the mirror is guessed to be hidden in a shrine some 300 miles away from Tokyo.

There are over 150,000 shrines in Japan. According to the 22 ranking system, the Ise Grand Shrine in the Mie Prefecture is the highest, holiest of them all. Supposedly, this is where the Mirror of Wisdom resides.

As if all this wasn’t fascinating enough, the shrine itself is also shrouded in mystery — and a singular tradition: Every 20 years, the people of Ise tear down the shrine’s two main buildings and rebuild them. The underlying idea is that “rebuilding renders sanctuaries eternal,” and that the impermanence of everything is nothing to be feared.

Of course, such a monumental undertaking comes with a plethora of problems. For one, there are only 500 miyadaiku — the kind of carpenter who can build such ancient structures — left in all of Japan. Then, there’s the issue of getting not just enough wood, but the right wood and having it available in time. In times of economic crisis, financial aid is a problem, as are criticisms of the whole thing being a waste of time and money.

Most of all, with 20 years between each reconstruction, a whole new set of problems will have arisen by the time the shrine is next rebuilt — and a whole new group of people will have to deal with them. It all begs the question: When will it end? When will the people of Ise reach a point where holding on to their tradition just isn’t possible anymore?

The answer — and this is where you and I can learn something — is never. As long as the people choose tradition, they will find a way. They have done so for the past 1,300 years. Until today, the Grand Shrine of Ise has been rebuilt 63 times. Every rebuild was different, and each came with its own set of problems, but the process is not about rebuilding some wooden hut — it’s about the values the people of Ise uphold and how there’s always a way to do so if they’re flexible in how to live them.

This is why having values is so important. Why you and I must choose our values. Values provide us with a sense of continuity in a world where none exists. They allow us to make sense of, form, and tell a story bigger than ourselves, and that story fends off the chaos of a world that attacks us with unfairness, irrationality, and lack of meaning.

I have spent a lot of time thinking about my values. I’ve come up with 12 that are dear to my heart, that provide me with a sense of stability in both the best and the worst of times.

I can spot many of them in the good people of Ise and their tradition, and, while each of them stands on its own, stacking them together creates a foundation that makes it easier to embrace all of them at once.

Courtesy of Japan’s most fascinating tradition, here are 12 lasting values for an uncertain world.

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The 5 Best Decisions I Ever Made

Three weeks ago, I graduated from Technical University of Munich with a Master’s degree in Management & Technology.

I’m not wearing the gown in this picture yet, but it’s the favorite one I took with my parents that day:

That day, November 29, 2019, marked the end of a very long journey for me — and the beginning of a new one.

It was the end of nearly ten years of fighting, struggling, learning, failing, repeating, but always continuing my way through the German academic system.

It was also the first day of the rest of my life as a full-time writer.

See how I said that without even blinking?

Ten years is a long time. While I was constantly second-guessing myself, wondering about the teaching methods, the practicality, the purpose, and the kind of career and life academia would give me later on, I also used that decade to do something about it.

That same day, Nov 29, also happened to be Black Friday. While I was out with my parents, at the ceremony, having dinner with my friends and later partying at a club, my website made over $2,000.

$2,000 in a single day.

Granted, it was the best day of the year, but still. That’s pretty damn amazing.

My name is Niklas Göke. I’m 28 years old. The year I finished grad school, I made over $100,000. I’ve never held a normal job, and I hope I never will.

Every day, I feel grateful that I get to do what I love, that it pays my bills, and that I’m in control of my time. I live a very happy life.

It’s not perfect. I have problems, issues, things to work on with myself and others. But I feel I’m in the best position I could possibly be to have a wonderful, fulfilling future.

These are the five best decisions I’ve made in my life thus far.

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Choose To See Projects, Not Problems

She was in her 50s, I think. A lady with red hair, seated across the aisle. For a brief moment in time, about 45 minutes, we shared the same destination — and thus the same train.

Except for her fiery mane, nothing hinted at her remarkable energy. She was plain and rather sturdy. But as soon as she talked, you knew she was fierce.

Unfortunately, she dedicated all of that ferocity to raising complaints, none of which her friend was in any capacity to solve. They might have been nurses; granted, a tough work environment by any measure. But the way she spoke of her workplace, it felt like a place wholly without solutions. Just problems.

“He promised he’d give us more people, but then he broke his word last-minute.”

“They can’t change the rules like that, that reporting policy is ridiculous.”

In many countries, mine included, being a nurse is a tough, underpaid job. There’s much to improve, no doubt. But in blowing off steam for the entire train ride, the redheaded caretaker fundamentally neglected her job: She merely exhausted both herself and her friend.

Often, venting is our habit of last resort. We feel helpless. As if we’ve tried everything. Like there’s nothing else left we can do. Of course, that’s never quite the case. There’s always something else we can do.

But, sometimes, we’re too close to the to-do list to see it. Sometimes, we have to take a step back — a step up, even — and find a new perspective.

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6 Social Norms That Make No Sense

When you’re a child, the whole world is a blank canvas. Every situation you walk into is a sandbox, waiting for you to shape it in your imagination.

As early as kindergarten or elementary school, that sandbox is turned into a cage. Adults pluck metal bars into the ground from above, like Zeus throwing thunderbolts from Mount Olympus. The bars are rules and every single one takes away a little of that blankness.

At first, we laugh. We don’t understand. We bend the bars into a jungle gym and climb on it. But with every slap on our wrist, we dare a little less. Until we’re fully conditioned. Sworn in to society’s code of conduct.

“We spend the first year of our children’s lives teaching them to walk and talk and the next 18 telling them to shut up and sit down.” — Neil deGrasse Tyson

Screw that. I want my blankness back. I want to look at life with fresh eyes and an open, un-opinionated mind. Not do things because “we’ve always done them this way.” Half the time, society’s unwritten rules don’t even make sense.

Just think about the following six things. Try not to scratch your head.

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Which Word Rules Your Life Right Now?

Having spent close to three months in Rome, Liz Gilbert comes to a useful if sobering conclusion: the Eternal City is lovely, but not hers to live in. Unable to put her finger on why, her Italian friend Giulio offers a curious theory:

“Maybe you and Rome just have different words.”

“What do you mean?”

He said, “Don’t you know that the secret to understanding a city and its people is to learn — what is the word of the street?”

Then he went on to explain, in a mixture of English, Italian and hand gestures, that every city has a single word that defines it, that identifies most people who live there. If you could read people’s thoughts as they were passing you on the streets of any given place, you would discover that most of them are thinking the same thought. Whatever that majority thought might be — that is the word of the city. And if your personal word does not match the word of the city, then you don’t really belong there.

The two then debate the words of various cities. Giulio is convinced that Rome’s word is ‘sex,’ which would explain Liz’s out-of-place-ness — she’d decided she wouldn’t have any while she was there. The Vatican’s word is ‘power,’ he says, and in Naples, it’s ‘fight.’ Meanwhile, Liz suggests the word of New York City is ‘achieve,’ which is similar, albeit different, to Los Angeles’s ‘succeed,’ while her friend from Stockholm claims the word there is ‘conform.’

But then Giulio asks Liz the next-most-obvious, yet really difficult question:

“What’s your word?”

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Never Travel To Fall In Love

Every time a girl far away tells me to visit, I start to dream.

“Maybe, this is it. Maybe, all I have to do is board a plane.”

I would book a ticket to paradise, and then I’d find you. It would be my big expedition, my grand journey. I’d search for you slowly, but — as it did for all great explorers — the discovery would happen all at once.

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I Spent My 20s in College Libraries and Came Out With a Career

I’d love to tell you that, to me, the library has always been a magical place – but it wasn’t.

Having grown up in a pile of books in a home where the walls were already lined with literature, library visits were rare and, often, disappointing. Our local, small-town book collection didn’t feel as refined as the one we had at home and due to funding issues, the place itself always seemed to teeter on the brink of foreclosure.

Today, you can get most books rather cheaply right from your couch, but there are still many reasons to go to the library beyond selection and price. Sadly, I never found those reasons when I was younger.

But when I started college, all of that changed. I’ve spent the majority of my 20s in campus libraries and, to this day, they’re the only kind of office I know. As it turns out, the library is more than a place of knowledge and wonder.

If you want to shape, even invent your own career, it’s a factory of dreams.

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What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20 Years Old

When I was 21, I learned that following someone else’s path often leads to misery. Not necessarily because it’s a bad path, but because you’ll always regret not making the choice yourself.

When I was 22, I learned that you can travel the whole world without finding yourself. After you come back, you’ll still be you. You can only invent yourself. But that you can do anywhere. Even without moving an inch.

When I was 23, I learned that life only starts when you do. You can plan and dream and wait all you want, but no one’s going to come and kick your butt into gear. You have to commit to something. Only then will the world start coming to you.

When I was 24, I learned that you can’t change a single person’s mind. All you can do is live your life, stand for something, and hope it inspires those around you. Because they think you’re worth watching and it makes them think.

When I was 25, I learned that when everyone tells you you’re wrong, it’s likely because you’re not finished. If you believe in something, give it time. It might be the only difference between you and those who’ve failed before you.

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