How To Move Forward In Life With These 5 Simple Checks

People have a strong desire to fit in with a group. There’s a famous study where researchers found that when a group of people all gave the same wrong answer to a simple question, the people who weren’t in on the experiment would also give the same wrong answer, just to avoid looking “stupid.”

Even if they knew the “normal” answer was wrong, they still felt uncomfortable going against what everybody else was doing.

People often prefer for things to stay exactly as they are. This is called the “status quo bias.”

Staying “realistic” or “normal” feels like the “safe thing” to do because it helps them avoid feeling regret later.

Our brains often think that trying something new is scary because we might lose what we already have, and the pain of loss feels much stronger than the joy of reward.

Many parts of our lives have “defaults“, which are the standard rules or choices already picked for us.

When there is a “normal” way to do things — like working a 9-5 or going to school, work, then retiring at 65 — people often assume that is what they should do as well.

We mistakenly trust that the people who made these rules know what is best for us — which we should know, that is far from the truth.

Because picking a new path takes a lot of effort and thinking, it is often easier to just default to the “normal” choice.

Sometimes, if someone had a hard time in the past and couldn’t fix it, they might start to believe they are powerless.

This is called “learned helplessness.”

When this happens, a person might stop stop trying to change their life, even when they have a chance to actually make things better.

They stay “realistic” about their problems because they have lost the motivation to try anything else.

So when we say things like:

Back in elementary school and high school, I used to play basketball.

Where I grew up, playing basketball meant you were part of the “cool” crowd, so if you didn’t play ball, you weren’t anyone worth knowing.

All my friends and I did during recess was play basketball, or when we wanted to pass the time, we’d play.

When it came to basketball, I was shit.

I was never as good as my friends were at basketball and I was always forced to play anyway.

This had a huge effect on my self-confidence and also made me dread playing basketball to this day.

But of course, to “fit in” with my friend group, I would sort of force myself to play.

After not hanging out with these friends for years, I haven’t even touched a basketball and I couldn’t be happier.

Since then, I’ve learned that doing something you dread or are not good at just to fit in is stupid and now, I don’t give a shit what people think of my interests; they’re mine, not theirs.

Back in 2018, I was a heavy-pot-smoking, unemployed, smoke all day every day playing League of Legends individual.

And I was comfortable.

And looking back at it now, I’m shocked at how I used to live.

Quite literally, I’d wake up, take a bong hit, start a game, take another bong hit after the game ends, start a game…

And this would go on until I slept because I “needed” to smoke to go to sleep.

This was my “normal.”

I was also depressed.

Actually, I’m bipolar (among other things), and depression was part of it.

I still couldn’t get over my grandmother passing and I had just started getting help.

Anyway, around the Christmas holidays, I got a call from my cousin inviting me to a Christmas dinner.

So obviously, I had the status quo bias, hard.

I didn’t want things to change. I didn’t want change because of my learned helplessness.

But something in me decided to go, so I did.

That’s when I met my niece for the first time after she learned how to walk and talk.

She was super shy at first, but then we were playing with her stuffed toy she had.

She was having so much fun, outta nowhere, she asked if I could sleep over their place.

My cousin thought it would be nice for me to babysit her because she works as a flight attendant, so I said sure.

This started a chain of events.

This resulted in me spending the entire first half of 2019 babysitting my niece.

I couldn’t smoke, so I stopped smoking.

And my game wasn’t as fun when I didn’t smoke, so I slowly stopped playing, too.

This made me start watching Netflix.

Which made me watch some documentary of bad things happening to kids from someone they know, like a neighbour or something.

This made me paranoid and forced me to start working out again for fear that someone would snatch my niece and I’d be helpless to stop it.

Around June/July, I got a message from my cousin in Korea and he said to fly over.

So I did.

Worked out more, and for the first time, actually learned about diet and other workouts.

When I came back, this gave me the confidence to start dating.

And that’s how I met my now wife.

If I did what I felt was “normal” — not wanting to change how my lifestyle was — I would’ve missed out on the happiest almost 7 years of my life.

I’m glad I followed my instinct to go to that Christmas dinner instead of normally wasting my life away.

Growing up, we were fed this default hubbub about getting good grades in school, graduating from a good school, getting a good job, and working that job until we retire at 65.

As you can tell, I don’t agree with that.

It was just considered “normal” and nobody questioned it.

But back then, I bought into it too.

After high school, I took a year off, but went to college soon after.

Didn’t complete it, but because it was just “the way things were supposed to be,” I continued to go to college, taking different courses.

It just doesn’t seem right with me that we’re not considered “old enough” to legally drink, but we’re old enough to make a ten to hundreds of thousands of dollars decision to borrow from the government for school.

I feel like that’s borderline child exploitation.

Well, at the same time, I was also working.

Couldn’t hold down a single job for longer than a few months.

Looking back at my resume, apparently though, I was able to stay at one job for 3 years!

Which was a surprise to me because I have absolutely no memory of those 3 years.

Anyway, none of that “normal” stuff worked out for me.

It wasn’t until I first learned about earning a living online in 2018, I felt this was what I was looking for all along.

But I quit after a few months after I got scammed out of a lot of money from a pretty well-known “guru.”

But starting again in 2021 was the second best decision of my life up until that point. (The first being to go to that Christmas dinner).

Couldn’t be happier about my decision.

The following will be simple checks.

If you feel like you’re stuck, unbeknownst to you, you chose to be there.

And if you find yourself falling victim to the “normal” ways of living or staying “realistic,” there’s a way to break out of that automatic way of thinking.

When something feels like the “obvious” choice… question it.

If you want to stop your brain from just following the crowd or staying stuck in old habits, you can try these simple checks:

First, just notice when your brain is trying to take the easy way out.

We often pick the “normal” choice only because it’s already there or to avoid the stress of making a real decision.

Once you realize you’re choosing something just because it’s the default, you can stop and think about it more carefully.