Learn to Think for Yourself: Define Success on Your Terms

It’s possible to spend years working toward a goal you never consciously chose.

We absorb ideas about education, careers, money, possessions, and success from our families, friends, culture, and social media. Some of those ideas are useful. Others become assumptions we carry without ever stopping to ask whether they’re true or whether they fit the life we want.

The problem is not that other people have opinions. The problem starts when we accept those opinions as facts and build our lives around them without examining them.

In this lesson, I explain why learning to think for yourself has made such a difference in my life. I share how I followed the traditional path of school, college, degrees, and a job before realizing that much of my definition of success had come from somewhere else. I also explain why money eventually stopped being my definition of success and became a tool for the freedom I actually wanted.

Thinking for yourself doesn’t mean rejecting every popular idea or accepting every unpopular one. It means asking better questions, examining what you believe, and intentionally deciding what success should look like in your life.

In This Lesson

·        Why it’s easy to spend years chasing goals you never consciously chose

·        How family, culture, and social media shape your definition of success

·        The question to ask before accepting an idea as true

·        Why education can be valuable without becoming the only path to success

·        How I changed my definition of success from a specific amount of money to freedom

·        Why money works better as a tool than as the definition of success

·        How to examine inherited beliefs and intentionally choose what matters to you

Watch the video or read the complete transcript below.

Learn to Think for Yourself

(Transcript edited for clarity.)

Hi, I'm Wes. Welcome to Learn to Think for Yourself.

I've got to warn you about this one. This is something I'm pretty passionate about.

I've got a nice outline here that we're going to cover today to keep me on track. But this is one of those things where, because I'm passionate about it, I might wander off a little bit. Stay with me, because this is the most important thing I think I can share with anyone.

I've shared these things with my family, my children, and many, many people throughout my life. It's one of the things that's made the biggest difference in my life, and that is learning to think for myself. That's what I want you to think about today.

I want that to be what you get out of today right now: learn to think for yourself.

It's easy to spend years chasing goals that aren't yours.

Let me give you an example from my life.

When I grew up, here was the plan. This is what everybody told you: You go to school, then you go to college and get a degree, and then you get a good job based on your degree.

That was pretty much the common belief. That's what I was told. That's what everybody around me was told. That was the goal.

So that's what I did. I got decent grades in school, made it through, went to college, graduated, and got a job. I even went back to college later, got a bachelor's degree, and got an MBA, which was valuable.

But it wasn't until I eventually figured out that was someone else's goal, and not my goal, that things really started changing for me in my life.

That is not meant to tell you that you shouldn't go to school, shouldn't get a degree, or anything like that.

What the point is, is that you need to think for yourself and decide what you want to work towards.

Are you working on your goals and what you want to do in your life, or are you working on someone else's?

This goes much deeper than what you're doing or what you want to do. This also touches on what you're being told that you blindly accept.

What are you hearing that you think is right, even though you believe it's right? It's not because it's a fact.

I'm not going down a conspiracy theory path or anything like that. What I do want you to do is, the next time someone tells you something and you find yourself automatically accepting it as fact, stop for a second and think it through.

Is it really true, or is it because someone's told you it's true?

We absorb ideas about success from everyone around us: our family, our friends, the culture, and social media.

You go to social media and start looking around. You see all these people who appear to have this great life, these great cars, and these great houses. A lot of times, we feel like we need these exact same things to be successful.

But is that what success really means to you?

I told you that I was told or taught that I had to get that college degree. What I found is that, throughout my life, the things I've made almost all the money with have absolutely nothing to do with my college degree.

Even my master's degree, even my MBA, has by itself made me very little money. Almost all the money I've made is from other things or other skills I've developed.

I won't argue that the college education wasn't valuable, because it helped my mind get to the point where I could develop these other skills. I could learn other things that are profitable to me.

Again, I'm not telling you not to get an education. I'm telling you to think it through and do it because it's what you want to do.

I eventually realized that many of my assumptions about success weren't mine. They were put there by someone else, or I absorbed them from somewhere else.

My life became much more intentional when I started questioning what I believed instead of simply accepting it.

There are a few important things here.

One, don't reject ideas because they're popular. But also, don't reject ideas because they're unpopular. Reject ideas because you've thought them through and they're either good ideas or bad ideas.

How do I know this is true? That's the question you should ask all the time: How do I know this is true?

There are plenty of things you read, get told, or hear that are true. But there are plenty of things that are not.

You should build your life around examined beliefs.

You should examine your beliefs and why you believe them. Are your beliefs true, and not inherited from someone else or inherited from assumptions?

The most important decision you'll ever make deserves your thinking. Not because someone else said it. Not because everyone else believes it. But is it actually true? And is it actually true in a way that can help you accomplish the biggest goals you want to accomplish?

You should intentionally choose your definition of success instead of inheriting someone else's.

Let me give you an example.

For years and years and years, I had a number. That was the amount of money I needed to be successful, and I chased that and chased it and chased it.

Sometimes I'd make a lot of money, sometimes not so much. But it wasn't until I learned that success to me didn't have anything to do with an amount of money.

Success to me isn't even money. It's what the money means.

When I stopped chasing success in a monetary form and started chasing success in what success meant to me, that's when my life changed.

Success to me means freedom.

You need money to do a lot of things, but you can't eat the money. The money is used for other things. The money's a tool, right?

So, for me: freedom. I want freedom - time freedom.

I want freedom over what I get to do with my time. I want freedom to help those who are important to me, to help my family in the ways I want to help them. I want freedom from the worry of money.

I've been on both sides of the money thing. I've been on the 'I'm worried about how I'm going to pay my bills today or tomorrow' side.

I've worried about how I'm going to pay the electric bill, pay the mortgage, pay the car payment, keep the lights on, and buy food for my family.

When you're there, it's hard to think about thinking for yourself, because all you're thinking about is, 'How am I going to get the money to take care of these things?'

I understand that. The reason I understand it is because I've been there.

I've also been on the other side. When I say financial freedom, I mean freedom from worrying about keeping the electric on. Freedom from worrying about paying the bills. That freedom is what I'm really after.

I'm not after a particular amount of money.

Why is this important to you?

When you don't have enough money, or you're worried about having enough money to keep the lights on, pay the bills, and buy food, it takes away your mind's ability and your ability to work towards what's important.

When I stopped chasing the monetary value and chased what was really important to me, not what somebody else told me was important, that's when I started getting closer to the freedom I'm talking about.

I'm blessed. At this point in my life, I'm as blessed as I've ever been in my entire life. I'm currently not worried about paying tomorrow's bills.

I can work on what I need to work on. I can be there for my family when they need me. I have time freedom.

I can decide whether I'm going to shoot a video and share it with you. I can decide what I'm going to work on today.

But it's taken a lot of time to get there, and it all ties back to what we're talking about: learn to think for yourself.

I'll give you another example.

I want a car that will get me there and get me back. I also want a car that does not embarrass my wife when she goes somewhere with me. But that is all I care about with a car.

I don't care what car I drive. I don't care how expensive it is. I don't care how old it is.

That's when I said, you get on social media and see people with all these fancy cars. Fine. If you want a fancy car, work towards getting a fancy car.

I don't care. I used to want a fancy car because I thought successful people had fancy cars. Now I don't care.

I don't care about anything except whether the car gets me there and back and doesn't embarrass my wife when I take her somewhere. That really doesn't have anything to do with me except avoiding pain, right?

My wife doesn't need a fancy car either. She wants a nice-looking car, and that's fine. But that's not important to me.

It used to be important because that's what I thought success looked like. That's why that ties back to learning to think for yourself.

Let me close with two quick things.

The most important decisions you ever make deserve your thinking.

And you should intentionally choose your definition of success instead of inheriting someone else's definition of success.

That's my challenge to you today. Define what success looks like for you, not based on what anyone else says, and then start working towards that in your life.

Thanks for being with me. Have a great day. Please subscribe for more videos.

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