“Reality is negotiable. Outside of science and law, all rules can be bent or broken, and it doesn’t require being unethical.”

– Tim Ferriss

One of my moment vivid memories of grade school when I was at the school gym. The teacher started passing out basketballs and I wasn’t too fond of sports. Everyone was handed one and start shooting hoops.

I, on the other hand, was sitting there with my legs crossed and I think the basketball was in front of me. I wasn’t sure what I was thinking at the time, maybe I decided it was time to experiment or maybe I wasn’t in the mood to play basketball so I decided to start drumming away on the basketball.

A kid saw me and start to sit behind me and do the same. Then another one came by, sat down and followed along. One by one, everyone began to sit down and follow my lead. As you already know, I had no idea what or why I was doing what I was doing but nonetheless, it was quite interesting. I did something that made no sense whatsoever and everyone followed along including the teachers if I recalled correctly.

I believe this gave me my first taste of leadership. While most people believe that authority is necessary for leadership, it wasn’t in this case. However, what was needed was consistency in leading the pack. It didn’t matter if it didn’t make any sense, it only matter that someone was doing it and there were people who followed along. Similarly, I recently saw a popular YouTube channel called Veritasium conducted an experiment where they created a line with an actor lining up. Eventually the line grew even though most people didn’t know what they were lining up for. It was pretty much the exact same thing as my basketball scenario but done by adults.

It just goes to show that if you believe in what you’re doing with undeniable certainty that you’re going to keep doing it and it didn’t matter what other people, reality may shape itself around you. If reality can be shaped than we all have the power within ourselves to shape the world the way we see fit, for better or for worse. I aim to make it a better one and I invite you to join me.

Until the next post, thank you for reading!