In 1989, the movie Dead Poet’s Society was released. Robin Williams, who plays inspirational boarding schoolteacher John Keating, bucks the traditional rules of his school to instill the love of learning, the virtue of thinking differently, and the imperative of seizing the day into his students. He also imparts the wisdom that no matter what other people say, words and ideas can change the world.
These words may have been spoken in fiction, but they apply just as much to nonfiction.
Decades ago, the thoughts Steve Jobs had shaped the world we live in today. He believed in the Macintosh (and its subsequent generations) so strongly that it’s no wonder that I’m writing this on a MacBook Pro, and you very well could be reading this on an iPhone, an iPad, or other Mac device.
Unfortunately, executing this vision also brought its fair share of cutting words. There have been many accounts of Steve Jobs berating underlings and reducing them to tears when they didn’t measure up to his ideas because he demanded perfection. Behold the simple layout, the futuristic feel, and the naked minimalism of an Apple device or even an Apple store, and it’s like you’re walking around in Steve Job’s thoughts. Or perhaps feeling the results of those cutting words in the corporate culture from decades prior.
But as simple as the idea of thoughts becoming things, there’s one huge caveat. The bridge between Steve’s (or anyone’s for that matter) thoughts from yesteryear and today’s reality is action. And not just any action, but massive action.
In addition to having amazing thoughts or saying compelling words, you need to take massive, determined action to change the world, or else nothing happens. Sadly, we humans love to be inert. Easily seduced by comfort and wanting to maintain the status quo as much as possible, many people forgo their dreams because realizing them is just too uncomfortable.
Our world can also be difficult, unrelenting even in its deployment of rejection and discouragement. John Keating begins his message by saying, “No matter what anybody tells you…”. By this preface, he is saying that the world and even those closest to you may tell you that your ideas and words are meaningless. Or that they will have zero impact on the world. But that simply isn’t true. The truth is, many of us struggle to overcome the opinions of others and our world’s many flaws to actually take action to change it.
But by challenging these opinions and messages, we can begin to discern what is really true. How does someone else really know what you are capable of? What makes them the expert on why one of your ideas won’t work? Remember, there are a lot of people who have no problem telling others who they should be, when they don’t even have a clue as to who they are. These are not the people to listen to – just sayin’.
By staying firm in your beliefs and remaining true to your own ideas, you have the potential to change the world. Don’t let anyone else tell you otherwise.
