You’ve probably heard the quote attributed to many successful people: “Show me a person’s calendar and I’ll tell you their priorities.”
I like to say it this way: Tell me the games you play, and I’ll tell you who you are.
Don’t Be Mediocre. Conformity Kills.
I got my first red card in first grade. Mr. Herrington was right—I was a talker. The lesson of only speaking when called on hadn’t settled into my 6-year-old brain. It didn’t feel great. What were my mom and dad going to say? Was I going to get my Nintendo D.S. taken away? I definitely couldn’t let that happen. So, I knew I had to act fast.
When I got off the bus that afternoon and rushed through the garage door, I quickly checked to make sure my mom wasn’t in the kitchen. I took out the dreaded red card, laminated in all its wicked trail of defiance, along with the handwritten note I hadn’t even bothered to read, and slipped it behind the bench tightly against the hallway wall.
No way anybody was finding out about that. My DS time was saved, and I was in the clear.
That was until my mom informed me about this little thing called email.
“Where is it, Nick?”
I think you could have seen straight through my head with how wide my eyes went.
I’ve learned a lot since then, but two main lessons stick out in my head.
First: Tell the truth no matter how much it hurts you in the short term. It is always best, and I haven’t come across too many exceptions.
Second: Throughout life, we are rewarded for staying in the lanes. Listening to directions and following the rules. But if you fall in line all the time, you’ll always be just like everybody else.
So do what you think is right, But don’t hide the red cards.
Fall In (the Assembly) Line
If you look deeper, the rigid soul crushing blocks of time dedicated to one subject at a time doesn’t offer much space for creativity, outside the box thinking, and exploration.
I happened to enjoy school (I know, lucky me), but that doesn’t mean I escaped the second-order effects of Henry Ford’s assembly line.
Henry Ford revolutionized manufacturing by introducing the assembly line. What was once the painstaking process of building a car by hand became a streamlined system of mass production, taking the world by storm. Workers specialized in small, repetitive tasks, and suddenly, products could be made faster and cheaper than ever.
But Ford’s innovation did more than change how we made products.
Soon after, education reformers began searching for ways to make schools more efficient. Schools became standardized, sorting students by age, not ability, and teaching subjects in rigid units. One grade to the next. Like clockwork. Like factory workers.
The goal? To produce a uniform product: students who could meet society’s need for a literate, obedient workforce.
Choose the games you play. Life isn’t just about passing exams, getting into college, and securing a stable job. I don’t want to be a cog in the machine. I want to follow my passion and pursue greatness.
While the assembly line may have revolutionized the car industry, its influence on education left many children trapped in a one-size-fits-all system that stifled their potential instead of nurturing it.
Media Manipulation
I once read about Edward “Eddy” Bernays and how he manipulated the public into believing anything. Check this out:
In the 1920s, Edward Bernays, the “father of public relations,” orchestrated one of the most manipulative marketing campaigns in history. At that time, it was taboo for women to smoke in public, and the American Tobacco Company wanted to break that barrier. They hired Bernays, and instead of using facts, he manipulated society’s emotions.
Bernays knew that people responded to symbols, not logic. During the 1929 Easter Parade, he hired fashionable women to march while smoking, branding their cigarettes as “Torches of Freedom.” The media jumped on the story, framing smoking as a bold act of women’s liberation. Almost overnight, smoking in public became a symbol of empowerment.
What the public didn’t know was that this “freedom” was a lie. There was no feminist movement behind those cigarettes—just a marketing ploy to sell more tobacco. Bernays had manipulated an entire society, turning a deadly habit into a symbol of empowerment. And it worked.
It was a shocking reminder: with enough money, anyone can make the public believe anything.
Question Everything
Blindly believing what the media puts out can lead people to chase superficial goals. Today’s examples: Athletic Greens, the construct of three meals a day, the 40-hour workweek, constant ads for the latest gadgets… The list goes on.
Don’t be afraid to resist the status quo. Question everything. It means you’re thinking for yourself. It means you’re playing your own game.
The societal games we play are enormous. Here are just a few examples:
- Fear of Failure: Society tells us to avoid failure, but this creates an environment where we stick to safe, low-risk choices and avoid challenges.
- Corporate Work Culture: The system rewards mediocrity and maintaining the status quo, preventing innovation and creativity.
- Social Comparison: We often measure success relative to others, which leads to mediocrity when we think doing better than most is “good enough.”
- Comfort Zones: Society promotes comfort over effort, and the allure of ease leads to complacency.
- Success Redefined: Modern success is often tied to wealth and status, pushing aside deeper pursuits like intellectual, emotional, or spiritual growth.
Society nudges us toward safety and predictability, but that will lead to mediocrity. Most people take the easy paths. Don’t be like most people.
So, what games do you want to play?
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