I was up at Book Warehouse the other day and had the chance to skim through a copy of Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman. It tells the story of outfitting company Patagonia and the business philosophies created by the founder. What I found interesting with his philosophies is that they often went against typical mainstream business practices. Even more so, I found that most of them were in synch with a lot of my own beliefs.
Really liking the book and the message it communicated, I seriously considered purchasing it. However, when I thought this, I stopped in my tracks because of something I remembered thinking before. Why is it that we often purchase books about things we already know?
I wasn’t too sure about this before but having just recently wrote about being introverted when I was young, I think I realize the answer now. Trust. We don’t trust ourselves. And in purchasing a book about the things we already know about, we are basically confirming our beliefs and our trust in ourselves.
It’s strange because so many people today are afraid of starting relationships with others. Obviously people don’t want to be hurt. They’re fearful of opening up and trusting someone else again. However, by doing this I think we’re forgetting about all of the positive aspects of a relationship. Thus we’re basically severing ourselves from the world because of a few bad incidents.
This is what happens with ourselves as well. We trust ourselves until something bad happens and then we immediately cut ourselves off from our inner voice because of a few bad mistakes. I don’t think we should do this, just as much as I don’t think we should cut ourselves off from the world because of a few bad relationships we’ve had in the past. If anything, I think we’re at a time when we need to be taking more risks and putting more trust in others. And strangely enough, I think the more we start trusting ourselves, the more we’ll start trusting others as well.
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