Ayn Rand - Atlas Shrugged - 'Trusting your mind'

"Do not say that you’re afraid to trust your mind because you know so little. Are you safer in surrendering to mystics and discarding the little you do know? Live and act within the limit of your knowledge and keep expanding it to the limit of your life. Redeem your mind from the hock-shops of authority. Accept the fact that you are not omniscient, but playing a zombie will not give you omniscience—that your mind is fallible but becoming mindless will not make you infallible—that an error made on your own is safer than ten truths accepted on faith, because the first leaves you the means to correct it, but the second destroys your capacity to distinguish truth from error" - John Galt, Atlas Shrugged.

That paragraph brought a smile on my face. I remembered a professor's lecture during my management studies. He was telling us about how the professors also get to make some money by doing consulting assignments for some corporate. This particular professor had a good sense of humour. After telling us about how the consulting practice worked, he said, “You know most of the times, the corporate are the best judge of what decisions to take. Since they are a part of the system, they know the system in and out. Truthfully, we are just outsiders." Then he paused for a while, looked at us with a twinkle in his eye and said, "You know why they hire us?" He suppressed a smile, and said, "They hire us, so that tomorrow, if the decision is proved wrong, they can pass on the buck to us and say - look even an IIMB professor, couldn’t make a difference to this. Basically, they need someone’s shoulder to lean on – someone to call the shots."

In life, many of us don’t trust our own self and our decisions. In a tough situation, we look for someone else to call the shots. When I had completed my college and just got into life, I would look for anchors to help me with my decisions. The way I led my life was primarily based on how my parents, teachers or friends would have led theirs. Sometimes it would work. But then there were times it wouldn't.

It took me quite a while to realize that life at every moment is different and unique to each one of us. I realized that the best way to live life was to make decisions based on the situations, circumstances and mental, emotional state we are in. Doing that would mean allowing ourselves to fail. But it would also mean, allowing ourselves to understand life on our own and stand proud.