Personal Manifesto

After reading extensively on other people’s life choices, their manifestos, and ‘rules to live by’, I gradually developed my own. It combines notions from others that I was a fan of, and some I created for myself.

This, like my life, is a constant work in progress.


PERSONAL MANIFESTO

1. Do not allow the actions of others to influence the choices you make. You cannot change a persons’ behaviour, but you can choose how you react.
2. There are only two directions in life – Grow. Or Die. Choose to grow always
3. Only dull women have tidy houses
4. Your greatest gift is your intuition. It has never failed you, so trust that impulse. Make your decisions quickly.
5. Write. Prolifically. Endlessly. Allow your thoughts to organise themselves on paper, because the only time your mind is quiet is when your hand will not shut the hell up.
6. Security is for cadavers. Get out of your comfort zone as often as you can. Each experience is a brave adventure into the unknown.
7. Enjoy the morning. The moment when you first wake up is the most wonderful of the twenty-four hours. No matter how weary you may feel, you possess the certainty that, during the day that lies before you, absolutely anything may happen. And the fact that it practically always doesn't, does not matter at all. The possibility is always there.
8. All that you gain from worrying, is a headache. There is no such this as tomorrow, or yesterday. Every single day is a NOW that once was. You cant worry over what doesn’t exist.
9. Love experiments (as you would an ugly child). Joy is the engine of growth. Exploit the liberty in casting your life as beautiful experiments, iterations, attempts, trials, and errors. Take the long view and allow yourself the fun of failure every day.
10. Money does not make the transit into your next life. There is nothing to be gained from hoarding. Give generously, including to yourself.
11. You will only ever pass along a way once, therefore any good that you can do, or any kindness that you can show to any human being, do it now. Do not defer nor neglect it for you shall not pass that way again.
12. Don’t take yourself too seriously. Lighten up. Often, at least half of what we accomplish is due to luck. You are not as in control as much as you like to think you are.
13. Don’t eat at your desk. Take an hour, 30 mins, 10mins, or 5. Whatever, just get up and away to eat. Change of scenery is good for the soul.
14. Never stop asking questions. The wrong answer is the right answer in search of a different question. Collect wrong answers as part of the process. Then ask different questions.
15. Don’t be cool. Cool is conservative fear dressed in black. Free yourself from limits like these.
16. Surround yourself with the talents of others. The space between people working together is filled with conflict, friction, strife, exhilaration, delight, and vast creative potential.
17. Don’t clean your desk. You might find something in the morning that you can’t see tonight.
18. Make up new words if they suit you. Expand the lexicon. New conditions demand a new way of thinking. The thinking demands new forms of expression. The expression generates new conditions.
19. Wear those high heels girl! Your height is their problem. Not yours
20. Organisation = Liberty.
21. Ask the stupid questions. Growth is fueled by desire and innocence. Assess the answer, not the question. And imagine learning throughout your life at the rate of an infant.
22. The world gets smaller every day, and Karma holds a grudge. Remember that next time you find yourself being rude, cruel, spiteful, or greedy.
23. Food is life. Bask in its tantalising pleasures. Smell, poke, lick, taste, chew. Cook amazing new things, and taste them. Make mistakes, and taste them too!
24. Don’t borrow money. By maintaining financial control, we maintain creative control over what we do with our time.
25. Laugh. Quite simple. Just do it.
26. Take trips. The bandwidth of the world is greater than that of your TV set, or the Internet, or even a totally immersive, interactive, dynamically rendered, object-oriented, real-time, computer graphic–simulated environment. After all, the world is a novel, and those who do not travel read but only one page.
27. Listen. Absorb. Think. Speak. And only in that order.
28. Love. Bravely. You will have wounds, and it will hurt. But scars are way cool.
29. There’s always a reason to smile. Find it. After all, you're really lucky just to be alive.
30. You WILL die. It is the only thing that is certain in this life. But what you do between now and then… is up to you.