A script comprises of values, beliefs and assumptions. We’re either living on our terms, or on someone else’s.
When we’re young, we follow a script because we don’t know how to author our own. Parents givus us rules, society is indirectly telling us what is good and what is bad. We leave our childhood with a script that quite black and white.
Teenagers are wired to be socially dependent; we’re constantly seeking approval and are hyper vigilant to determine what are the norms and the faux-pas of the tribe. Parents continue to transfer their own preferences to us, usually as suggestions but sometimes as directives, of what to pursue as we enter adulthood. Meanwhile, our peers are teaching us what is cool and what is lame, how to acquire status and therefore power in terms of sexual reproduction.
By the time we’re eighteen, we’ve adopted a fully formed script of how to pursue the rest of our lives. Unconsciously we have strong opinions about how much we value status, prestige, and wealth.
Here are some general scripts for success I’ve noticed over my years:
- Achieving career success (pursuing capitalism)…
- conventionally through climbing the corporate ladder (e.g. consultant, banker, C-suite executive)
- unconventionally through the startup or tech game (e.g. founder, engineer, strong startup exit or going public)
- Achieving anti-career success (opting out of capitalism)…
- conventionally through activism and/or pleasure-seeking through doing as much “cool shit” as possible (green peace people, surfer dude in South America, sustaining life with as little work and therefore money as possible)
- unconventionally through purely mission-driven roles (working in African countries to help erradicate malaria, working with Red Cross, building tech/products that are not economically viable)
We go through formative years of adulthood either unconsciously following one of the scripts above, or questioning the script we’ve been following and authoring our own.
Another way to map this out is seeing it as two options: either being unintentional, or choosing to be intentional.
On the surface, two people can be working the same job. Banker, barista, engineer…you name it. But the why behind their decision to be doing what they’re doing is the difference between a life that seems to be leading nowhere, and a life that compounds, building off of every experience.
On the surface, no script is inherently better or worse than another. I became a public school teacher like hundreds of thousands of other people. What I seem to have done differently than most is not stumbling my way into it because my parents told me it’s a stable career or society taught me that it is noble and valuable. Instead, I pursued it on my own accord.
What sets a mediocre life from an exceptional life is not the wealth amassed, but rather how wealth is deployed. Exceptional people are thoughtful and deliberate with how they deploy their capital, whether it be money or relationships.
To escape mediocrity, we confusingly need to be intentional about being intentional. At some point we need to make a pact with ourselves, usually when we’re fed up or have hit rock bottom, where we are overwhelmed or tired of living for others, and demand to live for ourselves.
Paradoxically, it is only when we selfishly pursue life according to our own script that we are in the best position to be available to support others. It’s socially beneficial to live for yourself, when part of living for yourself is living with integrity and feeling good when you are socially useful.
So how do we stop living according to someone else’s script? Question everything. An unexamined life is not worth living, and I mean it in the most radical way. Personally, I truly am not sure I want to be alive living an unexamined life.
By examining through questioning and not seeking certainty through answers, curiosity starts flourishing, and we find ourselves authoring our own script without even realizing it.
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