Stop trying to fix people

Humans love to fix things.

Fix ourselves. Fix others. Fix situations.

All this "fixing" comes from our own limited story. When we fix, we copy and paste our life's highlight reel onto someone else's movie. And that’s because the solution is always the one we know.

This shows up everywhere:

• Managers "fixing" employees to work their way

• Teachers "fixing" students to think their way

• Socials "fixing" our content to fit their way

• Parents "fixing" kids to live their way

You also see this in culture.

The West tries to "fix" the East and interferes. The East thinks the West is broken and tries to "fix" it (culturally).

Everyone thinks their way is the optimal way.

As a parent myself, I notice this most with parents and kids.

Look at this: my 4-year-old is drawing this weird mutated zombie witch. Every cell in my body wants to give him pointers. But I won't.

Because I've seen what happens: tell a kid they're doing it "wrong" a few times, and that spark moves straight to the "not for me" bucket. I do a great job of it sometimes.

There are many stories of startups losing their edge after too much "professional" advice, artists losing their style after too much formal training, writers losing their voice after too many writing rules, and cultures losing their identity after too much "modernization.”

We're so focused on showing others the "right way"—the optimal result, the perfect execution—that we forget we're breaking their uniqueness in the process.

So, here's what I've learned:

• Children need to discover their path, or we strip them of creativity

• People need to find their truth, or they're just borrowing someone else's life lessons

• When everyone learns the "right way," we become NPCs in someone else's game

This is why I also don’t like advice in every aspect of life. You don’t want to play their game, even if it’s solid because it could be the wrong game for you. Take advice, but mold it to your life.

The point isn't to fix anything at all.

You have to let people be weird enough to figure out who they actually are. We need the ‘think different’ group. We need people to write their own stories even if it doesn't make sense to anyone else.

Even if that means letting zombie witches who don't look quite right come to life and make you go, ‘what?!’