Whiskey Wisdom: 5 Bullshit Notions That Will Suffocate Your Wild Potential And Kill the Living Beast Within You
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    How often do you undermine yourself?

    Answer honestly.

    How guilty are you of self-sabotage?

    If you’re anything like most, the answer is approximately “a lot.”

    Here are five bullshit notions bartenders often hear which will kill the living beast in anyone:

    1. You’re not smart enough

    Then educate yourself. As you know, it’s never been easier.

    Do you remember your ABC’s?

    A. Always

    B. Be

    C. Cogitating

    Always be cogitating.

    The truth is that it’s always, in principle, been simple to educate yourself. You must merely commit to learning.

    One of the most satisfying things in the world is when you meet someone at a bar who’s spent her life in educating herself. You’ll then drink the rest of your whiskey and rise from that bar a far better and happier person, knowing that a great ideal has for a time touched you and sanctified your day.

    Remember: it’s not how smart you are.

    It’s how smart you want to be.

    2. You’re not passionate enough about any one thing

    Listen closely to what I’m about to tell you. It’s vital:

    Passion is willed.

    If you have an interest in something — even if it’s at first only a moderate interest — and if you then pursue that interest, your passion for it will develop as your understanding of it deepens.

    You must want it first.

    Ask yourself:

    Of things that are not vice-ridden, what things and subjects do you enjoy contemplating, learning, doing, seeing, hearing more about?

    Numbers and math?

    Books and poems and languages?

    Movies or music?

    Politics and philosophy?

    Maps?

    The planets and the stars?

    The ocean?

    Animals?

    Whatever it is, immerse yourself in the subject.

    Make it your purpose, which is the secret key to human happiness.

    Passion — from the Latin word pati, which means “suffering” — is to have powerful feelings for a thing.

    The more time you spend with something, the more your feelings for it will grow.

    This, incidentally, is why friendships forged in work are much stronger than friendships forged in, for instance, guilty pleasures.

     

    3. It’s too difficult

    All worthy things are difficult. What of it?

    Life is work. Life is effort. Life is difficult.

    The reason that anything worth doing is difficult is that survival is not assured to any living creature — the human creature included. It requires productiveness, and productive work is by definition effort. Effort is often difficult.

    The paradox is that once you grasp this fundamental fact, it ceases to be difficult.

    Why?

    Because at that point you’ve learned one of the most valuable lessons of all:

    Be happy in your work — as the Buddha similarly said.

    4. You don’t have the time now (but you’ll get to it later) and, anyway, you wouldn’t know where to begin

    You probably won’t get to it later. So you must make the time now.

    If you don’t do it now, when?

    Everything must start somewhere.

    You simply dive in and learn your way out.

    The very process will immerse you and give you a totally individualized perspective on your chosen subject, thereby making it uniquely you.

    The time is now.

    The time is always now.

     

    5. You’re not talented enough

    There’s no such thing as talent. Didn’t you know?

    Talent is a meaningless term.

    You learn to be talented.

    You become smart.

    Or you fritter away your nights and days.

    There’s a reason the smartest and cleverest people in school are almost never the ones who go on to achieve great things.

    What is that reason?

    That reason is this:

    Ambition, desire, drive, and, most important of all, persistence — are by light years more important than  talent, so-called.

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    What you just read was excerpted from Whiskey Wisdom: You’re a F*cking Beast (a bartender’s guide to living ravenously)

     


About The Author

Ray Harvey

I was born and raised in the San Juan Mountains of southwestern Colorado. I've worked as a short-order cook, construction laborer, crab fisherman, janitor, bartender, pedi-cab driver, copyeditor, and more. I've written and ghostwritten several published books and articles, but no matter where I've gone or what I've done to earn my living, there's always been literature and learning at the core of my life.

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