“Human beliefs, like all other natural growths, elude the barrier of systems.”
Miguel de Unamuno
Everyone is out to sell you a system. Diet gurus sell countless weight loss systems. Fitness experts sell an endless array of exercise systems. Spiritual leaders sell systems to govern your views of God and spirituality. Business experts sell moneymaking and management systems. Cosmetic companies sell beauty systems. There’s no end to the systems you can buy.
What these folks don’t want you to know is that most of their systems are based on the same few principles. The systems may vary, but the principles remain the same. It’s the principles behind the systems that are ultimately what’s important, and what we should all focus on.
A simple example might help to illustrate this. Let’s say someone is trying to sell you an exercise system to build muscle strength and size. Maybe it’s a machine or device. Or maybe it’s a series of predefined movements. Regardless of the system, you can probably break down the system into its basic foundation principles. A muscle building system might look something like this when dissected to its essential and most basic underlying principles:
- Apply resistance (weight) to your muscles using good form.
- Do this consistently over time.
- Slowly increase the resistance as your muscles adapt to the level of resistance.
That’s it! Every system of muscle development will apply these same basic principles in order to attain muscle strength and size. This muscle building example is an extremely simple one I know, but I use it to clearly illustrate that the countless systems can always be deduced to a small set of principles upon which those systems are based. And it’s those principles that we need to focus on, not the systems.
Systems often don’t conform well to the uniqueness of each individual using the system, and they are often attempts at easy fixes to complicated problems. Systems are typically solutions to a problem or need from only one person’s perspective.
Notice that I never urge you to avoid systems, merely to beware of them. There’s a big difference. Rather than avoid systems, feel free to learn about them to whatever degree you believe is helpful. Just don’t assume any system will apply to your life situation exactly. It won’t. Why? Because each one of us is truly unique. Everyone has a unique set of experiences, genetics, education, family history, and personal passions. Since this is the case, how can any system apply universally to all of us. No system can. When it comes to systems, one size does not fit all.
Systems are not bad. In fact, they’re helpful and sometimes necessary to meet our objectives. The danger is assuming someone else’s system fits your particular needs. We should all create our own personal systems.
Studying other systems can be helpful. Many systems were created after some thoughtful consideration by many wise people. Dissecting systems for those things that work well for you, and discarding those that don’t, and mixing in your own personally developed approaches that fit your own needs and situation, is a great way to come up with systems that work for you. This is how you achieve personal greatness, happiness and fulfillment. Using systems in this way is an intelligent way to view systems, as guides to understanding any system, or parts of systems, that work in your life.
We all need systems. Basic personal systems for those things we do repeatedly all through our lives. More complex personal systems to achieve what we want to achieve. It’s a well put together strategy of systems that comprises most of what we’ll do with a fulfilling life. But the key is that they have to be our systems that seem appropriate and relevant for us. Adopting someone else’s system with no consideration of adapting it to meet our unique needs is illogical. Illogical, but we all do it much too often.
You might do yoga as a form of exercise (a system) and really like it. You’ve explored other physical fitness systems and have decided that yoga is the right approach for you. That’s a sensible way to go about it. Or, you might just as well have decided you didn’t like yoga in its entirety, but you chose to use a few of the principles you learned in yoga in your own personal form of physical practice. No one approach is necessarily superior. Multiple systems can be equally effective in their own way.
I guess all I’m really saying is that we all need to respect our uniqueness enough to plan and act upon our lives through the prism of that uniqueness. I am often the first to absorb a system without the necessary scrutiny. My natural inclination seems to be to assume I’m the one who needs to adjust to a system rather than the other way around.
As I work on this in my own life, I welcome comments from anyone who might have thoughts about this post.