My wife and I tend to be non-conformists. Don’t get me wrong, we don’t do things just to be different. We just tend to question group think and the common dogma that most people use to place their life on autopilot. Recently we’ve taken this to a new level. There were several areas of our life that were not to our standards. To make these changes we needed to examine several core beliefs.
An interesting side effect is that we are also examining other areas of our lives. What we’ve been finding is that some of our beliefs are not based on fact.
If you want to get ahead you must make your own decisions
It makes sense if you look at it. The only way to be exceptional is to be better than average. The average man (or woman) lets other people decide what what he believes. He also lives a mediocre life.
One key is to look at the facts that your beliefs are based on. Look at all sides. Look at the source of info. Do they have an ulterior motive? Are they truly experts? Does the information make sense? Can you confirm the information from another source?
You also have to know what you want out of life and what you believe in. For example, I discount most of the advice from nutritionists. Why? Because it has been proven scientifically that the food pyramid is wrong. The fat free craze has been proven wrong. I have seen the studies showing that it isn’t just a case of calories in vs. calories out.
In other words, I can’t trust their advice. Anything they say is suspect. I’d rather get my information from sources that are reliable.
Look no further than a cup of coffee…
First we saw a shift from cream to half and half. Then we saw a shift from half and half to milk or non-dairy creamer. The premise was that the fat in cream (or half and half) added empty calories and too much fat to your diet.
I decided to do an experiment. First I used cream in a cup of coffee. Next I tried it with half and half. My basis was to identify how much of each was needed to optimally flavor my coffee and which tasted better. What I found was that I required twice as much half and half. I also determined that cream tasted ~33% better.
Ultimately it nutritionally made no difference. I was saving 3 calories (9 per day) and 1 gram of fat (3 per day) at the expense of 1 gram (3 per day) of carbs. All this for a less enjoyable cup of coffee.