You Look Pretty...

You gotta look pretty in this world. Of course it depends on your profession, but you gotta at least know how to look nice. I'm not saying you have to go out there and spend all your money on the latest runway picks, but you do have to do stuff to make yourself look nice.

I saw something on the news the other day, and it was related to politics and the man just..wasn't attractive. And I thought, I hate to sound shallow, but in politics if you want to be successful, you have to look nice. You just have to. Maybe it shouldn't be that way but that's the way it is now, and trust me: you can't overturn this one. Because we are driven by aesthetics.

I hate plastic surgery and everything, so I definitely don't support going there. But I feel like people who look attractive think differently. That's a huge claim to make, but I've seen people become so much more attractive from a different way of thinking. And that thought is typically related to success. It is thought that shapes the decisions we make, and as Albert Camus put it (and I strongly agree), "Life is the sum of all your choices."

Success is so superficial today. We look at the end result of everything and be like "wow, you made it so far, I admire you you are an amazing person you like, made it, dude," not realizing that they are just like us, working and chipping away at the David that is their lives. As Alan Watts put it, we think in terms of material success, and thus there is a start and a finish, and the goal is to get to that finish! Go get it! This has caused our thought process and internal programming to be totally backwards! Backwards in the sense of the "proper" (or perhaps, smoothest/easiest) methodology of getting what we want. We think that once we get what we want we will be happy. But once you get there you realize that you feel a little different but you're just who you have been, and you cover this up and try to bury it with "oh but this is what I want next! :D"

Start with your internal programming and thought. People who are successful think differently, not have different stuff. They have different stuff because they think differently.

Now I'm willing to extend this to the idea that people look different because they think different. I don't know how many people would be willing to take my two cents on that, but I don't find it far-fetched.

And now going back to the exterior material world we live in, we are driven by aesthetics - not just in looks - and aesthetics create a serious strong incentive, subconscious or conscious. Though often subtle in most professions, attractiveness will help you in your career. To varying degrees of course, but we are driven by aesthetics, and given that I believe people look different because they think different, the intuition is sure as hell a good/valid one. There are always exceptions, but it will always be the starting point.