Break the Prison of Others' Experience

"But often one is also unsettled by advice from those around them. Then you buy a house that everyone has recommended to you. Or you start a training course that your parents or teachers consider to be forward-looking, but which you yourself are actually not interested in. Many people are trapped in a prison of experience that others have built for them. Some build their own. They must first learn to look through the bars of empiricism in order to discover new fields of action beyond the distant horizon. Sometimes it takes years before one is able to revise empirical decisions and turn to the evident ones."

"> Don’t let yourself be impressed by any expert who tells you: “My dear friend, I’ve been doing it this way for twenty years!”—You can do something wrong for twenty years, too. > Kurt Tucholsky"

"Because in everything we do: What is important about it? The future! And not the prolongation of what has already been experienced. Only a bureaucrat acts from the past. The entrepreneurially disposed person always starts anew. He acts on the basis of today and what he anticipates from the future—strengthened by the skills he has developed in the past. With empiricism one grasps the past, with evidence one copes with the future. We move through the world, have our experiences, and derive some insight from them. One tries to ensure this insight, then feels secure and moves on. The path leads to a new encounter, one discovers an interest in the matter and then has an intuition. This intuition tells you: Now you must continue here! That is not an empirical experience; that is an experience of evidence. The evidence gives me insight. One does not act from experience, but from insight. Perhaps you are not in love yet, but you meet the other person and say: This has something to do with me. From the evidence comes insight. Everyone says it can’t be done, but you feel that maybe it could. It is an inner conviction of doing the right thing."