05: DIY your mindset

It feels like just the other day that I was in the grocery store, looking for something healthy to drink. I am trying to live a healthier lifestyle and keep things balanced, so I would never consider drinking a sugary drink or something artificial.
How hard can it be to find a healthy drink?

So it came to my surprise that obviously, you cant really find a natural "healthy" sparkling drink that doesn't have some type of acid, preservative or sugar in it.
I'm sure there are exceptions to every rule but the question in my mind was "why?"

Why is it so hard for the store to stock a product where they chop up a banana, put it in some sparkling water and you buy it?

Well, that question answered itself in my mind the moment I thought of it.
Big companies can not do that, it is literally impossible owing to logistics and nature.

From the moment they chop the banana up, a countdown timer begins for expiry and liability. They need to keep the item cool, sanitary, preserved and fresh and them transport it for thousands of kilometers away where the consumer will whimsically decide to buy it (or not) and then maybe they have to throw it away if its been on the shelf for too long. In almost cases they will choose to stock products that can last longer so that people have more time to buy them.

Alright, so I have spelled out the alphabet here. So what? This is all pretty obvious.
Give me a second, I am getting there 😉

Once I had realized the obvious, that the store is incapable of providing me with healthy, fresh produce (perhaps I am shopping at the wrong stores?) my next thought was an idea:
- I will buy some fruit, some sparkling water and make my own drink.

And with that thought in my mind, a whole new way of thinking has evolved:

I can achieve on a smaller scale what is literally impossible for a larger company to achieve.

All the money in the world, opportunities and connection and there are some things that these multi million international corporations can not do that is beyond easy for you to do!
Isn't that amazing?

If I hadn't looked around for something different or had my own direction, I would have had to accept what they could provide for me.

Are there other ways that we lose our direction and just accept the possibilities that are presented to us?

Our ability to build our world and change our personal lives are limited by the tools we have at our disposal. I am thinking of writing a future post on "Mindset as a Toolbox" but the message here is that in order to create, we need tools.

We live in a world where so much of what is available to us as tools is made by companies.
Hammers, drills, paintbrushes. Laptops, books, cars. Even software and music.

It's not just the physical tools we can buy at the store that need to be produced by companies. Some of them are tools we use to express ourselves and as such we are limited in that way as well. Sometimes there is no existing poem or song to help us understand what we feel and some people take the step to make a new one.

It is less and less common that people are creating their own tools yet our set of problems change all the time and very often are unique to us.

It is not possible for a company to understand your personal life, the challenges that you face and to scalably build those tools on your behalf and when I even say that out loud it occurs to me that companies that operate for profit are not going to help you build those essential tools unless it is of financial benefit to them.

So what am I trying to say?

• You have an incredible power to create and the problems you face may need special tools in order to resolve them.
• Don't look outward at some way of fixing it or some off the shelf solution to solve your problems. The tailor made solution lies within your reach.
• Don't accept the possibilities that are presented to you. Think for yourself what direction you want to go and if you cant see a way to get there, think to yourself what do you need to do in order to make it possible.
• What tools do you reach for to solve your problems? To express yourself? Are they solving your problems? Is someone making money from it? Is there another way?