My dad is the biggest provocateur I know. He has that entrepreneur-like motivation, and a persistent personality. Even if something is considered impossible by law of nature, he still is going to o it with no doubt in his mind. He does show a lot of courage throughout his life. He had to be courageous, because he grew up in a rough area in Michigan, so you had to be courageous to even walk out of your house. If anyone is ever fearful of completing a certain task, he'll push you out of the way and do it with no second thought.
To become a provocateur, I believe I need to stop thinking so much, because my thoughts usually become negative thoughts after a while of deep thinking. My negative thoughts always crush me and stop me from completing certain daring tasks.
“Those only are happy (I thought) who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness; on the happiness of others, on the improvement of mankind, even on some art or pursuit, followed not as a means, but as itself an ideal end. Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness by the way. The enjoyments of life (such was now my theory) are sufficient to make it a pleasant thing, when they are taken en passant, without being made a principal object. Once make them so, and they are immediately felt to be insufficient. They will not bear a scrutinizing examination. Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so. The only chance is to treat, not happiness, but some end external to it, as the purpose of life. Let your self-consciousness, your scrutiny, your self-interrogation, exhaust themselves on that; and if otherwise fortunately circumstanced you will inhale happiness with the air you breathe, without dwelling on it or thinking about it, without either forestalling it in imagination, or putting it to flight by fatal questioning.”
ReplyDelete― John Stuart Mill, Autobiography