Some stop at "knowing about", but not knowing deeply enough to actually do it.
Some people are so much stuck in the fixed mindset, where we simply learn what will avoid having us "look bad" but forget that the real reason for learning is to get results. We, ironically, want a good life but we stop short of what it takes to get the results we want in life! Imagine that!
In a sense, we sell out to the devil of trying to avoid looking bad, of seeking approval and avoiding disapproval. We sell out to being able to take tests and do well, instead of learning and knowing the whys and the pieces and how everything fits together and how to work things to get real results.
The triple whammy of life that ruins it is:
1. Have a fixed mindset, so we are defending our IQ or looking good. So we don't dare risk something new because we might fail or make a mistake... So we don't learn broadly enough, nor deeply enough, as we stop short...
2. We think the reward is in the menu, that the pretty pictures that "look good" are the reward - after all we need to be loved, don't we, so that our dependent little powerless selves can keep those people we think we are dependent on engaged with us, feeding us and providing us with shelter (at least symbolically, vaguely in our minds).
3. We do not do the "unsafe" or the ambiguous". For we don't want to risk. But life doesn't occur that way, it is often messy and there are a myriad of factors from different areas of life that must be merged in our thinking so that we can figure out and devise what to do that works. In this way, we develop what is called practical intelligence - and we do it only by practice, failing in any new endeavor before it is learned.
The reason for you to take your version of The Pledges is so that you will go far enough, push far enough to get to the point of actual capability and to not get stuck in a small world where you already know those things in that world and then just repeat them... If you were truly living the top pledge the others would be unnecessary as it is the "top down" pledge (the life value one)...if you were truly living the basic pledge it would all work out, but to live it you would have to be operating responsibly in life or you would never get to the point of learning how to be responsible...
But, isn't it a pain in the butt that takes a lot of time. - yes, just as it is a pain in the butt for the farmer to sow the seed and then to do all the work necessary to reap, for we all live by the Law Of The Farm (Cause And Effect), but many fail to "get it". If we don't do even one of the steps in the chain of steps needed, we won't get the results, we will be starving (at least emotionally and effectiveness wise) but perhaps wondering why (or maybe not wondering why at all and acquiescing to the idea that "this is the way things are" and I can't do anything about it or can't see how..)
(Some of our children by their 20's will have learned more practical knowledge than their parents and be living better lives. If you are doing this later in life, you better prioritize this, get in gear, and do this rapidly!)
