Hats and body piercings are fine superficialities, but if the most articulate thing about you is a tattoo, then it’s time to read a book. Take a knife to your dreadlocks, with no drama, and affirm that you are aligned with what is essential about you. Shrug off what is not essential.

A higher you moves on. Move on.

If you want to obsess, make a fetish out of substantial improvement. Ornamentation/style is not substantial. Creativity is substantial, and original presentation may or may not indicate creativity within, but it doesn’t confer it. Swing for the fences, and have the guts to admit to yourself when you could be aiming higher, better. Then do it.

Cool. However you define it, you know it when it shrugs in your face.
Those ‘cool’ bastards don’t care whether you respect them or not, because they respect themselves. A characteristic of ‘cool’ is something that feels like aloofness to the observer, but is really just psychological self-sufficiency. They are doing their thing. Their thing does not include trying to impress you.

Imagine the ocean of distractions you could avoid by never attending to other peoples’ notion of you. (Yes, that includes the ‘cool people’.) Imagine the freedom you could win for yourself by shrugging in the face of this phantom.

What’s your thing? What inspires you? Spend more time living with it: be focused and engaged. Spend energy/time on real development, real change, and in a few years your life may look and feel like something magnificent.

By then you’ll be cool too, but it won’t matter at all.

“We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we really need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about.”

-Einstein