(submitted by: @Anonymous)
If I had a good answer for this, I’d be selling out Holiday Inn conference halls all around the world.
I essentially cheated. When I was young, I found a group of older, ornery, communicatively sophisticated, and stubbornly open-minded perverts, who basically gave me a hard surface against which I could bounce my many, many bad ideas. Like all the best teachers, they refined the way I think.
Seriously, my most heartfelt recommendation is to find older, relatively sane mentors. The kind of mentors who will bicker with one another today, and bicker on behalf of one another tomorrow. Mentors who will take pride in supporting people they don’t like when the people they don’t like happen to be right. Move among them, piss them off, and listen closely to their stories. It’ll change your life.