Determination is the decision not to stop until a goal is achieved. It is a binary commitment, either determined or not determined. There is no determination gradient where there are "on and off" days, or variable levels of determination between 0 and 1, that gradient should be rightfully ascribed to motivation. Determination comes with beautiful gift, you get a fresh start where your previous failures and mishaps hold no emotional weight.

Tabula rasa is a latin term meaning scraped tablet. It was used in epistemology to describe the human mind as completely empty (blank slate) at birth, and then shaped by experiences. Though this is obiously disproved by cognitive sciences (ie. reflexes etc. shaped by biology), this remains a very relevant term philosophically and metaphorically. This isn't the passive emptiness of inexperience, this is the active emptiness of someone who has decided to begin again, armed with intention.

The Weight of Starting Over

The Weight of Starting Over

Most people fear starting over. They see it as loss; all that time invested, all that progress made, all those skills accumulated. But there's a different way to look at it. Starting over isn't about discarding what you've learned. It's about approaching what you've learned with fresh eyes and clear purposeand most importantly no emotional weight.

When you're newly determined, you don't carry the baggage of "this is how things are done" or "this is impossible because I tried before." You carry the lightness of "what if I approached this differently?" and "I believe that people grow and I can do this". You carry the freedom of not being bound by your previous attempts.

This is the tabula rasa of the newly determined. It's not empty because you know nothing. It's empty because you've chosen to let go of everything that doesn't serve your new direction.

The Paradox of Informed Innocence

Here's what makes this state so powerful: you have experience, but you're not trapped by it. You know the landscape, but you're not limited by the paths you've taken before. You understand the rules, but you're free to question them.

In programming, this might mean approaching a problem you've solved before with completely different tools or paradigms. In learning, it might mean studying a subject you struggled with by throwing out your old study methods entirely. In life, it might mean pursuing a goal you abandoned by changing not just your strategy, but your entire relationship to the goal itself.

This is informed innocence. You're not naive, but you're not cynical either. You're experienced, but not jaded. You know what's possible because you've seen it done, but you're not constrained by how you've seen it done.

The Clean Room of the Mind

When engineers need to reverse-engineer something without violating patents, they use a "clean room" approach. People who have never seen the original implementation create a new version based only on the specifications. This ensures the new creation is truly independent, uncontaminated by the assumptions and limitations of the original.

The newly determined mind works similarly. You take the specifications - what you want to achieve, what problems you want to solve - but you approach them as if you've never tried before. You don't import the bugs from your previous attempts. You don't inherit the limitations you once accepted.

This mental clean room allows for solutions that wouldn't occur to someone still operating within their old framework. It allows for approaches that seem obvious in retrospect but were invisible when you were trapped in your previous patterns.

The Discipline of Forgetting

Creating this blank slate requires a particular kind of discipline. Not the discipline of remembering and building upon what came before, but the discipline of selectively forgetting what doesn't serve you.

You have to forget that you "tried this before and it didn't work." You have to forget that you're "not good at this kind of thing." You have to forget the voice that says "be realistic about your limitations."

This isn't about ignoring reality. It's about questioning which parts of your perceived reality are actually constraints and which are just habits of thought. It's about distinguishing between what is and what you've convinced yourself is inevitable.

The Energy of Fresh Determination

There's a particular energy that comes with this state. It's not the manic energy of new enthusiasm, which burns bright and fast. It's the steady energy of clear purpose, which burns long and sustainable.

When you're operating from this blank slate, problems feel like puzzles rather than obstacles. Setbacks feel like data rather than defeats. The work feels like exploration rather than drudgery.

This energy is self-reinforcing. Each small success validates the approach. Each insight gained through fresh eyes builds confidence in the process. Each breakthrough that comes from thinking differently strengthens your belief in the power of starting over.

The Courage to Begin Again

Not everyone can access this state. It requires a particular kind of courage - the courage to admit that your previous approach might have been fundamentally flawed, not just poorly executed. The courage to let go of sunk costs. The courage to appear naive to people who knew you in your previous iteration.

It requires the humility to be a beginner again, even in areas where you once considered yourself competent. It requires the confidence to trust that your experience will serve you, even if you're not consciously drawing on it.

Most of all, it requires the wisdom to know when starting over is the right choice. Not every problem needs a blank slate. Not every challenge requires throwing out everything you know. But when it does, the newly determined mind is ready.

The Art of Strategic Naivety

This is what I call strategic naivety - the conscious choice to approach something as if you don't know what's impossible. It's not ignorance; it's the temporary suspension of limiting beliefs in service of breakthrough thinking.

The newly determined person asks questions that experts have stopped asking. They try approaches that "everyone knows" don't work. They combine ideas that "obviously" don't go together.

Sometimes this leads to failure. But sometimes it leads to solutions that wouldn't have been discovered any other way. And even the failures teach you something new, because you're approaching them with fresh eyes.

Enjoy Your Blank Slate You Beautiful Achiever

The tabula rasa of the newly determined is not about forgetting everything you know. It's about choosing what to remember and what to set aside. It's about approaching familiar problems with unfamiliar assumptions. It's about having the courage to be wrong in new ways rather than right in old ways.

This blank slate is not empty and It's not naive. It's strategically innocent. It's not about starting from zero. It's about starting from choice.