“The harder we try with the conscious will to do something, the less we shall succeed. Proficiency and results come only to those who have learned the paradoxical art of doing and not doing, or combining relaxation with activity.” – Aldous Huxley “From birth, man carries the weight of gravity on his shoulders. He is … Read more Stalling: Why Letting Go is the Key to Regaining Lift
I have a love-hate relationship with thinking. Sometimes, I get in these kinds of flow states where I follow my train of thought – connecting the dots along the way – to an exciting, unexpected destination. When I follow my thoughts in this way, I find it euphoric. I often derive my best writing doing … Read more Stuck in the Clouds: An Aviator’s Guide to Pointless Overthinking
The seeds of doubt were planted at a young age. I can’t tell you exactly when, but I know it started in childhood. I was lead to believe I wasn’t capable, that I would struggle in this life. In particular, concerns surrounded my abilities in English. At first, my parents worried that I had a … Read more Why I Write
“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” – Howard Thurman (Source: The Living Wisdom of Howard Thurman: A Visionary for Our Time) I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, ‘what do you mean the ONLY … Read more The Only Thing The World Needs From You
So my kids have started doing this thing. Every evening before bath time – after we take their clothes off before they get into the tub – they run around the apartment like crazed feral wild cats. Screaming and laughing.
Pure unadulterated joy.
It got me thinking about the clothes we wear, metaphorically speaking.
A kid doesn’t question why we walk around with clothes on (when you live in Singapore, there’s a good argument not to). They simply follow the herd to blend it. Because that’s the safest bet.
It’s for the same reason they imitate our actions. As much as I tell them not to act like the giant ass hat I am, they do anyway.
As adults, we’re no different with the character armour we assume. The social conditioning we’ve all undergone to varying cultural degrees. There’s a code of conduct we must follow.
For women, that’s typically something along the lines of never speak up. Always look pretty. Be perfect. Don’t over step your mark.
For men it’s something like don’t cry. Man the fuck up. Never ask for help. Figuring it out on your own or drown trying.
Of course, it’s all bullshit.
It’s all clothes we’re told to wear so we don’t make each other feel uncomfortable. Because who wants to deal with someone else’s vulnerabilities? I’m having enough trouble preventing people from seeing my own.
Thank you very much.
I wonder, though, what are we so afraid of? Of upsetting someone else? Why? That’s their problem, not yours.
But that’s not it.
What we’re really scared of is being vulnerable – of feeling exposed. We want nothing more than to be seen, heard, and accepted for who we are.
What we fear most is rejection.
We’re scared of being laughed at and ridiculed. We’re afraid of having our hearts stamped on.
But what happens if we say fuck this? If, despite our fears, we remove our clothes and let who we are all hang out, warts and all?
We may get laughed at and ridiculed. If you are, that doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you.
It might mean you need new friends!
At any rate, it’s a risk we have to be willing to take. If only to find out who are friends and family really are.
The truth is the character armour we can carry around is far heavier than the clothes we wear on our backs. We can only carry it for so long before it weighs us down.
That’s why we need to be around the people who will let us take it off – who will accept us when we do. (Even if they can’t help but laugh sometimes.)
The reward of course is the feeling of aliveness. The feeling of running free. The feeling of pure unadulterated joy.
“Time doesn’t heal emotional pain, you need to learn how to let go.” ― Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
During my adolescence, I was bullied relentlessly for over two years.
It was one of the most challenging periods of my life. I was at boarding school at the time. Halfway across the world from my parents. I felt isolated and alone. So, I withdrew.
That was how I defended myself.
Fast forward several years, long after the bullying stopped, those defences turned into a prison. The more I struggled against them, the stronger the walls became. Eventually, that prison became a fortress, and I found myself in a deep depression that lasted over a decade.
It wasn’t until I came home from work one day that something changed.
I found my son playing on the living room floor. All he wanted was to play with his dada. I remember looking at him without feeling anything – not a shred of joy. I wanted nothing to do with him. At that moment the shame was too much. I went to my room, closed the door, and began to cry.
The walls came crashing down.
Then, something remarkable happened. I found the bottom of the pool. I recall looking around the room with such clarity. It was like I was using my eyes for the first time. And I knew what I had to do. Something I’d been putting off for years. This time I didn’t hesitate.
I picked up the phone and called for professional help.
The Mistake I Made
Now, I’d like to say the rest was history. But that’s not how this story ends. Rather, it’s how it started.
A big mistake I made was thinking that waking up would happen instantaneously. Like my alarm going off in the morning.
That somehow the grand cosmic reason for my being would become apparent, and I would live happily ever after. (What a dope.)
The brutal reality is that letting go is a slow, arduous process. (On second thought, it’s just like my alarm going off in the morning!) It’s a process we must practice over and over again.
We first recognise that we’re struggling, and then we let go – we sink into our emotions. Once we find our feet again in the present – once we find the clarity and perspective we need – we push off the pool floor and rise to the surface.
We then take a much-needed breather before repeating the whole process over again.
A Stall Recovery Guide for Life
Of course, this is far easier said than done – especially if you have been clinging to your defences for a long time.
So, we need a roadmap – a set of steps we can follow to help us do that – to first shed our defences and then find the strength to pick up our swords and fight for the life we want.
This brings me full circle to the stall recovery pilots employ in real life. I believe the series of steps they take provide a useful framework that we can use to recover whenever we suffer from a loss of lift in life. Happily, it follows an easy-to-remember acronym I made up called RAPID, which stands for:
Recognise (take the autopilot out)
Accept (let go of the controls)
Push the nose down (come back to earth)
Increase thrust (protect your energy)
Do it again (climb away/pitch back up.)
This RAPID framework also provides a neat structure for my high-flying book. I plan to do a deep dive into each of these sections over the coming months as I go about researching/writing it.
For now, I want to give you a brief outline of each section so you can get a good idea of where this flight is headed. (And as a way to wrap up this initial series on stalling.)
Anyway, here it is.
Step 1: Recognise (Taking the autopilot out)
We can’t solve a problem we’re not aware of. If we don’t know we’re stalling, what hope do we have of recovering from it? We first need clarity before we can take appropriate action.
We need to understand what our stall warning alarm is really telling us (whether that alarm is grounded in reality or not). To do that, we need to build self-awareness.
How do we build self-awareness? By taking the autopilot out. This is step 1.
Step 2: Accept (Letting go of the controls)
The point of increasing self-awareness is not self-improvement but self-acceptance. (The paradox here is that self-acceptance leads to genuine change.)
This is the equivalent of letting go of the controls.
We must accept where and who we are – whether we like it or not – to regain control of our lives. A significant part of this section will explore the shedding of the defences we use to protect us from feeling vulnerable.
I’ll briefly highlight this point for now: Letting go is defined by a willingness to feel vulnerable.
Step 3: Point the nose down (Coming back to earth)
The paradox of vulnerability is courage. We derive true strength from our willingness to shed our armour and show who we really are. This gives us the courage to take action.
Not any old action – an action grounded in reality based on a set of intrinsic values.
Invariably this means we must sacrifice something – just like a pilot must sacrifice height for lift, we must do the same. We must give up what we want to do and instead come back to earth to do what we should.
That means prioritising people over productivity, and our values over validation.
Step 4: Increase thrust (Protecting your energy)
The other thing we must prioritise is our health and well-being.
In aviation, we have a saying: Energy is life. Without it, we cannot maintain lift. So it is with us. This is why we must protect/prioritise our own health above all else.
This section will look at how we do that. It will also explore time management – how we can protect not only our energy but our attention as well.
Step 5: Do it again (Climbing away)
The final step is a reminder that letting go is a practice we must repeat. To help us remain grounded as we return to our lives and chase our goals and ambitions.
A significant threat when recovering from a stall is re-entry – pitching too fast too soon before we’ve gained the energy and lift to sustain us over the long haul.
So this final section will look at life balance – how to balance the four forces of life – to help us stay grounded when we’re flying high, whenever we encounter some of life’s inevitable turbulence.
Closing Thoughts
In a nutshell – this is my 5-step guide for regaining lift in life.
Just in case you think I’m pulling all of this out of my pilot’s hat, well, I am. But, after some research, I release that these steps closely follow the methods used in ACT, CBT, and DBT. Quote, “Three of the most effective methods to improve anxiety, mood and self-confidence.”
To land this post, I want to make a final point.
I’ve defined stalling as a loss of meaning (lift). Stalling is inevitable because change is inevitable – because loss and heartbreak are inevitable. That’s why I think it’s wrong to think in terms of trying to avoid stalling.
The major issue we have isn’t a loss of meaning. It’s an inability to accept and process that loss of lift.
That, ultimately, is the whole point of letting go: so we can move on for the purpose of rebuilding the meaning of our lives. Hopefully this guide will help you do exactly that.
This is part six of a series of posts on the subject of stalling in life.
Hello lovely readers and welcome back to my high-flying newsletter! The only newsletter that promises to deliver what you can only do for yourself.
Following a 3-2-1 approach, it contains 3 thoughts from me (that you should ignore), 2 quotes from others (that you should read), and 1 joke that’s so bad, it’s good!
Let’s begin!
3 Thoughts:
1) “Which came first, the thought or the feeling, is a bit like asking whether it was the chicken or the egg. In either case they perpetuate one another. Negative feeling creates negative thought creates negative feeling creates negative thought… Thoughts themselves are often a form of distraction we pursue to escape our pain.
To escape the emotional rabbit hole it’s useful to ask what basic emotion it is you’re avoiding. Then practise letting it go. Once you’ve done that, you can examine the thought from a more objective place to determine whether it’s grounded in reality or not.” – click to tweet
2) “If you’re feeling overwhelmed try zooming the lens out and consider the bigger 10-year picture. Use that to remind yourself there is no need to rush. Then, keep zooming out to the end of existence itself and remind yourself that nothing fucking matters. Then come back to what you were doing.” – click to tweet
3) “Being successful on the wrong path should scare you far more than any amount of failure on the right one.” – click to tweet
2 Quotes:
“Never attach yourself to person, a place, a company, an organization or a project. Attach yourself to a mission, a calling, a purpose only. That’s how you keep your power and your peace.”
― Elon Musk
“When letting go, it’s not helpful to “think” about the technique. It’s better, simply, just to do it. Eventually it will be seen that all thoughts are resistance. They are all images that the mind has made to prevent us from experiencing what actually is. When we have been letting go for a while and have begun experiencing what is really going on, we will laugh at our thoughts. Thoughts are fakes, absurd make-beliefs that obscure the truth. Pursuing thoughts can keep us occupied endlessly. We will discover one day that we are right where we started. Thoughts are like gold fish in a bowl; the real Self is like the water. The real Self is the space between the thoughts, or more exactly, the field of silent awareness underneath all thoughts.”
— David R. Hawkins (from “Letting Go: The Pathway of Surrender”)
1 Joke:
My wife got annoyed at me for failing to clean the coffee machine.
“The harder we try with the conscious will to do something, the less we shall succeed. Proficiency and results come only to those who have learned the paradoxical art of doing and not doing, or combining relaxation with activity.”
– Aldous Huxley
“From birth, man carries the weight of gravity on his shoulders. He is bolted to the Earth. But man has only to sink beneath the surface and he is free.”
– Jacques Cousteau
Drown-Proofing
When it comes to our psychology what’s happened is this.
Our hands and arms have been bound together, and we’ve been thrown into the deep end. The more we struggle, the faster we sink. The more we panic, the more oxygen we burn, the quicker we drown.
As it happens, this is something navy SEALs do as part of their bat-shit-crazy survival training. It’s called drown-proofing.
The trick to surviving drown-proofing is to let go. You must surrender in the face of death and allow yourself to sink to the bottom of the pool. From there, you lightly push off the pool floor to rise back to the surface.
Finally, you take a big gulp of air before repeating the whole process over again.
The problem with drown-proofing (the reason so many cadets fail at it) is it’s completely counter-intuitive. It’s counter-intuitive for two major reasons.
First, are our deeply ingrained survival instincts screaming at us to do something. (This is what makes drown-proofing such a cruel training exercise: Your survival instincts are pitted against you.)
The second reason is our deeply ingrained belief that we must exert some kind of effort to exact any sort of result.
Diminishing Rates of Return
The logic goes the more I put into something, the more I get out of it.
When it comes to effort versus reward, we assume it’s one-for-one. Twice the effort garners twice the reward. But this is only true for certain menial tasks like washing the dishes or folding the laundry.
Obviously, 4 hours of work is better than none. 8 hours of work is better than 4, although those extra 4 hours will be less productive.
However, the difference between an 8 and a 12-hour workday is next to nothing. Whereas the difference between a 12-hour and a 16-hour workday is undoubtedly counterproductive. (Factoring sleep deprivation and the probability that the quality of work will have diminished significantly.)
At this point you’ve stalled. You need to let go and return to earth for the night before you make everything worse.
Of course, this is how an aeroplane works.
If I pitch up, I increase the amount of lift my wings generate. But I also increase the amount of drag I encounter. Depending on my performance (and what it is I hope to achieve), there is an optimum lift-to-drag ratio. If I exceed that ratio, I get a diminishing rate of return on my lift.
If I keep pitching up, eventually, I’ll reach a point where the air separates from the top of the wing resulting in a substantial loss of lift. This what’s known as the stall.
Understating where this point is important so I don’t exceed it. Of course, prevention is better than cure. However, understanding what to do once I have stalled is even more critical.
Not just because it constitutes an emergency, but because the way to recover is, you guessed it, counter intuitive.
Increasing Rates of Negative Return
This is the main point I want to make today.
The moment we stall in life, the exact opposite of what we believe is true. Effort no longer corresponds with an increase in reward – even on a diminishing rate of return.
Instead, we enter into an increasing rate of negative return.
That means the more effort we put into something – the more we try to exact a result – the worse everything becomes. The more we pitch up, the deeper the stall becomes.
The only way to recover is to let go.
We must then point our aircraft toward the ground to avoid hitting it. It’s completely counter-intuitive, just like drown-proofing. If you don’t want to drown you must sink to the bottom of the pool.
Here’s the mighty big thing.
When it comes to our psychology – when it’s something that exists purely within our mind – this is always the case. The more we try to control our emotional aeroplane – the more we try to fight the turbulence – the worse the ride becomes.
Happiness is the classic example here.
The more we desire happiness – the more we chase after it – the further the carrot moves. The more we wish we didn’t feel so anxious, or angry, or sad, the more gasoline we add to the fire.
The more we crave love and acceptance from others, the harder we find it to love and accept ourselves. The harder we try to fall asleep, the more we want to pull our hair out.
I could go on. So I will!
There’s one more example I want to bring up. The one I’ve been building to. One of the four forces of life known as meaning – the human equivalent of lift.
The more we crave a meaningful experience – the more we desperately try to find meaning – the more meaningless everything starts to feel. The more we wish our lives or experience didn’t mean something, the more we believe it does.
Meaning, like all of the above, requires a counter-intuitive approach.
The Psychology of Letting Go
As complex as our psychology is the reason for this is surprisingly simple. It’s because our mind is both the cause and the effect of the thing we desire.
We tend to treat our minds like a car we must drive to reach our destination. But the mind doesn’t work like that. This is because the mind is both the destination and the vehicle itself.
When Buddhist monks preach about already being free, this is what they mean. You can’t drive yourself out of the destination your mind is already in. You can’t swim when you’re arms and legs are bound together. Your only option is to let yourself sink.
You must sink into the uncertainty, pain, and fear.
When you learn to do that – as petrifying as it is – you’ll find something remarkable happens. As if by magic you’ll find the clarity and perspective you need. You’ll understand where your fear is genuinely rooted.
You’ll find the bottom of the pool.
From there, you won’t have to think about how you should act; you’ll know. You’ll push off the pool floor and launch yourself to salvation. You’ll realise that the only to fly upward from here is to point the nose down.
God willing, you will avoid the ground in the nick of time.
This is part five of a series of posts on the subject of stalling in life.
Hello lovely readers and welcome back to my high-flying newsletter! The only newsletter that believes you should imagine you’re about to die…
Following a 3-2-1 approach, it contains 3 thoughts from me (that you should ignore), 2 quotes from others (that you should read), and 1 joke that’s so bad, it’s good!
Let’s begin!
3 Thoughts:
1) “Live your life as if it will end just a few moments later. Let that decide what you say and do. Let that decide how you live and love. Do that and you’ll see what it really means to fly.” – click to tweet
2) “Imagine a football team that tries to avoid losing at all costs. One that only ever defends. How can they possibly win? The answer is they can’t. You have to risk being scored against in order to score yourself. You have to play to win, not to avoid losing. To do that you must combine action with acceptance. You must be willing to sacrifice your desire for control – of knowing what the outcome will be – and then go ahead and take a shot anyway.” – click to tweet
3) “Giving up is very different to letting go. When we give up it’s because we fail to see the the meaning in it. It’s like saying, “I will never look like Brad Pitt so why bother exercising.” Whereas letting go means accepting what you cannot control/change. It’s about accepting those love handles and then picking up the dumbbells anyway. Letting go is a courageous act that requires requires stepping into the unknown. It’s insecurity. That’s exactly what defines faith. ” – click to tweet
2 Quotes:
“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”
― Albert Einstein
“Birds born in a cage think flying is an illness.”
― Alejandro Jodorowsky
1 Joke:
The other day my 2 year old asked me, “Daddy, can you put my t-shirt on?”
I replied, “Well, I can try.”
So, I took his t-shirt and placed it over my head.
With my head stuck inside I said, “As you can see, it doesn’t fit me very well.”
My emotions come at me in waves. Often I’m strong enough to withstand them – to hold the ship steady – but every now and then they catch me with my shields down. I’m swept away.
That happened the other day when the movers came in to pack everything up. Seeing my whole life packed into boxes. That was difficult.
But the hardest moment came after they had gone. When I was left all alone in an empty apartment, the place we’d called home for the past four years.
And I could see it all at once. I could see the first time we brought my eldest son home from the hospital. I could picture my youngest taking his first steps across the living room floor. All the heart to hearts with my wife, sat exhausted on the sofa after a long day.
The ghosts of my past were everywhere to be seen.
Yet, my present had already packed up and left. Waiting for me in Singapore while I see out the remaining 3 months of my contract here in Hong Kong.
It was then that the sheer enormity of the decision we’d made hit me. It was then that the real ghosts of my past started screaming. Telling me I’ve made a huge mistake, that I don’t what I’m doing, that I’m weak for not having put up with everything.
Here we go again, I thought. The voices in my head that never let up. The voices that have haunted me for so long.
Part of me worried that maybe, underneath it all – behind the politics, the toxic work culture, the endless days of quarantine – the real reason for leaving is a futile attempt to try and outrun these ghosts. Hoping I would somehow be able to leave them behind when I leave myself.
For the longest time I thought the voices telling me to leave were those ghosts. So, I figured the path to salvation was staying put. I figured I had to stay the course.
But I know that’s not true. I know it was my ghosts that kept me frozen in fear for so long.
The funny thing is, now that the decision is made, it seems, in some strange sense, the louder they scream the surer I am. Yet, they still scream, they still kick.
Thankfully I know my ghosts well. l know, more often than not, they appear in a desperate attempt to mask some deeper pain beneath the surface. I also know that trying to outrun them is a mistake.
So, I believe, a better question isn’t how to stop your ghosts from appearing, but how to see through them when they do. To do that, you have to hold them in your heart.
To see through the ghosts of your past you have to accept them as they are.
After torturing myself for a while that day I sat down in middle of that empty apartment and took some time to let my ghosts be. Slowly but surely the voices started to quell.
Slowly but surely the real pain my ghosts were masking began to surface: Grief.
Of course, the only way to process grief is to let your shields downs. The only way to process grief is to let your emotions sweep you away. So, that’s what I did.
The unrelenting madness at work over the past couple of years has taken a toll. I decided I needed some time to clear the storm clouds that had gathered inside my mind. I realised I’d been too close to everything at work.
So, I called the doc and went on long-term stress leave.
After a few weeks of playing with my children and otherwise ignoring the news and anything work-related, I deiced to sit down and address these clouds – the repeated thoughts about leaving my profession and Hong Kong – and map out a flight plan for my diversion.
When I did, two uncomfortable questions kept popping up. Those were:
Who am I?
Who do I want to become?
As fate would have it – after stewing on those questions for a while – I read a BBC article about the importance of imaging your future self. It noted, “a large number of psychological studies over the past decade have shown those who struggle to imagine their future selves as a continuation of the person that they are today, tend to be less responsible.”
This caused me to spill my morning coffee. I thought, “That’s it! The picture of my future self has become blurry. So long as my future self remains a stranger to me – so long as I think of him as someone different to the person I am today – I will remain rudderless in the present.”
After reflecting on this, I decided to follow the same article’s advice. Which was to write a letter to my future self 20 years from now describing what is most important to me today and my plans for the coming decades.
So, I thought long and hard about my values and wrote this letter. And then, I wrote a second one. A reply from my future self. I found it to be a powerful exercise. One that brought that picture back into sharp focus. That has allowed me to find my bearings again in the present.
Aside from clarifying my values, it helped me look at everything happening from a longer-term perspective – helping to understand another mistake I’d been making.
Everything that has led me to this significant crossroads in my life, I’ve been telling myself that it represents a diversion from the person I thought I was supposed to become.
But that’s not true. As my future self put it,
“The values that are causing you to reconsider your future aren’t taking you away from the person you thought you were meant to be. They are driving you back towards the person you already are – the person you’ve always been at heart. If you place faith in him, I promise that he will take you exactly where you want to go.
That’s because – if you do – you’ll see there is nowhere you have to go, no place you have to be, nothing you have to do. You’ve already arrived. You’re already exactly where you’re meant to be. You’re already the person you’re meant to become.
Your only problem is that you’re fighting him – you’re fighting who you already are. But he will win this fight. And you must let him. You must place your faith in the person you already are.”
After writing this out, I felt this wave of calm wash over me. I saw my future self smiling back at me. As if he knows this is the moment I’ve finally come to understand something vital for both his sake and mine.
It’s this thought – this insight – that I want to leave you with to reflect on:
If you want to gain a clear picture of the person you are meant to become, you have to stop fighting who you already are.
When I was about 8 years old, my family and I went over to our next-door neighbour’s house for dinner. After dinner, their daughter offered me a sweet for dessert. So, she led me into her room and opened up her “sweetie draw.”
What she had done was save her sweets over months and months to fill up this draw with all of her favourite goodies. It was a big draw. Skittles, liquorice allsorts, gummy bears, gobstoppers… you name it, she had it.
The thought of it now makes me salivate.
It made such an impression, I decided to build my own. So, while we were out shopping the next day, I pleaded with my mum to buy me some sweets. I remember getting a packet of chewy fruit mentos. I vowed not to eat it but to save it for my very own sweetie draw.
On the way home, however, I couldn’t help myself. I bargained with myself, “It’s ok if I eat a few. I can save the rest of the packet for my sweetie draw!” By the car ride home, I’d eaten most of the packet.
After we got home, I placed this mostly eaten mentos packet in my bedside drawer. Of course, it didn’t last long. The thought of it continued to eat away at me. Eventually, I gave in and consumed the rest.
But do you know what? Do you know how I felt after this crushing defeat? Well, nothing really. I didn’t care. I simply moved on with my life.
Now, I’m sure you’ve most of you have heard of the famous marshmallow experiment. For those who haven’t, it was a study conducted by psychologist Walter Mischel, where children were offered a choice between one marshmallow now or two marshmallows if they waited for a period of time.
Years later, researchers found that the children who were able to wait longer for the preferred rewards “tended to have better life outcomes, as measured by SAT scores, educational attainment, body mass index (BMI), and other life measures.”
I bring it up because every time I read about it, it always made me feel kinda bad. Because I know I would have been one of the kids who “failed” that experiment. Just like I failed to build that sweetie draw.
Still, I realize something is up because, by most of those metrics, I am “successful.” Not as successful as some, but I could have done worse. How much of this “success” has to do with my skin colour, sex, or other advantages I take for granted, is up for debate. I feel it would be remiss not to mention that.
Either way, I know I’m still that kid inside.
My wife has no problem eating in moderation. On the other hand, given half the chance, I will consume an entire box of Oreos in one sitting. This is why I ask my wife not to buy treaty things when she goes shopping. She once asked, “What if I hide them?” I told her in my best Liam Neeson impression, “That I will find them, and I will eat them.”
None of this is to say I haven’t learned to delay gratification. I believe I have. My finances are in good order. I eat a balanced diet (at home). I’m fit and healthy. It’s just, none of this is really achieved through willpower. I’m not sitting on my hands, trying to distract myself from eating the marshmallow in front of me.
I’ve learned that designing my environment is a FAR more effective way to control my impulsivity. I’m better off with no marshmallows than I am trying to get two. And this, I’ve figured out, is my superpower. It’s not the ability to delay gratification so I can get what I want. It’s not wanting it in the first place.
I can’t help but wonder, what if, many of those kids – the ones who weren’t “capable” of delaying gratification – were misunderstood. What if they were happy being who they were until society placed a spotlight on the “successful” people of this world and told them this is who you should be and what you should have? Until society showed them the sweetie draw and said, “look at this!”
Of course, that same society also teaches us that our wants and desire “are the root of all evil.” That may well be true, but what happens when you hate on your own wants and desires? What happens when you hate yourself for being human? What happens when you resist or hate anything? Of course, you give those parts of yourself control. You give those things strength. (That applies to the political party and leader you hate too!)
But people don’t build sweetie draws because of their ability to delay gratification. They find the act of building a sweetie draw gratifying. They love collecting. They love saving up. Similarly, people don’t get up at 5 am to exercise because of their incredible willpower. People obsessed with health and fitness are simply obsessed with health and wellness.
They have made those things part of their identity. It’s who they are.
Of course, we can learn to make those things part of our identity too. We can put the habits in place that reinforce the identity we wish to build. We can learn to visualise our goals and “surf the urge” whenever we find ourselves tempted to dig into the packet of mentos.
These things are worth working on.
But if you’re going about it to make up for the fact that you don’t currently have a sweetie draw. If you’re trying to make up for feelings of inadequacy, it’s going to be hard, if not impossible. If you ask me, self-discipline is an illusion. The real secret to self-improvement is self-acceptance. It’s when you learn to understand, love and work with the person you are, that things become easier.
And you should take the time to ask yourself who you are and what it is you really want.. Maybe you want the second marshmallow, or, maybe you don’t one in the first place?
Personally, I love going with the flow. I don’t care so much for stuff. I tend to think that security is overrated. If I’m being brutally honest, I’ve found having three mortgages, keeping up with several different investment portfolios, etc., somewhat imprisoning. I’m looking to drastically simplify my finances over the next couple of years for that reason.
The older I get, the more I realise how much happier I am giving away my marshmallow than I am trying to save for a second. I realise there will never be a sweetie draw in my household and do you know what?
Hello lovely readers and welcome back to the first edition of my new and improved weekly newsletter! The only weekly newsletter that disappears for a month only to return on a different day of the week with a completely different name… (Let me know what you think in the comments.)
Following a 3-2-1 approach, it contains 3 thoughts from me (that you should ignore), 2 quotes from others (that you should read), and 1 something extra special (maybe).
Let’s begin!
3 x Thoughts:
1) When you stop giving a fuck about the end result, you start having a lot more fun.
2) Your plant won’t grow if you only feed water to the leaves. You have to feed the roots in order to grow. That means taking care of your fundamentals first (think health, relationships, security, etc.), before you start chasing your goals.
3) The more you believe in yourself, the more willing you are to accept your current reality. Preparing for the worst helps you build the confidence needed to deal with it. When the worst happens and the fruits of your labour are rewarded, this becomes the difference between failure or, if you’re lucky, feeling relieved, and gaining an unstoppable sense of self-belief. Preparing for the worst in life – both mentally and physically – helps you accept life on its terms. It prevents from placing hope externally, for circumstances out of your control to go your way, and instead places it internally, for your ability to deal with anything and everything that comes your way.
2 x Quotes:
“Groundedness does not eliminate passion, productivity, or all forms of striving and ambition. Instead, it is about ditching an omnipresent and frantic anxiety to begin living in alignment with your innermost values, pursuing your interests, and expressing your authentic self in the here and now. When you are grounded there is no need to look up or down. You are where you are, and you hold true strength and power from that position. Your success, and the way in which you pursue it, becomes more enduring and robust. You gain the confidence to opt out of the consumer-driven rat-race that leaves you feeling like you are never enough.”
“The desire for more positive experience is itself a negative experience. And, paradoxically, the acceptance of one’s negative experience is itself a positive experience.”
“Misfortune weighs most heavily on those who expect nothing but good fortune.”
– SENECA
Have you ever noticed how we’re taught that our wants and desires have everything to do with our suffering, yet we’re also taught to “live in hope”? Have you ever stopped to consider how these messages might muddy the waters?
You see it all over the blogosphere, of course. “Don’t give up,” “Hang in there,” “Never lose hope”…
But what, exactly, are we supposed to never lose hope for? A perfect body? A million dollars? For becoming a celebrity so we may be adored forever? For politicians to do as they promised – to do what’s right for our children?!
Hah!
So many talk as if hope is the panacea to life’s problems. As if hope will set us free. I wonder how many people have stopped to ask themselves whether hoping is the problem? That maybe it’s because they’re hoping that they’re suffering? I wonder how many people miss their own lives because they’re constantly hoping for something different?
I’m guessing it’s a lot.
What if you shouldn’t be hoping for something different? What if, when your survival isn’t at stake – when, at this moment, there is nothing wrong – what if hoping is the last thing you should be doing?
What if accepting life as it stands is more important than hoping?
We cannot hope the pandemic will disappear tomorrow after all, or that evil will vanquish without a fight. Of course, we must believe in our ability to prevail, but to hope for things out of our control?
Well, hello, psychological torture my old friend!
Maybe we can work towards improving our lives without feeling it needs to be? Maybe we can work in recognition that we already have everything we need? Maybe our work can be dedicated to helping others for that reason? For those who really do need to “live in hope” because their survival depends on it?
What Hope Is For
This is where I believe we need to be clear: Hope isn’t for external reality, it’s for your ability to deal with it. It’s for survival. It’s designed to lift you from the brink of destruction. When your back is against the wall and you ingest birds in both of your engines, hope gives you the fortitude to land that fucker in the Hudson.
Talking of which, when Sully Sullenberger ingested a flock of geese in both engines, the most remarkable thing about that day wasn’t that he successfully managed to ditch an aeroplane on the Hudson. (Although that was pretty damn remarkable.)
No, the most remarkable thing was his ability to rapidly come to terms with his predicament. The most remarkable thing was his ability to take stock of his situation and find the clarity needed to do his job under the most extreme circumstances.
In a TV interview where he describes the events of that day, he said he remembers the first three conscious thoughts he had vividly. The first was, “This can’t be happening.” Followed by, “This doesn’t happen to me.” Then, he said, this was followed by a dawning realisation that this flight, unlike any other flight during his 40 + career in aviation, wouldn’t end on a runway with the aircraft undamaged. He said, “I was ok with that, as long as I could solve the problem.”
Talk about radical acceptance! I don’t know about you, but it takes me more time to accept life when the alarm goes off in the morning.
A Counterintuitive Approach
Here’s the funny thing about acceptance – it provides a counterintuitive approach to hope. If you have the fortitude to do so, it prevents you from hoping for something different. To be saved by some knight in shining armour.
It means you’re left hoping for one thing and one thing alone: yourself. Your ability to deal with life as it stands. Even if that’s means you’ve just ingested birds in both of your engines!
Of course, that’s scary. Having to come to terms with the brutal facts of your reality. To understand that you and you alone are responsible for it.
That’s why most people don’t. They’re too scared to own that level of responsibility. So they distract themselves through addiction and false hope, convincing themselves that their life circumstances are not their fault and, therefore, not their responsibility.
Of course, that’s wrong. We are always responsible for things that aren’t our fault. In fact, that’s life. Life isn’t your fault, but here you are anyway. What do you want to do about it? Hope for something else?
Preparing for the Worst
Bruce Lee once said, “Do not pray for an easy life; pray for the strength to endure a difficult one.”
Of course, building the strength to deal with adversity when it happens is something you can control. Whether you have an easy life or not isn’t. What hand the universe deals you is beyond your control. What he’s really saying is you should hope for your best, not the best.
How do you that?
By actively preparing yourself for the worst. By challenging yourself. By putting yourself in the dragon’s den and proving that you can. By defining yourself by your pain. There’s a reason why the proverbial kitchen sink is thrown at pilots every 3 months in the simulator. We are thrown in at the deep end and told to sink or swim. Deal with it or have your license invalidated.
In that same TV interview Sully said, that although they had never practiced a water landing in the simulator before, “Because I had learned my craft so well and because I knew my plane and my profession so intimately, I could set clear priorities. And so I chose to do only the highest priority items, and then I had the discipline to ignore everything I did not have time to do.”
What a legend.
I’ll finish with one more thought.
Acting in hope for your survival and those you love is easy. It’s necessary, so it’s easy. When you have no other choice but to act against all odds, of course, you act. It might not be easy to do, but the decision is.
The real measure of a person is how they respond to events outside of their control. When they cannot act, despite their hopes. The real measure of a person is in their ability to accept. To accept the reality of their past – to accept and embrace the demons in their closet. To accept, ultimately, their own mortality. And that of those who they love most dearly. That is true courage. That is true strength.
And it isn’t hope that will bring you peace – although it may save you. It’s acceptance that does that. That’s why, I suggest you start with radical acceptance for what is long before you start hoping. Then, and only then, if you still have the audacity to hope, you better be prepared to take action.
***
You can find more of AP2’s writing at the following:
“No tree, it is said, can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell.”
― Carl Jung
I spent most of my adult life trying to avoid suffering. It made everything worse. I spent my days waiting, hoping for my knight in shining armour. The funny thing is she existed, I just didn’t have the courage to ask her for help. I was too afraid to challenge my beliefs.
I also didn’t understand the paradoxical nature of change. The fact that you have to first accept who you are, that you have to first accept your life circumstances.
Which is hard, of course. I mean, how could I accept what my demons were telling me? How could I accept that what I really believed, was that I wasn’t capable – that I wasn’t worthy?
I tried in desperation to whip myself into something I wasn’t. I tried to kill that part of myself and in the process became consumed by it. Depression took a firm grip and I found myself drowning. In my attempts to fight, I only sunk deeper.
Eventually I gave up altogether.
Yet, it was only when I finally let go that I started to see something. What’s already there is there, so why fight it? To fight your demons, to resit them – is not only futile, it makes things worse.
Attempts to kill your demons makes them scream louder.It’s hating those parts of yourself that gives them strength. It’s only by embracing your demons, by having the courage to hold them in your heart, that you will start to see change.
And it won’t be that those demons go away. They won’t. What changes is your relationship to them. Suddenly they become part of you. You see both the light and the dark side. You come to understand them. You start to see where they’ve really come from.
That is insight.
And because your demons feel heard, they start to soften. They don’t feel the need to scream for oxygen anymore. It’s no different to a child who is shown love after a long period of neglect. Of course that’s all that the inner-child deep down in all of us wants – to be heard, to be held, to be loved.
I believe life’s biggest lesson is acceptance. For who we are, for life in all it’s fucked up glory, for, ultimately, our own mortality and that of those we love.
That’s why I suggest making it part of your morning prayer or meditation ritual. Find ways, design habits, whatever you have to do to cultivate an extreme sense of gratitude for who you are and what you have in this moment. It’s not easy, of course. I get it. It is something you have to practise everyday.
That’s not to say one shouldn’t act. No, that’s resignation. Resignation is choosing not to act when you can make a change. Resignation is choosing to believe the false narratives in your head instead of looking deeply. Resignation is believing that you can’t be helped, when you can. I know all about resignation.
Acceptance is something very different.
Acceptance is about acknowledging your demons, it’s not about letting them dictate the terms. Acceptance is about having discipline to face your current reality as it stands, to own up to it.
You need to let your demons know you hear them, then go ahead and do what you know is right. That includes asking for help if you need it. That includes processing your grief. There is no shame in this. In fact, that’s exactly what courage is.
Now here’s the paradox.
What follows a fear to accept is a fear to act. What follows the courage to accept is the courage to act. If you do that, you’ll find your demons switch shoulders. You’ll find you’re driven by them, not burdened by them. You’ll find your demons are everything to you – they’re what give your life it’s ultimate meaning. Once that happens, you’re not just going through the motions. You’re not just doing a job. It’s far deeper than that.
We need meaning in our lives, because that’s what gives us hope. It’s what helps us to guard against nihilism. The more meaning you find in life, the more meaningful you believe your life is – the more peace and joy and love you will find in it. The most powerful way to do that is give meaning to your suffering.
If you do, you’ll realise your demons were trying to lead you from darkness all along. You’ll look down and realise, your shadows are made from light. You’ll realise your demons are your angels as well.
Hello lovely readers and welcome back to Mindset Mondays! The only weekly post that believes you have to earn self-acceptance…
Following a 3-2-1 approach, it contains 3 thoughts from me (that you should ignore), 2 quotes from others (that you should read), and 1 thing I’ve been reading, watching or listening to this week that has helped me grow.
As a bonus I’ve finished with 1 joke that’s so bad, it’s good.
Let’s begin!
3 x Thoughts:
1) Something better than hoping your children have a happy life, is hoping they have the strength to deal with a difficult one.
3) You aren’t meant to deny your emotions, you’re meant to negotiate with them. You say, “I understand you don’t want to go for a run, I understand you feel tired, but think about how great you’ll feel afterwards – think about the sense of accomplishment you’ll get once you’re done!” If you ask me, the biggest secret when it comes to self-improvement is self-acceptance. This allows you to work with your emotions, instead of against them. This is also what it means to love yourself. You don’t try to become something more because you feel inadequate, you try to become something more because you love who you are and want to look after that person to the best of your ability.
2 x Quotes:
“Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.”
This brilliant Ted Talk: How Great Leaders Inspire Action from the author of Start with Why, Simon Sinek. In this episode Simon explains the difference between leaders and those who lead using a simple but powerful model – starting with a golden circle and the question: “Why?” His examples include Apple, Martin Luther King Jr. and the Wright brothers. My favourite quote, “People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.” I believe his model could just as easily be applied to the world of blogging. Well worth the watch!
1 x Joke:
Another far side comic for you all this week, I hope you enjoy!
Thanks ladies and gentlemen. I’m here all week! As always I welcome ALL thoughts and opinions on this blog. Please let us know in the comments section below.
Sorry! Sorry! That was a bit harsh. It sounded cooler in my head. Let me try again.
“Hasta la vista, baby”, “Yippie ki yay, motherfucker!”
Damn it! Sorry! I did it again. One more time.
“Prepare yourself for death… motherfucker!”
I’m sorry, I just… I can’t help myself. I have a problem.
Anyway, what Iactually want to say is, come to terms with your own mortality.
Imagine it. Embrace it even. Picture your loved ones dying. Picture yourself slowly turning into dust. Become acutely aware of the fact that you, and everything you hold dear, are going to die.
Now, you might think I’m one crazy motherfucker for suggesting something so morbid – you might think that contemplating death will make you unhappy, however, studies have shown the opposite to be true. Those who deliberately stare into the abyss actually foster a “non-conscious orientation toward happy thoughts.”
The Bhutansese, for example, considered to be some of the happiest people on earth, think about death, on average, five times a day. Five times! It turns out that death meditation is a very common Buddhist practise. You know those peaceful chaps with no hair and orange robes? Yeah, they even have a name for it called Maranasati.
Personally I’ve found it to be a very powerful tool. It’s something I practise every morning now. I find few things sober me up to my present reality more. Few things give me as much clarity for doing and saying what I should – for aligning my actions with my values. Few things make me feel so incredibly grateful for the fact that I’m still alive – for the things and the people in my life as it stands today.
Now, I should say there’s like 1 percent of the population who probably shouldn’t meditate on death (disclaimer/suggestion thingy), so if you have some sort of trauma or psychological instability then please consult a mental heath care professional first. For the rest of you, however, I suggest implementing the following 3 steps, like, now!
Here they are:
Meditate on the death of your loved ones.
Meditate on your own death.
Reflect on and revaluate your priorities, today!
Here’s the exercise in full:
While sitting up straight, bring your attention to your breathe for a few minutes. However long it takes to stop the monkey mind from dancing around, then bring to mind someone you love. Now, consider the reality that they will die. Imagine it happening. Imagining being by their side during their final moments. Allow yourself to feel any emotions that arise. Next, notice any thoughts you have – like what you would say to them.
Next, spend a few minutes coming back to your breathe before considering the reality that you yourself will die. Make it clear that you don’t know when or how it will happen. As you inhale you can say to yourself, “This could be my last inhale.” As you exhale you say to yourself, “This could be my last exhale.” Next, allow yourself to feel any emotions that arise. Notice any thoughts you have – like what you wish you would have done or said during your life.
Next, let your eyes open and stop meditating. Take a few minutes to reflect on your response to the reality of death. Did you feel scared? Did any regrets pop up? What seems important to you now? Consider how can you use this knowledge to inform your decisions today. Ask yourself whether your priorities are aligned. Finally, take out your journal and write down any thoughts you have. Make a list of the 3 most important values/things in your life, then ask yourself how you can prioritise them today. Finally, get on it!
Hello lovely readers and welcome back to Mindset Mondays! The only weekly post to plan its own funeral…
Following a 3-2-1 approach, it contains 3 thoughts from me (that you should ignore), 2 quotes from others (that you should read), and 1 thing I’ve been reading, watching or listening to this week that has helped me grow.
As a bonus I’ve finished with 1 joke that’s so bad, it’s good.
Let’s begin!
3 x Thoughts:
1) The two most important things are your family and today. Connect the dots.
2) What if we all had the same colour skin? What if we all ate the same food? What if we all had the same job? What if we believed in the same God? What if we were all exactly the same? People often talk about the need to focus on our similarities instead of fixating on our differences. If you ask me, I reckon we should celebrate our diversity. We should each be proud of our unique qualities. That’s exactly what makes this fucked up world such an interesting place. In essence we are all the same (which is important to stress), but thank God none of us actually are.
3) Love was nature’s antidote to prevent our own fears from destroying ourselves. It was designed to give us the courage to overcome our own fear of death so we can protect what it is we love – our offspring. Or – historically – our tribe, or our country, or our religion (whatever represents our larger self.) But here we have to be careful. Because what you are willing to die for, you are willing to kill for. That is a brutal reality check. (Come between a mother bear and its cubs and you’ll understand what I’m talking about.) Too much fear and it consumes us – yes. But too much love can blind us. There is a balance. We need to be careful about what our love for country, or religion, or partner is telling us. Sometimes your fears are right and your love is wrong. In a society that makes a hero of one and a villain of the other I believe this has messed up our thinking somewhat. It’s not that one is good and the other is bad, but that both have their place. Often neither of them do. Trusting rational thought over emotion is a good rule of thumb in the modern age.
2 x Quotes:
“Sometimes as an antidote
To fear of death,
I eat the stars.”
– Rebecca Elson
“I don’t trust people who don’t love themselves and tell me ‘I love you.’ … There is an African saying which is: ‘Be careful when a naked person offers you a shirt.’”
— Maya Angelou
1 x Thing:
1) This moving video by Jim Carrey about who you really are. His point about taking a chance on who you are versus killing your true self certainly struck a chord. Hope you enjoy!
1 x Joke:
My old man cooked us fish and chips for dinner the other night. While he was halfway through cooking I asked, “What happened here? Did you get in a fight?”
My dad replied, “What do you mean?”
I said seriously, “This fish has clearly been battered dad.”
My mum who over heard the conversation shook her head while saying, “Oh cod.”
It’s fair to say we all had a whale of a time.
Thanks ladies and gentlemen. I’m here all week As always I welcome ALL thoughts and opinions on this blog. Please let us know below.
One bonus question to finish:
What’s something unique about yourself that you’re proud of?
The simplest, most common sense piece of wisdom that the vast majority of people fuck up on a daily basis is this: Don’t make shit worse than it already is.
For example, imagine that a global pandemic ravages the world turning life as we know it on its head (oh wait). Now imagine how much harder it would be if you spent your entire time wishing it hadn’t happened (ah shit). Wishing for a different reality (yep, fucked that one up).
Or imagine that you’ve lost your job. Now imagine how much harder it would be if you spent your time blaming your employer for what happened. Pissing all your savings down the drain in anger. Instead of knuckling under and coming up with a plan. Instead of first accepting the hand you’ve been dealt and then putting in the hard yards so you come out the other side stronger.
It sounds simple, not making shit worse than it already is. However not making shit worse is about having the discipline to face your current reality as it stands. Having the discipline to first accept it.
This is why so many people fuck up this simple common sense piece of wisdom. They don’t practise acceptance (which is hard). They don’t first come to terms with what’s happened. Instead of pausing to have a think – instead of then making a measured response – they react rashly, caving in to impulsivity instead.
There’s something else we use in aviation to help us think clearly when faced with any non normal scenario. I believe it works just as well in everyday life. It’s called the CLEAR model. (If you’re interested I wrote all about it here.) It stands for the following:
C – Clarifywhat the problem is. (Global pandemic has left me unemployed.) L – Lookfor information and ideas. (Search for a new job or do an online course to gain new skills.) E – Evaluate your options. (Apply for jobs or learn a new skill or binge watch NETFLIX.) A – Act on your decision. (Binge watch NETFLIX.) R – Review how it is working. (Enjoying NETFLIX. Will continue to watch NETFLIX until I hate myself then reluctantly look for a new job.)
I believe this is a useful model that helps you first sit on your hands and then gain some much needed clarity before making a decision. Because that’s what you need to do. First accept what has happened and then become clear about your options.
Hello lovely readers and welcome back to Mindset Mondays! The only weekly post that doesn’t completely hate itself…
Following a 3-2-1 approach, it contains 3 thoughts from me (that you should ignore), 2 quotes from others (that you should read), and 1 thing I’ve been reading, watching or listening to this week that has helped me grow.
As a bonus I’ve finished with 1 joke that’s so bad, it’s good.
Let’s begin!
(As a way to give credit and to say thank you, I’ve linked back to any posts that have inspired my thoughts. I’ve linked back to any quotes I’ve found as well.)
3 x Thoughts:
1) One needs to accept life as it stands today. Radically. In all of its fucked-up glory. And then act in whatever capacity one can to better his or her circumstances. But even that shouldn’t come at the expense of appreciating what one currently has. As a rule for life, I suggest you practice gratitude long before you start hoping in the morning.
2) Maybe we should imagine losing our loved ones in a car accident tomorrow? Maybe we should take the time to imagine losing everything we hold dear? Maybe imagining the worst is exactly what brings what’s right in front of us, sharply into focus? Maybe meditating on our mortality, our own inevitable demise is exactly what gives us freedom in the present? Maybe it’s doing this which reminds us how good we actually have it right now? Maybe we will find more joy in everyday life by embracing these difficult emotions rather than chasing after a bigger pay check or slimmer waistline? What do you think?
3) The next time you get angry at your racist grandfather – or any elderly person who appears to be stuck in his or her ways – consider the possibility that their contempt has less to do with what they believe than it does their inability to come to terms with their own mortality. This knowledge might just give you the strength to return love for hate.
2 x Quotes:
“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”
– Mark Twain
“Even if you’re going to live three thousand more years, or ten times that, remember: you cannot lose another life than the one you’re living now, or live another one than the one you’re losing. The longest amounts to the same as the shortest. The present is the same for everyone; its loss is the same for everyone; and it should be clear that a brief instant is all that is lost. For you can’t lose either the past or the future; how could you lose what you don’t have?”
1) This Psychology Today article: Why We Fear Death and How to Overcome It. As the title suggest this article explores some surprising reasons behind why it is some of us fear death (and why others don’t). It also outlines 4 ways (listed below) to overcome your own fear of mortality.
Help to nurture and raise younger generations: “The term “generativity” refers to a concern for younger people and a desire to nurture and guide them. When older people have a greater sense of generativity, they tend to also look back on their life without regret or anguish. This, understandably, leads to having less fear of death.”
Talk about it: It turns out that avoidance (surprise surprise) causes it to loom larger in our minds. Like all fears its best to bring them into the light. Don’t avoid the topic – talk about. Imagine it. Prepare for its inevitably.
Have a (simulated) out of body or near death experience: Perhaps seeking out a near death experience isn’t the greatest advice but trying to have an out of body experience (via deep meditation for example) can yield similar results. The idea is that it gives us the sense that we live on even when separated from out bodies.
Cultivate greater meaning in your life: Studies show that those who feel they are living a meaningful life are less afraid of death. I suggest you start by defining your values and then looking to see how you can better build your life around them.
1 x Joke:
Struggling for a good joke this week so thought I’d leave you with another far side comic. Hope you enjoy!
Thanks ladies and gentlemen. I’m here all week As always I welcome ALL thoughts and opinions on this blog. Please let us know below.
One bonus question to ponder:
Is it death that you fear, or not having lived in the first place?
“You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end — which you can never afford to lose — with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality.”
– Vietnam War. Admiral James Stockdale
Do you want to know the one reason you’re not happy right now?
It’s because you’re hoping for something different.
It’s as simple as that.
By wishing for something different your perception of what reality should be crashes against what is. This friction is the source of all your suffering.
You cannot alter reality. Only your perception of it, your acceptance of it.
Reality is perfectly happy being the fucked up place it is because it can’t be anything else.
It was just as fucked before you were born as it will be the day after you die.
Stop hoping for something different.
Either Act Or Accept.
These are far better choices than hoping.
Do you want to know why you’re in the mess that you are?
It’s because you were sold a dummy by a society that has glorified hope.With the movies and TV shows you watch. The super hero who swoops in to save the day at the final hour. You cling to that, waiting for your knight in shining armour to save you.
It’s true to say hope can serve as temporary relief from your current pain, but that’s about all one can say.
How have those things worked out for you in the past?
What has hope really done for you?
It’s another form of avoidance, of distraction.
What happened to your hope when coronavirus fucked up all your plans last year? What happened to your hope when governments repeatedly failed you?
Is hope going to get us out of this mess?
No.
Fuck hope.
You’re the super hero of your own reality. You control yourself, your thoughts and the way you look at the world.
Fuck hope.
Hope is an excuse not to do what you can.
Hope is an excuse to say these problems are beyond you, to say they are beyond all of us.
Hope is saying all will be ok when I die and go to heaven.
Fuck hope.
Hope is what led you to hopelessness when the world didn’t live up to your expectations.
And let me tell you, living in hopelessness is an equally terrible place because that isn’t based in reality either.
Act or Accept.
Those are your choices.
I’ll say one more thing before I wrap up.
Giving up hope isn’t about being overly pessimistic – it’s about coming back to reality and seeing it for what it is.
Hopelessness is being overly pessimistic.
If you have clothes on your back, food on the table and a roof over your head. If you can breathe…!
I’d say there is more right with you than not.
The best things in life haven’t changed because you lost your job or your wife left you.
Taking a shit or having a wank is just as wonderful with zero dollars in the bank as it is with billions (sorry, I meant feeling the cool breeze on your skin or listening to the birds chirping in the morning – yeah those things too).
Will this message inspire you in some way?
Who knows.
All I can do is my best to reinforce the narratives that help me and see if it helps others.
Maybe it will, maybe it won’t.
Either way, I’m not holding onto any hope.
(Thanks for reading ladies and gentlemen. I hope (ha) you enjoyed it. I’ll let you in on a little secret. Sometimes I take an extreme position on a topic simply to challenge myself (and you) to think differently, even if I don’t agree with the argument. Do I really think that hope is such a terrible emotion? No, of course not. Hope is a very important emotion designed to inspire action. But here is what I did take from this post – hope must be tied to action otherwise it’s dangerous. Hoping for things out of your control (as I learnt the hard way this past year) is truly awful for your mental health. Hope only for yourself, for the things that you can control. And then take action to make it so. For everything else you can’t control – I suggest you practise acceptance instead. With that said I’m curious what your thoughts are on the topic of hope? As always I welcome ALL comments and opinions. Wishing you well, AP2 🙏)
You shouldn’t have to! There should be, I believe, a certain flow to it. That comes from letting go a little (or a lot). It comes from letting the river carry you down stream.
That’s how you get the most enjoyment from life.
Sure there are occasions where you need to to give yourself a slap in the face, a freezing cold shower or a motivational speech in front of the mirror (What… You don’t do that?), but that should simply be to get things off the ground.
Afterwards things should come about somewhat naturally. I believe this comes from not giving a f*** so much. I believe it comes from trusting your gut. Following your intuition. Whatever it is you want to call it.
If you happen to find that everything is a massive struggle – that everything feels like one big drag, that’s probably a good sign that you’ve been forcing life. It’s a sign you’re burnt out (or depressed).
Let’s take writing as an example. If you find yourself in a spiral trying to rewrite a certain bastard post several hundred times, you need to walk away and do something else.
Meditate. Go for a walk. Go for a w… walk (yeah I already said that). Whatever it is. Laugh. Play. Enjoy. Then come back when you’re itching to do so.
We both know that the best stuff you and I write are rarely the blog posts we’ve slaved over but the ones that came about naturally. From the heart (and with a glass of red wine.)
Live and let go. There is always tomorrow. Or maybe there isn’t! Either way it’s probably best to enjoy today as your first order of business.
Is this good advice? No idea. Don’t really care. I’m winging it. I’m enjoying it. Along with this lovely glass of vino. That’s good enough for me.
That’s the most liberating, wonderful thing in the world, when you openly admit you’re an ass. It’s wonderful. When people tell me, “You’re wrong.” I say, “What can you expect of an ass?”
The vast majority of conversations consist of two people trying to have their egos validated by proving that one is right and the other is wrong. Often both will agree but even then, in most cases, what they agree is that others are wrong and they are right.
This is a special, saucy kind of conversation where two individuals stroke each others egos instead of their own. “Oh stop it.” “No you stop it.” “Reowww!”
It’s all based on the egos insatiable appetite to be right. To try to make sense of a world it can’t possibly make sense of. To place everything into neat little boxes. So we can get a tick with an A+ next to it.
Well done Timmy you passed the test! You’re 100 percent right! Any other option would have been wrong but you got it right! This is exactly how the world works!
The problem is so many of us have been raised to look at the world through this black and white lens where we’re taught that right equals good. Right equals success. Right equals smart and capable. Whereas wrong equals failure. Wrong equals incapable. Wrong equals dumb.
It’s this kind of thinking that has made being wrong so difficult for so many of us.
It either threatens our identity as being smart and capable or confirms it as being dumb and incapable. In both cases we find being wrong so incredibly painful we avoid putting ourselves out there at all costs.
The question is how do we protect ourselves against this form of thinking? How do we protect against having a fixed mindset?
Well one way is to consider that every single thought you’ve ever had, every thought that anyone has ever had, is in some way, shape or form, wrong. To consider that there is no black or white, only grey.
If you look deeply enough you’ll see this is true. That we are always wrong in someway, shape or form. This argument itself can be picked apart on so many levels.
The reason is there is no possible way you, or anyone else, can know everything there is to know about anything. The world is simply too complex.
The sooner we can see how deeply flawed the ways in which we think are, the sooner we can let go of our limiting beliefs and more forward to slightly less limiting beliefs.
Equally the sooner we can get to grips with the idea we know next to nothing – the more comfortable we can become in not knowing. This actually, paradoxically, promotes curiosity and learning.
It does this by helping us to understand that there is always something to learn. Always some area in which we can grow and get better. Equally it keeps our egos from feeling threatened by the idea that it’s wrong. As a result we become less afraid to learn and ask questions. We become less afraid to put our hands up and ask stupid questions.
This way of thinking promotes a growth mindset.
So next time you have a conversation with someone I suggest dropping all notions of, or attempts at, being right. Instead I invite you consider simply trying to be a little less wrong than you already are. Not only will this put you in a willing mindset to learn, it will allow you take whatever someone else has to say with a huge pinch of salt.
Thanks again for reading everyone. I’m curious what tactics you might have for cultivating a growth mindset? How do you keep an open mind? As always I welcome ALL thoughts and opinions. I will always take it with a pinch of salt.
Hello lovely readers and welcome back to myMindset Mondays Post! The only weekly newsletter that expresses gratitude after forcing you to concede…
Following a 4-3-2-1 approach, it contains 4 thoughts from me (that you should probably ignore), 3 quotes from others (that you should definitely read), and 2 things I’ve been reading, watching or listening to this week that have helped me grow.
As always, I’ve finished with 1 terrible joke that’s so bad, you won’t be able to help but laugh…
Expressing gratitude might just be one of the single best ways to interpret reality – for the fact that we are alive is an extraordinary miracle. That this is lost on us for the majority of our lives shows a sad and astonishing disconnect from the reality of what it means to be alive. Practising gratitude shouldn’t just be something you practise everyday but something you strive to practise every waking moment of your existence.
Isn’t it amazing that you can fail an unlimited number of times in life but still succeed? I find that reassuring. Sadly many of us allow repeated failure to grind us down. To tell us we are failures. It’s simply not true. The most successful people in life are the ones who have failed the most. It’s actually a measure of effort. It’s actually a measure of courage.
If there’s one thing I could get you to learn – I’d want you to see that you don’t need to achieve anything anymore. You don’t need to keep pushing for some goal to complete. You have everything you need. You’ve achieved it already. Slow down and look. Observe. See and experience what you have. Enjoy it. That’s the part of what it means to be truly successful that most of us fail at. Many people believe they’re successful yet can’t understand why they’re unhappy. People will never realise what true success is until they learn how to enjoy what they’ve already achieved.
3 x Quotes From Others:
“As we express our gratitude we must never forget the highest appreciation is not to utter words but to live by them.”— John F. Kennedy
“It is only from such a place of gratefulness that we can perform beautiful acts — from a place of absolute, ravishing appreciation for the sheer wonder of being alive at all, each of us an improbable and temporary triumph over the staggering odds of nonbeing and nothingness inking the ledger of spacetime. But because we are human, because we are batted about by the violent immediacies of everyday life, such gratitude eludes us as a continuous state of being. We access it only at moments, only when the trance of busyness lifts and the blackout curtain of daily demands parts to let the radiance in, those delicious moments when we find ourselves awash in nonspecific gladness, grateful not to this person, grateful not for this turn of events, but grateful at life — a diffuse gratitude that irradiates every aspect and atom of the world, however small, however unremarkable, however coated with the dull patina of habit. In those moments, everything sings, everything shimmers. In those moments, we are most alive.” — Maria Popova(Source: https://www.brainpickings.org/)
2 x Things That Helped Me Grow
1 – This Mark Manson article – Shut Up and Be Grateful. In it Manson explains the why gratitude is linked to happiness and why all of us should be practising it. Well worth the quick read!
“For decades, research has tied gratefulness and appreciation to happiness. People who are happier tend to be more grateful and appreciative for what they have. But what they’ve also found is that it also works the other way around: consciously practicing gratitude makes one happier. It makes one appreciate what one has and helps one to remain in the present moment. Practicing gratitude increases accountability which directly leads to higher self-esteem and happiness.”
– Mark Manson
2 – Since we’re on the subject, this TED Talk video with monk and interfaith scholar (and Jedi master) David Steindl-Rast – Want to be happy? Be grateful. Well worth watching – just in case I haven’t labelled the point enough…
“It’s not happiness that makes you grateful. It’s gratefulness that makes you happy
“Become aware that every moment is a gift. You haven’t done anything to earn it… it was given to you.
“Opportunity is the gift within every gift. If you miss the opportunity of this moment another one is given to you. If we avail ourselves to this opportunity it is the key to happiness.”
– David Steindl-Rast
1 x Silly Thing To Make You Smile:
We decided to start potty training this week.
Progress has been non existent.
So you can imagine my surprise when I heard my boy cry out from across room, “Daddy! Look at the shit!”
At first I didn’t know whether to tell him off for swearing or express how proud I was for doing a poo all on his own.
And then I thought, ‘there’s no way he’s managed to do it on his own so soon… is there?’
But sure enough, when I walked over to have look, there it was – my son stood proudly, pointing at a picture of a ship in one of this books.
Then I thought, Thank God I misheard him.
Thanks ladies and gentleman. I’m here all week!
I want to finish this weeks post by taking a moment to express my gratitude to all of you – for everything. For all your support. For helping to keep my head above water this year. For giving my life greater purpose and meaning. For making me a better person. Connecting with each and everyone of you is what has made blogging so incredibly meaningful. You are why I will continue to do so for a long time to come.
Till next time… Happy (belated) Thanksgiving!
P.S. Don’t forget to exercise your silly muscle this week!
A couple of bonus questions for you all:
What are you grateful for this year? What has this year given you that others haven’t?
(Thank you all so much for reading.If you have any suggestions, thoughts or ideas about today’s weekly post I’d love to hear from you in the comments below.)
Clear Air Turbulence 