“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.
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.”
Hello lovely readers and welcome back to my high-flying newsletter! The only newsletter that takes a holiday without telling anyone…
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) “A good writer is a good listener. What you need to listen to is your subconscious. You allow what comes forward to dicate the terms. You’re not suppose to write with your head. Writing – good truthful writing – must come from the heart. It must comes from the gut. To do that you need to let go, listen and then type.” – click to tweet
2) “If you don’t own the story of your past, the story will own you. Here’s an exercise you might consider: Recall several defining, difficult moments from your life and write them out in painful detail. Try you best to understand why you took the actions you did. Try to forgive your past self as you do. Then, take a long hard look at what happened and ask yourself what you would do if the story repeated itself. With all the wisdom you now posses ask yourself how would you act if you got a second chance. Let that knowledge sink in. Use it to orientate yourself in the present. Wear it on your sleeve along with your heart. What will happen is this. An opportunity will present itself. The story will come full circle. You will have a chance to rewrite the ending.” – click to tweet
3) “The more time spent living a life on autopilot the less able we are to live a life of purpose on our own terms. We become scared of taking the autopilot out for fear of the inevitable turbulence we will experience. Yet, it’s in the turbulence with the autopilot out where we really learn to fly.” – click to tweet
2 Quotes:
“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Shame derives its power from being unspeakable… If we cultivate enough awareness about shame to name it and speak to it, we’ve basically cut it off at the knees. Shame hates having words wrapped around it. If we speak shame, it begins to wither. Just the way exposure to light was deadly for the gremlins, language and story bring light to shame and destroy it.”
― Brené Brown. (from “Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead”)
1 Joke:
A farmer and a butcher are having a conversation.
The farmer says to the butcher, “I don’t slaughter my calves until they have matured… You could say, I’m raising the steaks!”
The butcher pauses before replying, “That meat joke… It was well done!”
Hello lovely readers and welcome back to my new and not-at-all improved (except for name) newsletter! It’s the only newsletter that tells you if you want to take control of your life you have to let go…
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:
“When we stall in life the only way to regain lift is to let go. We must let go so we can find our feet again in the present. So we may accept and face our reality as it stands. This is what grounds us. We let go of what we can’t control in order to regain control of what we can.”
“The primary reason we give life meaning is because it gives us hope. When we fail to see the meaning in something we lose hope. This causes us to give up.”
“The reason we lose meaning is because we’re clinging to something. Ironically it’s often an outdated belief that we’re unable (or refuse) to let go of. A belief that clashes with our current reality. This prevents us from instilling or finding new meaning in what currently is.”
2 Quotes:
“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. The success you experience becomes more enduring and robust. It is only once you are grounded that you can truly soar.”
– Brad Stulberg
“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.”
Last week I said the reason we stall in life is because we lose meaning. Of course meaning, lift, purpose (whatever you want to call it) is the reason we do anything. The meaning we give our life is the reason we get out of bed in the morning. Otherwise, why bother?
In its deepest sense this means depression. Depression is a loss of lift. Most people think of depression as a kind of sadness but that’s not correct. While sadness is often associated with depression they are not the same thing.
Sadness is a feeling. Depression is a more like a lack of feeling. It feels like a heavy fog blankets everything. All you want to do is let that fog envelope you. It’s a form of retreat from life. A deep withdrawal. A shrivelling of the self.
It’s a loss of hope, either in yourself or the world at large. As it happens that’s the primary reason we give life meaning. Meaning gives us hope. When we fail to see the meaning in something we lose hope. This causes us to give up.
Clearly then, something is up. It certainly ain’t the sky!
If we take the premise that the underlying reason we stall stems from a loss of meaning, and if we also take the premise that the main reason we lose meaning stems from an inability to let go (meaning we’re unable to accept something), that begs a number of questions.
Why have we lost meaning on such a colossal scale, especially in the modern developed world? What it is we’re unable to let go of? What can we do to save ourselves before it’s too late?
Undeniably these are complex and difficult questions to answer, but since I’m writing a book, I best have a crack. Let’s start with the obvious before taking a rapid nose dive off a cliff!
Heroic Individualism
On the surface it seems the reason we stall is a matter wanting something we can’t have. It’s like being grounded as a pilot. The desire to fly leaves us wishing for a different reality.
Of course, we want to be out and about, exploring the world, playing with our mates. We want to be getting rich, ripped, promoted and recognised for being the hero (or heroine) we all imagine we could and should be.
We all want to have the perfect glistening bodies, deeply meaningful careers, and raise perfect children who would never fart in public. We want a bigger house, a faster car, a fatter paycheque.
We want adulation from millions of ardent fans. We want to conquer the world and leave a legacy so our name may live on for all eternity.
That’s we want, if we’re brutally honest.
The question is why? Why do feel we must have everything, do everything and please everyone? Why is what we have never enough?
Performance coach and author Brad Stulberg calls this condition heroic individualism. “An ongoing game of one-upmanship against both yourself and others, paired with the limiting belief that measurable achievement is the only arbiter of success.”
As he explains, “men describe it as a cumbersome need to be bulletproof, invincible.” Whereas “women report feeling like they must be everything always, continually falling short of impossible expectations.”
The big issue with heroic individualism is the underlying belief.
We aren’t driven by a deep internal value system – or moral compass – but a deep seated fear that who we are and what we have isn’t enough. A fear that we are way off course, miles away from the destination we should be, and heading in wrong direction still.
So we feel we must keep striving, pushing, whipping ourselves in a desperate attempt to make up for our lack of being, to get our lives back on course – to climb to the highest possible cruising level for our lives to hold any meaning.
It’s the equivalent of pulling full back struck and applying maximum thrust 24/7. You’ll certainly see some short term results. But eventually, rather quickly, you’ll burn out and stall. It’s not sustainable over the long haul.
This is worth stressing: Whether you feel need to do everything or struggle to do anything, in either case you are driven by a sense of hopelessness.
Ultimately, if we don’t learn to accept ourselves for who and where we are, we will always feel out of control. This is important because a sense of control is central to maintaining hope. If we don’t feel we have any control, eventually, we lose hope.
When this happens we get a visit from the existential worm at the core. (I’ll talk more about Mr wormy head next week)
Hedonic Adaptation
Unfortunately a lack of belief isn’t the only issue when it comes to stalling. In fact, there are a number of psychological flaws that fuck us up in the modern age.
One of those flaws is something behavioural scientists like to call hedonic adaptation or set point happiness. Something I like to refer to as the pursuit of unhappiness.
Harvard psychologist Tal Ben-Shahr, who coined the term “arrival fallacy”, describes it as living under the false illusion that once we make it (whatever that means) we will find the kind of lasting inner peace and contentment we desperately crave. Then, only then, we will live happily ever after.
But even when we do arrive, even when our wildest dreams are realised, that happiness is short lived. Despite sacrificing everything to achieve our dreams, it’s a mere “blip” on the radar of life. We immediately start thinking about the next best thing. How that next promotion, fatter paycheque, or faster car will give us everything we need.
This is because we all have a set-point of happiness. Some of us have a higher set point (bastards) while others have a lower set point (poor bastards), but the vast majority of us (regardless of sex, gender, age, class etc) lie somewhere in the middle.
And somewhere in the middle looks like this: “Life is okayish, I guess. Not bad, but not great either. Certainly room for improvement!”
Of course, this set point is continually reset based on our life circumstances. So, if we win the lottery for example, what happens? We’re happy for a while, because, well, we just won the fucking lottery! But, eventually, much quicker than we would like, we get used to it.
We get used to our new lavish lifestyle – we get used to the big mansion, the 5 sports cars, the jet-setting. The existential worm at the core catches up with us. (There he is again.) We start to feel that something is off. That money really isn’t everything. (Shocker!) That we didn’t want the world after all.
The good news is that hedonic adaptation works in reverse.
If you have a divorce, for example, or end up in accident that leaves you paralysed – studies have shown that although your life on paper becomes worse, you readjust. Things feels awful for a while, but then get use to this new normal. You accept it – sort of – and move back to your default level of slight dissatisfaction.
Loss Aversion
The problem is (here’s where I open my bay doors and drop a bombshell on you) we don’t see this.
The same way we think gaining that next promotion or winning the lottery will solve all our problems, we think that losing what we already have will be an unmitigated disaster that will end in the collapse of humanity itself (I may be exaggerating).
This is because we suffer from something known in psychology as loss aversion (which goes hand in hand with something else known as a negativity bias). Loss aversion states that, on average, the pain of losing something is three to four times greater than the happiness of having it.
Lettings go hurts – a lot!
This brings us to the next critical life lesson: We are terrible at predicting what will make us happy.
Mother Nature – that cruel mistress – wired us this way. She’s got us convinced that we need to keep climbing to the flight level above us, even though, in reality, it won’t make us any happier. On top of which she convinced us that letting go and descending to a lower altitude would be a massive mistake, even if the turbulence at our current one is unbearable.
The reason for this is simple: survival.
To think back a few thousand years – for the vast majority of our evolution – we really didn’t have much stuff. The stuff we did have was invariably necessary for our survival. So we clung to those things while going after whatever scraps we get our scrawny little mits on. We kept hunting and gathering because we needed to! We needed to save up for the inevitable rainy day. Of which there were many.
The grass is always greener for a good reason. Once upon a time, the grass was always greener.
To come back to issue of meaning. When our survival is at stake that’s meaning enough. But past a certain point, the issue isn’t about our survival but the survival of our things. We cling to our things – our jobs, our relationships, our privileged lifestyle, our beliefs – because those things define who we are. They’re what give our lives meaning.
The reason an aeroplane flies is because of something known as the four forces of flight. Those are thrust, lift, weight and drag. Thrust counteracts drag, whereas lift counteracts weight.
If the forces of lift and and thrust are greater than the forces of weight and drag your aeroplane will climb, if they are less you will descend. When they are balanced, well, then, Bob’s your uncle.
That means your flying straight and level – sitting pretty while cruising at your optimum altitude. Thanks Bob.
Here’s a nice picture:
Now, let’s imagine you’re sat fat, dumb and happy, at your optimum cruising level, with all four forces in perfect harmony, when, all of a sudden, for reasons that Bob can’t understand, you bring the thrust back to idle.
Now, let’s pretend, for reasons that Bob really can’t understand, you decide you want to stay at your cruisy cruising level, despite the fact you brought the thrust back to idle.
How do you do that?
Well, the only thing you can do is pitch up. You must increasingly pitch up to counteract the loss of energy so that the sum of the four forces remain equal.
The problem with this is, by pitching up, although you increase lift, you also increase drag. Unless you come to your senses and increase thrust, you will continue to lose energy.
If you keep pitching up in desperation, eventually you will reach a critical angle of attack (the direction of the aerofoil relative to the airflow) where the air starts to separate from the top of the wing resulting in a substantial loss of lift.
This is what’s known as the stall.
When this happens Bob is no longer your uncle. In fact, Bob is fucking furious. (It’s possible he may be the Captain.) The only way to make Bob happy again is to do the one thing you don’t want to. Unless you have enough thrust to blast off into space (and you don’t), you must pitch the nose down.
You must bring the angle of attack down in order to regain lift. You must come back to earth – you must sacrifice height for energy. It’s the only way to recover from a stall.
As you might have guessed, this isn’t just a crucial lesson for aviators but all of us. Which leads us to the first critical life lesson and the central thesis of my (soon to be) high-flying book:
When we stall in life the only way to regain lift is to let go. We must let go so we can find our feet again in the present. So we may accept and face our reality as it stands. This is what grounds us. We let go of what we can’t control in order to regain control of what we can.
Now, hold on to your pilots hat because I’m about to take this analogy to new heights!
The Four Forces of Life
As it happens there are – broadly speaking – four forces that act on you at anyone time. These are known (by Bob at least) as the four forces of life.
They work, of course, just like the four forces of flight. Those are your health (which is equal to thrust), purpose or meaning (which is equal to lift), responsibility (which is equal to weight) and life itself (which is equal to drag).
Just like an aeroplane, when the forces of health and meaning are greater than the forces of responsibility and life, the human aeroplane that is you, will climb. If it is less, you will descend.
If they are balanced, well, then you’ve found the sweet spot. You have full health and enough meaning to carry the weight of your responsibilities. You’ve achieved that tricky thing known as life balance.
Here’s another pretty picture:
Now, let’s imagine you suddenly lose your health. Maybe you get ill or suffer a depilating disease or break you leg. What ever it is, suddenly you don’t have the capacity to carry on to destination. Does that mean you’ve stalled? No, although it can lead there if you try to soldier on. What it does mean is you need to come back to earth pronto!
It’s like when Captain Sullenberg ingested birds in both his engines. Did he stall? No, but he suddenly became a big-ass heavy-weight glider. That meant he had to come back to earth, and fast.
He understood how crucial it was to let go of everything that wasn’t absolutely pertinent to the emergency at hand. Had he not had that clarity of purpose – had he not been able to accept what had happened – well, the end result may well have been much worse.
Stalling in Life
So, what do I mean, exactly, when I use the term stalling in life. What causes us to stall?
Well, meaning. Fundamentally, the reason we stall in life is because we’ve lost meaning. Meaning in what, you say? Well, the present. Your current circumstances. Life as it stands.
The reason we lose meaning is because we’re clinging to something. Ironically it’s often an outdated belief that we’re unable (or refuse) to let go of. A belief that clashes with our current reality. This prevents us from instilling or finding new meaning in what currently is.
When I ended my 12 year career in aviation and left the city I’d called home for most of my life, that resulted in a substantial loss of lift. Did I stall? You bet your bottom dollar I did! Letting go of that was one of the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. But, of course, I had to. I had to let it go in order to find meaning in my current circumstances. My present reality.
As it happens, this is why I’m writing this book. It’s part of my stall recovery. I’m not only letting go of my past in the process – I’m subsuming that past and including it as part of my present day narrative. It’s the whole idea for this (soon to be) high-flying book. It’s so fucking meaningful to me, so fucking poetic, I could cry.
Not only is this important, as I will attempt to argue, it’s absolutely necessary. We must continually replace meaning in our lives. We must let go of old limiting beliefs and update them with new, slightly less limiting, ones. We must keep doing this. We must keep dying to ourselves over and over and over again.
But, and this is a big but, there’s a deadly important caveat. Not only do we need to instil meaning in our lives, ultimately we need to learn to transcend meaning altogether. We need to see through meaning itself.
We need to let go and take control – we need to transcend and give meaning – at the same time.
Now, I’m going to circle back to this particular paradox and the question of how, but first it’s important to understand why. Why it is we all find it so damn hard to let go. What it is at our core we’re unable to come to terms with.
I suggest you buckle up boys and girls. Turbulence is forecast.
This is part one of a series of posts on the subject of stalling in life.
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.
I recently completed a course on personality theory that I found infinitely fascinating. Today I want to share some thoughts about how this understanding can help us better navigate in the world.
You can think of personality as the lens through which we view the world. It functions by filtering the world so we only pay attention to certain things. This then influences the way we think, feel, and act.
Part of what colours our lens has to do with the environment in which we have been raised. But another significant part has to do with the innate personality traits that we were born with.
Not only for knowing who we should become but for helping us understand that other people are fundamentally different. They will never be able to look at the world like you do – neither will you they. It’s this understanding that helps foster greater compassion and tolerance for “the other side.”
This is also why we should pick things like our profession based on our personality. Some are of us are naturally creative while others look at art and simply don’t get it. Conversely, some of us are highly conscientious while others couldn’t care less if they put odd socks on in the morning.
Most organisations need a combination of both vertical (in-the-box) type thinkers and lateral (out-of-the-box) type thinkers. Indeed, the world needs various personality types because there isn’t a single answer to all of the world’s problems.
Does this mean we can’t adjust the colour of our lens? Does it mean we can’t become something we’re not? No, not entirely. Our personalities change naturally as we age. They are malleable. And we should try to expand the limits of our own personality.
That said, there are limits. After a certain point, you get diminishing rates of return. We all have a proclivity to learn specific skills more quickly than others. We all struggle to understand certain things more than others too.
This is because all of us have limited cognitive abilities. We’re simply incapable of processing all of the objective facts in the unknowable universe. Different personalities are nature’s way of covering all bases.
This is important for understanding different political persuasions, which is heavily influenced by personality. Sometimes liberals have the answer; at other times conservatives do. But, at the end of the day, to quote some Indian dude, “the left-wing and right-wing are part of the same bird.”
We need diversity of thought. And we desperately need to work together despite our differences. This is how we cover each other’s blind spots.
Ultimately this understanding can help us find that goldilocks position in life we’re all looking for. The one that suits us best (and this, I firmly believe, best suits the world too). But it also helps to adjust the parts of ourselves that on occasion need adjusting to fit the circumstances.
Ideally, you want to wear the hat most suited to who you are as much as possible. But you also want the ability to put on a different hat when the circumstances require it. Because life is unpredictable so we must be adaptable.
The trick is to specialise at what you are but practise what you aren’t.
But to do that, we must first become clear about who we really are at our core. We must first understand the hand we have been dealt before we try to play it – before we match the game to our particular set of cards.
This is something I want to talk to you about next week by introducing you to something known as the Big Five Personality model.
In the following weeks I mean to break these five traits down while placing my own personality under the microscope. In the process I hope to shine a brighter light on who you are too, so we may all deepen our understanding about ourselves and the world we live in.
We’re all looking for that Goldilocks position in life. That ultimate purpose specifically suited to our own unique talents and values.
Of course, we want to maximise our potential to do the most possible good. This is why many of us have this gnawing sense that the job we’re in isn’t quite right.
We feel like we are meant for something else, something more.
I didn’t pay much attention to my nature during adolescence, that critical life period when we are supposed to decide what we want to do forever and always. I simply did what I was told I should. Which was anything but the creative subjects I truly loved.
So I took a random collection of other subjects that left me increasingly confused about my future. Then I studied history for reasons I honestly couldn’t tell you, and then I decided to become an airline pilot.
Becoming a pilot was, at least, based on something I was passionate about. Traveling the world. Nothing satisfies my soul more. Still – and this is important – I didn’t become a pilot to fly aeroplanes.
In a sense, this has been a blessing. It’s placed a spotlight on the person I am.
And the person I’m not.
I believe this is why so many of us have joined the great resignation. And why many others feel incredibly burnt out.
We settle into a job. We get comfortable with it – we know we can do it and do it well – so we preserve with it even though we know it isn’t quite right. We keep pushing the boulder uphill.
But you can only fight your nature for so long before it catches up with you. At some point, you have to make a choice: You can either take a chance on the person you are or kill the person you are.
If you let that inner spark go out it can be very difficult to find the strength to fly again.
As I embark on the next chapter of my life, I mean to take a chance on the person I am. I mean to honour my inner child in the hope that I may do the most possible good with the gifts I have been given.
To inspire others through creativity.
As I embark on this journey, I want to take you along for the ride. I want to show you how to increase your self-understanding. I want to help you specialise in who you are so you don’t feel out of place anymore.
So that together, we may fly free in the knowledge we are exactly where we are meant to be.
“There’s no difference between a pessimist who says, ‘Oh, it’s hopeless, so don’t bother doing anything,’ and an optimist who says, ‘Don’t bother doing anything, it’s going to turn out fine any way.’ Either way, nothing happens.”
— Yvon Chouinard
Most of us don’t call fear out for what it is. We often dress it up as something else. Many of us will even rationalise our fear as optimism.
We entertain thoughts that our situation will magically improve over time. This is common for someone working a job they dislike.
But the truth is – if you feel the same way you did several months or years ago – things probably won’t get better by themselves. Unless you do something about it, the chances are you’ll remain just as unhappy as you are now.
This is what’s happened to me.
Right now I’m standing at the edge of the precipice about to take a leap of faith. All of my gremlins have come crawling out of the woodwork.
They’re whispering in my ear. Telling me this is a massive mistake, that it will end in disaster, that I have no idea what I’m doing…
Of course fear wants us to play it safe. It wants us to choose certainty over happiness. That’s because the ego isn’t interested happiness. It’s only interested in survival.
But that’s why it’s important to understand just how dangerous that leap of faith really is.
But to do that, you first have to embrace your demons. You have to give them the time and space to air out their concerns. So that you can really examine them. So you can hold them up in the light and see that fear for what it is:
False.
Evidence.
Appearing.
Real.
This helps us understand where our fears are really coming from. It helps us see what we can do to mitigate those concerns. Which fears are worth listening to and which really aren’t.
This in turn can give us the strength we need to take that leap of faith.
Fear-Setting: A powerful exercise for making major life decisions.
“You have comfort. You don’t have luxury. And don’t tell me that money plays a part. The luxury I advocate has nothing to do with money. It cannot be bought. It is the reward of those who have no fear of discomfort.”
First, you write down the major life change you’re considering.
Second, define the worst case scenario in pain staking detail. Ask yourself if it really would be the end of your life? How permanent would it be? How likely is the worst case scenario?
Third, ask yourself what steps could you take to repair the damage/deal with worst. Would you be able to get another job? What if you were fired from your job today? What would you do? How would you cope?
Forth, ask yourself what the outcomes/benefits of a more probable scenario are. What are the definite positive outcomes (including for your self-esteem, mental and physical health etc)? What would the impact of these more likely outcomes be?
Fifth, ask what the cost will be if you do nothing? What is the cost of inaction? What will it cost you financially, emotionally & physically if you postpone this difficult choice?
Finally, ask yourself what you’re so afraid of? What are currently putting off out of fear?
Perhaps It’s Better the Devil You Don’t Know?
“It’s not that we fear the unknown. You cannot fear something that you do not know. Nobody is afraid of the unknown. What you really fear is the loss of the known. That’s what you fear.”
– SJ Anthony de Mello
After running through this exercise the other night I came to a number of important insights.
I realised the nightmare scenario I’d been envisioning was one in a million. And the benefits – the positive outcomes – were much more likely. Even if the worst did come to pass, I realised that much of what I felt I was giving up was reversible.
But I also considered what the longer term costs of inaction might be. This presented me with another picture. One that was every bit as scary as the one that had been causing me to hesitate.
So I asked myself, ‘what I am really afraid of here?’
After giving it some thought it occurred to me that I what fear most – isn’t what the future might hold – but losing what I know.
I fear losing the gremlins that have kept safe for so long.
People often say it’s better the devil you know. But what if the devil you don’t know isn’t a devil after all?
After all, you don’t know.
What if it’s not an angel sent to save you? If only you had the courage to reach out to it – if only you had the strength to take that leap of faith and leave the shoreline behind.
The truth is, change is the only inevitability in this life. To cling to what we know only provides us with a false sense of security.
I would argue, to embrace change – to embrace the unknown – is to embrace life 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 something special (maybe).
As a bonus I’ve finished with one joke that’s so bad, it’s good!
Let’s begin!
3 x Thoughts:
1)A relationship without conflict is doomed. We must challenge each other if we want to grow together. We need a person who will contend with us, not someone who will only worship us. We need someone who is courageous enough to tell us the truth, even if it hurts.
2)If you want to conquer fear you have to define it in pain-staking detail first. You have to hold it up in the light and examine it to see it for what it really is:
False.
Evidence.
Appearing.
Real.
3) Change is the only certainty in life. To cling to what you know only provides you with a false sense of security. To embrace change – to embrace the unknown – is to embrace life itself.
2 x Quotes:
“Set aside a certain number of days, during which you shall be content with the scantiest and cheapest fare, with coarse and rough dress, saying to yourself the while: “Is this the condition that I feared?””
— Seneca
“What we fear doing most is usually what we most need to do.”
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.
Hello lovely readers and welcome back to 3-2-1 Flying Fridays! The only weekly post that is completely unaware of how awesome it is.
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 special (maybe).
As a bonus I’ve finished with one joke that’s so bad, it’s good!
2)The most important psychological trait you can develop is self-awareness. The caveat is, it doesn’t work without self- acceptance. It’s the combination of the two that leads to genuine change/growth in an individual. Self-awareness without self-acceptance leads to self-absorption. (Click to tweet)
3) Anger is a useful cue to zoom the lens out and foster greater perspective. (Click to tweet)
2 x Quotes:
“Friendship means we are willing to carry things for other people that they won’t carry for themselves. We hold in our packs a version of our friends at their brightest and most creative that can be shown to them when they are in a slump. We carry memories of the times we laughed, did silly things, failed and succeeded. We store all the depth of the ways we have walked side by side on the path as well as the times we waited at an intersection while they took a detour and vice versa. Then at just the right moment, we unpack the brownies we’ve carried so far and celebrate our friends… There are some things worth the extra weight and friendship is one of them.”
“We ought to do good to others as simply as a horse runs, or a bee makes honey, or a vine bears grapes season after season without thinking of the grapes it has borne.”
This article by John Salvatier: Reality has a surprising amount of detail. The article was recommended by Tim Ferris in his 5 bullet Friday newsletter. It details the detail in the seemingly simple, and why it’s important to look for the details you wouldn’t normally pay attention to. Well worth the 5-10 min read! Here are a few quotes from the piece:
This means it’s really easy to get stuck. Stuck in your current way of seeing and thinking about things. Frames are made out of the details that seem important to you. The important details you haven’t noticed are invisible to you, and the details you have noticed seem completely obvious and you see right through them. This all makes it difficult to imagine how you could be missing something important.
The direction for improvement is clear: seek detail you would not normally notice about the world. When you go for a walk, notice the unexpected detail in a flower or what the seams in the road imply about how the road was built. When you talk to someone who is smart but just seems so wrong, figure out what details seem important to them and why. In your work, notice how that meeting actually wouldn’t have accomplished much if Sarah hadn’t pointed out that one thing. As you learn, notice which details actually change how you think.
If you wish to not get stuck, seek to perceive what you have not yet perceived.
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 special (maybe).
As a bonus I’ve finished with one joke that’s so bad, it’s good!
Let’s begin!
3 x Thoughts:
1) Our lives hold as much meaning as we give them. Which is why we must give ours as much meaning as we can. In our relationships and our work. We must fill every corner of our precious existence with it. If we do, we won’t be concerned with what the meaning of life is. We will understand that the question doesn’t matter. We will understand – that when it comes to the meaning of life – our own unique, unrepeatable lives – that we aren’t meant to ask the question. We are meant to answer it in the only way that we can.
2) The real fear isn’t that we’re going to die or that soon after we will be quickly forgotten. The real fear is getting to that point and realising we didn’t really live in the first place – that we didn’t live a life we felt was truly meaningful. This is why a fear of death is so heavily associated with a fear of life. Why we often feel like we’re “racing against the clock.” It’s when we don’t feel that our lives are currently meaningful that the worm at the core starts to eat us alive.
3) Why it’s helpful to think you’re not a good person: A good person implies something black or white. You either are or you aren’t. This fixes your mindset. You believe you’re a good person and go at lengths to avoid being proven otherwise. You also become defensive about that belief. You feel threatened whenever this comes into question and so avoid the very conversations you need to hear so you may become a better person. That’s the way you should think. Not in terms of being a good person, but in terms of being a better one. Of course, you always can be.
2 x Quotes:
“Peace of mind produces right values, right values produce right thoughts. Right thoughts produce right actions and right actions produce work which will be a material reflection for others to see of the serenity at the centre of it all.”
– Robert Pirsig
“In their fear of death, those living fear life itself, a life that is doomed to die… The mode in which life knows and perceives itself is worry. Thus the object of fear comes to be fear itself. Even if we should assume that there is nothing to fear, that death is no evil, the fact of fear (that all living things shun death) remains… Fearlessness is what love seeks. Love as craving is determined by its goal, and this goal is freedom from fear… Such fearlessness exists only in the complete calm that can no longer be shaken by events expected of the future… Hence the only valid tense is the present, the Now.”
– Hannah Arendt
1 x Thing:
This Mark Manson article: The Meaning of Life Is a Ham Sandwich. As he explains, “Meaning is not something that exists outside of ourselves. It is not some cosmic universal truth waiting to be discovered. It is not some grand ‘eureka’ moment that will change our lives forever. Meaning requires action. Meaning is something that we must continually find and nurture. Consistently.” I particularly liked the two ways he suggests doing that: Either by solving problems or helping others. Well worth the quick read!
1 x Joke:
I had my haircut the other day.
When I got home my 3 year old asked, “Dad, did you get a haircut?”
Nihilism is a dangerous belief. The inability to make sense of it all leads many to conclude that life is entirely pointless. This, in turn, can lead to the belief that there is little point in trying at anything.
Now, I’m not here to debate the existence of a grand creator. (Thank God, I hear you say.) I certainly don’t think there is anything wrong with believing in or not believing in a God or Gods. I can see many good reasons for. But I sympathise with those who find it hard to accept the idea.
Truthfully, I would like to believe in God. I would like to take solace in the idea that I will go somewhere after death, along with all who I love. I appreciate and understand how this can provide psychological security.
I have a theory that we are theists by nature. Becoming self-aware came at a massive price. I believe we were meant to place our faith in something bigger than ourselves – that this is the antidote to one’s fear of death that resides at the core. Still, I can’t help but struggle with the idea.
But I also struggle with the idea of a meaningless existence. Why should anything exist if there is no God? Just because? That answer has never satisfied my soul. And for all of science’s ability to explain the how, it will never be capable of answering the why.
I’ve had these thoughts long enough to understand at least one thing that’s for sure. You can waste your life asking such questions. Asking what it all means. Why me? Why this kind of insanity?
I’ve come to realise that this is definitely the wrong approach.
Many people wish to live in a world free from suffering, of course – one that only has abundant love. But they fail to see that compassion cannot exist without suffering. In the same way, high cannot exist without low or light without darkness.
Even love without hate.
What if that’s the point? What if the meaninglessness of existence is a blank canvas that you’re supposed to paint meaning onto? Does the backdrop of meaning not haveto be meaninglessness?
I don’t know if that’s true.
But I am sure, at least, when it comes to the meaning of life – our own unique, unrepeatable lives – that we aren’t meant to ask the question. We are meant to answer it in the only way we can.
Perhaps – just perhaps – this really was by design.
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 Flying Fridays newsletter! The only weekly newsletter that laughs when you fall over before helping you back up…
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 special (maybe).
As a bonus I’ve finished with one joke that’s so bad, it’s good!
Let’s begin!
3 x Thoughts:
1)Treat your emotions like you would a child. They’re equally irrational. It’s non judgemental compassion that gets them on side. Getting angry at a child who is throwing a tantrum doesn’t work. So it is with you.
2) The belief that something is wrong with us is central to the issue of feeling bad about feeling bad because that belief brings up more negative emotions (go figure), which we then see as confirmation that something is wrong with us.
3)Attempts to control negative thoughts and emotions makes them worse. Better to concentrate on forming desirable habits instead. Mood follows action.
2 x Quotes:
“For the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts and that the world is not so ill with you and me as it might have been is half owing to those who lived faithfully a hidden life and rest in unvisited tombs.”
― George Eliot, MiddleMarch
“Most people die at 25… we just don’t bury them until they are 70.”
—Benjamin Franklin
1 x Thing:
This excerpt from The Practice of Groundedness by Brad Stulberg on perception of vulnerability:
Researchers at the University of Mannheim, in Germany, conducted a series of seven experiments in which they had adult participants share information about themselves with one another at varying levels of vulnerability. They repeatedly found that the individual doing the sharing felt that their vulnerability would be perceived as weak, as a negative. But the person on the other end of the conversation, the listener, felt the exact opposite: the more vulnerable the sharer was, the more courageous they perceived him or her to be. The listener viewed vulnerability as an unambiguously positive trait. “Confessing romantic feelings, asking for help, or taking responsibility for a mistake constitute just a few examples of situations that require showing one’s vulnerability,” write the researchers from the University of Mannheim. “Out of fear, many individuals decide against it.” But this, the researchers conclude, is a mistake. “Even when examples of showing vulnerability might sometimes feel more like weakness from the inside, our findings indicate that, to others, these acts might look more like courage from the outside. Given the positive consequences [increased trust and connection, improved learning from others, and forgiveness after making a mistake] of showing vulnerability for relationship quality, health, or job performance, it might, indeed, be beneficial to try to overcome one’s fears and to choose to see the beauty in the mess of vulnerable situations.” The University of Mannheim researchers aptly coined their finding “the beautiful mess effect.”
– Brad Stulberg
1 x Joke:
What did the left eyebrow say to the right eyebrow?
According to the Buddha, any time we suffer misfortune, two arrows fly our way. The first arrow is the bad event itself, which certainly can (and often does) cause pain. The second arrow is our reaction to the bad event, the suffering we attach to our pain. This secondary pain, he tells us, is always self-inflicted.
What you might not have been told, however, is that there’s often a third arrow in response to that second arrow! And, sometimes, even, a fourth arrow in response to that one. In fact, every now and then, hundreds of them start raining down. So much so that you end up feeling like this:
(That feeling when someone criticises your blog post)
To give you an example, let’s say I step on my son’s toy lego (first arrow), but instead of accepting this pain, I react by getting angry (second arrow). But then, I get mad about the fact that I’m angry (third arrow). So now I’m really angry. As a result, I lash out at my children for failing to put their toys away, and also my wife, who I decide (because I’m über pissed) is too nice to our kids (fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh arrow).
Eventually, in a moment of ever-so-brief clarity, I realised that I was being unfair and regret shouting at my family (eighth arrow). But then, guess what? This makes me angry (ninth arrow). So now I’m mad about feeling guilty because I got angry, about my anger, because of my pain, and then taking it out on my family. I think I got that right. Anyway, you get the point.
You see, there is suffering, and then there is suffering. The first kind of suffering, as Buddha taught us, is equal to pain times resistance. The second kind of suffering is equal to pain times resistance to the power of arrows fired. (That’s real maths!)
Of course, the emotion doesn’t have to be anger. To use a real-life example (I swear I made the last one up) earlier this year, I started to feel sad because of the pandemic. As a result of not being able to get home to see my family, I began to feel isolated.
But I didn’t just feel sad; I felt bad that I felt sad. I did this by painting a picture of what I thought life should be like. Then, eventually, I felt bad about doing that. So, I told myself I shouldn’t feel sad because other people have it much worse. Then it occurred to me that I should be happy even though I’m not. Therefore, I concluded, something must be wrong with me.
And this sent me down the emotional rabbit hole.
Secondary Emotions = Suffering
Now, there’s a psychological name for these kinds of secondary emotions, and that’s, well, secondary emotions. These are the feelings we have about our feelings. Naturally, we’re the only animal on the planet who has these, and, naturally, they have a tendency to mess everything up (thanks consciousness). Basically, there are four major ones. Those are:
Feeling bad about feeling bad (think self-loathing)
Feeling good about feeling bad (think self-righteous)
Feeling bad about feeling good (think excessive guilt)
Feeling good about feeling good (think narcissism/ego)
Of course, many complex reasons contribute to these secondary emotions, including our upbringing, cultural beliefs, past traumas, etc. However, to give you a simplified answer, I believe the essence of the problem stems from a belief that because an emotion feels good or bad, it must mean it/us/the world is good or bad, instead of seeing the feeling as just, well, a feeling.
Now, how much of this has to do with what, exactly, is up for debate, but (to give you a few examples) one suspects telling boys things like, “men don’t cry” has something to do with it. One also suspects certain helicopter parents who worship their children’s feelings (instead of allowing them to struggle and fail in order to grow) might have something to do with it. The role of social media broadcasting everyone’s perfect airbrushed lives 24/7 can’t help either.
“How come everyone else is so happy? Why am I not happy? Something must be wrong!“
Feeling Bad About Feeling Bad Makes You Feel Bad
At any rate, this belief that something is wrong with us, in particular, is central to the issue of feeling bad about feeling bad. This is because that belief brings up more negative emotions (go figure), which we then see as confirmation that something is wrong with us. So, we end up in this emotional rabbit hole where we fire arrow after arrow after arrow – feeling bad about feeling bad – and on and on until, well, we have depression, or anger management issues, or an anxiety disorder.
Aside from forming a habit that becomes very hard to break, that first arrow pain is still there. So long as we keep firing second arrows, it will continue to do all manner of push-ups, pull-ups, and sits ups in an attempt to get out. That mother is getting ripped! Unless you give it the space it needs, eventually, it will break free and tear you (or someone else) apart.
Unfortunately, if you’ve been firing these secondary arrows for a long time, you may be unclear what your first arrow pain is really about. If standing on a piece of toy Lego turns you into the Hulk, for example, you can bet your bottom dollar that your primary pain has little to do with that piece of toy Lego, or your kids failing to put their toys away, or your wife being too nice.
On the surface, we may believe our suffering is because of these things, but it’s rarely true. That’s simply the narrative we’ve written over the top of our emotional pain because we believe we shouldn’t (or should) feel the way we do. Of course, we need to drop this false narrative to escape the emotional rabbit hole and process our pain.
To come back to my previous example, I felt sad for some very understandable reasons earlier this year. However, my belief that something must be wrong compounded my misery. The truth is these difficult emotions brought up secondary emotions related to low self-worth. This is a common reaction that has to do with past trauma rearing its ugly head. I wasn’t resisting my sadness so much as I was resisting my habitual response to that sadness.
It’s at this point things started to unravel.
Escaping the Emotional Rabbit Hole
Having a clear understanding of the false beliefs/traumas driving our secondary arrow of choice is important for this reason. Not because it will stop that second arrow, necessarily – unless you’re a Buddhist monk, it probably won’t – but because it will, at least, prevent you from firing a third arrow. If not a third, then a fourth, fifth, or, in my case, twenty-seventh arrow. This awareness gives you an out. It allows you to transcend the false beliefs masking your real pain.
Baruch Spinoza once said, “Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it.”
If you’re still suffering – if you’re still firing arrow after arrow – then you don’t have a clear picture of it, despite what you might be telling yourself. For some, it might require therapy to untangle the web of secondary arrows and see that picture clearly. For others, it might simply need a period of quiet introspection. Happily, there is a well-touted meditation that I’ve used to great effect on many occasions called RAIN. I like to think of it like this – when it’s raining arrows, I need to:
Recognise it (become aware that you are firing arrows or experiencing difficult emotions)
Accept it (allow your pain to be as it is/don’t judge it)
Investigate it (look into it with curiosity)
Notidentify/Nurture it (understand you are not your pain/practice universal compassion)
After torturing myself for longer than I care to admit, I sat down and did this meditation. I soon understood what I was resisting (it’s always the same). Of course, it had nothing to do with my pain about the pandemic, but what I believed those emotions said about me. When I saw through this false belief – when I could see my demons in the light – the whole web of arrows I’d been firing crumbled to the floor.
Clear Air Turbulence 