Author: admin

Your self is not your self in the same way your gallbladder is your gallbladder. If you said “I’m scared of failure” and someone replied “where are you scared of failure?” you would look at this person as a lunatic. What do you mean “where?” In spite of this, we often fall into the trap of storytelling. We tell ourselves “I am not the type of person who takes career risks” or “I am impulsive and prone to anger.” Where, specifically, do you find these parts in yourself? What if I told you that your self is a totally fluid thing, more based on your inner monologue than anything you’d find in the prefrontal cortex?

In most ways and on most days, we use these narratives about our “true selves” to make sense of an increasingly chaotic world always tilting in favor of entropy. But we’ve become too firm in our characterizations that the self cannot change. We have inadvertently calcified ourselves, and limited our own ability to make choices. We’ve told ourselves a story about ourselves so many times that we’ve actually calcified our ability to change. How to break this?

In meditation, you learn to think of your thoughts as waves and consciousness as the ocean. This is much easier said and understood on a cushion than it is when someone is inviting you to have another glass of wine when you really should be on your way home. You don’t sit at the bar and think “I want to have another glass, but really, this is just a wave of a thought on the ocean of consciousness.” That would be…unworkable. But, if you can take a step back on some days, a genuine step back and wonder “Is there any actual reason why I cannot go to this party other than me constantly telling myself I’m a socially awkward person?” you’ll find that the answer is likely no. And it doesn’t quite follow that you’re going to go to this party and you’ll magically be cured of awkwardness; you’re likely to still be awkward. The point is chiseling the rock down, bit by bit. The point is showing up. This point is taking minute actions, day after day, that unbeknownst to you, slowly compound and allow you to break self-reinforced incorrect ideas about yourself. You’re not ramming the thing head on, you’re taking a detour around the bend to get to where you need to go.

We’re formed by millions of memories and of these memories and perceptions we “make” a version of Danny, or Linda or Gus, or whomever and we say, inside our minds “this is how a Danny that experienced these things would act” but there’s no one really in there. They’re just thoughts that then tell us to do these things. They-we-are pliable. Ever expanding. Ever learning. Ever changing. We are oceans.

Jung once analogized your life to the sun rising in the sky and then falling at night. There is so much promise in the morning. There is so much that can be done. So much life in front of you. You can taste possibility. Around midday, you turn into yourself, and as the remains of the day progress into inevitable night, the hunger you have for the possibilities of the day give morph inward. You bask in what was, and you appreciate things. Things seem to move slower, and you fully realize the conclusion of things is upon you.

Our lives and our careers are no different, and that internal twitch or pull you may feel can directly be tied to forsaking the clock that lives inside you. Hustling in middle age was never something the body was designed for. Climbing mountains and increasing complexity and possessions serves only to poke your thumb at the Gods at nature. This is not hyperbolic. Man breaks in middle age because he has no idea what to do. He has always climbed this mountain. He has always struggled. He has always ascended or attempting to possess, and then these small rips in inside begin accumulating. A humming. Pressure. “What is this?” is unconsciously asked. “Where now?” “What now?” The demands of the day are the same. The taxes and the bills and the kids and the streaming and the upkeep and the ego and the striving. All of it modern. All of it incessant. And yet, physically and mentally, for hundreds of thousands of years the human organism and consciousness itself has programmed something entirely different. They are, now, in all times, in all ways, in conflict. You seek permanence when there is none on offer. You seek ascension when there is none on offer. You were never designed to sit quietly and yet something inside is telling you to do that very thing. You fear stillness. Stillness equates death. It equates tumbling or shuffling down the mountain below. Lower and lower and you know, you very well know, once you make contact with the bottom, there is simply no way up again.

How many millions of Hero’s Journeys end in a disappointment that reverberates through generations. How many children living the un-lived lives of their parents? There is nothing to do but sit and listen to your body and your mind. Humbling though it is, it is the only natural way.

Hotels used to be, many years ago, places where one slept, yes, but also places where one could sit and write. They allowed you to produce. No longer. You are no longer expected to write anything. Much less…do anything. The ubiquitous hotel stationary is now provided more as an afterthought (the last car produced with an ash tray) than as an invitation to jot down thoughts, idea, notes, a letter, a memory, a doodle, etc… Its lonely existence now accessorized by an even lonelier hotel pen. If one is provided a desk, that desk comes with more ports than the Italian riviera. You plug in and face a wall. Like some sort of a punishment from a 1950’s parochial school. A palette of taupe and grey envelope you and make you wonder why the planners of these hotels hate colors. You imagine them screeching in terror at the very sight of a rainbow. This is not a bastion of creative energy, and maybe that’s the point.

We lose things when we do not foster an activity that has accompanied us for thousands of years. We lose a tiny part of ourselves. Our lonely existence in our “suites” highlighted now by thread counts and the ability to stream what we stream at home. It used to be that we brought our neuroses with us when we traveled, yes, but at least the creature comforts were different or non existent. The environment itself was changed, and perhaps, maybe that would change us in small, imperceptible ways. Now, the very shows we watch lying down in our bedrooms are the same shows we watch lying down in our hotel room in Madrid. The very same binging across different time zones. Our comfort neatly packaged and stowed away in our carry ons. We are no longer inspired as desensitized. We are nowhere together, all at once.

The desk and the stationary and the letter writing and the creativity and the production are all parts of the same thing. The inquiry into something greater. The conduit for expression which sits within us, screaming to be released. To question. To inform. To ruminate. To witness. The physical strokes on the pad evidence the fact that in this very moment of human existence on this great globe in this mysterious universe, you made this mark, and this mark shall live forever. The ideas will transmit thoughts of their own and they will change minds for eternity. They are a brutal attack against meaninglessness and unmitigated consumption. The desk allows you to say “I was here once. I walked here. I lived a life that included this very place.” The desk and the letter and the pen makes you immortal. The bed and the streaming and the lying down makes you dead.

When people talk about simplicity and simplifying, I wonder if they’re not looking for the cousin of simplicity instead. Dissolution. Dissolving seems to be a fairly refreshing activity. Dissolving an LLC that you haven’t used. Dissolving a friendship that doesn’t serve either of the former friends.

Nassim Taleeb often uses the phrase: “via negativa” and the Silver Rule, which states: “Do NOT do to me as you would NOT want done to you.” Add by subtracting. If you think about all of this and let it sit with you for a while, it can get you rather excited. It’s like the feeling of seeing the street you were looking for, for some time, finally pop up. You’re not there yet, but you’re on the right way.

Simplification occurs through the act of dissolution. It seems the activity itself is the cathartic part in all of this. Ridding yourself of old possessions. Ridding yourself of bills or a house that no longer suits you. Ridding yourself of commitments and restraints and old judgments latched onto your psyched. Slicing your Shadow in half and banishing him.

Simplifying should take care of itself. Aim to dissolve. Aim to subtract.

There is something inside most people that stirs them to action. The distinction between those that take action and those that do not, can, likely, be reduced to the consciousness surrounding the actual thought itself. In English: if you know you’re being sucked into the tide of everyday life and that 9 am will lead to this and 11 am will lead to that, and the swirl of life takes you far, far away from what you envisioned, you can try to plan around it. This will be the most difficult thing you can possibly do.

Life wants or demands nothing from you. It does not care one iota if you live or die, and frankly it is so detached from you that it cannot possible be thought of as supporting you or encumbering you on your path. You, however, demand things of life, without giving any thought to whether this exercise is futile. You then begin to curse your circumstances when things don’t go your way and when you’re on some path that leads to nowhere. This is insane. You do not see bears angrily screaming at huge logs that they cannot travail. A bird does not rant about a fish that was too fast for it. They have, as far as one can tell, no conscious thoughts surrounding these things. They simply try, and then continue. An endless feedback loop, which results in their surviving until they die. They do not bemoan an un-lived life because there is no such thing to me. There is only now. Alive. Now. Not infinite possibilities. Humans, however, were granted this gift (curse?) of introspection and future planning and we haven’t the faintest what to do with it. In the midst of this, human life make endless tedious demands of our time and attention. Long before the iPhone and the internet, we were just as scattered with television and radio and taxes and war and all the other things we now forget. And before that, well, before that, life wasn’t so great. Farmers had to farm all day and then die. Merchants had to sell all die and then die. Etc. Etc. At best, a higher power was given to us to likely placate us that some really cool amusement park was waiting for us once we stopped toiling. We have lost that. Both the perks and the costs.

Do you wish to do something radically different in your life (or even not so radically)? Then create a life which creates the conditions best suited to do that radical thing. That thing is not guaranteed, but once you set sail, it is a one hundred percent certainty that this new path will then lead to other new paths and other new paths and other new paths and then who knows. Life is not in charge. Life does not care. You are in charge and you must decide the toll you’re willing to pay for exploration and adventure, even if that means quite literally abandoning everything or maybe just one thing. Everything has a cost. But the highest cost, the most serious cost, is that of blaming other things. The handicapping of our gift. Of our consciousness and our ability to take action. To, in the midst of the sway of the everyday tedium, nevertheless push forth without thought to where it may lead. To live that un-lived life. To follow that green light, not knowing where in the world it takes us. We must abandon comfort and reach. We are not bears and we are not birds. We must not squander that gift.

I have this tendency to ingest. This internal consumerism. I read and read and read and learn. Then I read more. Then I listen to podcasts, and read more. I then do some more of that. I have read countless, innumerable articles on the way to grow your business. I have listened to an ungodly number of podcasts; interviews with world class performers who generously spill their secrets for the entire audience. I have done all of this, for years, and I most want a nap.

Action is the tough part. It’s what sets apart those people who actually accomplish things from those who read about those people who accomplish things. This is not to say you must rush something. In fact, you shouldn’t rush things. You should take the time required to learn what you need to learn, but you must not forget to act, lest you become simply an observer. You can chalk these things up with being lazy or disinterested. You can tell yourself that you simply don’t have a passion for what you do, sure, but the world still moves. It still lurches forward while you sit on the sidelines watching it do so. For some, that may be just fine. Non progress for some, is a form of progress. But that’s a trap as well. If you continue to simply consume, and you fail to create anything, you’ve essentially taken an easy route. Action begets action, so even if you don’t quite know what you should do, you should do something anyway.

There are caveats to this. Investments need only time. You must not do a thing. You merely need to let them compound and do their thing and never touch them. The same goes for health. You should take the same steps over and over again and not tinker too much (though, by definition, there is action there.) You must allow yourself large periods of time to simply sit and think. Same goes for enjoying the moment. None of these things require much from you. For everything else, though, there is action. Action can be tiny. It can be an email or a call or a letter or a gift. It can be a walk or a swim or a run or a journal entry or a dinner. But an initial action must be taken. We often allow ourselves the runway to say “I just need to research this a bit more” and, at some point, that becomes a license to sit and simply consume. At some point, you must enter the arena. Best to do that sooner rather than later. Even without a plan.

This word has been bastardized recently. A term meant to evoke thoughtful, conscious, step by step implementation has been morphed by a society that travels to fast for itself. Slow is now synonymous with stunted. “Are you slow?” people ask (or used to) someone who they don’t find intelligent. It’s analogous to intellectual paralysis.

Slow, if you really sit with it, is a beautiful word. A concept that reminds you to stop fidgeting. Stop grabbing the phone, the TV, the book, the whatever and allow things to happen. Watch. Do little if anything. Accept. Again, the very idea to do little if anything and just allow things can seem infuriating. We are the dreamers of our dreams. We fight the dying of the light. We do not go gently. But how much of this effort is just wasted energy. I don’t mean this in a rhetorical way, I quite literally ask that you look at how much effort you expend on things and how much you have to show for those things? I’d venture to say that most of what you do on a daily basis is just wasted energy. Doing things for the sake of doing things because “they need to be done.” Many things do, of course, need to be done, but how many of those things are we doing on a daily basis. 1? Maybe 2? The rest is filler.

We have so much time on our hands we don’t know what to do with it, and the idea that we would take things slowly, that we would sit quietly in a room, by ourself, is simply too much.

You don’t have to sit on a chair cross legged, zoned out, to feel as if you’re “slow.” You can just do a tiny bit less, day by day. You can ask yourself if the thing you’re doing is essential, and if so, why, and if not, why do it? You can relax your shoulders. You can take off your armor and stop beating back against the incessant waves that will never stop hitting the shore.

Slow is not some outdated new age idea of living on a beach and picking your own coffee beans. It’s simply a reminder to observe the greater world around you, rather than forcing yourself to brrrrrrrrrr into it. It’s to take a step back, mentally, and physically and be present. You’re not solving anything. There’s no goal (this drives many of us crazy.) You’re just quite literally breathing. Then another one. Then another.

Create it for yourself in whatever way you need to. Play defense or offense or all of the above. Turn the phone off or on silent. Run or walk away. Excuse yourself (nothing will happens-the world will continue to do what it does without your attention.) Do not search for answers but allow answers to come to you. Be receptive to them. You’re not “finding them” so much as your opening your attention up to finding what is already there.

At some point over the last few decades or so, the prominence of thought and the power of thought took hold of Western thinking, and hasn’t let go since. That we should view our thoughts, as if outside ourselves. That we should sit with our thoughts. That we should try and change our thoughts in a more positive direction. That only we, as captains of our own ship, have the power to change the direction of our lives. Our thoughts have given birth to DRT, CRT, and a bevy of of other capital letter salads at the psychology buffet, in hopes of analyzing who “we”, specifically are, and why we think what we do, as if this is hidden in some far corner of the mind, just waiting to be rescued.

Certainly, the dissection of thought, it’s origins, and it’s implications on our every day choices is a worthwhile goal, but it, most times, comes at the cost of action. We are so well versed these days in the concepts surrounding changing our thought patterns, that we believe (we are made to believe) that the work is simply more thinking. You can theoretically always be working by always reading more books on thoughts and your thoughts and why you think what you do and how your mother, when you were 5, really did this thing and now you’re 56 and of course you act the way you act because of that thing. That may masquerade as the work, but does it actually change anything. Yes, perhaps the curtains are opened just a bit, but perhaps they must be ripped off, and the ripping off requires the physical. And we are not talking that much about the physical, and the physical should probably be placed in an area of more prominence.

If you absolutely abhor your job or where you live, you are now faced with three basic decisions. The first is to seek professional counseling where you can dig deep into specifically why you do not like where you live or where you work, and what you’d rather be doing (for money), as if you know this thing and merely forgot about it and are now two decades into a career which does not seem worthwhile to you, but thankfully here you remembered you always wanted to be a pilot. Often, even if you do find “clarity”, and, mind you, you’re not sure where this clarity comes from or why you didn’t know about this before you sat down on the couch at $350/hr, you will, wholeheartedly, with every fiber in your being, desire to change your life and you won’t. You won’t because the action requires the action and there is a cost to the action, but the thought, outside of the hourly fee, is very much free. The second choice is to grin and bear it. Double down. Find things from your home life and your work life that you can live with, and re-frame the way you look at these thing. In this rather grotesque scenario which is served up quite often these days, you need to actively trick yourself and deny the feelings you’re feeling every second of every day and tell yourself “No, you are wrong. This job is redeemable, as is where I live, and I simply must, no matter what genetics tell me, look at this in a different way. You are force fed the idea of being grateful for this home and job because did you know many people are dying around the world and so far your death has been postponed so please stop being so trivial about the small things in life. This will, no doubt, lead to the shrink, and we circle and circle. The third choice, the most violent of the choices, is to quit your job and move. This involves almost no thinking. This involves almost nothing other than action. It’s pure, mainline, clear action. It’s brilliant in its lack of alternative. You haven’t the faintest idea what’s behind this door but you don’t care, since you know what’s behind the others. Very few people make this choice and those that do may often regret it, but that’s almost besides the point. We are, for all intents and purposes, subjected to so much inertia to think about things rather than do the things, that doing the things is an act of revolution.

The doing the thing doesn’t have to be so drastic. It could be doing wind sprints in your backyard. It could be planting a tomato. It could be selling your car, buying a cheaper one, driving to the airport and booking a ticket to a place you see without ever once thinking “What happens if I don’t have pants for dinner.” This comes callously close to spontaneity but it is not spontaneity. It is action for actions own seek. Outrospection (interestingly, not a word) instead of introspection.

We are all too guilty of this. We stew in our emotions and we vaguely attack our problems until our lasagna is ready and then we put them to the side, waiting for our feelings to change. Then, we die. But taking the action has nothing to do with nihilism or existentialism or even re-incarnation. Taking the action helps our muscles get used to taking the action, and hopefully things work out and maybe not, but you’re much, much, much more apt to take further actions if you took the first one. Buy a stock you like. Go ballroom dancing. Divorce. Cook beans. Whatever.

What happens when all we do is think about thinking and obtain wisdom but don’t ever actually practice it. The stoics and the Buddhists and the Christians and the Jews explicitly warn us about this. Bring God into the world through action. Practice meditation not on the cushion, but in your life. All of this, all of the ancients and the old men, and all of nature tell us, implore us, scream at us, to simply take action. We should follow their advice.