Don’t Forget the Fundamentals

In our life goals, we sometimes forget about the fundamentals or the basics that we know we should be focusing on. This can be a great mistake, as the fundamentals are important enough that we should never lose sight of them.

For living a good life, the fundamentals may be: eating well, sleeping well, deep breathing (to help destress), exercise, staying hydrated, nurturing and working on important relationships, avoiding chronic stress, seeking out supportive friends and colleagues, and having some free time to enjoy yourself.

I would also say that monitoring your progress is a fundamental skill, as this can help you to notice if your mental health is suffering or if you have lost your motivation and to help resolve small problems before they become big ones.

If we consider work, the fundamentals there may be: prioritizing your most important tasks, showing up on time, making sure you understand what is expected of you, working together as a team, developing good relationships with your boss and colleagues, setting attainable goals, and identifying obstacles and problems.

Since I value mental and cognitive development, other important fundamentals may be meditation or yoga, reading, learning, challenging yourself, brainstorming ideas, creative or artistic expression, and writing or documenting your ideas.

We sometimes form grand goals that we want to accomplish, and it is good to be ambitious, but we should be careful not to forget about the fundamentals.

If we try to advance too far without applying the basics, then some important part of our lives will likely suffer.

Many times, people want shortcuts to help meet their goals. However, when it comes to the fundamentals, this often means putting in the work every day. Simply sticking to them can provide a struggle every day for many of us. And so, we must remind ourselves when we want to advance and reach higher levels that the basics still matter.

What good does it do you if you get that promotion, but you no longer have time to eat right and sleep well? You may earn more respect and income, but in time, your health may suffer. You may even lose motivation at your work.

The fundamentals are there for a reason. And while they may differ from person to person, many of the basics do apply to all of us, such as those listed above that matter for living a good life.

Be aware that even the fundamentals can be overdone and get in the way of each other. For example, what good does it do to meditate an hour every day if you do not have a job or the funds to support yourself? What good does it do if you oversleep, and this drains your energy and motivation rather than helping you? Exercise can be useful, but if you obsess about it, you may fail to make time for important relationships in your life.

Today I would like you to think about the most important 5 fundamentals are in your life. What are they?

To be fundamental, they should be important to do every single day. Are you happy with how you are accomplishing them? Are you overdoing it?

A lesson I would like you to understand is that the fundamentals can appear quite easy and simple, and so we may get bored with them and want to move on. But you may find that if you do this, your life will fall out of balance, and you will need to go back and perform those fundamentals that you had neglected.

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One of my books which I am most proud of explored some fundamentals in our thinking processes, and how having the right thoughts can help us to live our best lives. For example, the first three Thoughts are:

• Focus on What You Can Control, Not on What You Cannot Control.

• Focus on the Positive, Not on the Negative

• Focus on What You Can Do, Not on What You Cannot Do

The book is 7 Thoughts to Live Your Life By: A Guide to the Happy, Peaceful, & Meaningful Life - These Thoughts changed my life around, and I hope they can impact your life too.

Who is Helping You? (Don’t Be Afraid to Get Help)

Today what is on my mind is whether we know when to seek help.

I feel like this has a negative connotation. When you are struggling, people often mention that you should get “help.” Sometimes they mean seeking mental health services or getting tutored so that you can get caught up. Usually, when someone mentions “help,” you are frustrated and beat down, and you may feel that all hope is lost.

Of course, our minds often make things worse than they truly are. In reality, there is nothing wrong with getting help, and we should all be open to getting it when we truly need it.

The problem with how we think about help is probably that we don’t worry about things much until they are collapsing. We may deny our mental health until we are crippled and unable to work. We may ignore an injury until it gets worse and worse, and a part of our body becomes incapacitated. If we are in a class, we may act as if studying harder will get us back on track, even when we have failed multiple exams.

Perhaps most parts of your life are working in perfect order, and you don’t need help, or you have never needed help in the past.

But sooner or later, we all tend to reach a point where we need someone there to help us get back on track.

As you may see where I am going, I think a major mistake is to wait to get help. At the first major signs of trouble, you should think about a way for you to get ahead of this problem before it becomes a major problem.

Could someone help you with this? Or can you truly get it done on your own?

Sometimes we have to help ourselves. One of my friends recently got Covid, and he has always been very healthy, so he was overconfident and tried to work his normal schedule (at his home office) through it.

Eventually, he found himself in bed most of the day, needing to catch up on rest. Perhaps he didn’t need much help from anyone else in this case – he just needed to acknowledge the problem and start putting his health first so that he could truly get better.

There are many, many ways to get help. I will post about some of them here:

Help Yourself

Stop being stubborn and acknowledge that you either need to change something, solve your own problem, or get help. You should always be prepared to help yourself improve your situation, but part of helping yourself will involve seeking outside help. Everything functions more smoothly when you have the support of someone to help you along.

Books

I’m the type of person who likes to solve my problems by reading. A book (or usually many, many books) have been written on virtually any issue you could have in your life. I view authors as my personal mentors. If you believe it is likely you will face certain kinds of problems, you may even read books on such topics in advance.

Online Advice

This can help point you in the right direction if you have problems that you don’t know how to tackle. Or perhaps even if you need to vent. Reddit has many subreddits (or forums) where you can get help and advice. For example –

https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhelp/

https://www.reddit.com/r/selfimprovement/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Advice/

People in these communities may either ask for advice or advise others on how to tackle their life problems. You can either ask a question, help someone else with their problem, or search for advice given to others on the type of problem you are having.

Hotlines and Helplines

These are phone services that are there for people in need.

As an example, one of the most important ones will be the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. According to their website, they provide “Free and confidential emotional support to people in suicidal crisis or emotional distress 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.” Their listed phone number is:

800-273-8255

Therapists or Psychologists

If you struggle with a mental health issue that interferes with your daily life goals, I recommend seeking out a professional therapist or psychologist to help you work through these issues. I have struggled with my mental health in the past, and I saw a psychologist who helped me get better. Also, many people I know personally have struggled with their mental health at some point in the past. If you are concerned about your mental health, this is a time when you should feel comfortable asking for help.

Mentors

An ideal mentor is usually someone who has accomplished what you would like to accomplish in your life, but they may be 5 or 10 years ahead of you. This is someone who will generally be available to chat or help if you ask for some advice. You want to find mentors who are happy to work with you and help you, as it will be important for you to form a relationship and trust them. You do not need to follow everything they say, but as they will be more experienced, you will want to consider their advice and experiences carefully. Keep in mind that most mentors will be hands-off - they will be happy to discuss general problems you face, but they probably will not dedicate enough time to walk you through exactly how to solve your problems.

Coaches or Tutors

If you need more one-on-one attention to tackle key obstacles in your life, you could find it useful to get a coach or tutor of some kind. For example, if you lack self-confidence and find it difficult to start conversations with new people, you may find a coach who specializes in improving social skills and working on confidence building. The benefit of a coach would be that they will know how to help you with your unique situation. These are services that can cost, but if you are being held back and have struggled to make progress in your life, it can be worth trying out.

It is the same idea with tutors. I still remember that in 9th grade, I struggled immensely with learning algebra – but I was stubborn, and I refused to get a tutor. Luckily, my teacher ended up helping me to catch up. If you are struggling that much with a class, I fully recommend getting a tutor.

Guides or Masters

A guide transcends the role of mentor, going beyond that level. This is someone who usually develops a personal bond with you (but not always) and can learn to see your problems before you see them yourself. I have come to think that we have many guides in our lives that come in many forms and that we do not always realize that they were guiding us until many years or even decades have passed. A guide will teach you, and you will probably not be aware that you are learning anything. They may guide you along certain paths that they know will work better for you without forcing you into it or making you feel that you must go on that path.

Our first guides are usually our parents, but many other guides will pop up in our lives. If something ever leaves a life-changing impression upon you, then a guide may be responsible for it.

A true guide may be there for anyone when that need arises.

As a brief example, my mother told me that she was once in the hospital waiting for my father while he was receiving treatment. And while she was waiting for him, she saw a young woman sobbing, and she seemed completely broken. My mother understood that she had a very sick relative, and the circumstance seemed uncertain as to whether he would recover. So my mother helped to calm her down and explain to her that she should take things one step at a time. That no one could know for sure what the outcome would be. My mother had a heart-to-heart talk with her that helped her to cope with her anxiety, pain, and emotions at the moment. At that point, my mother was a guide for this young woman in need.

As a last note, one time, I helped shift someone’s perspective so that he could begin to resolve his life problem, and he was incredibly grateful toward me for it. I told him not to worry about it. I could offer advice on his issue because I lived through it myself, and I overcame it. I told him:

Today I have helped you, tomorrow you will overcome your problem, and the next day you will help someone else overcome that same problem.

Are you Personally Fulfilled? (What is Success, Really?)

We tend to throw around words like “success,” – and usually, I think it is assumed that we are talking about bigger paychecks, faster cars, and gated communities. But is this really all there is to success, or is there something we are missing here?

Whenever someone mentions success, I always find myself thinking to myself:

What is success, really?

A study I read showed that college students tend to drink more alcohol than they would like, and this happens because they think everyone else is drinking a lot and enjoying it. Because of these perceptions, they feel like they should be drinking more and enjoying it. This ends up with college students drinking more than they would truly like – which perpetuates the idea that college students drink a lot and like it.

Extrapolating from this, sometimes I wonder if many people are chasing what they think other people view as success.

These perceptions of success are perpetuated in the news, media, social media, and so on. The idea that is created through this is that:

You should want conventional ideas of success for yourself, or something is wrong with you.

Some popular influencers will hire a model or rent fancy cars or create a background that makes it look like they are on a private jet. They will include these props in their supposedly real videos to create the illusion of success. Perhaps they all bought into the idea that they should want success, and perhaps they thought that by appearing to be successful, others would be more interested in them (thus, helping to actually make them successful).

For most people, is it more important to actually be successful, or are we just obsessed with the need to appear successful?

In life, I think we are often presented with a choice. Will we allow others to impose their ideas on us, or will we take the time to think things through and form our own thoughts and ideas?

Consider: What is success to you?

To me, it’s not about the money, the houses, or even the appearance of having it.

At its most basic element, to me, success is fulfillment.

So then, what is fulfillment?

You can be fulfilled in many different ways.

Purpose

One of the primary roads to fulfillment is to know what your purpose is. What do you find meaning from in your life? Many of us will find purpose through our work, helping others, improving ourselves, or raising children.

Physical (e.g., exercise and stamina)

We can find physical fulfillment through exercise, playing sports, or even just walking. Some people need more physical activity to feel fulfilled, and others can get by with less. However, a part of meeting our fulfillment will likely involve keeping ourselves in a good enough shape that we can be satisfied with and meet our other life goals.

Mental (e.g., intellectual, creative)

Mental fulfillment may be found through challenging yourself intellectually or creatively. Some people who always like to read, learn, or discuss interesting ideas will have a high need for mental fulfillment. We all have different needs in this regard, too – some people may meet this by painting or drawing, and others may need a mentally engaging job to feel fulfilled. Some people need to change things up regularly – they may enjoy being with nature, traveling, visiting museums, and learning about different cultures.

Social (e.g., bonding, spending quality time, and emotional support)

Most of us interact with a variety of social circles regularly, such as family, friends, colleagues, and perhaps neighbors or other acquaintances. As I keep stating, we all have different needs in this regard. Some people only need a few friends to feel fulfilled, and others will need many more. In general, we all need to engage with some people to feel whole. In the end, this is likely because our individuality happens in the context of the people around us (e.g., how can you be the shy one or the funny one if there is no one else there?)

Spiritual (and mental health / mental balance)

Some people may not like the term spiritual if you do not relate to it, but in that case, you can view this as mental health and balance. There are many ways to pursue this, of course. Some have prayer, meditation, yoga, or positive thinking. Some people may explore their thoughts and beliefs through journaling their personal journey. Of course, one way to strive for spirituality and mental balance is to make sure to pursue all the other ways toward fulfillment – purpose, physical, mental, social, and values. For me, spirituality also involves considering my personal role in the whole universe and how I interconnect with everyone and everything.

Living By Your Values

It makes perfect sense to me that you must know your highest values and live according to them to be fulfilled. If you are not living according to what you think is most important, how could you possibly be fulfilled?

To help you brainstorm which values are most important to you, here is a list of 50 core values from James Clear’s website.

My core values are truth, balance, love, knowledge, and transference – which I discussed more deeply in this post - The Path to a True and Fruitful Life.

Final Thoughts

True success lies in fulfillment. To recap, the ways to fulfillment are by pursuing your purpose, and also physically, mentally, socially, spiritually, and living by your values.

Before you go, consider these questions:

• How fulfilled are you in your life?

• What can you do to become more fulfilled?

• Is there something in your life you can let go of which has not properly fulfilled you?

• Did fulfillment mean something completely different for you?

Beyond What We Thought We Were

After we reach a certain point in our development, one of our greatest tasks is to question how we can become something beyond or greater than our current selves. By this, I don’t mean the incremental next step, but I mean the next breakthrough of our lives. We shouldn’t wait for that breakthrough to come to us, but rather, we must make it happen.

The task then is to look at all of our personal histories: how our parents raised us, the habits we’ve formed, the perceptions we’ve built, the factions that we’ve had thrust upon us such as our race or geographic location, and the factions we’ve purposely chosen, such as our political affiliation or possibly our religion.

We must take all of these things that make us who we are and set them aside.

Yes, we must set aside all of which has made us what we are at the present day. Why? If you continue along the path of all that made you what you are, then there is only one possible path to move forward on, and that path is what you have been conditioned to perceive, think, and act on through all of your upbringing and past. If you pursue that path, then there is no choice to be made. You are like a robot adhering to its preprogrammed nature. You can already hear the voices of your parents, peers, friends, colleagues, naysayers, and so on, and all those voices dictate what you will do next, because these are all the people who have always been in your life, and you can no longer imagine them not being in your life. They are you, and you are them, fused into one organism.

This can be good if you consciously choose to go in that direction. But I want to encourage you to consider all options, not just the convenient next steps that have already been laid out in front of you.

Just because a carpet is rolled out in front of you doesn’t mean you need to walk on it.

So again, to rise above and become something beyond yourself means to set aside everything.

Let everything go.

Entertain this idea for just a moment:

Perhaps everything you were ever instructed upon, led to believe, led to think was important, led to think would make a difference, led to think that was building upon your education and making you better or leading you toward societal views of success, well perhaps this was all just misguided, or wrong, or even a distraction along the path you were truly meant for.

Just entertain that idea for a moment now, and then set it aside. It’s okay. It’s a scary thought. It’s so absurd, in fact, that the thought itself must be wrong, somehow. But don’t shy away from the thought. Perhaps it isn’t wrong. Perhaps there is some rightness in it, and that is what you are afraid of.

Hold this thought in your head that perhaps everything you ever thought, perceived, were taught, and were guided toward, was all wrong.

When you are ready to let go of everything you ever knew and thought and were and are, then you are ready to die, be reborn, become something new, and rise as if the Phoenix from its own ashes, incapable of being decimated.

This is the way to move beyond yourself and work toward becoming something greater.

The point here is not to make you think that everything you know is wrong. The point is to make you realize that there is wrongness and rightness in everything. You should think and reflect on the wrong parts of what you have been taught in your life.

How can you identify those things? How can you accept them? How can you stop making the same kinds of mistakes over and over? You must release yourself from at least some parts of your life, history, and what you were taught to move beyond yourself.

This is not just about you and your personal life. As humans, to move beyond where we are now and reach higher states, we cannot pursue the trajectory that led us here. We cannot pursue the same thing all of humanity has pursued for all time, which has gotten us into these dire straits. We must release ourselves from our prior trajectories to pave new, more fruitful, better paths for all.

The Forces that Pull Us Apart and Make Us Who We Are

In the modern-day, we are pulled apart in many different directions. Religion tells us that a God is looking out for us, with a larger purpose in mind for humanity. Science cannot give us a reason for being here. It can just examine our parts and the nature of matter. Philosophy has shown us many perspectives on thinking and being but has not led us toward a particular direction for the future. History has told us how we got here, but not what we need to change to get where we need or want to be.

The other guiding forces are from our parents, peers, and society. Some people listen more to their parents, and some more to their peers, who could be friends, colleagues, or just the people one happens to be surrounded by for most of the day. Most of us listen somewhat to society, and those who stray too far often end up imprisoned or forgotten.

Often, neither our parents nor our peers quite have things figured out. They are just filling out their roles, as prescribed to them by their parents, peers, or society, informed by their religion, science, philosophies, and histories.

People do not know themselves well. We are told who we are or need to be by our parents, our education system, our society, but we are not led to investigate who we are properly. We are told who we are (or guided into being who others think we should be), and then we become who we were told we were. This may be a false self, created to appease the people around us or society.

As individuals, we are whole universes unto ourselves, as the universe at large does not exist on its own. The universe at large exists as an interplay between the mind and the universe, making the universe what we experience it to be. Another mind of a different sort would fabricate an entirely different universe – for instance, different colors, emotions, intuitions, beliefs, and visual perceptions would completely alter one’s personal universe. I am in my own self-created universe, and you are in your own universe – but of course, they do overlap.

We must ask ourselves how we can move forward as societies when we are pulled apart by different personal universes, beliefs, and messages that do not coalesce on any particular point? Religion pulls us in one direction, science in the other, our peers in another, and our true selves likely in yet another direction. Many of us are being pulled apart from our core. And not only from ourselves but by the people around us too.

It is no wonder that mental illness is so common. Perhaps individuals are not mentally ill, but society, which is pulling us in all directions, has made us this way.

Then we have an ongoing debate in the world about whether we should be led by reason or intuition, our analytical side, or our emotional side. This provides us with another split in the psyche.

Are you man enough or woman enough (or masculine or feminine enough)? People who do not naturally fit their expected roles may be made to feel that something is wrong with them, which of course, harms the psyche.

Then we have ideas of sexuality, in that you are either gay or straight – sure, we acknowledge more types now, but many people still see this as mostly two types of sexuality. So you are one thing or another, which splits the psyche of many people as well. If you are part of both or have different sides, you may not be accepted or understood.

We have race – are you white or not? Are you white enough? Black enough? You are artificially split based on skin tone, or possibly ancestry, even if that skin tone or ancestry may not represent who you are on the inside. Society tells us that to be white, you have to be pure (white from both your parents). Otherwise, you are treated as no longer truly white. A white and black person, for example, is treated as black, as was former President Barack Obama (who has a white mother). Often enough, other races or groups (e.g., Hispanic, Asian, Indian, Native American) are neglected from the general conversation, which could make them feel as if they are not relevant enough.

If you occupy two conflicting groups (as viewed by society) at once, society often decides what you are for you.

We are pressed to be in one of these poles, as the middle ground is often ignored. Are you rational or intuitive? Gay or straight? Black or white? Liberal or conservative? Religious or atheist? These are some examples of the categories of our lives. For every category you are in, there increases the chance that you will hate or be hated by individuals in the other group. We are all in multiple categories, so we all belong in groups that hate or are hated, and we tend to inherit that hate that our groups carry with them. We inherit this hate and are expected to carry it along, or we are treated as if we are not proper members of our group, and our own group will hate us. If that happens, we will be treated as “other” and destined to be forever lost and abandoned.

We grow up with this hatred all around us, and in the hearts of the people closest to us, so it seems normal. In fact, we often end up carrying the hatred (or anger, fear, disgust, etc.) of our ancestors. We inherit this hate and then pass it on to our families, and they pass it on to the next generation. At some point, we must realize that every individual is a member of various groups, and those groups may have longstanding problems with other groups. But there is no reason for us as individuals to absorb so much hatred and then pass it on.

How do we rise above the hatred? We pursue meaningful connections with more people. We pursue open-mindedness, empathy, deep listening, understanding, and we begin to acknowledge the role that our groups or we have played in causing problems. We consider deeply that some of the thoughts or beliefs of people in groups outside our own may be legitimate. At some point, our biases may have led us to believe that they were 100% wrong on everything, even when this is not reflected in reality. Likewise, they may have come to think that we were 100% wrong on everything, even when that was not the case.

One way to rise above all this is to see that we are not our categories. The categories are aspects of us, but they are not us. A book can be hardcover or softcover. It can have a red, blue, or yellow cover. It can have a catchy title or a boring one. There are all kinds of books, but ultimately, what should matter is whether the content inside is true and useful, entertaining, or whatever the objective may be with reading it. Just as with humans, we tend to forget that our personal content, or who we are at our core, is what actually matters, not all the superficial qualities that we happen to exhibit.

We must stop being blinded by the categories that people wear for us to see, often not even by choice. Instead, open your mind and look deeper into their true core of being.

Balance, Harmony, Contentment

We all want linear, steady growth in our lives. Some even want exponential growth if they are not easily satisfied. Many of us do not feel that we can be happy unless we are growing at all times, in all ways. We think that our bank accounts must grow, we must be getting happier, we must be praised more, we must be getting healthier, we must stop aging, we must always be beautiful or physically fit, and we must find more free time to do what we enjoy. How can anyone be happy, with so many goals and not enough time or ability to accomplish such extraordinary feats?

I have never heard of anyone who reached a point and said, “this is enough. I finally arrived.” So does that mean there is no point to arrive at? Rather than endpoints or goals to strive for, are we all actually more like the hamster on the hamster wheel? We get on the wheel, and not much is accomplished, but the next day we jump on again because we don’t know what else to do besides remaining in motion, appearing to make progress.

Ernest Hemingway said:

“Never mistake motion for action.”

Sometimes that is how we behave, though, as if mere movement indicated meaningful action. But of course, we are not hamsters, so we should have more thinking and reflective capacities.

It seems as if our very happiness is refuted by the fact that we aim to be happy. For example, have you ever been unhappy because you attempted to be happy and failed at it? You expected happiness yet did not receive it, and so this made you unhappy. Aside from that, everything was fine, and you had no other reasons to truly be unhappy.

Monetary wealth collapses on itself too. If a few people owned the vast majority of the planet’s wealth (so basically, the situation we are in), it would be quite easy for those wealthy people to amass more and more wealth by nature of their resources. Everyone else would increasingly feel as if they were poor and powerless in a rigged system. The rich are indeed getting richer, and everyone else is mostly working harder and harder to remain stagnant. Somehow with riches, we tend to carry the illusion that we are personally amassing something. But it ends up being an energy that is ultimately redistributed to others (even if that is to relatives or back to the government), just as everything else in life is.

When it comes to health, beauty, and fitness, we are also up against the clock. We can do our best to build and preserve these features in ourselves, but ultimately, all life perishes after a certain point.

If we look at the goal of life, from the universe’s perspective, at least, it appears to be death. Yes, you read the statement correctly, although it appears nonsensical. Life leads to death with 100% accuracy. So life appears to cause death. Being born appears to result in death.

So the universe is telling us that goals don’t make sense. If the universe’s goal with life is to have it die, then why? Well, with every death, life can thrive. Organic matter (or at least matter that was organic) is what living creatures eat. The more organisms die, the more other organisms can live. Perhaps the universe’s goal is to give us more life, even if that means death. However, the more life we have, the more it leads to death. If there are too many living organisms at once, then that means there is too much competition for limited resources and food, which would likely lead to rapid deaths – organisms killing each other to eat.

The universe presents us with many paradoxes, one of which is that more life leads to more death. And more death leads to more life. But ultimately, there is a balance.

And as with nature, which balances itself between life and death, I believe that a key purpose here in this life is to find our own balance and harmony. Shooting for endless growth in all areas of life is just futility. Extreme riches for one results in extreme poverty for others. Just as extreme poverty for some results in extreme riches for others. Aiming to be too healthy may, strangely enough, make your system fragile if one’s system gets used to needing the perfect combination of exercise and nutritional value at steady intervals. What happens when you do not have access to that “perfect” health routine? You will not feel so healthy.

This is why intermittent fasting appears to be gaining popularity. Stressing your system is part of what it takes to be healthy. Seeking optimization in any form, however, often works against us. The more you reach states of perfection in any facet of your life, the more ripples of flaws you will create in your life and others’ lives.

Do not get me wrong. I still aim to do my best. But I realize that doing my best requires making mistakes, faltering, learning lessons and sometimes failing to learn them, struggling to be myself, wasting time, wasting energy, repeating the same cycles of futility, aiming to help people but in some way failing, and so forth. The harder I try to do my best, the more self-defeating I may become. In just doing alright and avoiding catastrophic mistakes, I can maintain balance in more aspects of my life. If you work too hard to do your best in any single area, other areas of your life may eventually collapse.

I have heard many times about business people who had high aspirations, so they worked more and more, taking on too much. Then at some point, they had health troubles because they neglected to eat or sleep well, or they made no time for their loved ones and mental health. Then as their health faltered, they realized that they needed to cut back work, to have some form of balance in their lives. Sometimes our own nature guides us back to balance, even if we fight it.

Personally, I believe health is of the utmost importance. If we do not take good care of ourselves, we will lose our focus and be unable to make progress in the areas we find important.

Understand that the universe sets its limits. There is no such thing as endless growth in any direction. Eventually, all that is good comes to an end, just as eventually, all that is bad comes to an end. I believe the fruitful path is to seek some balance, harmony, and contentment. Seek it with yourself, your loved ones, nature, and everything.

From Feelings of Worthlessness to Worthiness

Sometimes we may feel a crushing weight of worthlessness. The problem with living for the future, as many people do, is that we know where the future will end for all of us. Eventually, we will end up dead as everyone before us has ended up. Somehow, knowing our end destination can make the whole journey seem worthless. But perhaps this knowledge of what will happen to us is meant to remind us that we need to focus on what is happening now. At any moment, our whole life can be robbed from us, and we will pass on to the next dimension.

But this means that our present, fleeting moment is precious. The limited time we have is precious.

We can obsess over the end and whatever it may truly mean, or we can move beyond this and live our lives fully in the Now.

If we bring our attention fully to the Now, then we are fully alive and not adding agonies about the past or the future to our lives. The other thing we can do to overcome this feeling of worthlessness is remember that we must make our own goals and pathways. We cannot rely on someone else or another system to determine our worth and our path. For when they abandon us, we are left feeling nothing but worthlessness. Our worthiness must emanate from within. We must define our life path and our life mission and pursue it wholeheartedly.

I often think of this quote by Henry David Thoreau:

“All men live lives of quiet desperation.”

What many of us fear most is what deep inside we desire the most. That is, to truly, truly live by breaking away from the daily grind of patterns we have set into like a stone. We are constantly doing things today based on all the things we have done in the past, finding it difficult to escape this shadow of the past that hovers around us.

Many of us want to get out of here.

We want to escape from ourselves – our lives, who we are, the daily pains and challenges of life, society, and everything.

The escapism that we see rampant in today’s society, where people are sucked into movies, reality TV, video games, sitcoms, drinking, drugs, and any activity that removes us from our real lives, goes to show that many of us are living these lives of quiet desperation. We want to get out of here, but perhaps we don’t want any of the risks that come with it. We don’t want to pack our bags and move out, only to have people say we went crazy or for our family to become upset. We want to quit that job but feel we can’t because we need a steady income to live our normal lives.

In a sense, we feel trapped. I always thought that the wealthy must have found a way to escape this. Still, I feel that hearing about all the financial issues even the wealthy have, it makes me think that they get sucked into feeling that they need to maintain a certain lifestyle. Therefore they get trapped into their quiet lives of desperation as well. We come to feel that we need others to think of us in a certain way. If I’m the professor, I need people to think of me as a serious academic who has contributed unique and valuable research to the world. If I’m a businessperson, I need people to believe I am successful and value my products. If I’m a parent, I need people to think that I am a good parent and that I do the best for my kids. This need to be perceived in a certain way makes us feel trapped in the end.

In life, we acquire responsibilities and things we must do, which is just what it means to be an adult. It seems that we do not have the real option to escape. But what about those people without obligations to others? They are young, without kids, without anyone that they must care for, but they tend to think that they are too young to know what they should focus on in life and look to their parents or elders. But what if all of their elders are living quiet lives of desperation? And what if these are the people guiding our youth?

For any stranger you see today, keep in mind that perhaps they live a quiet life of desperation. Perhaps life is weighing them down. Maybe they’re using whatever energy they have left to smile and pretend that everything is alright.

We all want something more, don’t we? We want something other than what we have, something other than what we are, but then instead of working at it, we escape our lives. This drives us further into the need to escape the pitiful lives that we create for ourselves.

Instead, we must double down on our own lives. We must invest the time in nurturing ourselves and the people we touch daily. This will result in a bettering of ourselves and our circumstances. Perhaps once in a while, we should engage in a real-life escape or journey rather than trying to escape from our lives through media. The real-life journeys (e.g., travel, spiritual journeys, doing something you always wanted to do but never made time for) may nurture the soul and fill us with learning, understanding, wisdom, culture, and such good qualities, rather than just robbing us of our time. Perhaps in these real-life escapes, we will find that we want to escape that escape and ultimately find ourselves pleased to be back home, the way things always were.

There are many times in life when we will be frustrated, tired, feeling unwanted or lost, or as if we don’t matter. There are times when we may be tempted to give up hope. What we should always remember, no matter how hard things get, is that this is part of the journey too. Fiction writers understand quite well that they need to give their protagonist many obstacles, sometimes tremendous obstacles, for the story to be interesting. So sit back and remember that you are part of the human story. And perhaps you have been given more obstacles than others to bear. And this is fine. This is just a part of your journey. The journey moves you toward something greater and better, but you may have to get through the mud before you find your way.

The human mind and spirit are powerful enough that if every time we falter or find ourselves in difficult circumstances, we were to think, Oh no, I am so dumb. I’m going to get fired. Then I’ll lose my house, then the kids, I’ll die in a ditch. How could we possibly expect to thrive under immense stress? We must always train the mind to do better, to be a beaming light in the face of darkness.

When an unexpected disaster happens, think: That’s alright. We’re going to come back stronger than ever after we get through this. When you are sick and have disturbing symptoms, you may think: That’s fine, my body is just purging this sickness from my body. And when you make a big mistake, think: That’s fine – I’ve had the opportunity to learn something here so that I can help make sure my colleagues nor I ever make this mistake again.

We must learn to train the mind to be calm through the storm. When we find ourselves in turbulent times, where everything seems chaotic and disordered, we must keep calm, composed and figure out the next step. It doesn’t help to allow the mind to run through all of the worse possibilities that may happen. If running through all the worst-case scenarios makes you panicky and unable to think clearly, then this is not helping you or anyone.

We must stay calm through the storm.

Sometimes in challenging circumstances, we need to stay strong to survive the present to live another day and figure everything out with a calm, cool head.

The Busy, Entertained, Exhausted Cycle

The rabbit in Alice in Wonderland, who is in a rush, worried about the time, and stressed, seems to represent all of us. We all have so much to do and so little time. Yet studies show that the maniacal stress is killing us – the pressure to do more, accomplish more, be more successful, and outcompete all the other people who are trying to outcompete us is in many ways worse for us and society. This results in toxic and sabotaging cultures rather than sharing and collaborative cultures. In the end, we want to take the credit. We want the reputation, and we want people to like us or fear us or do as we say.

We seem to be an ego trapped in a shell of a body, in need of mental and spiritual growth, rather than more tasks to add to our to-do lists.

Unfortunately, we live in an age where people must be busy or entertained at all times. What we are busy with doesn't seem to matter that much. The busier we are doing something for someone, the more productive we feel and the better we feel about ourselves. When we are not busy, we feel that we have earned the right to be entertained. When we can, we pursue this escape from our busy lives, often through social media or television shows.

So, we cycle between busy and entertained, and we no longer have tolerance or the ability to hold our attention on nature, which is not eager to entertain us or make us busy. We are unable to meditate because, again, this is not about busyness or entertainment. We cannot just be, exist, do nothing, and enjoy that experience for whatever it may hold. Someone finds themselves with nothing to do for a few seconds, and they must pull out their phone to see how all their friends are being entertained on social media or to read the new sensational article that makes a crazy argument just because this is what people tend to click on.

We are thirsty for more and more and more stuff happening, but where it is quite trivial. Our day-to-day cycle is work where our employers demand more and more and more for the sake of always making improvements, where improvement really means to make more dollars for the bosses. Our benefit is nothing other than to keep on working to repeat the vicious cycle. Then we go home and entertain ourselves, then we sleep and rest restlessly due to the excessive busyness and stress, and repeat.

The focus on busyness leaves us feeling unfulfilled. As eating popcorn may feel good but ultimately be unfulfilling to your appetite, being perpetually busy with stuff to do that fills your day can leave you feeling as if you accomplished little in the end. If, at the end of the day, you’re just burnt out, dreading tomorrow, then you may have gotten caught in the Busy, Entertained, Exhausted Cycle.

When this happens, we are treated as basic output systems (e.g., work), input (e.g., entertainment), rest, repeat, living like machines. We are treated like machines designed to produce stuff, and if we do not produce it, then we are dysfunctional, and society casts us away.

I feel that we are in a sort of trance or daze, of being busy and entertained perpetually, without much personal understanding. For example, understanding our role in life, understanding what it means to be alive, and how to build a good society or even a good family. Our minds are always occupied with something, and so this gives us the impression that we are making true progress in our lives.

But are we really?

What if we were busy doing the wrong stuff, thinking the wrong way, and getting stuck in unfulfilling and vicious cycles? 

It seems that learning and wisdom, and understanding happen in the gaps of time when we are not so busy doing and filling our brains with media and sounds and imagery and trivial matters. It seems that if we can slow down the influx of noise and take a moment to breathe and relax what our mind must process, we could actually use that time to grow. As the brain needs so much sleep and we rest 8 hours a day, it seems hard to imagine that a constant stream of busyness, an influx of media noise, and always being entertained would be optimal for our growth as humans.

Remember: Be more and do less.