This New Year, Release Yourself (2022)

For anything I think to add to my life, I consider seriously whether it is truly worth doing.

For example, I recently considered applying for “cash back” credit cards. And then I thought just for a moment and realized that in efforts to gain more cashback, I am more likely to spend more. I am more likely to think – I will get some cash back on this purchase anyway, so what harm is there in buying more or getting the more expensive product. As you can see, the goal of saving money can actually result in spending more of it. These companies are not running a charity, so that should not be too surprising.

Similarly, for anything that may take a serious time commitment from me, I tend to think more deeply – will this truly add anything to my life? In efforts to gain some positive outcome, am I just introducing a series of things that bring me dread?

I often find that if I think it through carefully, the things I thought were worth doing, were actually not worth the hassle at all. I feel liberated every time I realize that a task I put on my To-Dos actually isn’t worth doing, and I can just eliminate it.

To put it succinctly…

• If you can make $100,000 but it costs your health or mental health, is it worth it?

• If you can make 10 friends, but these people are a negative influence and only take and never give, is it worth it?

• If you can achieve your dream but must turn your back on your family and friends, is it worth it?

• If you can have people love you, but it’s because they don’t understand anything about you (and have their own false conception of you), is it worth it?

We can’t only look at the benefits we may receive, but also need to consider the costs.

So this year, I wonder what we can release ourselves from that just results in waste, problems, and negativity.

This year, can you release yourself from:

• Needing to feel superior to others?

• Repeating the cycles that have gotten you to the same undesirable point, over and over?

• Hoping or wishing, without taking the necessary actions to get where you want to be?

• Believing certain thoughts in your mind that have done you no good.

• Thinking your way is the only right way.

• Feeling that if you have failed at a task or goal, then this makes you a failure.

• Chasing the new and shiny thing that someone else says you should want.

• Needing to follow or listen to someone else, who likely does not have things figured out as much as it seems they do.

• Needing to add more and more to your life, to the point that you are perpetually exhausted and unsatisfied.

• The changing tides of emotions that make you unbearably upset. (You may think that others cause you to feel these emotions, but you play a role in it too.)

• Overfocusing on the trivial and temporary, and instead allowing yourself to see what actually matters.

Think now: what is the #1 thing worth releasing yourself from?

What will you release yourself from in 2022?

What is that you are sick and tired of from yourself? Is it the excuses, the lack of discipline, the re-creation of the same foolish cycles?

Do these words come to mind?: “New Years Resolution” or “Bucket List” or “Things I Want to Accomplish (But I Secretly Know it Will Never Happen Because I Gave Up).” Perhaps we need to rise above such things.

What I wonder is what it takes for us to be honest with ourselves. What does it take for us to seriously take a look at ourselves and say – “Something went wrong somewhere. What was it?”

What about me, you may say (me, the author). You may think it is easy for me to point the finger at you, but what can I release myself from?

I suppose if I wanted to release myself from something, it would be fear itself.

A few months ago, I began hiking. I bought new shoes and hiking clothes, and I felt ready. But on the first trip into the woods, I got scared. I went to a park with hiking trails that didn’t have any civilization nearby. Then I parked my car in a small lot and walked into the woods. Just a few steps in, I thought – I have no navigation skills, I could get lost here. I wondered if I could survive the night in the woods if needed. The fear was taking over, with irrational thoughts flooding in. But something kept me going.

What I was more uncomfortable with than the fear itself was the idea of letting the fear win over. Despite the feeling of dread that I would get lost and not know my way back, I just kept walking deeper and deeper into the woods. Eventually, I came across a few other hikers. Having seen other humans in the area that didn’t seem scared for their lives helped to put me at ease.

After a short while – I forgot about the fear. I was even beginning to enjoy nature and this pleasant walk.

Ultimately, everything went well on my hiking trip. I spent a couple of hours there, and I found my way back to the car without any problem. At first, the place seemed like a maze, but then I realized that many of the trails split up at certain points and then met up again. It was not so difficult to navigate the area with a bit of attention and focus.

The problem with fear is that if it isn’t one thing, it’s another. You may find yourself scared of not getting the promotion, but the thought of getting it also worries you. Or you may fear distracted drivers on their phones in the daytime, and distracted drivers who had too much to drink in the nighttime. When we really think about fear, it’s hard to get away from it. Perhaps even comically, some of us may fear death, but we also fear to truly live.

It’s easy to get caught in a cycle of fearing things, situations, or even people. Before you think I don’t fear anything – I’m doing fine, keep in mind that anxiety and worry are all a part of it. Fear is quite common – I’m guessing you and everyone you know has some anxiety, worry, and fear affecting their lives.

Similar events as the hiking one I mentioned have played out in my life so many times that I feel foolish for having to relearn the same lesson again and again. If you push through the fear, you often see that there was nothing there even to get scared of. The mind itself overreacts and comes up with thoughts and beliefs that drive us further into fear.

Even if something had gone wrong on my hiking trip, there were other hikers around that could help if I needed it. And my phone had GPS on it if I got lost and needed to find my way back to the parking lot. Of course, even if I had a serious situation come up, I could have called for help with my phone. Even if the things we fear do come true, there is often still a path forward. We just need to keep a level-headed mind. Someone who panics can make even a tame situation into a dangerous one, after all.

Whether fear or something else, I wish you would find something to release yourself from this year. But the reality is that to get to the point of being ready to release ourselves from something, we usually need to get fed up with where we are.

In my case, I was more irritated by the feelings of succumbing to the fear than I was by the fear itself. But who can teach you to get to that point? Who can show you the way? That is the path inside yourself that no one else could reveal.

Surely, for someone who has found contentment in the problems of their lives, they will relive them every year. If they never get fed up, then there is nothing for them to change. And that is simply the nature of things.

And that reminds me of one of the other things I have released myself from. I do not need you to listen, follow, or even agree with my words. I am at peace with whatever effect or non-effect these words may have.

This year, release yourself from one thing, then the other, then the next, and eventually see that you will be free from it all. You will be RELEASED, finding the freedom to be what you always were, in your own nature.

I am the Seeker Who Does Not Seek

For the longest time, I was looking for answers,

To philosophical questions.

Why are we here?

What is our purpose?

How should I live my life?

What is Good?

What should society aim for?

And I gradually found answers to some of these questions and more.

But the answers for one person do not necessarily satisfy the needs of all.

At some point, I became content with not knowing all I had wished to know.

Moreover, I accepted that I would never know those things.

I could seek true knowledge for this life and another life and another, and I will still want to know more.

And one thing I learned is that the pursuit of anything has no end, as one feels the need for more anyway.

If one has more power, one wants more.

If one has more love, one wants more.

If one has more money, one wants more.

And knowledge is no different.

I read enough books where each new one barely adds anything new to what I have already learned.

Asked enough questions to where each new one barely adds to the findings of a prior one.

Sought enough answers to know that anyone is willing to give them, making them worth little.

I was always the seeker, unsatisfied with my present knowledge, with the state of understanding of the people, books, and so forth.

And still, I am not satisfied with it, but I am content in knowing that I ventured to learn what I needed most and am working to do something with that.

Having come to know that I will never get to where I wanted to be, I still seek something, not knowing what it is.

I have sought to no longer seek, which is still seeking. Pursuing the end of all pursuits is still a pursuit.

Letting go of the need to seek or not seek, to pursue or not pursue, seems to be the path to somewhere. Like a wormhole that can transport you to another dimension, this may open up new paths we had not been aware of. When not focused on moving toward or away from something, there may be more energy to get through it.

This is a path rarely heard of and much more rarely taken.

Take Ownership Over Your Life

Know that whatever situation you are in, you played a crucial role in getting yourself there.

There is no other way. You are you. Who else got you to the here and now?

In your life’s path…

Whether there were major setbacks that you regretted or not,

Whether you learned and changed and grew from those or not,

Whether you listened to the good advice that came your way or not,

And whether you listened to the bad advice that came your way or not.

Either way, the common denominator was YOU,

You were the one who chose whether to act in a certain way or not,

Whether to believe in something or not,

Whether to follow someone or not,

Whether to be proactive or reactive,

Whether to seek betterment or not,

Whether to seek praise, riches, comfort, love, or safety,

Whether to be truthful or not.

What we often failed to realize in life was that…

We chose to continue along a path,

Or to get off of it and pave a new one,

Or to let others take us on whatever road they had in mind for us,

Either way, we chose this for ourselves.

We had the power to choose or to give up this power to someone else.

We are happy to take the praise when things work out,

But quick to blame others when they don’t,

Rather, we must own it all, as both good and bad will tend to pour out from our decisions.

There is no sense in blaming those who advised you, as they could not know the full extent of who you are and your life’s situation.

And in the end, you made your own decision.

Also, you chose your advisors - did you choose them well?

You would be happy to reap the rewards for yourself, so take any negative consequence, own it, and aim to make it right.

In owning what has gone wrong, you can begin to see through it, regain your power, and find a better path.

Many of us assume that power means power over others,

But the one with power over their own life is quite rare,

True power is to realize every moment of the day that we have the option,

To focus on what we can or can’t do,

To stay or go,

To fight or flee,

To argue or accept,

To act or reflect,

To take action based on need or want,

To speak or listen,

To lead or follow,

To love or hate,

To focus on what limits us, or what frees us.

To pursue or to be content.

We all have this power.

Of course, what is right for you will depend on your circumstance, experience, and goals.

If we are at the whims of people, emotions, and impulsiveness, then we have relinquished our power.

This is a power we always had and that we may have chosen to give away.

In such a case, we can prepare to regain it.

Regardless of what is going on in the world around us, we have power,

The power to think, learn, grow, change, and make the best choices for ourselves.

Take ownership over your life,

Own the situations that you find yourself in,

For you have played a role in creating them,

Own the good and bad that come from your life’s choices,

Seek to help and be helped by others but at the end of the day,

Take ownership over your life,

Your thoughts, actions, beliefs, and desires,

To do otherwise is a denial of what is.

Remember this:

You are the instrument and player,

The song and singer,

The pilot and passenger,

The thought, and thinker,

The being and spirit,

The writer and written,

The gift and giver.

Remember Who You Are

Today I would like to share an excerpt from my book, Your Personal Truth: A Journey to Discover Your Truth, Become Your True Self, & Live Your Truth.

Remember Yourself

“Remember who you are and where you come from; otherwise, you don’t know where you are going.”
— Karolína Kurková

How can we remember who we are? The best way to do this is to listen to your heart. Now the key is to consider what that means. Essentially, the real you is not what we see, nor all that you have been taught to think and do. There is a deeper part of yourself.

I believe many of us get used to going against our spirit, and we have to remember who we are. This is easier said than done.

I have come to think that part of our human journey is that we lose ourselves along the way. Many well-meaning people in our lives teach us so much that we may lose our core, authentic self in time. We develop obsessions—whether making money, seeking fame, having a perfect figure, or an addiction to buying stuff or playing games. This is where the world is steering us, away from ourselves.

The modern world is excellent at filling our lives with distractions that do not necessarily lead to a truthful, meaningful place.

Notice that animals have powerful drives, which we call instincts. To me, instinct is just knowing who you are. You know that when something happens, you react in a certain way, and you don’t need to question it because it is a deep drive inside yourself—it is you. Yet, when placed in zoos, animals start to lose their instincts. Animals that may have had a killer instinct can lose it. They can lose who they are, trapped behind bars. This is because the zoo is an artificial environment, holding back their true, wild selves.

Interestingly, I have come to think that humans also have a wild side that has been lost. It makes sense, of course, for society to avoid any part of ourselves that may cause havoc or violence, especially without any good reason. But as all animals have a wild side, and we are animals, perhaps we have this side to ourselves too, and it is neglected.

As part of our domestication on becoming human, we go to school and obey a teacher’s instructions. Then, later on, most of us go to work and obey our boss’s instructions. If we are promoted to management, we continue to follow the lead manager’s instructions. We are taught from the earliest phases in our lives that we must respect order. We are just a tiny puzzle piece in a much bigger puzzle.

If we had a wild side, we tended to lose it. But it’s not a matter of “if.” Just look at young children and how wild and carefree they can be. Perhaps without society to teach them to be civilized humans, they would have grown into wild adults.

Think back: If you stepped out of line in your youth at any time, someone was there to correct you and show you the error of your ways. I can still recall being a child and constantly hearing the words “single-file line.” Of course, in elementary school, teachers said this to remind us to walk in a precise, straight line on the way to the bathroom. They did not want to see disorder.

And so we learned to stay in line, to be orderly, follow instructions, and the wild parts of us were stamped out. Maybe some of this is good, but perhaps not all of it.

If we can learn to appreciate the wild nature in the world, why shouldn’t we enjoy it in ourselves? Why shouldn’t we appreciate the wild side of humanity? Must we follow the rules and instructions perfectly all of the time? You may explore such ideas as you figure out your truth.

Every day we are led along certain paths. Our teachers showed us that we had to follow their instructions as they reminded us to “stay in line.” We are adults now, but perhaps not much has changed. We don’t talk back to superiors, say something that could make someone feel uncomfortable, or laugh at inappropriate times. This is just what adults do (or don’t do).

Consider this: Do you deny parts of who you are just to follow the expected order? Is that order worth it? Or are you making a personal sacrifice?

If you choose to deny your true nature every day, you may eventually find that you do not know who you are anymore. You may have been following the paths others laid out for you for so long. For example, those paths the people around you believed to be good and encouraged you to go on. Perhaps all that this will accomplish is introduce falseness in your life and lead you away from your truth.

Ask yourself: Have I forgotten who I truly am? Have I been masquerading as someone that I am not? Am I an imposter in my own life?

No one can answer such questions except for you. Only you know if you are where you were meant to be. Even if you are not where you wanted to be, then the key question is whether you are doing everything you can to find that path that you were meant to be on.

Are you committed to being your true self? Is this something you are willing to struggle for? To take seriously? Or will you calmly lose the battle for yourself and allow your mind and body to be guided wherever the forces of the world happen to take you?

If you have forgotten who you were, how can you recapture yourself and remember? You may contact childhood friends or family members that you have not seen in a long time. Or you could get in touch with some lost beliefs, values, or desires that you had long ago and had set aside.

When was the last time that you felt completely free to be your true self? Were you a child? A teenager? A young adult? Was it decades ago, a few years ago, or months ago? Is it just on the weekends when you’re alone? Or does it only happen when you are around close friends and family?

Sometimes remembering isn’t enough, and you must get in touch with who you were, at that last point where you can recall having been your true self. Maybe you have lost touch with family—and you must visit them. Perhaps you have lost touch with a topic or activity you loved, and you must do this again. Or maybe you have denied a part of your personality to please someone, and it is time that you go back to being your true self.

Remembering who you are doesn’t just mean revisiting memories. It involves recapturing who you are for yourself. When you remember, you can find your true self inside yourself, in your mind, and then you will know the right path for you.

Key Questions (Remember Yourself)

1. Did you used to be a different person? If so, did you change for better or worse?

2. Do you find that pretending, lying, or exaggerating is a regular part of your life? If so, why are you covering up who you are?

3. When you were a child, what excited you the most? Do you still gain some pleasure in this?

4. Have you stifled a part of yourself that is wild, rebellious, or spontaneous to keep the peace?

5. Do you feel like the true you is different from what you have chosen to show the world?

Take Action Today (Remember Yourself)

Action: Consider the last time that you felt like things were going your way. You were happy, you were loved, or you felt generally fulfilled in life. Embrace this positive feeling that you had at that time in your life. Then, ask why you felt that way. Was it because of the people you had in your life? Was it because of a particular event that happened? Had you just achieved a life goal?

If you struggle to think of such a time, it could help to talk to an old friend to discuss some memories or to look through some old photos.

When you have your memory, relive the experience in your mind. Consider: did you have a positive feeling because you had so much potential then? Was it a simpler time? Were you more sure of what you wanted?

Is there a way to recapture that feeling? Instead of just recalling a memory, can you revisit a location that connects to your heart? Or can you contact people who inspired you or perform an activity you used to love but had given up on?

Reason: The goal here is simply to remember yourself. It’s easy to forget who we are and how we got to the point we are at now. Sometimes, we need to step back and remember when things were going our way and we felt like our true selves.

Tip: Instead of just reconnecting with an experience in your mind, can you recreate it? Can you play the music that reminds you of a time and place? If something inspired you in the past, can you draw from that same source once again?

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If you are interested in reading more of Your Personal Truth, the book is available on Amazon and other major retailers.

Real Learning Comes Through Transformation

“Learning—real learning, wisdom—comes only when you are transformed. It is not an additive process—you cannot just go on adding knowledge to yourself. You will have to go through a transmutation that is hard.” – The Buddha Said… by Osho

I am only on the fifth chapter (out of 22) of The Buddha Said… and already I can see that this book carries great wisdom. It will be worth reading carefully, applying, and rereading, and reapplying. That is what I plan to do. The knowledge in this book could take time and effort to master, as it seems to guide us toward enlightenment.

The passage quoted above was insightful to me, yet it may appear quite obvious on its surface. I have found that most worthy wisdom is just that. It seems obvious and straightforward and often even easy to apply, yet very few of us do.

For example, I can tell you that getting impatient is bad. The next time someone is irritating you or provoking you, ignore it. Let it be. Take a breath and pay attention to something worthwhile in life.

Yet, for someone with the habit of impatience, will they listen and change?

Or I can tell you that to be lazy is bad. Do not waste this life. Go out and have the courage to find something that truly matters to you and that will make a difference in this world. Stop doing the bare minimum to get by and increase the standard you expect from yourself.

Yet, for someone with the habit of laziness, will they listen and change?

Or I can tell you that to be vengeful is bad. Stop wishing to get payback on all those that commit wrongs against you. In some cases, they are poisoned from having been wronged, making them want to wrong others. And in other cases, they don’t know the wrongs they commit and do so through a lack of awareness. Lastly, as we have all heard, “An eye for an eye leaves everyone blind,” so is this something we want to give energy to?

Yet, for someone with the habit of vengeance, will they listen and change?

As you may guess, I find it unlikely that the person with a habit of something will suddenly change their life from being exposed to mere words.

Despite that I work as a writer and earn my living this way, it is painful to admit that the words themselves are empty if they don’t cause personal transformation. The learning, the knowledge, the wisdom, the teachings—all of it is empty, useless, and fruitless if we do not change from within.

Yet I have seen, as you have seen, that most of us know the right things to do, to be, to say, and yet fail to do them. Perhaps we need to come to the awareness more deeply that the only worthwhile learning was not in the accumulation of knowledge, facts, or even the pursuit of higher understanding.

Rather, the only worthwhile learning was in whether we could become aware, change who we are, and perform new and better actions. Awareness is not enough—to be aware is to see that something is happening. But to see it and do nothing seems to be a massive failure, worse than not having seen it at all.

If you see a wall and walk into it, isn’t that somehow worse than someone who never saw the wall and walked into it accidentally?

We must become aware, change who we are, and perform new and better actions.

The point is to do something with all the accumulation of knowledge and facts. Otherwise, the learning was useless. This is not something we hear often.

I am a big believer in education and learning. But what we often forget is that as humans, what we learn should be causing some change within us. And that change within us should cause some change in the real world.

In a similar vein, Mahatma Gandhi said:

“If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him.”

If I read the tragic history of a people, and then I live my life normally, without my heart having grown, giving to charity, or learning more about their present-day struggles, then what have I truly learned?

If I “learn” by acquiring facts, and change nothing, then isn’t that a personal failing?

Yet, the point of this post is not to make us all feel guilty for anything we ever learned, where we failed to convert it into some positive action. The point is to see that we need to be brave and encourage these personal changes to happen.

I have seen many highly educated people increase their learning and awareness while failing to grow at all. I’ve been guilty of this too.

How much time do we spend reading the news versus actually doing something about the world's tragedies?

How much time do we spend educating our children about “the real world” while denying them the ability actually to participate in it?

And how much do we consume books or media while not producing something worthy in return?

Having written this post up to here, I believe you probably already knew everything I just stated. So if we already knew, why haven’t we committed to acquiring more helpful ideas and performing more actions that could help us change more profoundly?

The reason is that we fear change. Even for those who want progress, it still can feel scary or overwhelming to make a significant change.

But we don’t need to make massive changes in every area of our lives, suddenly.

We can decide on certain things that we find to be important and then invest ourselves into them.

I use the word invest because when you invest, you risk losing something. Your risk may be that you hope to help improve something, and in the end, you don’t make much of an impact. Then you may be let down or upset. But of course, we have to be willing to risk losing something to make our impact.

The outcomes we desire are never guaranteed. There is always a risk. We need to choose which risks are worth taking, where we can hope to gain a worthy experience that transforms us.

I think we fear changes because we tend to fear death. Change is the death of something old and the birth of something new. However, why should we fear it? We can guide the change in our lives by moving away from those things that do not work, which are not fruitful, and moving toward the ones that are.

We may find that the greatest life lessons come from the most significant changes within us or around us. Yet great changes imply some form of loss, which again is what we fear. We must become comfortable with the idea of losing something (or someone) if we ever wish to gain anything that truly matters.

We cling even to the things that don’t do us much good because they are familiar. They make us feel at home. But sometimes, that home is worth letting go of, to introduce something that compels us to grow.

In the end, we will lose our lives and everything we ever gained. All of that was temporary. But if we work on transforming ourselves, we will leave a permanent impact on the people around us and on the universe itself.

The universe is not static—it is ever-evolving and changing. Perhaps we could learn something from that.

The key lesson of the day is that we should continue to learn. But for that learning to be worth something, we should be ready and willing to change from within. This can mean seeing the world in a new way, feeling in a new way, and then deciding to stop doing something we used to do—and doing something in a way that we never did before.

We have not truly learned unless we have been transformed from the inside.

As a practical tip, after you read something or learn something, ask yourself:

What has truly changed?

If nothing, then ask:

What can I change, and should I change, given what I just learned?

The Daily Drama

Today’s post is an excerpt from my book, 7 Thoughts to Live Your Life By: A Guide to the Happy, Peaceful, & Meaningful Life.

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A fascination with the negative, the dark, and the drama

Have you noticed that most people seem drawn to the darkness? When there is a horrible car accident, we can’t help but look over to see what happened, even though we know it cannot be good. People enjoy gossip, talking about the bad things happening in other people’s lives. We watch violent TV shows or movies, attracted somehow to the extreme and dark depths of human nature.

I call this general fascination with the negative and the darkness and how we are attracted to it, The Daily Drama. This is my name for it because I have noticed that many of us create a lot of drama in our own lives – we experience this daily, yet we don’t even seem to realize that we are a primary reason for its existence.

We can end the drama, often by tuning out of whatever is causing it. Is it a personal desire to always have attention on yourself? Is it a colleague or a friend? Is it your overreaction to any minor event that you did not expect? We can learn healthier ways to acquire attention or learn to overcome our need for this attention. We can minimize communications with the colleague or friend, and we can learn that our overreactions make things worse. We may fear disconnecting from the drama, thinking that we will make things worse by ignoring it or by not giving it our full attention. But often, one drama arises, then it is corrected or forgotten. Then another drama arises, and the cycle repeats again and again. We do not need to worry – the drama will always be alive and well. It is ourselves that we must take care of.

If this daily drama rules your life where every day is filled with it, I urge you to break the cycle. Understand that you are playing a role in the drama by how you react to it and that it is not fully out of your control.

Ask yourself: Am I going to feed the drama? Or am I going to allow it to die a quiet death without feeding it any further?

A matter of survival

Why are we attracted to the negativity and the darkness?

By having some darkness in us, we can better identify it in others and protect ourselves from it. For example, The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli and The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene were both written on the theme of gaining power and using manipulative tactics to get what you want. However, they were not necessarily written with the view that you must do dark things, but also with the understanding that you must at least be aware that there are people out there willing to use dark means to get what they want from you. And thus, if you understand their intentions, you can prevent the use of these manipulative tactics on yourself.

We have to understand the darkness to overcome the darkness. If you do not understand it, you risk succumbing to it. The issue is that our minds sometimes dwell on the darkness and become stuck in it, plagued by it. This is when we know that we have a problem.

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7 Thoughts to Live Your Life By is available on Amazon, Google Play, Apple, Kobo, and Barnes & Noble, and other retailers.

Celebrate the Milestones & Little Achievements

Introduction

For the ambitious and hardworking, sometimes we can meet a personal milestone and forget to celebrate it. Perhaps a party is unnecessary, but it can be worthwhile to at least acknowledge a significant moment. I am fairly diligent, so my celebrations are usually minor – simply acknowledging the accomplishment to a few close family members and friends is enough for me. Then I get back to work. Well, sometimes I may enjoy sharing a bottle of Champagne.

Moving along, to me, a milestone is simply meeting many little goals that have culminated into something bigger. Or, if you prefer, it means accomplishing a grand goal.

My Milestone: 100,000 Words

Today I have met a milestone of my own.

I have written 100,000 words for this blog. The longest book I ever published was about 70,000 words – 7 Thoughts to Live Your Life By, so 100,000 is certainly a milestone. And I only started this site just 3 months ago (on September 9th). In reality, I had written some of these words before beginning the site, but this is still a major accomplishment for me.

Little Achievements

In light of this accomplishment, I would like to point out some other little achievements that came along with this:

• My friend Arthur has commented on most of my posts, which I think adds great value – heed his comments carefully, as there is great depth in his soul.

• I have received several messages through my Contact page – usually, they were for opportunities to collaborate.

• I have received numerous comments from friends and readers telling me that they found the blog helpful. Some of the comments have used these words: deep, philosophical, practical, interesting, wise, inspiring, motivating. One reader mentioned “Kafka flavor” – in regards to my post on The Paradox of the Model Citizen, and another reader said it was “a blessing” regarding How to Make a Decision, which I wrote as a response to her question.

• My writing and thinking are improving – After writing 100,000 words, and reflecting on thinking, and thinking about thinking, I sense more clarity in my Thoughts. I can more efficiently know what I think, why I think it, and provide supporting points.

• The blog readership has been growing slowly but steadily. Some readers are beginning to find the site through search engines, so this helps. The more, the merrier!

Thank You

Thank you to everyone who has contributed, shared this site with friends, supported me, or given me some kind words about the site. Also, this site is still fairly new and small, so every reader matters to me.

Thank you for reading - It makes me very happy just to be able to help

Don’t worry. The journey is just beginning.

Future Plans

I am glad for the progress I have made on I. C. Robledo’s Thoughts, but I sense that it is time to change gears. From here on, I plan to post weekly instead of daily. This will continue into 2021.

The reason for this is that I need to open up time in my schedule to:

• Wrap up many projects before the end of the year - publishing some book translations, reviewing audiobooks that I am having narrated, setting up some book promotions, fine-tuning business plans, and so on

• Continue to post high-quality content – at this stage, I need to take more time to properly develop my Thoughts since I hope to explore something new with each post

• Pursue new experiences, perform my own life experiments, and learn new information - which will help me to produce more insightful Thoughts

• Focus on writing books – I would like to write two new books per year and at the highest level of quality that I can

• Promote I. C. Robledo’s Thoughts – at this point, I would like to expand my readership. I am working hard to explore valuable Thoughts, so it would be nice to get more people tuning in

The bottom line is I plan to post less often, but I believe doing this will actually help me to improve the site and also help me stay on schedule with writing new books and tackling multiple projects.

Acknowledge and Celebrate Your Milestones

Enough about me. Let’s go back to you.

I want to encourage you to acknowledge and celebrate your milestones. Don’t allow them to slip by unnoticed. There is no need to brag obnoxiously, of course. But if you accomplish something big in your life, you deserve to be able to stop for a moment, take a breath, and appreciate what you have been able to do.

When we neglect our milestones, we can easily get lost in just doing and doing, with little reflection on why this even matters. When you celebrate a milestone, you give yourself a moment to reflect on what this truly means to you.

If you find that your milestone was meaningless – that you only did it for the praise, or it turned out that someone else stole the glory for your hard work, then you can learn that perhaps you need to change something in your life. In such cases, perhaps you need to reconsider your purpose and your life goals.

Questions to Explore

• What is the most recent milestone you achieved?

• Or what milestone are you close to achieving?

• Are there some little achievements worth noting?

• What does this mean to you?

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What Do You Think?

Do you have any thoughts about my new planned change to start posting once per week, instead of five times per week? Please feel free to let me know. As always, you can comment below, or you can use my Contact page.

Also, if you have any general thoughts about the site, this would be a good time to let me know. I always welcome any feedback.

I will aim to continue to improve the site and offer more great Thoughts in the future.

The Qualities That Make Us Who We Are

Last night as I was falling asleep, I had the Thought:

Who am I if you strip everything away? Let’s take away the people I know, the experiences I’ve had, the things I’ve learned, even my sensory abilities, my personality, biological makeup, my creative or intellectual or spiritual side. After a certain point, I become nothing. As you remove quality by quality, eventually nothing is left but nothingness itself.

Here, by qualities, I mean anything that makes you who you are.

When you lose all these pieces of who you are, eventually, what is left? It will just seem like an artificial, fragmented part of you. After a certain point, you would cease to be you.

As a peculiar example, let’s take one detail about all of us. Of course, our skin tone is a major part of how we see ourselves and others. It is probably the first or one of the first things you notice about a new person that you meet.

Consider this:

What if we all woke up tomorrow, and everyone’s skin was transparent?

You could literally see our internal organs, nerves, and maybe bones. I think people would feel more naked than ever, and they would start wearing something to cover all their exposed skin, at least what the clothing did not cover. Or they may cover it with makeup to give themselves an artificial skin tone. Otherwise, this would be too much of a distraction for most of us to bear. It would be difficult to hold a conversation with someone while you can literally see their brain. Or you may look at someone’s hands and see nerves and even bones, which could be off-putting, of course.

Yet, in a sense, nothing has really changed. We would still be the same people we always were. Our organs have always been there, they haven’t moved. But somehow, actually seeing them there would change our perceptions, our behaviors, perhaps even our beliefs.

The book Blindness by José Saramago left an impression on me when I read it many years ago - as this is a thought-provoking novel. The premise is that people spontaneously begin to go blind due to some unexplained circumstance or illness. Obviously, our sight is a pretty major quality that we value in ourselves. It is the main sense that we use to understand the world, at least for those born with sight. The book is a pretty good example of how losing one quality on a mass scale would change everything.

I have just been left amazed at the thought that if one seemingly trivial detail changes about us, then everything can change. And if one small thing changes, we may feel like we are no longer who we used to be. If my skin suddenly went transparent, or if I suddenly went blind, I think my whole life would change, and I would probably change as a person due to new experiences that would arise from this. People would treat me differently, and I would begin to shift my behaviors and expectations about life. Surely some core part of me would remain the same, but I think it’s easy to underestimate just how profoundly a life must change if we lose a major sense or quality such as sight.

So I wonder, are we just the qualities that happen to make us up? And then, if those qualities can arbitrarily change without our desire, what does that mean for us? Does it mean that our identities are sort of arbitrary outputs based on the qualities we have been given (through DNA and our experiences, etc.)

As an example, if you love rock and roll, it may just be because your Dad introduced it to you when you were a kid. If he had introduced jazz to you at that age, you might have fallen in love with that instead. Maybe if he had introduced magic tricks to you then, you would have loved that. It may have just been a point in your life when you idolized your Dad and wanted to do the same things as him. In this light, some of your qualities may be arbitrary.

These sorts of thoughts have made me wonder about the level of influence or power we truly have over our lives. One minuscule quality can change everything. And many of those qualities that we adopt are based on our environment and circumstances. It seems like we don’t have much choice in the qualities that make us up, right?

However, we may have much more power than we think. For example, if James (fictitious person) works hard to develop himself, he may gain better communication skills, self-confidence, resilience, and stress-reduction techniques. These simple qualities may work to change his whole life. Rather than waiting for life to influence his qualities, he has taken it upon himself to develop into something better.

In fact, to go back to the idea that one simple quality can change everything, perhaps by working on his communication skills first, he was able to gain self-confidence. Then this helped him gain the energy and motivation to improve himself in numerous other ways. One quality, his communication skills, could have made all the difference. And if he never developed that skill, his whole life path may have gone in a different, much worse path for him.

To sum up, in this post, there are just a few key ideas for you to think about:

1.     Who are we really? By removing or adding a seemingly trivial quality in our lives, everything about us can change. Is your identity something that you will actively shape yourself, or is it mostly being done by your environment and surroundings? What part of yourself do you identify with the most? Is this something that you chose, or something that happened to you?

2.     If one simple quality can change everything, you should choose to develop key qualities in yourself that can greatly impact your life. For example, this may be self-confidence, communication skills, resilience, creative skills, memory, attention, or mindfulness. You may wish to learn how to train yourself mentally to improve some of these qualities. The skills or qualities that can make the greatest impact may be different for everyone. You should ask yourself which quality would help you accomplish your life’s mission or key goals.  

The Tides are Changing

The main constant in this life is that things are always changing.

Things are always changing, aren’t they? Whether it’s the seasons, the moods, the expectations, the tides, the goals, and so on….

Maybe we are changing too. If you’ve visited this site in the past, maybe you’re no longer the same person you were back then, even if just a few days or weeks have passed.

When I was a child, I often had a peculiar experience. If I hadn’t seen someone in a year or two years, I would feel like I had changed so much, and I felt strange that this person may try to relate and get along with a prior me rather than the actual me.

Perhaps my inner world was unfolding and developing quite fast, and my physical growth could not match it. Anyone can tell that a child has grown in a year or two, but who can witness or comprehend the mental changes that have happened?

We are always changing, and hopefully, for the better. For example, we are always learning new things. You can learn facts from books, or you can gain experience and learn things firsthand. You may learn about the people around you. Due to your experiences, you may even learn about yourself. And those new things that you learn may cause you to change your direction or goals in life.

Beyond just learning, of course, we are always exposed to changes: the weather, the time, the people around us coming and going, our life goals, travels, new jobs, new relationships, etc.

What do you think about change?

When you sense that everything around you is moving in a new direction, do you assume that this is bad? Is that your natural reaction? Or is your reaction that you want to change too, to move along with the tides of change.

To you, is it more important that you follow the changes happening around you in the real world or that you pay attention to any inner changes happening within you? Are some changes trivial to you, and others more important?

As humans, we want to exercise great control – over ourselves, each other, even the planet, and perhaps the stars and galaxies one day. However, it seems that everything comes and goes. We may be visitors here to enjoy and experience what we can. That is the nature of change.

On a cosmic scale, who knows whether we will adapt to the changes or create our own changes in a way that benefits us, or we may ultimately fail in some way, and then things will keep on changing without us.

Life is about change when you think of it. If things stayed the same, then time would freeze, and nothing would move.

Whether we flow with the changes happily, deal with them and adapt to them, ignore them and go in our own direction, or resist them, we are here because things keep changing, and we will be gone because things keep changing.

Whether a change is good or bad, it keeps things moving along. What is old goes away, and something new comes in its place.

Change prevails at the end of the day, with or without our acceptance or desire for it.

Today I wonder: Are we the product of change, the cause of change, the beneficiaries of change, or the victims of it, and is this something we will choose for ourselves? What do you choose?

What are you Training Mentally for?

Introduction

When it comes to physical activity, it can be easy to see that someone is training certain muscle groups to get stronger. They are running to get faster and build stamina, or they are training to improve at a particular sport.

But what about mental training?

Are you training your mind? To me, it is clear that the mind’s powers naturally regress and fall into laziness if not being trained for anything. This may happen earlier in our lives than we fear. Even when I was in high school, I distinctly remember that oftentimes I felt like a zombie, going through the motions.

Whatever the teacher told us was treated as fact and must be known for exams. In most classes, even if there may be room for dispute or disagreement in a domain, to disagree with the teacher was to guarantee yourself a lower grade. Anything the teacher did not cover must be assumed to be insignificant or irrelevant, even though in reality, of course, some topics the teacher did not cover must have been quite important.

My point is that sometimes you may feel that you are in training (e.g., taking a course or on-the-job training), but perhaps it is not enough. Are you truly training or just going through certain motions?

Here are some examples of what we can train our minds in:

Resilience

Having a resilient mind is critical to deal with the ups and downs of life. We all have problems that come up, sometimes when we least expect them, and we must be resilient to overcome them with calm and poise. We all know some people who are never fazed and never give up no matter how difficult things get. And we also know some people who give up on something as soon as there is a slight problem. This is the difference between people who are more resilient and less so.

To train your resilience, if you have certain routines that you always follow, you may purposely break them occasionally to make sure that you can manage or adapt either way. For example, if you always eat breakfast at 9 AM, you may occasionally eat it at 11 AM to help build resiliency. If you get used to that pattern too much, you may occasionally skip breakfast. (Of course, if you have any health conditions or concerns, speak to your doctor before trying any of this.) If you feel that you must do or have something in one way, that may be a good opportunity to practice your resilience by trying a new way.

Another key way to train your resilience is to train beyond what you think you need to. My friend Arthur, a mountain climber, recently told me that when you climb to the top of a mountain (metaphorically or real), you should keep on climbing after reaching the summit. You can do this through mental exercise (e.g., visualizations) or actual physical activity, depending on what you are training in (perhaps not actually to climb a mountain). Essentially, train yourself to go beyond the point to which you thought you would need to go.

Creativity

Most people that I know do not believe themselves to be creative. I always say we are all creative. Everyone dreams at night, and so our minds automatically create worlds, scenarios, characters, dialogue, and all in real-time. These are not scripted out in advance. Our minds seem to make them up at the moment. We can literally make stuff up in our sleep. So why couldn’t we do it while awake?

One of the easiest ways to train your creativity is to practice coming up with a list of 10 ideas every single day. (E.g., ideas for books to write, inventions, ways to save money, places to go on a date, things you could do with a paperclip, jokes to write, objects that could be used as a musical instrument, etc.). If 10 is too much, even 1 idea per day can make a difference!

Memory, Attention, and Mindfulness

Memory, attention, and mindfulness are quite interrelated, at least in how we train them. Often if you forget something, it’s because you didn’t pay proper attention to it in the first place. And if you’re not paying enough attention to what is happening around you, this indicates a lack of mindfulness in your life.

So the way to train any of these is to be more mindful. Use your senses and actually see and fully experience what is happening around you. Keep your mind on all that is there, not all that is not.

Avoid distractions, or rather, avoid the need always to be distracted. Our phones are, of course, an ever-present distraction. Most people I know could be doing anything – having a conversation, playing a game, or working, and when their phone chimes, they will check it right away. Perhaps find some hours in the day when your phone is not the most important thing and set it on mute.

In my case, I have noticed that a practice of meditation helps my memory, attention, and mindfulness. Often when I meditate, I end up remembering that night’s dreams in extra detail. I suspect this is because I am maintaining mindfulness within the dream, experiencing everything that is happening fully. And these effects are not limited just to my dreams. In real life, I will also remember more, observe more, attend more, mind more, and experience more fully.

Learning

Learning is an essential skill, so essential that we all do it even if we avoid doing it. As a practical matter, learning is often critical for being competitive in our careers. A person who doesn’t learn new things on the job may find in the best case that he never gets promoted and stagnates. In the worst case, he may lose his job and have difficulties finding a new job since he has not learned as much as other top candidates.

Beyond this, of course, learning is about exposing ourselves to new and interesting ideas. When you learn, you can prepare to understand and then create meaningful action in this world. What more reason to learn do we need?

This post isn’t just about performing an action but rather about training it. To train your learning, though, you must keep learning. If you truly want to improve your learning skill, you can also learn about learning. When you do this, you may learn some techniques that will help you to learn more effectively in less time.

When it comes to learning, sometimes we reach a point where we struggle to get any better at a given skill. This is why it is important to train ourselves to learn, to overcome such barriers. The best learners may work on learning in a variety of areas – physical skills, book learning, learning through experience, focusing on logical abilities as well as creative ones, abstract thinking, and also practical abilities. The best learners may also make it a point always to be learning something new. This way, you will always be training your learning abilities.

Critical Thinking

Critical thinking is about knowing how to find the relevant facts (especially when you have a problem) and then knowing how to come up with reasonable action steps based on those facts. Also, through critical thinking, you should be able to read facts and then be able to understand how some of those facts could influence the real world, or at least influence your own life. With critical thinking, you do not need to listen to everyone’s opinions. You can form your own independent opinions, just based on the facts.

To train your critical thinking involves many processes, and so this can be difficult for many people. But it is doable. Part of the training will involve searching for unbiased or less biased information sources. Also, it will involve learning to perceive when a source is biased. To learn what is more and less biased, at first, you should examine many different sources to see what they have to say about an issue. Withhold your judgment until you have read or experienced many points of view. When the information from different sources overlaps (or is the same), this is usually neutral or valid. If there is no overlap, the information may be less reliable in some cases, or in other cases, the source may have dug deeper to gain more information.

As another way to train your critical thinking, you may get used to reading facts and then coming up with your own viewpoints based on those facts. Rather than spending too much time with people’s opinions, you may focus on only learning the facts and avoiding opinions altogether. If you are not used to separating opinions and facts in your mind, you must get used to this. This will be an important process in developing your critical thinking. You will learn to give less weight to opinions in time and more weight to facts.

When you do give some weight to opinions, you should consider the expertise of the person who had the opinion. Often, you will find people giving opinions on topics where they have no expertise. You can safely discard such opinions or at least give them very little weight. At a minimum, to even consider someone’s opinion, perhaps they should hold a degree in the topic, or have read a wide variety of books on it, or have had a career or meaningful experience that relates to the topic. Ideally, they should have a combination of these.

As another way to train your critical thinking, you should get used to asking yourself a variety of questions to see how truthful any “fact” or statement may be. A key question I often ask myself is, “What is the evidence that supports this?” Then, you must ask yourself if the evidence is substantial, meaningful, and reliable. You can do this with your thoughts too. When I form a thought, sometimes I ask myself, “What is the evidence that supports this thought?” Just because you have a thought doesn’t make it true.

Concluding Thoughts

I believe it is important that we always work on training the mind. However, even if you do not consciously train, your mind is always being trained toward something. But if you are not careful, it can be trained in a way that ultimately works against you. You can train yourself to become less and less resilient, for example, if you do not have enough challenges in your life. Rather than moving in such directions, you should take control and train yourself toward something that will help you meet your life goals.

What are you going to begin training your mind in today? Or what have you been training in?

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I have written many books that operate as training manuals for the mind. Here are some of them:

7 Thoughts to Live Your Life By (to train resilience and more)

The Secret Principles of Genius (to train critical thinking and more)

Practical Memory (to train memory)

The Insightful Reader (to train reading abilities)

Idea Hacks (to train creativity)

No One Ever Taught Me How to Learn (to train learning)

Master Your Focus (to train attention and focus)