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.

Make Yourself Obsolete

We all want to feel important and needed, but are we really?

For every profession I look at, I find myself wondering how necessary it really is.

Many of us are not truly working from the deepest, most serious part of our hearts.

Instead, we see it as just a job, just a way to make some money, just a temporary station on the way to something better.

Ask yourself, when something goes wrong with your work, do you care about this deeply? And if you do, is it because you truly care, or just because you worry that others will think less of you? Be honest and sincere here with your thoughts. I am asking you to reflect on these questions, not to feel the need to get defensive.

A few months ago, I spoke with someone in the Education field interested in developing a better curriculum for her students. I told her that she would succeed when the student no longer needed the teacher.

I felt that this was not what she was expecting to hear.

I advised her to make her job unnecessary.

Why would I do that?

I’m not sure it’s a success when students graduate to need another teacher, and another, and another. I’ve often heard that students decided to pursue the next level, whether it’s to a bachelor’s degree, master’s, or even a Ph.D. because they didn’t know what else to do.

Is that worthy? Is that success? Or is it futility?

On the one hand, ongoing learning is honorable. On the other, we keep learning more and more stuff and not having much to show for it.

Is it the contents in our minds that are valuable, or the power we have to make something happen in the real world? Many of us have been led astray or forgotten which of these actually mattered.

No one wants to hear that their job should be made obsolete. No one wants to think that success is in finding a way to make your job unnecessary.

We want to hear that we are essential, that society needs us, that society would crumble without our involvement. But that simply is not the case.

We need doctors so badly, you may say. Sure, but isn’t that because we have neglected our health, to the point that we have outsourced its care rather than taken responsibility for it?

The most common “solutions” offered are medicines, which to some degree, act as poisons with their side effects.

We need teachers so badly, you may say. Sure, but isn’t that because we never taught students to think from the beginning? We led them to become reliant on digesting specific curriculums and memorizing them, only to forget most of it anyway. And the material they remembered would become obsolete in a few years.

The most common “solutions” offered are more degrees and more courses, often with no clear path toward careers. And for the ones that lead to careers, there is no guarantee that such careers will still exist in a few years.

When the “solutions” keep us reliant on needing more and more “solutions” from the same place, are they truly solutions?

I have no problem with doctors or teachers. I have merely used these as examples. I could have used any other profession.

For any career I can think of, the motivation of that job is to keep you locked in. There is never a true solution to any problem. It’s just a treadmill that keeps you running but staying in place at the end of the day.

Whether conscious and done purposely or not, it seems to be a consistent theme across most jobs. The client becomes an eternal source of revenue – always needing to come back for something more.

We never arrive at some desirable end point. There is just this empty feeling of needing more.

I don’t expect anyone to take today’s lesson seriously. I expect you to read this and continue about your job the same way you always have, and I can’t blame you for that either.

You are one piece of a much larger system. If you talk to your boss tomorrow and tell him: “I realized we’re just running our clients in circles here, and I think I know a way to get their problems fully resolved, so they never have to come back,” you’ll probably get fired on the spot.

There is no profit in true solutions.

We fear becoming obsolete the most, but perhaps it was what we needed all along.

Somewhere, in the Amazon rainforest, there was probably a panacea (cure-all) plant that would have cured everything. And it doesn’t matter because it would have made no profit for anyone. The only profit would have been to destroy the plant to avoid competitors, make it into a patentable drug, and then sell it at a high price.

This is where we are.

We are more interested in making people need us rather than truly offering something worthy. The most worthy thing to offer would be that which would make us no longer relevant or needed.

No one wants to hear this.

I don’t even want to say it because I know no one wants to hear it.

No one will hire me to give presentations at a Fortune 500 Company to tell them that they should make themselves obsolete. They would laugh at the idea that they should look for ways to dismantle their job positions and the company they work for.

Instead, they are focused on growth.

But the more a company grows, the more it shows they haven’t solved anything. They have learned to make others reliant on them, is all.

But if [Insert famous product here] is so great, why do we need more of it? Why does it never satisfy us? Why do I need to keep buying it or keep doing it to get that feeling?

Mind you, this is a feeling which is fleeting and illusory anyway.

If it were truly the best product, I think I could buy it once, and I would never need it again.

Those products don’t exist, of course. The products and services we have are the ones that keep us chasing our tails, coming back for more, like strung-out addicts.

The “solutions” we have are those that work for a few minutes, maybe an hour, maybe even a day, but not much more. In a recent post, I said: “The problem with solutions is that they are all temporary fixes. No problem has ever been permanently fixed.”

Our whole lives, nothing ever worked, but we think: “Maybe this new product or service will do the trick.”

I hope my books and Thoughts help someone somewhere, but I don’t want anyone to feel like they need me, my books, or my Thoughts.

My goal is not to keep you on the line, needing more.

Some of the “best” writers out there are actually the worst. If I read someone’s blog post, and it’s so great, why would I feel the need to read all their books and posts? If they were so great, I wouldn’t need to. If they were that good, I could read an article or two, get the message I needed, and never return to them again.

But that is exceedingly rare.

These days, I am writing everything I feel the need to so that it wouldn’t matter if I were to die. Even if I die, you can still access all that I thought was ever worth saying.

There isn’t this sense of “I must write 100 books or 1,000 articles.” That is irrelevant. The point is, did I say everything I needed to say, to the point that if lightning struck me dead one of these days, it wouldn’t matter?

Did I make myself obsolete? If so, then that was a success in my book.

Again: I don’t need you to need me. If you can click away from this site, and never return and be better for it, then I have succeeded.

Here is a quick example of how making oneself obsolete can lead to success:

A friend of mine had a Master or Guide in his life. He provided direction and words of wisdom regularly. One day, that Master decided to move on. My friend had often received good counsel and friendship and was saddened by his departure. But after this, my friend grew immeasurably. He started to realize that he did not need that Master at all. Rather than following or abiding by the lessons taught, he was paving his own way. In being left Masterless, he was now finding the Master within.

The Master, Guide, Parent, or Teacher who can leave and make you something better for it is the truly worthy one. Don’t misunderstand me to condone abandoning anyone. Only you can decide the point where it is better to walk away, or give space, or leave and never come back. But know whether you do this selfishly or selflessly.

Make yourself obsolete. Make it so that even if you vanished, the world would somehow become better for it.

We risk being made (or revealed to be) obsolete by the natural order of things every day. We might as well do it ourselves.

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Today’s post may be a heavy dose of Truth for some of us. If you would like to dig deeper into Your Life’s Truth, you may wish to read a book I just published, Your Personal Truth: A Journey to Discover Your Truth, Become Your True Self, & Live Your Truth.

You can read the book on Amazon and other major retailers.