What if I am wrong is tuff, but this!
As Mark says: "Many people are able to ask themselves if they're wrong, but few are able to go the extra step and admit what it would mean if they were wrong. That's because the potential meaning behind our wrongness is often painful. Not only does it call into question our values, but it forces us to consider what a different, contradictory value could potentially look and feel like." I have done this with core beliefs that I grew up with and had strongly adhered to. Beliefs that I thought where about love but came to realize where more about fear. And that was very painful but it made my life better, it made me more free. It made me able to love and accept myself and others more freely. And I think this is one of the things I love so much about this book is that it is helping me ask these questions again. Just because the beliefs I had before were wrong doesn't mean the ones I have now are right. It's not always right and wrong, often it's just less wrong. And realizing that you might just be less wrong rather than right can help you dig deeper, to get to the root, the meaning. For most of my life I have taken a stance on something that is a hot topic right now, so I'll just call it "A". I still feel strongly about A but what I asked "What would it mean if I was wrong? I began to see that A was a symptom rather than the problem itself. That to solve the problem we need to go deeper. So tough as it may be, to make our lives and the world better, we really need to ask not just what if I am wrong? We also need to understand that it's often not a choice of right and wrong at all, but often less wrong rather than right and we need to ask what does that mean?
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I'm just going to start this post by quoting Mark. "That means the more something threatens to change how you view yourself, how successful/unsuccessful you believe yourself to be, how you see yourself living up to your values, the more you will get around to ever doing it"
"There's a certain comfort that comes with knowing how you fit in the world. Anything that shakes up that comfort - even if it could potentially make your life better - is inherently scary." Man, I read that and thought, yep, that's me. There are things I know that I could do to break free from the job I have and gain more freedom over my life, but I am not doing them. I love working on Tiny House designs but am not doing what I need to do to actually build a tiny house, etc. etc. I see this in my life a lot. BUT I also see that I have made changes in my life, huge tumultuous changes. And my life is better for it. So maybe I need to see myself more as someone that benefits and grows from change. As someone who embraces it. As Mark says: "that's what keeps you striving and discovering. And it forces you to remain humble in your judgments and accepting of others." So what are you avoiding? In two weeks I surpassed my one-month goal! That was 7 lbs and I have gotten rid of 9 lbs! Good riddance!
Not much change in measurements yet with the new fabric tape I got, goodbye to that yucky metal one. 47.5 inches at the belt, 50.5 at the belly button. Yeah, this area needs some work. It will happen. But the hopeful and most surprising news on this challenge is how I am feeling and my energy. Now I would think that if I am losing weight I have to be depriving myself of things I had before so I wouldn't be feeling as good, right? But I am feeling better! Yes, I am working on cutting back on junk food (not gone, one step at a time) so I am getting less processed sugar, salt, and fat. But with this challenge, I am getting more of something very important, nutrients that I was missing before and that my body needs. Especially with me mostly microwaving everything! Thus, thus the thing I am most pleased with, at the end of the day at work, I am not as tired and I generally have more energy, don't feel like just sitting around as much. I am very happy with that. Haven't gotten anyone else to step up to the challenge yet, but honestly, I really haven't yet either. With all the junk out there, even though I had used these products decades ago as a child I wanted to make sure that I was happy with this before recommending it. And after two weeks I am very happy with it. If you want to know more please contact me. My read today in The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F*ck was one of my biggest single daily reads yet. And I am having difficulty sharing something from it because there is so much to share and I am concerned about it being out of context.
I am not going to share nearly all that I could. Get and read the book! Today's section dealt with an experiment where people felt they could do certain things to make a bell ring, when in actuality the bell ringing was totally random, and a story of false memory from therapy. showing in short that "the human mind is capable of coming up with and believing in a bunch of bullshit that isn't real." OK, don't even get me started on how the media is brainwashing us today! On that front, I do recommend the documentary "The Brainwashing of My Dad". Mark also talks about the telephone game that we all likely played as a kid, where someone starts with a simple story, and it gets whispered to someone else, and then to someone else, and about 12 or so people later the last person in the group shares what they got with the whole group and it's not anything like how it started. The problem is, this doesn't just happen from person to person, we do it to ourselves over time. Those things from our past that we remember so well weren't exactly like we remember them now. I agree with how Mark ends this section, self-skepticism and the rigorous challenging of our own beliefs and assumptions are the only logical route to progress. I grew up believing certain things where true. But I also saw that many of those things didn't make sense. So I questioned and that led to growth and new views of life.
And I realize as this new view developed that many hold fast to it just like many I knew held fast to my old beliefs and they are stuck in a "we are right, they are wrong" mentality, and the truth most likely is that we are all wrong. Certainly not to the same degree, as some stopped asking before others, so some are more wrong than others, but when we stop asking we all become wrong none the less. We may be tempted to believe in certainty, certainty is easy. We may be tempted to just believe, but believing without questioning is dangerous, it allows you to be taken advantage of by those who wish to control you. Resistance to change "knowing we are right" keeps us from growing and becoming our ever developing best. Here's a few words from Mark Manson: "Instead of striving for certainty, we should be in constant search of doubt: doubt about our own beliefs, doubt about our own feelings, doubt about what the future may hold for us unless we get out and create it for ourselves. Instead of looking to be right all the time, we should be looking for how we're wrong all the time. Because we are." Imagine if everyone had stopped asking questions and doubting thousands of years ago? We could still be in caves. This to me is the basis of the growth of humanity and especially of the scientific process. Don't accept anything as rock solid certain. Always ask questions, always doubt, and always keep moving forward to be better and ask better questions. As I was reading The Subtle Art this morning in a section on Victimhood Chic on how it's so chic now to be offended by every little thing and how the media feeds this, I was agreeing but wondering what I was going to share in my post here.
Then Mark gave this quote from Tim Kreider and I suddenly remembered why I started reading a book about not giving a fuck in the first place! I have been outraged ever since Trump got elected, and that outrage has grown with every move he and the GOP has made to end environmental, social, economic and other protections, people he has placed in charge of government departments who oppose what those very departments do, etc, etc. I have been outraged that calling and writing our elected officials clearly no longer has an impact, as they only listen to, and look out for the interests of those who line their pockets with money. And I realized that my outrage was devouring me from the inside out. That this situation didn't just happen overnight, Trump and the current crop of Congress are symptoms of things that have been growing for decades (Look to the Lewis Powell memorandum to the US Chamber of Commerce in 1971 as well as the end of the Fairness Doctrine in media in the 80's for a couple major ingredients of this current situation) I really can't do anything about that but vote. Was I going to let it continue to devour me? That's what made me turn to this book, to find a way, not to be indifferent about what is happening, I don't want that. But to at least not give so many fucks about it that I let it control my life and stop me from moving forward. For that I am very grateful that I found The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, it's helping. In this mornings read of "The Subtle Art Of Not Giving A F*ck" Mark Manson says: "We all get dealt cards. Some of us get better cards than others. And while it's easy to get hung up on our cards, and feel we got screwed over, the real game lies in the choices we make with those cards, the risks we decide to take, and the consequences we choose to live with. People who consistently make the best choices in the situations they're given are the ones who eventually come out ahead in poker, just as in life. And it's not necessarily the people with the best cards." Mark gives several examples to support this but the one that popped into my thoughts was a brilliant man who passed away very recently. And that is Professor Stephen Hawking. Professor Hawking started life pretty normally and healthy but then contracted a rare motor neuron disease that left him basically totally disabled, he couldn't even talk without the aid of a computer. I think with those cards most people would give up and fade out of existence feeling sorry for themselves. But Professor Hawking did not, instead, he rose up, played the hand he was given exceptionally well and gave much to the world. I don't know what within Stephen Hawking made him rise up rather than fade, but I want more of that. And clearly, as he and countless others show getting more of that is NOT about getting the right cards dealt to me, but learning and deciding how to best play what I have been dealt. The same goes for all of us. Life can be a real pain sometimes, that's just the way it is. It's not our fault, but I am finally learning that how we respond to it IS on us, it's our responsibility.
We can be whoa is me, have self-pity, be hurt, wallow in it. Or we can rise above it, our choice. Well maybe not totally our choice as we may have had a history and culture that supports how we react to pain which can be pretty deeply programmed into us through no fault of our own. But we can become aware of that and work to change it, to make our lives and how we react to things better. We only have one life, sometimes it's wonderful and sometimes it's shitty, but I am learning to have a better life in spite of it all and hope you will take on that challenge too. My read in this book this morning was I think my favorite so far, and that is saying something. Plus it was in a section that I was struggling a bit with.
Why is that? Well, a few years ago I really got into New Age thinking, the idea that what you think about comes about and you are responsible for everything that happens in your life. To the extent that if a hurricane happens, it's your fault, you thought it so you created it. I have even seen some go as far as to blame starving children in undeveloped countries on my thinking. What total bullshit! So this section of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck is on personal responsibility and I was like yeah, this is pretty good, but it's not my fault if some crazy somewhere shoots up a school. Then Mark broke it down. He broke down the difference between responsibility and fault, which New Age thinking doesn't do. Basically, even if something is not our fault, if we had absolutely nothing to do with it, we are still responsible for the effect it has in our life. I thought his example of that using judges showed the difference between responsibility and fault very well. "Judges don't get to choose their cases. When a case goes to court, the judge assigned to it did not commit the crime, was not a witness to the crime, and was not affected by the crime, but he or she is still responsible for the crime. The judge must then choose the consequences; he or she must identify the metric against which the crime will be measured and make sure the chosen metric is carried out" We all have to deal with things that aren't our fault all the time, that's life, so suck it up buttercup because how you deal with those things, how you let them affect your life, that IS YOUR responsibility. You choose how you see and react to things, even though you did not choose, and are not to blame for the things. I'll wrap it up with Mark's words again; "We all love to take responsibility for success and happiness. Hell, we often fight over who gets to be responsible for success and happiness. But taking responsibility for our problems is far more important, because that's where real learning comes from. That's where the real-life improvement comes from. To simply blame others is only to hurt yourself." Wise words, thanks, Mark. |
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