To see things as they are. What a magnificent way to live ! Rather than adding superficial meaning that deforms your perceptions and disturbs your peace of mind, be objective and look at things for what they are. Don’t cling to mental fantasies of what you would like things to be.

Succulent wine: Fermented grapes.

Delicious roast beef: Heated dead cow.

Sex: A rubbing of genitals.

Farts: The vibration of the anal tissue due to the passing of gas.

Let us take an example that everyone knows very well—going to the bathroom—and see how applying this kind of thinking will leave you undisturbed. 

Poop: undigested food and body waste matter.

Does it smell? Yes, it smells. In fact it smells like poop.

If you go to a bathroom and it smells like poop, why be upset? You are in a bathroom after all. What is it supposed to smell like? Roses?

What are you about to do there anyway? Deposit your own waste products.

Don’t be so self-centered thinking your poop is better than someone else’s. You just don’t notice your poop smell as much as someone else’s because you’re used to it.

If you go in a bathroom and it smells bad. Do these steps:

1. Acknowledge that it smells like poop or urin. There is no need to choose to be upset that someone came here before you and did what you are about to do.
2. Then if it still bothers you, see if you can do something about the smell. If you can do something to make it more accommodating and want to do it, do it. If not, move on. If you can’t do anything, acknowledge it, then move on.
3. Enjoy your undisturbed peace of mind.

Why let external events disturb you? See things as they are. Change the things you can change, acknowledge the things you cannot. Then go on living your day.

The Sun, the Moon, and Earth. The biggest physical bodies that affect Life. Remove one and Life as it is know today is not possible. Remove the sun and it’s lights out in less than 13 minutes. Solar powered life dies and mortifying cold reigns in a couples hours. Remove the Moon and water bodies no longer ebb and flow, cycles do not function properly and insects are disoriented. If insects are disoriented, life doesn’t last very long. Remove the Earth and, well… that one doesn’t need much explaining does it. (Hint: Perhaps your feet might be in the void).

Life is intrinsically linked with these massive bodies.

It is logical to say that other astral bodies in the solar system also affect Life. The other planets in particular have an impact. I cannot say in what way but i can be positive they have an effect, the same way the sun and moon do. Sure, their effects may be more intricate and easily unnoticed, but that doesn’t mean they have no effect.

We can even settle just on the gravitational pull these bodies exert on Earth. They have an effect. Even distant stars thousands of light years away do. Their effect is just smaller because they are so far.

This makes astronomy valid. It does not mean that everything in astronomy is truthful. It just means that part of what is said in astronomy and horoscopes must be true. That since it is a study of those bodies and their effects on us, it must at the very minimum have a couple insights we can learn from.

To disregard it as hocus poccus is ridiculous and illogical. It would only be another demonstration of the human ego trying to feel superior to nature and the world around it. Humans like to think they are superior to Nature and thus treat it in unsavoury ways by polluting and trying to dominate it. Never realising that they are themselves a part of that Nature and thus cannot dominate the very thing they are a part of. That is simply Ego. Thinking you can surpass death is a delusion of the Ego. Thinking you can dominate the world and the laws of nature is delusional. If you think you can prevent the Sun from rising you are misguided.

The reality is you are a part of Nature. Nature is bigger than you. It always has. And always will. You live in a physical world. You have physical needs. There are physical laws. They can’t be broken. We can only improve our understanding of them through observation and study.

The people who call out astronomy and horoscopes and say they are bogus because they are “unscientific” are mislead. Invalidating something just because you don’t understand it doesn’t make it false. It just highlights your ignorance. And it is perfectly fine not to know. It is just dangerous to pretend to know things you don’t. It doesn’t mean that everything in astronomy is true. But it does mean that not everything it contains is false. That distinction is important.

I do not presume to know anything about astronomy or horoscopes. I keep an open mind and remain curious as to what their effects on us might be. But I certainly do not think they are insignificant.

What are your thoughts on Astrology?

This is a tricky subject for me to talk about. In fact, to this day, no one knows this story. I’ve made sure of it. Those that know me as Adrien might be surprised. Those who knew me before saw some surface events. No one really knows, no one ever really will. Maybe you’ll learn something interesting. Here is a glimpse of my messy truth.

There are experiences that really challenge you to the depth of your being. This was one of those for me. Everyone goes through stuff they would rather not talk about. When you get to the point where you are able to articulate what you went through true healing starts occurring. There is great power in owning your story. The first times I tried writing out this story I realised I still had a lot of work to do. I would get triggered, ignore it, then come back to it.

Struggling with an identity crisis is tough for any person that goes through it. Not knowing who you are and trying to define yourself is something every single human struggles with. Over the past years this has been a unique challenge for me. It has taken years for me to get to the point of looking at something that caused me so much pain. I’m still in the process of finding approval for it.

What am I talking about you ask?

My birth name isn’t Adrien. I used to be Marwan Jamai. It stayed that way for the first 15 years of my life. Then it brutally changed. I didn’t deal with it so well. This is the story of what happened when it changed.

In 2008 I moved to France from the US because my parents’ Green Card application got rejected and their Visa’s were expiring. This meant we had to leave the Country. A new place, no friends, no job, a difficult situation to say the least. My world fell apart. I lost the little friends that I had. I struggled building new friendships. Two years later my parents suggested I skip a class in school because I was so bored and it was so easy for me. I agreed. This crushed my spirits and destroyed the few friendships I had just built once more. My self-esteem plummeted. My parents never showed me or talked to me about making friends. They didn’t have any. I never really decided what I wanted. I just when along with what my parents recommended. I felt powerless. This is a pattern of mine. Move to the France, OK. Learn this, OK. Go to school, OK. What to skip a class? OK. Go to med school? OK. OK was my modus operandi.

I went to school. I got really good since it was the only place I could get a little self-esteem. I struggled socializing. I picked up Rowing as a sport. It became my emotional outlet.

In 2011 my parents decided it would be a good idea if i changed my name. The rationale behind it was that my Dad was struggling finding a job because of his Arabic Name. And my parents were convinced it was the reason they didn’t get the Green Card and had to leave the US. Following that reasoning if I wanted to have a future and job opportunities it would make sense for me to change my name. As a child I didn’t know anything about the real world. My parents told me the way things were. If they said so, it must be true. Besides if I did change my name I would be doing what my dad was doing. Yeah, OK, I guess, it’s probably a good idea.

As with many things in life you often don’t know what you are getting yourself into until you’re in it. This was no different. The theory of changing you name sounds simple. All you do is change a couple letters on your ID. No big deal, you’re still the same person. In practice, especially for a teenager who is in the middle of trying to define who he is in the world, adding another degree of difficulty to an identity crisis isn’t the smartest thing in the world.

I’d always been told that my parents hesitated between Adrien and Marwan to name me. My dads Moroccan origins won. I never made much of it. I was just living my life. Sometimes I’d play video games and use AMJ as initials.

After some theoretical conversations, in 2012 the ball was set in motion. I met with lawyers. My parents briefed me on what to say, what stories I should tell the lawyers for them to agree. I told a couple lies. Most of the stuff I was telling the lawyers were fabrications my parents fed me and told me to tell them. I knew it wasn’t true but by now I had learned how to lie proficiently. Especially to my parents and everyone around me. A little lawyer I didn’t know would be a piece of cake. Just add some tears and they’ll believe you. After a couple meetings, I finally went to Bordeaux to plead my case in front of a judge. Now this wasn’t anything dramatic. Just a small room with a couple lawyers and a judge around a table. They were wearing black robes. I went in alone. My dad was waiting outside.

He’d told me what to say more times than I can remember. So I did. I told them exactly what my dad wanted me to say. I lied my face off. I still remember the feeling I had sitting in front of the judge, feeling alone, knowing something was wrong, but deciding it was easier to lie. I was so used to it. Besides my father was outside. If I told the truth what would I tell my father? I had one story to tell. In retrospect this seems like a perverse kind of peer pressure done by someone who genuinely believed he was doing something good. I know, it’s complicated.

I went back home. I went back to school. I never told anyone about it. All I had to do now was wait.

In the summer of 2013 I got a new name, a new photo, a new ID. As a bonus I even got to choose my signature. I took some time perfecting it. That was easy. In fact, everything leading up to this point everything had been so easy. This is an important thing to understand. I barely had to do anything. It’s kind of like when you check the “I agree to the terms” checkbox when you use an app or website. It is so easy to do. But you have no idea what you’ve just agreed to. I understood what changing your name was on a basic level. I just talked to 3 different people on 3 different occasions. I knew what story to feed them. I never told anyone who could have told me it was a bad idea. I didn’t have any close friends to talk to. It seemed so normal for my parents. There was no friction on my side.

Now I was officially Adrien Jamai.

I’d been playing a big game of pretend.

Then things got real. Summer break was over. I had to go back to high school.

This is where I realised theory is not practice. I knew the theory, but no one ever explained to me what happens in practice. What are you supposed to tell people? I just changed names? I didn’t yet realise how hard this was about to be. The game of pretend I was playing was about to go to a whole new level.

I’d already spent one year in high school and I had two left. The first day of the school year, I had a new name. Normal. New professors had no problem, they didn’t know me. Old professors that knew my previous name would call me Marwan, then correct themselves. I was discovering how embarrassing it is to have that happen in front of the whole class.

When I became Adrien I started denying Marwan. I tried to cut it out of my life like the plague. My parents framed my name as a problem. I was self-conscious. It felt like I was a problem. I denied everything attached to my name. My Morrocan origins, my feelings, my personality. I became a shell of a person. I didn’t know how to deal with it. I was all alone and no one seemed to understand me. Who could relate? I shut the fuck up and kept it for myself.

I had only seen my Morrocan side of the family one time. I figured my parents had bad relationships with them. I was angry, frustrated and lost.

Keep in mind I wouldn’t explain what I was going on to anyone or why because truth be told I didn’t really understand or know why? I was just doing what my parents told me. That didn’t seem like a smart thing to say. I felt ashamed. I would answer in some vague way. Oh, it’s complicated.

I remember one time, a classmate came up to me and asked me if it was weird for me to have a different name. No, I lied, it’s actually pretty easy. It’s nothing much really. I played it cool.

A couple people tried to understand a little more, but I wouldn’t budge. I was ashamed and admitting I didn’t know why I did it was scary.

The agony of feeling alone and trapped was horrible. I would cope the best ways I knew how. Porn became a way to forget my problems and rowing became a way for me to vent my frustration.

My parents never helped me or told me how to handle it. They just told me I’m the same person as before and that it’s just a name. Just be yourself. To them I was still the same person. I was realising it’s not just a name. It’s my identity. I was learning first hand what identity means.

I would figure this out by trial and error. Adrien. That’s my name now.

At home I would just force my parents and especially my brother to call me Adrien. I would literally just not respond if they called me Marwan. My parents adapted easily. My brother didn’t. I couldn’t understand. This created painful division. At school Adrien was Adrien. That was easy. With people I didn’t know before, that was easy. I was just Adrien. The toughest part is always the grey areas. What are you supposed to do about the people/friends that know you as Marwan? Who am I now? Marwan or Adrien? I had no fucking clue.

I tried the uncompromising tactic for a while. When I had to sign up for my Rowing licence, I said to put my name as Adrien. But my trainer told me, I’d always be Marwan to her. Talk about a complete mind fuck. That was the first time that happened to me. What a great way to accept and reject someone at the same time. I’m accepting you as a person but rejecting your new name by refusing to change the way I call you.

Welcome to internal struggles. Do I now want to belong to the group? or would I prefer to be uncompromising with my new identity? I realised having an identity has a cost. I gave in. The lines quickly blurred.

I soon realised that the reality my parents were feeding me that it was just a name and that you are who you are wasn’t that simple.

You’re a teenager struggling with self-identification, you are trying to define who you are. Then you change your name. Someone accepts who you were. Someone rejects who you are now. You don’t know who you are.

I was either Adrien, Marwan or Adrien Marwan.

If you refused to call me Adrien, I would simply antagonise you. If I cared about your approval enough I would let you call me Marwan but every time I would feel a sting of rejection. The worst would be when someone I actually liked or respected would tell me that I would always be Marwan to them. That one took a long long time for me to digest. Every time I would hear that I would be in a defensive freeze state, I would tense up, not knowing what to do. Feeling both angry and accepted but having to deny the anger. A concoction of sweetness and poison. I drank it.

The worst was probably that my parents just switched to calling me Adrien like it was no big deal. I said call me Adrien, so they did. I mean if it is so easy for them, I couldn’t comprehend why it would be so hard for someone else. This is what one calls a gaslight. When someone makes you believe something that is contrary to reality but then it just fucks with your head and you start thinking you must be crazy.

I lived like this for a very long time.

Then the best thing happened to me. I went to university. Bye bye old school days and bye bye ambiguity. I could now establish my identity and start building something a little more stable. No one ever needed to know I changed my name. That was amazingly freeing.

I had the constant fear of being found out as a fraud. What if someone called me Marwan among people that know Adrien? What am I supposed to do in that situation? It never happened. I still feared it.

I’d fantasize about people accepting me completely. I’d fantasize about telling people this story, so that they would accept me as I am. But somehow I never brought myself to telling anyone. I realised no one really cared anyway. I was the only one who did. I felt ashamed, guilty, fearful and confused.

Eventually I noticed what I was really looking for. I didn’t want someone else to accept me as I am, I wanted myself to accept me as I am.

One day I was buying a kebab and the owner asked a little bit about my story. He remarked that my tone of voice seemed to reject my father and Morrocan origins. I thought he was stupid. Only later did I realise he had put his finger on something I had never seen because no one ever mirrored it to me.

I’d go back and see a couple old friends who insisted on calling me Marwan. I let them do so. It was now less of a problem, I was used to the feeling of rejection. But I still felt the rejection. I still hoped they would somehow change and start calling me Adrien.

The Kin Of Ata Are Waiting For You was a book that helped me gain different perspectives on my situation. In that utopia, no one is given a name. Each person must choose his own name when it comes to him in a dream. It may come at age 5 or 50 or never at all. Movies like Jason Bourne, the Age of Adaline or About Time where the main character keeps changing identities and has a secret they can’t tell anyone struck a chord with me. I couldn’t figure out why at first. Eventually after reflecting and watching them many times I finally got it.

Then one day I completely stopped trying to change the way people called me. I was starting to understand. I was starting to empathise with them. I understood how hard it was to change. I realised it was actually just a name and that I wasn’t the name. I realised they had been accepting me the whole time. The name was just a tool to talk about the individual. Once I understood that I was fine being called Marwan. It took a long time to realise I wasn’t my identity.

I’d spend hours going through personality tests and horoscopes to try to make sense of who I was. Nothing was satisfying. I’d get attached to one and discover how painful it can be when it doesn’t fit reality.

I remember going through the New York City customs a couple years ago and being terrified shitless when I was taken aside that they might find out my name wasn’t Adrien and that I had Moroccan family. After being released, and realising they were just doing their job, I cooled down. It took more time for me to realise just how much psychological pain I was putting myself through with these stories and my identification to them.

Then I forgot about it. One day I was doing an exercise where you have to describe major life events. I realised changing my name was one of those. I got emotionally triggered. I had more processing to do.

I’d start thinking about changing my name back to Adrien Marwan Jamai. To take back control and not be a victim. I realized how angry and resentful it had made me. I talked about it to my parents several times. They thought I was making a big deal about of something small. I decided to sit them down one day and explain with a little more details. To say the least they were surprised. My mom still thought I was still over-exagerating, my dad listened. Later that day, my dad admitted he never realized what I’d gone through. Since then I’ve been slowly processing this. Every time I think I’m done with it, I realise there is even more to process.

Today I have nothing against my parents. At least that is what I tell myself. If I’m honest sometimes I’m still resentful of having had to suffer this on my own. Sometimes I don’t comprehend how ignorant it is possible to be. Then I realise you can’t hold something against someone that they don’t know. I get to see how I contributed to the problem and how to avoid similar situations in the future. I know my parents were doing the best they could given what they were going through. I do however realise that just because you think what you’re doing is good that doesn’t mean it is. You constantly have to get feedback on you actions and pay attention to the results. The biggest delusions happen when you stop paying attention to reality and prefer to believe the comfort of the stories you tell yourself in order to continue seeing yourself as a good person. Reality and the truth can be harsh. It takes courage to be willing to consider the possibility that you might be wrong.

Sometimes I wish someone would have talked me through all of it rather than having been left alone to deal with it. Today I realise that I learned a hell of a lot.

I learned the hard way what it’s like to get caught up with your identity. How painful getting attached to specific identities and stories can be. I still fall into this trap. Once I become aware of it I’m able to change it. When you create an identity or identify with something your ego gets all wrapped up in it and now you have something to loose. You start defending it at all costs. Only when your identifications start causing you pain do you start noticing there is a problem. We are all identified with something. Our names, our gender, our nation, our religion, our beliefs, our thoughts, our bodies. Only when you take a step back and disidentify are you able to see things more clearly.

I’ve learned the power of awareness and the dangers of denial and ignorance.
I’ve learned a lot about trying to force people to change and how that doesn’t work.
I’ve learned about the importance of feeling. About trusting yourself. About assuming most people aren’t out to get you but simply doing their best.
I’ve learned how ignorant I am of other people’s struggles and how I actually have no clue about what’s actually going on in their lifes.
I’ve learned the power of self-definition and it’s pitfalls. That defining who you are is something only you can do. That it has nothing to do with other people.
I’ve learned the power of the truth and authenticity and just how badly lies can fuck you up.
I’ve learned the liberating power of owning your own story and not letting it own you.
I experienced the value of talking with people about your struggles and not isolating yourself.

Most importantly I’ve learned to trust myself more and accept myself fully.

Sometimes I wish it hadn’t happened. But then I remember I wouldn’t be where I am today without that experience. Now I’m grateful that I got to go through such a painful learning experience. At least I’m certain no one has ever gone through it the way I did and the amount of growth I’ve gotten out of it is priceless. When I feel there is anger or resentment that bubbles up I know I’ve got more processing to do.

Now you can call me whatever you want. But if you know me as Adrien, please continue to call me Adrien.

And remember, you may not choose how your story starts but you do get to choose how it ends.

It’s the 3rd of June. I just came back from my trip to Lyon yesterday. I’m on a tram. I didn’t buy a ticket. All of a sudden a very unusual sensation of fear washes over me. I am afraid. I’m of getting a ticket. This is unusual, I’ve done this so many times in the past but not once did I experience this. What the hell changed? Why am I experiencing this right now?

Then I remembered…

It was before my experiment. The idea was planted on Christmas break. I started acting on it last Monday, the 27th of May.

I made an interesting observation in my life a couple months ago during Christmas break. I was comparing certain life experiences of mine with those of my brother’s. I had never been controlled by the police or gotten a ticket for anything in my life. Except once for speeding when I forgot there was a radar, but that doesn’t count. I never got anything stolen from me. Ever. I had heard of Pete Adeney aka Mr Money Mustache deciding to not locking his bike up because he evaluated the freedom of not doing so as more valuable than the price of purchasing a new bike if it were stolen. I liked that idea and used it to justify going on public trams without paying. I mean come on, who likes paying for the tram? That is the most brilliant excuse I’ve found to rationalise not paying for the tram. I would go on trams without paying and I’d never see controllers. I enjoyed the thrill of it too. Thinking I had Lady Luck on my side.

Then when my brother comes to visit me in Freiburg (Germany) for Christmas, he takes a tram he gets a control, on the very first day. But I never get controls, I thought, and he get’s one the first time he get’s here! This wasn’t new. Very frequently (at least in comparison to me) he would get controls. Or plain bad luck. And I wouldn’t. The Police would stop him while driving. Not me. He would get his bike stolen. Not me. He would break bones. Not me.

The contrast made me wonder. Why is it that he get’s these experiences and I don’t. Not that I wanted to experience them. But still, I was curious. Why? Is there a possible explanation? I wonder.

I’d been familiar with the idea that your environment is a reflection of your internal world for a couple years. Occasionally considering what it might mean if it were true. Then three months ago, I started learning around with the principle of the Law of Attraction or more precisely the Law of Mirroring. The main idea is that whatever thoughts you think the most (your internal reality) will be mirrored in your external reality.

This contrast with my brother came to mind. I wondered. Is it possible that we are just thinking different thoughts? After all, if my experience has always been that I never get tickets, I’m gonna think that I must be special in some way and think that is the way things are for me. If it is true that what you think reflects in your environment, then I’m probably not gonna get tickets or controls. On the other hand, if my brother’s personal experience has always been that he gets tickets he is naturally going to tend to think that is the way things are. He is going to think he is the type of person that get’s tickets and controls. And if thoughts manifest into reality, then he is at least more likely to experience that than I am, simply because he thinks about that more often.

I was now interested. I wanted to learn more. Of course I was skeptical, but I was also curious. I decided to play around with the idea of manifesting. Consciously choosing thoughts and deciding to focus on them to see what happens. Up till now my interest had been purely hypothetical, a bit too theoretical for me. I needed to do an experiment to test my assumptions.

What would happen if I consciously chose to think similar thoughts to those I expected my brother to be thinking? If it worked I should experience controls and tickets.

I decided to think more about this discrepancy between my brother and me. That was about a month ago. Then I kind of forgot about it.

The thing is, I don’t take trams if I don’t have to. I only did so at the beginning of the year to get around Freiburg when I didn’t have a bike. To me a bike is much more convenient and you have more freedom to get around.

Then, this happened.

For context my left bike break was already broken but I didn’t want to fix it (it broke after sometime after Christmas though)

On May 17th I crashed into a car. It bent the axis on my front wheel. My bike was now unstable. I adapted to my newly deformed bike. I’d been thinking of fixing my bike or just getting a new one since my left brake broke. But no, I would continue riding it. I wasn’t gonna change. I can be stubborn like that.

On May 27th my second brake broke.
Ok, I thought, now this is getting dangerous. I can’t ride a bike without brakes. Now I don’t really have a choice, I guess I’ll change. 

I had to take the tram temporarily before I could go get a bike after my Trip to Lyon over the next couple days. So I did. I took the tram. Without a ticket of course. I focused on the fact that I didn’t get a control. Imagining what it might be like. On the weekend I had a trip to Lyon with a friend planned. 
The bus ride was at 2.50 a.m. That was going to be fun. I looked at the tram times. There were none running at those hours. 
What a pity, I thought, I can’t think about tram controls. 

I would have to take my brakeless bike to the train station. So I did. Alone, riding in the cold deserted yellow-lit streets in the middle of the night. Thinking about how ridiculous it is to ride a bike without brakes. You can’t go very fast on a brakeless bike. What if you have to stop?

I don’t know much but somehow the above mentioned events look like the universe was conspiring to get me to ride a tram.

We got on the bus with my friend. The bus drove off. A couple hours later the bus was stopping. I was dead tired. I saw some gas-station-like looking building, then some guards. I guess we were at the border.

“Swiss boarder control, please take out your passports.”

There isn’t much more annoying than you being shit faced and having to wait for a whole bus to get controlled when all you want to do is to sleep. I didn’t yet notice what my thoughts had gotten me into.

Everything went well. We passed in France without a control. I didn’t even notice the border.

We got in Lyon. I was feeling rested and awake by now. My friend and I had fun. Great 31st of May. 

Then something popped up, we would have to part ways for the last day. I’d explore Lyon a bit on my own for a couple hours, before we left for Freiburg.

Somehow, on my own, I felt a calling, a mysterious need to take a tram. Yes, of course without a ticket. A curious thing. But hey, I decided to do an experiment.

I was waiting for the tram. 4 minutes to go.

I pace around.

I could buy a ticket. It’s just a little money…
Yeah, but let’s not do it this time around. Let’s see what happens.

This was like one of those little moments you see in cartoons where the mini red devil and mini white angle are arguing on the shoulders of the main character, each whispering into his ears, telling him what to do.

I could see a surveillance camera. 

I guess someone is gonna be seeing me not take a ticket.
Yeah, but no ticket this time.

2 minutes.

You still have time for a ticket.
Yeah yeah.

The tram is coming now.

Last chance for a ticket.
Nah, bro, another time.

I got on the tram. Without a ticket. I guess the little red devil won this round.

I sat down to a sweet old lady. I got comfortable. The tram started rolling. We started talking a little.

Then I look to my left…

Two good looking controllers controlling the people on my left.

Oh, hello there, I thought, isn’t it nice to see you. I smiled.

I guess I’m next. 

The irony of the situation made me laugh. Moments ago I had this huge urge to buy a ticket. I didn’t. Now I get a control. And I was fully conscious of it. Oh and I’ve been doing this thought experiment about trams and controls. Now I get a control! This is so cool!

I paid 60€. I asked if I could take the tram for the rest of the day without paying. I deserved at least that much at such a price.
He gave me that. My 60€ ticket would be valid till midnight.

I got off at the next stop.

I was ecstatic ! I’ve ever been this happy paying 60€ in my life ! And on a tram too ! Does this Law of Mirroring stuff actually work ? I couldn’t believe what had just happened ! For the past week I’ve been playing around with this idea more seriously since my brakes broke. This is amazing !

Calm down, calm down… Maybe it’s just random chance. A coincidence… 
Perhaps.
But dang this is so cool ! You have to admit it !
Ok yeah it’s pretty cool. You do realise you’re happy about paying money you could have avoided, right?
Yeah but this is too incredible. What if this stuff really works?

This went on in my head like this for the next thirty minutes; me thinking of how amazing this was. That was the best 60€ I’ve spent in a while. What a great way to kick off the month of June!

I went about the rest of my day wondering if the Law of Mirroring works or not. At least I’m open to the possibility.

My trip was coming to a close.

The next morning me and my friend met up. We took the bus back home.

I still couldn’t believe the experience I had the previous day.

And guess what happened on the way back to Germany?

We got three controls ! Once by the French, once by the Swiss, once by the Germans.

Now I was really mind blown! This seemed a little too freaky to be pure coincidence. Something had to be going on. I was looking at the border control guards like they might be hiding some secret to the universe.

We got back in Freiburg.

The next day I took the tram. I still didn’t take a ticket. I figured I had one day left before getting my bike. So I could allow myself to do this. I know, I know, trust me, I’m really good at rationalising stuff.
And now we are back where we started. I was fearing getting a ticket. But this fear was new. I’d never felt this way before. Especially on a tram. I got curious. Then I wondered why I was so afraid of paying just 50€. After all, the fear I was experiencing was totally disproportional to the possible consequence. What was I actually afraid of? Paying money? Being seen as a bad person? It was weird. 

Just being aware of my fear and questioning it made it dissipate. My angelic side decided that from now on it’s probably best to simply pay the ticket out of respect for the value of the transportation service provided by the city. But I’m not promising anything. My little red devil might just persuade me not to.

Today, this experience still seems surreal. The fact that I was aware of my thoughts during the whole thing was so cool. More and more I’m getting convinced that the Law of Mirroring really works. Too much weird stuff has been happening lately for it to be random. As for me riding trams as an outlaw, I guess I can’t promise that I’ll stay good. Sometimes it’s too much fun.

Your body is a finely tuned instrument developed over millions and millions of years of ruthless evolution. It is designed to help you. It is designed to help you survive, reproduce and thrive. Our ancestors have painstakingly and at great cost, figured out many solutions to what makes the body more healthy. They couldn’t properly explain why what they did worked, but they knew it worked.

Science is us trying to figure out why it works the way it works. But in the name of science it is an absolutely juvenile idea to think you can just dispense with ancestral wisdom and override millions of years of evolution with some pharmaceutical drug or dismiss it because it hasn’t been proven by some clinical study. Science only exists since a couple hundred years.

Who has more experience? A couple hundred years of science or millions of years of evolution?

Your body is always protecting you.

Your body never does anything that is not meant to protect you.

Your body is the ultimate adaptation machine.

Disease is the body trying to solve a problem.

A basic principle of ancient medicine is that disease is caused by some kind of obstruction of flow.

Obstruct the airways, you die. Obstruct blood flow, the deprived part dies. Obstruct waste product flow (intestinal, urinary tract and bile ducts) you get sick, then die. Obstruct electrical flow, you have neurological disease. Obstruct the absorption of any element, you develop lack in one area, overdose in another in an attempt to compensate (diabetes, nutritional deficiencies …). Obstruct emotional expression, you get psychological problems. Deprive someone of food, water, air, physical contact, social interaction, emotional support, you die.

No one kills themselves unless they believe they are all completely alone in the world and can do nothing to change it ( = devoid of social interactions).

The body works. It is designed to work.

Pain is a self-preservation mechanism. If you did not feel pain you would probably be long dead. Pain keeps you from doing stupid stuff. As Sadhguru said in this interview, everywhere you do not feel pain you mess with it and you call it fashion. People cut their hair in many different ways because it doesn’t cause you pain. But you don’t peal off your skin or cut off body parts in the name of fashion. That would hurt.

Any pain is a self-preservation mechanism. Whether it is physical, mental, or emotional. If you understand all three. You can minimise the amount of pain you experience. If you differentiate between pain and suffering, then you can live fully.

Everything your body does is to serve you. Now it is possible that is doesn’t make sense to your rational mind why your body would do certain things. We don’t understand how everything works. There is too much information. In fact we can’t ever know everything. How is cancer, auto-immune disease and infection the body protecting itself? You don’t need to know how a bike works to ride one. Any kid will tell you that is self-evident.

You don’t need to know exactly why the body does what it does to use it properly. Assume it is actually doing something good for you. Because it is.

No healthy apple rots. Only overripe or disease ridden fruit start to rot. Bacteria just help decompose it. Infection can be seen in the same fashion. If your cells are weak, unhealthy and filled with toxins, then it would probably be best for your body to get rid of them to naturally select for the healthy cells in your body. Thus making your body stronger.

The most important aspects to living a healthy life are to understand that your body is the product of the infinite interactions it has had and continues to have with its environment. Your physical, mental and emotional environment affect you deeply.

On a physcial level, whatever you are in contact with affects you. The air you breath, the things you touch, the food that decays in your gastro-intestinal tract all day long. All of that is outside of your body. Yes, your intestines are not actually part of your internal body. It is just a continuous tube from your mouth to your anus.
That is physiology.

On a mental and emotional level, you have created mental constructs based on how you interacted with your environment as a child and who you continue to interact with. Your primary care givers and influences shaped the way you developed your personality. Your personality is just an amalgamation of the behaviours and beliefs that kept you safe and alive as a child. Your personality develops due to the process of fragmentation. If the stress you experience is abnormally high, you will experience different degrees of this process and develop serious mental disorders. This again in an adaptation.

It is a healthy normal physiological response to the environment you grew up in. In fact, if you didn’t have what we call a mental disorder after going through such fucked up shit, then we could call you weird or abnormal.

That is what psychology is all about.

Everyone is healthy. Your body continuously seeks to maintain that balance, that homeostasis. It does everything it can to do so. When it no longer can, you die.

If you get sick, that is a good thing. It’s your body dealing with unhealthy parts in your body in a healthy natural way. The more you try to fight nature the more hurt you’re gonna get. Try standing still when a 100 foot wave comes crashing over you. You can try. But nature always wins. Why not go with the flow?

It is time we start to see things the way they really are. Too much of modern medicine thinks it has good solutions when sometimes it just exacerbates the problem by omitting the fact that your body is always reacting in a healthy manner. Your body is designed to help you. If you resist it, it will continue to try to do everything it can to help you. Sometimes death is the only solution that is left when the body is completely exhausted and has done its best.

Your life is about relationships. Everything is about relationships.

Your relationship to other people, to yourself, to the air you breath in, to the food you eat, to the world you interact with. All of it is relationships. Life is an elegant dance.

Let’s learn to dance.

Here a a couple of the most useful tips that have helped me recently.

Instigate invitations instead of waiting.

I spent most of my life waiting to be invited by people only to realise I would basically end up completely alone. Don’t expect people to invite you. Invite them instead. Create opportunities, talk about what you like, invite people to participate in your world.

Everyone likes to be invited. Start inviting. If you’re never invited, soon you will be invited too.

This is most self-evident while dancing. Especially as a man, you job is to invite. As a man, if you do not invite girls to dance you’re not gonna end up dancing much, if at all. Take charge, invite people to dance.

It takes two to tango.

This one took me the most time to finally understand. If you’re taking 100% responsibility for the relationship you are not in a relationship. 

Let me repeat that, because it is probably one of the most important pieces of advice concerning relationships:

If you’re taking 100% responsibility for a relationship you are not in a relationship.

This means you have to let go of people. If people don’t want to dance with you, move on. This goes for any relationship you have, from your parents, your siblings, your fiends, your bosses, your job, anything and anyone.

Why would you want to be with someone that doesn’t want to be with you?

If you invite a girl to dance and she says no, why in the world would you try to convince her that you’re worth dancing with? Just move on. There are plenty of other girls to invite. Most of them want to dance with you.

And yet, we tend to keep going to people that are unavailable. Repeatedly asking people who have already said no by virtue of not saying yes in the past. We keep trying to fix people or get them to change. We try to make people want other stuff than what they actually want. We try to convince people of our worth all the time. You know kind of like that annoying salesman who keeps trying to sell you his product when you’ve already clearly shown you’re not interested. Stop doing that.

Realise it takes two participants to willingly step into a common space to dance.

Stop wasting your energy trying to convince people to dance with you. Use that energy to invite people. Do that enough times and you’ll quickly see how fast you’re surrounded by a multitude of partners you can dance with.

Here is an exercise in perception I’ve been playing around with while walking down the street. This is a little glimpse into my mind. Feel free to try it for yourself next time you find yourself walking somewhere.

This experiment came to be because I decided to test the premise that what you see inside of you is reflected on the outside.

The way to test this is to walk in the streets of your city where there are many people. You don’t talk. You just think. And while you walk you observe your thoughts and how you feel during the exercise.

In the first part, every time you get near someone or look at someone you have to judge that person as quickly as possible and has harshly as possible. You have to find something wrong with them. Something that needs to be fixed. Something you don’t like. Do this for 5 to 10 minutes.

In the second part, every time you cross someone or look at someone you have to find something you like about them. Something that makes that person beautiful. Don’t overthink it, just make it positive. Again, you can’t talk. You only get to observe your thoughts, how you feel and how your perception changes. Do this for 5 to 10 minutes.

Here were my results the last time I did this:

In the first part, everything gets dark quickly. Nobody is friendly. They look like they’re all judging me. I feel insecure. What do I look like? Do they even like me? I could never talk to that person. I just want to hide. This is uncomfortable. Why the hell am I even doing this? There is tension in my whole body. I feel like I have to be aware of everything around me because something bad is about to happen. I can’t relax. Wait, is that person talking about me? Are they pointing at me? Ouf, that wasn’t for me, it was for that other person. It feels like I’m the center of the world. It feels like everyone is judging me and or ignoring me. I feel alone with so many people around me. This feels horrible. It feels like I have to get somewhere to get away but I don’t know where I have to go or what I’m trying to get away from. The feeling keeps staying with me wherever I go. Perhaps I’m trying to get away from myself? But I can’t do that. I’m screwed. I’m in Hell, in eternal damnation.

Then I switch to phase 2 of the experiment; finding things I like:

At first if feels kind of weird to switch to this kind of thinking. Then it quickly feels like relief. I feel light, like I’m having fun again. Everyone is on my side. Everyone is my friend. We are all flowing around doing our own thing, each in his own world in the same world. Like busy bees tending to their tasks. There are no threats. Those people are beautiful. I’m enjoying myself. It’s effortless to smile and wink at the girls. I’m curious about everyone. There is no rush. I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be. I don’t have that sense of a pressing need for anyone or anything in particular but I feel an assurance that my needs will be met. I don’t need to know what’s going to happen next. Things happen exactly as they are supposed to. Not everyone is a good fit for me but there are those that are. Those are my tribe. I have a quite confidence in me. I see what others don’t. I see Beauty.

This little exercise is surprisingly effective. When you realise that your thoughts create your reality in a matter of seconds, that you actually get to choose how you see the world it is both a bit scary and amazing. It is super empowering. This doesn’t mean you start avoiding negative thoughts by thinking positive ones. It means you can observe what’s going on. You can choose to change the way you see things.

You can either make your experience a literal Hell on Earth, or you can choose to make it fun, alive and joyful. It depends only on how you choose to see the world.

If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.

Dr. Wayne Dyer

Feel free to go ahead and try this for yourself.

You get to choose what you see. I choose to see beauty.

What will you choose?

Trying to live longer is a big problem in the medical establishment. Many therapies focus on how can we make this person live longer? What meds can we give to prolonge the state of this or that patient? Not much care is given to how that person is actually living. It becomes a game of who lives the longest. Quality of life doesn’t seem that important. As long as I reduce your risk factors by giving you these pills, I have done my job and I can think highly of myself because I’ve just theoretically increased your lifespan by two, five or ten more years. I can be proud of myself.

Do you really want to prolong the life of someone who is chronically in a really bad state? Do you really want to give someone pills for some possible future increase in lifespan?

Is more bad what they need?

I’m not talking about emergency situations where treatment is what is needed. I’m talking about chronic diseases and preventive medication.

If life is to be quantified as the experiences you have, their intensity times their quality, then whether you live longer or not doesn’t really matter does it? Living longer would only allow you to accumulate more of these experiences.

So living longer would be useful assuming you already maximised the quality and intensity of your experiences.

Maximising the time you spend doing shitty experiences only makes your life shitty for longer. Are you sure you want that?

Stop focusing on how long you get to do things. Maximise the things you do get to do.

I suspect longevity would be an unintended consequence of living better. If you really lived your life to the highest quality you could and with the highest intensity you could muster then you would probably live longer as a byproduct.

But if you make longevity a goal in and of itself then you completely bypass the living part. You become focused on a number, on something you are going to loose, instead of focusing on your life. You keep giving yourself an excuse to postpone and procrastinate.

Remember you are going to die.

If longevity is your goal then you will die every day to attain something you can’t have.

If you focus on having more time, you have less time because instead of using the time you have, you’re using it to think about how to have more time and what you would do with it. How ironic.

Focusing on longevity and having time is paradoxically the wrong way to approach the problem. It is only when you stop caring about living long or having time that you actually end up having more.

Think of Snoopy’s wisdom, we live every day. Maximize that.

In the generally accepted model of reality children are viewed as ignorant people. They are viewed by society as empty vessels to be filled to serve a particular purpose. We put these children into schools to teach them to fill these roles. The modern school system is designed to mass produce large quantities of obedient factory workers. Learn this this and this and do what I say. Don’t question me. Raise your hand. Step in line. This model is super effective. The downside is that you get a lot of people who end up doing stuff they aren’t supposed to be doing. You hamper creativity and suck the life out of these future members of society. These once joyful energetic spirits end up mumbling and dragging their feet from class to class, aimlessly wandering, with low expectations and no sense of worth. You end up with teachers that shouldn’t be teachers. Doctors that shouldn’t be doctors. Lawyers that shouldn’t be lawyers and the list goes on. Unhappy faces that walk around everywhere you go.

In the model of Source perspective, a child is the most intelligent being. He is smarter than all the adults because he knows exactly what he wants and has absolutely no resistance to it. He simply goes for it.

If he is hungry, he cries. If he is uncomfortable he lets you know. If he wants to poop, he does so. No one tells him what to do or when to do it. He does everything when he wants to, exactly when he needs to. They laugh, they play, they cry, they run around. Always buzzing with energy. They skin their knees, then get right back up and are already halfway across the playing field. 

Then  progressively the child goes through the process of socialisation. He learns that certains behaviours are unacceptable. Then he begins to develop free will and starts to experiment. He learns what brings pain and what doesn’t. He still knows what he wants and he goes for it. He wants to say something he does so. He doesn’t like something he says so too. But progressively he starts to hold back, to say nothing, to restrain himself or to hide, because mom or dad doesn’t like it or they reward only certain behaviours. These souls seems so chaotic and wilful from the perspective of boring low energy adults. 

“How can we keep up with that kind of energy?”, they say. “We are old now. These kids have to learn that the world isn’t so pretty. Life is a chore. They need to learn some manners and how to do things properly.”

No wonder adults who think like this struggle keeping up with children. They are so slow and stuck in habitual patterns. They don’t go for what they want, they are full of reasons why things won’t work. As a consequence they impose their views on children. The only problem with this is these children don’t know how to get their needs met. So depending on these adults they have no choice but to conform.

As you grow up you learn how to meet your needs directly or indirectly through manipulation.

Children engage with life fully and don’t resist it. Adults find excuses and reasons why they can’t.

No child is born hating the world or other people. No child is born with fear.

Children are learning machines. They absorb everything, test everything, taste everything. They are all creative geniuses.

Take ownership of the child in you. Get in touch with it’s needs and desires. Notice all the reasons you have for why you can’t. Start with easy steps. When you have some easy choice or decision to make, ask yourself what your child would choose. Don’t respond with your logical left brain answer. Let the child in you express itself.

The most intelligent version of a child is the adult who has retaken ownership of his inner child. He doesn’t resist it anymore. He lets it run around when it wants to.

Learn to let go of the resistance you have to moving. Start moving in the direction of that flow. Your inner child is intelligent and know exactly what it wants and what it needs. Start listening.

I’ve been thinking a lot about resistance and flow lately. This demonstation from Teal Swan and Frederick E. Dodson’s description of flow in Levels of Energy have been really challenging me to rethink how I see things.

This past week I’ve had a very real and vivid realisation that I want to share with you. But first here is a paraphrasing of the metaphor Dodson uses to describe life.

“Life is a stream. This stream always flows. It flows whether you like it or not. Resist the flow and it overwhelms you. Swim with the flow and you can use it to your advantage. It was already flowing before you arrived into it. It always reaches the destination its meant to reach. This stream diverges into several different streams and converges from several different streams. Each stream represents a different reality.

“You are sitting in a boat that is flowing with the stream. You have been given oars to paddle. With these oars you can try to go against the stream or paddle quicker with the stream. None of these two are necessary to reach the destination that is perfect and natural for you. Merely and merrily sitting in the boat will suffice for you to arrive exactly where life has ordained.

“Paddling against the stream (upstream) is what most people call „life“. This type of resistance and struggle is ultimately a complete waste of energy and does not lead you to your most ideal and natural and happy destination. Instead it slows your progress to what is good and natural for you. If it has any benefit at all, then that is that it makes you stronger. The only reason someone would paddle upstream is because he does not trust that the river is taking him to the right places speedily and efficiently. He has lost his basic trust in life, the universe or „higher forces“ and feels the need to paddle elsewhere. Another reason for paddling upstream could be because he was taught that resistance will solve problems. This person will exert himself until he becomes so exhausted he gives in to the natural stream again. Many people believe that where the stream is taking them is not to their liking and that life must be struggle and fight. But most people are somewhere in between. While they go with the flow to some extent, they put on a lot of brakes with their oars because they don’t want to go too fast. Going too fast they think they´d be unable to enjoy the current surroundings or they think that they would crash into a stone sticking out of the water.”

When I read and listen to this the first thing that pops into my mind is that song iI learned in preschool, Row Row Row Your Boat.

Here are the lyrics for anyone who doesn’t know them:

Row, row, row your boat
Gently down the stream
Merrily merrily, merrily, merrily
Life is but a dream

The next thing I think of I how much resisting I’ve been doing in my life. Something about his metaphor struck a chorde in me.

Last week I went to a pool where there was a circular stream flowing counter-clockwise. I got into it and followed what everyone around me was doing. Going with the flow. I was focusing on my internal body sensations. They were becoming intense. I was much more aware than usual. Progressively my awareness softened and I found myself feeling the flow of the current around me, feeling it before it moved my body. I could feel the temperature differences in the water and between the water and the air. I could walk and jump quickly. I could go slow, go fast or even stop. I could go left and right and wherever the hell I wanted. Everything was easy, light, effortless. I was having fun. The people around me were smiling, talking, swimming and some were kissing. Then I thought back to this metaphor of life as a stream. I decided to observe what would happen if I intentionally when against the flow of the current and observed how my state of mind and experience would change. So I did.

Here is what happened.

When I turned around and started to go against the current the first thing I felt was the resistance. It was sudden. It was total. I was hyper stimulated by the water rushing against every part of my body. My footing was unstable. I couldn’t go where I wanted to go. The only path available to me was the path of least resistance.

Then I noticed that I couldn’t feel my inner body anymore because my body was overwhelmed by the stimulus coming from the current on my skin. Everybody else was flowing in the other direction. Everyone was against me. I was alone. But I had to persevere and push through. Step by step. The current constantly pushing against me. I tried going to zones where the current was stronger but I would loose balance and would keep defaulting to the path of least resistance.

The world seemed to be against me. I noticed how I started getting more confrontational and aggressive in my thoughts. No pain, no gain, you gotta suffer to get what you want, just keep pushing, step by step and keep persevering.

I can’t tell you how absurd these thoughts seemed to me as I was contrasting them to the previous ease and flow I was experiencing moments ago.

Then quite synchronistically an older man who was going with the flow engaged me:

“Gegen den Strom danach die Quelle” he said smiling. Quite literally “Against the flow then comes the source”.

Those words seemed so profound. He was the only person I talked with while at the pool. I made so many parallels with Source perspective and Subjective reality it was unreal.

Yes … the source can be reached if you go upstream, I thought, but it can also be reached if you go downstream. The cycle of water is such that it will always come back to the source. And yet, one way is easy the other is hard. Is it possible I’ve been living my life the hard way?

After a few rounds of me going on like this against the current, I crossed this man once more.

“Did you find the Source?”, he asked.
“Yes,” I replied.
“Good. It takes a long time to find the Source,” he added.

I felt like I was in one of those movies where a wise old man tells you deep secrets of the universe in simple phrases. There again he was right. It does takes a long time. In this circular pool it actually takes about five times longer to go countercurrent than it does to go with the flow. And going with the flow is basically effortless. It also takes a long time to figure out that you are in Resistance in the first place, and then to find the real Source.

After having absorbed the essence of this resistance I decided to go back with the flow and contrast it some more. It was so easy in comparison I couldn’t help myself but laugh. And this is what I’ve been missing all this time?

And so here I am today. A bit confused. A bit surprised. A bit more conscious. A lot more curious to see what I discover next !

How often do we find ourselves in Resistance without even questioning it? Do we really need to make everything so hard all the time? What if we could live with more flow? How much more experience and enjoyment could we get out of life?

Now I can’t stop asking myself: Am I in resistance right now, or am I in flow?

The answers are very insightful.

What do you think about this metaphor?

Where are you in resistance and where are you in flow?

I am committed to living the best life I can possibly experience and finding out what my full potential is. I desire to live a life of excellence and not be constrained to the doll-drums of normal average boring mediocrity. Here are some thoughts I want to share on to how you can start doing this too.

As Joseph Campbell explains in The Power of Myth what everyone is after is the experience of feeling alive. Richard Heart in this book Scivive explains it like this: Life is a collection of experiences and memories, their Quality multiplied by their Intensity. If you want to maximize your experience of life, this may be a formula worth looking into.

Today let’s explore a couple ways as to how to increase the Quality and Intensity of your experiences, thereby increasing the enjoyment you get out of your life?

In order to do that we must first attempt to understand what Quality is and what Intensity is.

Quality is inherently subjective. Though many people would tend to agree on certain types of quality. I will define quality as a rich experience both from a sensory perspective and perceptual point of view.

What is Intensity? I would qualify this as being your sensitivity to incoming information. What type of data are you able to process? Are you constrained to hearing only low frequency sound waves or can you also hear the high pitched frequencies? How wide is your sensory apparatus and how sensible is it to incoming information? There is also an emotional aspect to Intensity, it’s about the way it makes you feel.

Do you hear monotone noise all day or do you hear the rich vibrant timbre of that magical music playing all around you?

The music is always playing. The music is called life. The only question is how attuned to it are you?

The next question is how do you increase your attunement to your environment?

When you first came into this world you didn’t know much about it so you had to learn and adapt. You were highly attuned to what was going on around you, there was so much information and you had to make sense of it all to survive.

Thankfully at birth you were equipped with highly sophisticated and advanced technology, selected for by millions of years of Evolution, that allows you to sense your environment in the most effective way. With time your body learns to filter what is useful from what is not. You go through phases of neurological pruning where the body gets rid of anything that is using unnecessary energy. You develop neural pathways that imprint useful behaviour for your survival.

Your brain and body process all the information and come up with meaning so that you can start to understand and function in your environment. You will notice that everything that has ever happened to you has happened through your perception of your environment. Everything is based on what you have perceived, what you have felt and understood. It is entirely subjective.

Your environment shapes your feelings. Your feelings shape your thoughts. Your thoughts shape your beliefs. Your beliefs shape your actions and behaviours. Your behaviours influence your environment and the loop reinforces itself.

And yet, despite having some of the best technology we somehow loose touch with our natural state of attunement from childhood and find ourselves in situations of pain and confusion.

From a neurological perspective your tech looks something like this: you have a sense organ, sensory messengers, sensory highways, and sensory processors that integrate the signals then give it meaning and try to contextualise the information properly.

We can try to change our bodies or we can simply figure out how to optimise what we already have and profit from it, using it the way it was designed to be used.

There are 4 main types of changes we can make to improve the final product; i.e. your experience:

• Increase the sensitivity of the sensors
• Increase the data processing speed
• Decrease the amount of noise coming into the system
• Increase the quality of the processing

Increasing The Sensor Sensitivity

This type of dynamic is most evident in people who loose a particular sense. Blind people are a good example of this. When they loose their vision other senses gain in sensitivity. A scientific hypothesis for this phenomena is that the brain space allocated to vision is redistributed to other senses. Blind people are much more spatially aware than most people. They are aware of much more stuff than your average Joe. This is so because their survival depends on it.

It should be said that in the case of the body the receptors don’t actually get more sensitive but the density of the sensors increase and the brain areas dedicated to processing that type of information expand.

How can you leverage this principle in daily life?

For starters, you can experiment with different sensory deprivation tactics. Closing your eyes and trying to do stuff you are used to doing on a regular basis, like dressing, eating, moving around in a room is a good example. Deliberately suppressing a sense for a short period of time makes the renewed experience that much more vivid.

It is said that nothing is sweeter to a man dying of thirst than a glass of water. I’m not suggesting you put yourself into unsafe and extreme situations. I am however trying to illustrate my point.

Try easy things like, temporarily fasting, or eating only one kind of bland food like rice for a couple days, or periodically closing your eyes to do habitual stuff in a controlled environment. You can also try taking only cold showers for a week or two and then see how much you start appreciating warm ones. Or you could sleep on the floor and then return to a comfortable mattress.

Stay away from continuous monotonus routines, add some twists and unusual aspects. Spice it up! Add a little discomfort from time to time to keep your senses sharp and your appreciation high.

Increasing The Processing Speed

This is most useful for physical movements and repetitive patterns. As can be observed while learning to ride a bike. At first you really struggle synchronising your legs and keeping balance. You have to focus a lot and expend enormous amounts of energy just not to fall off. Then with practice you’re able to focus on where you’re going. You don’t really have to think about peddling anymore. The processing is no longer conscious but subconscious and it frees up space to process other stuff. Now you can think about things without really paying attention to where you’re going because you already know where you’re headed. You get to enjoy the ride and focus on the beautiful nature around you.

The more you repeat something, the easier it is to do it. Repetition is the mother of skill, as Aristotle put it. Scientifically this is called the process of myelinisation. The building of fatty isolation around neurones to increase electrical current conduction and transmission speed.

Your brain is designed to make repetitive stuff easy. You get to choose what that is.

Decreasing The Noise In The System

To decrease the amount of noise you have to stop multitasking and focus. You have to be present to the moment and pay attention to your experience intentionally. Try eating a meal while closing your eyes and only focusing on the experience of eating that meal. Watch how intense that experience becomes. Try just focusing on the thing you are doing. If you wash the dishes, actually wash the dish, don’t think about what you’re gonna do afterwards. Focus.

In a culture of No Pain No Gain, and Work-As-Hard-As-You-Can and Persevere-Through-The-Pain, what I’m gonna say may sound controversial. To me such a mindset sounds like an awful lot of resistance and sensory overload if your goal is to experience and enjoy the richness of life.

If all you feel at this moment is pain and resistance, how in the world are you supposed to smell that delicately scented flower over there or feel the way the breeze caresses your face? Those two realities are not compatible.

If you live a life of resisting things the only thing you’re gonna feel is the resistance. But if you decide to go with the flow you now get more choice as to what you get to experience.

Increasing The Processing Quality

Processing is mainly what goes on in your mind. It’s the stories you tell yourself, the things you believe and the meaning you assign to neutral events.

Improving processing quality means examining your beliefs and consciously choosing beliefs that serve you. It means letting go of things that don’t serve you. It means becoming more aware of your inner experience. It means becoming overall conscious about your life and not letting yourself be run by unconscious behaviours.

Learn how beliefs work. Learn how to identify beliefs and how to choose beliefs. This is all about becoming more conscious about what you want and why you want it.

What if you could detect when something wasn’t right in your body in the infancy stages? Would you not deal with it then and there, instead of waiting for a huge ugly dangerous and potentially lethal diagnosis to wake you up and tell you something might be wrong?

Living a great life, a life you want to remember is a life that takes effort. It’s a life you get to choose to build in a conscious way. Life is all about the experiences you have and the memories you make. It’s about the Quality and Intensity of those experiences. How are you gonna choose to live your life?

Go and create your life consciously.

What was your biggest take away message?

Here we go for part 2 of Models of Reality.

As mentioned in part 1, the first models I’ve was confronted with were Science and Religion. Recently however I’ve discovered new models that have been challenging my ideas of reality.

Today I’m going to expose and briefly explain the main other models I’ve come across, their advantages and their limitations.

As a reminder this is my own opinion about these models and it is quite incomplete as I’m still learning about them.

Dream Perspective

After Science and Religion you have what is called the Dream perspective. The main idea is that you assume that life is actually a dream. You try to flip things around.

The main advantage of this model is that it helps break limitations and widen your concepts of what is truly possible or not. The scientific perspective is good but it tends to limit you. If you adopt and use a model that doesn’t have any limitations you start asking different questions and new possibilities come to mind.

The obvious downfall of this model is that it isn’t what one might call “realistic” in the sense that if you think you can jump off of a building and fly just because you think you’re in a dream world you might still be subject to the rules of Science and physics. A surprise might be coming for you. It is quite unlikely that you’re gonna fly.

The main utility of this model is that it widens your perceived limitations and allows for bigger thinking. I am not a big fan of this model because I don’t find it practical in everyday life. It also requires a degree of belief I can’t summon for something that has no proof or way of testing it’s validity

Subjective Reality aka The Simulation

The next model that I came across was Subjective Reality or so called Simulation Theory.

Essentially you imagine that the world you are in could be a simulation. The only thing that exists is what you perceive in this moment. Hence the name Subjective reality. You parents don’t really exist, they’re just data. Oh, you spoke with them on the phone? Who is to say it wasn’t just the Simulation creating some sound inputs to make you believe it was a real person? It is a version of Simulation Theory that is depicted in the movie the Matrix.

The main argument for this is that given sufficient technological advancement it would be possible to create a virtual reality in our objective world that could simulate what we are experiencing right now. But there is no way to tell for sure.

It could also be that we are in a subjective world that creates an objective world that obeys to specific rules that can be programmed, or it could simply be that we are in an objective world that is capable of creating an simulated version of itself. You can’t really know. You cannot prove that you are in either one or the other. You can’t falsify the theory either. It’s similar to the Last Thursday paradox I talked about here.

If you die, and you go to another world, you can’t know if you’re now in the real world or just in another simulation. The movie Inception is a good example of this idea. Additionally if you “die” in this model it’s kind of like hitting game over when your character dies in a video game. You don’t really care that much, you just play another round.

There are several twists you can apply to this model.

You can assume there might be someone in the “real world” controlling how your environment evolves, which characters appear, maybe he plants some guides to help you out just like in video games because he wants the best for you, etc. These hints from the simulator are called synchronicities. The scientific model would call it random coincidences but in this model it could actually be meaningful clues as to what is best for you.

You can imagine that all people around you are Non Player Characters (NPCs) and that they are sending you messages from the Simulator. It is a fun model to experiment with.

Another twist you can apply is one called Humanizing Reality. This means caring about your relationship to reality as if it were a human being. Have you been ignoring reality lately? How have you been communicating with it? If you have been ignoring it how do you think it feels? How do you think it would act if it were a human, how can you improve your relationship? etc.

The main advantage of this model is that you don’t really have to believe in anything. You can just play around with it and see what happens. But if you do, prepare for some really weird stuff to happen.

Source Perspective

The last main model of reality is the Source Perspective model.

This one is actually quite similar to the Simulation model, in fact I’d say that the Subjective Reality model is actually just a modernized version of the Source Perspective. This is more of a spiritual perspective on life. It is a model that has been used for over 5000 years as taught in the Bhagavad Gita and Vadic Literature.

Source perspective is the idea that everything is one and in a unified field of consciousness. Here, everyone ops into their life consciously and gets to experience life to increase Source’s awareness about itself. You also need to experience Black in order to know what White is (so called contrast).

The main ideas from this model are the Law of Attraction or Mirroring, that whatever you resist persists and living in alignement with your higher self. The main goal is to let go of resistance as a way to achieve your highest potential. There are a lot of confusion concerning this model, especially concerning the Law of Attraction, so keep an open mind when looking into it.

Something that is quite difficult with this model is that it requires a certain level of belief. It uses a lot of jargon that is unusual to the Scientific mind. Such as vibrations, and levels of consciousness. It is also heavily centered on emotions and our awareness of them.

Once you let go of your resistance to specific ideas, this model actually allows to understand a lot of what is happening in your own daily life and the world at large.

So, What Is The Best Model?

All in all best models I have found as of today, and the ones that work the best for me are Source Perspective and Simulation Theory. I find they are the best because they include all other models. They seem pretty accurate in my experience and are more precise. They offer an open and abundant perspective on life. Of course it is entirely possible that I’m completely wrong.

It’s up to you to decide what model works best for you. You’ve got to experiment and see what floats your boat.

As of today I enjoy very much exploring Simulation Theory as it is a lot of fun to play around with. I like Source Perspective too and I am now able to transfer its principles and ideas to the Simulation model that I like to play around with without really having to believe anything particular. It’s more about exploration and adventure, trying to discover what the nature of reality is.

If you haven’t read part 1 of Models of Reality, here’s a link.

If you’re interested in finding out more about Source Perspective I recommend you check out Teal Swan on Youtube for some very useful advice regardless of whether you think she is right or not. As for exploring subjective reality I’d start out with Steve Pavlina’s guide and then if you’re really curious I’d take his course called Submersion.

Have fun exploring 😉

What is reality? What do you think it is? How do you know what you believe is true? Are there limitations to the model you’re using?

We Humans have been trying to understand our reality and environment since the dawn of humanity. We are natural born storytellers. I’ve been having fun challenging my perceptions of reality and questioning my models of reality. Here is an exposé of how my conception and perception of reality has evolved over the past years. Do your best to keep an open mind and suspend your judgement.

I’ve come across 5 main types of models for reality. This is a two part series. In Part 1, I’ll cover the first two models I’ve been confronted with. In Part 2, I’ll cover alternatives. It so happens that these first two models are the most popular.

Science

The first perspective that has appealed to me and still does to this day is the scientific evolutionary perspective. The quest for objective truth. The appeal of this model is that it is predictive in nature and helps explain a lot of the world around us. It also appeals to our insatiable appetite for knowledge and our desire to know the Truth.

Science’s predictive utility and accuracy at depicting our environment has evolved and is improving constantly, from the Mathematics of the days of Pythagoras, Euclid, Galileo and Guass, to Newtonian Physics, to Einstein’s Relativity, then Quantum Mechanics. Time and Space and Matter. From Socratic questioning, Aristotle’s character types and virtues, to Darwin’s Evolution, Freudian Psychology and Jungian Archetypes, to Dawkin’s Selfish Gene and Buss’s Evolutionary Psychology.

There are however limitations to science. It does not explain everything.
Today Science falls short of explaining dreams, out of body experiences, mystical and spiritual experiences. It doesn’t explain the placebo effect or how spontaneous remissions from cancer are possible. In essence science fails to explain the paranormal and supernatural.

Science relies on the normality of Guass. Therefore anything that belongs to the extremes of the bell curve get gently thrown away and are deemed unscientific, an exception to the rule, or random error. Nassim Taleb eloquently shows in his work titled Incerto, of which Antifragile and Black Swan are a part, that it is really the extremes that shape the world. As he puts it History is a succession of very rare and unlikely Black Swan events (therefore by definition unpredictable) that have enormous consequences. It is the meteor that wipes out the dinosaures, the Ice Age that freezes the world and volcanoes who plunge the world into centuries of darkness that shape the world, more than the constant linear improvement of daily life. History is not linear.

Another drawback of science is Evolution. Evolution is a wonderful theory. The drawback of relying solely on this, though, is that it reduces the human experience to being a mere animal that is here to survive and reproduce—a slave to our Selfish Genes. There is no meaning in this model. Everything becomes bland and devoid of life energy. Why would you want to continue living if that is all you’re supposed to be doing?

We must keep in mind that this is still a model, it is just a story we choose to believe. And a damn good story at that, but a story all the same. As Descartes once put it, the only thing you can know as really true is Mathematics. His famous cogito ergo sum came to him when he was challenging what he knew of reality and questioned Truth.

To summarize, science is great for it’s predictive utility but it misses anything that doesn’t submit to the tyranny of the bell curve.
Despite Science gaining popularity, Religion has not disappeared. Nietzsche wasn’t entirely right when he said God is Dead.

Religion

Nietzsche once said, God is Dead. What he meant was that the Enlightenment and the rise of science killed the possibility of belief in God or any gods having ever existed. And he is right if you are a hardcore scientist for you cannot prove or disprove that God exists. Hence the rise of Atheism and Agnosticism. An interesting thing to note is that despite Science killing God, God still lives on in our societies. Religion is an attempt at explaining what science cannot and giving meaning to our lives.

Religion is one of the oldest societal constructs that exist. Religion is a tool of great utility. The stories religion tell help organise huge masses of people into communities and helping them co-operate. They give meaning to what goes on around us. They satiate our human desire and need to believe in something. They help us deal with the natural uncertainty inherent to life.

People who fight over religion don’t understand what religion is. Religion in and of itself is neither good nor bad. It is a tool. It is never the tool that is the problem it is the way it is used. As Yuval Noah Harari explains in Sapiens and Homo Deus, we humans are great story tellers.

I’ve never really much liked the story of religion because from it implies that some all powerful being is controlling me and that my destiny is written in the stars. My father being Muslim increased my resistance and incomprehension of this model that obviously to me was flawed. The personification of God in monotheic cultures only heightened my angst in this respect. I’d always been content recognising that there were forces greater than me, but I preferred calling them Nature or the Universe. The term God was problematic to me as it implies someone is superior to you. Hence Nietzsche proclaiming that God is Dead.

Then, after reading the works of Joseph Campbell, namely who writes about comparative mythology and the stories humans have been telling forever, my resistance to God lessened. I realised that God was just a story. That other cultures had masculine and feminine gods. The greeks had a god for everything. Native American cultures had gods for everything and venerated Mother Nature. Essentially I moved away from my identification with the purely scientific story by seeing that all stories where an attempt of humans at understand their environment. So despite Science killing God, God lives on. When I read the masterpiece of Vladimir Bartol, Alamut, I was dumbfounded by the power of belief in a specific story. This fictional account of how one man manipulates the islamic religion to create deadly Assassins and amass huge amounts of power was foundational in opening my eyes to how your perception of reality influences you.

Religion has built in limitations, as do all models of reality. All religions are based on an us-versus-them mentality that fosters identification to the group. That is very beneficial to the members of the group but detrimental to outsiders. Religion has many stories that are for the most part metaphorical. And that is where our human nature plays tricks on us. This is where interpretation and group identification can spiral out of control and create wars, destruction and chaos. When two people believe in different stories and more importantly when they believe that these stories are mutually exclusive, big problems arise.

Many people believe Evolution and Religion are mutually exclusive. One of the main arguments is that the genesis myths (Adam and Eve being one of them) don’t fit in with Evolution. The thing is, both are not mutually exclusive. Many scientists are religious. If you ask the question how can both be right? You can find arguments that validate both.

Many people will get frustrated and angry if you start questioning their belief systems. If you start showing them how their models of reality are flawed they will attack you and try to discredit you or tell you you can’t understand because you don’t believe what they do. You must have compassion and develop empathy. You are essentially threatening the only thing they have relied upon to understand this world and survive. And they’ve perhaps relied on it their whole life. So if you start invalidating their beliefs they will feel like they’ve been living a lie, and no one wants to feel that. That is normal. Truth doesn’t always feel so good at first.

A common trap, one of which I am guilty of falling into is to recognise that Science killed God but then confusing Science and by proxy Humans for God. Science becomes a new religion by it’s resistance to religion. How ironic. Why do you think it is so effective to just cite that a theory is based on scientific studies and that it’s proven by peer-reviewed scientists, PhDs, and Doctors? Randomised controlled studies and meta-analysis have become a new religion. If you can’t use those tools to validate something, then it must be false.
This is the same as the analogy: when all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.

Once my resistance to Religion and fanaticism for Science settled, and I got to see that these are both tools and stories we use to understand the world around us, I became more tolerant of different opinions and perspectives. I also recognised that in particular the religious stories didn’t suit my critical mind mainly because of the requirement of belief. If you’re not a believer, you can’t use the model.

Virtual reality was starting to intrigue me and films like the Matrix, Memento, Ready Player One were getting me to question reality. Zan Perrion with his book The Alabaster Girl opened my eyes to a new world of possibilities in the realm of relationships. After playfully experimenting with some of his ideas I was both confused and overjoyed to see that what he talks about actually works. My mind was now open to possibility. Utopian novels like the Kin Of Ata Are Waiting For You, where the society is organised to optimise for dreaming made me question dreams and their source.

Quite randomly or perhaps synchronistically I came back to Steve Pavlina’s work as he had been instrumental to shaping some of my perspectives in the past. I got to participate in the creation of his program called Submersion and to say the least that was the best investment I’ve made in my life so far. He opened some doors I’d never even considered.

In Part 2 I’ll be talking of the other three main models of reality their advantages and limitations, mainly Source perspective, Dream perspective and Simulation theory.

What’s your experience with belief been? What is your preferred model of reality?

Have you ever eaten a banana?

Can you prove it?

This is where things get complicated.

There is a concept called the Last Thursday Paradox. It states that you cannot prove that the universe was not created last Thursday.

According to this idea, every single thing around you could have been created barely a week ago. Everything was created to give you the illusion that it was much older. You cannot argue with this idea because every argument you give can be used to justify the argument. “Well,” the argument goes, “God could have created that too, to give you the illusion of reality.” And indeed, it is possible that fossils, books, movies, memories and all the other stuff we use to justify reality are fake. The issue is that we cannot know for certain what is true and what isn’t.

There is another concept called Occam’s Razor. It is the philosophical concept that if there are two explanations for an occurrence the one that requires the less speculation is usually better. I.e., the more assumptions you have to make, the more unlikely the explanation. The simpler the idea the better. The more complicated you make something the less likely it is to be true.

Since I’ve been introduced to this idea I’ve been forced to accept that you cannot prove the nature of reality. It has opened my mind to many new ways of viewing the world.

Why do we believe something in the first place if you cannot know anything for certain?

You believe something because if you didn’t you wouldn’t be able to function, the level of uncertainty would be too difficult to understand. Humans need to believe in something. That is a law of human nature.

If you want to accumulate power, sow confusion and offer people something they can believe in and they will. It is the basis of what Robert Greene calls the 27th law of Power: “Play on People’s Need to Believe to Create a Cult Like Following.”

All wars are based on a clash of beliefs. My people are better than yours, my God is better than yours or there is only one God, but actually, before that concept existed there are many gods. All of it. A disagreement on who is right and who is wrong. But what if they’re all right?

The past is but an image in our heads that does not exist. It is a story. It only takes a little imagination to realise the past and future are only illusions. Only the now exists. If you think about it, there is not a single moment in your life where you breathed in the past, or in the future. You were always anchored in the present. You body is limited to the present moment and all that is, was, and ever will be. That is why breathing is the main tool used in meditation. It brings you back to reality.

I remember walking in Colmar an old town in France and looking at the old buildings. Thinking of how it must have looked to people before me. Pretty much the same, actually. Of course some of the buildings and roads would have been different but the oldest buildings would have been the same. And the people? How would the people have been? Pretty much the same. Perhaps a different language, different fashion but in the end still humans with the same needs and instincts as me. In fact I now have a very similar human perspective as any human that lived in this town and walked on the roads I’m walking. An unusual feeling of relief and belonging washed through me. I’m not alone, nor have I ever been.

Of course the things around me have changed, but not my experience of them. Not my feelings, emotions and perceptions. Those are the same. People before you have felt the same things and dealt with the same type of problems you are dealing with. That is why people today still read wisdom from generations past. They all had the same problems as us. How to deal with your emotions, how to find meaning, how to deal with people, how to deal with suffering, how to be a good human being. It stays relevant because it is timeless. That is all Religions, Spirituality, Mythology, and the handbooks of Famous people do. They offer solutions to the perception of reality around you. They help you deal with it, with Life.

The past isn’t some black and white photo-reality of old people as I imagined it to be. The past is just a now that has ended. All events happen now.

When you shift your reality, you open your mind to new possibilities.

What have you believed up till now that might not actually be true? How do you know it is true? Can you be absolutely, beyond the shadow of the doubt, certain that it is true?

Everything in your life is based on your perception of reality. What you call reality is only a collection of beliefs you have about how things are supposed to work. If you change those beliefs then your reality changes.

Your environment determines what set of beliefs you develop. The beliefs you hold determine the filters you apply to perceiving the world around you. The way you perceive the world around you determines the way you will interact and behave in that world. The way you behave and interact with your world shapes your environment and those reinforce your beliefs. Ad infinitum.

A belief is simply an automatic thought. It is a thought that you’ve thought so many times it is almost effortless to think it.

Your environnement begins to affect you the second you become a zygote. Fecundation has occurred and you now exist in physical reality. Anything that happens henceforth will influence your beliefs. Your development in the womb, the way you are raised by your parents, the attachement styles you take on, what teachers you have, what friends you have, all the suffering you endure, all of it shapes the way you will think and what you will believe. And beliefs are one of the most powerful forces on the planet. Thoughts have power. It’s about thinking and growing rich. The beliefs you learn as a child that helped you survive will surface in unconscious ways the rest of your life as long as you do not become aware of them. You can bet on that.

Those beliefs will manifest themselves through your behaviours and in your environment in ways you cannot understand. An interesting thing to note is that your being always tries to figure out how to become whole, how to become it’s best version. Every time you move away from this higher self, you feel resistance and suffer. Any time you move towards it you feel better.

Situations will keep repeating themselves until you realise what is going on and that something is repeating. And situations will keep getting worse and worse until you are fed up with suffering and decide it might be time to make a change. Once you become aware of your patterns, you can examine them and figure out why you are actually doing the stuff you are doing and if it is really the best thing for you to be doing. Or you can just choose, as most people do, to numb yourself out with distractions and addictions. Whatever floats your boat. It’s your choice. The dirty secret is that unless you face your shit you will either be miserable the rest of your life while you pretend not to be, or, if you perceive your situation as completely hopeless you’ll die from some disease or choose to kill yourself. I strongly recommend facing your own shit.

Very often it takes great amounts of suffering for you to be willing to even consider that maybe what you’ve been doing up till now hasn’t been working that well. In your desperation you open your mind to other possibilities. You start seeking solutions to your problems.

Rather than denying your suffering you decide to look straight into the eye of the storm and you feel terrified, but hey, you don’t have much to loose anymore because you’ve suffered so much that you figure you don’t really have a choice. You’ve already been there and done that. Time for something new.

The world that awaits you after you’re willing to go through the storm and have had the courage to feel your pain and face your shadows is quite incredible to your older self, quite literally. This is the Hero’s Journey Joseph Campbell talks about, this is the story every human must live for himself. It can be understood intellectually but it is only once it has been experienced that you really understand what it means. It has been called many names over the centuries ranging from Shadow Work, to digging into the unconscious, to facing your demons, to facing your insecurities, to airing the dirty laundry you’ve been keeping hidden from other people your whole life, including yourself. It’s time for you to start smelling your own shit and owning it. Staring at it wholeheartedly and in full acceptance. Once you begin this process you realise how liberating it is. A whole new world opens up.

Once you stop running and start standing still you get to experience what it means to be alive. You get to feel the terror, the shame, the guilt, the fear, the sadness, the blame, the self-hate, the anger and all the other emotions you’ve repressed your whole life. Once you really feel those then you get to feel the connection, the abundance and the joy you’ve hidden from by virtue of your ignorance.

I can only wish that you start looking at your Shadow. It is only when you start looking at your darkness that you are able to see your light.

What if everyone is right? What if everything you are told is right? What if all Religions are right? What if all teachings are right? What if every person that disagrees is right?

But … how could this be? Surely one person must be right and the other wrong?

But, but, but …

Suspend your judgement and consider this for a couple seconds, imagine what it would be like if it was possible that everyone was right? What would it mean?

How could everyone be right?

Well, if you suppose that everyone is right, then to allow for that you must assume that nobody has the complete picture. Several people can stand around a statue and take a picture of it. All would have an accurate picture depicting the statue, but none would have the entire statue in the frame.

Perhaps, all teachings point in the same general direction of Truth. Perhaps some are just pointing from behind, above, under, the left, the right or some other direction relative to that Truth.

What are the implications of supposing everyone is right?

Better Communication and Conflict Resolution

If everyone is right it means that from where this person is standing, he is completely justified to think, and feel and say what he is saying. So is that other person.

If you assumed the person you are talking to was right, you wouldn’t get defensive to what they are saying, for they are right. They might not see the complete picture but from their perspective they are justified and it is valid for them to interpret their reality the way they do.

A very interesting and very important consequence of this is that if everyone is right, it means that you are too. Let me repeat that, it also means that you are right too. It means your perspective is valid and true for you. It means that you are justified to think, feel and act the way you do.

Now this does not mean that any action taken is necessarily the best. But for the person taking it, it does mean it is the right one, at this time.

A natural compassion arises and also a tolerance of differences. If everyone is right and you are right too, then there is no more need for you to justify yourself. No need to prove yourself. For you know you are right. If someone invalidates your perspective it doesn’t mean you are wrong, it means they are right. It means that from their perspective they are right. That doesn’t make you wrong.

Most conflicts arise from a misunderstanding of this. Most problems in relationships arise from a conflict of communication. One person feels right and the other wrong. This polarity causes disagreement. It causes problems of self-worth, of self-esteem. The Ego gets involved and things can turn nasty.

All conflicts of communication can be resolved by considering the perspective of the other party. If you can actually understand what the other party is thinking and feeling, then there is no more conflict.

There can now be co-operation and co-creation.

Less judging.

What if your angry neighbour is right? What if he is justified in feeling that way? What if you too are justified feeling bothered at his anger? That too is valid.

Anytime one perspective is right and the other made wrong, problems arise.

Is modern medicine better than shamanic rituals and traditional Chinese medicine and plant based therapy and energy healing? Is it wrong simply because it is not based on some scientifically peer-review article or study? In science everything seems to need to be based on a scientific study. If it isn’t then it isn’t science, therefore not true.

But what if it all were true? What if it all worked? Perhaps they simply don’t work all in the same specific areas. Perhaps you don’t actually need to know how they work. You don’t need to understand the mechanics of a bike to ride a bicycle.

More Self -Trust

If everyone is right, opinions loose their unbearable weight. They have weight in the first place because you think some are right and others wrong. But if all are right you simply detach from caring what other people think. Because everyone is right, no one is right, and you are also right. If everyone is right, you end up doing what feels right to you. There will always be a person who says what you are doing is right and another that says it is wrong. But if both are right, then you get to decide for yourself what is right. And at the end of the day that is the only thing that really matters. Do you feel what you are doing is right? If not, don’t do it. If so do it. This means you will have more self-trust.

In closing…

You limit yourself when you assume right and wrong. You open yourself to opportunities if you assume the other is right from the get go. Yes, assume they are right. Not all of it may be valid but don’t limit yourself by cutting it out because it doesn’t fit your current reality. Assume you may be missing something. Be open. Maybe they’re right too.

So, I’ll leave you with this?

What if I’m right?

But more importantly, what if you’re right?

We all know how to do it. Everyone does it—albeit rather fast—yet we rarely do it enough to get the real benefits.

Do you ever get stuck in a loop of hyperactiveness? Always wanting to move onto the next thing never knowing what to do next. Clicking on a video and another and another and another. Then eating something, reading something, and moving onto something else. Feeling like you’re in a rush to get nowhere, mindlessly racing through the world without ever looking at it?

You know, getting into the vicious cycle of going faster, wanting more, rushing, and then getting to the point where you’re overwhelmed, and don’t know what to do. You’re stressed, emotional, and your mind’s foggy. Feeling unproductive, you think should be doing something with your life right now.

Well, I have to admit, this is something that happens a lot to me these days.

It’s quite frustrating. Everything you do seems to intensify the problem.

At some point, though, and this is what I’m working on, I remember to slow down. That seems so counter intuitive, you think “but I want to go faster”. Yet there is much wisdom in the saying “make haste slowly.”

What I do, and this works almost instantly, is walk. It’s simple. I simply go take a walk. A slow walk. Not a quick walk, but a slow one. One that seems effortless.

You’re in this hyperactive state and all of a sudden you’re taking a slow walk. It breaks the pattern.

At first you feel a bit uneasy. You feel like you’re in a rush. But where to? What’s the rush? And you realize it’s all in your head.

Then you allow yourself to take a step back. To breath. To focus on slowing down. You take in the world around you rather than mindlessly racing through it all.

You become aware of your surroundings. The gentle breeze on your skin, the ground and how it feels under your feet.

Sometimes your mind tries to go back in worry mode, but you insist on relaxing and slowing down.

You calm down, stress magically leaves your body.

When you slow down the noise quiets down. You create space. Instead of being driven by worry, greed, lust, and impulses, you begin to observe. You notice thoughts that don’t get to be heard often. You are with yourself. You realize you were running from yourself. This is when what Blaise Pascal said becomes relevant: All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.

The main advantage of walking slowly is that you create space. Space to calm down. Space to think. Space to relax, to take in the world. You feel what it’s like to be alive. Walking this way is something I got into after reading Nassim Nicholas Taleb, an adept of long slow walks at a pace where you barely notice you are even walking.

As Nassim Nicholas Taleb puts it in Antifragile: Just as for a long time people tried to shorten their sleep, as it seemed useless to our earthling logic, many people think that walking is useless, so they use mechanical transportation (car, bicycle, etc.) and get their exercise working out at the gym. And when they walk, they do this ignominious “power walk,” sometimes with weights on their arms. They do not realize that for reasons still opaque to them, walking effortlessly, at a pace below the stress level, can have some benefits—or, as I speculate, is necessary for humans, perhaps as necessary as sleep, which at some point modernity could not rationalize and tried to reduce. Now it may or may not be true that walking effortlessly is as necessary as sleep, but since all my ancestors until the advent of the automobile spent much of their time walking around (and sleeping), I try to just follow the logic, even before some medical journal catches up to the idea and produces what referees of medical journals call “evidence.”

We evolved to walk and run. So there must be some advantages to these behaviours. I’m working on implementing this more and more in my daily life. What about you? Go try it and share your results.

I didn’t understand what hit me. I mean, it happened so fast! One moment I was in the air, the next I was hitting the ground hard, a bit dazed and surprised at the same time. Wondering what happened to me, feeling my right knee, hip, and elbow in acute pain. Ow! That hurts.

What happened!? What’s all this about?

This, is a story of me making a fool of myself.

As with many stories, this one involves a girl. Mind you, I have no idea who she was. I don’t even remember her now. And I’m not blaming her for anything, although …

The story is quite basic and can be simplified as follows:
Boy sees pretty girl, boy gets distracted, boy makes a fool of himself, boy learns a lesson.

So, what happened?

I was just getting out and warming up on my habitual run, nothing special. In my head, thinking of jumping the fence I usually jump. Then I see this girl. She’s running, fit, nice legs, wearing shorts and a black t-shirt. She has a ponytail that is swishing from side to side, and has white headphones one. Probably of the Apple brand.

I’m coming up on that fence.

Then I think of how good I’d look jumping over that fence. I bet she doesn’t see many people do that.

The fence in closing in.

She really was pretty.

I jump and BAM! I’m on the ground. Did I fall?

What’s the first thing that pops in my head?

Come on, did you really hit the fence? Did I really do that? Well, you must have, you’re on the ground.

Am I fine? Can I move my legs, arms, hips. Yes. My sensitivity is fine. Blood flow is fine. Nothing is broken. Good.

I vaguely remember the girl stopping to see if I was all right, me answering “yeah I’m fine”, then thinking, no, not really and saying, “well I’m gonna take my time to get back up. ” She ran off.

So I lay there sitting in the dust contemplating the events that had just unfolded so quickly. And a little quote pops in my head: Pride cometh before the fall.

What a literal description. I laughed internally.

I slowly got back up, then walked back home, dusty with some blood on my knee, feeling my body ache with every step. I was both amused and frustrated for being so stupid.

Keep your focus. Don’t get distracted. Focus on the task at hand. I repeated internally.

So. Will boy learn? To be continued … in the following encounters with the opposite sex.

Does this remind you of times you’ve been stupid? Leave a comment and don’t be afraid to share 🙂

Here we go for a first edition of a What I Learned Doing week, where I sample some of the things I learned and applied this week.

-1-

A simple but effective question to evaluate your day is to ask:

What have I learned today?

-2-

Insulting someone, even jokingly isn’t worth it. Avoid it at all costs.

-3-

Exposing yourself to randomness and uncertainty is very valuable. Practically this means staying in a closed room all day, that is “safe” and “predictable” offers no significant chance to improve your life. Whereas going out and exposing yourself to randomness and uncertainty lets you take advantage of serendipitous opportunities and creates a very palpable excitement to life. You simply can’t wait to see what happens next. Saying yes to weird opportunities, and being a bit more spontaneous, has potentially very high upside and very little downside. Who knows who you might meet next?

-4-

“We’re all going to have the ‘I want to quit days’, but you cannot quit on those days.” 

(Nastia Liukin, c.f Impact Theory interview)

-5-

When you really think about everything that had to happen for you to exist at this very moment, you become unbelievably grateful to be alive. It’s nice to remind yourself of this one, since we so rapidly take life for granted.

-6-

“Don’t run after trains. […] Running after a train is only painful if you run after it. Likewise, not matching the idea of success others expect from you is only painful if that’s what you are seeking. […] It is more difficult to be a loser in a game you set up yourself. “

(Nassim Nicolas Taleb author of Black Swan)

 

-7-

“The ultimate freedom we have is how we choose to respond to a situation.”

(Viktor Frankl author of Man’s Search For Meaning)

-8-

“To get what you want, you have to deserve what you want. The world is not yet a crazy enough place to reward a whole bunch of
undeserving people.”

(Charles T. Munger)

-9-

“Man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life: to life he can only respond by being responsible. […] According to logotherapy we can discover this meaning in life in three different ways: (1) by creating a work or doing a deed; (2) by experiencing something or encountering someone; and (3) by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering. 

(Viktor Frankl author of Man’s Search For Meaning)

-10-

Asking for a 10% discount off everything you buy is remarkably and surprisingly effective. Be it a cup of coffee, a sandwich, clothes or something else. Give it a try and see for yourself. (I barrowed this from Tim Ferriss)

Recently I had a conversation with a friend with 20 years more life experience than me. He remarked that, boys (me included) tend not to speak to girls, and vice versa. And that we were missing out on amazing people and opportunities to connect and develop relationships. I asked him how he behaved at 20 years of age and he admitted that he used to do the same thing. This underlines the fact that young people tend to suck at relationships.

This remark sparked a very interesting conversation. Here are some of the key ideas we discussed as well as some of my thoughts.

A couple basic observations:

• Boys and girls tend to not speak to one another that much.
• The best conversations you have tend to be with people much older than you or much younger.
• Gay people talk to a lot of girls and tend to have more interesting conversations.
• It’s easier to speak to someone you don’t have sexual interest for than to speak to someone you have sexual interest for.
• Most people want to feel connected.
• Most conversations you have tend to be superficial and unfulfilling.

Why does this happen?

Sex, An Impediment To Connection ?

What is common between a gay person that speaks with many women, an old man who speaks with young girls and a married man speaking with women?

Well, in all these interactions sex is off the table.

The gay person by definition doesn’t have sex with women. Young people aren’t generally sexually attracted to older people. Married people, or at least those that are monogamous, only have sex with there spouse.

What this enables is to move past sex and have more interesting conversations because each person isn’t concerned with how s/he is coming off to the other and then start to talk about stuff they actually want to talk about. They are both seeking connection but not the sexual kind because it is not possible. They don’t risk scaring off their “only” opportunity to have sex. Now this is obviously not true but in the moment it can feel like it. Evolutionarily speaking it was advantageous to worry about how others perceived you because there were only so many women in your community with whom you could reproduce with. So your brain makes you feel as if it were a life or death situation, where you have to be “perfect” or else your genes won’t survive. Whether or not it is true the brain doesn’t care.

Why do we have so many superficially unfulfilling conversations?

I’d argue that most people hate superficial conversations and that most want deep meaningful ones, but that most people think that not everyone wants that kind of connection. When you think about it, not many people like to speak about the weather, but almost everyone ends up speaking about the weather? Why is that? Well for sure it’s not that they want to speak about the weather. They want to connect. They want to have a conversation. Everyone craves connection. That’s why we love it so much when we finally meet someone with whom things just click and we can speak about anything with them.

Another key element is that a conversation is two sided. You need a minimum two people to have a conversation. Otherwise it’s called a monologue. It’s not all about you. You need another person. If that person isn’t open to conversing then there is no conversation. Some people want to be left alone, simply aren’t in the mood or have other more pressing problems to deal with than speaking with you.

Another impediment to fulfilling conversations is that we care too much what other people think. We end up not broaching subjects that really interest us for fear of how the other might react or perceive us. This is quite sad because most of the time this is exactly what the other person is dying for us to do.

We are bad conversationalists. Nobody ever taught us, this is how to have a healthy conversation.

We don’t listen. We’re always obsessed with how interesting our own ideas are that we never take the time to listen to what the other person is saying. Often we’re thinking of our own smart remark that we can’t wait to say once the other person finally shuts up. More often we just interrupt them to say what we want to say, because we can’t wait that long. We end up speaking to each other rather than with each other. It can actually be quite entertaining to watch people do this.

Can’t you just jump into a deep conversation?

No. You can’t. Unless you already have a great relationship with the person you are talking to, and even then you have to build up to it.

What would you do if a stranger asked you a really deep question out of the blue? Most likely you’d think they were weird and continue doing what you were doing, I mean who do they think they are interrupting you like that.

There is no short cut to small talk. As Benjamin Disraeli says “there is a certain acquaintance with trifling but amusing subjects which must be first attained”.

But once the talk is started you also must to be willing to say something interesting, dare to say something different or ask an unusually penetrating question.

What can we do about it?

Educate yourself about conversations. Learn from the best. Read books. Do the work.

Men need to realise that sexual desire isn’t something you get rid of. It’s something you move past. It’s an age old problem. 2000 years ago the stoics had some advice on this topic:

Marcus Aurelius has a specific quote that I like to revisit from time to time:

Start praying like this and you’ll see.
Not “some way to sleep with her” — but a way to stop wanting to.
Not “some way to get rid of him” — but a way to stop trying.
Not “some way to save my child” — but a way to lose your fear.
Redirect your prayers like that, and watch what happens.

Accept that you’ll feel desire and attraction and learn to move past that. Don’t get stuck in superficial appearances and perceptions. Instead move past them. To do that you can imagine the other person as unattractive. Something that also helps, is getting in the habit of seeing things for what they are. Don’t get all obsessed over sex, see it for what it really is. A rubbing of genitals, a slight seizure, a spurt of semen.

Realise connection is what you want and that sex is not necessarily the only way to get it.

David Deida has some thoughts on the leveraging of sexual desire: “allow women’s sexiness to help you discover and give your gift, rather than beguile you into cycles of stimulation and depletion”. Let the energy a woman give you fill you up and give expression to your gifts.

Realise you don’t need to be perfect. This is something that is really important. Realise anything you do can’t be perfect. You can always do your best though, and that should suffice.

Learn to listen. Don’t think of your smart, witty answer you can’t wait to blab out. Listen. Then if it is needed respond.

Realise that if you don’t interact with the opposite sex you’re literally missing out on half of the people in the world and a fantastic opportunity for growth.

Move from a scarcity mentality to an abundance mentality. Realise every interaction is an opportunity to practice being your best self and developing your communication and relationship skills. Also remember that there are as they say “many fish in the sea”. Or that “there is an other bus every 15 minutes”.

Additionally, pay attention to Benjamin Disraeli’s advice on relationships and seduction that encompasses several of the aforementioned ideas. Disraeli was a man who mastered communication:

Do not talk too much at present; do not try to talk. But whenever you speak, speak with self-possession. Speak in a subdued tone, and always look at the person whom you are addressing. Before one can engage in general conversation with any effect, there is a certain acquaintance with trifling but amusing subjects which must be first attained. You will soon pick up sufficient by listening and observing. Never argue. In society nothing must be discussed; give only results. If any person differ from you, bow and turn the conversation. In society never think; always be on the watch, or you will miss many opportunities and say many disagreeable things. Talk to women, talk to women as much as you can. This is the best school. This is the way to gain fluency, because you need not care what you say, and had better not be sensible. They, too, will rally you on many points and as they are women you will not be offended. Nothing is of so much importance and of so much use to a young man entering life as to be well criticised by women.

—ANDRÉ MAUROIS, DISRAELI, TRANSLATED BY HAMISH MILES

On some evening walks I take there is this little thing I do that  has some profound effect.

What I do is walk in a straight line on a path I know, in the dark, with my eyes closed. It’s quite disorienting at first.

I worry about drifting to one side of the path or running into something, even when I know there is nothing in front of me. I worry about where I’m trying to go. I worry about how far I am from my goal. I can get all mixed up in my own head. Paralysed by fear.

But with practice what I’m really doing is learning to take one step after the other. I’m learning to keep walking. One step at a time. At a steady pace. Not too fast. Cautious but continuous. I learn to be in the present moment. To trust that if I just keep moving forward I will eventually get to where I want to go. How far I have to go becomes irrelevant. It’s the process of taking one step after another that is important. Each time I get a little closer to my goal.

If I wander off to one side I feel the grass border. Then I adjust. And I keep walking.

Sometimes I want to look ahead in my imagination, but that only distracts me from the real task: putting one foot in front of the other without stopping.

To get to the ultimate goal I have to keep walking. Worrying or imagining the future leads me nowhere, it just makes me forget where I am right now. Looking at past steps doesn’t help me get to where I want. I just have to keep putting on foot in front of the other.

On the path I take there are a couple light sources. While I have my eyes closed I can still see variations in luminosity through my eye-lids. When I’m in the dark everything is okay. When I’m in the light everything is okay. But when I transition from one to the other, my mind gets agitated and fear arises. A shift from light to dark creates an instinctive reflex of wanting to stop. Usually if it gets darker it means there is an obstacle in the way. But in this instance I know there is none. So I learn to push through that fear and discomfort. The opposite is also true. When I’m going from the known darkness to a different uncertain light I feel fear, get uncomfortable, and push through it. One step after an other.

This practice forces me to be in the present moment and fully aware of my body and surrounding. I must relax and trust in my ability to adapt to unforeseen obstacles or events. I learn to just keep stepping.

In a way it resembles life. You’re going somewhere you can’t see. You constantly have to adjust your course when you hit the grass. You have to go through moments of lightness and darkness, each one temporary. And through it all, you have to keep putting one foot in front of the other. Relax and keep taking the next step. Never dwelling on past steps or looking too far ahead. And trusting that you will eventually get to where you want to go.

Join me in making those small consistent steps. Put one foot in front of the other. Then repeat.

What’s the real job of a teacher? What makes a teacher great?

The job of teaching is an ever changing one. It is never the same because you never teach the same thing to the same individual. It’s a job of constant adaptation, effort and dedication.

The job of a teacher is to create a safe environment in which the student can fail safely, repeatedly and at little to no consequences. So that the student may gain confidence in his ability to learn and try and adapt. So that he may forge his identity around being a learner.

A teacher’s job is to show a student that he can learn. To show him how learning works and to prepare him for life. A teachers job is not to transfer information. Information is a commodity. Anyone can google a subject and figure out facts and figures. And whatever a teacher may think, all the information a student learns for an exam he forgets after he’s taken the exam. It simply isn’t useful. What is useful though is the philosophy of learning the student picks up in the classroom. The mindset of learning. That is what teachers must always keep in mind at the back of their heads. That is what all there actions must reflect.

The teacher is a leader. He must teach by example. If the teacher isn’t willing to adapt, how will the student? If the teacher isn’t willing to take himself off his self-made pedestal how is the student going to learn? If the teacher isn’t willing to try new things how is the student going to be willing? If the teacher doesn’t know how to learn, how can he teach the student?

The teacher’s job is to show the student how to use the information how to reason around it, but it is more importantly to teach how to learn. Nobody cares about whether you remember your history lesson from high-school or that book you were supposed to read, or how much you got or that exam. What really matters is how you think. What your mindset is. Do you have confidence in your ability to learn? Do you know you can figure stuff out? Can you fend for yourself? Or were you told to sit down, shut up, and do as your told, to do it the way it’s always been done?

Did you have a teacher who encouraged your efforts and not your results? A teacher that went above and beyond to explain something you didn’t understand? A teacher who showed you your capabilities and strengths and how you can use them? A teacher who lead by example? A teacher who made associations to everyday things? Who encouraged you to say something even though it might not be the right answer? Did he value learning over having the right answer? Did your teacher make you want to come back to his classroom?

That’s what a real teacher is supposed to do.  If you aren’t at the service of your students you aren’t a teacher. If you’re here only for a pay check you aren’t a teacher.

A teacher is here to learn and to teach you how to learn. A teacher is here to explain things simply. To make you understand and give you the foundations you’ll need for the rest of your life. At teacher is there to give you confidence in your abilities by allowing you to fail safely. And as a bonus, a teacher can teach you a couple things about his or her specialty. But that is possible only when he has taught you to learn. Otherwise he only wastes his time.

Have you ever had a great teacher? If so, name them in the comments and take the time to thank them.

Have you ever wanted to learn better and faster? Is there a language you wish you could learn? A thing you wish you could just do if you knew how to learn better?  Wouldn’t your life be easier if you could learn better?

Well today I want to talk to you about the world class learner and how we can model him. For that I’ll be talking about the best learners on the planet: babies.

Everyone is born a baby and everyone is an amazing learner when they’re born. The issue is that we’re often robbed of this amazing gift by people who call themselves adults, conform to societal standards of mediocrity and think themselves superior to these helpless young blobs of flesh.

Learning is instinct.

When you are born you are in the ideal conditions to be a learner. You leverage the power of necessity. Either you learn or you die. Babies don’t even have a choice of whether or not to learn. They just learn. And they learn faster than anyone because of this. You never hear them complain. They persevere in ways that can seem superhuman to modern day adults. They don’t have a choice of whether they have to learn to walk, or talk, or dress or live. They just learn it. And they learn by doing. By experimenting and trying new things all the time. Thankfully babies don’t think about what they’re doing. It’s an instinct. It is a deep seated thing in our wiring. It’s what makes us humans. Our adaptability and malleability at birth. Our neuroplasticity. We can literally learn anything.

Now for you, reading this right now, learning is also an instinct. Some of us have simply lost touch of this little untold fact. Your job is to get in touch with that primal instinct.

Babies and young children are the most lively and curious bundles of energy you will ever find. They just suck it all in. They absorb everything like a sponge. They are unstoppable learners. They are shameless. There self-esteem is through the roof and they persevere. This can be incredibly tiring for the unaccustomed adult, who then tell you to slow down, not do this, stop talking, and do what everybody else is doing.

Now consider the fact that that was once you !

Consider that you have the potential to learn anything you set your mind to. Babies don’t know the meaning of the words success and failure. They just know to follow their instinct and learn.

These two words, success and failure are perhaps two of the most misunderstood words of our language. They are both powerful and devastatingly dangerous when non properly handled. You can learn more about this here.

So if you want to learn faster and more effectively you have to model world class learners.

You have to model babies. 

Be curious. Try things. Do a lot of things. Mess up a lot. Learn. Adapt. Change. Don’t complain. Figure it out. Go on instinct. Be playful. Don’t have an ego. Do what “adults” would consider as humiliating. Don’t take yourself so seriously. Have fun. Adopt the mindset of a learner. Have a growth mindset.

You were once a baby and did all this without thinking. You have already done this once. You can do it again. You are a born learner and you can learn anything you want. So get in touch with the baby inside you. That is the power inside everyone.

Are you going to let your power stay dormant? Or are you going to choose to wake up the learner inside you?

Have fun and experiment.

Never Stop Growing

Have you ever beat yourself over because you wanted to ask something but you didn’t. And then went on to ask yourself, what if… what if I had asked the question? What would have happened?

This is something I’m working on a lot lately. Learning to ask for what I want.

The principle is simple. Ask for what you want. You’ll be surprised how often you actually get what you want.

When you want something, don’t downsize you’re proposition. Or try to seem more acceptable. Never assume the answer to your question. Ask it. You never know. They might actually say yes.

It’s about learning to stay unconcerned with what others think and acting.

Learn to stop making assumptions. Once you actually realise how much stuff you assume, it will be eye opening. A lot of the time I assume the answer is going to be no, so I don’t ask the question. In effect, I’m right, the answer is no. But now, more and more, when I catch myself assuming the answer will be no, I take a step back, and ask myself Do I know for a fact that the person will say no? Virtually every time I cannot be 100% certain. That then sparks another question: What if they said yes? Then, I ask what do I have to loose by asking?

Usually the outcome of asking my question has a potentially very high upside for a very limited downside, if there even is one at all. I am then logically bound to act.

We all have to face random excuses that we might conjure up, but if you have nothing to loose and everything to gain, you simply have to act and get over with it.

Don’t concern yourself with the opinons of others. If they like it. Good. If they don’t. Good. Why would you get upset? You simply gained information. Adapt to this new information if necessary or move on. Don’t apologise for asking a question.

It’s a simple formula:

1. You want something.
2. You ask for it.
3. You either get it or you don’t.

Scratch your own itch. Ask that question. Don’t wait for someone else to do it for you. Solve your own problem.

The more you do this the more confident you get at asking for what you want. It’s no big deal when you think about it. But we always make it a big deal in our heads.

Give it a try.

Next time you want something. Ask for it. Unapologetically. Wait for the answer. See what you get. You might be pleasantly surprised.

Today I want to talk about the process I went through to overcome depression and what I learned along the way. I want to stress the fact that it is a process. There is no quick fix. It always takes time.

This is a somewhat autobiographical account of my 2 years after high school and my struggle to figure myself out. I talk about the mindset I had, the challenges I faced and the strategies I used to overcome them.

Whether you think this concerns you or not, though my context may be different from yours you may come to find many similarities with your path.

Context

Let me set the stage for you, this part is a bit long but is necessary to explain the state of mind I had at the time.

I’m 17 years old. I just finished high school. I’ve almost always had excellent grades and thrive in school. I was first of my class nine years straight with minimal work. I’m told I have abilities others don’t, that I’m special. I don’t care, all I hear is an excuse to justify my academic success. And, that so called “success” I find meaningless. I don’t have much of a social life. I love sport, I row.

I have no prospects for the future. I don’t know what I want to do. I just know I’m a good student. My parents see I have potential. I’m advised to try medical school. I see it as a challenge. The first year of med school (in France) is apparently very hard and selective. You work one year and at the end only about 15% make the cut. To me this is basic academics, a little challenge, the sort of thing I know how to do. I strategise, research methods of work and optimise for efficiency. I move to a new town, stop rowing and learn what it’s like to actually work long hours. I work out of my 9 sq. meter (96 sq ft) dorm room, stay disciplined and finish in the top half of accepted students. I pass onto my 2nd year.

Now all is well in the world, I’m a second year med student, strangers congratulate me for something I don’t consider of much value, tell me it must have been hard and that I’m courageous. I brush it all off because it wasn’t that hard for me and I don’t obsess over past achievements. What’s done is done. Let’s move on to something else. I socialise very little, have no goal, no friends, I dread the question Do you know what you want to do later?, I have no fucking clue and think I’m supposed to know. I don’t. It makes me feel bad for not knowing. Something must be wrong with me.

I was in a safe environment all my life. The school system is easy for me, so I set a goal of 18/20, and figured out how to achieve it with minimal effort, spending my time rowing, watching youtube videos and discovering personal development. The first year of medicine, has an external goal that couldn’t be clearer, pass the first year. I aim for top 25 students and resort to figuring out what I need to do. (I didn’t end up in top 25 but I got my year anyway). Easy peasy.

Now though, in 2nd year I have no clear goal, there is no pressure to perform, all you need is 10/20 to pass. There is this test in 6 years but that’s too far off and I don’t even know if I want to be a doctor. I obsess over the question Why the hell am I in med school?

I’m big on personal development and try to figure myself out. Taking personality tests and various other tests that give me no particular practical guidance. I’m looking for something or someone to tell me what to do. I stumble on the follow your passion advice. That messes me up because I don’t have one. I don’t feel good enough and I feel worthless. As you might have guessed, at this point I’ve been doing this for a full year, it wasn’t a great time to go through. I became a living hell. I’m studying stuff I find a bit interesting but it needs to be a passion? Well I definitely don’t have it, I actually find it rather boring because all you do is learn, digest and vomit your knowledge  into some dehumanising multiple choice questions twice a year. I don’t know what I want. I want someone to tell me what to do, why and how, but no one does. How frustrating.

Depressed

I start going berserk. I’m an ass with my parents and I still don’t know what to do. I isolate myself. Around Christmas I’m bored beyond my days and decide to start continuous writing. More on that later.
I decide to isolate myself further, believing it would be interesting to see how I react to staying in a room for 12 hours doing nothing but siting or writing my thoughts. (It wasn’t very interesting). I resort to an old habit of adolescent impulses, watching pornography, to get some chemical boost that lasts about ten seconds but makes you feel like shit and ashamed for a couple minutes before you rationalise it somehow. Eventually I get sick of pornography and decide to never do it again. I’m disgusted with myself. I’m working just to pass, but I hate that mentality. I’ve always wanted to excel and now I’m settling for 10/20? I see absolutely no point in working to be the best for just some stupid grade. I feel terrible most of the time and put on a happy face for class and when I have to socialise. Nobody cares what I feel. Progressively I work less and less. By the second semester of 2nd year, I’m all cooped up in my small room, binging on TV show and movies, reading books, masturbating and in my free time I study a little just so I pass, because I would hate to do this again for another year. Everybody seems perfect and seems to have no problems, while I seem to be the only one in my world who is full of shit. I’m what one might call depressed.

Looking back I probably thought it couldn’t get any worse. But as you can guess, I would have been wrong.

Progressive Painful Awareness

As I said I’m into personal development, and as you might have seen I had quite a lot to develop. Up till now I was doing all this in a semi-conscious way. I started journaling in my first year, a practice I recommend. I would read my journal occasionally. Eventually, complaining all the time and feeling like shit becomes tiresome and you have to recognise you have a problem. I don’t know when I realised I had one, I must have known all along but I certainly didn’t want to admit it if I did.

Often realising you were deluded is worse than actually being deluded. But that is a necessary step to change.

Clarification

Then, one day in March, March 22nd 2017 to be exact I was laying on my bed in my room alone and I started contemplating my situation. My loneliness was quite acute. I understood intuitively that loneliness means you need to connect but I didn’t do much about it.

Then I contemplated talking to someone about my situation. And that terrified me. My reaction intrigued me, so I kept digging. I could barely think straight it got me so emotional. And I was only thinking about talking to someone. I had some sense to jot down my thoughts on paper, here is the progression my thoughts took (I was talking to myself). Notice how I don’t censure what I’m thinking but I seek to clarify what I was feeling. I got curious and tried my best to keep a positive mindset (focused on improving) even though what I was experiencing wasn’t very pleasant.

• Everyone’s life seems cool, well, amazing, yours doesn’t. It seems boring, aimless, goalless, meaningless. Perception
• I’m afraid of people. I’m stressed for nothing. I want to socialise, yet not with people who seem different.
• No one loves me.
• You want to cry? Don’t.
• I’m lost. The best way to discover a town is to get lost? 
• Is this some identity crisis?
• I want to stretch  to reach a new level, but I don’t see the level.
• Who do I turn to if I want to talk?
• I feel like I’m going to explode !
• I just need to talk. The real thing I need is to be listened to.
• I’m terrified because I’ve never opened up to express how I feel to anyone.
• I’m scared shitless of doing this in front of someone I don’t really know. It puts me in a position of vulnerability and it’s really uncomfortable.
• I’m scared to death to express negative emotion to a person because I don’t control the outcome, the uncertainty freaks me out.
• I’m totally self conscious of how I could be perceived.
• One of the very things that makes us human terrifies me.
• I’m afraid of how  I’ll be judged even though I know intellectually that people have empathy.
• I must be willing to be uncomfortable to grow.
• I’m afraid of being emotionally hurt, of showing vulnerability.
• The more I do it, the more I hope I’ll get comfortable being uncomfortable.
• I really like discipline and self-control but I don’t know what vulnerability is.
• It might seem trivial but for me this is the most uncomfortable thing I can think of right now.
• Time has made me good at displaying, at saying it’s all good. I’m not sure it’s the best way.
• It takes serious guts to be willing to be vulnerable, to display emotion and hope you will be accepted, not rejected.

That was one of the most excruciatingly painful and alleviating conversation I’ve had with myself. It was the first time I allowed myself to cry.

Thinking I was onto something I typed vulnerability into Google and found Brené Brown’s TED talk. It basically repeated what I’d just stumbled upon.

Digging for clarity. This exercise I did when I found vulnerability, was about clarifying and being curious as to what I was feeling, I was doing my best to be non judgemental, always trying to pinpoint exactly what I was feeling, all the while keeping a positive and hopeful outlook on the future. The goal was not to dig myself deeper into my grave. It was to look at the grave I had already started digging, to better be able to get out of it.

The Process of Taking Action

You might think that now all was well and I lived happily ever after, but that’s not who things tend to work out. Fortunately I had the good idea of writing all this down. That’s about all I did. I let it sit. I did nothing.

Eventually I came back to look at it again, figured it was stupid and dropped it. After a couples times I thought it might actually be worth a try since all else had failed. So what did I do? No, I didn’t go talk to someone, I bought Brené’ Brown’s book Daring Greatly. (That is some high level procrastination at work). I read it a bit. Dropped it. Then gave it a shot. I summoned all the courage I had and confronted my parents. That brought up some of the most awkward, embarrassing and raw emotional conversations ever. I’d never cried so much. The conversations that have followed since then have been some of the most interesting and connected I’ve ever had.

And those were definitely not comfortable conversations. But they were mandatory. I persevered in my efforts, because only effort counts, and it payed off.

But things don’t stop there. Remember, it’s a process and it takes serious effort and courage to accept yourself and look at yourself clearly.

On the 31st of May, being dissatisfied and bored I had the idea of looking back at the continuous writing I did a couple months prior. I would write two pages of whatever came to my mind, every morning for a couple weeks. I’d underline things that stood out. After reading about 20 days of content I was starting to get disturbed. I was so disgusted and outraged by what I was reading that I remember clearly thinking that if I ever met this person I would avoid him like the plague. That seriously shook me, because this person was me. I couldn’t believe how deluded and blind to my situation I was. I was stunned. I went to my parents and just cried. That was one of the scariest things, to realise I could get to such a state mentally that I didn’t realise what was happening and kept digging myself deeper and deeper in the ground.

I realised that the actions I was taking now were way beyond my old comfort level. This was a clear sign of progress. Things needed to take their natural course.

Conclusion

Since then the road has been rocky and I’ve focused on building myself up. I now tend the garden of my thoughts with utmost care. Learning to accept yourself truly, completely and without judgement is one of the most challenging and rewarding of practices. Internalising goals and foregoing external ones is also challenging at first but gets easier every day. I am immensely grateful to my parents and brother who have been there and tolerated me, all along this bumpy ride.

I kept waiting for someone to help me, show me the way or tell me what to do, but thankfully no one did. No one came to help me. I had to help myself. Out of necessity. Not having someone tell you what to do can be both depressing and empowering. It is daunting to feel lost, but once you realise you get to decide whatever you want, that you get to choose your standards, heroes and goals, then are you truly empowered. You don’t know what will happen in the future but you become confident in your ability to figure it out.

Realising what self-awareness is takes time and gaining clarity takes courage. The courage to ask questions and look at the answers clearly. Asking for help and showing weakness can be the greatest show of strength.

The darkness makes the light that much brighter.

I believe that getting lost has helped me discover one of the greatest gems of human existence: our ability to connect through vulnerability.