Chatter of the Masses

By Bob Proctor

Reader’s Digest is a great publication. It always has a number of articles that are mentally stimulating. The following lines were picked up from a Reader’s Digest a number of years ago.

Small minds talk about people.
Average minds talk about events.
Great minds talk about ideas.

I have come to believe this is fairly accurate. I suppose we all fall into the first two categories; talking about people and events periodically. However, have you ever noticed that those two categories dominate the conversation of most people? Listen carefully and you will hear a buzz of meaningless noise going on around you almost constantly.

It would almost appear as if people were under some obligation to talk whether they had anything to say or not. I refer to this as the chatter of the masses.

If you are not mentally on guard without noticing it happen, you will be swept into this useless waste of time and energy.

If you don’t consciously and deliberately create order in your mind, your environment or the people surrounding you will dictate your mental state of being.

Observe those who are surrounding you on any given occasion. Their conversation and actions could very easily change completely four or five times in less than a minute.

If you think I am exaggerating, check this out for yourself or possibly get involved with a few people in conversation and deliberately change the topic as often as possible over four or five times a minute. If you don’t tell them what you are doing, they will never notice but they will willingly follow.

What does this mean? Well, your mind is the greatest power in the universe. If you’re not diligent you will waste it and go nowhere. Consciously choose to associate with those great souls who discuss BIG Ideas. Your life will never be the same.

Bob Proctor

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12:40:00 - By Vincent 0

Managing My Depression Is a Constant Struggle. Here's What's Helped

BY JOHN ROMANIELLO

We throw the word "depression" around a lot. That's the unfortunate truth. We use it to describe a weeklong period of sadness after a breakup or a few days of feeling bad when things aren’t going our way. I don’t mean to trivialize those experiences or emotional hardships. But being sad is not the same as being depressed—that’s only the smallest part of it.

Depression is about feeling trapped by overwhelming unhappiness, completely surrounded by an impenetrable fog of misery, and a general acceptance of the idea that it will never go away.

Winston Churchill called depression “the black dog.” His reasoning was simple: Like a hunting dog, it would always be nipping at his heels, following him. For some people, the black dog is omnipresent. For others, like myself, depression comes and goes—but even when you’re not suffering, you’re always aware of the black dog off in the distance, waiting to close in. This is an uncomfortable thought to which one must adapt: Even when you’re not depressed, you’re afraid of depression.

In My Case

 PIN IT

When I say I’ve suffered from “debilitating” depression, I mean exactly that: I’ve had long periods of time (three months or more) when getting out of bed was the only thing I could accomplish each day. And sometimes that was a stretch.

There have been times when I would break down and cry for seemingly no reason or randomly snap and put my fist through a window before I could rein in my temper. There were months when I hid from friends and family, pretending everything was fine and that I was too “busy” to see them while sitting alone in the dark. More often than I care to admit, there were times when I needed to be working on some massive project, but instead would spend a weekend watching an entire season of some TV show I’d already seen.

That’s what depression is like for me: a general inability to perform. And with it, a feeling of shame and guilt for not being able to do so, compounded by the ever-growing anxiety of deadlines.

In many ways, being truly depressed is sort of like being immunocompromised: It weakens you emotionally and psychologically, wears you down to your bones—and suddenly, things that would not normally affect you or which you could fight off with ease overwhelm you. When I’m depressed, I’m infinitely more susceptible to things like guilt, fear, shame, and regret. I’ll dwell on mistakes I made years ago and think about all of the ways I could have done things differently. I’ll feel ashamed of myself and my actions or inaction—and actively fantasize about the ways the lives of everyone around me would be better if I were simply not there.

Small setbacks seem like incomprehensible obstacles. Tiny transgressions seem like reasons for justifiable homicide.

Small setbacks seem like incomprehensible obstacles. Tiny transgressions seem like reasons for justifiable homicide. Mustering up the energy to shower sometimes takes days. Sleep comes unbidden or not at all. Training is half-hearted at best. Food turns to ash, and everything that isn’t made of chocolate seems to be made of cardboard. Life is pretty sh*tty.

Coming Out the Other Side

 PIN IT

Since I’m clinically depressed and not bi-polar, I don’t have cycles of depression alternated with extreme mania. I just have periods of being depressed and periods of being a relatively normal human being. Most of the time I’m fine and happy and productive. I’m typically brash, boisterous, happy-go-lucky. I’m friendly and goofy and annoyingly passionate about love and life and sex and food and literature and music.

But depression doesn’t really follow any schedule or come at predictable intervals. Things just start feeling awful, and then they feel worse. And then you sort of get used to feeling awful. And then maybe things change a bit.

There is no massive change, no celebratory event, no clear signal that the storm has passed. Things just slowly get better. Day by day you’re able to function just a little bit more.

There’s an old saying about the month of March: It comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb. Depression, then, is the March of your emotional calendar. And like March, it strikes suddenly and takes over absolutely everything. When it fades, it’s gradual. There is no massive change, no celebratory event, no clear signal that the storm has passed. Things just slowly get better. Day by day you’re able to function just a little bit more. And then one day you look up and realize you’re doing pretty well. Things seem less gray, and the world seems to offer reasons to keep living.

And there are reasons—thousands upon thousands of reasons. And they’re all around you. You just need to wait things out long enough for the veil to lift so you can see them. Now let’s talk about how to do that.

How I’ve Coped

Therapy and medication are viable options for treatment, as are other less clinical approaches: meditation, exercise, certain dietary changes. All of them work in their own way. While I dislike medication, I admit that antidepressants, taken in moderate doses for short periods of time (8 to 12 weeks), have seemed to get me through the hardest times.

Whether you find yourself besieged by depression and/or thoughts of suicide, or you know someone who may be in distress, I’d like to provide some other resources that have helped me.

1. Pick up the phone.

If you’re actually considering suicide, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline immediately: 1-800-273-TALK (1-800-273-8255).

2. Educate yourself.

If you’re exploring depression from an academic perspective and trying to figure out how the pieces fit together in your particular emotional landscape, I encourage you to spend some time reading the following articles:

Some Practical Thoughts on Suicide, by Tim Ferris
This amazing series on The Art of Manliness, collectively titled Leashing the Black Dog:

• Part 1: My Struggle With Depression
• Part 2: The History of Depression
• Part 3: What Causes Depression?
• Part 4: The Symptoms of Depression
• Part 5: A Realistic, Encouraging, Compassionate, No-Nonsense, Research-Backed, Action-Oriented Guidebook to Managing Your Depression

3. Do nothing; be silent; be still. Breathe.

Take a moment and try to take the long view.

Perspective is important because chances are whatever fresh hell you’re experiencing is a temporary thing. Eventually you’re going to feel better—or at least, less awful. Your experience of depression, however powerful, is an exercise in exposure to the impermanence of humanity—and there is simply no real upside to facilitating death with suicide. Because once you’re dead, that’s it. Game over.

While I admit that the idea of committing suicide might occasionally reach out to the tortured artist in me, the pragmatic side of my personality rails against the thought. Because suicide is permanent—and ultimately robs the world of whatever contributions you may make in the future. What if Hemingway killed himself before The Sun Also Rises? Or The Old Man and the Sea?

While I cannot claim any Pulitzer Prize-winning manuscripts, in my own small way, I change lives. I have a file on my computer of emails filled with several hundred notes from people who have said my work has changed their lives; those are lives I would not have had the chance to change had I checked out years ago. To me, that is a reason to keep living.

4. Take control.

I’ve come to believe that suicide is an attempt to feel in control, and both depression and anxiety result (in part) from feeling out of control. So take control—of something, anything.

Take control of your body. Cut your hair. Get a tattoo. Sign up for a transformation challenge. You’d be surprised how this can help. (I am endlessly surprised by how many of my clients tell me they were suffering from depression before starting their fitness journey.)

Take control of your environment. Change something. Devote five minutes a day to imposing your will on something external. There have been some surveys that suggest that something as simple as making your bed every morning can mitigate the symptoms of depression.

Take control of your mind. Meditate. Read. Write. Examine. Discuss. Whatever seems interesting to you, dive into it and allow it to eat up some of the energy the black dog is trying to siphon from you. I have a friend who was experiencing intense feelings of anxiety and who decided to address it by taking control of his inbox. He made it a game to see how many things he could unsubscribe from or delete in a single day then tried to beat it the following day; within two weeks, he was at inbox zero—and he said that helped.

5. Do less.

A big part of feeling out of control is simply feeling overwhelmed. If you have too much sh*t to do and your ability to produce is already hampered by your emotional state, then you’re not going to get it all done. Trust me, this will push you further in depression.

If you can eliminate something, do it. Do less. Say no to as much as you can. Push off any obligations or projects that aren’t immediately urgent. Delegate things to other people, and actually allow them to help you.

6. Ask for help.

This is the hardest thing of all but also the single most important—and the most beneficial. If you’re anything like me, you feel deep shame about asking for help and more so about needing help.

I find it almost impossible to look back now and get into the mind of the person I was in those moments—but I do know that I did not allow myself to ask for help.

I’ve had three actual suicide attempts: two of which I can say in retrospect were more a cry for help (ironic, as I never told anyone about them), and one that qualifies as what mental health professionals label a sincere attempt. I find it almost impossible to look back now and get into the mind of the person I was in those moments—but I do know that I did not allow myself to ask for help.

What I’ve come to believe is that suicide is something that is contemplated for extended periods of time— yet the decision to execute is made in a single moment. Had I just reached out to someone, anyone, I would have gotten through that particular moment and been able to lean on them for support.

Ask for help. From a friend. A loved one. A stranger. The hotline. A support group.

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13:01:00 - By Vincent 0

How to Stop Worrying – 8 Simple Tips to Help You

by Remez Sasson

What are worries?

These are nagging thoughts about something you fear might happen. If you pay attention to these thoughts, they would grow stronger and attract similar thoughts, and in no time, the fear would grow and occupy your mind and affect your behavior and even your health.

If you allow these thoughts to fill your mind, they would grow stronger, deprive you of peace, and make you unhappy.

Worries start as thoughts, but soon negative emotions get involved.

If you do not stop the worries the moment they start, they turn into a self-perpetuating cycle of negative thoughts, negative mental images and negative emotions.

According to Wikipedia:
“Worry refers to the thoughts, images and emotions of a negative nature in which mental attempts are made to avoid anticipated potential threats. As an emotion it is experienced as anxiety or concern about a real or imagined issue.”

According to Merriam Webster:
“To think about problems or fears: to feel or show fear and concern because you think that something bad has happened or could happen.”

Is it possible to stop worrying?

Yes, you can stop worrying, or at least, eliminate most of your worries.

I would like to offer you a few tips to help you stop worrying. Reading them is great, but practicing what you read is more important.

I would like to ask you a question, what about not creating worries at all, instead of creating them, and then practicing tips to stop them?

Yes, this is possible, but this requires some inner work on your part. Are you ready to invest some time and effort in this worthy goal?

When there is more inner peace, worries will find hard to get into your mind. In this situation, a mental state of no-worries will become natural, and you will not need tips to stop worrying.

A peaceful mind does not create worries. When there is inner peace, worries go away.

Okay, here are a few tips that I hope you will find useful.

How to Stop Worrying

1. It is easier to eliminate worries when they just start, than after they grow stronger. Try to be aware of the thoughts that pass through your mind and when you feel that worries are starting to build up, do one of the following:

• Read an inspiring or funny book.
• Read a few inspiring quotes and think about their meaning. You can find a collection of quotes in the quotes directory here.
• Work out or engage in any kind of sport to take your mind away from the worries and not let them grow.

Get busy with any activity that you love doing. You may, for example, watch a movie, read a book, take a walk or meet friend.

2. Analyze them to find how real they are. Often, they are just unreal fears that create unnecessary stress and anxiety. Often, there is no reality behind them. There is no reason to let them trouble you if they are not real, but only imaginary.

If they are real, instead of worrying, look for ways to deal with their causes. Sometimes, you have to do just a few changes in your life to eliminate their causes.

3. Often, thinking about what is the worst that can happen, if the worries are true, will reveal that it is something not so scary, which you can deal with it. This would make you feel better.

4. Ask yourself, how many of your worries came true. The mind moves from one worry to another. Therefore, many worries do not receive enough attention to grow strong enough affect your life.

5. Do you worry about what people think of you? Can you read their minds and know exactly what they think? No, you don’t, and it is quite possible that they don’t think about you at all, and you just get concerned in vain.

Often, we arrive at the wrong conclusions and wrongly interpret people’s behavior and reactions. This creates unnecessary suffering about things that are not real at all.

6. When you feel weak, hungry or tired, worries arise more easily. Therefore, in these situations, give yourself some rest, eat or drink something and get some sleep. Afterwards, it would be easier to deal with what is troubling you.

7. Stop what you are doing, and ask yourself, “What can I do right now to stop worrying?” Try, even though it night not always easy, to detach yourself from the negative thoughts in your mind. Think of ways that can free your mind, at least temporarily, from these thoughts.

8. I know that meditation is not everyone’s cup of tea. However, it can help you stop worrying and start living a more peaceful life. Simple meditation, for a few minutes can help. Of course, you need to train yourself with meditation for some time, before getting results.

Remember, worries are thoughts, and you can refuse to pay them attention. Your attention give them life and strength, and if you deny them of your attention (which is possible, but not always easy to do) they will grow weaker and leave you.

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13:00:00 - By Vincent 0

DIVERSIFY YOUR IDENTITY

By Mark Manson

I don’t watch much TV, but if there were a channel that played Tony Robbins seminars non-stop, I’d watch it like a teenage girl glued to an America’s Next Top Modelmarathon. Say what you want about Robbins (opinions range from him being a complete hack and fraud to him being the second coming of Jesus Christ; my opinion is somewhere in the middle), but his seminars are never dull. The guy knows how to market helping people.

For the uninitiated, Robbins’ seminars have some informal portions where people in the (massive) audience are able to stand up and address their personal issues with Tony one-on-one, in a kind of private counseling session… in front of 2,000 other people. Tony manhandles their emotional worlds, reshaping their realities in front of your eyes, all to thunderous applause. Whether it’s genuine or not, it’s never boring, and it’s usually educational.

(A good friend of mine who is a psychologist and therapist refers to Robbins as the Batman of Psychology — sometimes he has to break the rules and do some unethical things, but it’s always for the greater good.)

In one seminar, a middle-aged man in the audience stood up and confessed that he was suicidal. He then shared his story: he was a finance guy, a very good finance guy. He made a fortune and not only that, but his friends and family members gave him their savings to manage and he made them fortunes as well. His entire life he had been successful and made a lot of people a lot of money.

And then one day he lost it all.

When prodded by Robbins, his reasoning for wanting to kill himself was that his life insurance policy would pay enough to support his wife and children after he was gone, whereas if he stayed alive, his family would be saddled by debt and left broke. When Robbins threw out the obvious point that while his kids would grow up with financial stability, they wouldn’t have a father, the man calmly asserted, “Yes, exactly. That’s the idea.”

What immediately strikes you is this man’s dumbfounding belief that his kids need financial stability more than a living father. And it’d be easy to discount him as a loony for that and be on our merry way.

But if we take a moment and empathize with him and dig a bit deeper into his motivation, we discover something important about his self-perception: This man perceives the value of his own life to be nothing more than financial.

He has no sense of value in himself as a father, husband, friend, companion, not to mention any other skills or hobbies. It’s not just that he thinks his kids would be better off with money than with him, it’s that he believes his only value as a person is his ability to make money.

Superhero Robbins quickly pounced on the nub of the issue: this man had never emotionally invested himself or identified with his roles as a father, a husband, a friend, a colleague — he had invested all of his identity (and time and effort) in making money and becoming rich. Then once his wealth vanished, so did his entire sense of self.

A while back, I saw a short video of Tim Ferriss and in passing he mentioned a concept called “identity diversification.” He more or less said the following:

When you have money, it’s always smart to diversify your investments. That way if one of them goes south, you don’t lose everything. It’s also smart to diversify your identity, to invest your self-esteem and what you care about into a variety of different areas — business, social life, relationships, philanthropy, athletics — so that when one goes south, you’re not completely screwed over and emotionally wrecked.

I loved this idea. It’s one of those ideas that’s so obvious yet elusive. When you hear it, it makes you feel like you just woke up. Identity diversification.

WHAT IS IDENTITY?

Whether consciously or unconsciously, we all choose what’s important to us; we choose what we value. We choose the measuring sticks with which we measure success and our self-worth. Common measuring sticks people often choose include: being professionally successful, being highly educated, making a lot of money, being an excellent father/husband, being pious and faithful in a chosen religion, being socially and/or sexually popular and desired, being physically attractive or beautiful, and on and on.

Whatever we choose to judge our self-worth by, be it how big of a fan we are for our favorite sports team or making more money than any of our friends or getting more attention from the opposite sex, we are choosing in which way we want to receive validation to feel good about ourselves. Like a mural, whatever you choose to value and receive validation from conglomerates into your overall identity.

Most of us naturally gravitate toward certain aspects of our identity merely through growing up and having attention or praise lavished on us for particular reasons. Maybe you were the smart kid, or the good-looking quarterback, or the popular musician, or whatever. The validation we receive growing up largely determines how we choose to value ourselves in our adult life.

Some of us also experienced emotional traumas early on and therefore many of us get fixated on certain aspects of our identity more than others. Social pressures can also force us into over-identifying with a certain aspect of our identity, which then drowns out other areas of our lives.

For instance, the movie Blow is a true story about drug smuggler George Jung. Jung grew up in a poor family with a father who had trouble paying the bills. As a result, Jung grew up identifying disproportionately with earning money and being rich and doing it in whatever way he could. Once he began smuggling drugs, the social pressures of those around him, the drug cartels and the lifestyle he lived continued to reinforce his choice to receive validation from money and wealth. Even if you haven’t seen the movie, it’s fairly obvious that eventually his life unraveled along with all of the relationships which mattered to him.

In my own life, I over-identified with my sex life and the validation I received from women. This led to me becoming depressed and living on a couch with no job. Later on, when I was building my business and often working 14-16 hour days simply to make a rent payment, a simple refund request or 2-3 days with no new sales could send me spiraling into a depression. Both of these examples from my life were times when I was investing myself completely into one area — women and business — and forsaking other important areas of my life and my identity.

In the case of the man in Robbins’ seminar, he lived an entire life that reinforced his identity as a man who could make money. He worked 100 hour weeks for decades. He made millions. Everyone who knew him, knew him as the man who could make money and did. Many of them knew him and liked him because he could make money.

This constant reinforcement and lack of diversity in his life eventually warped his perception in himself away from being a father, a husband, a friend, a role model, and instead a walking bank account. That’s all that came to matter to him and his identity. He had nothing else going for him because he never invested in any other aspects of his relationships. And when the money went, so did his self-worth along with it.

WHAT DO YOU CARE ABOUT?

One could take this advice as merely being a well-balanced individual. The problem is, people can be well-balanced but still not have a diverse identity. They can participate in a lot of different activities, but still derive the majority of their validation and self-worth from one source.

For instance, let’s say you’re a well-balanced individual with a successful law career, a spouse, some cool hobbies, and you enjoy reading in your spare time. But in reality your career dominates your identity. You work so much that you have little with which to relate to your spouse other than work. Your hobbies all involve your coworkers. Your reading relates to your career. You have no diversity.

A lot of people I know in finance are like this. Their friends are their co-workers. The books they read and movies they watch relate to their job. Their social excursions are work and networking functions. The dates they go on with people they meet doing work-related things. There’s no diversification of where they’re receiving their validation. And therefore their emotional stability and self-esteem is at risk.

If you invest all of your identity in one basket, then you put your self-esteem and emotional well-being at risk.

American Football player Junior Seau recently committed suicide a few years after retiring. A lot of discussion has taken place about athletes and how they can regain their lost identity once they retire. One can’t imagine what they must feel, having gone their entire lives since childhood being recognized for being great at a single activity, and then once they hit their 40’s, it’s all taken away.

Seau is not the only casualty. There’s this heartbreaking article about Hall of Fame football player William “Refrigerator” Perry and his descent into depression and alcoholism after retirement. Or this excellent article on soccer legends Pele and Maradona and their inability to let go of their pasts. Or how about this one on Michael Jordan and his continued bitterness and insecurity after retirement?

Three years ago, the thought of my business going under terrified me. I stayed up entire nights worrying about if a new web page would make me money or not. When they didn’t I would lose sleep again trying to figure out why.

Ironically, now that I’m successful in business, my identity isn’t as invested in it, and if it failed tomorrow I don’t think I’d be as devastated now as I would have been three years ago. Why? Because I’ve diversified my identity. I’ve been around the world, speak multiple languages, have a wide array of friends of varying lifestyles, am a good musician, a successful writer — if my business crashed, it would surely suck and be stressful, but I imagine emotionally I would hold up much better.

What do you care about? I mean, what do you really care about? Invest yourself in a wide range of areas. If you like music, start attending concerts or learn an instrument. Don’t just travel as a vacation, but invest in learning about the cultures. Learn a new language. Make time for old friends. Pick up new hobbies. Get competitive in something. Expand yourself beyond your work and your relationships. Go out for no other reason than to be with your friends. Learn how to dance. Take some time off work. Attend a meditationretreat.

And don’t just do something else, but care about it, invest yourself in it.

Lest you become like our finance guru at a Tony Robbins seminar. Because chances are, the Batman of Psychology is not going to be around to save you.

12:43:00 - By Vincent 0

THE PRIME BELIEF

By Mark Manson

In the mid-19th century, a boy was born into a wealthy family. From the beginning, the boy suffered serious health issues: an eye problem that left him temporarily blinded as a child, a terrible stomach condition that forced him onto a strict diet, and back pains that would plague him throughout his life.

Despite his father’s disapproval, he aspired to become a painter when he grew up. He practiced his craft but for years and years every attempt ended in failure. Meanwhile, his brother went on to become a world-renowned novelist. As he entered adulthood, many of his health problems worsened, his relationship with his father fell apart, and the young man began to struggle with severe bouts of depression and suicidal thoughts.

Desperate to fix his son’s situation, the young man’s father used his business connections to get the young man admitted to Harvard Medical School. Fortunately, the young man was smart. He could handle the coursework. But he never felt at home or at peace at Harvard. After touring a psychiatric facility one day, the young man mused in his diary that he felt he had more in common with the patients than the other doctors.

Dissatisfied with his medical training, the young man looked for other opportunities within academy that may suit him. He was desperate. He was willing to try anything, even something radical and completely different.

He soon discovered an anthropological expedition to the Amazon rainforest. The young man signed on, excited to get away and start anew, to perhaps discover something new and interesting about the world and about himself.

In those days, intercontinental travel was long, complicated and dangerous. But the young man made it to the Amazon. There he promptly contracted smallpox and nearly died alone in the jungle. He was rushed back to civilization and the expedition left him behind. Upon recovering from the small pox, his back spasms returned worse than ever. He was emaciated from the disease, stuck in a foreign land alone with no way to communicate, and continued to exist in a daily excruciating pain.

The young man managed to return home to a disappointed father, nearly 30 years old, still unemployed, a failure at everything he had ever attempted, with a body that betrayed him and wasn’t likely to ever get better. Despite every advantage and opportunity he had been given in life, he had failed them all. The only constants in his life seemed to be suffering and disappointment. The man fell into a deep depression and planned to take his own life.

But first, he had an idea.

He made an agreement with himself. In his diary, he wrote that he would try an experiment. He would spend one entire year believing that he was 100% responsible for everything that occurred in his life, no matter what. During this period, he would do everything in his power to change his circumstances, no matter the outcome. If, he wrote, at the end of one year of taking responsibility for everything in his life and working to improve it, if nothing in his life had actually improved in that time, then it will be apparent that he was truly powerless to the circumstances around him. And then he would take his own life.

The young man’s name was William James, the father of American psychology and one of the most influential philosophers of the past 100 years. Of course, he wasn’t these things yet, but he would go on to become them in large part due to his experiment. James would later refer to his experiment as his “rebirth,” and would credit it with everythingthat he would later accomplish.

There is a realization from which all potential personal growth emerges. This is the realization that you are responsible for everything you do in your life, no matter the external circumstances.

In 1879, fifteen years after making the deal with himself, William James gave what was perhaps his most famous lecture, titled “The Will to Believe.”

In it he argued that whether religious or atheist, capitalist or communist, everyone is forced to adopt values on some degree of faith. Even if you don’t believe in faith, that is itself a value requiring faith. He went on to say that if we all must value something, then we may as well orient ourselves to value what is most beneficial for us and others.

When we become responsible for our own values, we no longer have to struggle to make the world conform to our needs, rather we can adapt our own values to fit the circumstances that confront us in the world. 

It’s that simple choice to take responsibility for ourselves and our own values that allows us to feel in control of everything that happens to us and allows us to transform our negative experiences into empowering experiences. It’s completely counterintuitive, the idea that being responsible for all of the horrible misfortunes that befall us could somehow liberate us from them, but it’s true. Our responsibility for ourselves unleashes a deeper fulfillment by allowing us to construe whatever we confront into a value that fulfills our needs. Unruly kids grant us the opportunity to be a good parent and instill discipline and responsibility. A layoff at work grants us the opportunity to experiment with new career paths we had always daydreamed about. A terrible breakup gives us the chance to take an honest look at ourselves and how our behaviors affect our relationships with loved ones.

Image credit: Kamren B Photography

Yes, these experiences still hurt like a motherfucker. But negative experiences are part of life. The question is not whether or not we have them but what we do with them.
Responsibility allows us to leverage our pain for empowerment, to transmute our suffering into strength, our loss into opportunity.

James wasn’t dumb though. He knew that values require more than a simple choice to believe them. You don’t just wake up one day and decide, “I’m a happy successful person!” and become it. Values must be cultivated, consciously tried and tested and steeled by experience. Values are worthless if they don’t contain some sort of real-world manifestation, some tangible benefit in the form of positive experience.

We don’t always control what happens to us. But we always control a) how we interpret what happens to us, and b) how we respond to what happens to us. Therefore, whether we consciously recognize it or not, we are always responsible for our experiences. Choosing to not consciously interpret events in our lives is still an interpretation of the events of our lives. Choosing to not respond to the events in our lives is still a response to the events of our lives.

Whether we like it or not, we are always taking an active role in what is occurring with ourselves. We are always interpreting the meaning of every moment and every occurrence. We are always creating values of ourselves and others. And we are always choosing our actions based on those values. Always. Whether we realize it or not, we arealready choosing our actions. We are already responsible for our negative experiences. We just aren’t always conscious of it.

SOURCE

12:41:00 - By Vincent 0

THE SIMPLE JOYS ARE THE MOST MEANINGFUL

By Mark Manson

The cute Brazilian girl in the cell phone store looks up at me and sputters a series of syllables in my general direction. She’s been fiddling with my phone for 15 minutes now, the phone I just bought for twice as much as I would have paid in any other country. Now she can’t get it to work. Explanation is pending, at least until I decipher the Portuguese syllable soup she continues to vomit at me.

I’m frustrated, if you didn’t notice.

“Não entendo,” I reply, for probably the twelfth time. It means “I don’t understand.” One of the only Portuguese phrases I know.

The coy smile she had given me the first few times I said it are now replaced with an aching impatience. She frowns at me, then at the phone, and then sighs. She pulls out a Post-It note, scrawls some Portuguese on it, hands it to me along with my dysfunctional new phone and slowly instructs me to go to another store in the mall and have them deal with it. She has to repeat these instructions three times before I understand them. This is the fourth cell phone store I am being sent to. Apparently there are a lot of bureaucratic procedures involved with buying a cell phone in Brazil, the details of which are obviously sailing clear over my head. And since none of the store clerks speak English, they’ve all eventually reached a breaking point, lost patience and sent me down to the next store to be somebody else’s headache.

The entire process has taken close to three hours… and it’s still not over. The mall cell phone nightmare continues.

(Although to be honest, it should have only been about an hour-and-a-half, I fell asleep in the Claro store waiting for a customer service rep to call my number. I awoke 45 minutes later to find they had proceeded to half a dozen customers beyond me. I strained to convince the rep to take me next since I had been there an hour. But my Portuguese persuasion skills weren’t very effective… OK, since we’re being honest right now, they were non-existent. I couldn’t say a thing, and therefore I hardly raised a fuss. Thus I took a new number and sat my ass back down, this time forcing myself to remain awake for the ensuing 30 minutes I would wait… again.)

I never resolved my cell phone issue that day. I finally found an old man in the mall who spoke English and was kind enough to come translate for me — yes, I walked around a Brazilian mall randomly approaching people to find someone to translate for me. It turns out that Brazil requires an identification number to activate any cell phone bought within the country, the equivalent of having a Social Security Number in the US to buy a cell phone. There’s a formal process that’s required and if you’re a foreigner and don’t work for a Brazilian company, then you’re screwed (unless you can get a friend to come in and register your phone under their name). As is probably obvious, I did not have any Brazilian friends with me. So almost four hours after arriving, I left the mall, having paid too much for a phone I still couldn’t use.

…And then got lost going home.

This was my first day in Sao Paulo. And I would be lying if I said days like this were rare. They don’t happen that often, but with enough regularity that the seething frustration, the awkward self-consciousness, the mental exhaustion, and the unavoidable sense of isolation, they’ve all become familiar to me now.

Today, internet entrepreneurship is the latest rage. Attachment-free mobile living is the new dream. And you don’t have to look much further than the 4 Hour Work Week to see the romanticization of such a post-modern lifestyle.

But as with any lifestyle, there are strengths and weaknesses to it. It’s not all a bed of roses. You sacrifice some things to gain others. And don’t worry, I’m not here to complain about every trying moment I’ve come across in two-and-a-half years of traveling. There have been far, far, far more good days than bad. And I would not take back a single life decision I’ve made.

But I do want to paint a realistic picture of what this lifestyle entails, the highs with the lows. And posit that perhaps the biggest difference between this lifestyle and a conventional one, is simply that the highs are higher and the lows lower, thus reorienting what one values spending their time on.

Because this is what you don’t hear, and that Tim Ferriss would never tell you: that day after the Brazilian cell phone debacle, after finally finding my way back to my hotel at dusk, I went and sat in my room by myself. Without TV. Without Wifi. No movies. No friends (not like I’d be able to call them anyway). Nothing to do. I went home and laid in bed for most of the evening. Physically and mentally drained and miserable.

And alone.

There’s nothing new about a bad day. We all have them. And we all have our own strategies to unravel our negative emotions. Sometimes we call up a friend and unload on them, perhaps over beers. Or we call up mom or dad and look for a little reassurance. Maybe we put on a movie with our significant other and just forget about everything for a few hours. Or maybe we hit the gym or take it out on a basketball court.

But life on the road, it’s quite often that you don’t have any friends to have beers with, you can’t call a parent and lean on them for some support, you don’t have a movie to watch or someone to curl up with, no gym membership, no basketball court. Often you have to take the brunt of your emotions alone, with nothing to distract you from them.

And it’s hard. But it makes you stronger, more mentally resilient, more centered. When you do eventually bounce back, life feels much lighter. And those joyous experiences you feel in contrast to the dark and lonely ones become that much better. In fact, I’ve found that the stark contrast between highs and lows has actually begun to redefine what those joyous moments are.

Some of my happiest memories from last year were going out and just having beers with some friends. Nothing more, nothing less. Something which I did weekly for years and years prior to this new lifestyle and that was always available to me.

It’s a bizarrely paradoxical effect on one’s emotional life: the extreme highs and novelty of experience render certain “exciting” activities to feel meaningless, and the extreme lows of isolation and frustration make many “normal” activities feel exciting and fulfilling. A Fourth of July parade looks a lot different after you’ve been to Carnaval in Brazil (twice) and stayed up three days straight partying in Ibiza. And I’ll give you a hint: it becomes really boring.

A road trip to the beach back home seems silly in comparison to living on the beach in Thailand, or taking surfing lessons in the swells of Bali. In many ways, you become jaded to your former life.

But on the other hand, the dark times of loneliness, depression, frustration, and isolation make other routine daily events of life — events which you and everyone else take for granted — that much better and more significant.

Last year, I got terribly sick in a rural town in India — possibly the last place on earth you would want to be sick. I had a scorching fever, cold chills and a headache that jackhammered the inside of my skull. I ran out of potable water at about 10PM, and the only stores in town had closed down for the night. I laid in bed through the entire night, unable to sleep due to fever and sweats. No medicine. Dehydrated and incredibly thirsty. And just to make things more interesting, a few hundred bugs swarmed into the room and were now crawling and buzzing around the walls, and occasionally on me.

Mom’s Christmas dinner tastes a lot better after an experience like that.

Which I guess is what the paradox resolves into: a devaluing of superficial pleasures and a greater appreciation for simple, authentic ones. I don’t really enjoy the presents at Christmas anymore, the fireworks at fourth of July, or even the parties on New Year’s Eve. I’ve seen bigger parties, been to more beautiful places, and already own everything I’ll ever want in this life. But unlike before, I appreciate every day spent with those who mean a lot to me. A quiet beer on a patio. Watching a basketball game together. Going to a birthday party or a barbecue. These are the events I look forward to now and get excited about, days and weeks ahead of time… And that’s probably the way it should be.

12:28:00 - By Vincent 0