101 Essays

Subconscious behaviors that are keeping you from having the life you want

You extrapolate the present moment because you believe that success is somewhere you "arrive," so you are constantly trying to take a snapshot of your life and see if you can be happy yet. You convince yourself that any given moment is representative of your life as a whole.
You think that to change your beliefs, you have to adopt a new line of thinking, rather than seek experiences that make that thinking self-evident. A belief is what you know to be true because experience has made it evident to you. If you want to change your life, change your beliefs. If you want to change your beliefs, go out and have experiences that make them real to you. Not the opposite way around.
You think your past defines you, and worse, you think that it is an unchangeable reality, when really, your perception of it changes as you do. Because experience is always multi-dimensional, there are a variety of memories, experiences, feelings, "gists" you can choose to recall...and what you choose is indicative of your present state of mind.

The psychology of Daily Routine

The most successful people in history---the ones many refer to as "geniuses" in their fields, masters of their crafts---had one thing in common, other than talent: Most adhered to rigid (and specific) routines.

Your habits create your mood, and your mood is a filter through which you experience your life.

It would make sense to assume that moods are created from thoughts or stressors, things that crop up during the day and knock us off-kilter. This isn't so. Psychologist Robert Thayer argues that moods are created by our habitualness: how much we sleep, how frequently we move, what we think, how often we think it, and so on. The point is that it's not one thought that throws us into a tizzy: It's the pattern of continually experiencing that thought that compounds its effect and makes it seem valid.

You must learn to let your conscious decisions dictate your day---not your fears or impulses.

Things emotionally intelligent people do not do

They don't assume that the way they think and feel about a situation is the way it is in reality, nor how it will turn out in the end. They recognize their emotions as responses, not accurate gauges, of what's going on. They accept that those responses may have to do with their own issues, rather than the objective situation at hand.
They don\'t complain (too much). When people complain, it's because they want others to recognize and validate their pain; even if it's not the real problem, it's still a form of affirmation.
They can stand up for themselves without being aggressive or defensive. Though it sounds like a contradiction, aggressiveness or defensiveness is indicative of insecurity. Calmly standing up for oneself is indicative of inner resolve and self-esteem.
They are not stuck in the illusion that "happiness" is a sustained state of joy. They allow themselves time to process everything they are experiencing. They allow themselves to exist in their natural state. In that non-resistance, they find contentment.
They recognize that through social conditioning and the eternal human monkey-mind, they can often be swayed by thoughts, beliefs, and mindsets that were never theirs in the first place. To combat this, they take inventory of their beliefs, reflect on their origins, and decide whether or not that frame of reference truly serves them.

Signs of a socially intelligent person

They do not confuse their opinion of someone for being a fact about them.
They speak calmly, simply, concisely, and mindfully. They focus on communicating something, not just receiving a response from others.
They validate other people's feelings. Everyone's feelings deserve to be seen and acknowledged and respected. Validating someone's emotions is validating who they really are, even if you would respond differently. So in other words, it is validating who someone is, even if they are different than you.
They know that not everybody wants to communicate, learn, grow or connect---and so they do not try to force them
While listening to other people speak, they focus on what is being said, not how they are going to respond.
If you want more recognition, recognize others. If you want love, be more loving. Give exactly what you want to get.
Whatever you are angered by is what you aren't willing to see in yourself.

What the feelings you most suppress are trying to tell you

Real emotional maturity is how thoroughly you let yourself feel anything. Everything. Whatever comes. It is simply the knowing that the worst thing that could ever happen...is just a feeling at the end of the day.
Suffering is just the refusal to accept what is.
It's not about changing how you feel. It's about listening. Not accepting what the feelings appear to mean---that's important---but really following your instincts down to what they are trying to signal. They are how you communicate with yourself.
The love you really want is your own. What you're seeking in someone else is what you aren't giving to yourself. What angers you is what you aren't accepting and healing; what gives you joy and hope is what you already have within you. Finding a relationship to be that great enhancer, to have someone to share everything with, begins with you. It's as though we were taught to "love ourselves first" without ever being told that "loving yourself" is giving yourself what you want someone else to.

The parts of you that aren\'t \"I\"

There is a concentration of energy, of heavy presentness, in your chest and throat and maybe a little in your head. It is centered. You don't feel yourself in your legs. You don't have emotions in your arms. It's at the core. In that same space coexist the organs we don't identify with and the energy we do. If we removed the latter, what would be left? What would be there? What exists when you don't?

Have you ever sat with that? Have you ever felt each part of your body and realized the parts are not "I?" Have you ever felt the presentness that is somehow livened when attached? Have you ever identified the difference between what you call yours and what you call yourself?

Breaking your upper limit and how people hold themselves back

Most people don't want to be happy, which is why they aren't. They just don't realize this is the case. Everybody has a happiness tolerance an upper limit. It is the capacity for which we allow ourselves to feel good.

People delay action once they know truth---and the interim between knowing and doing is the space where suffering thrives.

Most of the time, it's not about not knowing what to do (or not knowing who you are). It's about the resistance between what's right and what's easy, what's best in the long v. short term. We hear our instincts; we just don't listen. We're culturally addicted to procrastination, but we're also just as enamoured by deflection. By not acting immediately, we think we're creating space for the truth to shift, when we're really only creating discomfort so that we can sense it more completely (though we're suffering needlessly in the process).

You can choose to cut yourself off from feeling good so as to buffer the sense of loss and suffer from numbness, or you can have an incredible life and mourn wildly when it's over, but at least there was a means to that end.

The heart as the map and the mind as the compass. The heart will tell you what; the mind will tell you how.

Ways to not let irrational thoughts ruin your life

Realize that there are three layers of you: your identity, your shame, and your true self. Your identity is your outermost layer, it's the idea that you think other people have of you. Your shame is what's shielding you from expressing your true self, which is at your core. It is from your shame circle that irrational thoughts breed and thrive. Work on closing the gap between who the world thinks you are and who you know you are. Your mental health will change significantly.

Stop pretending you know what other people are thinking.
Dedicate your time to helping someone else. Volunteer at a homeless shelter, donate your belongings, work with kids after school. Make your life about more than just your own wants.
Stop judging other people. See everyone with dignity, with a story, with reasons for why they are how they are and why they do what they do. The more you accept other people, the more you'll accept yourself, and vice versa.
Nobody is thinking about you the way you are thinking about you. They're all thinking about themselves.

Live in the Now and don\'t seek comfort

The only way to be extraordinary depends on what I do with the ordinary.
If I had the life I wanted, what would today look like?
If I had the love I wanted, what would today look like?
Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can.
Don\'t replace "reflection" with "experience" and wonder why you feel unfulfilled.
Don\'t wait to feel motivated or inspired before you act. Losers wait to feel motivated. People who never get anything done wait to feel inspired. Motivation and inspiration are not sustaining forces. They crop up once in a while, and they're nice while they're present, but you can't expect to be able to summon them any given hour of the day. You must learn to work without them, to gather your strength from purpose, not passion.
You don't want what you want; you want what you've known. We are literally incapable of predicting an outcome that is out of the realm of what we've known previously. So rather than trying to seek "better," we seek "the best of what we've known," even if "the best" is really just the solution to a problem we didn't need to create again.
"Familiar discomfort" feels the same as "comfort." Which is why so many people are stuck in "ruts" or absolutely do not want to change even though they know it's what would be best for them.
Clarity comes from doing, not thinking about doing.

Questions that will show you who you are

What, and who, is worth suffering for?
What would you stand for if you knew that nobody would judge you?
What would you do if you knew that nobody would judge you?
Based on your daily routines, where will you be in five years? Ten? Twenty?
Whom do you admire most, and why?
What do you not want anybody else to know about you?
What are a few things you thought you would never get over while you were going through them? Why did they seem so insurmountable? How did you?
What are your greatest accomplishments so far?
What would be too good to believe if someone were to sit down and tell you what\'s coming next in your life?
Who from your past are you still trying to earn the acceptance of?
If you didn\'t have to work anymore, what would you do with your days?
What are the five most common things in your daily routine aside from the basics such as eating and sleeping?
What do you wish those five most common things were instead?
If you really believed you didn\'t have control over something, you\'d accept it as a matter of fact. What do you struggle to accept that you have \"no control\" over? What part of you makes you think or hope otherwise?
If you were to walk through your home and put your hand on every single thing you own, how many of them would make you sincerely feel happy or at peace? Why do you keep the rest?
What bothers you most about other people? What do you love most in other people? What bothers you most about yourself? What do you love most about yourself? (Dig until you see the correlation.)

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