Reality Laughs

Happy is action. Happy is doing. The journey is the destination.

Life is 10,000,000 micro choices, one after another.

How am I going to choose a career, make a living, find a mate, raise a family?

It’s ridiculous to think you can make some sort of central planner’s five year plan for yourself. It’s daily, hourly choices. One at a time.

Find a North Star. Keep walking toward it, around obstacles, getting lost then back on course again.

What’s a North Star? Look for what people have valued since antiquity.

What am I living for? The Mark-Almond Band answers that question, if you listen carefully to the song.

Be a dad. That’s a good start. it’s been done before. That should be a good enough signal to you that it is a worthwhile path.

That song is a song of despair, but that’s wrong.

Why am I living, why am I giving all my life

To bring up a family, children, and wife

Listen my friend, its been done before

What am I living for?

There is no “living for”. That’s the ego talking. And the fact that it has been done before tells you that it is worthwhile for you. Ask a random dad whether being a parent is good. Odds are you will get a honest answer.

This dawned on me.

Writing stuff here is a way of coaching myself.

Self exhorting self to action.

Self reminding self of insights, quickly written down before The Forgetter vanishes a lesson learned.

Note: not, by the way, self revealing self to self. Revelations about self can only come from outside of self. A catalyst of some kind is required, which may be from a book, a person, etc.

If I am open-minded and willing to accept truth, the catalyst will lead me to see who I am, or what I think. And then I can see who I am and make a change.

It’s hard to be open-minded. Willing? That’s easier. Even if I’m stuck, I can get unstuck if I am willing.

This happened today. A life insurance salesman wants to network. He didn’t present himself as a life insurance salesman, of course. They never do.

I talked to him. He set up a call with someone he knows that would be a good contact for me. Sure. I talk to that person.

His process is to be an Introducer. Introduce me to all sorts of people. He is a “shake the box and see what happens” marketer.

He has been on me to do more schmooze calls. I have put him off. Finally I sent him an email asking if he is real and what he is doing. And why. And followed up with a call.

I asked him whether we had a definite purpose with the schmoozing, and explained the four types of luck and how I don’t want to play in type 1 or 2.

His response was to say he’s “not a throw spaghetti against the wall and see what sticks” person. And then he proceeded to throw spaghetti against my wall to see if any of it stuck.

He is what he said he isn’t. He did what he said he never does.

This is the same as someone who loudly proclaims his own honesty. That is a clue that you are dealing with a dishonest person. An honest person just is.

How do you keep yourself open to serendipity from the universe without burning all of your time on bullshit activities with bullshit people? I confess I don’t have an answer.

Maybe “no meetings unless transactional”? Push all meeting requests to calls? And push calls to emails, emails to text messages, and text messages to nothing?

Anyway, that’s a business question.

Live your life by seeking what is real.

As soon as someone self-declares a personal attribute, assume the opposite is real unless a string of actions over time confirms the truth of the assertion.

And if you smell someone playing the type 1 or type 2 luck game, know that they don’t understand reality the same way I do.

Help them to see what you see, if you can, but if that doesn’t work stay away from them. Some people don’t have eyes to see, ears to hear.

Isn’t it enough to know the true nature of good and bad, and the proper bounds of our desires and aversions, and also of our motives to act or not to act, and to make use of these as rules to order the conduct of our life, and renounce those things that are beyond us?

Fragments, 1

In other words, if you want to get smart, don’t try to figure out what’s going on in the world outside you. Instead, work on the things you control. Motives. Desires. Aversions.

If you know right and wrong and you know your motives, desires, and attitudes, then you will know what to do.

Anything beyond that is out of your control.

A man’s got to know his limitations is one way to look at what he’s telling you to do.

Know right and wrong? This is the eternal challenge. Be content to stumble, confused, for the rest of your life. You’re not going to achieve a goal here (“I know the difference between good and evil and you don’t, so let me enlighten you”). Here, the journey really is the destination.

It’s easy to see someone who has a clear sense of right and wrong. They will stumble frequently. Their idea of right and wrong may evolve over time. But their actions tell you everything you need to know about their principles.

And their principles are, you will find, simple and pragmatic. Don’t ask them. Watch their actions. You will quickly see what you need to see.

This is the recipe: Know your limitations and have simple guiding principles.

Easy to say. Now let’s go do it, just until lunchtime. You can do this for a few hours to the best of your ability.

The same brain that creates the problem is unlikely to solve the problem. This is why we all need outside help. Books. People. Etc.

On the other hand, the Kingdom of God is within. You already know the answer.

Puzzle on that paradox.

I did it today.

Uneventful.

Have hard boundaries.

This works for food intake. I have a hard rule of “no calories until noon”. It’s easy to resist temptation . . . to have a banana, a protein bar, cream in my coffee, whatever.

This has been my rule for several months now, and except for days when I travel, it has worked well. (When I have to be at the airport at 5:00 a.m., well, I am going to adapt to external conditions. Then I get back on track the next day.)

This helps with weight maintenance, but the real benefit is not physical.

I have proven to myself that I can stick to a self-imposed rule, not cheat, and not make excuses for myself. Now I can bring this strength to bear on other things I want to change.

That’s the payoff. I am a man who can live according to his principles, in small ways and big.

I did this with Diet Coke. I used to drink about 4 or 5 a day at work. Now, none. The refrigerator at work is stocked with Pellegrino. We have one of those nice water things with a five gallon bottle on top that gives chilled tasty water. I drink coffee (black) and water at work, nothing else. The rule was simple to understand, and it worked. This change happened in about 9 months ago. There are still Diet Cokes in the refrigerator. I don’t drink them.

Next frontier: the snack cabinet at work. The easy rule here is “No bags of chips. Anything else is fine.” I don’t like chips all that much, but I was gobbling down three or four bags a day. Because the rule is easy to follow and I have plenty of other options if I want a snack, I have succeeded here, and will continue to succeed. The Cheetos are safe.

What’s the action plan here?

• Pick a simple, clear rule. “No calories before noon” is easy to understand. It’s 11:59 a.m. or it’s 12:01 p.m. There’s no room for me to debate myself and bullshit myself into why it’s OK to eat before noon. The clock tells me, and I obey.
• Pick something that is absurdly easy to achieve. I can resist Cheetos because I don’t like them all that much. I give myself permission to have those candy bars that masquerade as healthy protein bars, even though I know it’s bullshit and they aren’t healthy at all.
• Ideally, pick a habit that removes something from your life. Via negativa. Removing Cheetos from my life is easier than adding kale to my life. I would have to shop for kale, prepare it, learn to (ugh) like it, etc. Trying to install a kale habit will not work (at the moment at least).
• Make it easy to get it done fast. I’m on The Tens for exercise right now. It only takes a few minutes. Ten pull-ups, ten push-ups, ten squats (usually holding something that weighs about 10 pounds). I abandoned the 10,000 steps a day for now. That’s it. I feel it a tiny bit of oomph in my muscles, and I feel like a warrior in my mind.
• See the habit build, day by day. Congratulate yourself on it frequently. Multiple times a day. (I am congratulating myself on my achievements right now).
• Resist adding new habits too frequently. That makes your life busier, more complicated. There are more things to remember, more things to do.

Hat-tip to Sebastian Marshall for the idea of hard boundaries. Hat-tip to Tiny Habits for the idea of starting small, simple, and achievable.