Month: November 2015

Fear

~ tonirib ~ Leave a comment
 “I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
– Frank Herbert, Dune

Life is governed by fear. If you think your life isn’t governed by fear then you are out of touch with your reasons for doing things. Fear and love (which is partly just a fear of losing someone’s love) are the only true motivating forces in a person’s life.

Fear of failure. Fear of success. Fear of hurting someone. Fear of not being able to pay your bills. Fear of making a mistake you can’t take back, can’t fix, can’t remedy. Fear of losing your job. Fear of spending too much time in a job you hate. Fear of disappointing those around you. Fear of disappointing yourself.

Fear, in one form or another, is at the base of every decision you make. If you accept this, if you realize the truth if this statement, then you can start figuring out what fears to pay attention to and what fears to drop in the dust like the dirty rags that they actually are.

Some fears are good. You should be afraid of seriously injuring yourself. You should be afraid of going to jail.

You should not be afraid of making a mistake that won’t result in death or jail. If the consequence of your mistake is possibly being happier, even if you have less money or people judge you for it…then what are you really afraid of?

How much do you let fear of something you shouldn’t be afraid of hold you back? How much do you hesitate when making a decision because you’re putting more stock in fear of failure than in what you actually want? How often do you bite your tongue, tell a lie, or nod your head in false agreement because you’re afraid of what might happen if you speak your mind?

We are taught to be afraid. Society teaches us to be afraid of basically everything. Do you have a fear of not being attractive even though it isn’t really important? Do you have a fear of not having a job that other people consider professional or successful? Do you have a fear of being called a bitch just because you’re a woman with opinions? Congratulations, you were raised in America.

But just because you’re taught to have these fears doesn’t mean you’re forced to live with them forever. I’ll let you in on a little secret: most of these fears are total bullshit.

You can keep making excuses for letting fear rule your life or you can start to use logic, reason, and a sound understanding of what you really want to get over that fear. Next time you hesitate, next time you are trying to make a decision, ask yourself if it’s a valid fear that’s governing your actions. Can you trace the origin of that fear? Is it something that’s happened to you in the past, is it a legitimate concern, or is it maybe something that’s been drilled into your head by your family, friends, and every commercial you see on television? Are the consequences of taking a leap in a new direction really that dire?

Fear is what you let it become.

Be a Chef

~ tonirib ~ Leave a comment

“Study hard what interests you the most in the most undisciplined, irreverent and original manner possible.” – Richard Feynman

I’m going to start out this post by linking to the Wait But Why final blog on Elon Musk. It’s super long and it will take you more than an hour to read, but you should read it.

Now I’ll pretend like you read it since I’m sure most of you didn’t when you realized I was totally serious about it being very long, but I’m going to structure this post based off of it.

The main concept in there is that in the world there are chefs (people who follow their own path, question everything, constantly reevaluate themselves, aren’t afraid to speak up or change, etc.) and cooks (people who, to some extent, follow what they have been told is true). I read the entire article and I would like to think that I am a chef, and I think that if you’ve been reading this blog you might actually agree.

Here’s why:

I write in Speak Up about being unafraid to say what’s on your mind and to state what you’re actually thinking even when you may have some (unfounded) fear of something bad happening because of it.

I write in The Lost Art of Wanting about evaluating what you really want, versus what you just think you want (and maybe why you think you want it).

I write in You Are Not an Event about it being okay to fail, because even if you fail it doesn’t make you a failure, so you shouldn’t be so afraid to fail in the first place.

I write in Comparisons (and the Death of Your Happiness) about using comparisons to as a tool to figure out what you want and how to get it, instead of just thinking about what you don’t have.

I write in The Nature of Change about not being able to know everything about yourself from the beginning and the importance of constantly re-evaluating who you are what what you want and why you want something.

I could go on, but I’ll stop there.

I realized that the entire point of this blog (which has always been a little unclear to me since the beginning) is to convince other people that they can be chefs. That there is nothing special about me that allows me to quit my job, to speak up, to embrace change, to say ‘fuck it’ to the things I’ve been told will make me happy. There’s no reason why you can’t look at the world the way I do, why you can’t act upon what you really want to do, and why you can’t embrace change right now to be more of who you want to be.

Be a chef. If I haven’t convinced you yet, and Tim from Wait But Why hasn’t convinced you yet, then I guess you’ll just have to keep reading this blog in the hopes that one day I’ll convince you.

Your life is too short to spend it in autopilot.

Being Myself (or Why I’m Not Likable)

~ tonirib ~ Leave a comment

“The real problem in speech is not precise language. The problem is clear language. The desire is to have the idea clearly communicated to the other person. It is only necessary to be precise when there is some doubt as to the meaning of a phrase, and then the precision should be put in the place where the doubt exists. It is really quite impossible to say anything with absolute precision, unless that thing is so abstracted from the real world as to not represent any real thing.”
– Richard Feynman

As I start a new phase in my life again where I’m constantly meeting new people and these new people are forced to get used to my particular brand of personality, I’m reminded of something that comes up over and over again in my life: I’m not likable. Or, more precisely, I’m not very likable when you first meet me, and after spending some time with me, you’re either going to really like me or definitely not like me.

I have a very polarizing personality. I’m opinionated, I think I’m right a lot, I’m brutally honest, I have almost zero filter, and I’m vocal about all of these things. My personal experiences have taught me that many people are afraid of being wrong in front of others, but I don’t have this fear. I’m that annoying person that answers questions in class all the time because even though I’m right more times than not, I’m not always right, and that’s okay with me. If I’m wrong, I’ll just learn from it.

Sometimes I don’t like writing about myself because I’m afraid it will sound conceited or narcissistic. I’m afraid you will judge me and talk about me in an unpleasant light behind my back. So, because I’m afraid of it, I’m going to keep on facing it and write about it anyway.

I find that simply by being myself, and being honest, I alienate people. I learn quickly, which means that right now in my new school, I’m not having a lot of trouble. I’m not stressed and I’m rarely confused. And if you were a student in that class having a tough time almost every day and feeling overwhelmed, I imagine that you’d want to get together with the other students who feel like you do so you could commiserate together. Why would you want to hang out with me when I can’t complain with you? Why would you want to hang out with me at all? You’d probably (secretly) hate me just a little because you’re comparing your work to mine. And I’m not surprised about this at all, because it’s how I’ve felt towards other people at times in my life also.

I also have a tendency to want to help others understand things, and to correct people if they are wrong, and to answer questions. If someone asks me if I’ve completed something and I have, I will say yes. If they ask if it was difficult for me and it wasn’t, I’ll say that too. If they ask me for help so they can understand it also, I’ll be delighted, and I’m pretty much always say yes.

But I recognize the fact that I would have an easier time making friends if I wasn’t honest. If I pretended things were difficult, if I wasn’t so open about my knowledge, would people like me more? If I kept my mouth shut, would it be helpful to me or would I simply be denying who I really am?

If you’ve ever watched “Mean Girls” then you’ll get the dilemma. If I’m really good at math, but the cute boy in front of me totally doesn’t understand it, then I should just pretend I don’t understand it so he’ll like me more, right? Except the moral in the end is be yourself, even if that self is a super math nerd (yes, I was co-captain of my high school math team) who doesn’t make a lot of friends.

But knowing this, and knowing that being myself is the best option, doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt when I get the impression that people are out planning things and doing things that I’m not invited to. When I feel like I can’t bond with people in the same way even though I want to bond with them. Unfortunately, knowing something doesn’t usually make it easier to accept or deal with.

Furthering the issue is the inability to express this accurately. How do you get someone to understand who you are and why you act the way you do? How do you choose the right words – the most precise words – to convey your meaning to someone who has only known you for a few weeks?

How do you be yourself, while not hurting others by being yourself?