What Do You Live For?

 

When we were children, we gathered with friends because being together was itself the point of life. We built forts that served no purpose. We rode bikes with no destination. We spent entire afternoons creating things that nobody would ever buy. We weren't wasting time. We were living. Somehow, somewhere along the way, we decided that enjoyment had to justify itself. Every hobby has to become a side hustle, every talent a business opportunity, every spare moment an investment in some future version of ourselves.

Look at the average adult's life. They spend forty or fifty hours each week earning enough money to support a house that requires constant maintenance, filled with possessions that require constant upkeep, all so they can have a place to come home to after working too much to enjoy it. Weekends become dedicated to mowing lawns, repairing things, cleaning rooms nobody uses, shopping for things they didn't know they needed, and preparing for another week of doing it all over again. Ask people whether they enjoy this rhythm and most will laugh. They don't. They endure it because they believe it's simply what adulthood is.

Who decided this? I want to speak with adulthood management!

Why do five close friends need five houses, five lawns, five sets of tools, five guest bedrooms, five washing machines, five lawn mowers, and five people spending Saturday doing exactly the same chores on five different properties? We talk endlessly about being busy while designing our lives to maximize the amount of work each individual has to perform. We call it independence, but independence from what? Enjoying life?

Imagine instead that the purpose of life wasn't to accumulate things but to maximize enjoyment. Isn't this the obvious truth? Instead of asking how quickly we can afford our own place, we should ask who we actually enjoy living with. Instead of asking how to own everything ourselves, we should ask what makes sense to share. Instead of trying to minimize our dependence on other people, we begin seeing trusted people as one of life's greatest assets rather than one of life's greatest risks.

I'm not talking about surrendering our individuality. I'm talking about reclaiming community. Somehow we've come to believe that growing up means becoming increasingly isolated. We leave our families, move away from our friends, build our own little kingdoms, and then schedule appointments weeks in advance just to spend a few hours with the people who make us laugh. We've accepted this as normal despite the fact that almost everyone complains about feeling lonely and friends become nearly impossible to come by.

What if our friends were more than occasional visitors? What if they were our teammates? What if one person loved cooking, another enjoyed gardening, another fixing things, another teaching children, another creating art, and everyone benefited because everyone contributed in different ways? What if creating together became more important than consuming separately or making money? What if our friend's latest project wasn't something we politely acknowledged before changing the subject, but something we were genuinely excited to help bring into existence with them because their joy added to our own?

I know the common objections. What if someone doesn't contribute? What if people argue? What if someone wants to leave? Of course those things will happen. Every way of living has problems. Marriage has problems. Businesses have problems. Families have problems. Living alone has problems. We don't reject those ideas because they have difficulties. We work through them because we believe the goal is worth pursuing. 

The real obstacle here isn't logistics, but imagination. We have become so accustomed to organizing our lives around ownership, privacy, and individual success that many people cannot picture another way to live. They immediately begin searching for reasons it won't work instead of asking how it could. That's what we've trained ourselves to do. We defend the familiar, even when the familiar leaves us exhausted.

Maybe we've been asking the wrong question all along. Instead of asking how to make our current lives slightly less stressful, perhaps we should be asking what kind of life is actually worth building. One where we own more, or one where we laugh more? One where we protect our independence, or one where we deepen our relationships? One where every person carries the full burden alone, or one where the burdens are lighter because they're shared?

Like Twenty One Pilots' song Stressed Out, we all love the idea of going back to our childhood where we were more carefree. I don't think it's because we miss being children—I think it's because we long for a time when life revolved around enjoyment instead of obligation. We absolutely miss belonging and simply being. We miss having people around to pick up a random game, go for impromtu walk or bike ride, to check out what we can do as we attempt some insane feet just for kicks. We miss creating things simply because we want to. We miss waking up excited about the day instead of relieved that it's Friday. Kids hated going to sleep because the day was so full of wonder and opportunity. And now? We can't wait to sleep and end another exhausting day of self-induced obligations to manage our things while our lives wilt away.

We've been chasing the wrong dream. We don't need bigger houses. We need fuller lives. We don't need more ownership. We need togetherness. We don't need more money before we can start living. Laughter is free. Gratitude is free. Deep discussions, walks, and friendly competition is free. We've traded life for collecting the tools of life rather than actually living it. We've traded the main quest in a video game for running the dailies over and over so that we can buy a sword we'll never use. We stand around proud in the town square as our armor and sword flashes and glows while everyone looks in awe to do the same. Then we each stand separately wondering if the oohs and ahhs were even worth it. They were not. It's about the story on the way, not the achievement at the end. The end is the same for everyone and the only thing that matters is how much we enjoyed it on the way. Let's stop pretending that money will solve our problems and that accumulation is wealth. If we learn to prioritize and share, we won't be too busy to live.

Read Your Mind is Made of Voices for free to begin your journey toward new ways of thinking.

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Look Within to Change World

 

Mahatma Gandhi is often attributed as saying we ought to be the change we wish to see in the world. Michael Jackson wrote a song about starting with the man in the mirror. These concepts have been around for ages. On the surface, they sound like simple lessons that tell us to focus on ourselves, but the truth is far more profound. These aren't messages of changing one person at a time nor are they messages of personal responsibility. They are saying something simpler: Look within to change the world.

There is a deeper truth at play: when we align with certain ways of being, it literally radiates around us and changes our bubbles of experience. Our lives will literally change around us as if by magic. In fact, this is the teaching Mahatma Gandhi actually wrote. The above attribution was more of a response to his teaching than the teaching itself and it lost its power in the conversion. What Gandhi taught was, "As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him." Science has plenty to offer in the ways of explaining this phenomenon, but I also have no problem claiming that science is describing fundamental spiritual principles. Emotional transference or vibrational energy fields is beyond the point. The fact is, we can and do radiate moods or energy that others pick up on and reflect back to us. It's quiet, it's subtle, but it's profound.

Looking within is not simply about improving ourselves. It's about learning to live in such a way that we are truly free and our expression naturally changes the expression of those around us without even trying. We can be decent people while lacking this energetic expression. This isn't about becoming a "better" person. This is about finding ourselves so deeply that we can't help but exude a force around others that helps them find themselves as well. The phenomenon is real. 

Have you ever been near a person who saps the energy out of the room? Someone you dread being around? Someone who takes the joy out of everything? Or how about the person that lights up the room? They make things far more tolerable. They make things fun. These are real things and they can be learned. You can be that depressed or anxious person who brings everyone down or you can be that spark of light that people feel safe beside. This energy you give off is far more important than any skill you may possess as it overrides those skills both in ability and in perception of value. Everyone has the option to choose—the trick is simply learning and growing in that choice. And it's easier than you might imagine.

It all starts with a spark of curiosity and a willingness to try. Looking within isn't about being better for others, it's about being entirely comfortable within our own skin. Don't think in terms of doing more—it's about being more by doing less. Less worry, less strife, less control, and more passive things like appreciation, wonder, and joy. One can work the soup kitchens all day and give everything to the homeless while entirely failing at looking within and becoming this beacon. It's easy and it's freeing—how else would we radiate if it were hard or miserable?

To investigate further—entirely free—begin with Your Mind is Made of Voices and learn to control the stories which control our alignment. 

The Greatest Lie Isn't Spoken

 

The greatest lie ever told isn't spoken—it's believed. It's believed so strongly that many will scoff upon revealing it and roll their eyes. And yet, the lie is the single greatest source of misery in the world. The lie is so powerful that mere comprehension of its deception is impossible for those who believe it. The words used to reveal it are so filled with false expectation and misunderstanding that the rejection of the strawman is valid, but the truth remains hidden and entirely unexplored. If your life is in shambles, no doubt this is why. 

Stick with me as I explain. The lie is the same but comes in a few forms: emotions are weak, love is a farce, or spiritual growth is for fools. This is not a call to religion. This is a call to recognize the power that exists in a particular way of living that is so foreign to the average person that they cannot comprehend until they've actually tried it. The words have been loaded making comprehension challenging. It takes diligence to unpack what it means before one can truly choose to reject or accept it as a possible truth. And even after accepting it, one must actually give it a try before they can truly understand. But the lies are so ingrained, believed, and lived, that one can hardly take the plunge. Emotion, love, and spirituality seem foolish to all but hippies and a religious few. And those who claim the mantle often give it a bad name. It gets rejected before it's even understood, let alone tried when it is.

The fact is, psychology has been showing the way all along, but the word rarely gets out. The philosophies have been around for ages but they're buried by the rubble of time and the fears of the blind. Love and even faith are indeed the way, but we don't know what those mean or even comprehend the way to what. 

To begin to understand, consider what can possibly ail us more than our own minds. Apart from physical harm, our consternation is almost always made entirely from fear. We worry about our jobs—what would happen if we lost them? We worry about perception—what will they think of us if we say or do X? We worry about politics, the economy, and the downfall of our world. How much of this suffering are we experiencing as we sit on our bums staring at our pocket computers in perfect capacity for relaxation and safety? We worry about all these things that are not at our doorstep and which we often have little to no control over. And for what? 

Will popping our veins somehow prevent us from losing our jobs? Will our anger somehow cure the world? If Betsy down the street thinks we're a horrible person, is it aided by our anger, defensiveness, and retribution? Of course not. But we think our reactions are just, we think they're necessary, we think these reactions are just the way things are. But why? Because we've never stopped to question our default position that spiritual growth is for fools and love is weak. 

Spirit can be understood scientifically just as much as it can be understood spiritually. It does not require religion nor does it require a concept of God. It doesn't require ghosts or even spirits. Those things can certainly aid the efforts of growth, but it's ultimately about our internal state of affairs. Our spirit can be understood as our mindset—our emotional mode of operation—our mood. A depressed person is a depressed spirit. A happy person is a happy spirit. A spirit of gratitude is a grateful spirit. When we come to grips with the reality that we are selecting lower moods by our unwillingness to grow spiritually and thereby see the world through a greater lens, we can finally begin our ascent to happiness. Choosing between low and high moods is the very growth of spirit.

When we realize that the vast majority of our suffering comes solely from our own fear, we can begin to reduce our suffering through the ascension of our spirit. This isn't weak. It is the single most important aspect of our lives. It is the one and only thing that has the potential to make us happy. And a spirit of love is the one and only source of actual joy. To deny that growth, and to deny love as weak, is to deny the only thing that could ever make us happy: our own mindset. We have the power to make anything miserable and we have the power to make anything joyful. 

All that remains is "faith" that this is so, and "faith" to take the charge and grow out of our self-made holes of despair. This faith can be in science and psychology, it could be in a God to guide us, or it can be in the mechanics of quantum fields and multi-world string theory. The faith can also be in the simplicity of logic that fear won't help so we'll simply not utilize it. Faith and Love are indeed the answer to our ultimate joy and the lie would have many of us turn our heads in disgust or misunderstand the goal entirely.

When we learn to not simply stop and smell the roses, but to recognize and embody that it's only ever been about the roses, we can begin to understand. We hear truth, but we can't articulate it in our minds how we can abide by it. "The joy is in the journey, not the destination." We often know this, but knowing is not the point—living it is. We can't live it until we release fear and embrace the strength that is found in our pursuit of love. The world may smirk, but only because they haven't understood. It cannot be described in words and it must be found through seeking it out and tasting of it directly. If you're not living your best life, it starts with the stories we tell ourselves and these stories often ignore or outright reject the very things that will bring us joy.

This article is one small piece of a much larger conversation. If you'd like to explore these ideas more thoroughly, Your Mind is Made of Voices is a free e-book available at flow-restoration.com

Faith Has Nothing to Do with Religion

 

When we think of faith, we often think of faith "in God," and this raises a lot of concerns depending on how one thinks of God. Everyone has a preconceived idea of what God is and they accept or reject the notion and so accept or reject faith entirely. But faith has an important role to play since we don't know every facet of reality. How can we do anything at all without some amount of faith that it will be a worthwhile activity in some fashion? Selecting a career is an act of faith. We can research all we want about how much money we might make and perhaps have an idea that we like the work, but an actual location, the actual people and culture, the successes we'll have, the economy, whether or not we'll enjoy it in 10 years, and so much more are entirely unpredictable. We get our degrees and accept our job offers with an extraordinary amount of faith.

When we are children, we only have faith to work on. We cannot do much of anything for ourselves. We must trust that our parents will take care of us, that the schools will teach us effectively to survive in the world, that our bus drivers won't kill us on the way and so on. Faith is an integral part of life from childhood. Most children don't even consider any of these things. Faith guides them—or rather, they are not hindered by fear in their lack of faith. In such a way, faith can be a lack of something just as much as it can be an activity. One can simply refrain from considering all the fearful what-if scenarios, or one can consider them, make calculated decisions where possible, and shrug at the rest, "Whatever happens, I'll work through it!" Both of these scenarios are simply a lack of fear. Faith, then, is the opposite of fear. Fear provides no value whatsoever while faith is the only worthwhile direction.

Now, yes, I do hear the complaints that fear has merit. And to that, I say, "Ha!" and "No, it doesn't." There is a significant difference between shaking in one's boots at the unknown and simply making calculated decisions without fear. Fear only ever makes things worse. There is not a single instance where fear will make us perform better or wiser. Adrenaline, sure, but not fear. Adrenaline can be had without fear. Being startled is also not the same thing as fear. Fear is its own beast. It is the worry, the consternation, and the shutdown of mind and body. It delays our ability to think and it overemphasizes threats. The only time fear could appear useful is when one mistakes coincidence for causation. Acting in fear is never the best course of action.

Now, let's consider faith for a moment before we get too crazy. In the same way that it is not fear that prevents us jumping off a cliff without a parachute, it is not faith to make such a leap. This is simply a stupid thing to do and has nothing to do with faith or fear. Faith is knowing that whatever happens, we will keep our wits about us and do the best with what we've got. Faith is believing that things are possible when we dream they are possible within the constraints of our current understanding. Faith is knowing that if we get moving toward something, we can shift as new information comes rather than getting stuck in analysis paralysis attempting to solve every last problem before anything ever arises. Faith is knowing that we cannot account for absolutely every eventuality and at some point we just need to move. Faith is critical to life and critical to our happiness. Faith is what enables growth to occur whereas fear will keep us stuck. Faith is what enables success where fear keeps us away from action. 

We can only succeed at goals we actually have faith are achievable. Lacking the faith that something is achievable is a sure-fire way to thwart our efforts. This is known psychologically, scientifically, practically, emotionally, and spiritually. We must believe. We must have faith. As to one's God... the value is entirely dependent on their definition. 

A God of wrath who instills fear is not a God I would put faith in for the exact reasons stated above. It is also not faith, per se, but belief. I can believe unicorns exist, but that is not putting my faith in them. Faith has expectations of action. So we cannot have faith in any God beyond what we're expecting such a God to do. A God of love who protects us and directs us is a great thing to put faith in for as much as this leads us to reduce fear. Faith in a God who will let us jump off cliffs, however, is perhaps not a great one to bank on. But one who might protect us if we stumble off a cliff when acting genuinely and authentically? Faith in such a God is a means to remove the fear of pursuing our dreams. Whether or not any of these Gods is real is not the purpose of this article—faith is itself the goal.

All new inventions and bright ideas start with faith that it can be done. Faith is the only reasonable choice. It has nothing to do with religion which can exist without faith. It has nothing to do with belief in the existence of God which can be done without faith. Faith is walking forward with the absence of fear.

To learn more how to apply this knowledge, read Your Mind is Made of Voices or visit us at flow-restoration.com/reflections.html

Your Stories Might Cut You

 

The greatest part of happiness—or misery—is found in the stories we tell ourselves. Stories we don't even realize we're telling. Stories that have been passed down through culture, upbringing, television, and fear. Stories that run as an operating system but secretly eat us away inside. Let's take a look at these stories from an example in my past.

I purchased some shirts from a company called Breeze. I bought an XL because they said they fit slim. When I received the shirts, they were far too small still. I contacted the company while being struck by the fact that I needed to request XXL. In the good ol' US of A, I wear a Large. They informed me that they'd have to charge me $7.95 per shirt to replace them.

I had a few stories running in the background at this time. One story was regarding the silliness of using these size labels. Another story was in regard to how much larger Americans are than some Asian countries where the shirts were no doubt originating from. I told myself a story regarding how they ought to run their business while in America. I ran a side-story regarding how they might be doing this intentionally to get more money out of us. In the end, I landed on the story that I should have simply checked the size chart given that I knew these other facts regarding sizes and other countries. It was also my error that I didn't know my own size when looking at a size chart which is another story regarding men, size labels, and perhaps the US. Either way, I sucked it up and paid the fee. This wasn't terribly upsetting to me as I owned the error myself. 

Fast forward a year, and I purchased another 6 shirts from this company. I selected the same size I did as before since I now knew what size I needed from them. When I received my shirts, however, they were much larger than before. They changed their labeling and provided no warning that they did so. Surely, I told myself, they would own this error—how was I to know that I wouldn't be receiving the exact same size and dimensions once I already know the size that worked for me?

They did not own the mistake and tried to charge me yet again: $47.70 this time. I remained polite and I expected them to eventually understand how they created the conditions for this situation and that I was not to blame. But they never did. They offered 50% off the fee, but that was still an extra $23.85 that "I should not have to pay." Or so the story was told to me in my mind. Where does this story come from? Who made this rule? Why is this my assumption?

The story that I should not have to pay for someone else's error is rooted in a story of fairness. And yet, we all know the world isn't fair. It's not going to be fair. Sometimes we will indeed have to pay for someone else's errors. For some reason, this is hard to swallow. Like a child, our mind throws a little tantrum. Sometimes this tantrum works to our perceived advantage and sometimes it does not, but it always works to our actual disadvantage despite the perception.

If the story I tell myself is simply that of "They're not going to budge and this is the best I'm going to get," and I go no further, the decision is clear: accept the offer and get on with my day. But this is not what happens. We continue to hold the story of fairness. Take them to the BBB, demand a manager, threaten a lawsuit, or threaten to never return. How dare they? And what good does any of this do me? It brings down my mood, my flow, my vibration—whatever word you wish to use. It puts me in a frame of mind of injustice, disappointment, anger, and frustration. Operating from this tone is not great for me. And all for what? For a possibility at $25? To "teach them a lesson"? Do I need to teach them a lesson? Do I really need that $25? We underestimate the power of remaining at a higher tone of being. Retaining our peace is far more valuable than we realize as it permeates through the rest of our activities. This effect is much larger than it appears on the surface. It compounds and reflects in unexpected ways.

Now, I could have still fought the good fight if I knew how to keep my expectations out of it and maintain my peace, but this is rarely feasible unless we're a master at swimming in our mood currents. And even if I could, it would still have taken my time and effort. What truly matters here? Am I going to save the day by inconveniencing one "corrupt" company? Not really. I could take it to the extreme and assume that if everyone did it, it will show these companies what's up, but then I'm telling myself a story that everyone should rise up and punitively punish greedy corporations. 

One could run with story of the lone shirt-buyer taking on the greedy company, but this story is based upon yet another—that punishing greedy corporations is valuable. To explain that story would require another article. In fact, it requires a book—or even a few thousand variants of books. But if you'd like to know more, you can start with Your Mind is Made of Voices. Comprehending the voices in our minds and just how impactful these stories can be to the very world we experience is paramount to our own happiness and even in shaping the world around us. The book is free, but the lessons are invaluable.

For more Reflections, go to flow-restoration.com/reflections.html

Are You Optimizing for Happiness? Or Something Else?

 

Humans have a knack for keeping themselves busy. We have so many things we must do: family events, work, social groups, work, housework, routines, and even work. We do many of these things out of obligation rather than selectively for enjoyment. As we do these things out of obligation, we tend to maintain that "obligation energy." We know these activities as requirements and not as play, and this withers our stores of energy and enjoyment.

We need to take a step back and truly analyze why we do the things we do—especially for work. In the west, our culture has greatly shifted toward career and income as main focuses of attention. We generally choose our career for the sake of the income. But why? We intuitively understand that money is good to have, but most of us stop our analysis right there. We must work. We must make money. Money equals survival and survival seems to be the goal. And if we have more money, we survive even harder?

Obviously we wish to do more than simply survive and we intuit that we'd like to enjoy our lives as well. Money will enable us to enjoy our lives, so we simply seek more money expecting that it will enable more enjoyment here and there. Unfortunately, we're optimizing for money rather than optimizing for enjoyable survival and that quest for money often undermines the actual enjoyment we're able to incur. There are diminishing returns in our quest for more money.

Life is a game of balance. We have so much energy to put toward things every day. We can sacrifice some energy each day for things that enable us to use that energy in more preferred ways later. But we rarely stop to consider the ratio of our sacrifices to enjoyment. If we could have twice as much enjoyment over sacrifice, is that not preferred to twice as much sacrifice over enjoyment? Surely, it is. And yet, we optimize for money rather than for enjoyment. Heck, most of us don't even realize what we prefer to begin with. We're so busy optimizing for money that we don't have time to consider what we truly want. We just assume that eventually we'll have just the right amount of money to finally make us happy.

Unfortunately, as we all should already know, money in and of itself does not make us happy. But if we're so busy chasing money, we have little time to consider what does—and yet, this is the most important aspect of life. If we found that we could be happy fishing all day, then how much money do we truly need? We need just enough to live somewhere, eat, and buy fishing gear. That's not a lot. We could move somewhere warm and live in a tent year round and maybe sell a fish or two every day to pay for tent repairs and fishing gear replacements. 

Granted, most people would expect to want more than fishing for the rest of their lives. Some people like playing video games, watching movies, traveling, creating, or any wide range of activities. But the question is, do you even know what you want? A bigger house and a new car aren't really the things that will make us happy. Things never do. Things are very passive. It's the activities that we enjoy and that we should be considering. Do we enjoy performing perpetual maintenance on a house? If not, it might not be worth buying a larger house. We can enjoy the status we feel from a larger house, but are we going to walk around all day basking in our status? Probably not. If we are truly able to bask in our larger house and enjoy it intentionally every day, then maybe it's a good choice to pursue, but if in that pursuit we lose the time, energy, and frame of mind to enjoy it, then once again it is a poor tradeoff.

In the end, it is activity that has the opportunity to bring us joy—even if that activity is staring out a window at the trees while sipping coffee. Mindfulness is they key to actually experiencing the joys of our activities. However, we often fail to do this. If we're lost in thought wrestling with ideas or problems, whatever activity we are performing is lost to the void. We don't get the return on investment beyond what the activity itself produces. If the activity is sipping coffee, then we gained no joy and simply obtained a fuller bladder and more jitter. If we look at the coffee, feel the coffee, smell the coffee, smile at the birds, sit in wonder, breathe, and sigh intentionally, then the activity truly brought us joy and restoration. Mindfulness is key to actual enjoyment. Anything else is yet more drainage.

So what activities can we be mindful of that bring us joy? And how much money do we truly need to obtain those things? How much variation do we need? How often? If we truly start to optimize for these things, we may find that we don't need to strive any further. How amazing would it be to drop half our workload because we realize we don't actually need more money? Not only do we drop a loss of energy, we can utilize that for something that brings us energy—the return is twice as much as what we dropped.

There is yet another secret to using mindfulness for happiness: it can apply to any activity whatsoever. This takes skill, but one can be mindful of the wonders of the universe around them while picking up dog poop or filling in a spreadsheet at their desk. If we're just starting off, we may not be so great at finding those opportunities, but if we can manage to be mindful without focusing on negativity or fear, anything and everything can become a source of joy. 

In the end, there is only one thing that matters: being in a mental state which is agreeable to us. And this is so extremely dependent on ourselves and how we view the world and our activities, that it is hardly worth considering any external factors whatsoever. Apart from literal abuse of others, we hold the keys in our own hands and minds—we simply need to train our minds and focus on our actual objective to align our thoughts with what brings us joy.

For more, check out www.flow-restoration.com/Reflections.html