“Tell me where I’m going to die so I never
go there.” This sentence describes a superpower few people
have. It’s one I’ve only been able to exercise
10% of the time, but that 10% creates most of the positive results I get in my life. What’s the superpower? Restraint. Success, happiness, or whatever word you use
to articulate what you want, often involves what you don’t do. Also, restraint from one action can be a springboard
to a more useful one; for example, talking to listening. We live in an unrestrained world. It’s getting louder, angrier, more chaotic
and pretentious. Which is why it’s the perfect time for you
to behave in the exact opposite fashion and wield these superpowers few people have. If you’re a smart person, you might have
the tendency to want to show it off. You want people to know you’re smart. While there’s nothing wrong with displaying
your intelligence, the costs for showing it off too much are high. People don’t like being corrected. Also, they don’t want a mirror reflected
on their own inadequacy. If you’re in a work setting, follow one
of Robert Greene’s 48 laws of power — never outshine the master. Showing up your boss is a surefire way to
make the relationship contentious (even if only subtly). Showing people up in general means you lack
an important type of intelligence — social intelligence. If you had social intelligence, you’d know
that letting other people take the spotlight makes them feel important. And they’d connect that feeling of importance
with being around you. Also, paraphrasing Greene again, it’s much
more clever to resist the urge to display your cleverness: (“move in silence… let
people think you’re less intelligent than you are”). It’s difficult for me. I’m tempted to correct people when I hear
them say something incorrect. I love talking about all the things I know. But, at times, I’ll catch myself and realize
that nobody really wants to know how smart I am. They want to know how I can play a role in
their life that benefits them. It’s almost always better to understate
your intelligence than overstate it. We lie to ourselves a lot. One of the main lies we tell ourselves? We think we’re open-minded. On the whole, we’re not. You’ve cobbled together an identity based
on narratives. You tell yourself stories constantly and the
ones you repeat often become part of your personality. You’re also prone to adopt narratives based
on groups you belong to. You do this because human beings are naturally
tribal animals. The problem with this occurs when you’re
unable to even hold views that deviate from your group’s list of stances. This is what you see in the political sphere
right now — no one’s budging. If you’re able to form your own worldview
— a legitimate one should contain elements of contradictory philosophies — you’ll
have the benefit of not being a crazy person participating in mud slinging contests. It’s pretty much impossible to form an original
worldview because you have to form it by picking up established narratives. Just knowing how difficult it is to form untainted
beliefs gives you the humility to second guess your own opinions. The end goal? Be able to say that you’ve put thought into
which components of group narratives you decided to adopt. And then, stay out of the herd altogether. You’re going to have to sit on the sidelines
while everyone else bickers. Don’t even participate in the discourse. Improve your life. At the end of the day, most of what happens
in your life can be seen and shaped through the lens of your individuality. No matter what group you belong to, the experiences,
memories, and emotions you have are unique to you. And, you can only genuinely look to yourself
to reshape any of them. You want to know a great trick for letting
go of other people’s opinions? Read a book about space or watch a Youtube
video about it. Right now, I’m reading Stephen Hawking’s
A Brief History of Time. Here’s a passage from it:
“Our sun is just one of the one hundred thousand million stars that make up our galaxy
the Milky Way. The Milky Way is only one of the many galaxies
in the local group. The local group, in turn, is just one of the
thousands of groups and clusters of galaxies which form the largest known structures of
our universe.” Now think of your place in that universe. Why so preoccupied about ‘what will happen’
or ‘what others’ will think when you’re already essentially dead? Because human beings are the only known species
arrogant enough to place themselves at the center of the universe. I do it. You do it. The less it’s done, though, the freer you
are. That’s the thing about freedom — it’s
often a consequence of what you don’t do. Once you decide to stop caring so much, it’ll
allow you to do what you want. Are you going to let other people — infinitesimal
pieces of existence in the expanse of the universe — stop you from living your life
the way you want to live it? This is about taking ownership of your mind. If you don’t own your mind, someone else
or circumstance will. Owning your reactions to what happens to you,
gives you a source of power no one can corrupt. Like most of us, I get angry when someone
slights me or treats me unfairly. When situations don’t go the way I want
them to, I begin feeling sorry for myself. If I’m lucky, I catch myself and focus on
the role I played in the situation. You’ve heard this before. It’s so cliche. Why add personal responsibility to this list? Because it’s really, really hard and goes
against our nature. Also, there are times where the blame should
be placed somewhere other than on yourself, but it’s often fruitless. Sure, you might be able to convince the person
you blamed they’re wrong, but at what cost? To what degree did each of you play in the
situation? You might be able to bend the universe to
your will and make the circumstances around you better — as opposed to just being better
— but, again at what cost? In my life, at least, I’ve seen that forgoing
the blame game is a net positive 99% of the time. Does that mean I always accept responsibility
instantly? Hell no, but being able to do it even some
of the time goes a long way. Have you ever been in a conversation where
it’s clear no one is listening? Each person talks and the others are waiting
for a millisecond of silence to jump in. This entire video has been about dialing back
your tendencies. Why is that important? When you’re a little more restrained in
your actions and your thoughts, you become a better observer. When you become a better observer, you realize
that you can get further ahead by doing less. It’s not easy to put that idea together
at first — less outward activity equaling better results — but it’s true. If you let other people talk, listen to them,
and give up your need to jump into the conversation right away, everyone will love you. People love to talk. Let them. While they talk, listen. If you really listen, they’ll give you all
the information you want to know — their hopes, fears, desires, needs, likes, dislikes. Just sit there while they ‘spill the tea.’ Then, you can do little things that make them
feel like you’re a great conversationalist and someone they can trust, even if you barely
talk — repeat what they said back to them, ask them a question that makes them continue
to talk, genuinely highlight when they bring something up you have in common. You can use this technique in a real conversation
or the conversation — the zeitgeist, blogs, and social media. Don’t jump in the debate. Watch it while everyone reveals their cards. Books like Think and Grow Rich teach you to
have an ultimate desire for wealth, to get it. If you like to read about business and self-improvement
like me, you see Facebook ads on “how to start a six-figure business in real estate”
etc. Ambition can be good and necessary. It can also be poisonous. When I focus too much on results — output
— writing becomes less fun. It starts to feel like work. When I write what I think you want to watch
and start to pander because of a desire for clicks, the work suffers. Every time I do something I don’t really
want to do because I think it will help me get something I desire, I feel bad, misaligned
and incongruent. The only times I’ve ever succeeded and felt
good were bi-products of doing the work I enjoyed doing. How about you? What status games are you playing right now? What objects and circumstances are you lusting
over? Are you being controlled by a desire for the
output or the need to do the input? I have to remind myself constantly that I
can be happy with what I have this second. And, even if my life gets better outwardly,
I’ll adjust to it quickly and begin running on the hamster wheel all over again. Better to just do the things I love, right
now, and forget about the future. Imagine a society where everyone tended to
their own well-being first before shouting into the sky about the government or what’s
on the news? What if we stopped watching the news altogether? If we did that, we’d realize — while things
are nowhere near perfect — the sky isn’t falling. It isn’t. You can probably see this in your own life. The things we tend to take seriously at a
high level, for example, will we go to war with ‘x’, have little to do with what’s
going on at the ground level, otherwise known as our actual life. I stopped reading the news and going on Twitter
all the time. It’s not real life. I realized I was getting riled up over nothing. Also, even if the situations were as dire
as I thought, my tweets weren’t going to fix the situation. All the while there were plenty of things
in my own life that needed tending to. Get out of the outrage, ‘if it bleeds it
leads’, machine right now. It’s not worth your sanity. Then, even in your own life, try to stop taking
everything so seriously. Focus on your career, but don’t make your
career your life. Be prudent, save, budget, but don’t become
a worry wart. Spend time with your friends and family without
worrying much about anything beyond them. I’ve said this many times. From the perspective of the universe, you’re
dead. Clutching on the steering wheel of life gives
you the illusion you have control. You don’t, really. Just live.
