When I get worried I like to be able to say, “Well at least I did that one honest thing today,” and I feel better about it. What’s the honest thing? Any form of pure expression. It’s a thing that you can look at (or look forward to) for the day and say you did it.

Ideally we’d always be in the state of, “I’m living in this unfathomably interesting universe and I’m grateful to be here for the time (that illusion!) I’ve had so far and by golly death isn’t the worst thing that could happen to a person.” That’s the case for exactly one person I know and I’m pretty positive he’s lying about it.

So instead make the minimum of one honest thing. I wrote a completely honest letter to a friend in prison today. I’m going to eat dinner with my grandpa tonight. I hope I ask him something important.

The idea isn’t to have the feeling, “Well, I’ve done it. I’ve finished everything I felt like doing in life, I’ll just die now.” When a person gets the feeling of, “I’m done here,” they deteriorate.

The idea is to feel like today you’ve done one thing that, if you died, your favorite person in the world could find and remember you by. It doesn’t mean it should be “good”. The only measure is that it’s honest at the most basic level of You.

Some things it could be:

• poem
• letter
• a compliment to an employee
• an honest smile
• a blog post
• a hug or kiss or sex
• a run that pushed you harder than anything before
• painting
• advice
• it doesn’t matter

One thing every day. One thing you can, for the rest of the day, remember and look at the darkness with a little more courage. Maybe two tomorrow. Maybe all day by next year.

<xkdc3

<xkdc3

this is the third time i’ve used this image and i will never stop – EVER

First I got depressed. Then I went to Seattle to live with my sister, Michel. She is a yoga teacher extraordinaire and owner of BeLuminous Yoga. While I was there she gave me unlimited access to yoga, yogis, yoga-knowledge, yoga-wisdom, yoga-minded-books, and helped me decide to go meditate for 100 hours. Basically, she saved my life.

While I was there I read every book on eastern philosophy that anybody has ever written ever in the history of the eververse. These guys and gals from the 1960’s or the BCs all showed me some fascinating things about the nature of life. They convinced me they attained enlightenment and, by god, I should get some enlightenment too.

we built that city and zen and asanas (actually i think it was opium)

Then I looked around Seattle and saw everybody else trying to get the same stuff. I met one guy with buddhas in every room, one sitting on his altar ($10,000 sound system), and one on some other gizmo. Then I saw him take girl after girl to his apartment to demonstrate his zen in plastic molds. I’m convinced he tattooed Buddha’s laughing face on his wiener to really seal the deal with any yogi-ette that found peace in his pants. I don’t even know if he knew what he was doing.

or a buddha out of bieber!

When culture around you creates a Bieber out of Buddha you’re bound to bring the same kind of fever. Guys, we’re doing it wrong. I used to get after Enlightenment – it’s the final answer! Buddha sat under a tree for fourteen hours, got his, and lived happily ever after. But not really. Here are ways I have fucked up and continue to fuck up my own (my! own! obviously I’m lying here) enlightenment (except for now I try (!) not to aim anywhere and I don’t use that word much, it’s a trickster):

1. Defining Enlightenment. When you take a definition or somebody else’s story of it then you have painted a picture of something that you should be experiencing and aren’t. Then when you experience something like the picture they’ve painted you question, “Is this what they were talking about? Is this it?” and it’s not. It can’t be what they were talking about because they were talking about something that, by it’s very definition, can’t be summed up in words – only pointed at. Some of the most ‘enlightened’ (by my false picture of it) people I have met are those who haven’t read a book on eastern philosophy at all. Enlightenment is a word, clumsy like the rest, that points at a certain kind of being. Maybe it’s internal peace, maybe it’s accepting the whole, maybe it’s seeing the duality clearly, maybe it’s being completely attentive to what actually is all the time. The thing is, though, you’ll never know it until you trust yourself to see it.

We might as well talk about it though, it’s fun. Here is a stab at it by some random site I googled:

The true Definition of Enlightenment is simple, yet extremely difficult for the mind to comprehend. This is because Enlightenment itself is beyondmind.

Enlightenment is a state of perception attained once your ego has beentranscended. This state has been achieved by all of the greatest enlightened spiritual masters, mystics, yogis, and avatars of all time. The state is beyond duality and is experienced as Oneness and Allness.

Enlightenment is available to all regardless of culture or religious background. It is the realization of the Kingdom of Heaven within you and is pure bliss, joy, peace, and love.

In Buddhism, Enlightenment is also known as: Nirvana, Bodhi, and Buddha Nature.

In Christianity, it is known as: Salvation, State of Grace,
Christ-Consciousness, Divinity, and Transcendence.

In Hinduism, it is known as: Moksha, Krishna-Consciousness, Reality, and Allness.

2. Desiring Attainment. What happens when we desire enlightenment? We guarantee ourselves that we aren’t. This is often the last barrier many monks face before they have their ‘realization’. They need to work so long to get it that they forget they are working toward it at all. Viktor Frankl’s Logotherapy uses a technique called Paradoxical Intention. When we want something too bad we can get in our own way of getting it. When you are nervous for a date and are stress-sweating it is often better to focus on trying to be as nervous as you possibly can. Also, in Zen Mind Beginner’s Mind (free PDF), a sage wise wiseman proposes Instant Enlightenment. I’ll buy that all day long. It’s the idea that enlightenment comes instantly and doesn’t necessarily stay around indefinitely. You’ve been there before and you’ll be there again and you could see those moments and learn to sit in them longer.

3. Thinking It’s Attained. It’s not something you get, it’s something you are. BeLuminous teaches an extremely athletic school of yoga and so it attracts people who like to push themselves to achieve. They are the ones dominating their careers at Amazon, starting breweries, and overall just making their mothers proud. They take this to their yoga practice which simultaneously let’s them do cool looking postures quickly, injure themselves, and completely miss the internal lessons yoga has to teach. We are so used to achieving goals and running after the things that we desire. Or just stop trying. “Their is no try,” Yoda said. 

4. It’s Not Sitting All Day. Sitting meditation does a lot of cool things to make the mind a better place. However, there were groups of monks who were some of the best warriors in the world. It’s well known that many Samurais claimed to have attained (ah!) enlightenment. Tantric traditions claim enlightenment requires the energy that is only available in sexual contact with the opposite sex. What does this tell me? People find their versions of enlightenment doing all sorts of stuff. If you can find it with your sword penetration another human or “your sword penetrating another human” then you can find (another clumsy word when talking about this) it anywhere doing anything.

5. Rejecting Pain. When Buddha was told that his hometown was burned to the ground by a bunch of jerks he cried out in agony. He felt a deep pain for the loss of his people. And he felt it fully. The secondary pain of thinking, “I should not be feeling this pain,” is the dirty one. There is pain in perfect compassion.

light doesn’t exist without the dark

6. Forgetting How Small It Is. This is a corollary to #1 but it deserves a number of it’s own – even if it is the lowly six. Enlightenment has been described as “just like everyday life, but two feet off the ground.” It changes everything and nothing. Maybe colors will be more vivid, but it’s just because you’re looking. Maybe you’ll feel more love for those around you, but it’s just because you’re seeing you in them. From the outside it’s tough to see if someone is enlightened or pretending. The inside, if you’re clean and honest, knows.

7. Holier Than Thou. Just like anything else, you screw it up when you’re excited about getting it. As soon as I balanced on a slack line (a tight rope for… I don’t even know for you, a loose rope between trees) for the first time: “I’m doing it!” annnnd kerplop-fall. Same thing here. “I’m enlightened!” Annnnd you’re not. “God, why can’t everyone see the wholeness and oneness and enlightenment of life like me?” Annnd you’re out. “What idiots! Can’t they see that they are me and I am them!?” You get the idea.

8. Reading Lies About How To Fuck It Up. I’m convinced that the only thing that matters is a deep trust of the self. That is the trust that doesn’t require a linear string of words to know whether something is right or wrong. You don’t kill your ego by stabbing at it with a knife, you kill it by forgetting about it. You forget about it by knowing it so well that you forget about it consciously (like the process of adding or subtracting). All I want to do when I write is convince you to trust yourself (and me to trust me). To throw ideas out and see if they resonate with your honest self. That’s it.

I want to know your enlightenments. How have I fucked up here? How have you fucked up yours? Which of these ideas mean anything to you? Help!

Also, I really can’t take the last word on this. Nobody can but you. But I think Alan Watts is closer to You than I am. So here he goes:

But Brahman as One Reality is all-inclusive, for the Upanishads say, ‘It is made of consciousness and mind: It is made of life and vision. It is made of the earth and the waters: It is made of air and space. It is made of anger and love: It is made of virtue and vice. it is made of all that is near: It is made of all that is afar. It is made of all.’

What, then, is nonduality in terms of a state of mind? How does the mystic who has realized his identity with the One reality think and feel? Does his consciousness expand from out of his body and enter into all other things, so that he sees with others’ eyes, and thinks with others’ brains? Only figuratively, for the Self which is in him and in all others does not necessarily communicate to the physical brain of John Smith, mystic, what is seen by the eyes of Pei-wang, construction worker, on the other side of the earth. I do not believe spiritual illumination is to be understood in quite this sensational way. We shall answer the question sufficiently if we can discover what is a nondualistic state of mind. Does it mean a mind in so intense a state of concentration that it contains only one thought? Strictly speaking, the mind never contains more than one thought at a time; such is the nature of thinking. But if spirituality means thinking only and always of one particular thing, then other things are excluded and this is still duality. Does it mean, then, a mind which is thinking of everything at once? Even if this were possible, it would exclude the convenient faculty of thinking of one thing at a time and would still be dualistic. Clearly these two interpretations are absurd, but there is another way of approach.

Spiritual illumination is often described as absolute freedom of the soul, and we have seen that the One Reality is all-inclusive. Is the mind of the mystic singularly free and all-inclusive? If so, it would seem that his spirituality does not depend on thinking any special kinds of thoughts, on having a particular feeling ever in the background of his soul. He is free to think of anything and nothing, to love and to fear, to be joyful or sad, to set his mind on philosophy or on the trivial concerns of the world; he is free to be both a sage and a fool, to feel both compassion and anger, to experience both bliss and agony.

And in all this he never breaks his identity with the One Reality-God, ‘whose service is perfect freedom.’ For he knows that in whatever direction he goes and in whichever of these many opposites he is engaged, he is still in perfect harmony with the One that includes all directions and all opposites. In this sense, serving God is just living; it is not a question of the way in which you live, because all ways are included in God. To understand this is to wake up to your freedom to be alive.

A lot of my close friends read solely non-fiction. “HA! Childish stories? Have fun Kyle…” I think they’re missing out on a lot of life-knowledge that can’t be told through somebody teaching a lesson in a book. The more subtle lessons of this world need to be wrapped in a story. I included some below to change a mind or two.

These are books that put ideas in my head that got stuck. Then they started growing. Then they started mating with other ideas in my head. My life is significantly better every day because at some point I was willing to blast open my head and let their ideas pour in and grow.

[I mentioned this at the bottom, but I just considered that the best books I will read are the ones I haven’t yet. And the books that really have effected me are probably the ones I forget about, maybe from my childhood, the hidden ones. Help me here – what books could we all use in our head-minds?]

this is the copy i have, pages are stuck together

Thus Spoke Zarathustra is Friedrich Nietzsche‘s (my collection of his quotes here) best known (and known as his best) work. It is a book that cannot be summarized or talked about without really missing the point. When you read it you realize the importance of poetry. He doesn’t write ideas down so they can be clearly understood by each and every person. He writes in a way that embodies his philosophy more perfectly than any perfectly logical groupings of words can. You read this book and you realize just how subjective this world really is. He kills our hypocrisies and then sets them loose again, but knowingly. Nietszche went insane when he saw a horse being beaten in an ally. He was probably a little insane before that. And that’s probably why I love him so much. Stanley Kubrick features a songs in 2001: A Space Odyssey named after this as well.

how confused we are

The creator wanted to look away from himself, so he created the world.

(“God” here is within us…)

But wherever I found the living, there too I heard the language of obedience. All that lives, obeys.

And this is the second point: he who cannot obey himself is commanded. Such is the nature of the living.

But this is the third thing I heard: that commanding is more difficult than obeying. And not only because the commander bears the burden of all who obey, and because this burden may easily crush him: –

All commanding seemed to me to be an experiment and a risk: and whenever it commands, the living risks itself.

Yes, even when it commands itself, it must still pay for it’s commanding. It must become the judge and avenger and victim of its own law.

QUICK FAST READ

Dune by Frank Herbert will teach you about power politics, how religions evolve, and intricacies of the human mind. Herbert’s grasp on so many varying ideas is fantastic. And the story is awesome. [fear, mentat]

Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic.

mentats

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. (ZenPencils did a great comic for this.)

what a sweet older lady

Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand’s magnum opus was the first book I read that showed me how much ideas can shift the experience of living. Objectivism is the shit, just not the shit it thinks it is. I think my generation could use a dose of Ayn. It’s much better than “Who is John Galt?” bumper stickers and hating poor people. The philosophy, in the right light, is actually loving and fun. Then it fucks up at other parts – but so does everything else guys! Oh, Objectivism is Rand’s philosophy that she demonstrated through Atlas Shrugged. It’s god is productivity and the respect of the individual.  [My Ayn Quotes]

another great zenpencils.com art thing

If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose – because it contains all the others – the fact that they were the people who created the phrase ‘to make money’. No other language or nation had ever used these words before; men had always thought of wealth as a static quantity – to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted, or obtained as a favor. Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created. The words ‘to make money’ hold the essence of human morality. – Francisco D’Anconia in the fantastic money-speech (one of the several speeches in the book that I touch myself to while others yell about.)

he wasn’t happy about the title – but it converted the best

The 4-Hour Workweek is the book Tim Ferriss had to write for himself after his girlfriend left him for working too many hours to make millions of dollars on some supplement company. He essentially created the lifestyle design movement with the ideas in this book. It outlines very specifically how to cut down the amount of time you spend at work, how to travel cheaply, how to understand how much money you need to live your dreams, and how to create on online business. It’s eye-opening. And I spent years after reading that sitting on the internet waiting for Tim to say something else so I could go worship that new idea. (I’m hesitant to include a quote – his art isn’t in words.)

But you are the average of the five people you associate with most, so do not underestimate the effects of your pessimistic, unambitious, or disorganized friends. If someone isn’t making you stronger, they’re making you weaker.

The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable is the smartest book I’ve read from a living author. Nassim Taleb (who also wrote an even more smart collection of aphorisms The Bed of Procrustes) blew my mind with this book. Like Thus Spoke Zarathustra, you can never really get the point from a retelling because he is such a great writer. He talks about how the probable impact of an event is much more important to look at than the possibility of it happening. He points out that some markets are robust to Black Swans because they can take advantage of them. The movie and publishing industries are examples of these – they plan on losing money until the improbable massive bestseller/blockbuster hits. He shows that most things we consider to be measurements are actually bad guesses (banks’ risk management algorithms). Reading this book will make you think better. He also has great design sensibilities.

Narrow-minded prediction has an analgesic or therapeutic effect. Be aware of the numbing effect of magic numbers. Be prepared for all relevant eventualities.

toilet seat courage, the greatest clarity

The narrative fallacy addresses our limited ability to look at sequences of facts without weaving an explanation into them, or, equivalently, forcing a logical link, an arrow of relationship upon them. Explanations bind facts together. They make them all the more easily remembered; they help them make more sense. Where this propensity can go wrong is when it increases our impression of understanding.

We have a natural tendency to listen to the expert, even in fields where there may be no experts.

Physics has been successful, but it is a narrow field of hard science in which we have been successful, and people tend to generalize that success to all science. It would be preferable if we were better at understanding cancer or they (highly nonlinear) weather than the origin of the universe.

Beauty is enhanced by unashamed irregularities; magnificence by a facade of blunder.

DON’T PANIC!

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy(written by some british asshole Douglas Adams, who is not actually an asshole as I understand it) is my first experience with a funny book that hits all the big worries of life. It reminds you every day that it’s possible to laugh at the giant unknowns in the universe. And keeps us honest about what we consider an ‘answer’ to life. 42.

actually the intro to “the restaurant at the end of the universe”

• Old Man: come, come now or you will be late
• Arthur: late? What for?
• Old Man: what is your name, human?
• Arthur: dent. Arthur Dent
• Old Man: Late, as in the late Dentarthurdent. It’s a sort of threat, you see. I’ve never been very good at them myself, but I’m told they can be very effective.

clear old man

You Are The World was the first book I read by Jiddu Krishnamurti. He actually doesn’t write, people just record what he said and puts the words in books. If you are interested in eastern thought at all you need to get some Krishnamurti in your life. His constant reminders of the direct, clear, completely attentive possibilities of living in life force you into having an experience with him instead of reading words.

Confusion implies choice and choice is the product of thought. Shall I do this or that – the “me” and the “not me,” the “you” and the “not you,” “we” and “they,” and so on, all that is implied by thought. And out of this arises confusion and from that confusion we choose; we choose our political leaders, our gurus, and so many other things, but when there is clarity, then there is direct perception. And to be clear, the mind must be completely quiet, completely still, then there is real understanding and therefore that understanding is action. It isn’t the other way around.

Self-Reliance is the single greatest essay ever written. Ralph Waldo Emerson is my Virgin Mary and that painfully shaped baby of Self-Reliance is my Baby Jesus. Come to think of it, I don’t even know anything about what the Virgin Mary represents. And an essay telling you about the importance of your experience can’t be a rule-maker. What a confused analogy. You have to read it though. I even made a skimmable version with action questions. It’s so important that I can’t say anything else about it. It’s the best. The single thing I’ve read more than twenty times in my life and teaches me more every time. Here is the PDF to my version of it.

Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life’s cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another, you have only an extemporaneous, half possession. That which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him. No man yet knows what it is, nor can, till that person has exhibited it. Where is the master who could have taught Shakspeare? Where is the master who could have instructed Franklin, or Washington, or Bacon, or Newton? Every great man is a unique. The Scipionism of Scipio is precisely that part he could not borrow. Shakspeare will never be made by the study of Shakspeare. Do that which is assigned you, and you cannot hope too much or dare too much… Abide in the simple and noble regions of thy life, obey thy heart, and thou shalt reproduce the Foreworld again.

We do not know today whether we are busy or idle. In times when we thought ourselves indolent, we have afterwards discovered, that much was accomplished, and much was begun in us. All our days are so unprofitable while they pass, that ’tis wonderful where or when we ever got anything of this which we call wisdom, poetry, virtue. We never got it on any dated calendar day. Some heavenly days must have been intercalated somewhere.’

Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your reading have been to you like a blast of triumph Shakespeare, Seneca, Moses, John and Paul.

If our young men miscarry in their first enterprises, they lose all heart. If the young merchant fails, men say he is ruined. If the finest genius studies at one of our colleges, and is not installed in an office within one year afterwards in the cities or suburbs of Boston or New York, it seems to his friends and to himself that he is right in being disheartened, and in complaining the rest of his life. A sturdy lad from New Hampshire or Vermont, who in turn tries all the professions, who teams it, farms it, peddles, keeps a school, preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a township, and so forth, in successive years, and always, like a cat, falls on his feet, is worth a hundred of these city dolls. He walks abreast with his days, and feels no shame in not ‘studying a profession,’ for he does not postpone his life, but lives already. He has not one chance, but a hundred chances.

Stranger in a Strange Land is Rober Heinlein’s book about a martian that looks a lot like us. But he can blow people up. And he doesn’t have our sexual baggage. And he loves everyone. And “Thou art god.” And groks things. And shows us what a religion could be. And tells us what tattoos could be. It’s fucking awesome. It presents so clearly a radical possibility of what society could be.

I mean it. A confidence man knows he’s lying; that limits his scope. But a successful shaman believes what he says — and belief is contagious; there is no limit to his scope. But I lacked the necessary confidence in my own infallibility; I could never become a prophet … just a critic — a sort of fourth-rate prophet with delusions of gender. – Jubal Harshaw (badass character)

A desire not to butt into other people’s business is at least eighty percent of all human ‘wisdom’…and the other twenty percent isn’t very important. – same old Jubal

The Phantom Tollbooth is the children’s book that made me realize what could go in a children’s book. There are massively interesting ideas tackled in this book in no simple way. The story is fun and the ideas are better.

The only thing you can do easily is be wrong, and that’s hardly worth the effort.

Expect everything, I always say, and the unexpected never happens.

The most important reason for going from one place to another is to see what’s in between, and they took great pleasure in doing just that.

Annnnd those are some good books. But of course I didn’t mention

• Ender’s Game
• 1984 – I learned to see Big Brother.
• Brave New World – I learned to see when I kill my brain.
• Alan Watts book – I read like six of them and it taught me the importance of repetition and the difference between knowing something and knowing it in your bones.
• A whole bunch of business books
• All the others

I think that probably the books that matter most in my life are the ones I forgot about. Actually, they are definitely the ones that I haven’t read yet.

What books should I read? Tell me!!

thank you, amazon

Most business books should be lengthy blog posts, not books. But nobody will pay for a book and if you said, “I blogged my ideas based on research we did” you would get laughed at. I love business books, they have great ideas in them, but the authors feel like they need to write a big stack of shit about it for the idea to be worth anything. And, in many people’s eyes, they’re right

That’s what happened with Carol S. Dweck’s Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. A little bit anyway. It has a great idea

– it is powerful enough to shift your perspective totally. Then that idea is repeated a thousand times. Repetition helps us understand things. So this can be a good thing. I’m going to give you the two-minute, two-cent version followed by my raw (dirty) notes taken from the book.

My good friend Carol realized that people can be split into two groups of people: the fixed-minded and the growth-minded. My (actual) good friend Reuben Pressman, who is a hero in the doing community, must have seen my fixed-mindedness when he threw the book at my face and said, “Maybe you would like to read that.” He’s a professional idea-haver so I very obediently opened the thing. Okay, so, fixed and growth. Fixed and growth.

People in the fixed mindset believe they have a certain set amount of intelligence, a specific personality. Because these traits are fixed you must evaluate every situation looking for confirmation that you’re okay, you’re doing it just right. When you don’t have anywhere to go, if you don’t think you can improve a certain thing, it becomes imperative that you have enough as is. It is then natural to attempt to convince yourself and others that you have, “a royal flush when you’re secretly worried it’s a pair of tens.”

Consistency is the hobgoblin of little men. – Ralph Waldo Emerson (my main man.)

Those with the growth mindset believe that their “basic qualities are things you can cultivate through your efforts.” They don’t see the point in trying to prove how great you are when you could be spending time getting better. Richard Feynman embodies the growth mindset pretty completely, see what he says about receiving the Nobel Prize:

There is continuum of fixed and growth mindsets. You probably have one that is dominant and one that shows up only in certain places in your life. Maybe you have a growth mindset at work but a fixed mindset in your relationship. I found Dweck’s many examples most useful in pointing out areas I would never think to assign a growth or fixed mindset to. There is no area in life where you are stuck forever if you allow yourself to focus on growth.

click for the big’un — an overview of why to grow (taken from http://amix.dk/blog/post/19487 )

Dweck found the growth mindset to be the one taken on by most successful people (surprise!) and the fixed mindset to be paralyzing to a lot of people. When we focus on the doing instead of the elusive end we want to reach then we end up doing much better work. And we have more fun doing it. She’s hardly the first person to say that. Buddha said basically that a few thousand years ago. Mihály Csíkszentmihályi said that more recently in his great book Flow, which discusses his concept of, erm, flow. The idea is a good one. Now, who can say it in a way that forces us to care about it?

another nice table overviewing the two mindsets

Notes on notes: Numbers are pages. FM= Fixed Mindset (or, “people with the fixed mindset”) . GM= Growth Mindfuckingset (or, “people with the growth mindfuckingset”). These are straight from notepad to here and may not be complete ideas. Also, the quotes are from quotes I wrote down so they might be wrong. Playing telephone is hard, playing telephone with yourself is harder.

Le notes:

16: FM tells us effort is bad because expending effort signals that you aren’t smart or talented enough to just do it without trying too hard.

20: Initial success can turn a GM into an FM. “I’ve done it! I’ve arrived!” – But we never arrive until we die. Maybe not even then.

23: FM will only stay interested if they do well right away.

24: GM feel smarter when they’re learning something.

25: “Becoming (GM) is better than being (FM)”

27: FM blows context out of proportion (let’s tests define them) while GM knows tests measure snapshot of specific ability.

32: FM believes when they are winning they are superior humans. FM turns “I failed” into “I am a failure.”

You aren’t a failure until you start to blame. John Wooden (37)

38: FM causes more depression because because increased ruminating which means the fewer actions they took to help their depression. GM took more actions as they become more depressed. They became more determined.

41: American culture praises effortless success, downgrading trying hard. Cultivates FM.

43: FM is scared of effort so they can say say “I could have been.”

44: GM is scared of not making an effort so they don’t have to say “I could have been”

47: you can apply FM and GM to all areas of life

51: FM has fragile confidence because once failure happens, they are a failure. GM overcomes by seeking to overcome.

53: We fantasize about perfect times or seek people to worship us to feel in a false comfort that kills growth. It’s tough to try honestly and totally when you keep looking in and judging yourself for what is.

Just because some people can do something with little or no training, it doesn’t mean that other’s can’t do it (and sometimes do it better) with training. – 70

71: When parenting, better to say, “It looks like you really worked hard” than “this is good”. If you praise them just for being good then they will lie and cheat so they don’t fall behind, they’re scared to lose that positive label of being ‘good’.

81: Grow Your Mindset (Actions)

• Find the history of how hard your hero worked to get where he/she is.
• Consider that when people have beaten you it’s because they used better strategies, practiced harder, etc.
• Compliment people specifically about growth things, like how hard they worked. (Spread the GM!)

I believe ability can get you to the top but it takes character to keep you there… it’s so easy to… begin thinking you can just ‘turn it on’ automatically, without proper preparation. It takes real character to keep working as hard or even harder once you’re there. When you read about an athlete or team that wins over and over, remind yourself, ‘more than ability, they have character.’ John Wooden (97)

98: Sports research

1. GM athletes found succes in doing their best, in learning, and improving. This is obvious but highlights the importance of measuring progress.
2. GM found setbacks motivating. Took them as information and wake-up calls to kick things in gear.
3. GM took charge of processes that bring success and maintain it. Like their environment.

107: Grow Your Mindset (Actions)

• If you have passion for a sport but assume you’re bad at it, try putting in effort and testing progress (physically and mentally).
• Is there a sport you were good at until you hit a wall? Endowed talent can curse you – try it again with GM.
• Attempt to find sense of success in improvement like great athletes do.

112: FM business leaders attempt to use company as platform to show their own superiority.

136: FM creates groupthink – leader thought infallible.

142: Grow Your Mindset (Actions)

• Ty to be less defensive of mistakes
• can you learn more from feedback?
• do you re-affirm status by demeaning others?
• is your workplace set up to promote groupthink?

144: In relationships:

• FM thought themselves ‘unlovable’ when broken up with
• GM was more about forgiving and understanding

148: FM on relationships, “If you have to work at it then it wasn’t meant to be.”

164: GM end up with better social skills

214: In the 1960’s Aaron Beck found thoughts were creating issues. He taught people to notice like “this isn’t worth anything’ but we can be aware — cognitive therapy.

215: Fixed mindsets makes big assumptions on things based on a small detail. “This means they are selfish.” GM does not have a judging mind but is more about improving.

216: Talented FMs may not expose themselves to failure because it means permanent failure. (Third time this made the notes. Hmm.)

228: Vowing to do something is worse than useless because it doesn’t get done and you feel bad about it. It’s important to make plans specific.

231: Basically FMs are scared to be inferior while GMs are having a great time learning stuff.

___

I’m going to try to go learn something and not punch myself in the face when I fuck it up. Godspeed. The Growth is with you, always. No, not that growth. That’s nasty.

Mario Savio’s Free Speech Movement Speech 1964

There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part; you can’t even passively take part, and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop. And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!

Aristotle Onassis, according to Nassim Taleb in The Black Swan, managed his entire business empire with one notebook. Demonstrating that we need much less information to make decisions than we think we do.

Friedrich Nietzsche is one of my favorite people for caring so much about the truth while still being able to hear it when it spoke. He found our hypocrisies at the most basic levels.

how confused

Marvin Minsky said

In general, we are least aware of what our minds do best.

Which is another way putting Derek Sivers’ idea that what is most obvious to you is the thing you should share because it’s probably what isn’t obvious to others.

On The Road is being adapted into a film. The trailer highlights this quote from Kerouac:

The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars…

Email still matters in a world with Facebook. I’m currently taking one of the most exclusive internet marketing courses you can get. The guys is all about building up email lists because they create a stronger connection to people you know you can reach than standard social media. This is obvious when you email a friend instead of posting something on their wall, it’s just more personal.

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe opened with this:

what a treat

Douglas Adam’s series of hilarious space fun has been hilarious fun.

Space picture of another place in the universe.

that happens in our home universe

i found an article about how pissed off everyone is on the internet while finding this image

Everyone on all the feeds are yelling trying to educated (read “enrage”) their friends about politics and whether blue is evil or red or at least which one is least evil. I even found an article from Scientific American titled “Why Is Everyone on the Internet So Angry?” while I was searching for the beautiful thumbs down image. It’s sad, why would I go onto the internet to tell my friend they are stupid? Somebody is really good at getting us excited about these things. I’m probably the worst too. I wrote like 4000 words about why everyone was wrong. I couldn’t even point my middle finger properly so I gave up and attempted to Transcend Bullshit. People were angry at me because I didn’t supply a golden calf of my own.

I get the sense that we’re a little angry right now as a people. We are using social networks to push friends away instead of making connections with people. I want to stop getting frustrated with people who have dumb political beliefs (with no basis in reality! can you believe them!?) or yelling at some unnamed person in their life. They just had to tell somebody something. They needed to stand up and shout it out. Okay, that’s fine. Here are some ideas to bring the love back into digital interactions:

1. “Like” everything on Facebook. We post things on Facebook so somebody will see it and react. Make somebody’s moment by liking their status. Why do we only ‘like’ things that impress us? Why do I sit here like some great arbiter of what is deserving of ‘likes’? I should just start liking things because my friend said it and I want my friend to feel good.
2. Send an email for no reason. A great friend of mine quit Facebook recently because it wasn’t helping him with anything in life. I think that’s a great idea. But he started emailing me and we’ve had much better conversations since. The novelty of email is almost as good as snail mail at this point – surprise someone!
3. Photoshop a funny picture of a friend.
4. Find an old picture of a friend to reminisce over.
5. Upvote! (Reddit)
6. Send a video message to someone. Most phones can do that now and it is really fun and people love it.
7. Send a picture message. Same as above.
8. Buy twitter followers for someone anonymously. If you have a friend that’s into twitter and they were suddenly followed by 1000 new followers they would be the happiest person in the world.
9. Post something relatable on a friend’s wall.
10. Send random chat messages on Facebook.
11. Poke everyone on Facebook.
12. Make a rage comic for a friend. Also from Reddit.

Really I just think we should stop being such dicks to each other on Facebook. I’m not sure I’ve ever convinced anybody of a political belief by mocking them.

Furor Shnooks?

I love Snooki like nothing else. Anything negative in the world can be blamed on her and nobody has to argue about it. It’s the Snooki effect. That’s what bother’s me about Snooki more than anything else – the fact that she actually doesn’t bother me that much. Maybe she’s like a Charlie Sheen, playing us all. The Snooki Conspiracy. I thought, “Maybe Snooki is a cultural ninja infiltrating the airwaves.”

After realizing the Snooki influence was surrounding me I decided to leave the infested culture behind and begin my studies from a secret Snooki-proof lair somewhere outside Area 51. From here I slowly decoded the Snooki Secret. I followed her rise to MTV-fame and poof-hair influence all the way from the time she was born from her own Snooki. That’s correct, she comes from a long pure-blooded line of Snooki.

Few know this, but “snooki” comes from the ancient Greek word “shnook” roughly translates to “große Lüge” in German which translates to “big lie” in American (yes, Amuuuriicann). This is Adolf Hitler’s “Big Lie” which he describes in his adorable little book Mein Kompf:

because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods.

Is Snooki a Nazi infiltrating American culture with her poofy hair, poor ideas of being a parent, and worse ideas of education? There is no telling for sure behind shadows so thick with misinformation. One thing is for sure – she is much more than a girl who gets her face punched on television.

A more thorough investigation of Snooki and her creations:

Some things I learned from looking at The Snooki dead in her beady little eyes:

1. We need the Shnooks. She is the on the dumb end of our polarizing society. The internet is doing a fantastic job at providing places for anyone to find ‘their people’. The ease of finding your group is blowing up the phenomenon of agreeing with each other loudly. When the smarties go talk smart in one corner, the dummies are going to go yell dumbly in the other. When they have sufficiently built up each others’ confidence they will yell something across the room. The less the interface the more extreme they get. The extreme of the Snookis running around at bars applying tanning lotion while simultaneous groping around for the nearest rod shaped item to gobble down means there is a recluse at home somewhere who hasn’t seen a human in over a week but has gained at least 1300 karma on reddit. Then there are the really crazy ones who steal from both camps and make something to help out. Or at least that’s what I like to assume.
2. She’s only dumb in most ways. There are things she is good at I’m sure. There are 8 intelligences I’ve heard, she has to be good at something! I don’t know anybody with a fade but I’m sure they could attest to her felacio abilities. She’s a star! She’s pregnant! She’s pretty much a bitch but keeps her friends around. Perhaps ‘being Snooki’ is the 9th intelligence. She has mastered the art of enjoying a position designed for ridicule. There is a popular idea that you need to be overly intelligent to ‘make it’ when there are plenty of Snookis around us to demonstrate the exact opposite. There are always more dumb confident people with money than smart people who forgot that a little stupidity is necessary in life.

   1. 

      there has to be something here…

3. Even she can raise a baby. He is going to have a tough time. At first he is going to live in exactly the world Snooks has created. He’s going to be fed so he gets fat, then she is going to yell at him to get his abs like Uncle “The Situation”. She is going to say, “be smart like me!” And then he’s going to be confused when she slaps a book out of his hands and yells at the teacher to turn his “D” into an “A”. She is going to be as confusing a person she is now as a mother and so the son is going to have to find out some interesting things about his mother. But he’s going to grow up. He’s probably going to have a kid. Then he’s going to pass on the baggage he couldn’t let go of to that kid. And it’s all going to be okay. They are going to be fine, the Shnooks.
   

   All Hail The Future King: Sheasar Shnooks

4. Even ugly people can set trends. I’m sorry for calling you ugly, Mother Shnooks, but… well… shit. She’s not even ugly. Everyone that gets up in arms about anorexic girls in magazines should be shouting praise for the Snooki Who Loved Her Tummy. Oh, she has to say prayers each evening as well? She still set the trends. No girl has told me, “Kyle, Snooki has really helped me embrace my chub.” but the sentiment is there in the mocking. The same girls who watch Jersey Shore because “it’s funny how terrible they are doing at being human beings” are the same ones who show up three shades too tan with a poof and lollipop in their mouths. I don’t even know if Snooki does the lollipop thing. (Lollipops, tanness, poofs aren’t bad, just Snooki-inspired action.)  I shouldn’t focus on the girls, the guys are worse. GTL! Also, I’m not talking about crooked teeth when I say ugly. This is her most obvious Big Lie – if you are ridiculous enough long enough and confident enough people will believe… and transform!
   

   Rest In Snooks

5. Even Shnooki will die. Snooki will spend her entire life doing exactly what she will do, and then she will die. I don’t know if she’s happy or not or if she believes herself, but she’s going to die and it’s all going to be over. She is going to go back into the state she was right after a star exploded to create the elements that eventually came to such a specific way as to create The Shnooks. Her Snooki experience is going to end and she’ll probably never know she was a Snooki. She might not know anything, or know everything to the point where Snookiness is a non-subject. I don’t know. But she’s going to die having been Snooki to the brim. I will have died knowing I spent time to write a blog post making fun of Snooki – and hopefully a little bit more than that.
6. Snooki is passionate about her life. It seems like Snooki is most passionate about her life and people seeing her life. A lot of could could use a bit of passion for life as it is instead of thinking it lays solely in flute-playing or some other activity they haven’t ‘found’. (I hear she does enjoy flute-playing thoroughly though… AMIRIGHT!?)
7. She embraces the Suck. Not the dirty kind, the overall kind. She apologizes for none of the awe-inspiringly terrible things she does. I don’t know anything about her, really, but I like to assume things about people. I’m assuming she is the least book-smart person in the world. I’m going to assume she makes mistakes and then yells at people for them.

In honor of the Snooks and embracing the Suck, I’m going to keep the title of this post “10” and only have 7 items. Then I’m going to tell you to fuck off about it. FUCK OFF! And have a day!

don’t kid yourself!

Every moment was proof of my worthlessness. Every thought proof of my guilt. Every interaction a demonstration of the complete ominous nature of life. My future grew darker as I learned through irrational, yet completely convincing, thoughts to hate myself and the world more perfectly.

And then the light bulb went off, the answer loud and clear: kill yourself! Rid yourself of the the world and the shackles of society. One free act and forever my problems fixed.

But then I remembered that I’ll be dead anyway. So why worry about it? Live like you’re dying! Because you are! … Then back into depression.

When I was thrown into this stormy state of being I had just raised half a million dollars to manage in a fund I had just started. I had trade setups sure to bring me unlimited wealth in my life. I also had outlined and was bringing a team together to form SelfMadeU, the first business to provide a complete education on how to survive and thrive in this world without a college education. There would be an accompanying documentary I was sure would take the gold at Sundance. I graduated, took a well-paying job. Then it hit. A fucking critical hit because something snapped. Unable to do anything well – in my mind anyway – I thought the best course of action was to drop everything and fix the mind.

Well, it turns out depression doesn’t get ‘fixed’. I moved in with my divorcing parents and things went downhill quick. Into that sucky dark weighty abyss completely void of hope or trusted happiness (each smile is a ‘lie’). It’s shit and there is no way around that.

Nobody ever told me that becoming a man was more about feeling big boy pain (soul pain!) than killing wolves. Nobody sat me down and said, “Son, one day you are going to be hurt on a level that is unfathomable. One day everything you believe now is going to be shot in the face and you’re going to be left with an existential void that you’ll spend the rest of your life trying to figure out or forgetting.”

if only it were so obvious

(It’s funny that as I’m writing this a storm is passing over. Those depressing clouds follow you everywhere. But I said “fuck you” to the internal ones so Depression brought some sky buddies in. But you know what? I’m grateful for their cool breeze and I think rain can be fun. So suck it.

Same thing with depression. Depression brings a sense of profundity and sensitivity that doesn’t go away.)

Back to a sad story. I was in my parents’ house who are on the brink of divorce. They fuck the brink and get divorced. All cool productive things I started are now at below zero. I am nothing with no one. Boo hoo! The story doesn’t really matter, it’s only the depression that matters. If the story mattered then I could just say, “I have so much to be grateful for. Look at the other 95% of the world who dies because they can’t drink clean water.” and feel better. Because other peoples’ terrible situations usually make me feel better. I wish it wouldn’t. Get some compassion, Kyle!

Buddha was probably depressed before he was Buddha. He was Siddharta the Prince. His dad kept him in a castle and hid him from anything bad in the world. Old people weren’t allowed to be around, or sick people. He never saw anyone die. Until one day he got a glimpse of pain and his entire bubble got shattered. “Suffering!? What is this madness!?” And so he went on a journey to the end of the world and the end of his soul. He tried all the remedies other people tried to deal with suffering but realized they were all ineffective. One day, after starving himself for a few years, he decided to sit under a tree and deal with his shit. He sat and he saw his mind and all the craziness inside. He saw it’s connections to the body and he saw what happens when desire takes hold. I think he sat there for fourteen hours until he was enlightened. He had to finally go to his mind and say, “Show me everything!” before he reached enlightenment. The story is that it stuck for him, he stayed enlightened forever. I don’t see things working like that, we are humans moving through time who forget and remember and feel. Either way, Buddha felt some shit, some shitty shit, to get where he was going.

even that guy wasn’t having fun all the time

I think it’s time to maybe stop talking about my shitty story and move onto the things that helped. A depressed mind is such a tricky bastard. It loves commiserating with other sad souls and simultaneously believes that it is completely alone in it’s level of profound pain. “Yeah, I’m glad you’ve experienced pain. But really you have no idea. You couldn’t, you aren’t in the depths I am.” Or maybe that was my mind’s own special trick. I doubt it though.

These are all things I wish somebody told me when I was in it deep and dirty and couldn’t stop drowning in the shit I kept pouring on myself. These are also reminders for the future Kyle who will almost certainly have his world turned upside down again and he’ll get tossed down to that vaguely familiar yet all-new Rock Bottom.

If at any point one of these things makes you feel like moving or doing something then leave this here and act. Every tiny action has the possibility to be your relief for the day. Also, I know very little about the ‘professional’ ways of helping depression, so all this is just shit I did that, looking back, helped a bit.

Some suggestions for navigating a world that is 110% bad:

1. Find your neurotic jews. I spent an absurd amount of time listening to WTF with Marc Maron, a podcast of a comedian interviewing other comedians. It turns out some of the funniest people in the world – people you see on TV all the time – are depressed as shit. I especially recommend the interviews with Luis CK and Judd Apatow. Maron is possibly the best interviewer on the planet and people open up to him unlike anything else. My other neurotic jew is James Altucher who’s blogis probably the best thing in the world. I always felt like I wanted to spend time with depressed people without draining my friends’ energy (of course, after I told them this they just wished I would have talked to them because they have their own shit) so I found them online. James was the perfect buddy to hang out without actually being around anyone. He told me about all the times he failed in life and how he didn’t kill himself over it. How we slowly recovered from the tear-soaked carpet.
   

   he just lost a tooth

2. Take the smallest wins. Depression, especially for those in the quarter-life-crisis, is about unmet expectations. The whole world is operating on antiquated ideas and we are finding we can’t – and don’t want to – meet it’s demands. Lower the bar. Appreciate the fact that you only ate three donuts instead of five. Appreciate that you got out of bed. Congratulate yourself on taking a shower – and feel how clean it is. A cold shower is even a bigger challenge (and is known to reduce depression)! Congratulate yourself for going to work today, that was huge. For saying hello to somebody. For having the shortest of conversations. When your mind is telling you that every single thing you do is worthless it is a huge accomplishment to do anything. Or to resist doing something. Sometimes the biggest wins are the things you don’t do. Maybe you wanted to tell your sibling how miserably useless the entire world is but didn’t, good job! Maybe you thought a terrible, hateful, blaming thought about a parent – then realized that’s the liar Depression speaking – good job! Every little positive thing you do and terrible thing you don’t is a massive win at this point.
3. Perspective. Watch space videos. Depression is the perfect place to gain an appreciation for the Universe again. The Universe is big, huge, so big that we are none of it. And paradoxically all of it because we are experiencers in it. You are literally 14 billion years in the making. It’s absurd how beautiful life is in every minute if you take a deep breath and look. Beauty is not a smile, it’s beauty. Some of the most beautiful things in the world come out of sadness. This is an opportunity in your life to look at the world around you, detach from all the human expectations and hopes for each other, and cry about the how mysterious and beautiful and infinite the universe is.
4. Walk in nature.Go into the woods or by the ocean or in a park or look at a plant and just stare. No thinking about it. Just looking at it. And walk slowly, not like you need to get anywhere. Just walk in a place without signs of what should be done. Just look at and touch the things around you. When you have a thought just feel a leaf. If your mind won’t stop thinking then think about how this leaf works, how those clouds happened, the frequency of the water hitting the shore. In nature every “should” dissolves into the perfectly complex system around you. The trees growing towards the sun without a second thought. You’re becoming what you are supposed to become too – you just think about it. Hang out with the things that do what they should without a second thought.
   

   or just the local park

5. Appreciate art. I never knew art until Depression forced me to care. Suddenly every good lyric punched me in the face. Every profound line in a movie brought me to tears. Every painting was screaming with meaning and purpose. I suddenly understood the deep human connection possible through art. Dive in and find your shit. Mix it up, sometimes it’s beautiful to revel in sadness but sometimes it’s just sad. Synecdoche, NY and Adaptation are both by Charlie Kaufman and are both inhumanly good. Then laugh with superbad or something. Garden State is a good one to watch too. Animated films like Up are refreshing. I Heart Huckabees is a must-watch. But then laugh at Superbad.
6. Make art. Write or paint or express yourself in some way. Revel in your shit for a bit. Write a terrible poem and make an even worse drawing. Some of the greatest art in the world was made by people who had to make something at rock bottom. Neil Gaiman gave this advice in a recent commencement address, he probably made something beautiful out of pain. You are going to make a lot of shit, things you’ll never show anyone, but that’s not the point. The point is to process of making something, expressing something. Then maybe after you make a bunch of terrible things you’ll plop out a golden nugget you feel like showing someone. Think of how the people who have helped you deal with shit are the people who said something brutally honest, they bled for you, then think that maybe one day somebody else will benefit from your honesty.
7. Meditate. Start at just 30 seconds. The thing that is eating you alive is rumination. When I was at rock bottom my spiraling thoughts barely let me leave my bed after hours of sitting there thinking about the uselessness of everything. Depression is the biggest dick of a liar I’ve ever met. It will convince you of the most insidious things in the world. It will convince you that you are worthless and the world is worthless and everybody else is stupid and doesn’t understand the worthlessness of the whole fucking thing. When I learned to see these thoughts it immediately lifted my depression to the point where I could not only get out of bed but make the executive decision to eat something as healthy as a carrot. My guide for the most part was The Mindful Way but all you really need to do today is sit for 30 seconds and look at your breath. Add thirty seconds every day. Just sit, feel your breath come in and out of your nose, and see your thoughts. The point is not to shut up your negative thinking, it’s just to see it. When you find yourself following a thought then leave it and look at your breath. Don’t feel obligated to the thought (you aren’t), don’t think there was the final answer in it (there wasn’t), just see it. And be fucking nice to yourself. You are sitting down to meditate – MASSIVE fucking win! After one week of meditating like this – looking at breath, refocusing after a thought, reminding myself to be nice to myself – I cut down my negative thought spirals by at least 50%. And never never feel bad about having a negative thought. When you do, because that’s what we do, don’t feel bad about feeling bad. Those secondaries and tertiaries and the rest of them are the most ridiculous – the only way to escape to side step. You’ll never think yourself into smiling again. Sit and watch and sit and watch.
   

   if you do it enough…

8. Kill guilt. I spent a lot of time apologizing to people for things like not knowing they needed me to open a door or spilling something or breathing on them or bringing them down or existing. At least five people had to tell me, “Kyle, I like being with you, please stop saying you are fucking sorry.” What are you feeling guilty for? Usually it’s nothing. It’s an empty, pointless feeling of guilt that we layer ‘reasons’ onto. Notice the times when you are feeling guilty for no reason, or for feeling depressed, and then forget about it. Again, never feel guilty about feeling guilty.
9. You don’t need to deserve it. There is a funny form of guilt that goes something like, “There are people in Africa starving and they aren’t depressed, who am I to be depressed?” I thought of the people I knew who were facing a life in jail or who’s family members passed and then felt terrible about it. The thing is, though, feeling shitty about feeling shitty because other people’s lives are maybe more shitty doesn’t make anything more fun for anyone. The best thing you can do for the others who’s lives are harsher than you could even imagine (at least in the physical world) is to forgive yourself. Forgive yourself for fucking everything up so royally – even though you almost definitely haven’t.
   

   it’s all relative

10. Surrender to Depression. The day I stopped fighting depression everything got a little bit easier. It was one layer of rust of my wheel of life. You’re depressed, people get depressed. Their are chemicals in your body fucking with your mood. There is a brain in your head soaking up said chemicals and delivering stupid fucking sentences into your consciousness. If you fight you will lose. This is another opportunity to learn something for the rest of your life. There are dragons you can kill with a sword and then there are dragons you have to starve. Depression is that dragon with a billion heads and just as many disguises. Stop swinging at it and surrender. This does not mean you do nothing to stop it. Just think of it as something that you must starve. Once you say, “Alright, I guess I’m going to be depressed for a while, let’s explore this thing” it suddenly loses power. You are now free to see this experience as it is instead of trying to throw yourself outside of it. This is the bravest thing you can do in a world where every self-help ‘guru’ is screaming that you MUST be happy NOW. When every person is drowning anything outside of drunken happiness it’s the most courageous thing to say, “Let’s see how deep this sadness thing goes.” Once you’ve surrendered, the most important thing you can do is to let it leave as well.
    

    it’s like this, but invisible and harder to kill

11. Don’t hold onto it. As soon as you identify as “depressed” then you make it a part of you. After a while, depression is the comfortable state of mind, it’s your default. Now the revolutionary thing in your life is to smile. It is so difficult for humans to change – what if somebody else is uncomfortable with it!? The depressed mind convinces itself that sadness is the truth and that anything happy is a lie. It’s not true. Maybe the only thing worse than fighting depression is fighting the happiness as it creeps in. Don’t worry, you will take your sense of profundity with you.
12. Eat as healthy as you can. This might mean having a salad today. Maybe it means eating an apple. More likely it means eating one less bowl of ice cream. Or even one less scoop of ice cream. Your body’s chemicals are all sorts of fucked up, help them out a little. And take the goddamn win!
13. Sweat. Or at least make your heart beat. Even if that means doing five pushups right now. Huge win! And a little sweat every day will help bring your chemicals back to somewhere near sanity – or at least a more livable insanity.
14. Notice your affirmations of life. Every breath you take is you living. It’s an affirmation that you should be here on Planet Earth. Every piece of food you put in your mouth is you loving life enough to keep living. Even if it doesn’t feel like love it is. It’s true that hate and love are close and can sometimes be indistinguishable. You don’t even need to feel appreciation for your life, you probably can’t, but know that your existence proves you should be here. The fact that you got out of bed today is a miracle. The fact that you are reading this means that you are fucking alive. You care enough about this ridiculous experience of life to think about it with me. So far we’ve had an experience of about 3000 words together. That is beautiful! It’s murky at the bottom and you can’t see a lot of things, but I promise you I was there and at the end it will be worth it in the end.
15. Yell. Go in your car or into your pillow and put everything you have into it. It is a relief when the build-up is too much.
16. Abuse yourself a bit.I drank too much, then woke up in an impossibly deeper hell. Then I knew I could stop. I chain-smoked a pack of cigarettes because I thought it would be a good way to express my hate for myself more perfectly. Then I got sick and, again, took myself to a deeper hell. I took some pain meds (not a dangerous amount) and found that all it did was fog up my soul. All the pain was still there, everything was still the worst thing in the world, but now it was even worse because it was nagging at me and I couldn’t see it. I shoved a dozen donuts in my face and got sick. People get addicted to these kind of things when they trick themselves into believing they help. But they don’t. It’s only compiling the problem. If you feel the urge to abuse your body or mind in some way you can (1) not do it and take it as a win for the day or (2) abuse yourself and then forgive yourself later. Forgive yourself for treating you like such a piece of shit – then take that win! But also remember how much worse that made things. Remember that you need to organize your mind and support something that looks like a healthy chemical balance in your body to really starve this fucker. If you choose abuse (and we all will in some way or another), limit it as much as you can. Then take the win for the limit. Maybe tomorrow you’ll do it even less.
    

    tricky, sticky, shitty thoughts try the impossible and fail and frustrate

17. Find/lose your isness. Alan Watts was instrumental in helping me surrender initially. His talks about the world as it is are some of the most comforting things you can listen to. Also, his books. Those two funny people who make South Park animated some clips of his lectures.
18. Cry to people.When I was at rock bottom I cried to my boss, my ex-boss, and my sister’s boss. Then to a bunch of family. What happened? A moment of discomfort, then a connection. People are hungry for honesty in this world. It’s something we haven’t been very good at as humans but people are starting to crave it. The first time I cried on my (very patient, loving) ex’s breast is maybe the first time I felt a true love-connection with a girlfriend.
    

    you can never see what’s been burned to nothing

19. Don’t look for rock bottom. “Is this it? No, can’t be, I’m pretty sure I’ve felt worse than this before.” The next day, “Wow! This must be it!” Then, “Well, he said he’s at rock bottom too. I think I’m as deep in hell as him. Maybe this is it.” Who fucking knows! Nietzche said something about the abyss staring back at you but really it grabs you and sucks you into infinity of abyssiness. Fight Club promised me that at Rock Bottom everything is possible. Chuck forgot that it’s invisible and maybe not a point and if you look at it it probably disappears. Forget about it.
20. Say “Thank You” to nothing for nothing. Just say thanks for the day, thanks for the breath, thanks for the food. Thank Depression for showing you another part of life. Write a list saying thank you to every terrible thing that happened. Maybe one day you’ll actually feel the gratitude.
21. Respect your experience. Jack Kerouac gave this advice to writers. But really it’s the greatest advice for living. You don’t need to feel good, you don’t need to be happy, you don’t need to meet anybody’s expectations. Respect your life exactly how it is in totality. Change things as you want to change them but always hold a sense of respect for the cumulation of experience that is your life. You will lose respect for your life at some point but you can always go back and show it respect. Trust your life, it’s the only thing you’ll ever be.

There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; – Ralph Waldo Emerson

If you are drowning in the shit-pits of the ultimate badness and need someone to talk to, email me at kyle.eschen at gmail dot com. There is an end, I promise, but you need to live – and maybe even take a sick, sincere ‘appreciation’ – in the thing until it burns off. Don’t hold it and don’t push. This is the adventure of a lifetime – the ultimate internal conflict – and you’ve been thrown into it unwillingly but you’ll come out bigger and better and with a wider way of seeing the world.

The Force is with you!

The second letter, what a treat!

Summary: Focus. Spend time in quality. Don’t waste time with bad authors, people, or ideas.

Big Ideas

1. Restlessnes – mental and physical – isn’t ideal.
2. There is travel that encourages growth and their is escapist travel.
3. Reading broad and shallow isn’t useful.
4. Know your enemy.
5. If you are grateful you are wealthy.

Action

1. Travel, but well.Reread your favorite book. And more of that author’s writings.
   1. Seneca does not dislike travel, he did say  “Travel and change of place impart new vigor to the mind.” However, the focus of your travels is important. Travel is worth very little if your sole purpose is to be able to say you’ve been to well-known-place-X.
3. “Go to the enemy’s camp.” If you’re a liberal, read a conservative piece. Where are they coming from? Why do they hold those particular beliefs?
4. Give gratitude. Make a list. http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2007/11/19/dont-like-meditation-try-gratitude-training-plus-follow-up-to-testing-friends-firestorm/

Letter II

Judging from what you tell me and from what I hear, I feel that you show great promise. You do not tear from place to place and unsettle yourself with one move after another. Restlessness of that sort is symptomatic of a sick mind. Nothing, to my way of thinking, is a better proof of a well ordered mind than a man’s ability to stop just where he is and pass some time in his own company.

Be careful, however, that there is no element of discursiveness and desultoriness about this reading you refer to, this reading of many different authors and books of every description. You should be extending your stay among writers whose genius is unquestionable, deriving constant nourishment from them if you wish to gain anything from your reading that will find a lasting place in your mind.

To be everywhere is to be nowhere. People who spend their whole life traveling abroad end up having plenty of places where they can find hospitality but no real friendships. The same must needs be the case with people who never set about acquiring an intimate acquaintanceship with any one great writer, but skip from one to another, paying flying visits to them all. Food that is vomited up as soon as it is eaten is not assimilated into the body and does not do one any good; nothing hinders a cure so much as frequent changes of treatment; a wound will not heal over if it is being made the subject of experiments with different ointments; a plant which is frequently moved never grows strong. Nothing is so useful that it can be of any service in the mere passing. A multitude of books only gets in one’s way. So if you are unable to read all the books in your possession, you have enough when you have all the books you are able to read. And if you say, ‘But I feel like opening different books at different times’, my answer will be this: tasting one dish after another is the sign of a fussy stomach, and where the foods are dissimilar and diverse in range they lead to contamination of the system, not nutrition. So always read well-tried authors, and if at any moment you find yourself wanting a change from a particular author, go back to ones you have read before.

[Seneca supports travel in a big way, he said,  “Travel and change of place impart new vigor to the mind.” The focus of your travels is important. It is worth very little if your sole purpose is to be able to say you’ve been to well-known-place-X.]

Each day, too, acquiring something which will help you to face poverty, or death, and other ills as well. After running over a lot of different thoughts, pick out one to be digested thoroughly that day. This is what I do myself; out of the many bits I have been reading I lay hold of one. My thought for today is something which I found in Epicurus (yes, I actually make a practice of going over to the enemy’s camp – by way of reconnaissance, not as a deserter!). ‘A cheerful poverty,’ he says, ‘is an honourable state.’ But if it is cheerful it is not poverty at all. It is not the man who has too little who is poor, but the one who hankers after more. What difference does it make how much there is laid away in a man’s safe or in his barns, how many head of stock he grazes or how much capital he puts out at interest, if he is always after what is another’s and only counts what he has yet to get, never what he has already. You ask what is the proper limit to a person’s wealth? First, having what is essential, and second, having what is enough.

a friend wearing a friendly shirt

But Will got stuck in traffic and behind streets that were closed down by armies of bicycle cops. I sat on a concrete barrier and looked at the people around me. Then I wrote this on my phone:

There is a stark difference between between those walking into the RNC and those outside waving signs outside. The ones walking in have every one of their beliefs confirmed by the shaggy looks and angry remarks by the sign wavers – they’ve won, they’re going inside! The sign wavers have all their beliefs confirmed by smugness of those walking in. They are “Them”, those with the credentials and hair-do’s to get into the building.

Nobody is learning. Nobody’s mind is changing. They are attacking on a level that isn’t meant to change or educate – just to hate and alienate.

The yelling is stereotypical. The old black Obama supporter is yelling at the old white republican who is limping on crutches and a broken leg about Obamacare. Republican couples mumble about how people need to get jobs. Every comment is an echo of a soundbite. Soundbite people repeating soundbite news to go kiss soundbite ass. It’s why they’re losing their grip.

I hear a man say “cash” and I knew something was about to happen. He made a connection, made a plan, got an interview. He had a conversation about something sincere. He’s already made a difference. Good job guy, I don’t know what you or your braided beard are going to do, but thank god you got some money. (Not sarcastic here – he was curious and wanted to make some progress!)

It’s sport for them. It’s only about being right and telling the other people they are wrong. TV told them to be scared of the Others and so they are – they are the end of America. Maybe they are, but I don’t think telling them that will help. Unless saying “I told you so” counts as a life enhancing event.

The cops had no idea whats going on. The captain takes them and drags them into position like he drags people out of the way of a walk way.

We love sports. Sometimes it’s about the athletic prowess but usually it’s more about, “Yeeeehawwwrr I’m better because I prefer this athlete who won today inside this particular set of rules!” And I think that’s great. I think sports are fantastic when we play them. I think it’s beautiful to see what our human bodies are capable of.

Just lesser. Our government shouldn’t be a colosseum though. You shouldn’t get a politicians back, he’s supposed to have yours. They have us so disillusioned that almost everyone is convinced we must choose between “the lesser of two evils” even though there are plenty wonderful places to live that don’t buy it.

Money. It’s easy to manipulate a game if there are only two sides. In the 1980’s French banks failed and the government took them over. In 2008 US banks failed and they took over the government. Some might argue this happened much earlier. Most will argue that I’m a conspiracy theorist for saying this. But I’m not talking about a conspiracy or a theory, only things we know about for sure. Remember that the Federal Reserve is a private (profiteering) bank that no politician (or president) can do anything to control. They don’t even have to show what money they’ve been printing or where they’ve been putting it. Again, only facts, zero opinions.

Salesmen. We like to have hope. Actually, we need hope if we aren’t going to drink ourselves to death tonight. We also need to blame people. The economy (please define “the economy” and whatever you do, don’t include yourself in it) is bad and I’m scared and I’m upset so I want someone to tell me it’s okay. Politicians’ favorite things (things) in the world are people who desperately need something, they will mold themselves to fit any hole you need them too – mentally or otherwise.

Fresh Hope! Only 50% of your income (unless you need to get paid, we can do that too) to make some bombs to blow up babies and pay that Company who helped me out, and to pay for more votes. OR DIE

Corporatism. Amazon has been fighting sales tax for years, now they support it. Why? Because they figured out a way to keep their competitive edge in the face of it. They made a deal with the government to build cheap distribution centers all over the place. Google uses 21 times more bandwidth than they pay for. These are two of my favorite companies and I don’t blame them for what they’re doing. As a business you use the tools available to you to profit. The government should never be a tool for business. I don’t understand why this would ever be a controversial statement.

Same stuff. Obama has told a billion lies and probably isn’t even a U.S. citizen. Mitt Romney has been caught in at least 530 lies in 30 weeks. The only way we can change the political game is to sack up and recognize that our ‘parties’ are teams playing for votes (and we never got to read the rule book) instead of groups of people with good ideas to make your life better. I challenge anyone to scan a list executive orders and attempt to figure whether the president was an elephant or donkey.

They can’t care about you. Politicians (presidents) are humans just like you and me. They have emotions and pee on the seat and eat and have terrible relationships with people. They also have 24 hours a day and a the same amount of attention as you. How many people do you care about? I probably actually care about a baker’s dozen worth of people and two dogs. That’s it really. I love a ton of people and I wish I could help more people all the time and have real relationships with more people. I want to have more human connections. But we barely get any as humans, and to think your ‘representative’ gives a shit about anything besides your vote means he gave a great speech and you are a terrible listener.

The presidency in the universe of The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. More truth than fiction. (click pic for bigger)

Obligation. P-diddy and others just as incompetent will tell you that if you don’t vote, you will die. What this really means is, “If you don’t side with Big Blue or Rowdy Red you aren’t an American and all your friends will make fun of you and you don’t deserve to dance to my sick beats and your parents will disown you and America will die. And it will all be your fault. You lonely, sad, sick fucker.” It’s scary for people to see an independent thinker, almost as scary as thinking independently. So they will violently push you onto a side – “have an opinion you pussy!” But why does every person in America need to ‘research’ other people’s opinions about people who we KNOW are lying to us?

Fiercely Apathetic. They turned apathetic into a bad word. (THEY!) But we are all apathetic about most things most of the time. Just because somebody holds a very strong belief that they are very insecure about (the more volatile a person is when discussing a subject the more scared they tend to be about their stored conclusion) it doesn’t mean you need to give a shit about it. Defend your apathy with everything you’ve got! Nod your head, give a concerned ‘hmm’, then forget about it. If I see a group of people circled around something bowing to it I will probably want to bow too – it’s comfy to worship things! But when I was bowed I smelled something gross. I dove balls-deep into the bowing crowd, I found out everything I could – what is that smell they are all praying to!? Then i got to the front row (this means protests, heavy academic books) and I saw the thing I smelled the whole time. I didn’t want to admit to myself what the smell was. I didn’t want to admit that I was worshipping a pile of bull’s shit stacked however tall Obomney is. But I saw it and it burned and nobody can ever force me to worship shit, no matter how charismatic it might be. 
The best part is that when you see a pile of shit and gather the courage to leave it behind, you find much better things to eat. Care about politicians, for real! Bad political ideas are a very real danger – but for God’s sake don’t look at the issues they shove your face in.

sounds a lot like a politician to me

Stop Fighting. My reaction to every political thing is to fight it or praise it. “Fuck you!” or “Oorah!” But there are other things to do with it. Ask things. What does this mean for my life? What opportunities does this create? Why would they do that? Where is the incentive? Where did this fact become an opinion?

Start Fighting. Maybe zero of this applies to you. Maybe you love the game. Then play! Just not blindly. There are MUCH more interesting things in the political landscape than Obama or Romney or even Ron Paul. I don’t want to see our government as separated from anything or above anything, it’s a huge organism that has complexities that are hidden everywhere. Instead of researching to win a fight try researching out of curiosity of how this thing works. Fight for some fucking truth, just try. Keep it a secret if you want, tell them you’re voting for Romney or Obama then go and find out if that’s what you should actually do. Don’t dig in the official websites, their incentives are funny. Realize you’re not on any team but Team America. Even better, Team Universe. You were made in a supernova god damnit – you deserve better than bickering about whatever the media decided this week’s argument is.

All I’m saying – just because everybody is taking part in a feces feast around you it doesn’t mean you need to put one bite of it in your mouth. You might get a whiff on facebook and splattered by some spewing out of the television but wipe it off if you want. Leave the mob behind and find some facts, connect some dots, and put the precious moments of your human experience’s awareness into something something you choose. I chose to write you this because I might die today and I might never get to talk to you again. Or hug my dog or get drunk or tell somebody who loves Obama or Romney that I love them. I don’t know how you feel about this, but I feel a little closer to okay about Death smacking my infinitesimal (and maybe the opposite) being out of this existence.

looking in is infinite too