photo: BetterWorks

More students (and people in general) are embracing the risky and uncertain path of the entrepreneur/artist. The education system is being challenged more than ever. Online platforms—whether it be your own blog, Facebook or Twitter—is a part of who we are, what we do, why and how we do things. A business no longer requires a storefront but a forefront, whether it be a website or an app on your phone. Access to education and information? Right at your fingertips. How to do anything? YouTube. Some of the greatest books cost more to ship to your home than it is to purchase.

As Steven Pressfield eloquently observes in his Writing Wednesday series, he calls it The Free-Agent Mindset:

We—meaning anybody now living in the globalized/digital/satellite-linked/worldwide-web world—are faced with the challenge and obligation to make a primal shift in consciousness. This shift is as cosmic, I believe, as the transition from illiteracy to literacy in the Gutenberg era, from farm to factory in the days of Wordsworth and Coleridge, and all the post-Industrial Age changeovers since.

I’m not talking about external changes. Those are obvious. What’s perilous and critical and what we all need to become conscious of is the stuff inside. How have we had to change our minds and our ways of thinking about the world and about ourselves?

The poster child of this cultural and world change are the Millennials—or what Time has called, The Me Me Me Generation; also known as Generation-Y. This encompasses a group of individuals born from the years of 1980 to 2000.

The article goes on to express how my generation is lazy, entitled, narcissistic, and suffer from phantom pocket-vibration syndrome, but equally important, why we are capable of changing the world. Millennials: The Me Me Me Generation says:

At 80 million strong, they are the biggest age grouping in American history. Each country’s millennials are different, but because of globalization, social media, the exporting of Western culture and the speed of change, millennials worldwide are more similar to one another than to older generations within their nations. Even in China, where family history is more important than any individual, the Internet, urbanization and the one-child policy have created a generation as overconfident and self-involved as the Western one.

…

They are the most threatening and exciting generation since the baby boomers brought about social revolution, not because they’re trying to take over the Establishment but because they’re growing up without one. The Industrial Revolution made individuals far more powerful—they could move to a city, start a business, read and form organizations. The information revolution further empowered individuals by handing them the technology to compete against huge organizations: hackers vs. corporations, bloggers vs. newspapers, terrorists vs. nation-states, YouTube directors vs. studios, app-makers vs. entire industries. Millennials don’t need us. That’s why we’re scared of them.

Productivity has reached its true potential and now it’s time to reach ours. The focus nowadays seems to be going from external systems to internal systems (our self-talk, perception, worldview, etc.). Mastering our internal system—like the way the Industrial Age mastered productivity and created a safe, solid, and fruitful foundation for society to flourish—is imperative to innovation, growth, creativity, and learning.

But most importantly, it is essential for us to understand the cause of this narcissistic tendency in Millennials, and the most recent book that I read by Brené Brown, Daring Greatly, says it with utter brilliance. She defines shame as, “Shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging.” Now lets tie this to the topic of narcissism; she goes on to say:

The topic of narcissism has penetrated the social consciousness enough that most people correctly associate it with a pattern of behaviors that include grandiosity, a pervasive need for admiration, and a lack of empathy. What almost no one understands is how every level of severity in this diagnosis is underpinned by shame. Which means we don’t “fix it” by cutting people down to size and reminding folks of their inadequacies and smallness. Shame is more likely to be the cause of these behaviors, not the cure.

For example, when I look at narcissism through the vulnerability lens, I see the shame-based fear of being ordinary. I see the fear of never feeling extraordinary enough to be noticed, to be lovable, to belong, or to cultivate a sense of purpose. Sometimes the simple act of humanizing problems sheds an important light on them, a light that often goes out the minute a stigmatizing label is applied. This new definition of narcissism offers clarity and it illuminates both the source of the problem and the possible solutions.

Most of us define ourselves hierarchically and don’t even know it. It’s hard not to. School, advertising, the entire materialist culture drills us from birth to define ourselves by others’ opinions. Drink this beer, get this job, look this way and everyone will love you. What is a hierarchy, anyway?   Hollywood is a hierarchy. So are Washington, Wall Street, and the Daughters of the American Revolution. High school is the ultimate hierarchy. And it works; in a pond that small, the hierarchical orientation succeeds. The cheerleader knows where she fits, as does the dweeb in the Chess Club. Each has found a niche. The system works. There’s a problem with the hierarchical orientation, though. When the numbers get too big, the thing breaks down. A pecking order can hold only so many chickens. In Massapequa High, you can find your place. Move to Manhattan and the trick no longer works. New York City is too big to function as a hierarchy. So is IBM. So is Michigan State. The individual in multitudes this vast feels overwhelmed, anonymous. He is submerged in the mass. He’s lost. We humans seem to have been wired by our evolutionary past to function most comfortably in a tribe of twenty to, say, eight hundred. We can push it maybe to a few thousand, even to five figures. But at some point it maxes out. Our brains can’t file that many faces. We thrash around, flashing our badges of status (Hey, how do you like my Lincoln Navigator?) and wondering why nobody gives a shit. We have entered Mass Society. The hierarchy is too big. It doesn’t work anymore.

The Time article further explains:

Companies are starting to adjust not to just millennials’ habits but also to their atmospheric expectations. Nearly a quarter of DreamWorks’ 2,200 employees are under 30, and the studio has a 96% retention rate. Dan Satterthwaite, who runs the studio’s human-relations department and has been in the field for about 23 years, says Maslow’s hierarchy of needs makes it clear that a company can’t just provide money anymore but also has to deliver self-actualization.

It goes on to say that employees are able to take classes like photography, sculpting, painting, and karate. That’s pretty amazing and a core example of how the workplace can shift from rudimentary tasks to finding fulfillment, attaining mastery, creating value, and embracing purpose.

So what matters now?

Seth Godin, in his latest book, The Icarus Deception, is one that ought to be read by anyone who wants to understand the vast changes in our culture, workplace, and ultimately ourselves:

It’s easy to become a self-paraody, whining about the imperfections in an almost perfect world that gets more perfect all the time. We finally got the industrial world working the way it was supposed to; we found our safe spot, our mortgage and our houses and our dream in the suburbs. The connection revolution has made it easier to find what we want, get what we want, and complain about what we didn’t get.

…

Can we really produce more shiny objects to delight an ever-growing population? Can we give the people who already have endless stuff even more pleasure by giving them more stuff? The economy we live in today is very different from the one our parents grew up in. We have a surplus of choices, a surplus of quality, a surplus of entertainments to choose from. We have big-box stores and big-box storage units and big-box debt. But we’re still lonely. And we’re still bored. The connection economy works because it focuses on the lonely and the bored. It works because it embraces the individual, not the mob; the weird, not the normal.

This shift from “how can we make the world more awesome” to “how can we make ourselves more awesome so the world becomes more awesome” is a spark that has caught the attention of many and will soon spread like wildfire. We are leaving (or already left) the Industrial mindset and now starting to embrace a new one—one that is focused on championing our innate, human desires. The machine is oiled and running well, but operator is sick and tired. Time for a change.

Like Steven Pressfield said, “How have we had to change our minds and our ways of thinking about the world and about ourselves?”

There are certain underlying patterns and themes that reflect what I’m talking about—mastery, autonomy, and purpose. Dan Pink offers empirical evidence in his insightful book, Drive, on what motivates us and what we should be focusing on:

Humans, by their nature, seek purpose—a cause greater and more enduring than themselves. But traditional businesses have long considered purpose ornamental—a perfectly nice accessory, so long as it didn’t get in the way of the important things. But that’s changing—thanks in part to the rising tide of aging baby boomers reckoning with their own mortality. In Motivation 3.0, purpose maximization is taking its place alongside profit maximization as an aspiration and a guiding principle. Within organizations, this new “purpose motive” is expressing itself in three ways: in goals that use profit to reach purpose; in words that emphasize more than self-interest; and in policies that allow people to pursue purpose on their own terms. This move to accompany profit maximization with purpose maximization has the potential to rejuvenate our businesses and remake our world.

Indeed, there is no escaping the wonder and changes going on in our world.

However, it’s important to make a distinction. Seeking purpose such as how to make more money isn’t effective in the long run—how can I make money quicker to buy this Gucci bag sooner so that others can accept me ASAP?

Pink shows a study on students graduating from the University of Rochester entering the real world. The study focuses on two groups with two separate goals—money versus purpose:

Some of the U of R students had what Deci, Ryan, and Niemiec label “extrinsic aspirations”—for instance, to become wealthy or to achieve fame—what we might call “profit goals.” Others had “intrinsic aspirations”—to help others improve their lives, to learn, and to grow—or what we might think of as “purpose goals.” After these students had been out in the real world for between one and two years, the researchers tracked them down to see how they were feeling. The people who’d had purpose goals and felt they were attaining them reported higher levels of satisfaction and subjective well-being than when they were in college, and quite low levels of anxiety and depression. That’s probably no surprise. They’d set a personally meaningful goal and felt they were reaching it. In that situation, most of us would likely feel pretty good, too. But the results for people with profit goals were more complicated. Those who said they were attaining their goals—accumulating wealth, winning acclaim—reported levels of satisfaction, self-esteem, and positive affect no higher than when they were students. In other words, they’d reached their goals, but it didn’t make them any happier. What’s more, graduates with profit goals showed increases in anxiety, depression, and other negative indicators—again, even though they were attaining their goals.

The shift from mass productivity to mass consciousness is a movement, a revolution. We can pinpoint our behaviors that spawned from shame and make new decisions and adopt new beliefs tomorrow. It is clear that money doesn’t buy happiness, but rather the pursuit of mastery, autonomy, and purpose creates it. Many Gen-Ys may be narcissistic and entitled, but nevertheless, the establishment they’re growing up in, the tools that are available and that are being created can facilitate self-actualization, pursuing meaningful work, creating revolutionary ideas and products, and leaving a dent in the universe.

There is always an ominous smell before it storms. It would be wise for us to start planting some new seeds now.

photo: MAMJODH

Abraham Lincoln once said: “Whatever you are, be a good one.”

I believe the solution to feeling stuck is picking something—and not limited to just one craft—and becoming so great at it that it becomes your Life’s Task, as Robert Greene calls it in his latest book, Mastery. Certain crafts come to mind such as writing, graphic design, coding, painting, music, architecture, etc. Leadership and making brave decisions and solving difficult problems are skills too. The pursuit of mastering a craft, I believe, provides a deep sense of meaning in our lives and gives us a platform to contribute.

Or, put more eloquently by James Rhodes, a concert pianist: “Find what you love and let it kill you.”

With initiative comes fear. Fear of failure, of not making ends, of uncertainty, and of greatness. Succumbing to a safe, routine job that doesn’t evoke your inclinations, passion, or skills is the norm. It sustains life, but doesn’t fulfill it. Why is it that most people hate their jobs?

Roberte Greene—known for his meticulous methodology in providing rich research by using patterns in history and its heroes, and deeply thought-out books on power, seduction, and purpose—offers a compass to those who need help finding their Life’s Task. Here’s how he defines it:

“The process of realizing your Life’s Task comes in three stages [emphasis by me]:

First, you must connect or reconnect with your inclinations, that sense of uniqueness. The first step then is always inward. You search the past for signs of that inner voice or force. You clear away the other voices that might confuse you—parents and peers. You look for an underlying pattern, a core to your character that you must understand as deeply as possible.

Second, with this connection established, you must look at the career path you are already on or are about to begin. The choice of this path—or redirection of it—is critical. To help in this stage you will need to enlarge your concept of work itself. Too often we make a separation in our lives—there is work and there is life outside work, where we find real pleasure and fulfillment. Work is often seen as a means for making money so we can enjoy that second life we lead. Even if we derive some satisfaction from our careers we still tend to compartmentalize our lives this way. This is a depressing attitude, because in the end we spend a substantial part of our waking life at work. If we experience this time as something to get through on the way to real pleasure, then our hours at work represent a tragic waste of the short time we have to live.

…

Finally, you must see your career or vocational path more as a journey with twists and turns rather than a straight line. You begin by choosing a field or position that roughly corresponds to your inclinations. This initial position offers you room to maneuver and important skills to learn.

When I was in this position, I chose writing. At the time of this decision, all I did was really play video games—seriously. I always seemed to have a strong opinion. In the game, in the chatrooms or in forums, I was always able to spark a conversation. Not trolling, of course, but real debates on the functionality of the video game and what the creators ought to do to improve it.

When sitting down with my best friend/mentor, he helped me outline my strengths, weaknesses, and ultimately the kind of lifestyle I desired to live. It is then that he introduced me to blogging, having my platform, understanding the internet, etc.

Fast forward about three years, and here I am, still doing what I enjoy/love most, slowly but surely mastering the skill by exercising it daily, creating new opportunities to use my expertise, and at the same time, building a life where it sustains my desires, aspirations, and curiosity.

In The Start-Up of You, Reid Hoffman shares the story of Sheryl Sandberg, current CEO of Facebook:

Today, Sheryl is the chief operating officer of Facebook, where she is in charge of the company’s business operations. She serves on the boards of Disney and Starbucks. Fortune named her one of the most powerful women in business.

You might think someone so successful knew her goals and aspirations from day one, and followed a rigorous and ambitious career plan to achieve them. But you’d be wrong. Sheryl hasn’t stuck to a conventional career plan. In fact, as an idealistic undergraduate majoring in economics she never imagined that she would one day be working in the private sector, much less as a top executive for one of the world’s most valuable companies. Sheryl began her career in India, about as far as one could get from Silicon Valley. There she went to work on public health projects for the World Bank. It was a first job consistent with deeply embedded values: to give back to those less fortunate and to make a difference in the world.

…

Yet after a couple of years with the World Bank, Sheryl shifted course and left the public sector to enroll at Harvard Business School, where she earned an MBA. From academia, her next stop was the business world. But after a one-year stint at management consulting firm McKinsey, she realized the corporate track wasn’t for her; so she shifted yet again, this time to Washington, DC, where she served as then U.S. Secretary of Treasury Larry Summers’s chief of staff from 1996 through 2001.

She then went on to work for Google as vice president of global online sales and operations. She grew the company’s online sales and turned a group of four individuals into a global team of thousands; she was responsible for the growth of Google Ad Sense and Google Adwords—Google’s top revenue generating engines. After six years at Google, she pivoted yet again, but this time to Facebook.

Hoffman also mentions the idea of being aware of your assets.

Assets are what you have right now. Before dreaming about the future or making plans, you need to articulate what you already have going for you—as entrepreneurs do. The most brilliant business idea is often the one that builds on the founders’ existing assets in the most brilliant way. There are reasons Larry Page and Sergey Brin started Google and Donald Trump started a real estate firm. Page and Brin were in a computer science doctoral program. Trump’s father was a wealthy real estate developer, and he had apprenticed in his father’s firm for five years. Their business goals emerged from their strengths, interests, and network of contacts.

The resume is no longer a valuable currency—experiences are.

The trouble in finding work that provides fulfillment, work that relentlessly challenges you and helps you contribute, is ultimately the fear of serendipity and the fear of being an amateur. What if you started to learn how to code? How will you know if it’s the right path? This riskiness unmans us. We usually want solid, concrete plans so that we know where we’re heading. We want to know which boxes to check off and which obstacles to hurdle so that we can have what we want.

Alas, that is not how great careers are forged. It turns out that the strongest careers are non-linear.

Hoffman provides some more insight on Sandberg’s career path. This also relates to what Robert Greene said earlier in finding your Life’s Task, in that “you must see your career or vocational path more as a journey with twists and turns rather than a straight line. You begin by choosing a field or position that roughly corresponds to your inclinations. This initial position offers you room to maneuver and important skills to learn”:

Sheryl’s story contradicts the analogous assumption that massively successful people find their calling at an early age, devise a bulletproof life plan, and then follow it unwaveringly until attainment. Sheryl’s career plans wasn’t something she crafted once in her early twenties and then followed blindly. She didn’t assemble a bunch of dominos, knock over the first piece, and then sit back and watch the rest fall into place over time. Instead of locking herself in to a single career path, she evaluated new opportunities as they presented themselves, taking into consideration her (ever-growing) set of intellectual and experiential assets. She pivoted to new professional tracks without ever losing sight of what really mattered to her. “The reason why I don’t have a plan is because if I have a plan I’m limited to today’s options,” she says.

What we can focus on, like Sheryl Sandberg did, is creating value. What value are we creating for others? A graphic designer does what you can’t because not only did they develop an eye for it, but it overshadows nearly every aspect of their life. Wherever they go, they can be inspired, because the art of designing is ultimately the art of seeing. They go from “Oh, that’s interesting,” to “Oh, I can steal this and morph it into something of my own.” As Pablo Picasso once said: “Good artists copy; great artists steal.”

When I first started writing, I never admitted it to anyone. Looking back, I was ashamed. Ashamed to be viewed as a beginner. Ashamed to be viewed as a 20-something-year-old college student who decided to do, of all possible things, writing. How did I gain confidence to keep going? Practicing, shipping, and learning, i.e., signing up for online courses or asking for help—the very acts that elicit fear and self-doubt but ultimately reshape who you are.

You don’t find your purpose, you create it

My first realization was when I landed a guest post on Problogger. Then another big blog. Then another. I finally realized, Wait, I can do this writing thing. I’m actually getting pretty good. Now I write for multiple popular blogs, self-publish books, created an awesome manifesto, did a ghostwriting gig, some freelance work, etc. This may seem linear, but I would disagree, because anything could happen from here on out. There are plenty of writers just like me who won’t self-publish or write a manifesto, but instead, may start a company or become an editor for a magazine or start a podcast. Anything can happen. But the focus remains the same: creating value, practicing the craft, and adapting to opportunities.

Pursuing a path is scary. It means that tomorrow requires a newfound commitment. The pressure, anxiety, and fear of practicing your craft and exposing yourself only increases with time. But this pressure and being able to overcome your own negative self-talk forges you into something greater. We look up to our heroes in a specific niche because they overcome, everyday, the pressures and fears of creating value and doing meaningful work. This is a pattern, and it is worth understanding.

Lastly, I want to end with a passage from The War of Art, written by one of my favorite authors, Steven Pressfield. I’m hoping this scares you in a way to make you realize that inaction is far more detrimental than failing.

Have you heard this story: Woman learns she has cancer, six months to live. Within days she quits her job, resumes the dream of writing Tex-Mex songs she gave up to raise a family (or starts studying classical Greek, or moves to the inner city and devotes herself to tending babies with AIDS). Woman’s friends think she’s crazy; she herself has never been happier. There’s a postscript. Woman’s cancer goes into remission. Is that what it takes? Do we have to stare death in the face to make us stand up and confront Resistance? Does Resistance have to cripple and disfigure our lives before we wake up to its existence? How many of us have become drunks and drug addicts, developed tumors and neuroses, succumbed to painkillers, gossip, and compulsive cell-phone use, simply because we don’t do that thing that our hearts, our inner genius, is calling us to? Resistance defeats us. If tomorrow morning by some stroke of magic every dazed and benighted soul woke up with the power to take the first step toward pursuing his or her dreams, every shrink in the directory would be out of business. Prisons would stand empty. The alcohol and tobacco industries would collapse, along with the junk food, cosmetic surgery, and infotainment businesses, not to mention pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, and the medical profession from top to bottom.

If you’re saying, “I don’t know what I want to do with my life,” then let me offer an option: start something, fail hard, learn from it, adapt and pivot, then try again.

Focus on mastering a skill and leveraging it to embark on other endeavors. Let the very idea of using your hands or transferring thoughts to words or communicating with design devour your day and ultimately yourself. There is no time to think, or even care, about the latest scandal—it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t help you do better work.

The first person who found buried treasure didn’t sit in their room or ship and think of possible solutions to obtain lost riches. They used the resources available and started digging.

(I’ve never really written an article like this, but I might start doing so—focusing on a topic, using my research, while tying in my own story/opinions. Did you like this article? Should I write content like this more often? I’d appreciate your feedback.)

A few months ago I applied for 99U’s new feature, Workbook. It’s about providing bite-sized bits of knowledge on many topics: creativity, productivity, shipping, management, art, etc.

It was perfect.

I told all my friends about it, and most reactions were, “Dude, that has your name written all over it. Isn’t that what you do right now?”

Even while I was laying on the beaches of Cancun, Mexico, on Spring Break, with my best friends, drink in hand, all I could think about was the email. All I thought about was my semester ending, getting back into devouring books, taking the insight and posting up articles.

Of course, it didn’t happen.

I’m sitting in class and an email notification pops up. At a glance, I saw the email address and immediately knew who it was and what it was about. I clicked it, saw a short email, and pretty much knew right away.

“Unfortunately, we’ll be moving ahead with other candidates,” said one of the sentences.

Accept whatever comes to you woven in the pattern of your destiny, for what could more aptly fit your needs?

said Marcus Aurelius.

The professor’s voice started to fade. I could hear the blood swooshing around my face. My hands became brick-cold. I didn’t want to believe it.

“Fuck the Universe,” I kept thinking. And then Aurelius’s quote kept counteracting and reverberating in my head.

I took a few deep breathes to calm down. I realized I was feeling this way because of what I was telling myself: An event occurred (me failing to get my dream opportunity); I then had a belief about it (I’m not worthy; I’m a terrible writer; my email submission sucked); and luckily for me, due to constant practice and awareness, my emotions didn’t dictate my behavior, i.e., flinging my laptop across the room. More deep breathes.

As Hunter S. Thompson once said: ”Buy the ticket, take the ride.”

I bought a ticket, took the ride, and arrived at a place where I didn’t want to be. What can I do?

What we all should do when this happens to us: move on.

Transmuting Failure

The next time you experience failure do the following:

1) Breathe: It’ll be okay. You missed the train, so what? Another will come. Breathe. Realize this: without breathing, without pausing, you will go back to stupid methods of dealing with your frustrations. Now is not the time. You have shit to do. Breathe.

2) Acknowledge it; what can you learn?: You failed. Great. What did you learn? What can you do different next time? How can this failure empower you to do better work? How much better off are you now that you experienced this event and survived? Is dwelling on this failure going to turn the failure into a success? Ask yourself these questions and you will find clarity.

3) The Universe: The universe, the universe, the universe. Good ol’ law of attraction. Is it real? I don’t know. Your perception is your reality. The only two things that are real are matter and energy. Sometimes you just can’t win’em all. A pattern that I noticed is the people who do meaningful work experience more failures than success, and maybe for a good reason. The habit of blaming external factors is fruitless and won’t last in the long haul; a worthy habit to invest in is how you react.

4) What’s next?: Like your To-Do list, what’s next? You arrived at a place you didn’t want to be. You learned your lesson. You accept the failure and refuse to use it as an excuse to delay or complain but rather to move forward and do something else. Reassess your situation—especially if this was a bigger-than-normal failure. What can you do next that matters? What will help you explore, learn, and grow? Focus on that.

Failure, adversity, downfalls, bruises, pressure, fear—these are all part of life, an accommodation to taking risks and choosing yourself. This is what you get for suiting up and not sitting on the bench. If you are facing these elements, then I applaud you, keep going.

And if aren’t, then you know where you stand and probably have an idea of where you should go.

Was it the criticism that angered you or did you make yourself angry?

Was it the article that went against your worldview that angered you or was it you that angered you?

Perception is mediated thought, not immediate. It is how you collect, organize, and think about it. Sensation—like putting your hand on a table and feeling cold, hard, smooth—is immediate. “Oh, this table feels good,” is not a sensation, but rather perception—it is what we tell ourselves about the table that creates how we feel about it. Understand?

The same goes for every aspect in your life.

The driver that cut you off this morning wasn’t the cause of your rage. It was you.

The co-worker, yoga instructor, and gym buddies that are yapping away aren’t the cause of your irritation. You are.

Sure, the waitresses at Outback Steakhouse may have been stonewall, but she wasn’t the one who made you feel that way. You created it by what you were telling yourself. You had demands, expectations, and beliefs about how you should be treated. It’s not like you’re telling yourself this as you’re opening the wooden doors and asking for a table for two, but it is embedded in your mind, in your belief system.

Because these demands and expectations aren’t being met, you tell yourself (cognition/thoughts) about the event based on your beliefs. Instead of saying, “She’s just having a bad day, poor girl”—which would suppress anger—you become angry because you’re telling yourself, “What a horrible worker. This food sucks. This experience sucks. Call the manager.” Blah blah blah. Stop doing that to yourself.

This isn’t some spiritual zen practice or something that isn’t available to everyone. This is how our mind works. This is what they teach you in Psychology of Consciousness. The way we perceive the world, the stories we tell ourselves about an event or person or thing, feels like it’s automatically happening. That’s because it is. That’s because we are aware after the fact that we were being a bit harsh … or not harsh enough. We are fierce creatures of habits, and habits are automatic behaviors, meaning we are unconscious of it.

So yes, lashing out and creating stress and being angry is a habit that you created. It is how you deal with the events in your life. And only you can change this.

The only way to change a habit is to be conscious of what you’re thinking, feeling, and doing. You have to pause and do a little introspection. You have to reflect on what you do. This helps you become self-aware.

As Marcus Aurelius once said:

Your ability to control your thoughts — treat it with respect. It’s all that protects your mind from false perceptions — false to your nature, and that of all rational beings. It’s what makes thoughtfulness possible, and affection for other people, and submission to the divine.

Practice

The assignment for today is to realize that you are responsible for how you feel.

Do you ever go a day without feeling frustrated? Think about that.

Remember:

1. An event has to occur—someone cuts you off, hands you a cold steak, steps on your shoes, says that your book or song or piece of art is horseshit. 
2. You have a belief about this event. This is how you perceive what has just happened; this is mediated thought. Although you are not saying it out loud, you are telling yourself in your mind, “How dare they” or “Wow, they’re right, I do suck.” In turn, you create an emotion based on what you’re telling yourself, based on what you believe.
3. Your emotions, to a great extent, control how you behave. When you create anger, you use anger.

This kind of mindfulness, this ability to control how we think, feel, and behave, is a practice. I fail all the time. I lash out, too. But that’s what the practice is for. You get better at it with time. You become more self-aware and more mindful.

The daily practice of realizing this strength can help you regain the freedom that is rightfully yours. Freedom from self-sabotage, from excuses, from pandering, from focusing on things that do not help you grow, learn, and explore.

“Who’s in charge here?!” says the angered patron.

“You are,” the mind says.

I opened a Time magazine and one of the first things I saw was, “SCANDAL: Beyoncé and Jay-Z caught flak for vacationing in Havana despite the U.S.’s decades-old trade embargo.” Really? Can someone show me a picture of their I-care-face?

I saw a guy on twitter post a picture of Kim Kardashian’s twitter feed showing a tweet about how her heart was broken about the Boston marathon bombing. And then the next tweet was sponsoring her younger siblings show or interview or something.

The guy was furious. Here is a man expecting something from someone he doesn’t know, but only knows through media and twitter and dinner table gossip. Here is a man expecting this person to do something bigger and braver than he can … because she has more influence and power and money?

The same people who criticized others for having their tweets scheduled during the Boston bombing are the same ones who sent out their “hearts and prayers” in the morning, but by 3 in the afternoon were tweeting an article about some secret to success or magical headlines or something.

It is easy to be mad at the wrong things. Easy to have a horrible disaster happen—one that happens once a day in other countries like Iran, but with 10x the death rate—right at home turf. There’s so many misguided fools in the world that it’s easy to rally alongside with them—especially if you are unaware of what you stand for—and raise your fist.

There’s a mirror in every home, and yet, we continue to investigate into the lives of others rather than the person we see every morning.

It seems that it’s deeply embedded in human nature to hate what we can’t understand; we immediately criticize or reduce it to something that we can understand, for good or ill. ”I have no idea how that man or woman became successful doing that! … they must be gifted or lucky!”

Isn’t that strange, that most initial reactions is to not understand for what something is—to unravel it, educate ourselves about it, learn the different angles to it, and find ways to use it as an advantage—but to reduce it to a level where it fits our perfect little perception. How strange we humans are.

Why, exactly, do people respond to trolls in online articles? Will they really change Anonymous’s mind?

Humans, by nature, are very demanding. We are demanding something and because we aren’t getting it—fairness, a raise, respect, appreciation, being acknowledged—we resort to, usually, fruitless ways of dealing with the problem.

Why something bothers you

It bothers you because of what you’re telling yourself.

When I say that I don’t mean you’re actually saying it out loud (and if you are that’s great because you can be aware of it), but rather you are saying it in your mind unconsciously. It’s automatic behavior. You learned it from someone.

It also bothers you because it may not align with your values and beliefs.

“I believe that anyone who has a driver’s license should know how to drive well.”

You probably believe that. After all, you’re the best driver in the world.

And then comes reality: You hop on the highway, some 17-year-old cuts you off, and you curse him to hell and back. This frustration stems from your demandingness of fairness. Because your demands aren’t being met, because your beliefs and values are being spat on right in front of you, it bothers you. You lash out and Facebook it.

What’s the cure?

First, you need consciously acknowledge what you’re thinking, feeling, and behaving. You can’t change your methodology in dealing with an issue without being aware of what you’re actually doing.

View your attention as real estate: Shitty people can occupy your mind, punching holes in the walls and peeing on your toilet seat or … you can fill that space with something meaningful, something that adds value.

One thing that drove me nuts were people complaining on Facebook. More specifically, it was people that I went to high school with. These weren’t really my friends per se, but people just like me: seeing what everyone else was up to.

I caught myself unsubscribing from everyone’s feed. And then it hit me; I became self-aware and asked myself, Why is this bothering me? Why is this taking up my time and attention and energy? I was becoming bitter.

I had better things to do. So do you.

So ask yourself these questions when trying to understand your own frustrations:

1) Why is it bothering me?: Think demandingness. The answer might not come up in a split second. You might have to really think this one out. Why, exactly, does traffic bother you? Why, exactly, is someone else complaining bother you? Get to the core of this. Once you figure it out, it’ll be apparent that you’re better off not paying mind to it. This process of asking ourselves questions that we would never ask otherwise elicits clarity. Most people aren’t self-aware. They never take the time to see themselves for who they are or what they do. This can blind a person, having them point fingers to external factors, when in fact, the real issue is internal.

2) What do I have to do today?: Is complaining about some celebrities divorce the most important thing you can do today? Is punching your steering wheel going to make the traffic move? Why are you surprised about the everyday dilemmas? There are greater matters to attend. There are important decisions to be made, like whether or not you’ll start telling the truth about yourself or whether or not you should eat that fried food.

3) Can I change it?: Can you update the outdated education system? Can you change the way people drive? Can you remove the hatred from this world? If so, work at it. If not, stop complaining about it. Hearts and prayers through your Facebook is nice and thoughtful, but I was always taught that actions speak louder than words.

4) Is it me or them?: It’s always you. That’s all.

I think it’s strange how we partake in such fruitless behaviors. I mean, we are learning it from someone or somewhere. What’s worse is failing to take the time to analyze it, to become aware of what we’re doing. How, exactly, does caring about Kim Kardashian’s twitter feed help in anyway with the Boston bombing? And yet, the guy got like 50+ retweets. More idiots.

You don’t have to pay mind to things that don’t add value. You can sure as hell understand why something bothers you. Both exercises will save you time and energy to focus on the things that actually do matter, things that you have control over.

I agree. A book that is labeled as a “business book” may be about business, but ultimately it is helping the reader become exposed to new ideas and perspectives. It is helping them in some way…

Self-help. Personal development. Self-development. All these phrases have gotten a bad rap; it’s a shame, really. Sure, some of it may be from the empty and non-practical books that have been written and continue to litter the online bookshelves (and that’s just my own opinion, to others it may be life changing). But most of it, I believe, is because of the reader.

Most people, including myself a few years ago, would pick up a self-help book and expect to find all the answers to our unhappiness. Because we enter the author’s worldview with a set of high expectations, we miss a lot of the important stuff, the actual lessons and patterns that have great meaning. We hear what we want to hear. We throw the book down and curse it to hell. We go back to being stuck on stupid.

With humility, of course, I have certainly changed my habits and mind over the last few years, only because I made it an obsession, something that had to be done. I’ve become very mindful of what I do and why I do it; I learned to be aware of what I tell myself in situations where I would normally lash out or criticize or not pay attention. I exercise self-awareness daily, in a sense that I can acknowledge and own my flaws, mistakes, and hindrances. Being aware of all this, it has helped me lead a better life because I knew what had to be done; I knew where I stood; I knew who I was and wanted to become.

This attitude and process was created by many different ideas and perspectives from many devoured books. Also from failing relentlessly, i.e., changing my habits or being mindful in times of anxiety.

Reading self-help or any book is great for you. It’s great for the mind and it opens you up. It exposes you to new ways of viewing the world or one specific problem. Here’s how to approach one of the most densely populated categories of books:

1) The purpose of reading self-help: It’s not about finding a book that gets you to put your head back up; it’s about learning why your head was down in the first place. What is the cause of all this unhappiness? Why am I so discontented? We humans have demands, and when those demands aren’t met, there is error in our thinking and behavior. It’s quite possible that your unhappiness isn’t based on what you have, but rather what you lack. You may be lacking appreciation or love or respect. Being aware of what it is you desire, what you’re subconsciously demanding, is imperative to unraveling the unruly problem and moving forward. My favorite book of all time is Mediations by Marcus Aurelius, Gregory Hays translation. It gave me a backbone made of steel. It helped me adopt an attitude where any obstruction in my way is no obstruction at all, but rather a stepping stone, an opportunity to learn. It helped me connect seemingly unrelated dots. It is to this day, in my opinion, one of the greatest books ever written.

But do you see what it did for me? It may not do that for you. Another book might do that. And that’s the idea: Reading and exposing yourself to so many different perspectives that eventually you find one that works for you. It’s about empowering yourself and realizing that if this person can do it, so can you.

2) It’s just a perspective: Mediations, I don’t think, ever sold over a million copies like some other books have. It’s not praised like How to Win Friends and Influence People. Understand this: When you pick up a book, you are picking up a perspective, a worldview. The author has something to say—and hopefully with the backing of other books, studies, life stories, etc.—he or she is proving a point in an educational and insightful manner. You have a specific problem—depression, anxiety, bad habits, whatever. You bought this book because you thought it might contain some kind of information or wisdom to help you view your hindrances in a different way. 

Many of us live life as if it were one gigantic problem to be solved instead of living it as one gigantic adventure to be traveled. A lot of this pressure is from society itself and the rules that were dropped on top of you. A lot of it, in my opinion, is fear. Finding a book that helps you change your perspective or help you understand your own perspective is a great way to reinvent yourself so that you can make the difference that you are naturally capable of making.

3) No one has all the answers: When I started really devouring books, I was a lost fucker. I didn’t know what I wanted out of life. I didn’t really know who I was, other than the fact that I wanted to be great in something. It’s easy to pick up a book and have it completely take over your life. That’s not wrong per se, but realize that no one has all the answers. No one lives a perfect life. I don’t agree with everything said in Meditations, and that’s what helps me draw the line; that’s what helps me be me. Think of your favorite writer and how much you admire them and look up to them and purchase all their stuff. At the surface they seem perfect—but the truth is you have no idea what they’re really like. No one has all the answers. What you’re really doing is gathering different ideas, perspectives, thoughts, attitudes, biases, etc., mixing it in a bowl, and seeing what you create. From there, if you like it, drink up. If not, create something else that works for you so you can start leading the life you were meant to lead.

4) A lot of it is patterns: When our ancestors weren’t humping each other or fighting wild animals (or each other), we were thinking. Thinking about life and nature and the stars and the gods. People have been pondering how to live a reverent life for… forever? When I started to follow my favorite authors, thinkers, and doers, I noticed many patterns. Many of them read books. Many of them didn’t watch television. Many of them have a system for themselves on when they wake up, when they go to bed, what time they exercise, etc. There are patterns at play here, and patterns are very innate to life itself. One of the best pieces of advice that has helped me tremendously was to always find patterns. Learn from them. Why are you seeing them? Why does this keep constantly coming up? When you start to see patterns, pause and find the meaning behind them (hence, why I put that line in my manifesto).

5) Attitude does not dictate behavior: In Psychology, I learned that attitude isn’t as powerful as we think. We can have a great attitude about something, but when an event actually occurs, when real cues are present, our attitude doesn’t always facilitate our behavior. What this means is that you have to act first in order to develop the attitude. You have to carry out the knowledge you have learned so that you can create the attitude of being fearless or vulnerable. An attitude is a mask. Behavior is actions that have a language of its own. To reinvent yourself, to become the person you want to become, you need to act first. And if it so happens, people will describe your attitude for you simply because your behavior spoke for itself.

I hope you start reading many books and blogs on all different subjects. Reading enriches the mind. The mind is a muscle, and putting it to work everyday will help it strengthen and expand. This is a great asset to have for the rest of your life.

What books have changed you?

How do others see you?

Perception is what you tell yourself. Perception is thinking about the sensory stuff that is happening around you. It is mediated thought, not immediate—although it feels that way. What this means is that we actually have greater control over how we think, feel, and behave. It’s a practice of mindfulness.

When Brené Brown was doing research on connection, she said something in her extraordinary TEDTalk that resonated with what this post is going to be about:

“When you ask people about love, they tell you about heartbreak.

When you ask people about belonging, they’ll tell you their most excruciating experiences of being excluded.

And when you ask people about connection, the stories they told me were about disconnection.” — Brené Brown

Why is this?

Why, at times, are we our own worst critic? Why is it easy to give advice that others need to hear, but equally difficult to implement it in  our life? Is this learned or biological?

Greatness is something that all humans desire to achieve. The feeling of being acknowledged for a great act is unmatched. Could greatness mean perfection, like straight A’s or no criticisms at all from your boss? I believe the two are completely different. We know that perfection is boring and is most likely a spawn of fear. The idea of something being imperfect gives it a sense of authenticity, a sense of realism—not something that is out of reach.

In certain facets of our lives, our perception is incredibly false. This could be due to certain experiences in life, like feeling constant shame, not being appreciated, or feeling pressured by social rules and conformity. Again, perception is what we tell ourselves. What we tell ourselves is just another word for thoughts. The challenge that we face throughout our day is to realize that the quality of our life, our work, our relationship with friends and family, is determined by the quality of our thoughts.

Check out this video; it will shock you how often we don’t give ourselves the credit we deserve. How often we fail to acknowledge the gifts and skills that we posses to lead a great life. And how often we need someone to come in and wake us up.

Yes, beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but only when the beholder’s mind consists of beautiful thoughts.

“Starting a restaurant is one of the hardest things you can do.”

“Losing weight is so hard.”

No shit.

Of course it’s going to be hard. When we embark on endeavors that challenge our grit and desire to make a difference, we are learning to create a fruitful habit of dealing with pressure, fear, and ultimately our impulsive selves. When we overcome the obstacle (or fail), we are able to learn lessons that help us evolve and be better than yesterday.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with the small, easy wins. They provide motivation. They may also lead to something bigger or help us become aware of what it is we truly desire. But to constantly bring up—or to listen to those around you—that something is going to be hard is wasted breathe, a waste of words and conversation.

The person saying that to you ought to stop (including yourself).

Do yourself a favor: Define what you want. Plan something, a strategy of some sort. Ask for help and feedback within your group of friends/peers/mentors/whatever. Execute it—test the waters and know where you stand.

Everything else is irrelevant, like the fact that it’s going to be hard, or that you don’t know what you’re doing—because the truth is, most of the time no one knows what they’re doing.

Why is this important?

Because chances are, the decisions and tasks required of you to lead you to where you want to go will elicit fear, discomfort, and anxiety. My personal heroes that I learn from are masters at being aware of their fears and moving past the feeling of anxiety or discomfort. It doesn’t hinder them; they accept that it’s a part of the process. They realize that the feeling is ephemeral, that our brains, hardwired to protect ourselves against any threat, can at times be far more powerful than our attitude.

There is no secret: You learn this habit by doing activities that elicit discomfort, over and over and over.

Mine are the gym and Bikram yoga. I feel immense discomfort halfway through my sessions, and I always feel discomfort before I even step into the gym. Training myself to revel in this feeling has strengthened my ability to be aware of it and still act in the face of discomfort; this also helps in other areas of my life i.e., writing.

The discomfort you feel exercising or doing something rigorous is the same discomfort you will feel standing in front of an audience or receiving constructive criticism from a friend or mentor. It’s a trigger in the brain that causes you to think of ways to escape, find shortcuts, and not pay attention to the present moment.

I believe the panacea is mindfulness— being in completely in touch with and aware of the present moment. Knowing where you are and what you’re doing. Many times, we want to block out the feeling of discomfort. That creates a habit , too. I would rather create the habit of knowing how to deal with it rather than run away from it. You?

Mindfulness is another habit in itself.

Why is it so important?

Most people don’t go through this level because most of our daily life is unconscious—physiologists say about 90-95%, meaning that we are functioning on automatic behaviors (habits) all the time. We are not conscious of what we do all the time because we have already established a routine for dealing with the situation—it’s likely that you have no idea what car you parked next to when you went to work or the mall.

The truth is, most people aren’t aware of what they do or why they do it. It’s easy to go through life carrying out the same habits that create needless stress, only to never challenge why we choose to feel this way or follow an ineffective course of action. Once you choose to be mindful of what you do, you begin to notice certain flaws in your decisions and thinking. This is perfectly fine because what else can we expect—perfection? The challenge here is to acknowledge our ignorance and mistakes and do better next time.

Over the past few months I’ve really been putting myself in situations where I know I’ll feel anxiety and discomfort; even changing the way I eat elicits the feeling because I’m so used to fatty foods, massive amounts of carbs throughout the day, and sweets at night. By staying mindful, I’ve been able to overcome these obstacles, and in turn, see the kind of results that I wish I attained years ago.

Here’s what to do:

1) Acknowledge the situation: Hot yoga has taught me a lot about mindfulness. Many of the instructors always start the class by saying, “Set your intentions.” Thats great advice. It’s about acknowledging the situation, knowing that it’s going to be hard as hell, but proceeding anyway. Whatever situation you’re in that you know will elicit discomfort or anxiety, acknowledge it. Realize that by starting you are training yourself to move past it, helping you achieve your goal and become more determined.

2) Be aware of what you tell yourself: Your environment or some kind of stimulus doesn’t create your feelings. You create your emotions by what you tell yourself. Let me explain: An event occurs; you then tell yourself a story on how you perceived that event (this happens instantly in our brains); this, in turn, creates an emotion, so let’s say you’re driving and someone cuts you off, you then tell yourself, “How dare they do that to me. What an asshole,” and by telling yourself that you feel anger or frustration. If you told yourself, “Oh that poor soul, they’re probably in a rush because they’re going to piss their pants,” you won’t feel anger. Try it sometime. We are social animals and we react on our emotions. It’s nearly impossible not to. For you to not quit in the face of screaming fear, anxiety, or discomfort, you have to be mindful of what you tell yourself so you don’t create feelings that will hinder your ability to step forward.

3) Proceed anyway: Most people quit the moment they feel discomfort. It’s how we naturally react, simply because we haven’t trained ourselves not to. The next time you do something that elicits discomfort—whether approaching someone at a bar, writing something true to your heart, exercising, stretching, changing your eating habits—go one step further. Do it day after day. That’s the only way you get better at it.

4) Our brains lie to us: You aren’t going to die… not that easily. People who suffer from phobias know that there is only one true cure to their fear and anxiety: exposure. Constantly facing the thing that elicits anxiety and fear. Fear of heights? The most effective way of “curing” someone with a phobia of heights is to constantly put them in a position where they face their fear of heights. It takes baby steps. I watched a woman who couldn’t climb six steps on a ladder. The moment she hit the fifth step, her brain triggered an immense feeling of anxiety because she learned to perceive heights as a serious threat (also can be biological), then she started saying she was going to fall and die. But with the help of the therapist, she finally took that step; when she got to the top, she realized it wasn’t all that bad, that her brain had lied to her. She smiled and cheered and raised her arms. It took a while, but it was done. The same goes for you: Constantly expose yourself to the thing that elicits anxiety, fear, and discomfort, take that step forward, and master the obstacles that hinder you from exploring.

5) You will change: Creating this habit for yourself will surely change you. You’ll come up with less excuses. Your determination will be fierce. You will begin seeking adventures, ways to challenge your comfort zone. When I started doing hot yoga, anxiety and discomfort pervaded every particle of my body. I constantly thought about how others perceived me. I constantly worried about how my body looked. This, in turn, affected my practice—the simple reason why I was in that room in the first place. After so much practice, so much exposure, I’ve become the type of person who sits in the hottest corner of the room and in front of the mirrors. I can finally touch my toes, no problem. I can almost do a headstand. The actions that my brain once perceived as discomfort (and it still does) became less debilitating and more of a realization, an acceptance of, “Ah, I’m making progress.”

Discomfort, anxiety, and fear are part of the process. It is a part of growing and moving forward. To simply shy away from it, to make excuses, to avoid it at all costs, is doing yourself a disservice. Those elements fortify your habits and make you who you are.

To not feel discomfort means it’s time to shatter new boundaries.

You’re either in or not.

It’s easy to sit there and create stories in your mind. Stories, which in turn, create how you feel. It’s part of human nature to act on emotions. So we how we feel influences how we behave.

What you tell yourself is one of the most important skills to master. Learning to administer your thoughts—the stories you tell yourself in your mind—can ultimately help you control how you feel, and in turn, how you behave.

Telling yourself that you’re likely to fail, that you aren’t capable, and that it would be stupid to even try, creates anxiety and self-doubt. This process happens instantly in our brain and strengthens the more we practice it. What happens when you feel anxiety and self-doubt? You hide.

The notion of having nothing to lose is often a good thing—especially when your belief is, “I truly have nothing to lose, so I have to try.” Doing nothing is far worse than making a mistake.

This video exemplifies what happens when we — as Billy Joel says in the video — “Take a chance.”

Next time you find yourself in a situation where you can take initiative, be aware of what you tell yourself. The simple words that we use daily can make all the difference between letting opportunity happen and missing it altogether.

I think you’ll love this.

Here is an interview with the student, Michael Pollack.