In many ways, the title of this book would suggest you should read only if you are >18. It was a bit difficult to digest at first, due to the language and ultra-direct approach. But as I read, it made more sense, and after completing the book, I was glad that I read it. The last few chapters are gold. It gave me new insights of life, and also gave me valuable realization to improve myself.
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| I think most of us are always worried and anxious about almost everything - We end up not feeling happy. |
This book shares how to care-less on the artificial things in life while managing more tangible and essential things in life. There are some concepts to note.
The Feedback Loop from Hell is something we do all the time, especially as a modern day human.
You get anxious about confronting somebody in your life. That anxiety cripples you and you start wondering why you're so anxious. Now you're becoming anxious about being anxious. You are officially anxious about your anxiety, which is causing more anxiety...
You get pissed off at the stupidest, most inane stuff, and you have no idea why. And the fact that you get pissed off so easily starts to piss you off even more. And then, you petty rage, you realize that being angry all the time makes you a shallow and mean person, and you hate this; you hate it so much that you get angry at yourself. So, you are angry at yourself getting angry about being angry.
Now here's the problem: Our society today, through the wonders of consumer culture and hey-look-my-life-is-cooler-than-yours social media, has bred a whole generation of people who believe that having negative experiences - anxiety, fear, guilt and etc. is not okay. In your Facebook feed, everyone is having a good time, getting married or having nice presents. You are stuck at home flossing your cat.
The Feedback Loop from Hell has made many of us overly stressed, overly neurotic and self-loathing.
Back in Grandpa's day, he would feel like shit and think to himself: "I feel like cow turd today. But hey, I guess that's just life. Back to shoveling hay." Nowadays, you open Instagram, Tik-Tok and are bombarded with 350 images of people living totally happy lives! This is why not giving a f*ck is key.
The desire for more positive experience is itself a negative experience. The acceptance of one's negative experience is itself a positive experience.
The more you desperately want to be happy and loved, the lonelier and more afraid you become. The more you want to be spiritually enlightened, the more self-centered and shallow you become in trying to get there.
You're going to die one day. You and everyone now are going to be dead soon. And in the short amount of time between here and there, you have limited amount of f*cks to give. If you go around giving a f*ck about everything and everyone without conscious thought or choice, you're going to get f*cked.
This does not mean that we should not care of anything. We should give our best in what we do, and hope for the best. For important or noble cause (friends, family, purpose), one would not give a f*ck and pursue it in the face of adversity.
Disappointment Panda - the superhero that reminds us that the greatest truths in life are usually the most unpleasant to hear. He is a hero that none of us would want but all of us would need. He'd make us stronger by tearing us down, brighten our future by showing us the darkness. We suffer for the simple reason that suffering is biologically useful. It is nature's preferred agent for inspiring change. Problems are constant in life, and happiness comes from solving problems. So don't avoid your problems. Just do something. Don't wait for inspiration and motivation. Start doing something, and the inspiration may follow. Happiness is a constant work-in-progress, because solving problems is a constant work-in-progress. The solutions to today's problems, will lay the foundation for tomorrow's problems and so on.
Most people f*ck things up in two ways:
- Denial. This may make them feel good in the short term (temporary high), but nothing good in the long term.
- Victim mentality. Some choose to believe that there is nothing they can do to solve their problem. Victims seek to blame others.
Wow. That is true. I didn't realize that!
People who feel entitled view every occurrence in life as either an affirmation or, a threat to, their own greatness. Entitlement is a failed strategy. It is just another high. It is not happiness.
The true measurement of self-worth is not how a person feels about her positive experiences, but rather how she feels about her negative experiences. Entitlement plays out in one of two ways:
- I'm awesome and the rest of you all suck, so I deserve special treatment.
- I suck and the rest of you are all awesome, so I deserve special treatment.
Selfish people flop back and forth between the two, depending on the day of the week.
We are for most part, pretty average people. It's the extremes that get all the publicity (via the internet). Every day, we are flooded with the truly extraordinary, the best of the best. The internet has not just open-sourced information; it has also open-sourced insecurity, self-doubt and shame.
Being average, ordinary and mediocre is normal. You appreciate life's basic experience - simple friendship, creating something, helping someone in need, reading a good book, laughing with someone you care about... Sounds boring, as these are ordinary. But maybe, because they are what actually matters.
I find the chapter on values / metrics in life really insightful. Mason explains that there are some common values that create really poor problems for ourselves, that can hardly be solved:
- Pleasure - A false god. It is not the cause of happiness, but the effect / by product of it. Ask an adulterer who shattered her family and lost her children whether pleasure ultimately made her happy.
- Material success - Other values such as honesty, nonviolence and compassion is often sacrificed.
- Always being right - It's better to assume that you're ignorant and don't know a whole lot. That's how we learn and grow.
- Staying positive - Denying negative emotions leans to experiencing deeper and prolonged negative emotions and to emotional dysfunction. Constant positivity is a form of avoidance, not a valid solution to life's problems. Things go wrong, people upset us, accidents happen, and we will feel like shit. Negative emotions (like suffering) are necessary component of emotional health. The trick with negative emotions is to 1) express them in a socially acceptable and healthy manner and 2) express them in a way that aligns with you values. For e.g., a value of mine is nonviolence. When I get mad at somebody, I express that anger, but I also make a point of not punching them. The anger is not the problem. Anger is part of life and is natural. Punching people is the problem.
In the long run, completing a marathon makes us happier than eating a chocolate cake. Raising a child makes us happier than beating a video game. Starting a small business with friends while struggling to make ends meet makes us happier than buying a new computer. These activities are stressful, arduous and often unpleasant. Yet they are some of the most meaningful moments and joyous things we'll ever do. The years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.
The point is to nail down some good values and metrics, and pleasure and success will naturally emerge as a result. Examples of good values: honesty, innovation, vulnerability, standing up for oneself and others, self-respect, curiosity, charity, humility, creativity... Good values are achieved internally.
Examples of bad values: dominance through manipulation, feeling popular and good all the time, being center of attention, not being alone, being liked by everyone, being rich for the sake of being rich. These values are not reality, reliant on external events. There is no way to control how other people think of you.
In summary, when we have poor values that we set for ourselves and others, we are giving f*cks about things that don't matter, things that make our life worse. But when we prioritize better values and things that matters, we improve the state of our well-being, which will generate happiness, pleasure and success as side effects.
Mason introduces five counterintuitive values that we can adopt. To him, these are life-changing.
- Radical form of responsibility - Taking responsibility for everything in life. You are always choosing your problems, so act on it. Like a game of cards, we don't always control what happens to us. But we always control how we interpret and respond to it (whether we like it or not).
- Uncertainty - Acknowledgement of your ignorance and doubt your own beliefs. Some of the most difficult and stressful moments of our lives also end up being the most formative and motivating. Some of the most gratifying experiences are also the most distracting and demotivating. Don't trust your conception of positive/negative experiences. All that we know for certain is what hurts in the moment and what doesn't. And that's not worth much. Be careful of what you believe. Uncertainty removes our judgments of others and is the root of all progress and growth.
- Failure - Willingness to discover your own flaws and mistakes so they may be improved on. The fear of failure comes from having chose shitty values.
- Rejection - Ability to both say and hear no, thus clearly defining what you will and will not accept in your life. Honesty is a natural human craving. But part of having honesty in our lives is becoming comfortable with saying and hearing the word "no". Rejection makes our relationships better and emotional lives healthier.
- Death - Contemplate one's own mortality. Paying attention to one's own death is perhaps the only thing capable of helping us keep all our other values in proper perspective.
Point #4 includes several pages on relationship/love, I suppose since this is one of the topics that could make you happy or unhappy in life. Most elements of romantic love that we pursue - the dramatic and dizzyingly emotional displays of affection, topsy-turvy ups and downs aren't healthy, genuine displays of love. In fact, they're often just another form of entitlement playing out through people's relationships. Unhealthy love is based on people trying to escape their problems through their emotions for each other. In other words, they're using each other as an escape. Healthy love is based on two people acknowledging and addressing their own problems with each other's support.
People in a healthy relationship with strong boundaries will take responsibility for their own problems and values BUT not take responsibility for their partner's. People in toxic relationship with poor boundaries will avoid responsibility for their own problems and/or take responsibility for their partners problems. Poor boundaries look like:
"You can't go out with your friends without me. You know how jealous I get. You have to stay home with me."
"My coworkers are idiots; they always make me late to meetings because I have to tell them how to do their jobs."
"I can't believe you made me feel so stupid in front of my own sister. Never disagree with me in front of her again!"
"I can date you, but can you not tell my friend Cindy? She gets really insecure when I have a boyfriend and she doesn't".
In general, entitled people fall into one of two traps in their relationships. Either they expect other people to take responsibility for their problems: "I wanted a nice relaxing weekend at home. You should have known that and canceled your plans." Or they take on too much responsibility for other people's problems: "She just lost her job again, but it's probably my fault because I wasn't as supportive of her as I could have been. I am going to help her rewrite her resume tomorrow."
Entitled people avoid accepting responsibilities and inner pain. People can't solve your problems for you. And they shouldn't try, because that won't make you happy. You can't solve other people's problems for them either, because that won't make them happy. The mark of an unhealthy relationship is two people who try to solve each other's problems in order to feel good about themselves. Rather, a healthy relationship is when two people solve their own problems in order to feel good about each other.
The setting of proper boundaries doesn't mean you can't help or support your partner or be helped and supported yourself. You both should support each other. But only because you choose to support and be supported, not because you feel obligated or entitled.
Entitled people who blame others for their own emotions and actions do so because they believe that if they constantly paint themselves as victims, eventually someone will come along and save them, and they will receive the love they've always wanted.
Entitled people who take the blames for other people's emotions and actions do so because they believe that if they "fix" their partner and save him or her, they will receive the love and appreciation they've always wanted. (I may be on this path, and need to remember this)
This is the yin and yang of any toxic relationship: the victim and the saver, the person who starts fires because it makes her feel important and the person who puts out fires because it makes him feel important.
The victim, if he really loved the saver, would say, "Look, this is my problem: you don't have to fix it for me. Just support me while I fix it myself." That would actually be a demonstration of love: Taking responsibility for your own problems and not holding your partner responsible for them.
If the saver really wanted to save the victim, the saver would say. "Look, you're blaming others for your own problems; deal with this yourself." Instead, victims and savers both use each other to achieve emotional highs. Ironically, when presented with emotionally healthy people to date, they usually feel bored or lack "chemistry" with them.
Trust, thus becomes one of the most important ingredient in any relationships. It's like a china plate. If you break it once, with some care and attention you can put it back together again. But if you break it again, it splits into even more pieces and takes far longer to piece together again.
Consumer culture is very good at making us want more, more and more. Make more money, visit more countries, have more experiences. But more is not always better. In fact, we actually are happier with less. When we're overloaded with opportunities and options, we suffer from paradox of choices. The more options we are given, the less satisfied we become with whatever we choose, because we're aware of all the other options we're potentially forfeiting. The anxiety, desire for certainty, perfection and success will make you unhappy.
PS: Happy Wesak Day. Happiness in life is more important than health and wealth, but we always strive for the latter two.
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