Honest self-questioning is difficult. It requires asking yourself simple questions that are uncomfortable to answer. In fact, in my experience, the more uncomfortable the answer, the more likely it is to be true.
These moments of non-fuckery are the moments that most define our lives.
Welcome to the Feedback Loop from Hell !!!
And it took me a long time and a lot of struggle to finally figure out why: I didn’t actually want it. I was in love with the result – the image of me on stage, people cheering, me rocking out, pouring my heart into what I was playing – but I wasn’t in love with the process.
A needy man’s actions and words will therefore be primarily motivated by impressing and winning approval from others.
The problem is that we’re finding out that romantic love is kind of like cocaine. Like, frighteningly similar to cocaine. Like, stimulates the exact same parts of your brain as cocaine. Like, gets you high and makes you feel good for a while but also creates as many problems as it solves, as does cocaine.
Uncertainty is the root of all progress and all growth.
That means everything you say and do must be done without any ulterior motive. You are simply expressing your thoughts and feelings as they come to you, without inhibition, without shame.
We joke online about “first-world problems,” but we really have become victims of our own success. Stress-related health issues, anxiety disorders, and cases of depression have skyrocketed over the past thirty years, despite the fact that everyone has a flat-screen TV and can have their groceries delivered.
I didn’t like to climb much. I just liked to imagine the summit.
Words and appearances are merely a symptom of a greater internal problem.
A lot of people hesitate to take responsibility for their problems because they believe that to be responsible for your problems is to also be at fault for your problems.
This confines us and stifles us. We can be truly successful only at something we’re willing to fail at.
Victims seek to blame others for their problems or blame outside circumstances.
You care, and you desperately convince yourself that because you care, it all must have some great cosmic meaning behind it. You care because, deep down, you need to feel that sense of importance in order to avoid the Uncomfortable Truth, to avoid the incomprehensibility of your existence, to avoid being crushed by the weight of your own material insignificance. And you – like me, like everyone – then project that imagined sense of importance onto the world around you because it gives you hope.
Take a moment and think of something that’s really bugging you. Now ask yourself why it bugs you. Chances are the answer will involve a failure of some sort. Then take that failure and ask why it seems “true” to you. What if that failure wasn’t really a failure? What if you’ve been looking at it the wrong.
But we need to reject something. Otherwise, we stand for nothing. If nothing is better or more desirable than anything else, then we are empty and our life is meaningless. We are without values and therefore live our life without any purpose.
We’re apes. We think we’re all sophisticated with our toaster ovens and designer footwear, but we’re just a bunch of finely ornamented apes. And because we are apes, we instinctually measure ourselves against others and vie for status. The question is not whether we evaluate ourselves against others; rather, the question is by what standard do we measure ourselves?
How attractive a man is is inversely proportional to how needy he is. The more needy in his life, the less attractive and vice-versa.
The acceptance of one’s negative experience is itself a positive experience.