Outer wealth vs. inner wealth
Basic hopelessness affects people regardless of their circumstances. In Nepal, where I grew up, material comforts were few and far between. We had no electricity, no telephones, no heating or air-conditioning systems, and no running water. (…)
Many people didn’t have enough food to feed their families. Even though Asians are traditionally shy when it comes to discussing their feelings, anxiety and despair were evident in their faces and in the way they carried themselves as they went about the daily struggle to survive.
When I made my first teaching trip to the West in 1998, I naively assumed that with all the modern conveniences available to them, people would be much more confident and content with their lives. Instead, I discovered that there was just as much suffering as I saw at home, although it took different forms and sprang from different sources. This struck me as a very curious phenomenon.
“Why is this?” I’d ask my hosts. “Everything’s so great here. You have nice homes, nice cars, and good jobs. Why is there so much unhappiness?” I can’t say for sure whether Westerners are simply more open to talking about their problems or whether the people I asked where just being polite.
But before long, I received more answers than I’d bargained for. In short order, I learned that traffic jams, crowded streets, work deadlines, paying bills, and long lines at the bank, the post office, airports, and grocery stores were common causes of tension, irritation, anxiety, and anger.
Relationship problems at home or at work were frequent causes of emotional upset. Many people’s lives were so crammed with activity that finally coming to the end of a long day was enough to make them wish that the world and everybody in it would just go away for a while. And once people did manage to get through the day, put their feet up, and start to relax, the telephone would ring or the neighbor’s dog would star barking—and instantly whatever sense of contentment they may have settled into would be shattered.
Listening to these explanations, I gradually came to realize that the time and effort people spend on accumulating and maintaining material or “outer wealth” affords very little opportunity to cultivate “inner wealth”—qualities such as compassion, patience, generosity, and equanimity. This imbalance leaves people particularly vulnerable when facing serious issues like divorce, severe illness, and chronic physical or emotional pain.
Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche: „Joyful Wisdom“
What lucky people do different
Unlucky people miss chance opportunities because they are too focused on looking for something else.
They go to parties intent on finding their perfect partner, and so miss opportunities to make good friends.
They look through the newspaper determined to find certain job advertisements and, as a result, miss other types of jobs.
Lucky people are more relaxed and open, and therefore see what is there, rather than just what they are looking for.
Why problems matter
I’m thinking a lot about problems at the moment because having one is integral to writing a good plot in a story.
If my main character doesn’t have an obstacle, then what is she going to overcome? What will she achieve despite it? What’s going to make her act?
Nothing.
She’ll wander about aimlessly on the page and there won’t be any story.
(via)
How to destroy your past lives
“The hydrogen atoms in a human body completely refresh every seven years. As we age we are really a river of cosmically old atoms. The carbons in our bodies were produced in the dust of a star. The bulk of matter in our hands, skin, eyes, and hearts was made near the beginning of time, billions of years ago. We are much older than we look.” (Kevin Kelly: „What Technology Wants“)
I like the idea that every seven years we’re a totally new person. A whole new set of hydrogen atoms, a whole new reason to reinvent ourselves. Obviously this whole new person is defined somewhat by the grand design of our DNA structure, and the choices we make, but it still is a whole new body at it’s basic structural level.
For example, the me who ate bacon egg and cheeses every morning and while sitting at a desk and eventually developed a 34 inch waist line 3 years ago is very different from the me now — with a 29 inch waist line, who eats mostly fruit, veggies, coffee and the amazing food at The Summit SF, while taking double or triple yoga classes a day.
Frequently we find ourselves dwelling on the past.
We remember the night we said goodbye to the little blond girl in the rain that one night in Manhattan. We remember the time we danced all night until the sun came out in the basement of a school in Brooklyn. We remember the time that we took that first photo of the first day we got dropped off in New York. We remember the time we rode our bike to Lake Michigan at 4am and watched the sun come up over the horizon.
These were all beautiful moments, but they happened in the past. In many ways they happened a lifetime ago.
There’s a reason that so many spiritual and philosophical practices focus on bringing you into the present moment, your breath, your heartbeat. Because these two things can only happen now, not then, not in the future.
Many of the people who contact me about becoming minimalist are struggling with a past that they cannot forgive or forget. So they hold on. They hold onto the rocks they collected in 7th grade. They hold onto the memories of the loves they never really had. They hold onto the art they created five years ago, but never sold. They hold, hold, hold.
And these collections of memories, physical or emotional build up over time. These people become heavier and heavier, until they find no rest. They do this until all of their energy is dedicated towards keeping the past alive.
The reality is that the past is dead. It happened, it shaped who you are, but it’s gone now.
And it’s never coming back.
No matter how many Facebook messages you send to your high school ex-girlfriend/boyfriend when you’re drunk at night, you’re never going to be 17 again. You’re never going to share the connection you had then.
No matter how many times you look at that picture of the perfect halloween, with the displaced tribe of a dozen remarkable individuals, they’ll never be together again in the same way.
And this is okay. The world changes. We evolve into new and better individuals every single day.
The choice though is this: will you continue to build up your energy in order to focus on the person you were back then?
Or can you let it go, to concentrate on the faces around you now?
Can you look up into the eyes of the person across from you at the table at the coffee shop, or on the yoga mat next to you, or on the other side of that email and say:
“I am here with you now.”
Because, you are.
Here are a few actions that I’ve taken to clear the past, maybe they can help you.
1. Destroy your old unpublished work.
In the last few years I’ve adopted an incredibly healthy habit of burning Moleskin notebooks. When I’ve finished one, I take it somewhere like the edge of a body of water or the top of a mountain and a burn it. I like to think this releases the creative energy invested in the work into the universe, so that it can come back to me or others at a later date.
I’ve been writing a non-fiction story, a dialog between a young woman and man who survive the apocalypse and then go on to save the world, in notebooks for the last few years. Every time I finish a notebook, I burn it, then start writing the story again. Every time I write the story again it’s clearer, more focused, more important. Someday maybe I’ll actually write a version that I want to publish, or maybe it’s just an exercise to bring me closer to the creative side of my brain, who knows?
This also means I can’t grab a notebook and flip back to remind myself about how I felt about some girl I was in love with five years ago when I feel down at 3am on a Tuesday night. I can still feel down, but without the physical connection to the memory it’s that much harder to escape to the past.
I’ve been thinking about taking all of the photos/data on my hard drives collected from the dawn of time and destroying them too. I’ll let you know if/when I do how that feels. I never look at this stuff, why keep it?
2. Don’t collect souvenirs.
It might be obvious from the fact that I live with around 50 things that I don’t collect stuff from places. I don’t have any artifacts to remind me of my trip to Vietnam. I didn’t buy a I Heart NY shirt on the day I left NY. I don’t save sea shells.
If I feel like I need to be connected to an awesome experience, I go out into the world and have one.
3. I lose touch with (most) old friends.
There are certain people who I have a cosmic connection with, who I will continue to visit every time I wander through the city that they live in. We’ll go to each others weddings, we’ll say each others eulogies, we’ll make dinner together every time we cross paths.
My friends who are these people know who they are, and I know who they are. We just know, there’s no other way of explaining why.
But most people aren’t those people. Over the last year I’ve met thousands of people, I’ve received tens of thousands of emails. I’ve said ‘until next time’ to hundreds at the end of the night. Most of these people I’ll never actively seek out again, in essence, we’ll lose touch.
This sounds sad, but it isn’t. The fact is that most people aren’t your people. They’re just bodies passing in space and time. They might have something to teach you in the moment, but after that moment they don’t need your help anymore.
So you let them go.
Why we need to destroy our past lives.
The world is speeding up. 100 years ago, you’d probably have the same small group of friends who supported each other for your entire life. You never left the town you were born in. In order to get in touch you had to send a postcard via the, uhm, snail mail? Whatever that is.
In today’s world, it’s not uncommon to live many different lives over the course of your own. You’ll morph, change, your life will transition. You’ll move dozens or hundreds of times as the ever-growing cloud of connected information cares for your survival.
You have a choice, you can either let the pain and joys of the past build up until they’re too heavy a burden. Or, you can let everything go. Burn your notebooks, let the friends go, leave the souvenirs at the shop.
All that really matters is having a connection with the here and now. This breath, this movement, this heart beat.
What can you do to bring yourself here right now?
The art of non-conformity
Page 34: We tend to overestimate what we can complete in a single day, and underestimate what we can complete larger periods of time.
P. 40: Smart people are very good at making simple things complicated.
P. 40: When you do what you love, why would you burnout?
P. 40: If you are going to worry about something, worry about regretting a decision you really wanted to make but held back from because of fear.
P. 41: The people I talk with … tell me they „wish“ they could do something but fell unable have usually made a number of choices that prevent them from doing what they wish. They have chosen to prioritize other things above their stated desire.
P. 43: It is not the decision you make that is most important; it is the degree of commitment with which you make the decision. (Bo Bartlett)
P. 45: The absence of fear is not courage; it is mental illness. (Po Bronson)
P. 46: The greatest mistake in life is to be continually fearing you will make one. (Elbert Hubbard)
P. 49: To break the cycle, the fear of the unknown has to become less than the stale acceptance of the current situation. There are two ways to make this happen: 1) Increase the pain of the current situation. 2) Decrease the fear of the desired situation.
P. 58: When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it. (Paulo Coelho)
P. 59: Among other things, I worried a great deal about what other people thought of me, and I was so afraid of disappointing them that I would allow that fear to influence many of my decisions.
P. 60: Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy. (Dale Carnegie)
P. 61: „Will the world end if this does not go the way I expect?“
P. 63: Forcing the active decision is good for a couple of reasons. First, it often encourages us to step out in our fear, since we may realize that fear is the only thing holding us back. Second, even if we decide against the action we were considering, taking the active decision not to do it will at least get it off our mind. (Just note that when you let something go, you have to really let it go. Otherwise, you’re no better off than you were before you forced the decision.)
P. 64: „People don’t want you to be an actor. They want you to be yourself.“
P. 66: Fear is normal! The goal is to conquer the fear, not to avoid it or pretend it doesn’t exist.
P. 66: Asking yourself „What’s the worst thing that can happen?“ helps to put big decisions in perspective.
P. 68: The question is not who is going to let me, it’s who is going to stop me. (Ayn Rand)
P. 69: A critic is a man who knows the way but can’t drive a car. (Kenneth Tynan)
P. 70: People will always try to stop you from doing the right thing if it is unconventional. (Warren Buffett)
P. 85: It’s tempting to believe that the secret to happiness is less work. Here’s another idea: instead of giving up on the idea of work, why not find a way to make it better?
P. 87: Take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: you have no one to blame. (Erica Jong)
P. 126: If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more, you are a leader. (John Quincy Adams)
P. 154: If I can’t afford to pay for something in full, I don’t buy it.
P. 163: It is pretty hard to tell what does bring happiness; poverty and wealth have both failed. (Kin Hubbard)
P. 176: Radical exclusion is more a state of being than an activity, although it can be helpful to set aside a specific block of time for it.
P. 177: An important principle of life planning is that you can have anything you want, but you can’t have anything at the same time.
P. 185: Practicing the art of radical exclusion is good for two reasons: first, it eliminates the unnecessary from our lives. But just as important, when you say no to some things, it gives you the chance to say yes to many more. All things being equal, I’d rather regret something I did than wish I had done something (but sat it out due to fear or other commitments).
P. 192: One of the things that separates a goal from a dream is a deadline.
P. 194: „If you could do anything, what would it be?“
P. 209: Sometimes you need to reject a number of other, reasonably good choices to create a legacy project.
P. 215: I like to focus on deliverables (output) instead of hours.
P. 221: Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of ordinary. (Sir Cecil Beaton)
P. 226: We cannot be completely responsible for our past. What we are responsible for, however, is our future.
(Notes from: Chris Guillebeau: The Art of Non-Conformity)