Getting ahead in life (and enjoying it)

Recently, I was asked to answer a Question on Quora. The asker wanted to know how to stop feeling ‘behind’ in life. 

The main question that needs to be answered first is what does ‘ahead’ or ‘behind’ mean when it comes to life? Life is a game, but it can be difficult to make it in a game when you don’t. know the rules.

When playing a board game, you normally have a manual, which no one actually ever reads. When I play board games I usually look at other people playing or ask them to explain the rules to me. Not knowing the rules of the game, would get me as well as the other players extremely frustrated. I might eventually learn the rules through playing blindly, but will also certainly lose the first game. Unfortunately in life we don’t really get a second game, and if we do, we don’t remember the experience of previous games. Fortunately for us, reality is not a game per se, but rather more of a playground.

When I was a little boy, I used to play in the sand dunes near where I used to live, I would run around with a friend, and we would create our own games. The dunes were our playground, together with our minds and imagination they supplied all the necessities for creation of wonderful games. These games were ones which we always won, because we made our own rules for them. 

Life is very similar, it gives you all the necessities for great games, but if you want to win it, or at least enjoy it, you have to set up your own rules. 

Now, of course reality has some rules of its own, and you share the playground with other beings, but you are the one who decides on the winning conditions of your game. Unfortunately, most people don’t realize it and just take on rules decided by others, but it’s still their choice to follow these rules. 

Often when people say they are ‘ahead’ or ‘behind’ in life, they refer to some social standard of what is expected at a certain age or life stage. Following these social standards is exactly what I mean when I say they are following someone else’s rules. What we should all do is set our own goals and standards, and only Compare our progress to ourselves. It’s up to Us to decide what we are here to do, and what will give our lives meaning. As long as we allow others to decide it for us, we rely on them to decide whether or not we are happy. 

So ask yourself: “what do I really want to achieve to be successful in life?”

Then ask yourself: “is it really something I want, or is it something that’s expected of me to gain the love, or respect of others? (Or both)”

I recommend asking yourself that every now and then to make sure the person who determines the victory conditions of your life, is You!!

Begin deciding, and start winning your life.

Your wizard 

Taking a leaf out of a plant’s book – or the most effective way to grow

We often have goals, motivation for change, improvement (and so we should). Sometimes we want to open a new leaf, to start over completely. Other times we feel like facing a challenge guns ablazing, storm to the head of the mountain and get it done and over with.

This approach is very common, especially if you’re like me – impatient. The problem is, when you try to improve or change something all at once, you often give it great significance. This significance puts pressure on you, and one one hand pushes you forward. On the other hand, the challenge becomes big in your mind, because it’s so significant, it literally becomes a mountain you feel you have to climb. This metaphor creates a feeling of overwhelm, and gives rise to fears. It will also consume your motivation and wear it out. 

On the other hand, look at a plant. Its essence is dedicated for growing, just as we all are, when we’re healthy. But normally you wouldn’t see a bean grow a giant bean stalk over night, these images are reserved to man-made fairy tales. In real life, growth takes time, and is done with tiny steps. Instead of swinging from one point to another, it consists of an infinite number of points of balance. The way of effective change is by making an infinitely small change, maintaining balance, and then making another small change, rinse and repeat. Another problem with big changes, is that they take a great deal of self control/determination/discipline. Essentially when the change is too big, it feels like pulling an elastic band, the longer you stretch it, the more force you have to use to keep it stretched. If you keep spending that energy you’ll get weaker and tired, and eventually let go. Now imagine what would happen to that band once you let go…

My advice is, whenever you’re facing a challenge – a big assignment or change you wish to have in your life, chunk it down. By chunking down I mean, take the change and divide it to several steps, the smaller the steps are – the better, especially if you list them somewhere and keep track. You can read an example of chunking down in a answer I wrote on Quora recently. In this answer, I encouraged the writer of the question to make a plan to focus their attention on schoolwork in incremental steps, starting with just 2 minutes at first. By chunking a challenge down to easy small steps you get several benefits:

1. You reduce the significance of the challenge, and no longer get overwhelmed by its size or difficulty.
2. You make each step an easy step, helping you prevent procrastination, because it is no longer this huge thing you have to do, it’s just a small task, so why not get it over with?
3. You can check that box. Making a list of small easy steps, and checking each step off is incredibly empowering. As human beings we often like to check boxes, it helps keep track of our progress and make us see that we are getting further along, and closer to our goal. 
4. You can cultivate a feeling of accomplishment with each step. We’ve all made a cognitive link between success and happiness, so that whenever we achieve something, we feel happy and empowered. By chunking down, you get an infinitely larger number of successes to enjoy, but only if you allow yourself to! If you make each step a smaller peak, and stop to enjoy the view on your way to the mountain top, your quality of life will improve greatly.
5. You make the change into a habit. If you recall my elastic band metaphor from earlier. Chunking down, is like pulling the band only slightly each time, and allowing it to adjust, so it’s in a new state, and won’t revert back if you release. This allows for a more sustainable change and helps prevent a backlash should you pause or stop your progress. Eventually, your change is no longer unfamiliar, it’s just another habit you have and don’t even have to think about, you just do it, and spend much less attention and energy on it.

The last part is the main reason why whenever someone comes to me and ask about dietary change I advise chunking down. A diet isn’t or shouldn’t be something you do until ‘X’ happens, it’s something you are doing always, it’s a habit of nutrition. Of course it changes with time, a diet much like life should be dynamic and fit our health and lifestyle, but it should never be something you “go on”, because going on a diet is like a large pull on the elastic band, and most people who went on different diets know the pain of letting go of the elastic band. 

So go on, storm new mountain tops, and reach new heights, it’s what we’re meant to do in this life, it makes life exciting and worth living, but make sure you see all the little peaks on the way to the mountain tops. As always I ask that if you enjoyed this or felt this post benefits you, please share it with people you think might also benefit with reading it.

Meet you on the next peak,

Your wizard.

I’m back (and just in time)

After taking too long a break, I’ve started writing again recently. The reason for the break, had partly to do with the topic of this blog post: self worth.

We all sometimes have things we are not happy with in our lives, in our character or in our history. We should remember though, that as much as it’s important to strive to grow and change for the better, it’s equally as important to realize that our self worth, or feeling of self worth should not depend on that. That, in a nutshell is what I told this young lady in my answer to her question on Quora. She focused her question on her comparison of herself to her boyfriend, but it is implied through her wording that she was under-valuing herself in general, and that she needs to understand that she is and should feel worthy just for being herself. Struggling with her weaknesses will only give her more pain and suffering. I had a similar problem a few months ago, as after an especially painful rejection I started linking the attributes I wished to have (attributes which might have made me more attractive to my subject of affection) to my feeling of self worth. After battling my feeling of depression and even a little dispair, I started working hard on improving the attributes I found lacking. Obviously as I made progress I felt better, but only briefly. Only after I remembered and regained my sense of purpose in this world, I remembered that this purpose, defines who I am. Remembering who I really am broke the link between my feeling of self worth and my conceived weaknesses. I remembered suddenly that I am worth something just for being me, for recognizing my core values and those parts of my being that I can’t change even if I wanted to.

So ask yourself this question: do I really value myself for being who I am? Or am I linking my self worth to something outside of me, something dictated by my mind rather than my soul?

See you soon, and remember you are valuable and deserve to be loved just for being who you are. Please share this if you found this helpful or can think of someone who might benefit from reading this.