Okay whatever rut kind of feeling, we were facing in the past 3-4 days, was overcome by this.
- Meditation for 8 min.
- Reading Swami Aphorisms.
- Reviewing what am I doing in life by updating the AMS (Achievement management system) excel file. As found in Design Your Best Year Ever by Darren Hardy
- Where are we headed, taking the leverage of the time that lays ahead of us, like seeing okay 15 days are there right, let us take leverage of compounding and dump the bomb of compounded time and get results.
- Then updating google keep accordingly.
- Now everything seems worthwhile.
Meaning in life comes, when there are targets to achieve and systems to adhere to.
However more essential is being responsible. Responsibility attributes meaning in life.
Primary emphasis is on short term targets (finish a book on life, course, project)
Enlivenment of purpose is supreme.
A mermaid graph
graph LR
self[self]
mot[Best Self]
mot0[Family, Friends, Community, Humanity]
mot1[Be there when needed]
mot2[Ready for worst situation?]
mot3[Create our own culture]
mot4[Proceed towards novelty]
mot5[Enemy is preparing. Are you]
mot6[The storm is coming. Are you]
mot7[Room full of people. Are we ready]
mot8[Guide and protect the child]
mot9[Keep them quiet & passive, attention dissolvers out there.]
self --> mot0
self --> mot1
self --> mot3
self --> mot5
self --> mot7
mot0 --> mot1
mot1 --> mot2
mot3 --> mot4
mot3 --> mot1
mot5 --> mot9
mot5 --> mot6
mot1 --> mot
mot2 --> mot
mot4 --> mot
mot6 --> mot
mot7 --> mot
mot8 --> mot
mot9 --> mot
graph TB
START --> PR1{CODE}
START --> PR2{READ}
START --> PR3{MIND}
PR1 --> CODE[Hackerrank]
PR1 --> CODE1[AI Project]
PR1 --> CODE2[Kaggle]
CODE --> Real[Solve real life problems]
CODE1 --> Real[Solve real life problems]
CODE2 --> Real[Solve real life problems]
PR2 --> READ[40 BOOKS]
PR2 --> READ1[Blogposts]
PR2 --> READ2[Daily reading]
READ2[Daily reading] --> VOCAB[4500 Eng Words By 05/20]
VOCAB --> CONN
PR2 --> READ3[Podcasts]
PR2 --> READ4[Explore Place]
READ --> CONN[WRITE]
READ1 --> CONN[WRITE]
READ2 --> CONN[WRITE]
READ3 --> CONN[WRITE]
READ4 --> CONN[WRITE]
CONN --> Medium
Medium --> ?[?]
PR3 --> MIND[Meditation]
PR3 --> MIND1[Memory Teq.]
PR3 --> MIND2[Exercise]
PR3 --> MIND3[Image streaming]A reddit post which focuses on the similar sentiment
I want to share with you something controversial. Something that isn’t being talked about at all here.
I just saw a post about a young man who finds himself despondent.
He is back living with his parents. Plagued by depression and anxiety. Spends all day either distracting himself, or suffering or chasing all kinds of addictions.
But he doesn’t want to be that way.
Sound familiar? That’s what the vast majority of men are struggling with today. And you see it in posts like these.
And yet the advice given is all “band aid solutions”.
- have a schedule
- set goals
- define what you want
- make a routine
- make your bed
- start exercising
- stop wasting time
Etc... etc.
While all those things are true. They aren’t the root cause of the problem.
I’ve discovered this as I’ve been in exactly that situation.
Being a high school drop out, a social reject, a basement dwelling nerd.
Someone that was unemployable and had no money.
Someone that was addicted to many things and suffering in immense depression and anxiety.
I’ve worked on these kinds of “band aid” solutions for the last 20 years.
Yet, as you have surely experienced, sometimes they work. Sometimes they don’t.
Why? I’ve also been involved in fitness coaching and that also was the case with clients I worked.
It worked for some but not others.
Why not? Because there is a deeper problem. Something beyond the band aid and surface level fixes.
Something that just “routine”, discipline, health, fitness, personal development, and optimism cannot fix.
Victor Frankl the famous Austrian psychologist who was imprisoned by the Nazis and send to the concentration camp.
And had his whole family killed.
Found himself in such a hopeless situation.
And that prompted him to find the deep answer.
But to really understand this, we must look at how he helped others who were suffering from hopelessness in the concentration camp.
He came across 2 men who were hopeless and suicidal.
And when he asked them why. They said “Life has nothing to offer me”.
Think about that for a minute. Isn’t that what we all are doing when we are stuck in a rut?
We ask that question. “How come things aren’t working out” “What did I do to deserve this” “Why am I not getting what I want”
And yet Dr. Frankl explains that’s exactly the source of the problem.
So he asked them instead
“What if life is expecting something out of you?”
What if, it’s not “life isn’t giving you something.”
Life is asking you for something.
So the men thought. And he asked them further.
**Who is dependent on you? What external thing do you have that you can bring to the world? What can you do to help others? To provide? To make a difference?**
And that was the transformational moment for these men.
One of the realized he still had his sister outside of the camp and she needed him.
The other remembered the project he was working on before he was sent to the camp.
And suddenly their entire world view and paradigm had changed.
They went from suicidal and hopeless, to having a renewed sense of purpose in life.
That’s the deeper issue and deeper need.
That’s why so many men today kill them selves.
Men die on the inside when they don’t feel needed anymore. And many simply complete the act.
A mans biggest pain is feeling useless. That he cannot contribute. He cannot make a difference.
Men throughout history were the hunters, the warriors, the fathers, the elders, the tribal leaders, the kings, the seers.
Their meaning and life purpose came from their mission.
From their contribution.
Even Artists find meaning by their artistic contribution.
They have a sense that they are contributing to the river of humanity.
Many men die shorty after retiring. Their health worsens and they get depressed. They were useful and depended on, but now they are not.
If you are struggling with motivation, then this must be your main focus.
Is your life in the service of something greater than yourself?
A project? A person? Your parents? Your family? Your kids? Your community? Your country?
To the world? Or to even life itself?
As long as you are obsessed with your own pleasure gratification and escaping from pain and chasing person goals and that is your main focus, you will suffer and find no meaning.
You will continue “struggling” to constantly to motivate yourself.
Because there is no fuel. No innate drive.
That drive comes from service. From being needed. From being useful.
So, having said that. How do you turn that concept into reality? How to make it actionable?
First, you must find the role modes and philosophies that support that.
For me, it was Stoicism that really tied everything together.
It taught me that I must make living Virtues life my main focus.
Not my goals. Or my pleasures. Or escaping from pain.
But Virtue. Being a good person.
And you must continuously strengthen and educate that part of yourself.
Whatever you continually expose yourself to, you become.
Our mainstream culture is obsessed with ego gratification and personal achievement.
Pleasure and Power.
Those are what the ego feeds on.
But this will destroy your soul by itself.
The ego alone, will lead you towards anxiety, depression and hopelessness.
The ego must be in the service of Virtue. In what is the greater benefit.
So that has to be trained and indoctrinated and reinforced within yourself.
Second, start to make Virtue. Aka, being a good person your priority.
Be the bigger man.
See yourself as the hunter, the warrior, the provider, the king, the brother, the father, etc.
Act from these greater roles.
With your family. With your friends. With strangers. Even with animals.
Stop being a passive victim of your life, start being the creator of your life.
See it as your duty to be the improver. To create. To give. To do. To help.
Third, now, add in the remaining 10% we talked about in the beginning.
With the philosophical and ethical and spiritual alignment, now you unlocked your internal spiritual drives.
Now the energy and power starts to flow from inside of you, and you direct that power and energy into perfecting your life and the lives of others.
Now, exercise is more meaningful. Routines. Structure. Discipline. Health. Etc.
Nietzche said A man can endure any WHAT if he has a big enough WHY.
That’s what we’ve been talking about.
The pain of discipline becomes a righteous joy, because it’s in the service of something good.
But, discipline without purpose simply leads to more pain, more hopelessness and ultimately failure.
Please consider this for yourself. I have been obsessed with personal development, success, peak performance and achievement for almost 20 years now.
And this has been the culminating jewel in my own journey, and what I’ve seen repeated hundreds of times by the wisest people in history.
If you guys want me to clarify or expand on anything. Please let me know.
And if you disagree, let me know also with specifies and I’ll see what sources and backing I can find supporting my points.
All the best.