Matthews Story
Post by Matthew J. Pallet
Whether our first or most recent experience of trauma, experiencing it shatters that which protects us from what we fear. It redefines us. It exposes our vulnerabilities and leaves us exposed to the outside world. We feel as if a side of us that we would otherwise keep hidden is exposed to the elements. This makes us extremely uncomfortable. It hurts our ego. As a result, we go from one addiction to the next in an effort to run away from the pian, but it is futile. We wake up the next day and the vulnerability is still there. We feel consumed by our circumstances and fall into the trap of being defined by them. We exhaust ourselves trying to run from it but we're running in the wrong direction. We need to stop and turn around. We need to take ownership.
In doing so we face our problems head-on and realise that it's well within our ability to overcome them.
There is a way out, and that is through: read this
In a recent podcast where Tim Ferriss spoke to Naval Ravikant (TIM FERRISS SHOW #473: NAVAL RAVIKANT ON HAPPINESS, REDUCING ANXIETY, CRYPTO STABLECOINS, AND CRYPTO STRATEGY [https://open.spotify.com/episode/5IIMmgac27IaeChTYQMKIn?si=HfNmH6JvTZ2-VuZ4kBc8dw]), Naval put it far better than I ever could:
“Think about it this way. We spend so much time in our relationships. Our relationships with our wives, our relationships with our colleagues, our relationships with our business partners, our relationships with our friends. The most important relationship you have is with yourself. It’s with this voice in your head that is constantly rattling every waking hour. It’s with this crazy room-mate living inside your mind who's always chattering and never shuts up.
“And you can’t control these thoughts, they just come up out of you don’t even know where, and those quality of your thoughts, those conversations you’re having in your head all the time, that is your world. That is the world you live in. That's the world-view you have. That is the lens you see through and that going to determine the quality of your life more than anything else.
“If you want to see what the quality of your life actually is, put down the drink, put down the computer, put down the smartphone, put down the book, put down the headphones; just sit by yourself, doing nothing. And then you will know what the quality of your life actually is because that’s what you’re always running away from. That’s why people, when they try to meditate, sit down, and say, “I hate it! I can’t sit still!” Why? Because your mind is eating you alive. Your life is unexamined. Your mind is running in loops over things that it has not resolved. And because they're not resolved when you run around in your normal life, it’s not that those problems have gone away, it’s just that they're just there, provoking anxiety.
“And what you think of as the anxiety that kind of consuming you and you can’t identify the source, that just the tip of an iceberg poking out from underneath the water. Underneath this is a giant pile of garbage decisions that were made without too much thought of situations that you’re in that you haven't resolved - that you need to resolve - of problems that you have, or desires that you have that have gone unmet or unmanifested or are being, or contradictions that you’re living in a way that you feel trapped.
“So proper meditation, proper examination, should ruin the life that you’re currently living. It should cause you to leave relationships. It should cause you to re-establish boundaries with family members and with colleagues. It should cause you to quit your job. It should cause you to change your eating patterns. It should cause you to spend more time with yourself.
“It should cause it to change the books you read. It should cause us to change what your friends are. If it doesn't do that, it’s not real examination. If it doesn’t come attached with the destruction of your current life, then you can create the new life in which you will not have the anxiety.”
Take ownership of your life. Where your journey goes from here is up to you but in not examining your life the only person you're cheating is yourself. And we both know you are better than that.
Only you will know if you are truly putting in the work. Only you will know if you could do better. For those that are interested, my journey has led to this: https://www.quora.com/What-was-it-like-for-you-to-awaken-after-having-been-in-a-coma-for-an-extended-period-of-time/answer/Matthew-J-Pallett.
BREAK RULES WHEN NECESSARY
Matthew J. Pallett
https://www.quora.com/profile/Matthew-J-Pallett
https://www.facebook.com/mjpallett
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