Peace and quiet is all about the noise in your head

>>> A man lost his right hand in a freak accident. He quit his job and became really negative and bitter. Unable to put up with his attitude, his girlfriend broke up with him. This young man went into deep depression and shunned everyone. For months, he didn’t meet or talk to any of his friends. Just when his wounds were starting to heal, he went online to see what his ex was up to. He was shocked to find out that she had already married someone else.

He saw her pics. She was happy, laughing, partying in every one of them. He went and visited Facebook pages of his other friends. Someone had got a promotion, someone else had a child. Everyone seemed to be having fun.

“My life sucks,” he thought. “I’ve lost my right hand, my job, my love and my friends. No one wants me, no one needs me and no one is even bothered.” Negative thoughts began overpowering his mind so much that he decided to end his life.

He went on the top of his high rise building and looked down with the intention to jump. Just then he saw the most amazing scene.

There he was, a pedestrian on the sidewalk dancing most joyously, as if no one was watching him. Not only that, he had no hands, not even arms and yet he was merrily dancing. Giving up the idea of suicide, he rushed downstairs to know the secret of the pedestrian’s happiness.

“Sir,” the man said humbly, “I’m so inspired and touched by your positive outlook. I see you have no arms and yet you are dancing. What’s the secret of your happiness?” “Happiness? Dancing?” he replied somewhat awkwardly, without stopping his dance. “Man, I’m just trying to scratch my bottom. It’s not easy I tell you.”

Now you know the secret of people’s happiness when you see them dancing or partying. Just itchy bums.

Happiness is your personal state, a private matter (though the more you spread it, the more you get to keep). When you fail to see the good in your life (and everyone has abundance of goodness if you choose the right perspective), there’ll be nothing good left to feel. Be simple, be grateful. An ostentatious or flamboyant lifestyle can bring you attention but not happiness. You are entitled to have your comforts, but extravagance is a disease.

Socrates lived a frugal life and he believed that only a wise person understands the beauty of frugality, of simplicity. It is said that he would not even wear shoes and yet every so often he spent hours and hours in the marketplace looking at various goods on display.

“Why do you waste your time in the market,” his friend asked him once, “when you never buy anything?” “Because,” Socrates replied, “When I go to the market, I discover how many things I am perfectly happy without.”

I don’t think there’s anymore to happiness than noble actions, gratitude and contentment. No doubt, happiness is not merely an emotion but a state of being. Above all though, happiness is an attitude. When you make it a point to live your life positively, to appreciate the goodness of your own life without measuring it against the lives of itchy bums, your world will light up with the radiance of a thousand suns.

“What do you think the weather’s gonna be like today?” Mulla Nasrudin’s friend asked him. “Just the kind I like,” he foretold patting his donkey. “How can you be so sure?” “Knowing that I can’t always get what I like, I’ve learned to always like what I get,” Mulla said. “So, I’m certain we’re going to have awesome weather today.”

1: http://omswami.com/2016/12/the-secret-of-being-positive.html 2: http://omswami.com/2014/10/source-emotions.html 3: http://omswami.com/2017/05/five-principles-happiness.html 4: http://omswami.com/2016/03/an-attitude-of-happiness.html

For me, negative thoughts are triggered by certain situations, namely inter-personal relationships and the fear of rejection. In scenarios like dating someone I'm really interested in or befriending a stranger whose respect I want to earn, I immediately assume the worst: that they think lowly of me, they dislike me, they are having a terrible time, etc. Internally, I'm going haywire and panicking. And unless I get an explicit sign of approval, I ended up with a lot of self-loathing.

This made it really hard for me to make new friends, to socialize, to go to parties... I'd over-analyze unfamiliar social situations which would cause me to not want to socialize, which would only make me feel more lonely with a lack of self-confidence. I didn't want to smile at someone like a stranger and experience what its like for someone not to smile at me back. I didn't want to be honest with a woman unless I knew with 100% certainty that they were interested in me because rejection was soul crushing.

The tipping point for me was when I went on a friendly outing with a woman who I liked. I felt like I couldn't be myself and was internally frantic throughout the entire day we spent together. I cared too much for her approval that I ended up about as interesting as a blank piece of paper.

From that moment, I knew something wasn't right and that I needed to get professional help. I knew that there were things I wanted in life, like more friends, a significant other, and more comfort in my own skin, yet I wasn't anywhere close to it. Thinking about things only made me more depressed.

There's two major things that helped me.

The first was I ended up going to a Psychotherapist as she said she could teach CBT. But she didn't really explicitly teach it, so much as talked me through my thoughts and we came up with ways to incrementally challenge me. Things that she helped me discover through talking were:

- She reveal to me that I an abnormally strong inner critic which prevents me from taking risks in order to prevent me from potentially getting emotionally hurt. He keeps me safe, but also prevents me from growing.

- She taught me the importance of meditation and mindfulness, so as to be more aware of my current state and to recognize I don't have to be carried away into the flow of emotions if I am aware that its there and/or what triggers them.

- She constantly challenged me to try uncomfortable situations socially

- She revealed to me my inner child who has certain vulnerabilities. If I could learn how to take care of him by imagining myself with him, I could learn how to deal with certain problematic situations such as social rejection. I was honestly skeptical at first and felt this was overly new-agey, but I have found it helpful to think about what I'd say to my younger self to assure them when I experience something that I know would hurt them.

My therapist ended up becoming a figment of my mind, where if I'm in a situation, I consider what she would say to me and act accordingly to it.

The second important thing was that I needed to not rely on others to bring me happiness, but I had to be able to generate on my own. For some, it's their religious faith, a certain hobby, physical activity, their work... for me, it was learning. Via HN in early 2017, I took Learning how to Learn which opened up my eyes to the process of learning. And then from there, I just haven't been able to stop learning things that continue to amaze me. Suddenly, I could find things that interested me and happily engage my brain instead of passively relying on some entity to bring happiness to me in the form of games, social media attention, etc.

When I finally had both therapy and self-generated happiness, everything clicked. I recognize it isn't a mind-blowing fact: without a purpose, life can feel tough and lackluster.

In summary, my psychotherapist revealed unique things about me that I'm more aware of that I wouldn't have recognized without a third-party perspective, and gave me the mental and physical tools to deal with triggering situations. But that was only half the equation, the other half was finding something purposeful in my life that brought me excitement and a sense of accomplishment, something that no one could take away from me.

I had problems with panic attacks that would sometime keep me awake all night. I tried medication and therapy without much success. What I learned at these retreats was invaluable and has helped me to manage the panic attacks and anxiety.

The only constant is that nobody seems content just taking the upper hand of keeping their stereotypes to themselves. Everyone acts like they've lived 5 years in every country and somehow know how it all crumbles. In reality maybe they've lived in two countries and have had day-visits elsewhere. Hardly grounds for being a master of the nations.

Like someone swearing that <some city> drivers are the worst. Almost guaranteed that they grew up there.

American tourists didn't even have a bad rap where I worked in Prague because you just didn't see them compared to the daily horde of Europeans. By the time you work in the hospitality industry for a few seasonal cycles, you get burned out by the exact same conversations, like people arguing over which nation tourists suck the most. Turns out it's probably just the one you see the most of. In our case, the British. ;)

These days it's on HN where people will post the template: "I took a few day trip to <place> and it's insane how <judgmental thing that people seem to do everywhere>."

Or perhaps the crowd applaud themselves for successfully going to the movies again.

The possibilities are endless.

Go watch a Tyler Perry movie or the recent black panther if you want to hear lots of clapping or cheering during a movie.

And when I saw Get Out...

Standing ovation at the end.

A few years ago I peaked at reading 72 (mostly audio) books in a year, and since then I've been reading less and less. I realized, even though we consider reading to be healthy, that reading THAT much is is its own form of distraction/procrastination/escape.

'The English are not a very spiritual people, so they invented cricket to give them some idea of eternity. '

True, but I was replying to a snarky opinion.

As adults we get so accustomed to "noise" that we often don't realize it's there. Every time I turn around, I have taxes or some other painful administrative thing to do. That's noise in my head that buzzes quietly at times or very loudly as a deadline approaches.

We have job noise - projects, human conflicts, financial concerns etc. There are home relationship noises - fears, doubts, conflicts, whatever.

This is why I suspect the practitioners of meditation claim to have so much peace and such improved intentional focus: they have learned how to turn down the background noise in their minds.

If you hear a door creak or a person speak, that's attention grabbing. Are they speaking to me? Is someone looking for me? Can I add to the conversation?

But with noise you are isolated. The attention grabbing sounds don't come through.