2022-12-24

I went to sleep at an unholy time (6am) to finally publish the first post. I just wanted the site and my page to be a tad bit more perfect. Oh well. Got up at 2pm as a result.

Yesterday I read Mark Manson’s book “The Subtle Art Of Not Giving A Fuck”. It is incredibly eye-opening to say the least and inspired me to read much more of his work.

One important theme in the book is ‘entitlement’ that is very common in today’s culture. I noticed how entitled I feel with regards to my parents efforts, like cleaning up their house (where I am currently over for holidays). My father was cIeaning. When I saw this and thought about cleaning, I felt entitled not to help — it is their house after all! I caught the entitlement red-handed — this little lip-puckering, nose-raising, eyebrow-furrowing, bitchy jolt of entitlement. I stopped myself and helped my Dad.

The book helps to see your faults. The author implies that to start changing, you need to start from first principles — first principles being the values. I will read about discovering my values (which I have already done once at a uni seminar) and redo it again. I may even share my values.

I stumbled upon his video “What Should You Do With Your Life?” I think about this a lot, in unhealthy and angsty ways, so naturally, I watched the video. He stated that what people actually mean by this question is: “What can I do with my time that is important”? Pondering on this, I read Manson’s article ”10 Life Lessons I Learned from Surviving My 20s” and I particularly enjoyed reading this part:

[…] From a broad perspective, people are basically the same. Everyone spends most of their time worrying about food, money, their job and their family — even people who are rich and well fed. Everyone wants to look cool and feel important — even people who are already cool and important. Everyone is proud of where they come from. Everyone has insecurities and anxieties that plague them, regardless of how successful they are. Everybody is afraid of failure and looking stupid. Everyone loves their friends and family yet also gets the most irritated by them. Humans are, by and large, the same. It’s just the details that get shuffled around. […] Most of the differences that we hold to be so significant are accidental byproducts of geography and history.

Reading that inspired and excited me, because I am very interested in understanding humans. If humans are so similar and so predictable, then it should be easy to connect with any human. Since early teens I have been fascinated by our perception and how it is driven by chemical processes inside the brain.

I think we are still incredibly far behind in understanding ourselves. I want to give people a look inside themselves and help them see their actions and decisions and give them more control over themselves. And this is what I want to spend my time on, that I think is important.

As a result of more pondering, I wrote a post about it: Transformative tools for self-awareness. The first non-daily post on my blog, hooray!

Merry Christmas. 🎄