Meditate, Reflect, and Question Yourself
Understanding Success and What it Really Means.
I’ll admit I don’t travel much, but just being around the people in my stable life right now tells me that the rest of the World must be pretty crazy. I live with the everyday person in America in a boring city that’s not even worth mentioning. And to make it more painful, I don’t even hang out with anyone interesting. I don’t hang out with the art crowd or the psychonaughts. I don’t do high-stakes business with politicians or CEOs and I don’t know anyone famous.
No, I just hang around ordinary people, but as ordinary as we are, I notice that a lot of us want to go off and do great things. Here’s the problem, though…Most of us are crazy and that’s startling given the fact that we’re the average in our “pristine” little World.
Some of us want to start a business. Others want to make it big in the movie or music industry. And then some of us want to pursue something strange and seemingly random like wrestling or professional poker playing. Now, some of us are successful and it’s these people who suddenly become the “Interesting” because they do something different from the rest. They’re regarded as the craziest and most outlandish. However, I would argue that it’s the unsuccessful people who are the craziest.
I understand that not everyone grows up with the best set of cards, but a lot of those who live unfortunate lives, are very happy because they consider themselves to be successful. And then there are a lot of people who do pretty well, yet they don’t feel successful at all…just content. These are the crazy people that I’m talking about because they walk around their entire lives believing that success is only granted to a few lucky people as though it’s a finite resource.
What..the..fuck?
That doesn’t make any sense. Resources are scarce, but success? That’s nothing more than a completion of a person’s true identity. It’s just an idea of one’s self and ideas are infinite by nature. So theoretically, if the conditions are right, anyone can be successful and to think that you can’t means that you’ve already lost the race.
Now before I go on, we need to clear some things up about what success actually is. Success isn’t a wife and kids. It’s not having a lot of money and a 100 thousand dollar car. These are merely the byproducts of success. Success is figuring out who you are and being the best at it. It’s maximizing that intimate bond between your actions and how you view your true self.
But holy hell, that sounds like a lot of meditation and self-reflection. No one has time to figure out their true selves. There’s money to be made; lives to live. So what do we do?
…
Oh? You’re waiting for me to give you an answer? You want to know the “secret” to getting around this? Well, there isn’t one. To be successful you have to take the time to meditate and reflect on your own life. Now that doesn’t mean you have to buy a yoga mat and a join a club. You can do it anywhere without having to do anything different from what you normally do.
You just need to free some time to get away from the World and examine who you really are and why you do the things you do. You need to constantly reflect on your daily actions such as trying to understand why you got into that fight or why you were embarrassed after someone said something about you.
Clearing your mind of all the noise and clutter you deal with everyday allows you to really see yourself and once you do that then you can begin to figure out what you love to do most. In fact, many people already know what they love to do. They just haven’t figured out the reason for why they love to do it and that’s because they haven’t taken the time to reflect. If only they could properly frame their reason for doing something, then suddenly they would have a solid framework to build their success.
Doing a little bit of self-reflection everyday goes a long way in helping you reach success because the act itself means so much more than we believe it to be. I read a wonderful article on Nautilus the other day where they interviewed the famous Michio Kaku on the definition of consciousness. He gave a theoretical physicists point of view on it and said that consciousness is a feedback loop that allows us to create a model for our space and what we are relative to everything else.
In other words, self-reflection is the deliberate act of trying to figure out the World around you. And so that’s why you grow to become more successful the more you take the time to reflect on yourself because you gain valuable insight on the World around you rather than doing what all those unsuccessful people constantly do; dwell on the relationships, the money; the friends.
Not that these are bad things. But they’re merely the byproducts of your success so if you’re not successful, then your relationships are going to suck, the money will be weak, and your friends will be non-existent. It’ll be one giant heap of issues that will cause you to lose focus on the real goal, which is to figure out what the World around you means.
So if you’re the struggling artist, the guy with the big ideas, or just the simple person who wants an honest living and a nice family, do everyone a favor and stop questioning others. Meditate, reflect, and question yourself. Then, the rest will fall in place.
Understanding Success and What it Really Means.
I’ll admit I don’t travel much, but just being around the people in my stable life right now tells me that the rest of the World must be pretty crazy. I live with the everyday person in America in a boring city that’s not even worth mentioning. And to make it more painful, I don’t even hang out with anyone interesting. I don’t hang out with the art crowd or the psychonaughts. I don’t do high-stakes business with politicians or CEOs and I don’t know anyone famous.
No, I just hang around ordinary people, but as ordinary as we are, I notice that a lot of us want to go off and do great things. Here’s the problem, though…Most of us are crazy and that’s startling given the fact that we’re the average in our “pristine” little World.
Some of us want to start a business. Others want to make it big in the movie or music industry. And then some of us want to pursue something strange and seemingly random like wrestling or professional poker playing. Now, some of us are successful and it’s these people who suddenly become the “Interesting” because they do something different from the rest. They’re regarded as the craziest and most outlandish. However, I would argue that it’s the unsuccessful people who are the craziest.
I understand that not everyone grows up with the best set of cards, but a lot of those who live unfortunate lives, are very happy because they consider themselves to be successful. And then there are a lot of people who do pretty well, yet they don’t feel successful at all…just content. These are the crazy people that I’m talking about because they walk around their entire lives believing that success is only granted to a few lucky people as though it’s a finite resource.
What..the..fuck?
That doesn’t make any sense. Resources are scarce, but success? That’s nothing more than a completion of a person’s true identity. It’s just an idea of one’s self and ideas are infinite by nature. So theoretically, if the conditions are right, anyone can be successful and to think that you can’t means that you’ve already lost the race.
Now before I go on, we need to clear some things up about what success actually is. Success isn’t a wife and kids. It’s not having a lot of money and a 100 thousand dollar car. These are merely the byproducts of success. Success is figuring out who you are and being the best at it. It’s maximizing that intimate bond between your actions and how you view your true self.
But holy hell, that sounds like a lot of meditation and self-reflection. No one has time to figure out their true selves. There’s money to be made; lives to live. So what do we do?
…
Oh? You’re waiting for me to give you an answer? You want to know the “secret” to getting around this? Well, there isn’t one. To be successful you have to take the time to meditate and reflect on your own life. Now that doesn’t mean you have to buy a yoga mat and a join a club. You can do it anywhere without having to do anything different from what you normally do.
You just need to free some time to get away from the World and examine who you really are and why you do the things you do. You need to constantly reflect on your daily actions such as trying to understand why you got into that fight or why you were embarrassed after someone said something about you.
Clearing your mind of all the noise and clutter you deal with everyday allows you to really see yourself and once you do that then you can begin to figure out what you love to do most. In fact, many people already know what they love to do. They just haven’t figured out the reason for why they love to do it and that’s because they haven’t taken the time to reflect. If only they could properly frame their reason for doing something, then suddenly they would have a solid framework to build their success.
Doing a little bit of self-reflection everyday goes a long way in helping you reach success because the act itself means so much more than we believe it to be. I read a wonderful article on Nautilus the other day where they interviewed the famous Michio Kaku on the definition of consciousness. He gave a theoretical physicists point of view on it and said that consciousness is a feedback loop that allows us to create a model for our space and what we are relative to everything else.
In other words, self-reflection is the deliberate act of trying to figure out the World around you. And so that’s why you grow to become more successful the more you take the time to reflect on yourself because you gain valuable insight on the World around you rather than doing what all those unsuccessful people constantly do; dwell on the relationships, the money; the friends.
Not that these are bad things. But they’re merely the byproducts of your success so if you’re not successful, then your relationships are going to suck, the money will be weak, and your friends will be non-existent. It’ll be one giant heap of issues that will cause you to lose focus on the real goal, which is to figure out what the World around you means.
So if you’re the struggling artist, the guy with the big ideas, or just the simple person who wants an honest living and a nice family, do everyone a favor and stop questioning others. Meditate, reflect, and question yourself. Then, the rest will fall in place.
