Fortunately, I was working overtime that day, so I decided to forgo the extra hour of sleep and just head in to work. With my second tent alive, but just barely, I headed down the ruddy, muddy dirt hill, dampened in body and spirit.
At work, the coincidence of all coincidences presented itself to me: one of my coworkers was renting out a room. Sakes alive! This truly was a Christmas miracle. He said he had to ask his other roommate if it would be okay, and it turned out that his other roommate was a friend of mine who worked on my shift. The coincidences kept on rolling. Take that, Zeus.
With that, I was out of the desert.
So what did I learn?
The interesting thing, and you may find this hard to believe, is that I miss living in the tent. At least, I thought it was that for the first two weeks. To be honest, I was kind of depressed because I missed the excitement of surviving and having good material to write about handed to me. I also kept a much better routine when it was just me that I had to deal with.
What I realized, however, is that it’s not the camping itself that I miss, it’s living by myself. Don’t get me wrong, I could not have gotten luckier with the situation I landed in: my roommates are both great, and they both work where I work so we can carpool. It’s excellent. However, part of the reason I moved out here in the first place was to live by myself for the first time in my life, and I had that for the month of November. It was, without exaggeration, the best month of my life.
There’s a quote from a Buddhist monk (whose name escapes me) that I’m very fond of that goes something like, “Enlightenment is found not in the monastery but in the marketplace.” This, above many other ideas, has always stood out to me. What this means, more or less, is that while one can isolate themselves in an environment that is peaceful and easy, one actually needs the challenge of the chaotic, uncontrolled environment to truly grow. It took awhile for me to accept this, as it usually does, but this is what helped me to accept that my current situation is actually ideal, even though it’s not what I wanted.
If I had been offered a room to rent the day before, I would have said no. I was still loving it, but the storm managed to weaken my resolve just the right amount to make me willing to do what was ultimately the right thing. Such is the pull of the Great Magnet.
The interesting thing is that my roommates are business partners. For those of you who don’t know, last year I and my roommate were business partners, and over the course of the business I got front row seats to the slow death of a great friendship, for which I am most certainly at least equally responsible. However, with this new living situation, it seems that I have been given the opportunity to (hopefully) prevent a similar tragedy, and for that I feel fortunate. Say what you will about karma, but she’s nothing if not fair.
So this is the end of the series for now. I may yet be back in the desert when the snows melt; only time will tell. It’s been a hell of a ride, and here’s to the new year of MasterSelf!
Happy Holidays*, and thanks for coming along with me!
(*Except whatever holiday celebrates the god of the wind. That guy is a dick.)
4 Ways to Deal With Criticism
On the road to self-mastery, you are bound to encounter a few haters. Sometimes criticism can just be the result of thoughtless, inconsiderate opinions. On the other hand, many people will claim to be encouraging but, in reality, they only want to see you fail. As you improve yourself and your life, the people around you may become envious of your newfound success. They may even seek to tear you down. On that note, here are 4 ways to deal with criticism-
Know the Difference between Constructive and Destructive Criticism:
Not all criticism is bad!
In fact, finding a good source of well thought out feedback is one of the most important things you can do if you want to better yourself. However, it’s important to be able to tell the difference between the good criticism of someone who wants to see you improve, and the bad criticism of someone who just wants to tear you down.
The most obvious difference between constructive and destructive criticism is whether or not a solution is offered. If you don’t have a way to improve what you’re criticising, keep it to yourself. Constructive criticism also is delivered in a considerate manner, taking into account the fact that most people go on the defensive when criticised. If the feedback seems like a personal attack rather than a valid objection, it’s probably destructive.
“It is a thing of no great difficulty to raise objections against another man’s oration – nay, it is very easy; but to produce a better in its place is a work extremely troublesome.”
– Plutarch
Understand the Critic’s Motivation:
If you find yourself being the victim of some cruel critic or unfair criticism, ask yourself:
What are some reasons that the critic may have for this behavior?
In many cases, the people that criticise us are simply jealous. (The downside of this is that it’s almost impossible for a jealous person to realize their own envy.) If you’re encountering rude words from someone who is jealous of you, the most important (and my personal favorite) thing you can do is take their jealousy as a compliment! They may not be acting like it, but their behavior is a backwards way of them saying they wish they were more like you!
Sometimes, people who are outwardly critical are actually much harder critics of themselves. This is actually an occasion where some understanding and pity can come in handy. Imagine if you were so hard on yourself that you never managed to do anything at all! Instead, these people just try to tear down people who attempt things, because they see their own failures reflected in the other’s success.
“Don’t be distracted by criticism. Remember – the only taste of success some people have is when they take a bite out of you.”
– Zig Ziglar
Accept that Criticism is Inevitable:
If you’ve ever seen the news, you’ll know that almost everyone you see on TV is the victim of criticism, sometimes constantly. Imagine being the president, or just a politician in general. Regardless of what party you’re a member of, the other half of the country will mock you relentlessly and even hope for your failure. This extends to nearly anyone successful: celebrities, musicians, artists, actors, and business people are all the victims of criticism at some point. You can even take the fact that you’re being criticized as a sign that you’re going the right way.
No matter what, eventually everyone who becomes skilled, creative, or successful will face some pushback from the unskilled, unimaginitive, failures of the world. With that in mind, why should you care what a bunch of failures think? Foster a sense of pride in yourself, your abilities, and your values. Know that, deep down, you’re better- and if you aren’t better, then know that you won’t rest until you are. Let their envy be fuel for the fire of your passion.
“There is only one way to avoid criticism: do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.”
–Aristotle
See Failure as an Opportunity to Learn:
If you’re going to do anything useful, you are absolutely going to fail many times first. Talent is a myth- no one ever picked up a guitar and and immediately wrote Stairway to Heaven, or grabbed a paintbrush for the first time and painted like Bryan Larsen. Skill takes practice, and in practice, we fail. Embrace the failure, because every time you miss a goal, you learn one more way not to score. Every time you make a mistake, you know one more thing not to do.
No one becomes great on the first try.
You will fail, and when you fail, people will criticize you- so you have to learn to deal with criticism. Ultimately, though, only the people who are afraid of failing are the ones guaranteed to lose.
Theodore Roosevelt had this to say:
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by
dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
5 Easy Tricks To Avoid Enlightenment
Enlightenment can be a scary thing. Who wants to have “full comprehension of a situation” anyway? Sounds way too serious. In that vein, here’s a simple guide to make sure you never “wake up” and have to “deal with cause, effect, and the nature of suffering.” That doesn’t even sound like fun.
“Follow Your Bliss”
Some guy named Joseph Campbell had a made-up job called “comparative mythologist” and he came up with this theory called the Monomyth, a story that forms the basis for the Hero’s Journey (and the original Star Wars trilogy.) He’s most well known nowadays for a phrase that he coined, “Follow your Bliss.” Now, 99% of the people who use that quote don’t understand what he actually meant, and why should you, anyway?
“Now, I came to this idea of bliss because in Sanskrit, which is the great spiritual language of the world, there are three terms that represent the brink, the jumping-off place to the ocean of transcendence: Sat-Chit-Ananda. The word “Sat” means being. “Chit” means consciousness. “Ananda” means bliss or rapture. I thought, “I don’t know whether my consciousness is proper consciousness or not; I don’t know whether what I know of my being is my proper being or not; but I do know where my rapture is. So let me hang on to rapture, and that will bring me both my consciousness and my being.” I think it worked.”
-Joseph Campbell*, author of The Power of Myth
That all sounds awfully complicated and foreign, doesn’t it? Don’t worry about it, just do whatever makes you happy right now! Who wants to do the hard work to figure out what their true passion or calling is, and to give up anything that is preventing them from achieving it?
Live in the Moment
No one wants to think about the future, it’s so far away. Who even knows what’s going to happen, anyway? If you just focus on the here and now, everything will be fine. Don’t worry about the consequences of your actions, or try and fix any mistakes you made in the past. The only thing that’s real is right now, and right now you don’t have to deal with any of that stuff! So what if the same bad things keep happening to you? So what if you’re setting yourself up for failure? That’s a problem for a different moment, right?
Don’t Worry
Why would you go around asking questions? There’s nothing to worry about, just like Bob Marley said! Obviously that guy knew what was up. If you worry, you ask questions, and what do you do if you don’t have any answers? Things are fine the way they are! If you ask questions, you might find out something you don’t like! And then what can you do? Search for an answer? Try a new way of doing things? No way, that doesn’t sound chill at all, and besides, there are no real answers. Right and wrong are just things that the man uses to keep you down. There’s no truth, only opinions! Just don’t worry and be happy!
Don’t Start With Yourself
There’s no point in trying to make yourself better, we’re all perfect the way we are! In fact, the only thing you should do is go around telling other people what they’re doing wrong and that they should be more like you… perfect the way you are! The blind lead the blind, right? And if we’re all blind, then it doesn’t matter who leads. I can’t see a one-eyed man anywhere, anyway! Besides, if you fix yourself, how is anyone else supposed to feel? You’ll just make everyone realize that they’re not as good as you! Better to stay down here with the rest of us.
Trust Your Feelings
Don’t think about where your feelings come from. If you’re mad, be mad! Your gut knows better than you! Feelings are natural, and everything that’s natural is good! Since facts are just something that rich people made up to control you, you don’t have to worry about whether your feelings make sense! Just go with the flow, trust your gut, and never try and figure out why you feel the way you do. Your thoughts just appear and disappear, and there’s no rhyme or reason to why they are the way they are. If it feels right, just do it!
With these five easy steps, you’ll never have to deal with any harsh truths ever again! There’ll be no chance that you might learn anything unpleasant, or have to deal with the so-called“consequences” of your so-called “actions,” because free will is a lie and no one is responsible for anything bad that happens to them. Right? Don’t judge! Who are you to point the finger? You can’t blame me, it’s not my fault! I don’t want to be enlightened!
Right?
*(Campbell is reported to have once grumbled, “I should have said, ‘Follow your blisters.’”)
How to Save the World
I used to love the show ‘Heroes’ years ago. The first season was probably the best single season of a TV show ever made, everything after that was terrible. If you also watched the show, you might remember the line, “Save the cheerleader, save the world.” I was thinking about how nice it would be if it were that simple. Unfortunately, like the seasons of ‘Heroes’ that came after the first, the world is far too convoluted to be understood by any one person.
Of course, like the writers of the show, many people throughout history have thought that they understood, and with similarly disastrous consequences. Chairman Mao’s ‘Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution,’ originally thought to be a way for the Chinese communist party to reshape the country into a modern ideal, actually only managed to destroy countless historical sites, temples, monasteries, libraries, and tens of millions of lives. Adolf Hitler’s ‘Final Solution’ led to the horrific deaths of millions of Jews and the torture and imprisonment of many more. Joseph Stalin’s regime was responsible for many millions of deaths as well.
Clearly there seems to be an issue here- why is it that so many grand attempts at changing the world end in failure and death on a massive scale? I don’t honestly believe that anyone sets out in their life thinking, “How can I murder millions of people?” It truly doesn’t make sense. What does seem more likely is that these people end up believing that the ends justify the means. If you ever hear a person say that, you should be very concerned. The road to Hell is paved with good intentions, after all.
I am a proponent of a different philosophy: the means are the end. This is in no small part based off Gandhi’s line of thinking:
“If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. We need not wait to see what others do.”
Newton’s Third Law states that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Call it what you want- karma, causality, or some other name, but your actions have consequences, good or bad. To quote the marvelous film ‘Cloud Atlas’ (I haven’t read the book yet, forgive me):
“From womb to tomb, we are bound to others. Past and present. And by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future.”
In our lives, there are many more forces that are outside of our control than there are things we can influence. Other people have a remarkable amount of control over our day to day experiences- through government, profession, poor driving skills, and even unwanted opinions. There are even more things that have nothing to to with people that can influence your life- the weather, solar flares, a comet hurtling towards the Earth, or even that damn butterfly flapping its wings in China. To contrast that, on a good day, you can only be truly responsible for a few things- your body, your mind, your choices, your responsibilities, and how you react to that nigh-infinite number of extenuating circumstances. The work is really cut out for you.
Faced with that understanding, I see the reality simply as this:
Save the World, Master your Self.
There’s a fairly great explanation provided in Matthew 7:5, during the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says:
“You hypocrite! First remove the beam out of your own eye, and then you can see clearly to remove the speck out of your brother’s eye.”
Religious affiliation aside, that’s great advice. Imagine if all those dictators had been able to see the reality of their actions- and, more importantly, the consequences of those actions? Maybe we could have avoided the mindless slaughter?
You and I may not have the power to issue executive orders, ratify laws, or rule in a courtroom. We may not become revolutionary leaders or captains of industry. We might not even be remembered after we die. However, if you could make it to your deathbed with the knowledge that you did everything in your power to be the best version of yourself, wouldn’t that be all that matters? I certainly think so.
MasterSelf Year One Page 4