Fortifying not only makes you a happier person all around, but is also what permanently relieved me of my lack of confidence (and, to a lesser degree, my self esteem issues). Like many others, I felt like I was a barely functional product that was just barely able to make it through life. But truth is, as I kept proving the more I reviewed myself in different situations, that I was incredibly capable of dealing with actual problems. And so are you. You just have to look out for ACTUAL problems, which are easy to ignore, and stop looking at the imaginary problems that we love to give attention to.
Actual problem: My bike trie fell off and I didn't have my phone with me. (Solution, which I did not recognise myself doing until much later): Drive the remaining length to my destination, ask for someone's phone and call someone who could help pick me and the bike up later.)
Imaginary problem that same day: My voice is shaky, isn't it annoying for other people to listen to? ("Solution": Akwardly stop talking with this person who is interested in hearing what you have to say. Imagine if they started disliking you.)
So fortify yourself if you are worried, and focus on the small solutions you come up with everyday. You are the god of problem-solving, and this next trick to avoiding self-pity is all about that:
Understand who you are. That may seem like a tall order, but it's easier than you think. You are a human. You may think humans come from all sorts of weird places, but if you can't accept evolution, I mean, I don't know how you found yourself in my blog in the first place, cuz I don't dumb these things down for my readers. So we are fancy monkeys, less hair, more stamina, bigger brain, the works. What about it? Well, what are we meant to do? That's right! It's time to answer the meaning of life (kinda). I will argue that, by looking at our bodies, we can to a degree figure out what we are meant to do. Let's take a look at a cheetah. Cheetahs go fast. like 100kmph or 60mph fast. That's impressive, and you would have to assume that, on some level, the Cheeta is 'meant' to go fast. Let us now look at the humble dog. The dog is a wolf, but for humans! They are rounder, slower (both physically and mentally), cuter and much less scary. The dog is meant to be our pets! And it wants to be, too! Now for the human.
The human is.... uhh... well.. For starters, we have a straight back. Why? Because we have 2 legs. Why? Because we have 2 of our limbs as arms. These can move far more freely than our legs. Why? So that our hands can reach things in all sorts of ways. Why do they need to do that? Because humans are dynamic. We constantly try to one up ourselves and each other, and we don't just have one unique mechanic for one purpose. Right now, you are deriving meaning (hopefully) from looking at pixels on a screen that display the right photons in the right patterns to make this "g", and your brain is not only proccessing those symbols, getting meaning from them, but you may also write something yourself, where your brain both thinks what it wants to convey, turns it into a sentence, THEN makes your fingers press on buttons on a plastic board until your idea exists somewhere other than your mind. What?? That's an insane concept to think about! Armed with this knowledge, I challange you to ask yourself the next time you find yourself in a scary or unpredictable situation: "How am I gonna get out of this one??", because that's litterally what your mind is meant to do. That's right! The meaning of life is to solve problems?? Eh, maybe not, but it's probably a small part of the puzzle, so don't throw the idea out, okay?
With that, you should be well on your way to complain less, both to yourself and others. Remember to fortify and celebrate the small victories that you give yourself.
Love, Anthony.
Life is not an experience void of joy, so instead of yearning for value, go do the things that give you value!
Gambling is a practice that will never yield positive results, and serves only to further the misery that we may bring upon ourselves. Never have I seen or heard of a person who came out of a casino happier than when they went in.
Partly because the high of winning is either followed by the next day's compensation, should they choose to leave with their winnings, with the thought of going back lingering in their mind.
Partly because, should they keep playing, they will inevitably lose all their earnings (and probably more after that), or move back up to the previous example.
And partly because the low of losing is one that can only be satiated by either winning the losses back (Which is what casinos prey on) or accepting that the money is gone forever, which casinos do everything in their power to make difficult.
But most of all, gambling is miserable because it is built on a complete and total lack of dicipline. "The only winning move is not to play", after all. Casinos draw in the impulsive and those in a vulnurable state of mind, knowing they won't have the dicipline to keep their winnings or cut their losses.
Many lose all track of money and just start playing on emotions, because the gamblers fallacy actually relies on "I just need to get my money back, then I will no longer feel down", which would only hold true if you were to immedeately leave the casino once you've minimized losses.
I imagine that the most successful gambler is as miserable as the one who lost it all; Both lost their most valuable asset long before they put down their first bet.
Nobody knows what the meaning of life is, this is pretty commonly known. However, people are surprisingly good at knowing what the meaning of life isn't! For example:
If I asked you: "is the meaning of our time here on earth to drive cars?" You'll probably answer no, because intuitively, cars isn't... the meaning, yk? Obviously you can argue why with examples and reasoning, but you don't need those to know that driving cars isn't the meaning of life.
Is the meaning of life eating food, surviving and then having offspring? Some people will say yes, and it's a fair answer. Biologically, it is why we are here, after all. But most people don't find this a satisfactory answer, which is where the question takes a more spiritual turn. It's less "what is my purpose" and more "how do I feel accomplished in life". Accomplishment is a hard feeling to keep. You may have it, periodically, but it quickly slips away. This is the same with happiness.
Humans have (due to advertisements and ESPECIALLY social media) gotten used to the idea that being happy means actively experiencing happiness all the time. It doesn't. Being happy is more of a skill, something you steer towards when given the chance but otherwise don't stare longingly at when you don't have it.
Greed is the product of two things: The idea that money reduces misery. The idea that you are miserable.
And indeed, it is true. A lifetime fuelled by greed will make you miserable, and the only prospect of getting new money will ease your misery.
You are only as happy as you think you are!
Smile often, it makes you happier.
That is all.
"Here we see, a Homo Sapiens. This one is out hunting for a meal tonight."
(Camera pans to a prime cut of meat)
"The ribeye steak is a delicious temptation"
(Human looks in his wallet) "The human uses his frontal lobe to calculate whether or not he can afford it. The human brain is very overengineered, and takes more than 20.000 factors into consideration at every decision."
(Human closes his wallet) "Hm. Perhaps not in the budget right now. This human is running out of time. The store closes at eight, and if his children are to make it through the night, they need sustainance. Normally, their mothers milk would provide for them, but due to Dolfin-made contaminents, most human-breasts are clogged with microplastics."
(A few shots of human kids looking cute)
I remember I had a day that, on paper, was awful. Bike had somehow had both of its wheels punctured, so I had to walk to school (it wasn't too far away from where I lived so if I made haste I wouldn't be late). While I'm walking, Aeolus decides to do everything in his power to ensure I fail. It was like walking against a leafblower, only bigger and proportinally stronger. However, while I pass the only place on the route where there are puddles, a truck speeds by, splashing a small tsunami directly at me. By this point I'm in a seriously bad mood, but it gets worse, as the moment I step foot on school grounds I trip on dogshit and fall in the earth-mud combination that the ground has become after yesterdays rainfall. On the way home I pass under a tree and I kid you not, like 3 acorns fall on my head and fall down my clothes, (these were like, decently heavy, not enough to hurt me but enough to be uncomfortable to be hit by). Then, when I get home, I realise I have lost my keys. By this point I am barely holding it together, but I can still go to my grandparent's house to get a spare and return it. Annoying, yes, but better than standing around in dirty clothes waiting for someone to come home. When I make it up there, I realise that they aren't home either, so I go to retrieve the spare key for their home, and after getting in, i realise that I don't actually know where their keys are. I call my grandmother, and she reveals that alas! The spare key is with them, as they use 1 keychain for all their keys. This was the point when the entire situation became so absurd that I just began laughing at it all, full on belly laughing at how comically unfortonate the day had been. I laughed most of the way home (it's a fairly short walk), and then it happened. As I got home to wait, my mom opened the door. She had been working from home all day, and heard me try to open the door but had been in the bathroom, and by the time she unlocked it I was already off to get the spare key. When I heard this I laughed hysterically she got genuinely worried, and then I showed her the back of my clothes and explained the entire thing, after which we both laughed like hell about it.
So it was a good day in practice, haha
There's a reason for that, you know. When the body is near death, the brain decides that ultimately, it wants to not die, and so it goes into a special, extremely harmful state where it presses every body on the keyboard and releases as many positive chemicals it can, to try and keep itself awake. What you are doing is effectively the same as huffing gasoline. You are getting high on your body's very last survival mechanism to try and prevent a total organ shutdown. And you enjoy it.
if u starve for long enough u start feeling like ur high sometimes its my fav thing ever
Remembering that time the Soviets pulled a 1:1 recreation of a B-29 (pictured) out of their asses, slapped a red star on it and called it the TU-4.
As far as I understand, they seemingly did this by attempting to make it a 1:1 replica, even when they had specific technologies or building techniques that were superior.
The Soviet Union also had to reverse engineer it from near scratch, as even the thickness of the Hull had to be figured out (America used imperial whereas everyone else used metric), and the very best thing about it is that their main motivation to do all this was to show the Americans that they had the ability to drop a nuke (which, mind you, they had just barely invented), with the whole 'we engineered your $60 billion dollar plane in two years" aspect merely being a bonus.
They made the plane as close as possible to prove to the US that they had a bomber that could attack the mainland, because that was easier than making a new design and proving what they wanted to prove.
I talk about stoicism and stuff sometimes. Do not expect consistent posts. Do not expect relevant posts all the time.
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