Humble Yourself to Fulfill Your Universal Purpose

Sometimes I wake up during the night, and my mind is thinking about a variety of things going on in my life. I don’t always feel in control of it – the thoughts go on and on, from one concern to the next.

What is the commonality of all the thoughts I have? They all relate to me in some way.

Even if I am thinking of someone else, it is still about my perception of who they are, and usually, the people I think about directly influence my life somehow. My family members are like extensions of me (or I am an extension of them), so it doesn’t quite feel like a selfless act if I think of them.

No matter what or who I think about, I usually monitor if this person or thing brings me happiness, helps me succeed or provides me peace or valuable knowledge. My mind naturally seems to think: What is in it for me? Maybe this is not always a conscious thought, but I suspect most of us have it and make many of our decisions based on this.

By the nature of having a mind, and thoughts, and a single perspective all of the time, our thoughts tend to revolve around ourselves. Our thoughts make us the center of the universe. Everything that happens either affects us, which means it matters or does not affect us, and so it doesn’t seem to matter so much. It either makes our lives better, or it makes it worse.

So the mind is attracted to things that help the mind and the body it inhabits. This makes sense.

Most people I know are very focused on their journey to improving their own lives. However, it’s important that on this journey, we do not forget about everyone else. Some people are stuck: they don’t have the resources or a support system, or they lack self-confidence, or they may just be overwhelmed by the problems of their own lives. We should not forget about them.

I think it’s important that we sometimes humble ourselves. We need reminders that the universe is not here just for us alone. Whether something helps me or not is important to me personally, but that doesn’t mean it is of the highest universal importance.

On a universal scale, what do I matter? What do you matter?

We do matter, of course, but if every action in your life is built toward improving yourself and making yourself happier, richer, having fun experiences, and living conveniently, then are you living out your universal purpose?

It seems that we have a personal purpose, and then the universe has its own separate purpose. The personal purpose deals with making things better for ourselves as individuals. The universal purpose deals with making things better for the universe.

These are interdependent forces.

Often, the better you make things for yourself, the better the universe becomes too. But not always. And the better the universe becomes, usually the better you become as an individual. But not always.

We must look for ways to grow as individuals that also promote the growth of those around us (or of the universe).

When I was much younger, I was not so concerned with the growth of everyone around me. I wanted to grow, and that was my only true focus. But I started to observe that sometimes when people go down this path of doing what helps just themselves and disregarding everyone else, we end up with horrible outcomes.

If we are only self-focused, we can justify doing horrible things to other people as long as it helps us personally. And that is not the type of world I want to live in. I don’t need to elaborate with examples. Just read the news or scroll down your social media feeds. Many of the massive negative impacts in the world happen because someone or groups of people were so self-focused that they did not care how many people were hurt along the way.

It was not meant to be that way.

Nature intended for us to plant an apple tree, and then the apples would nourish many stomachs. Then other people would plant more apple trees, and the pattern would repeat. Somehow today, it seems more common to plant an apple tree, chop down all the rest, and sell the apples for a greater profit.

Let’s take a moment to self-reflect a bit. Are we truly helping to make things better for all or just for ourselves?

If we find that all our actions only help ourselves, we should consider more deeply what we can do to make things better on a grander scale, for more people, more beings.

When we find that we are very self-focused, what can we do?

We can humble ourselves.

We can learn to give more attention to the world at large, to the universe at large. We can learn to see ourselves as just a small part of this grand whole. I heard once that love is just giving our full attention to something. If your attention is always on yourself, then you love yourself. But can we spread some of that love and attention to the whole universe? I believe it is possible.

And if you love the universe, you love yourself anyway. You are part of the universe.

How exactly can we humble ourselves?

I suggest that you learn a new language and eventually travel to a country that speaks the language. Learning a language is a great skill to develop, of course, but at this moment, I’m not concerned with how to pad the resume. The purpose here is to humble ourselves. Trying to learn and speak a foreign language is very challenging, and it is very humbling. And we should seek to be humbled more often.

Spanish is my second language. And I would guess that I speak it better than 80% or more of people who speak it as a second language. As I grew up around Spanish speakers, I took Spanish classes for years, and I even lived in Mexico for a few years.

Yet, I still feel humbled and not so sharp when I am around nothing but native Spanish speakers. In Spanish, my thoughts and words come out much more slowly. I have to think to make sure I get the grammar and pronunciation right and to get the meaning across that I wished to. Sometimes people speak too quickly, and I struggle to keep up.

Even though my Spanish is good, going to a Spanish-speaking country is always humbling for me.

As another example, I lived in France for two years, and my French is very basic. Having an actual conversation is very difficult for me. Often, I will know a word, but people speak too fast, and I may not understand what they mean. Or it takes me too much time to understand what a collection of words actually mean as a whole phrase, even if I know the meanings of the individual words.

When I was living in Paris, I went to a government office to make a payment. I had just moved there, so I could not understand what the cashier was telling me. She kept repeating, “Règlement! Règlement!” She was getting agitated, even though I had already told her that I did not speak French. Her body language indicated that she could not believe how dumb I was not to understand her. Later, I realized that she was asking me how I wanted to pay.

These experiences are humbling to struggle to communicate with the people around you. It teaches you that perhaps you are not as important as you thought. And for many of us, this could be a good thing.

When learning a language, you will be like a child again. You will struggle to think through basic ideas. People may even treat you like a child, slowing down when they talk, perhaps even pointing at things to bring your attention to them. They may act as if you are not smart enough to understand certain ideas. They may avoid you.

My experience in every country I’ve traveled to has overall been positive. I don’t view these struggles as a negative thing. Being humbled is a very positive experience in the end. I wish more of us had the opportunity to be humbled.

When you travel, other things to keep in mind are that your culture, customs, and social habits will be the strange ones. In Paris, for example, you are expected to greet almost everyone – so shop clerks, colleagues, and so on. Usually, this is done with “Bonjour.” If you don’t do this, it is viewed as rude. And hugging is not common – usually, for friends or close relationships, they do two kisses on the cheeks.

This is humbling, too, to find that your way of life is not necessarily normal or common everywhere you go.

By the way, if you want to bypass the need to learn a language to humble yourself, there are other routes. If you have the opportunity to attend an event or meet up with people in a different field from yours, do it. If they are advanced enough in their fields and you have little enough knowledge of it, you will feel as if they are speaking a foreign language. You will feel very far behind, but this is good. This is humbling.

Otherwise, help someone at a level below you, even if there is nothing in it for you. Spend a bit of time reflecting on other people’s lives. What struggles are they going through? Don’t assume that you know the one right way to do everything. Give the people around you a chance to show you their way of doing things. When you catch yourself doing something to make yourself feel better or look better, ask if you can do something to help someone else instead. Don’t take all the credit for yourself when you have a big win – give thanks or praise to those who helped you get there.

To humble ourselves is to provide ourselves with a simple reminder:

We are not the center of the universe.

There is much more going on out there that is bigger than us, and that is certainly bigger than our self-focused thoughts, and that is bigger than our wishes for success, happiness, and so on. Our personal purpose is important, of course, but the universe also has its own purpose in store for us.

Meet your personal purpose. Work toward it every day. Fulfill your mind, heart, and soul. But do not forget your universal purpose along the way.

The universe wants you to be better, not just for yourself, but so that you can help the rest of the universe along the way too.

As part of your life’s journey, you should see yourself as one part of the universe that is there to help other parts of the universe (e.g., the people and life around you) to fulfill its universal journey.

What Actually Guides Human Behavior? (It’s Not Reason)

Quite often, I hear people make predictions that people will behave in a certain way. Just today, I heard this on the radio:

“There is no reason kids shouldn’t be allowed to trick-or-treat even with Covid-19 being a concern. The parents need to make sure they wash their hands. And the people who give the candy need to make sure they keep their distance. If they do these things, we won’t have any problems.”

I use this example not to take a side but to shine a light on widespread problems in our thinking.

Essentially, to expect reasonable and rational behavior is itself irrational.

From what I have seen, this is the order of what actually guides human behavior:

1. Survival

2. Self-interest

3. Close relationships

4. Emotion, feelings, and intuition

5. Beliefs (e.g., religion, ethics, ideologies, politics)

6. Reason

I have met many people who are indeed quite reasonable. They work through problems in their lives methodically. But most people, most of the time, are not guided primarily by their reason. Let’s discuss these principles a bit more deeply.

Survival

The idea of survival guiding human behavior should not be difficult to understand. When your needs are not met, you will do anything to survive.

Self-interest

This should not be a shock either – we are the star of our own lives. So naturally, our focus is often on making decisions that make us happy and successful.

Close Relationships

The people closest to us in our lives are quite important to us. So often, we will make decisions that help them, or at least consider them.

Emotion, Feelings, and Intuition

Emotions, feelings, and intuition help provide us with a shortcut to make decisions effectively and efficiently much of the time. If my boss at work asks me to spit on someone he does not like, I do not need to evaluate if this falls in line with my beliefs or if this is a rational thing to do. My gut or my feelings immediately make me disgusted at the thought.

Of course, sometimes, our emotions can overwhelm us and cause us to make poor decisions. Nonetheless, they still tend to guide our actions.

Beliefs

After all the prior principles guiding our human behavior, we have our belief systems. This does not always mean religion. I can believe in certain ethical practices, or I may believe that everyone has certain rights. If none of the prior principles mentioned have led us to behave a certain way, then our belief systems will help us decide what to do.

Some people are highly religious or believe strongly in certain values or ideas, and they may aim to make this principle the primary guiding force of their lives.

Reason

Reason is last for a reason. It takes a lot of work to reason properly. If you work hard at it and fail, you may come to an unreasonable conclusion and make a bad decision. Even if you reason correctly, you may get unlucky somehow, and the outcomes of your decision may still lead to negative consequences. Otherwise, if part of your plan involves convincing other people that your reasoning is correct, you may fail to convince them even if your reasoning is correct.

So reason carries its risks. Get it wrong, and you have wasted your time. Get it right, and it still may backfire on you. Most people, most of the time, do not find good reasons to employ reason. They may not feel competent enough to think rationally or reasonably, it may be too much work, or they may have had bad experiences trying to use reason. They may have given up on it. Also, real-life has so many variables that it can be too complicated to reason through perfectly. Rather than bother to try, many of us prefer to use feelings or emotions to guide us.

We like to think that we are rational and reasonable, but the evidence does not seem to support this.

The former conclusion stands. Most people, most of the time, are not basing their decisions on reason. We cannot expect most people to behave reasonably. If we do, then we are the ones who are thinking unreasonably.

Any time I hear phrases such as “If people do this….” I already know that we are not going to be happy with the results. It isn’t easy to control or predict what a large group of people will do. Most “experts” whose job it is to predict the stock market actually fail at it. This is their job – this is how they earn their living, and they cannot predict where the stock market will go. Part of this is because they cannot predict the human behavior that affects the market.

You may be able to predict or even control what a small group of people will do. But beyond this, it seems to be a fool’s game.

Instead of guiding everyone into perfect actions or expecting them to behave perfectly rationally, we should take advantage of this knowledge that there will be unreasonable behaviors and imperfect actions everywhere we go.

How can we do this? Here are a few examples.

I am very good at avoiding car accidents because I assume that people will drive in erratic ways. I assume that they may get distracted and struggle to stay in their own lane. I have lived in places where Stop signs and traffic lights were just viewed as suggestions, so I got used to checking for traffic and pedestrians at every intersection. Ironically, assuming that perfection will happen tends to give us poor results and may result in more accidents.

As another example, when I want to succeed at something, I have backup plans. Many people end up working outside of the field that they trained for. In my case, I was studying to be a psychologist, but I changed paths and ended up becoming an author who writes about self-development, psychology, and other related themes. Fortunately, my psychology background was a great asset for this. If you are pursuing a degree, ask yourself if it will be useful for only one thing, or can you use it to succeed in various fields?

Another way to stop assuming that things will work out perfectly is to reconsider your timelines for important projects. I had a boss who once said:

“Give me your timeline. That way, I can double it in my mind. When you make up your timelines, you tend to expect things to work out perfectly, but they rarely do. We need to account for all of the problems you’ll have that we can’t predict right now.”

You can try this too. If you expect things to take a certain amount of time (usually assuming that things will work out perfectly), then double that in your mind, and that may be the true timeline.

When I see that people have assumed perfection, I expect that things will go wrong. For situations that require everyone to behave perfectly and orderly, I will avoid them and be extra cautious, waiting for something to go wrong, as it often does.

Of course, the exception here is that some people are highly trained or skilled to deal with certain scenarios. In some professions, people may operate at seemingly perfect levels to get the job done.

However, we cannot expect such a high level of rational behavior from most people, most of the time.

Learn this lesson that people do not usually make decisions based on reason, see the lack of reason around you, and use this understanding to make better decisions.

Unlock Infinite Possibilities (A Creative Exercise)

We often fail to see just how many options we truly have. We may assume that we have two possible pathways, or maybe three when the possibilities are actually infinite.

As a thought exercise, imagine this:

You are trapped in a car and there is a large brick next to you.

For most people, it may be difficult to think beyond this brick. It is so prominent that it is practically shouting, “break a window with it.”

However, let’s think a bit more deeply.

Even though I said you were trapped in the vehicle, perhaps this was just an assumption. Maybe the doors seem to be locked or jammed shut, but they are so old that if you press on them, they may pop open with little effort.

Since I didn’t explain how you got in the vehicle, maybe this is your own vehicle, and you have the keys in your pocket or nearby. You may be able to start the car and drive it somewhere that you could ask for help.

Surely you are wondering what led up to this scenario. It’s unknown. Perhaps you were in an accident and suffered amnesia.

If none of the above options to escape work, of course, you could check if anyone is nearby currently to help you.

Unfortunately, no one is there.

Practically on a daily basis, I hear people say in response to problems that we can go with Plan A or Plan B. They identify two options, or sometimes, they only identify one possible option. And often, implementing such plans would require a great deal of time, money, or energy.

But sometimes, we don’t have any of that. Some people lack financial resources and work hard to get by – they don’t have much time, money, or energy. They need to resolve their problems quickly despite these setbacks, or they do not get resolved. They must be resourceful – if they cannot figure things out for themselves, no one else will step in to solve it for them.

Life isn’t always easy. Sometimes we are presented with new and big problems when we least expect it when we don’t feel able to handle them, even when we are already overwhelmed with other problems.

Nonetheless, we must deal with the most pressing problem in front of us. In this scenario, you are still stuck in this car, and you want to get out.

What if you already tried all the above options that I proposed? You checked if you could force the doors open, you looked for the keys, you checked around to see if anyone could help you, and you even tried to use the brick to break open the windows. They seem to be reinforced and not so easily breakable. Nothing worked.

What else can you try?

You look around for a cell phone, and you check the glove box for anything useful. Nothing. The car is not old enough where you can roll down the windows manually. It has an electronic switch that does not work unless the car is on.

At this point, most people might give up. It seems like you’ve tried everything.

Can you think of anything else?

Remember, there doesn’t seem to be anyone around. You’re welcome to try banging on the glass to get attention, but I can tell you that will accomplish nothing as the creator of this scenario.

If you would like, take a bit of time to come up with one more thing you could try. I will come up with 7 more ideas to escape. Do not use Google to get ideas (or any search engine) – I am not. If you are struggling, keep in mind that these do not need to be good ideas. They need to be ideas that may have a chance at working.

When you are ready for my solutions, scroll down.

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1.     Check if there is a sun or moon roof. In some cars, there is a sliding door you can open at the top. If you are lucky, the glass part could have been left open or partially open for you to escape.

2.     Look for a pen, screwdriver, or any equipment that may help you to force the ignition to start, functioning as a sort of key. I know I said there was nothing useful in the glove box, but perhaps there were other compartments to search, or there may even have been something under the seats. By starting the car, you may drive it somewhere that you can get help.

3.     Alternatively, if you find anything like a pen, screwdriver, or something like this, you may try to force a window to slide down.

4.     Rather than throwing the brick at the windows or knocking it against them, lay the brick against the windows and then use your feet to kick the brick into the window. Your legs can exert more power, so this may be more successful. I’m aware that getting into a position to accomplish this may be challenging if the brick is heavy. (Doing this has some risk of causing injury, unfortunately)

5.     Move the rear seats out of the way so that you can climb into the trunk. There, look for a way to open it or force it open. Perhaps if you are lucky, it will be unlocked, or it was already left open. (While you are there, look for any equipment that may help you escape).

6.     If you have any cash, line up the windows to attract people to the car – obviously, this is in complete desperation, but it may help you get rescued.

7.     If you have tape, markers, string, etc., write SOS in big letters along the car's windows – this is also done to attract attention.

If you thought of some solutions that I did not mention, please post them in the comments.

The whole point of this exercise is to show us that in life, even under normal circumstances, we probably give up quite quickly on looking for solutions. Most of the time, I see people present one or two options, and if those don’t work, they are ready to give up. They may even claim that the problem can’t be solved.

We set limits on ourselves when we do this.

Another situation where we tend to set limits on ourselves is in competition when we are at a disadvantage or we seem to be losing. Most people give up when they should be taking this as an opportunity to look harder for pathways to win. You may be the underdog, but is it truly impossible for you to win?

When you come across a problem or situation, or you feel that you are the underdog, search deeper for ways to solve this or to win. Often, there isn’t just one solution to a problem. There may be 10 or more pathways forward. You don’t need to find THE solution. You need to find ONE way that works.

Keep in mind that the path forward could actually be to abandon your problem for another solvable one or redefine the problem in some cases. In this scenario, several of my solutions were not about escaping directly. Instead, they were about looking for ways to get people to help me escape.

The next time you encounter a challenging problem or are the underdog in a competitive event, look for 7 new ways to solve the problem. If you don’t think you’ll have a difficult problem come up today, then practice making up your own difficult scenarios and resolving the problems that you create in your mind – as we did in this post.

What helps me is I usually imagine that the possible solutions are infinite or near-infinite – this makes it much easier to come up with just 7 solutions. Also, this is a daily practice. It may not be easy at first, but this means you need to work at it. This creative skill can pay off in all areas of our lives.

The possibilities are endless.

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If you feel like you could use some help in getting more creative and finding more possibilities in your daily life, I recommend reading:

Idea Hacks: Come up with 10X More Creative Ideas in 1/2 the Time

“How Does That Make You Feel?”

I once interned with a clinical therapist (when I was a college student) – her specialty was working with adolescents and families who were facing a variety of problems. Some of those problems could be behavioral issues, communication issues, improper parenting techniques, drug abuse, domestic violence, and sexual abuse.

Her goal was generally to help resolve some of the problems they presented but also to help bring families closer together so they could communicate better and solve their own problems.

In seeing this therapist in action, I realized that she had a catchphrase that worked quite well for her. After someone presented a problem or issue in their lives, she would ask:

“How does that make you feel?”

People naturally wanted to discuss the problem, which usually involved other people being wrong, and them being right. But the therapist always brought the conversation back to feelings. It was important to figure out the feelings that had made people so upset and led them to take certain actions in their lives. It was important to look more closely at which feelings may have led to growing conflicts and problems rather than resolutions. The feelings by not having been properly processed, acknowledge, and directed, had led people into toxicity, maladaptive states, and chronic troubles in their lives.

By not processing or understanding our own feelings, we can get stuck at one station in life.

I must note that she had a compassionate, delicate way to ask this question. It wasn’t just the question itself but how she asked it that helped people open up to her. She was truly empathic and cared deeply, and surely this helped her to open up communication channels with her clients.

Understand that when we communicate, many of us are mostly paying attention to our own feelings. We tend to get absorbed in this and forget that the people we communicate with also have their own feelings. We have to be open to communicating with our true feelings to open up someone else’s feelings and then come to a meaningful understanding. When someone’s feelings are not heard or acknowledged, they tend to become aggressive, or they may want to avoid you, or they may ignore you. None of these provides a proper path toward fruitful communication.

Of course, opening up our true feelings is not always easy, but we must learn to do it if we wish to communicate openly, rather than set up walls that shut down communication.

This simple question, “How does that make you feel?” has made me realize over and over that many of us have a lot of room to grow when it comes to our communication skills. We have gotten used to only surrounding ourselves with people who we agree with. Being around people we agree with makes us feel good, but unfortunately, it can stunt our personal growth. In this age, we also surround ourselves with social media or news feeds that only provide us with the viewpoint we already agree with. Again, this makes us feel good but does not necessarily help us to grow as a person.

What happens when people agree with us? This may make us feel smart, liked, or special in some way. And when they disagree with us, we may feel dumb, disliked, and useless. So when people disagree with us, rather than allowing ourselves to have those negative feelings, we may jump into rationalizations and justifications and bitterly defend our positions. Even if, at times, our position is not actually reasonable.

Feelings are important to how we communicate, but at the same time, it should be obvious that just because I feel good about an idea does not make it true.

Why are feelings important to communication, then? Feelings are about finding a pathway toward understanding and resonating with people. Feelings get at the core of who we are. We own our feelings as a part of ourselves more than we own our facts or rationalizations. Facts and rationalizations are available to all. But we see our feelings as uniquely something that we are experiencing. Even if I am sad and you are sad, we are still sad in different ways, so we always know our own experience to be a unique marker of who we are at a point in time. To deny my feelings is to deny me and to say that I do not matter. When someone debates rationally while completely ignoring how I feel, I feel as if I do not matter.

“Well, our budget is smaller this year than last year, and we needed to cut something somewhere. There’s no other way. Sorry, we’re letting you go. I need you to pack your stuff up and be out by the end of the day.”

Anyone faced with hearing the above would probably feel completely denied as a human being. There is no interest in hearing how you feel. The decision is made about your life without actually factoring in your life, feelings, purpose, and will.

Of course, this denial of who we are makes us angry, depressed, anxious and provides us with a full spectrum of negative emotions. The denial of our feelings makes the situation seem worse than it had to be, somehow.

Here is another scenario to consider. For whatever reason, you may find yourself seated next to someone who holds opposing viewpoints on big life issues. Well, what if instead of bitter debates, personal attacks, and building up our anger and hatred for each other, we instead focused on our feelings?

What if the conversation went something like this:

Robert: “I hate how liberals are always trying to control us.”

Martin: “Well, how do you feel when that happens? (Notice that rather than fueling the fire or resisting this potentially antagonizing idea, we ask a neutral question.)

Robert: “It feels aggravating and like we always have to fight just to keep our basic rights.”

Martin: “I’m a liberal, and I feel aggravated too like we always have to fight to make any basic progress toward something better. It sounds like we feel the same, doesn’t it?”

From there, perhaps the conversation could grow in a direction where both people realized that they both feel aggravated, they both feel misunderstood unheard, disregarded, treated unfairly, etc. Both sides are probably experiencing the same feelings, but they are processing them differently, and they have formed different belief systems or worldviews.

We could choose to focus on the common human factor here, which is our feelings, rather than what splits us apart. When we argue, even with facts, all either side truly hears is:

“He disagrees with a plainly obvious truth that anyone with basic intelligence and human decency should be able to see – so he is obviously ignorant at best or a wretched person at worst. I should give him a piece of my mind so he knows how ignorant and wretched he truly is.”

And, of course, such thoughts cannot possibly go anywhere productive.

The way we tend to behave isn’t as a person who is calmly evaluating facts and weighing them against each other. Rather, we are more concerned with our feelings. We tend to react to the way things make us feel.

In our real conversations, of course, it will be a challenge to have a calm, reasonable conversation with someone from an opposing group or belief system. This is a great challenge because we must connect to our emotions while not letting them rule us. Connecting to our feelings will help us see that we share something that unites us with even people from opposing groups.

While we can reason logically through the facts, the reality is that most people do not think in this way. Most people have a feeling or emotion about something, and then they pick the facts or arguments that support their position. There is a confirmation bias – meaning that we only pay attention to evidence that confirms what we already believe. After you believe something, it becomes quite a challenge to change someone’s mind.

So instead of trying to change minds, why don’t we aim to respect our differences and build connections with people? Ask how people feel and encourage them to tell a story about what got them to that point. If you open your mind and listen to people’s pains, you will see that we can’t argue with feelings. We can argue by using logic, but implementing logic successfully is an overwhelming challenge when we live in a world with more and more misinformation, misinterpretations, and biased information. Also, new research is constantly identifying that what we thought was true becomes false overnight, as new “truths” replace the old ones. And of course, when you argue with logic, people tend to get quite emotional about their “facts,” which defies the point of using logic in the first place.

Understand that when we argue from the point of needing to be right, we can’t convince anyone.

The more you feel the need to be right, the more that the other person will feel the need to be right. And the situation we end up creating is of locking horns (such as with bison, antelope, or moose). And sometimes, in nature, both animals lock horns so tightly in a gruesome battle that both sides end up losing their lives. If that is not the future we want to create for ourselves, then we should reconsider our need to be right and instead look for ways to open ourselves up to others and get them to open up to us.

Debating the people we disagree with in an angry, hate-filled way is not the path forward.

Ignoring that the people we disagree with exist is not the path forward.

Treating the people we disagree with as less than human is not the path forward.

Instead of closing down, we must open up and invite people into our hearts, minds, and souls.

If we open up and explore people’s feelings, we create an open window of communication—a channel between souls where true understanding may develop.

Who the Room Wants You to Be

I am on the introverted side, and I value the fact that I am my own person and not in need of being who someone else wants me to be. Nonetheless, it seems that we all feel societal pressure to be who or what the room wants us to be.

By “the room,” I mean whatever environment of people we happen to be around.

I once had a dream that left a great impact on me. In the dream, I was at a restaurant having a conversation with many physicists. My knowledge of physics is quite basic (in the dream and reality), but in the dream, I felt compelled to take on this role I was given. I didn’t understand that it was just a role, as I thought that I was a physicist and that it looked bad that I was somehow struggling to keep up with what my colleagues were telling me. Rather than admit that I was lost, I pressed forward and pretended as if I followed their words, and then I contributed my own thoughts in a vague way to try to carry on the illusion that I knew advanced concepts in physics.

The other physicists looked at me like I was crazy. Still, somehow I felt better in trying to carry on the illusion that I was a physicist, rather than admit that I was in a false role, which may have been admitting that my whole life was false (within the context of the dream).

This scenario with physicists faded into a blur, and I found myself somewhere else.

I was in prison. I quickly took on the attitude and role of prisoner then. I started to talk like them, feel like them, act like them. I knew in my heart that I was not the prisoner type, but something about waking up in this role demanded that I fill it. It was clear that acting as if I did not belong in prison would have done nothing to help me get out of there. I took on the role as if I were truly a prisoner. This meant that if a weaker-looking prisoner caused trouble with me, I felt the need to put him in his place. On the other hand, I respected the bigger or more senior prisoners. Basically, I became just another prisoner in the short course of this dream.

Then this scenario faded away, and I found myself in another one.

I was having a romantic dinner with someone. From being in this scenario for just a moment, I figured out that this was my fiancé (only in the dream world), but I didn’t actually recognize the person. I assumed something was wrong with me for not remembering my own fiancé, and I felt the need to fill this role properly. I needed to be the good loving fiancé, and I needed to successfully have this romantic dinner with this person, even if I could not recall why or how I had gotten there. This seemed to be a fancy, special dinner. I couldn’t face the idea of ruining this night for this other person who I didn’t even know but who appeared to know me so well.

These were all deeply uncomfortable dreams for me, but I found comfort in pretending to be the role that I appeared to be, rather than acknowledging that my role was false and my life was false.

Why did this series of dreams leave such an impact on me?

It made me realize how powerful the room is that guides us into being who we are. My mind is always monitoring what it feels I am expected to be, and sometimes this can impede me from actually being who I am.

In any given situation, I may think: I’m supposed to laugh here, I’m supposed to compliment here, I’m supposed to thank this person here, I’m supposed to feel uncomfortable here, I’m supposed to get scared now, I’m supposed to be disgusted, I’m supposed to want to be friends with this person, I’m supposed to apologize, I’m supposed to feel grateful, or I’m supposed to want to be here, and so on.

I’m not a robot, so I have feelings, emotions, and more human ways of thinking. But I also always seem to have this overactive thinking mode that focuses on what I am supposed to be, do, or feel, rather than what I actually am or what I actually feel. The thinking mode seems to interfere with the being mode.

My mind is always reading the room, judging what the room wants from me. And I get the sense that if I am not giving it what it wants, I am not properly filling my role. Or I may feel that I am somehow failing to be what I was supposed to be. If I am not what others expect of me, then who am I? Is it good enough to be what I expect me to be?

And then we have to ask, is my role in my life one that I am just playing out? Could I just as easily have been in any other life situation or scenario? With one wrong turn in my life, could I have been put in prison? And if I were put in prison, wouldn’t I just become another prisoner? Another face in the crowd, doing what he is expected to do based on the circumstance.

For anyone I see in the streets, or at work, or even at home, are these just people filling a role at a certain point in time, or is this actually who they are? Is the Mom just filling the Mom role, or is she being the Mom? What about the police officer? What about the teacher? The clerk at the grocery store?

Are the roles actually minor aspects of who we truly are, but they somehow end up taking over our lives? When we see the role someone is playing, it isn’t easy to see them as anything else. In some ways, the humanity may be stripped away, and we see the role, not the person.

As humans, we can know what people in the room want from us and then attempt to appease them. And it’s difficult to resist the urge to appease those around us because it feels rewarding when they like us, or want to be around us, or congratulate us for being what they wanted us to be.

We can say that “I am not being controlled by any room – I am my own person,” but that is not quite my point. Of course, anyone can choose to go against what the room wants. My point is that we all have this benchmark understanding of what the room wants from us. And so it feels like anything we do is a reaction to that. Imagine that someone suddenly throws a ball at your face. Whether you try to get out of the way or catch it, or even if you get hit by it, you cannot deny that the ball is coming toward you and that you must do something. What the room wants from us is just as powerful as the ball coming at your face – it demands that you respond somehow.

Sometimes I come across people who, when they interact with me, are reacting to what they expect me to want them to do or reacting to what they expect me to be thinking. Much of the time, they are wrong. I clear my throat sometimes, and people sometimes think I am trying to rush them. Actually, I’m just clearing my throat – it’s something I do more than most people, and I’m not sure why, but I don’t do it to try to rush anyone. Once they have identified me clearing my throat as something people do to rush other people, it’s difficult for them to get away from that thought. They feel forced into reacting to that thought. Sometimes they apologize for inconveniencing me, even though that was not even on my mind.

Other times, I have asked for help with something, and the person has gotten very angry with me. Apparently, they were overwhelmed with their own life, and they got angry that I would dare to “impose” extra work on them and “expect” them to do it for free. However, I wasn’t expecting anything – I had simply been asking a question to see if they were in the position to help. They were reacting to what they thought I would be thinking or expecting.

So interestingly, many of us are reacting to this room, and the room is a mirage. What we think the room wants often isn’t even what it wants. But we react to it somehow. We can go along with what it wants or against it, but we are reacting to it either way. Once we have a benchmark in mind for what the room wants, it’s difficult to escape this “reality bubble” we have created. It’s a reality bubble because it is a true perception of reality in some respects and false in others. When you realize its falseness, it pops, and another reality bubble replaces it. This can happen over and over. We tend to think that our current reality bubble represents the true reality, but of course, it never actually does.

Thinking Styles to Perceive the True Nature of Reality

There are perhaps an infinite amount of thinking styles that we could employ to think about the world. Today, I want to highlight the most common form of thinking that we tend to use and then point to alternative thinking styles that can help us perceive reality more fully and accurately.

Categorical Thinking

This is the thinking that we begin to learn and use early on in life. For example, a young child may learn that a particular object is called a peach. The child may quickly learn that “peach” is not the name for this unique peach – such a name does not exist. Rather, “peach” is the name for all fruits of this type. The term “peach” is just a category.

This form of thinking is quite powerful because it allows us to learn and understand very quickly. Perhaps you have never heard of lychees, but these are just a type of fruit. Due to your familiarity with the category, we call fruits, you can immediately form a basic idea of what the lychee is.

When we think in categories, we are not thinking of one particular object in the real world. Rather, we are thinking of a general class of objects (or beings) in the world.

Socrates referred to the idea of forms. For example, we have an ideal conception of what a dog must be, even if that dog does not exist in the real world. These forms or ideals that we hold in our minds help us to better understand the world around us. If I see a 3-legged dog, I can understand that this is still a dog, even if it does not fit the ideal that is in my mind.

Although categorical thinking has many uses, we should understand that it is flawed because by thinking of the category, our idea of what the category must be then influences what we see. We are likely to see what we expect to see rather than what is actually in front of us.

This becomes problematic when it comes to prejudices and biases. Someone who has had repeated negative experiences with individuals of a particular ethnicity may come to assume that this whole category of people is somehow bad. Every time he sees such people, he will become angry, scared, or worried, possibly avoiding such people or treating them with contempt.

Our prior experiences shape how we see the world, so we can sometimes make the mistake of improperly categorizing something. In Into the Wild, Chris McCandless made the fatal mistake of thinking a plant was edible when it was actually poisonous. He mistook two similar-looking plants for each other, only realizing his mistake after he had eaten the poisonous one.

Of course, most mistakes that we make will not be fatal, and most of the time, we will likely be correct in our categorizations. But because we are correct most of the time, we may be overconfident in the categories we form. And we may be overconfident in thinking that our categories are meaningful when they are not always so.

Bacteria may be something that has led to many deaths. Yet, now we know that there are good bacteria and bad bacteria. Most people will have a balance of both in their bodies. Just because bacteria can lead to deaths does not make them all bad. Yet, this is the kind of assumption we often make. Something bad in one case will be assumed to be bad in most or all cases.

We intuitively think if one bacteria is bad, they must all be bad. This is because our intuition is based on categories, and those categories are often based on faulty assumptions.

Categories are useful, but other modes of thinking may help us see reality more clearly.

Essential Thinking

We can look at a sunflower (or anything in nature) with essential thinking and see it clearly for what it is. We can let go of our need to categorize everything, at least for a moment. We can stop perceiving this sunflower as just a type of sunflower – since such thinking will cause us to not see the sunflower right in front of us, but rather to see all the sunflowers we have ever seen inside of the one we are looking at. Is it more of a real experience to perceive the general idea of something, which is the concept of something in your mind based on all prior experience? Or is it more of a real experience to perceive what is right in front of you right now?

If you can perceive what is in front of you without needing to grasp all your old ideas, then you will be free to see what is indeed there. You will see that sunflower as if it were the first time you ever saw one, and you may have a magical experience.

We do not need to abandon categorical thinking, as this is probably our default mode of thought. However, we should introduce more essential thinking into our lives. There is something powerful about meeting someone from any race, background, and of any quality or feature, and then allowing your mind to melt away all those superficial qualities of a person. I say superficial because how much can you truly know about a person based on their height, weight, clothes type, and skin tone? We may just be led into making a variety of faulty assumptions based on this.

I have met people dressed very plainly who were quite wealthy. I have met people with brand new cars who were in immense debt. Some tall people feel very small on the inside. Some white people relate more to blackness, and black people who relate more to whiteness. Whiteness and blackness as words express our preconceived notions of these groups and are likely quite flawed – how can we generalize to such massive groups?

To continue, some men feel like women on the inside and vice versa. Some people of a group, ethnicity, or religion feel quite strongly about their identities, and others do not feel that it is a significant feature of them. How ignorant can we be to see that someone belongs to a category of beings based on external categorical features and then make assumptions about who they are on the inside?

I have a Hispanic skin tone and features (since I am indeed Hispanic). Thus, when I am in Mexico since my Spanish is not perfect and I have an accent, I am often seen as the American or the gringo. Yet when I am in the US, sometimes people ask me where I am from, as if they are caught up in my superficial form or my physical appearance. In being caught up in the superficial, they have failed to observe that I speak well-educated English, as you would expect a professional writer and someone with a master’s degree to have. Also, I have no foreign accent. I am just as American as any other American since I was born on this soil.

I often sense that people have identified me as not being one of them before they have had the chance to know me. I am sure I have committed this mistake with people in my past too. It is quite an easy mistake to make. We think we know something about people by seeing them at a glance, but often, we really don’t. Subconsciously, a part of us always seems to be thinking this when we meet someone new: “Is he one of my kind, or not?”

In Mexico, people can often tell that I am not from there before I even speak. Recall that I have an accent in Spanish, and I speak it imperfectly – so if I speak, the natives know I am not from there. Physically, I appear Mexican, so how would they notice that I am not from there so quickly?

Sometimes I think I am too tall. At 5’11, most Mexican men are somewhat shorter than me (at about 5’5), and I have only seen a woman taller than me once (while on average they are about 5’2) in three years of living in Mexico. Sometimes I think that perhaps we Americans dress or walk differently, or we are not in tune with some basic mannerisms and customs of the area. All these things may immediately signal to some people that I am not from there, despite my skin tone and physical features being common to the area.

So in Mexico, I am the American or gringo, and in the US, I am the Mexican American or Hispanic American. Both viewpoints are calling attention to where I am not from. Somehow in my life, I have come to feel at home with not appearing to be from wherever I happened to be at the time. I mention this feeling because I am sure all minorities have this feeling to varying degrees. And it can be difficult to process and understand this feeling even when you live it, so I imagine it is not easy to grasp when you do not have to live it.

I took us down a winding path here, but the point is that we need to learn to see the essential features of the person, or animal, or plant, or even the thing in front of us. We can lazily revert to thinking:

I have seen one dog, so I have seen them all. I have seen one tree, so I have seen them all. I have seen one apple, so I have seen them all.

But if we do, then eventually we start thinking:

I have seen one Native American person, or white person, or black person, or Hispanic person, or Asian person, so I have seen them all.

We start to see our preconceived notions of a group of people when we see a person rather than to see the particular person in front of us.

Learn to guide your focus to the essence or spirit of things. See what is actually there, not what is not. Focus on what is, not on whether some quality is lacking.

Interdependent Thinking

With interdependent thinking, we will see that the essence of people or things does not exist on its own. I am who I am, but only because of my interactions and interdependencies with the rest of the universe. For me to be here, the sun had to be there, the Earth had to be there, my parents had to be there, and the neighborhood I grew up in had to be there. For these things to be there, my parents’ families and ancestors had to be there, countries had to be there, and governments had to be there. For these things to be there, nature had to be there, ecosystems had to be there, and dinosaurs and all organisms that led to our evolution had to be there. For those things to be there, some first mover, or Creator, or big bang, beginning, or eternity had to be there. I don’t exist outside of all these other interdependencies.

We see the essence of people and things with interdependent thinking, but we move beyond this and take it a step deeper. When we study the essence of things, there is a point where there is the absence of essence. My matter is the same matter that has always existed. At one point, it was a part of the stars, at another point, a part of the seas, at another point, a part of the dinosaurs, at another point, a part of the air, and so on. The essence of things is that they are always here, and they are always flowing from one form to the next. I am a temporary form that the universe was leading up to. You are also a temporary form that the universe was leading up to. But we are not the end. The universe and its forms move on, before us, through us, after us, beyond us.

I’m not sure that we ever came to be. Perhaps we were always here, and our consciousness cannot access that because we were a part of different forms at that time (e.g., a part of the stars, the air, the water, other living organisms, etc.)

Categories are temporary classifications of things. They are impermanent. For example, did dogs exist a billion years ago? No. Did humans? No. Will we exist in our current form in another billion years? It’s quite unlikely.

Categories are impermanent. Essence is absent (or perhaps also temporary). And so, interdependence is the truth that we are left with when we chisel away the falseness of categories and essence.

Categories are truer than random or disorganized thought. Essence is truer than categories. And interdependence is truer than essence.

When you see the daisy at this level of thought, you don’t see it at one point in time, but you see it at all points in time. When you do this, the daisy is soil, water, fertilizer, a seed, sunlight, and a part of the Earth and the air, and intermixed with everything for all time. The daisy is not just the daisy we see it as now. The daisy is a temporary form, and that form will change and become a part of other forms of life and nonlife.

A Summary

With categorical thinking, we learn to perceive the general idea of things. The problem is that these categories we form can give us an incorrect picture of the thing in front of us. We focus on the categories and how we have defined them or how society has defined them that we stop seeing what is actually right in front of us. Categories can blind us to reality and the truth rather than enlighten us to it. When we have mastered how to think categorically, it is time to seek a higher form of thinking and understanding.

With essential thinking, we learn to perceive what is actually right in front of us. Categories can blind us to the reality, so essential thinking forces us to be in tune with the present, the here and now, and to experience reality to its fullest as it actually is rather than responding to our ideas of what we thought a person or thing was supposed to be. Essential thinking helps us live according to what is, rather than to what we thought was supposed to be. When we have mastered how to think essentially, it is time to seek a higher form of thinking and understanding.

With interdependent thinking, we learn that categorical thinking focuses on the temporary, essential thinking focuses on something absent, and interdependent thinking is what we are left with. This is a principle that is not bound by time. Nothing exists as a theoretical category – since these are just abstractions. And nothing exists as a pure essence of itself – since nothing exists independently on its own. Everything exists as part of a relationship with the rest of the universe. In physics, there are four forces: gravity, electromagnetism, weak forces, and strong forces. Other forces (or emotions) in the human world, such as love, happiness, anger, and fear, similarly guide the way humans move, act, and interact. All of these forces guide our relationships and interrelationships and keep us working as interdependent forces upon each other.

Are You Your Thoughts, Feelings, or Actions?

One of the most important questions of our lives that perhaps we do not give enough thought to is:

“Who are you?”

I think so much about everything that, at many points in my life, I would have assumed that I was my thoughts.

For many people, they may feel so much that they may conclude that they are their feelings.

For others, they may feel so compelled to act that they may come to conclude that they are their actions.

For others still, perhaps some quality has become so central to their lives, whether it be their work, their beauty, or their intellect, and they identify with such qualities so much that the quality becomes them. When they think of themselves, they see a particular quality or set of qualities they embody as part of their human spirit.

Growing up, if someone told us over and over how hardworking, or smart, or beautiful we were, perhaps we ended up learning to identify as what we were told we were.

Unfortunately, if we were repeatedly reminded of our faults and how we were not good enough, perhaps this is how we came to identify ourselves. Rather than being something, we came to see ourselves as lacking something we were supposed to be.

The interesting part of being human is that we get to define what or who we are. Whether we relate more to our thoughts, feelings, actions, or some other quality of ourselves, we get to choose to live our lives based on what we find to be important.

Often, we like to simplify things to make sense of them. It’s easier to see myself as my thoughts. But the reality is that my feelings and actions help me to arrive at my thoughts. Most people tend to know what they feel or believe, and then they use thoughts to rationalize or explain this. If I feel angry and I don’t know why, I will find a way to explain it, probably based on whatever actions just took place.

Feelings flow into thoughts. Of course, thoughts can flow into feelings too. If I am obsessively thinking about something, I may have a strong feeling about whatever I was thinking. And it seems that if we feel strongly enough, we will be compelled to take action. And again, our thoughts or our reasoning will help convince us further whether we should take action or whether it is unsafe to do so.

Often, our feelings compel us to action, and our thoughts reason us out of having to take any action. If you feel more, you may take more action. If you think more, you may take less action.

Feeling too much with not enough thinking can lead you to take actions you regret or to take actions in ways that were not properly thought out and perhaps would lead to undesired consequences. Thinking too much with not enough feeling can result in not taking enough action. You may miss many opportunities, having thought them through too deeply and focused on all the things that could go wrong, thinking yourself away from taking action. The other danger with thinking too much with not enough feeling is that we can find it difficult to relate to other people. Usually, people find it more interesting to surround themselves with impassioned people, as they tend to be more relatable and entertaining to be around. Thought or reasoning without any feeling can feel dry, empty, and purposeless.

If your feelings and thoughts are in balance, then you may find the way to take the proper actions when needed and to avoid taking unnecessary actions or actions that will lead to undesirable consequences. Reaching this point can take self-reflection, practice, and of course seeking balance in one’s thoughts, feelings, and actions.

A key issue to keep in mind is that it is quite easy to get stuck. Thoughts can get to a point where they loop around. I suffered depression in the past (e.g., many, many years ago), and at some point, there were just negative thoughts looping in my mind repeatedly. After sinking deep into these thought loops and having hundreds of negative thoughts in a row, it isn't easy to form a positive thought or positive action in your life. And so thoughts can build a sort of momentum, and when they get going in a certain direction with enough power, going against them can be like trying to stop a speeding train.

A path to get out of these loops is to realize that our thoughts have gone out of control and force ourselves to take positive actions (e.g., exercise or socializing with friends and family) even if we don’t feel like it. If you feel stuck in your life and unable to make progress, I recommend seeking professional help.

We can also get stuck in our feelings. Have you ever felt bad for someone? Perhaps a friend just lost his job. Then you spend your time worrying, thinking about his family and how they may struggle to pay the bills. You may worry about how they will pay for that new car they just got. You don’t want to call your friend and bother him, as you know he is probably worried and busy. And also, a part of you doesn’t want to call because if he asks for help, you fear that you are not in the position to offer any. You would be happy to listen to his problems, but ultimately you cannot do much of anything to fix it. When we find ourselves in these situations, it’s quite easy to get stuck in our feelings. It can drag down our whole day if we get stuck there.

A path to get unstuck from our negative feelings is finding a small positive thought or action we can do to help and then actually do it. For example, this could be notifying our friend of any job openings you know about, or offering to listen if he wants to talk, or meditation or prayer. Such actions can help us relieve the negative energy inside us and transform it into positive action.

We can even get stuck in our actions. Imagine two men who struggle to move a heavy sofa from one room to another. So they ask a couple of friends to help them. The sofa is currently positioned in the hallway between two rooms. The men get to their positions, two on one side of the sofa and two on the other side, and they proceed to push the sofa. They struggle and struggle, but the sofa doesn’t move. They check to see if something is blocking the sofa from moving, and there is nothing there. It should be able to move freely. The furniture is heavy, but not so heavy to where four men would not be able to move it.

What is the problem here? The men were not clear on their direction. They were all pushing the sofa forward, meaning they were canceling out their forces and working against each other. If two men are on each side of the sofa, one side should be pushing and the other side pulling. If everyone is pushing, as is what happened here, then we have a problem.

When we get stuck in our actions, we can stubbornly push forward, even when we shouldn’t be pushing at all. Sometimes, we should think more deeply before we act, or we should consider how we feel. Our feelings or intuitions may reveal that this is not the proper course of action, but our desire for progress may keep us moving forward nonetheless. Sometimes, the best course of action is to do nothing – to wait and see what happens. Not every situation demands action, and most situations will not benefit if we push forward without thinking through the implications of our actions.

Everyone gets stuck in action occasionally. But if we often push forward and cause undesirable problems in our lives, we should think more deeply about our true goals. We should come to understand that action without any reflection can cause catastrophic problems and waste time, meaning we will have to perform more and more actions in a loop that becomes frustratingly difficult to dig our way out of. This can result in burnout, as we do more and more but accomplish less and less. To perform meaningful or useful actions, we will need to engage in thought.

This can take practice, but see if you can learn to use your thoughts, feelings, and actions to help you move forward in life, rather than getting stuck in them. Try to balance these different parts of yourself and see what happens.

The Lesser Paths and Better Paths

I see regret in many people. It is painful to wake up to our lives and realize that we are on the wrong path. It may appear we have chosen the wrong job, we have sought the wrong relationship, raised our kids improperly, moved to the wrong town, and so on.

When our path is wrong, we feel it with our whole body, with the resistance of every fiber of our being wanting something else. Anything else. We want to eliminate the dead weight we carry around every day as part of our life’s burden.

However, we often forget that we needed this wrong path to see how wrong it truly was. Or we needed this wrong path to learn great lessons that would help us on the road to better paths. Or, in many cases, when we are young, no one could have talked us out of taking this path. It’s as if it were our destiny. I’m aware of many people who had a hunger for adventure and travel, and so they went to different states or even countries, only to realize that the place they truly belonged was back at home where they grew up.

I use the term “wrong path” because we all know what it means. But we must understand that a path that seems right for us in one moment can change and become the wrong path. And vice versa.

Truthfully, the wrong path does not exist. There are only better paths and lesser paths. Naturally, we will aim to take better paths and avoid the lesser ones. And when we cannot avoid them, we will wish to get through the lesser paths as quickly as we can to move on to something better.

Here is what comes to mind for me when I think of the lesser and better paths.

When I finished my undergraduate studies at Purdue University, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with my life. I thought it made sense to continue my studies in psychology, as I did enjoy the field. So I decided to go to graduate school, but many things on that journey ended up being wrong for me, and I chose to leave after three years with a master’s degree even though I had been expected to finish the Ph.D. degree there.

During my time there, I struggled to enjoy anything that I was doing. Everything seemed like work to fill my life with. I lost perspective, and in many ways, I stopped recognizing who I was. I had become whatever I needed to be to fulfill the role of graduate student that I had been playing. I was playing the role, not fully embodying it as my own self. For me, it was the right choice to leave.

A few years after leaving, I realized that this “wrong path” in life had given me so much. I completed advanced courses in psychology and statistics. I had published academic articles and book chapters, which helped me learn to write professionally. I learned to organize my time and work, which was something I had never done before this. I practiced presentational skills, which was an area that I always struggled to perform well in. And I learned to work collaboratively rather than just on my own. Almost everything I had done helped me to later succeed in creating my own life and business on my own terms. In the end, I had done so much in three years that I felt as if I had acquired six years’ worth of experience in that period. One of the things I disliked the most in the program was the intense workload, but I could finally see that it had all been worth it after finishing.

Understand that when we are on the wrong path, often, this is just a part of our journey toward something better. I am glad that I completed three years in the graduate program because that allowed me to gain most of the benefits from being there. If I had left earlier, I may have lived with regret, knowing that I could have learned and accomplished so much more. Yet if I had left later, I would have also lived with regret, knowing that I was living a lie, pursuing something that was not me. I had been working toward something that my heart was no longer in.

When you believe you are on the wrong path, you have to ask yourself if there is a better path available to you. If not, it could make sense to continue on the road you are on, as long as you gain something from it. However, sometimes, to find a better pathway, you must open yourself up to the unknown, to uncertainty, and explore what you can create in your life out of nothing. Sometimes it is worth taking that leap.

A realization I have come to in living my own wrong paths and seeing others live theirs is that we need these paths in our lives. In many ways, our lives may end up just being a series of lesser paths that we take, and then better paths, and then lesser, and then better, in endless cycles.

The lesser paths that we take help us learn and grow to identify those better paths. With that experience, we can then take those better paths more courageously, confidently, with greater skill, poise, and gratitude.

Ultimately, the lessons that we learn along the journey of lesser and better paths will help us become our better selves.

Be More, Do Less

When you get up in the morning, and you prepare yourself for the day, most of us probably think, “Today, I am going to do A, B, and C, etc., tasks that I have on my to-do list.” And there is something about this that becomes exhausting. Everything on the to-do list is something that we tend to resist. If we didn’t resist it, why would we have to write it down?

Do you write down that you will eat, go to the restroom, love your significant other and kids, watch TV, and so on? Probably not, but you probably do all of these things. This is because these things are in your natural state of being.

Reflecting on these ideas helped me to come to a simple yet powerful realization. We should aim to do less and be more. The amusing thing here is that as far as behavior goes, it’s all the same. Being and doing end up in you performing some actions, usually. Someone who is observing you may not be able to tell the difference, whether you are being or doing at any given moment.

However, there is a clear mental difference. Any time I am doing, I am resisting something. Perhaps it is me that I am resisting. Perhaps it is society and the fact that it makes demands on me. Perhaps it is my family who has given me these extra tasks. Whatever it is, I feel that resistance. Maybe you do too.

And so, I have learned that a key goal of life should be to be more and do less. I still have to-do lists, as there are some things which must be done. But if your whole day constitutes trying to check items off a list, something is seriously wrong. Items to do are done mostly with the purpose of completing them, so most of your life will become a series of events that you were busy completing. This appears to be joyless, and strangely enough, purposeless.

If your purpose becomes to complete tasks, you will always feel that you are not fulfilled. This is because we create endless streams of tasks to complete. Every day you will wake up feeling de-energized, as whatever you accomplished in the past seems not even to matter. All that matters is this towering list of new stuff you have to complete, so you can then move on to the next series of stuff you have to get through.

By trying to have goals and impose purpose in your life, you have actually run away from it. It’s as if our purpose in life has become to have purpose through completing tasks. And somehow, paradoxically, this is the worst way to achieve true purpose in our lives.

Then, how do we accomplish our true purpose? Not through doing tasks, but through being who we already are. Purpose is about self-discovery and then being what we have discovered ourselves to be. And through being ourselves, we learn more about ourselves, which helps us be more centered with who we already are.

Unfortunately, when we become too task-focused, those tasks are usually not for ourselves, to begin with. Some tasks are because of the boss, the significant other, the kids, the neighbors, organizations we belong to, taxes or debts we owe, etc. And when we work on tasks for others as a big part of our day, we tend to feel as if our life is not in our hands. We are doing tasks not even for us, but for other people. And so we feel exhausted and drained because we are not being for ourselves, but we are doing for others.

Obviously, as you may be thinking now, real-life does constitute many tasks that most people don’t want to do. And for many of them, there is no good way around them. My point is that we may have more control than we think. If we consciously thought through our daily rhythms, we would find that no one is forcing us to go through certain tasks. We have made it up in our minds that we needed to do them and stress about fulfilling our own need to accomplish tasks endlessly.

Every day, ask yourself: How can I be more and do less?

Trust me when I tell you that every task on your to-do list does not need to get done. And trust me when I tell you that if you are resisting yourself and exercising all your willpower every day to get through your tasks, then something has gone horribly wrong.

An overnight life change may not be practical for you. But at least search for small ways to be more and do less.

For example, I used to have to-do lists for my business that were 4-5 pages long. This was reoccurring every week. Every week, I would check some things off and add some new items, and so my list was always 4-5 pages long. It always felt overwhelming, and through the years, I realized that I had a lot of resistance. I resented this list, and I had no one to blame for it because I happen to be my own boss.

Several months ago, I realized that most of the list was not that important, and I aimed to simplify my professional goals. Currently, I only have 1 page maximum of to-dos for my business. This has helped me focus more on being who I am rather than doing an endless set of tasks.

To be more and do less means asking yourself what the most important thing in your life is. Perhaps you have many important areas in your life – such as family, a career, hobbies, etc. You should ask yourself which areas of your life are most important. And perhaps, which sub-areas of your life are most important. When you know what truly matters, you can focus on being in the moment for those parts of your life.

When you focus on being, you will be more energized, fulfilled, and more in line with your true purpose in life. You may find that being so task-focused was robbing you of your own life, and you will be more committed to avoiding getting sucked into doing so much.

Most of us have to-do lists, but I have never heard of someone having a to-be list. This is because we naturally want to be beings. We are beings, not doings. So our natural state is to be who we are, and no one needs a reminder to be who they are.

To focus on being, aim to create situations where you can be yourself more comfortably. Or aim to surround yourself with people and settings that help you to be yourself. Strive to be with people who value you personally for who you are, rather than just for the number of tasks you can accomplish per day. I realized that most of my childhood friends were just people with whom I felt comfortable being me around – and I was shy, so this was not always easy to find. As a last note, if you have the power, you may consider creating systems or settings that allow others to focus more on being rather than just doing.

There is a big difference in how we live when we are being versus when we are doing.  I find that when I am being, I am focused on being mindful. I want to savor what is happening, I want to live the moment as deeply as I can, and I am enjoying the journey of being rather than needing to have an endpoint. Rather, when I am doing tasks, I often allow myself to enter into a mindless state. This means that I become okay with doing the task to get it done, just to get to the next task so I can get it done, and so on until everything is done.

So we have to ask: Are we meant to live mindfully or mindlessly? Are we meant to be or do?

Approaching Higher Levels of Consciousness

Our consciousness needs to be ready before we can expand ourselves into higher levels of seeing, being, and doing. There are so many problems most of us are dealing with in our personal lives and with our families that most of us do not have the mental bandwidth to seriously consider problems on a higher level than our current consciousness.

It is not practical to expect anyone to jump levels, from worrying about their survival, for example, to suddenly being concerned with world peace. How can anyone expect to influence world peace if they have not been able to accomplish their own personal peace?

One of the most fruitful things we may do in our lives is to identify what level of consciousness we are at. When you know your level of consciousness, you know what types of problems you are capable of tackling. It is also useful to be aware that certain goals or problems may be above your current level of consciousness.

Here is a brief summary of some levels of consciousness:

Survival Mode

At this level, you are mostly concerned with having some basic needs met, such as food, water, and shelter. Since your life itself is possibly under threat, you face the challenge of doing the right thing and living a humble, difficult life or doing the wrong thing and receiving quick benefits from it.

For those in survival mode, the primary goal is to move out of this phase. Unfortunately, some people may become desperate and get into drug dealing or other crimes, find themselves in prison, and then become unable to escape this mode of consciousness.

At this level, hard work may not be rewarded. In fact, it may be punished, as the people around you may view you as a threat when your diligence makes them look bad. Otherwise, a boss who knows you need your job may use this knowledge against you, refusing to give you a deserved raise.

Ironically, in order to escape this level of consciousness may require you to be an especially knowledgeable, conscious, organized person. But because you are at this stage, you may not have good models to help teach you this. Also, you may be at this stage because you lacked opportunities to acquire these qualities in the first place.

The Chase

Perhaps you know what it is like to be hungry or to be without your basic needs, and so now you have been given the opportunity to chase a better way of life and you are happy to do it. You may have just completed a certification program, or a degree, or been offered a job that seemed out your league. Now, you are ready to commit and work to get that dream life you wanted.

At this point, you may find that you are actually able to save money and build up your bank account gradually and work on making life improvements such as eating better or exercising. Alternatively, through seeking a better way of life and buying more things regularly, many people will find it hard to save money when they enter this phase of consciousness. Likely, you will have the goal of moving into a better home or community, getting a car (or upgrading it), or educating yourself to pursue a path that will help get you there.

Perhaps you have lived the hard life, and are eager to enjoy the little things in life. For example, you may wish to be able to turn on the AC in the summer without worrying about how much it costs.

At this stage, we find that our good and positive actions generally lead to good and positive results. You have reached a point where the harder you work, the more rewards you tend to gain from it.

Although you may not have attained it yet, you are generally on the path to achieving what you wanted.

The issue is that as long as you are on the chase for more money, more things, more people to network with, more sales to close, and so on, you may find yourself locked into this phase, always chasing, even after you have already surpassed your goals and dreams.

Keep in mind that for some people, the chase can be for something highly maladaptive, such as alcohol, drugs, or sex – and such forms of the chase are likely to keep one stuck in this form of consciousness, or possibly even lead you back into survival mode.

Self-Understanding and Growth

Here you will be focused on understanding who you are and how you can improve yourself, not just to meet goals like getting a job or a date. Rather, you want to grow as a person at this phase because you recognize this as an important goal on its own.

You may find that you didn’t know yourself as well as you thought. Perhaps you will question things you always took for granted. You may have been born surrounded by people of a certain political belief or religious belief and now find yourself questioning it all. Everyone thinks they are right, and every belief system thinks it is right. So do you believe what you do because you are following others, or have your personal reasons for believing?

This phase will be marked by many life questions that leave us feeling conflicted:

• Who am I?

• What do I value above all else?

• Have I done something good in this world?

• Were some of the things I always thought actually wrong?

• Am I in control or just being led by outside forces around me?

• Why am I here?

• Do I matter?

• What do I believe in?

• Were the goals I set for myself the right ones?

• How can I do better?

• What will be my legacy, or what will I leave behind when I’m gone?

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If you enjoy thinking through questions such as the ones above, you may be interested in reading a book I wrote with co-author Dave Edelstein: Question Yourself: 365 Questions to Explore Your Inner Self & Reveal Your True Nature

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We may go through periods of turmoil and unrest, feeling that we don’t even know ourselves. This can happen at any point in life. We may turn to others to help us figure out who we are, and find that all we hear are what they perceive us to be. Other people have their own beliefs about who we are, but all of that is based on their perceptions and prior interactions with us. While their perceptions may help guide us to understand ourselves, they will ultimately be limited in what they can reveal to us.

We will have to decide if we will be defined by who other people think we are, based on who we have always been. Will we be limited by others, and our past, or do we want something greater for ourselves?

As a final part of your self-growth and understanding, you may come to the realization that you get to define who you are, and you get to create who you are. These are powerful ideas that when fully realized, will aid you in being your best possible self.

Becoming Your True Self

We become our true self by actualizing our self-chosen highest values.

While in the prior mode of consciousness, you probably identified some of your highest values in your life. Perhaps you will even realize that you have not been properly living out your values. You may have gotten so caught up in The Chase mode of consciousness, that you forgot what really mattered to you. Or perhaps, you never properly thought through what truly mattered to you. You allowed others to guide you toward what they valued, rather than consciously thinking through your own values.

When you have identified your highest values, you will see that all that truly matters is living by them. To live against your values is to live in falseness, and to be a hypocrite, and to cause your psyche and soul to be in pain and disorder. Every time we go against our values, we are actually going against ourselves. This leads to the inhibition or even destruction of the better parts of ourselves, which is not the way to the fruitful life.

My primary life value is truth, and I think this should be on everyone’s list of primary values. This value is so important to me because it allows me to always have a voice. Many times in my life, I felt scared to say what I truly wanted to say. I assumed that it was not important or people wouldn’t care or they would ridicule me. Now, I see that anything that comes from my heart is always worth saying, because it is my truth. Truth is actually a part of my life’s quest. I am always on the search to learn something that will help me to understand our entire universe, and our place in it.

My highest values are Truth, Balance, Love, Knowledge, and Transference. This is what I aim to live by in every thought, word, and action.

When you know all of your primary values then you can aim to live your life congruently, where your thoughts, words, and actions, and your whole self becomes one with itself. You will be a harmonious person with a clear vision for who you are, living by it every day, and people around you will come to see this too. You will represent something worth representing and not be a person who trivially pursues his impulses and desires without being connected to a greater purpose.

A powerful realization you may have at this point is that your self is connected to everyone else in the world. Your thoughts, words, beliefs, and actions are not just your own, but they ripple throughout the rest of the world. When you are lazy and do nothing for a day, that is a day that the world suffered by not gaining the best from you. When you help an elder across the street, that is a day that you, one part of the universe, is helping the elder, another part of the universe across the street. We are all parts of the universe, and not outside of it. We are all therefore interrelated with everyone and everything else. So at this stage, you will feel a compelling motivation to think better and do better not just for you, but for as many people as you can.

Your self is not just your self. Every person who has ever spoken with you or engaged with you in any way has shaped you into becoming who you are, just as you have shaped them into becoming who they are. We are all an interplay on each other, and not separate and distinct islands on our own. With these thoughts, you cannot help but focus on improving the world (the next phase of consciousness).

At the highest levels of finding yourself, you may found your own personal philosophy (or your own interpretation of it), even if this is just a mixture of other philosophies. Strictly speaking, it may not be a philosophy, but rather a religion for some people. You may grow spiritually, attaining insights that are not easily put into words. Some people may take ideas from various philosophies, religions, or spiritual traditions, to come up with their own unique path.

Improving the world

After you have surpassed survival mode, made it through the chase, figured yourself out, and then become your true self, you will be ready to aid others fully with your consciousness. Do not misunderstand, you have probably been helping others since you were on The Chase. But perhaps, when you were on The Chase, you didn’t care if you helped others. You were mostly concerned with making sure that you benefited from everything you did.

In this stage of consciousness, you are deeply concerned with everyone and everything. In reality, this mode of consciousness may happen in stages. You may find yourself more concerned with your community, then your country, then your part of the world, then the whole world. That is fine, this mode of consciousness happens in different ways for different people. Importantly, this level of consciousness involves a deeper connection with larger communities. Most people are naturally concerned with their families and close friends, almost as an extension of themselves, and so those types of connections are intertwined with our earlier stages of consciousness.

When you arrive at this level of consciousness, you may learn about physics, and realize that this domain relates to biology, which relates to your heart, which connects to all hearts, which connects to all lives. You see that physics is fundamentally important.

Then you read about history, and you realize that these stories connect to patterns in all of human history, and that currently we just happen to be in our own part of the human history. All history interrelates and interconnects, and the same themes happen over and over. So when you know your history, you know the present day, and even the future.

At this stage, with everything you learn, you can extrapolate it to mean something greater than what it was intended to mean. Everything is an analogy or metaphor or pattern from which you can absorb more understanding than was intended. You observe a bird fly outside your window, and see that humans want to be the bird, free to go anywhere they want, and free from concern.

Your seeing that the world is acting on you, and you are acting on the world, motivates you to find ways to impact the world for the better. You may pick any kind of world problem and see what you can do to make it better. For example, hunger, domestic violence, income inequality, lack of literacy or education, racism, sexism, pollution, global warming, misinformation, overpopulation, endangered animals, or improving human consciousness. There is no shortage of big problems to work on. The challenge is choosing the most important ones and then committing to them. The most important ones for you will likely be based on your most important values.

Someone who values truth above all else may choose to focus on tackling misinformation, miscommunication, poor literacy and education, and helping people to identify common personal biases (e.g., logical fallacies and cognitive biases).

As far as actually making improvements, you may decide to do this in different ways. Your daily actions may work to improve some world problem. For example, you may work in a field that works on these problems, or you may volunteer in one, or you may simply choose to speak to people about these problems and raise awareness. Another option is to donate to different causes. There is no one path for all. You will get to choose how you wish to improve the world.

A challenge at this phase is to keep ourselves grounded and remember the fundamentals. We should stay true to our core values and continue to help the most important people in our lives such as family and close friends, even though we have now come to see the greater importance of everything and the world at large. Also, we may cause ourselves new sufferings, as we see that no matter how much we do, and how much we try to change things for the better, there are limits to what we will be capable of accomplishing alone. For that reason, many people will find it useful to join organizations that can work on a greater cause together.

There are even higher levels of consciousness, but those will need to be explored at a later time.