On Ego and Roles (Thoughts)

When I am working and ask if I can help and the customer responds automatically with "No, I'm fine." When really what they want is for someone to help them find the thing they are looking for but they don't want anyone to think that they are helpless, weak, or can't find it on their own. Inevitably, within a few seconds, they raise my attention with, "Actually, where is the so and so?" 

Sometimes I smile when I filled with a sense of ego. When I accomplish something difficult or figure something out that is meaningful, or when someone says that I did a good job. I am consumed by a sense of pride and confidence. I smile and look inward to congratulate myself. "What a good job I have done!" "They like me!" Then I am struck by another thought and I smile to myself and I accept my pride and release the feeling of ego and move on with life. If I allow myself to live in the past accomplishments I will have a harder time recognizing the current experience and become distracted from those around me who rely on my judgment and expertise. If I forget those around me in pursuit of prolonging my sense of self-worth then I forget to treat people as I would prefer to be treated. I prefer to those around me to acknowledge my existence and be present around me. I want to be a part of their world, not a ghost adjacent. 

My longing to be perfect is a reflection of my dysfunctional ego. An ego that will not be satisfied with anything less than perfection creates an endless cycle of failure. Instead of being satisfied with improvement with an upward trajectory, an inflated ego demands a level of expertise that is only afforded to those that are practiced, educated, and experienced, and only to varying degrees regardless of said experience. 

I get nervous before I stream myself live, offer my opinions to superiors, or try to impress loved ones. I want to control the perception of others in a way that makes me think that they think that I am awesome. That I am wise, courageous, strong, funny, healthy, sexy, and all other archetypes of awesomeness. When I am nervous I forget to be in the moment and I forget to focus on the task at hand. In the back of my mind, I am imagining those that are watching me and attempting to will them into seeing me in a positive light. 

This is illogical for many reasons. Firstly, I am incapable of accurately predicting the thoughts of others. Secondly, I have no control over and shouldn't require control over the thoughts of others. Thirdly, I have to accept that not all people will like me, hate me, love me, think about me, forget me, know me and in fact, most people will never think about me at all. Even those who have met me will rarely think of me twice. And my best friends, family members, and lovers will only think of me occasionally and with only a small fragment of an accurate impression of myself. 

My ego allows me to spite others for not caring enough about me. When I choose not to call a friend and use the excuse that they haven't called me in "who knows how long" or when I say to myself, "if they wanted to talk to me they would call me." My ego tells me that in order to be my friend you have to put in the same amount of effort I put in so when my friends don't put in the effort it is simply a reflection of my effort. My ego tells me that if I text them first then I am the weak one. 

My ego makes me want to show how amazing I am by working harder than anyone else, even though I am lazier than I could be, waste plenty of time, and only marginally work toward bettering myself. When I judge others as being lazy because they don't answer a phone I don't want to answer. When I look around at everyone and think "these lazy fucks!".    

I am full of shit. 

Any desire that is born simply for the need to impress others is shallow and elusive. To understand what others want one would have to constantly be probing and questioning those around them to gain insight into what might impress others. To make your parents proud you have to constantly be assessing their pride in your deeds, or lack of deeds. Maybe your parents are elusive as well. They disguise their pride and your ego becomes lost and confused. 

Roles: 

The ego is an expression of the collective idealism you create around the perception of yourself. The ideal self is postulated within the mind and over time it evolves. Whenever you contemplate yourself as being in alignment with your perceived ideal self your ego is satisfied. 

Be wary of the ideal self as this is generated with others in mind. We generate and develop our conception of ourselves by comparing ourselves to those around us. We impersonate, mimic, and react to the world and we are shaped by its actions. We are told who we are by witnessing the world. We know we are human because other humans look the same and identify as humans. Are parents and siblings become role models and we become like them. Adapting and surviving. But we are not them and so we take different paths and soon we learn of the paths of many others. Through stories, we learn about the lives of others and we incorporate those archetypes into our bank of lives to emulate. "I like that person. I don't like that person." We identify allies and enemies by taking sides in stories and justifying actions. We place ourselves into the story and take on the roles of its characters. We imagine living the lives of these characters and 

These stories are ancient but in the age of information, the stories are overwhelming. From before we are alive we are inflicted with stories. Many of them that are purposely unrealistic in a way that clouds the mind with counterfactuals and contrivances. (This has been an attempt to get the word contrivances into a sentence.)

We can't trust the news to tell us what is really going on. 

Politicians attempt to convince others that they are the hero in a virtue story. A story about how people should act. A story about how people should try to help others. A story about service and chastity. A story about trust and courage. These are just stories. They are not real. Politicians are professional administrators with jobs related to spending the public's money. They determine their own salaries, bonuses, and benefits. 

There are no roles. Your life is not a story. You are an ape on Earth, on your way to death while witnessing the deaths of those around you. You didn't choose to be born and you will most likely remain ignorant to anything deeply true in the universe. You will only tenuously grasp reality and mostly fumble along getting by on sheer momentum, determination, and luck.  

Luck is another word for ignorance. Luck is not knowing the causal link from an outcome to its salient cause. Luck is seeing a result without seeing the effort put into it. It is assigning positive or negative value based on its relative benefit to the individual. 

Fuck Ego.

Ego is when you put the mask on that you create that you think makes you look like the person you wish you were. It's you confusing yourself for an illusion. Ego is pretending you don't make mistakes. Ego is thinking that you did it the best you could when you could have done more.

Ego is hiding behind excuses, blaming others, and screaming to get your way. Ego is resenting those around you that have accomplished things you value. Ego is thinking others are thinking about you all the time. Ego thinking that if you work on your appearance you don't need to work on your character.  

Ego isn't always bad but even when it's right it's too seductive. When you're confident enough your ego helps reward you and as you congratulate yourself your ego swells and soon the mask returns and you go about the world assuming people care about the facade. Those that celebrate your facade only do so in an effort to support their own egotistical delusions. Those that care about you challenge your facade and seek to understand the entire you. They acknowledge your flaws as a part of you and wish for the development of positive change or at least an acceptance of the truth. 

If you focus on the present moment and forget to control your image your ego fades away. Certain activities force you to focus on what you are doing. For example, exercise, sports, music, and reading can take over your cognitive resources leaving no room for ego. Meditation and honest conversation can also help shed the facade.

Instead of ego work on discipline, balance, and growth. This is easier said than done and distracting oneself from these nobler pursuits is often a challenge. One can never be perfect and it is in the pursuit of perfectionism that one also attempts to legitimize ego. Striking a balance between healthy confidence and honest criticism seems to be a winning strategy for living a good life that doesn't hold the self as something it is not but also doesn't demean the self for the things it lacks. Honesty is key and the ego is rarely honest.  

Optimism and Play

“Fear is the path to the dark side…fear leads to anger…anger leads to hate…hate leads to suffering.” Yoda

Engineer life around play. If you can choose your way through life then why choose to see everything as work when you can choose to see life as an opportunity to play? I want to choose to play more in my life even though I don't fully understand what that means for a 33-year-old man in 2017.

Forgetting my youthful exuberance is a tragedy I hope to avoid but sadly I forget it's power.

I believe at some point our self-consciousness builds and if it is not put into balance with objectivity we forget to live openly. In filtering our behavior to match a self-imposed social expectation we lose the joy that comes from a lack of inhibition. Many turn to alcohol to regain this feeling but I would like to attempt to implement the philosophy of play in every endeavor I engage in. This will be exceptionally difficult but I think that deep down inside myself there is an optimistic child that is not completely lost to the sands of maturation and socialization.

The best part about this psychological disposition toward life is that a creative person can play anywhere. As an adult, you don't have to do many things. You have to eat, sleep and live and there are endless combinations of potential solutions for accomplishing these basic requirements. In America, once you have the money to pay your bills consistently you are free to do whatever you want. Of course, you are limited by the resources you have to acquire objects and experiences but at no time are you required to feel a certain way about yourself and life by an outside source. You are free to view your circumstances in whichever way you choose and whether you are pessimistic or optimistic will determine your outlook and emotional reactions. I believe optimism is a prerequisite to play and pessimism is a prerequisite to nihilism and the negative definition of work.

You can choose to see yourself as a victim of life or as a player of life but either way, it is a choice that affects your well being as well as the well being of those around you. Take responsibility for your life and become its master or you will be a slave to the negative emotions and outcomes of a life lived in the dreary landscape of nihilism.

Victims require villains. Villains are to be feared. Fear leads to hate and resentment. Resentment festers and violence ensues. The dark side can only be mitigated by the light of hope.

At least that is what I keep telling myself and I think it really matters. I am not predisposed to thinking this way but I will try.

Reasons to be optimistic:

45 Benefits of Optimism by 

https://www.lifeoptimizer.org/2010/03/24/benefits-of-optimism/https://www.lifeoptimizer.org/2010/03/24/benefits-of-optimism/

Stuart Brown: Play is more than fun

Thoughts On Storytelling and Consciousness

“Whether you think you can, or you think you can't--you're right.”
― Henry Ford

As humans developed language they were better able to teach and pass on adaptive strategies for survival.

Storytelling is the most effective way to pass on lessons. It takes the lesson and puts it into context which makes it much easier to relate to and remember. Songs do an even better job of helping people remember by adding patterns and rhyming to the story.

I wonder if people started using language to impart helpful information about survival and emotional states before they were able to observe themselves in a conscious way. It seems that many animals have a language or other form of communication but we do not think of them as conscious or of having a sophisticated self awareness and certainly not free will. This would indicate that language evolved prior to consciousness, if consciousness is a new phenomenon so it is reasonable to think that people were telling primitive stories prior to the modern conception of consciousness.

I think that storytelling may be the precursor to the development of consciousness and the more complex the storytelling the more complex the expression of consciousness can manifest. To tell a story is typically to incorporate time into the information being communicated. It also involves the creation of characters, archetypes and perspectives. If communication can develop from primitive grunts to sophisticated storytelling then it may be possible that consciousness is a product of this development.

This would explain why we are so drawn toward narratives and stories. We understand identities and memories as stories that we tell ourselves and others. The more abstract the language the more abstract the self identity and since abstraction seems to be beneficial it grows and is propagated throughout time ever adapting.

I don't think that consciousness came about like a switch being turned on. I think it is the result of incremental advancements in communication over long periods of time. It is a social and mental adaptation that is much more subtle and illusive than physical characteristics. It hides in the brain and taunts from the shadows.

As humans increased in population they begin to interact with others who do not communicate in the same way and therefor do not think in the same way. They would have differing principles and expectations for how one should act. This can lead to conflict but if the two groups can come to an understanding and find some mutual benefits in working together they can trade and intermingle which would allow for more potential adaptation and refinement of survival strategies.

In the modern world groups have become very entrenched in their ideas and some survival strategies seem to work better than others and some are certainly not compatible with others. National identities consist of individual identities which are products of stories.

This is all to say that storytelling is a very powerful force aiding human expansion and proliferation. Storytelling is also a powerful tool for defining the self. Telling yourself a story of woe and sorrow defines the parameters that you see enclosing you, just as telling yourself a story of triumph and empowerment can free you to be the hero of your own story.

"Be the hero of your own movie. If your life was a movie and it started now. Forget about whatever financial disasters you’ve had, personal failures, relationship failures. What would the hero of your life’s movie do right now? Do that, do those things. We define ourselves far too often by our past failures. We look at our past and we say, “Well that’s me”. That’s not you, you are this person right now. You’re this person right now, you’re the person who’s learned from those failures and you can choose to be the hero of your own movie right now. Write down your goals, write down things you want to improve, write down things you won’t tolerate from yourself, write down things that you’ve done in the past that you never want to see yourself do again. And go forth, from here, as the hero of your own movie. Build momentum. Build confidence and momentum with each good decision that you make from here on out. You can do it, anyone can do it. We live in unique times. We live in one of the rarest times in human history where you can choose almost all the input that comes your way, whether it’s the movie that you watch, the books you read, the podcasts you listen to. You can choose to be inspired. Do that. Do that and be the hero of your own movie."
— Joe Rogan

Immortality in the age of YouTube

From the days of ancient Egypt humans have been seeking immortality. While we work on medical advancements in this direction true immortality remains illusive. There is another type of immortality and it is the kind that you get when your image and personality is etched into long lasting media. From rocks and paper to hard drives we record our likeness for the world to remember. When everyone is immortal who will be remembered?

Unless the internet changes massively or ceases to exist the activity of individuals will be continue to be uploaded in mass. It has become so easy for anyone to create semi-permanent reflections of their lives that the value of each reflection, while long lasting, is reduced. We are no longer limited to the ruling class as the sole representative of humanities achievements and record keeping. The statues and memoirs of long past rulers will not be the only record past on. But with such access to the future minds of humans the lasting impressions we leave online are increasingly trivial.

Forums such as YouTube help us immortalize our thoughts and visages for the world to see and with more views comes more notoriety and "fame". While some people will be remembered by more people it is only the truly revolutionary, visionary and repugnant that will that live on in the minds of future humans. This kind of immortality can not be gained by simply talking into a camera on YouTube. To be truly immortal one must be immense.

But why do we seek immortality? I think it is a relative of the need to reproduce. The ultimate driving force for humans is the need to reproduce our genes and if done successfully the genes are what become immortal. So it seems that our lust for immortality is born from our deepest primordial desires. Although it is a lofty goal that moves many to great deeds both good and bad it is really an illusion and when we actually die we no longer care about how many views our YouTube channels acquire.

So what's the point? The point, may be, that people are motivated by those who came before them that made lasting impressions which gives them the notion that they too can live on in the records and memories passed down. We are frantic to create lasting copies of ourselves and the more copies we make the harder it is for the world to erase our mark. Our children, art, businesses, and work all lead to nothing if nothing remains after we die, and we all die. The Buddhists believe pain comes from desire but so does greatness and mediocrity.

A New Lifestyle: How I lost 45 lbs and kept it off.

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I changed how I think about myself. I lost 45 lbs in about a year. I try not to eat for relief from boredom. I eat when I'm hungry and I know better what that feels like. I try to never eat fast food. I make salads most nights and pair it with fish, chicken, potato salad or something decent. I almost never eat candy and I never drink soda except maybe a mountain dew or sprite on a very rare occasion.  I barely ever drink beer or liquor. This article is about how I lost the weight but more importantly, it explains why. 

Motivation:

Prior to my weight loss, I lived in a state of perpetual hedonism. I ate what I wanted, I drank what I wanted and I spent my time doing what felt good because in my mind I was going to die anyway, so why not. I felt like life was short and I had a pessimistic look at my own abilities and future. My confidence and self-esteem were shrouded in confusion, regret, avoidance, and denial. I felt pointless but as long as I engaged in freedom of consumption I could get by and what's wrong with that? 

A couple of years ago I started listening to some very powerful people, two of which I would like to credit for shaping my thinking in a positive way. Joe Rogan and Stefan Molyneux. Both of these men speak about taking responsibility for your actions, taking control of your life, making a difference in the world, morality, relationships, and both men have a passion for what they are doing. They provided a wonderful model for what being a man could be like and I have been woefully void of great male role models in my life. These men helped me gain a sense of power and challenged my thinking in a fundamental way. And I am still learning from these men and men like them today. 

Stefan Molyneux, in particular, helped me challenge the value of my relationships and the truth of my past. I feel like I woke up one day and realized that I didn't know myself or my history very well and this ignorance had led me to a life I didn't want or deserve. After examining my family and childhood I saw the life I led and began to stop accepting my fate. I started holding my parents responsible for the decisions they made and the neglect and abuse they allowed in my life. I started to see that I wasn't the one who deserved to suffer but I deserved to flourish in all that life can offer. I was worth the effort my parents neglected to make so now I had to make the effort for myself. Once I started to hold them responsible for their actions I started to accept responsibility for my own actions. What is true for them is true for me. So I took responsibility. 

The Plan:

About a year or two into taking personal responsibility I decided to make a change in my habits. I decided that I would try to read more and work toward being healthier. I was planning on a trip to New York with my long-term girlfriend and my plan was to enjoy the trip and when I get back it would be the start of making real change. I didn't have any specific goals but I knew that I wanted to start a new lifestyle. 

I started looking into dieting and exercise. I decided that I would stop eating fast food and replaced it with nightly salads and low-calorie microwave lunches. I stopped eating candy and chocolates, bread and sugary drinks.

Also, I decided to do exercises that were easy to do every day and in my small apartment. I didn't try to go full bore into a specific program but instead started very slowly with body weight exercises. I made sure to do push-ups, sit-ups/crunches, and pull-ups every day. Making sure to push myself without getting frustrated. 

Also, I decided to make a monetary commitment by buying a nice hybrid bicycle. This investment in my health prompted me to continue my efforts. If I spent money on it I would feel worse by having it go to waste. Later, I decided to try kettlebells after hearing the versatility and effectiveness they might offer. I got a 15 lb kettlebell and followed a workout video a few times a week.

I grew into these activities slowly and saw results very quickly. I started to see noticeable results within a few months and I felt better mentally. My self-esteem and confidence grew as my body started to shrink. I thought I would be good if I got to about 150 lbs which is what I weighed in high school but when I got to 140 after about 9 months I realized that I was a different person than when I started out. I enjoyed eating well and exercising. I became stronger and more attractive. I had done something difficult and knew that I had made a permanent change in my psychology. Many people talk about making a change or getting in shape and I actually did it. 

2 Years Later:

It has been almost 2 years since this transformation of lifestyle and I am more passionate about it than ever. I maintain a healthy diet and exercise almost every day. I am continuously looking for better dieting behaviors and exercise options that work for me and my goals. I am learning about the slow carb. diet outlined by Tim Ferris in his book "The Four Hour Body." I have maintained my current weight of about 140 lbs. and just want to lean up a bit. I am still the same person I was before but I am more mindful and optimistic. I am not a gym rat and I don't exercise to the point of exhaustion but I work on it every day and take responsibility for my actions.