Don’t Bind Yourself.
Sit on the other side of the table.
There are days that I feel like I don’t have any weight on my shoulders. I am simply relaxed. No stress on the neck neither the mouth. No grinding teeth. My breathing is smooth. Only happens on a full moon. In that case, no hiding needed. No hands on the eyes, no hands on my mouth, no hands on my ears. No voodoo. My mindset is balanced. In current days, November 2020. The year of misinformation, that can seem an accomplishment. The reality is, this writing makes me less nervous. My head is a 17 year old bedroom. I need to try to express everything that I have inside. At least, try to make a bridge with every thought and my mouth.
When I don’t feel my mindset is balanced, I feel overwhelmed by my own thoughts. My eyes, my mouth and my ears capture everything. They feel so real. The how, what, why, who, questions are always popping into my head. Sometimes I feel like Scarlet on the movie Lucy, without the super powers.
Probably I mask myself, or self-sabotage myself with this weak notion that if I’m not on my maximum, the fault is from the outside. If I was calm, with a clear mind, the fault was mine, and guest what, I don’t want that. No one wants that. That way would reveal that my weaknesses. I’m vulnerable. I don’t know everything. Not knowing get us vulnerable. Unprotected. Ignorante. But the great thing about this is that you don’t need to know everything, you just need o know that you don’t know everything.
In every corner is someone waiting for you to be misinformed or not informed at all so they can start the snail balm crap.
Dr. Jordan Peterson once said that in the middle of every book that he reads, the ones that made him change, from a stance of “I have a bag with Doritos a pair of underwear and lets conquer the world” to a stance of “Well balance Tai Chi practician, because something can happen”, were books that had the opposite view in a specific subject. And those are the book that make him have a perspective on things.
I don’t like peas because I don’t like peas.
Have you ever tried?
No.
And I don’t think he does this because he is masochist. I think is more a mind check practice. If his concept still relevant. If it has good foundations. With this he can practice the red flags of his point of view and make changes. Make changes. Don’t bind yourself. We, Humans, always were creature of labels. Hate it os love it that is why we could survive spiritually. Is a storm? No its Zeus / Jupiter. We need luck to cross the Atlantic? Poseidon / Neptun. Nowadays, there are thing more complex that we don’t understand that need to be labelled so we can know where we are going.
Don’t bind yourself to a newspaper. Don’t bind yourself to a book. Don’t bind yourself to a website. Don’t bind yourself to a quote. Don’t bind yourself to a person. Don’t bind yourself to a friend. Don’t bind yourself to a blog post. Don’t bind yourself to a video on YouTube. Don’t bind yourself to a tweet. Don’t bind yourself to a photo. Don’t bind yourself to an opinion. Don’t bind yourself to a thought. Don’t bind yourself to your parents. Don’t bind yourself to your siblings. Don’t bind yourself to the same brands. Don’t bind yourself to the same supermarket. Don’t bind yourself to the same “Hi, how are you?”. Don’t bind yourself to the same music. Don’t bind yourself to the same color. Don’t bind yourself to the same boring sex. Don’t bind yourself to the same lipstick. Don’t bind yourself to the same haircut. Don’t bind yourself to the same shoes. Don’t bind yourself to the hipsters. Don’t bind yourself to the geeks. Don’t bind yourself to technology. Don’t bind yourself to beer. Don’t bind yourself to wine. Don’t bind yourself to the same perfume. Don’t bind yourself to be vegan. Don’t bind yourself to be omnivore. Don’t bind yourself to the same suplemente. Don’t bind yourself to the same doctor. Don’t bind yourself to Crossfit. Don’t bind yourself to rugby. Don’t bind yourself to brunettes. Don’t bind yourself to the car. Don’t bind yourself to the bus. Don’t bind yourself Joe Rogan. Don’t bind yourself to Sam Harris. Don’t bind yourself to Tim Ferris. Don’t bind yourself to Tom Misch. Don’t bind yourself to Carl Cox.
From another angle I feel limitless and unshakable. I make a haka and here I go. Open the front door and something happen. I’m on the film Jumper. Completely teleported to the Sahara. I’m there with my backpack full. Now I don’t now where to go. I have all the tools but don’t know where to use them. That’s great. Now I feel frustrated. Can someone help me?
I already get it, I need to hunt the opportunities. That means I need to look everywhere? Like, if I’m into graphic design, should I go to the pet store? Or into a tomato pure warehouse? Don’t limit myself to the same beer brand, but what others existes? Or should I change beverage completely and try wine? I love Sam Harris but why limit myself to his perspective? What other neuroscientist and philosophers should I read and listen? And if they are not quite as good as him? Do I need to read his three book to know that? And the websites? If I don’t read news website or and analogue paper, where do I read? There are not holograms yet. But what I think is that the problem is not the support of the information but the platform that I extract information. And also we need to put everything into perspective.
Let’s make a bet.
I bet that in every platform, you tend to follow: your friends, people that you know, and people that you wish you knew. Your answer is probably yes. Now this, the perspective of things between you and your friends, is 65% of the times, the same. The perspective of thing between you and the people you know, is 76% of the times, the same. The perspective between you and the people you wish you knew, is 98% of times, the same. (This data is probably not accurate) this means that we and the people we follow have a tendency to agree on thoughts. If we talk about what to do with a specific subject, (Lets call it abortion, for exemple) and even though the information comes from all angles, all angles are people that you already agreed on. If the places you get your information are against it, it’s more likely that you are too. NOW. If we can agree that for most part we can choose the people we follow, isn’t that biased? Has I said before, its rare that we follow / read people with different perspectives.
Probably this way we have a closed group of people that we “trust” and for bad and worst we feel a part of something. It’s our effort to belong in a world that seems too distante. The Tribes of Seth Godin.
Other way to look into this is the way we search for information. If you really believe that there are no Climate Cancer on Earth you will find proves of that. If you really believe that abortion should be denied to women, you will find information that supports you. Tony Robbins one time ask people to look for brown in the room. “Look for brown. Look for brown. Look for brown. Now close your eyes. Tell me one thing that was red.” Well that’s difficult because because was not what you were looking for.” Now look for red. Look for red. Look for red. Look for red.” Now people not even found red things, even Bordeaux was fine just to feel successful.
If you feel like in every platform you follow the same people try and create and follow people that you don’t like. They have perspective too and even you don’t agree with them you will strengthen yours perspective.
Listening the The Futur Podcast with the amazing Chris Do and Marty Neumeier ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpZfNNYUZEc ) he decide to share a perspective that someone told him when he was 25.
“What do you do?”
“Well, I’m a graphic designer.”
“Where do you work? Do you work on a table?”
“Yes”
“Where is the table? Is it against a wall?”
“No, part is against the wall and its sticking out to the room.”
“That’s good. Now what I want you to do is, when you finish the project you worked on, sit on the other side of the table.”
