“Why is my life so fucked up?” Has been contemplated by billions of humans over thousands of years.
Modern culture provides abundance, and most don’t know what to do with it, and abundance is rarely fulfilling on a deep level.
It’s easy to identify problems with scarcity. If you’re hungry, you don’t have enough food. Get more food. If you’re thirsty, you don’t have enough water. Get more water. There is meaning to this, because if you’re starving, getting your next meal for you or your family is imperative.
What do you do if you feel like your life is fucked up, but you aren’t facing a tangible problem you can see? How do you fix being depressed, or being anxious? These two alone are causing a catastrophic amount of despair, especially in developed nations.
Sadness in the modern era
- The Suicide rate has tripled for young adults since the 1950’s
- Normal children today report more anxiety than mental patients in the 1950’s
- Depression is a disease of the modern world
It’s hard to find out what’s wrong with your life if your life is unexamined and is not systematized; meaning, your life is more chaotic than it is ordered. Modernization systemizes chaos, which is organized based on cues, not systems.
In Tim Ferriss’s book, Tribe of Mentors, Tim sends the same questions to a large pool of notable high-performers. High-performers generally meaning people who are good at what they do and have some notoriety in their sphere. The common habits shared across a majority of the high-performers includes meditation, exercise, reading, journaling and eating healthy. One of the benefits of reading biographical content is you can steal habits(system loops) from others while being altruistic; you cannot help the world effectively if you cannot help yourself.
Below are some reasons why your life could be fucked up. Understand that humans are vastly complex–the most complex living entity in the known universe–so these could or could not apply.
The fact that you’re here shows that you love and care about yourself. This may be the beginning of your journey, or a step along the path; regardless, appreciate yourself and love yourself because you are trying to fix the world you inhabit.
All of us must decide what paths we follow; someone can show you the way, but only you can walk down the path.
11 reasons why your life could be fucked up
You don’t know what’s wrong with you
The unexamined life is the unknown life; you don’t know what’s wrong with you because you have not examined your life deeply enough to understand what you must cut away and what you must move to obtain.
Technology fights for our attention. Technology makes meditation difficult because a grounded individual is not an emotional buying-machine, which is what corporate entities desire. Technology solves problems, and it creates problems; being grounded with a strong morning routine helps you live authentic to your philosophy.
Before smartphones, we had time to meditate and to be bored. Being bored meant you could think about your thoughts, as well as process them. If you spend every free second occupied with an app, show, or other piece of content, you aren’t understanding or analyzing the self.
Kids used to walk everywhere. This gave time to think about life, dreams, the environment, and the self. You were alone. Few people seek the comfort of themselves in the technological era.
Few can simply “be” with their thoughts.
Look at people. They’re walking, sitting on the bus, waiting in a lobby or a line, at the gym; everyone is on their phones taking in information. While taking in information, it’s impossible to process what is already in your head; so billions of people are hording knowledge but not organizing or deleting mental files; their systems are clogged and inefficient, but instead of organizing, the just accumulate more. This is a product of our times. We want more, even if we aren’t ready for more or know what more we actually want.
More information is not the answer. The answer is the organized accumulation and destruction of valuable and worthless information.
Sitting at home, watching Netflix, is not alone time. When you consume content, you gather information; you cannot process information and gather it at the same time.
To know yourself you must organize the information in your head; this can include the painful process of conducting inventory of your past experiences–which includes trauma–which depending on the severity, may be better conducted with a professional of mental inventory–a counselor or other trained professional.
Great leaders for thousands of years had councils; accepting council is a sign of strength, and is not a weakness unless used to procrastinate what you already know you need to do.
Your life could be fucked up because you don’t know who you are.
You don’t have a routine
Many of the greatest who ever lived followed a schedule, which is really a daily plan of attack. If you want to be a great individual, defined by contributions to the path and others along it, a good strategy is to steal the habits(systems) of character models, whether they are real or fictional. This is a shortcut to becoming the greatest version of yourself.
Recommended presidential biographies:
Find someone you look up to and learn everything you can about them.
One of the benefits of reading/watching/consuming biographies is the concept of stealing what you like about their life. Don’t copy your heroes; steal from them and make it your own. The best artists in the world are thieves; all of them.
Having a schedule turns order into chaos. Chaos must be controlled and contained, but not eliminated entirely. Chaos is a mutation that is required for art and innovation, ie. you need to be a little crazy to bring new life into the world.
The morning routine establishes order from the moment you wake. Designate areas of chaos that are controlled and do not overspill to areas of your life that demand order to function optimally.
You need order to get things done–which is making progress down the path–which includes being aware and controlled enough to walk a different path when the one you are on is no longer serving your body, mind, or spirit.
Create a routine or steal one.
You don’t meditate
If you don’t spend time with yourself, you don’t know who you are. You need time away from your smartphone; time away from corporations that use the phone as a portal to reach through and steal your attention, which they crave more than money.
According to Tribes of Mentors, nearly every mentor has a meditation practice.
Meditation benefits
- Increased confidence
- Decreased anxiety
- A calmer state of mind
- More focus
- Better sleep
- Fewer distractions and greater control over distracting urges
- Clearer thought
- General happiness and gratitude boosts
The benefits of meditation appear to be a almost 1:1 cure for the ills created by the modern world. Even though you can meditate at anytime, anywhere, no matter your ability, people still say the have no time for it.
If you have no time for free medicine, YOU are the problem.
Skipping or refusing to meditate is self-destructive.
You can meditate anywhere, for any length of time–10 seconds, to ten hours and beyond–with eliminated upside, and zero downside.
No one has suffered from over-meditating.
The more you process your mind, the more efficient it gets. Your mind is like a sword and meditation is how you keep your sword sharp. A trained martial artist does not cut themselves. A dull sword is useless and dangerous. It’s common knowledge that a dull kitchen knife is more dangerous than a sharp one. It is a beautiful metaphor for the mind. A dull knife requires more pressure, which increases the chance the knife will slip.
A dull mind requires more pressure to get it’s objective, which increases the chance of failure.
Use meditation as the default for a lapse in focused activity, instead of “checking” your phone with no reason to do so. As we mentioned above, you can meditate for ten seconds and it still benefits you. Like sharpening a knife or a sword, the more you practice, the better it gets.
You’re never alone
Corporations have conditioned us to avoid our inner minds because it reduces profit margins. When you have everything you need and have few desires, you aren’t a good consumer, and corporations demand consumers who spend money.
Understand that your phone is not your friend; it is a marketing device that must be managed; if you have active notifications, you are managed by your phone. A notification TELLS YOU WHEN YOU HAVE TO LOOK.
The more time you spend on your phone, the more depressed, anxious, and less satisfied you are with your life.
Ultimately, we all walk the path alone.
Control your phone and all other technological devices. Set screen-timers, remove notifications, turn your phone on silent–without vibrate. Set lockout timers so you only use social media for a few minutes a day, instead of hours of scrolling that equates to months of your life STOLEN FROM YOU by technology companies who make money via your attention by selling ads to corporations.
With most Americans spending 25% of their day on their phones, it’s no surprise people are anxious and depressed. Their addiction cuts 25% of their day from their lives.
Beyond the smartphone, you need to be alone so you can focus on your path and make progress towards it. Having your phone next to you while trying to walk the path is nigh-impossible. It’s like living in a house without a front-door; you’re trying to focus on painting, but anyone, or anything, can walk inside your home whenever they want to and demand attention.
Spend less time with distractions and corporations, and more time alone, on the path.
Musashi wrote the 21 rules of walking alone. The Dokkado.
You don’t invest in your future
Humanity is the only species that can think about the future and prepare for it. Your actions and habits today determine your future tomorrow. This is why it is important to cultivate good habits that allow you to walk down the path at all times.
Every action you take needs to support your journey down the path. Alcohol is a good reference; pleasure today, for pain tomorrow. The actions you take today should be aimed at progressing further down the path in the future.
Investors think to the future. They visualize where they want their paths to go, and the paths of those they control. They understand the power of compound interest. Others will see greatness and get angry, jealous, or bitter about it, thinking they can never reach such a status. Little do they know every single person alive can reach greatness by following the path, which compounds into visible greatness.
Instead of binge-watching entertainment, spend time in each pillar of body, mind, and spirit every day. Define your paths and walk them daily. By doing this you are investing in your future, which is self-love. Loving yourself is caring about what the future has in store for you, and controlling what you can to get where you want to.
Investing for the future means you spend time right now on the path. Learning, or doing anything that is not consumption.
We aren’t talking about financial investing, but you can get free stock from Robinhood here.
Your relationships are toxic
“You are the accumulation of the five people you spend the most time with”
It’s been said so much but few understand what it actually means. They forget that you, the individual, spend time with yourself. If you hang out with losers, you’ll have a higher chance of being one; but acting and behaving like an unsuccessful loser is an almost-guarantee that you will become one.
Toxic relationships with the self, the family, the intimate partner, or the friends is like a constant shower of radiation that slowly kills your body, mind, and spirit.
Understand that people fear being left behind because they fear the unknown. This is applied to the self and is of utmost importance to understand; your brain fears the unknown more than it fears your negative habits you want to change; we are our own impediments to success because what we know–even if toxic–is less intimidating than what we don’t know. This is changed by building self-confidence which is found on the path, and analyzing & understanding your life which is found through meditation.
Good relationships will encourage you to improve and follow your goals. They’ll support you. True relationships involve keeping each other on the path and out of the gutter.
A Crab is someone who holds you back physically, mentally, and spiritually.
Communities of crabs keep themselves trapped because they refuse to let anyone escape their condition, which is why you do not need a lid for a crab bucket. The moment a crab reaches the edge of the bucket–with the potential to free all of the crabs, as well as itself–another crab will pull it back to the bottom.
Toxic individuals are crabs.
You do not want to be friends with crabs.
Being friends with crabs will turn you into a crab. They don’t want you to leave, and they glue you to their circumstances consciously and subconsciously because misery loves company and the miserable do not want to be alone, because that would mean confronting the self.
Crabs don’t meditate.
You want your relationships to be with allies who will encourage you to pursue your paths and you will to them. Crabs will always tell you why you should give up, because they live inside the bucket of giving up and they’re comfortable there. Crabs don’t want you to change because they want you to stay in the bucket. They don’t understand that when one of us succeeds, we all succeed. This is the strong mentality to hold with your associations.
Having one or two strong relationships is better than being in any bucket with any number of crabs.
You don’t read
Social media has damaged our attention spans; a study from Microsoft Canada shows that humans have a shorter attention than goldish. A goldfish can’t read a book, and neither can a distracted human; neither learn or develop, and continually repeat whatever behavior cues their environment provides to them. Swimming in the bowl, just reacting, with no plan or investment for the future.
Earlier we talked about stealing from those you you want to mentor. Books written by great individuals gives their lives away to you. An author transfers their thoughts into a book, which is a vessel for holding data. By reading, you can download the data(thoughts) of anyone you want.
An author transfers his thoughts into a vessel when he writes a book. His thoughts can be shared. By reading, you can download the thoughts of anyone you want. The power of this is unlimited and understood by few.
The barrier to entry to great information is almost nothing; you can read the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, the last great Roman Emperor, for 99 cents on Amazon. Imagine what a citizen during Aurelius’ time would pay to understand his thoughts. This is an example of how we hold ourselves back. You can read the thoughts of the last great Roman Empire; “can” and “will” is a universe apart for those who are not their own advocates.
There are different ways of reading – do them all
Reading is a data-transfer for organic entities. Read as much as you can, but be selective in what content you read. You can read Reddit comments for months and learn nothing, because it is shallow knowledge. Clickbait titles are less effective on books, but still exist.
Reading is accessible today with physical books, Kindle books, and audible audiobooks. You can listen to books while driving, at the gym, or at work. However you want good information you can get it.
CEOs tend to read a book a week. 25% of Americans haven’t read a single book in the past year.
You can significantly unfuck your life by reading. You can also get two free audible credits here.
You’re too plugged into the news
If everything the news reported on was true, the world would have ended over a hundred years ago.
Understand that most of the news today is controlled by corporations who have agendas; everyone has an agenda, and sadly most reporters’ agendas are not to tell the news. Instead they want likes, followers, money, etc.
These people don’t want to lose their jobs. It’s sad that many humans have become mouthpieces for corporate agendas. Corporations have enslaved many mentally, but because they are free physically, this is ignored.
The news is shallow. You aren’t learning, you’re being informed of things happening of which 99% do not affect you directly but are spun so that you are emotionally invested. The news doesn’t want you to be informed, it wants you to pay attention so corporations can sell ads.
If a news story matters, you’ll hear about it without searching for it–this is the key. Pay attention to what is happening, but don’t seek or consume news about what is happening for the sake of doing that.
The news isn’t even really news anymore. It’s ideologically driven entertainment spouting whatever opinions the executive board of a corporation want to be spread, which usually comes back to money.
When you cut the news from your life, you’re no longer carpet bombed with every terrible event that happened around the world today.
Understand that the news is not just from news-people. All of the social media sites use news to keep attention on their platform, so they can sell ads, which makes money. Corporations hijack emotions to steal from us.
Maintaining a disciplined diet with healthy food makes our bodies feel better. A disciplined diet with healthy content makes our minds feel better. The news is fast-information–like fast-food–and both are bad for you.
You don’t take care of your body
Your body, mind, and spirit are connected like the three legs of a stool. If one leg is damaged, or missing, the stool is not longer stable. A weak body produces a weak mind. Roughly 60% of Americans are obese or overweight. Modern problems could never be comprehended by regular citizens of ancient society who only saw the wealthiest suffer from overconsumption.
Taking care of your body makes you feel better.
Harvard Health states that “Exercise is as effective as antidepressants”.
“Exercise starts a biological cascade of events that results in many health benefits, such as protecting against heart disease and diabetes, improving sleep, and lowering blood pressure. High-intensity exercise releases the body’s feel-good chemicals called endorphins, resulting in the “runner’s high”that joggers report”
“In people who are depressed, neuroscientists have noticed that the hippocampus in the brain–the region that helps regulate mood–is smaller. Exercise supports nerve cell growth in the hippocampus, improving nerve cell connections, which helps relieve depression.”
Your life isn’t fucked up; you just aren’t exercising.
If you’ve never worked out before, there are some thousands of resources to help get you started. One of the best, no-nonsense books on lifting and eating, without fluff, is Bigger Leaner Stronger.
You can find millions of pieces of content for exercise, and the best exercise for you is what you like doing. So if you don’t like lifting weights, you don’t have to; understand that whenever we start something new we must give it time, because few enjoy a pursuit that they are bad at, which is why you need to be a professional beginner by not quitting right away.
Ideally you have a strength pursuit and a cardiovascular pursuit, and they can be found in one activity.
You don’t need advice on what to train, you just need to find something you can do consistently.
Consider exercise as your daily antidepressant. Daily means everyday activity.
You aren’t emptying your thoughts and emotions
Your mind and your body are the same. You strengthen your body through lifting and sport, you strengthen your mind through challenge, repair, and education.
Advanced lifters know they need to spend as much time recovering as they do lifting. Dr. Kelly Starett, author of Becoming a Supple Leopard recommends spending one to two hours performing mobility and recovery training for each hour training.
We treat our minds like muscles that don’t need to be stretched or rehabbed. Your mind needs rehab more than your muscles, yet we neglect the mind more than we neglect our muscle recovery.
You strain, chase goals, deal with stress, and none of that gets released.
Mental challenge while you carry trauma is like running a competitive marathon and you’re the only runner carrying a backpack full of rocks.
There are multiple methods for mental recovery and your best choice is whichever you can do consistently.
You can journal for mental recovery. Julia Cameron recommends doing “morning pages” in her book, The Artist’s Way.Morning pages are two pages. Your journal is your therapist. You can tell it anything and it will listen. Tell your journal everything. Everything. All of your deepest secrets. The secrets you keep from yourself are trapped and cannot be processed, so they cannot be released.
If you have lagging trauma, you may need a professional to pull it out of you. Go to a counselor. Guys like Charlagmane Tha God admit to going to therapy because he knows it gives permission for other men to get therapy. In the past, going to a mental health therapist was considered taboo. Whether or not you want to share your counseling attendance, you need to go. Understand that your therapist will lose their license if they reveal anything about your life to anyone else. You need to release your trauma and these professionals will help you do so.
You have no personal philosophy
You need a code for your life. A philosophy. Philosophy is a guide for life. You can have a philosophy and a religion if you’re religious. Your religion can be your philosophy but cover your bases. Your philosophy needs to set a framework for how you live right now. Before the afterlife.
The best philosophy is the one you create yourself, stealing from great minds and great philosophies of the past and present.
Find a path and follow it. Create a philosophy and live according to your instructions.