Feedback From Hell
There is an insidious quirk in your brain that, if you let it, can drive you crazy. Tell me if this sounds familiar to you: you are worried about bumping into someone in your life. This worry cripples you and you start to wonder why you are so worried. Now you worry about worrying . Oh no! Doubly alarming! Now you are worried about your anxiety, which is causing you even more anxiety. Rather, where is the whiskey?
The following is an excerpt from Mark Manson‘s book,The Fine Art of Not Fucking: A Controversial Approach to the Good Life .
Or let’s say you have an anger problem. You get angry at the stupidest, stupidest things, and you don’t understand why. And the fact that you get angry so easily starts to annoy you even more. And then, in your petty rage, you realize that constant anger makes you a petty and mean person, and you hate it; you hate it so much that you are mad at yourself. Now look at yourself: you are angry with yourself, angry with anger. Fuck you, wall. Keep your fist.
Or you worry so much about doing the right thing all the time that you worry about how much you worry. Or you feel so guilty for every mistake you make that you start to feel guilty about how guilty you feel. Or you often feel sad and lonely that even the thought of it makes you feel even more sad and lonely.
Welcome to the feedback loop hell. Chances are you have done this several times. Maybe you’re doing this right now: “God, I use a feedback loop all the time – I’m such a failure because of this. I have to stop. My God, I feel like such a failure for calling myself a failure. I have to stop calling myself a failure. Oh fuck! I am doing it again! See? I’m a loser! Oh! “
Calm down, amigo. Believe it or not, this is part of a person’s beauty. Very few animals on Earth have the ability to come up with persuasive thoughts from the start, but we humans have the luxury of having thoughts about our thoughts. So I can think about watching Miley Cyrus videos on YouTube and then immediately think about how sick I am that I want to watch Miley Cyrus videos on YouTube. Ah, the miracle of consciousness!
The problem is this: our society today, thanks to the wonders of consumer culture and the hey-look-my-life-cooler-than-yours social networks , has raised a whole generation of people who believe that these negative experiences are anxiety. , fear, guilt, etc. – this is completely not normal. I mean, if you look at your Facebook feed, everyone is having a hell of a good time there. Look, eight people got married this week! And some sixteen-year-old girl on television got a Ferrari for her birthday. And another kid just made two billion dollars, invented an app that will automatically deliver you more toilet paper when it runs out.
In the meantime, you are stuck at home and floss your cat. And you can’t help but think your life sucks even more than you thought.
Hellfire feedback has turned into a borderline epidemic, leaving many of us overly nervous, overly nervous, and self-loathing.
At the time of his grandfather, he felt like shit and thought to himself: “My God, today I really feel like cow poop. But hey, I guess it’s just life. Let’s go back to hay harvesting. “
But now? Now, if you feel like shit for even five minutes, you are bombarded with 350 images of people completely happy and having an amazing fucking life , and it is impossible not to feel that something is wrong with you.
This is the last part that gets us into trouble. We feel bad about not feeling well. We feel guilty about our guilt feelings. We get angry because we are angry. We are worried about feeling anxious. What’s wrong with me?
That’s why it’s so important not to give a fuck . This is why it will save the world. And he will save him if he agrees that the world is completely ruined, and that’s okay, because it has always been and always will be.
Not giving a damn about the fact that you feel bad, you complete hellish feedback; you say to yourself, “I feel like shit, but who cares?” And then, as if showered with dust by a magic fucking fairy, you stop hating yourself for feeling so bad.
George Orwell said that it takes a constant struggle to see what is in front of your nose. Well, the solution to our stress and anxiety is right in front of us, and we’re too busy watching porn and advertising non-working ab machines wondering why we don’t swing hot blonde. six dice to notice.
We joke on the Internet about “first world problems”, but in reality we are victims of our own success. Stress-related health problems, anxiety disorders and cases of depression have skyrocketed over the past thirty years, despite the fact that everyone has a flat-screen TV and the ability to deliver groceries. Our crisis is no longer material; it is existential, it is spiritual. We’ve got so much fucking bullshit andso many opportunities that we don’t even know what to give a damn about anymore.
Since there are an infinite number of things that we can now see or know, there are also an infinite number of ways in which we can find that we don’t fit, that we are not good enough, that things are not as good as they can be. And it tears us apart from the inside.
Because here’s what’s wrong with all this “How to Be Happy” shit that has been shared eight million times on Facebook in the last few years, which is what nobody understands about all this nonsense:
Seeking more positive experiences is a negative experience in itself. And, paradoxically, accepting a negative experience is itself a positive experience.
This is complete fucking mind. So, I’ll give you a minute to open your brain and maybe read it again: wanting a positive experience is a negative experience; accepting a negative experience is a positive experience . This is what philosopher Alan Watts called the “reverse law” – the idea that the more you strive to constantly feel better, the less satisfied you become, as striving for something only reinforces the fact that you lack it in the beginning. … place. The more you desperately want to be rich, the more poor and unworthy you feel, no matter how much money you actually make. The more you desperately want to be sexy and desirable, the uglier you see yourself, regardless of your actual appearance. The more you desperately want to be happy and loved, the more alone and fearful you become, regardless of those around you. The more you want to be spiritually enlightened, the more selfish and superficial you become in trying to achieve this.
It was as if I once stumbled upon acid, and it seemed to me that the more I walk to the house, the further it is from me. And yes, I just used my LSD hallucinations to formulate a philosophical thought about happiness. No fucking.
As the existential philosopher Albert Camus said (and I’m pretty sure he wasn’t taking LSD at the time): “You will never be happy if you keep looking for what happiness is. You will never live if you seek the meaning of life. “
Or more simply:
Do not try.
Now I know what you are talking about: “Mark, my nipples are getting hard, but what about the Camaro I was saving up for? What about the beach body that I starved for? After all, I paid a ton of money for this ab machine! What about the big lake house I dreamed of? If I stop giving a damn about these things – well, then I won’t get anywhere . I don’t want this to happen, do I? “
So glad you asked.
Have you ever noticed that sometimes when you care less about something, you do it better? Notice how often the person who invests the least in the success of something ultimately achieves it? Notice how sometimes when you stop fucking things fall into place?
What’s up with that?
What is interesting about the law of the opposite is that it is called “inverse” for a reason: do not give a damn, it works the other way around. If the pursuit of the positive is negative, then the pursuit of the negative generates positive. The pain you chase in the gym improves overall health and boosts energy. Business failure is what leads to a better understanding of what is needed to be successful. Being open and insecure paradoxically makes you more confident and charismatic around others. The pain of honest confrontation is what inspires the most trust and respect in your relationship. Suffering because of your fears and anxieties is what allows you to develop courage and perseverance.
Seriously, I could go on, but you get the point. Everything valuable in life is achieved by overcoming the associated negative experience . Any attempt to get away from negativity, avoid it, suppress it or silence it is just a backlash. Avoiding suffering is a form of suffering. Avoiding a fight is a fight. Denying failure is failure. Hiding the shame is itself a form of shame.
Pain is an unbreakable thread in the fabric of life, and it is not only impossible to break it, but also destructive: an attempt to break it unravels everything else with it. Trying to avoid pain is fucking too much because of the pain. On the contrary, if you don’t care about pain, you cannot be stopped.
FromThe Fine Art of Not Giving AF * CK: The Counterintuitive Approach to the Good Life by Mark Manson. Copyright © 2016 Mark Manson, published by HarperOne, published by HarperCollins Publishers.