Choosing to Free Yourself
Choosing to Free Yourself
The hardest thing is not doing what you want—it’s knowing what you want.
Be aware there are no “adults.” Everyone makes it up as they go along. You have to find your own path, picking, choosing, and discarding as you see fit. Figure it out yourself, and do it. [71]
How have your values changed?
When I was younger, I really, really valued freedom. Freedom was one of my core values. Ironically, it still is. It’s probably one of my top three values, but it’s now a different definition of freedom.
My old definition was “freedom to.” Freedom to do anything I want. Freedom to do whatever I feel like, whenever I feel like. Now, the freedom I’m looking for is internal freedom. It’s “freedom from.” Freedom from reaction. Freedom from feeling angry. Freedom from being sad. Freedom from being forced to do things. I’m looking for “freedom from,” internally and externally, whereas before I was looking for “freedom to.” [4]
Advice to my younger self: “Be exactly who you are.”
Holding back means staying in bad relationships and bad jobs for years instead of minutes.
FREEDOM FROM EXPECTATIONS
I don’t measure my effectiveness at all. I don’t believe in self-measurement. I feel like this is a form of self-discipline, self-punishment, and self-conflict. [1]
If you hurt other people because they have expectations of you, that’s their problem. If they have an agreement with you, it’s your problem. But, if they have an expectation of you, that’s completely their problem. It has nothing to do with you. They’re going to have lots of expectations out of life. The sooner you can dash their expectations, the better. [1]
Courage isn’t charging into a machine gun nest. Courage is not caring what other people think.
Anyone who has known me for a long time knows my defining characteristic is a combination of being very impatient and willful. I don’t like to wait. I hate wasting time. I’m very famous for being rude at parties, events, dinners, where the moment I figure out it’s a waste of my time, I leave immediately.
Value your time. It is all you have. It’s more important than your money. It’s more important than your friends. It is more important than anything. Your time is all you have. Do not waste your time.
This doesn’t mean you can’t relax. As long as you’re doing what you want, it’s not a waste of your time. But if you’re not spending your time doing what you want, and you’re not earning, and you’re not learning—what the heck are you doing?
Don’t spend your time making other people happy. Other people being happy is their problem. It’s not your problem. If you are happy, it makes other people happy. If you’re happy, other people will ask you how you became happy and they might learn from it, but you are not responsible for making other people happy. [10]
FREEDOM FROM ANGER
What is anger? Anger is a way to signal as strongly as you can to the other party you’re capable of violence. Anger is a precursor to violence.
Observe when you’re angry—anger is a loss of control over the situation. Anger is a contract you make with yourself to be in physical and mental and emotional turmoil until reality changes. [1]
Anger is its own punishment. An angry person trying to push your head below water is drowning at the same time.
FREEDOM FROM EMPLOYMENT
People who live far below their means enjoy a freedom that people busy upgrading their lifestyles can’t fathom. [11]
Once you’ve truly controlled your own fate, for better or for worse, you’ll never let anyone else tell you what to do. [11]
A taste of freedom can make you unemployable.
FREEDOM FROM UNCONTROLLED THINKING
A big habit I’m working on is trying to turn off my “monkey mind.” When we’re children, we’re pretty blank slates. We live very much in the moment. We essentially just react to our environment through our instincts. We live in what I would call the “real world.” Puberty is the onset of desire—the first time you really, really want something and you start long-range planning. You start thinking a lot, building an identity and an ego to get what you want.
If you walk down the street and there are a thousand people in the street, all thousand are talking to themselves in their head at any given point. They’re constantly judging everything they see. They’re playing back movies of things that happened to them yesterday. They’re living in fantasy worlds of what’s going to happen tomorrow. They’re just pulled out of base reality. That can be good when you do long-range planning. It can be good when you solve problems. It’s good for us as survival-and replication machines.
I think it’s actually very bad for your happiness. To me, the mind should be a servant and a tool, not a master. My monkey mind should not control and drive me 24/7.
I want to break the habit of uncontrolled thinking, which is hard. [4]
A busy mind accelerates the passage of subjective time.
There is no endpoint to self-awareness and self-discovery. It’s a lifelong process you hopefully keep getting better and better at. There is no one meaningful answer, and no one is going to fully solve it unless you’re one of these enlightened characters. Maybe some of us will get there, but I’m not likely to, given how involved I am in the rat race. The best case is I’m a rat who might be able to look up at the clouds once in a while.
I think just being aware you’re a rat in a race is about as far as most of us are going to get. [8]
The modern struggle:
Lone individuals summoning inhuman willpower, fasting, meditating, and exercising…
Up against armies of scientists and statisticians weaponizing abundant food, screens, and medicine into junk food, clickbait news, infinite porn, endless games, and addictive drugs.
选择让自己自由
最难的不是去做你想做的事，而是知道你究竟想要什么。
要意识到这个世界上没有真正的“成年人”，大家都在摸索前进。你必须找到自己的道路，选择、取舍皆按自己心意来做。自己去摸索，自己去行动。 [71]
你的价值观发生了怎样的变化？
在我年轻的时候，我非常非常看重自由。自由是我核心的价值观之一。讽刺的是，它现在依然是，但定义有所不同。它仍然是我最重要的三个价值之一，但现在是一种不同的自由。
我以前对自由的定义是“有自由去做什么”：自由去做任何我想做的事，想什么时候做就什么时候做。而现在，我寻找的自由是内心的自由，是“自由于什么”。自由于反应，自由于愤怒，自由于悲伤，自由于被迫做某些事。我追求的自由是“自由于”，内外兼修，而不是之前的“自由去”。[4]
给年轻的自己的建议：“做你自己，毫无保留。”
压抑自我意味着在糟糕的关系和工作中逗留数年，而不是数分钟。
逃离期望的束缚
我完全不衡量自己的效率。我不相信自我衡量，我觉得这是一种自我约束、自我惩罚和自我冲突。[1]
如果因为别人对你有期望而伤害了他们，那是他们的问题。如果他们和你有明确的约定，那就是你的问题。但如果他们只是对你有期望，那完全是他们自己的问题，与你无关。他们会对生活有很多期望。你越早打破他们的期望，对你越好。[1]
勇气不是冲向机枪阵地，而是不在乎别人怎么看。
任何认识我很久的人都知道，我的一个显著特征就是非常没有耐心且固执己见。我不喜欢等待，我讨厌浪费时间。在聚会、活动、晚餐上，只要我意识到是在浪费时间，我立刻会离开，这已经成为我的标志。
珍惜你的时间。这是你唯一真正拥有的东西。它比你的金钱更重要，比你的朋友更重要，比任何东西都更重要。你的时间是你唯一拥有的，不要浪费它。
这并不意味着你不能放松。只要你在做你想做的事，那就不算浪费时间。但如果你既没有做自己想做的事，也没有赚钱，也没有学习——那你究竟在做什么呢？
不要把时间浪费在让别人开心上。别人的幸福是他们自己的问题，不是你的问题。如果你自己开心，那会让别人开心。如果你幸福，别人会向你请教如何做到幸福，他们可能会从中学到东西，但你没有责任让别人快乐。[10]
摆脱愤怒的束缚
什么是愤怒？愤怒是你尽可能强烈地向对方表达你有能力施暴的方式。愤怒是暴力的前奏。
观察你愤怒的时刻——愤怒是你对局势失去控制的表现。愤怒是你和自己达成的契约，要承受身体、心理和情绪的折磨，直到现实发生改变。[1]
愤怒本身就是惩罚。一个愤怒的人试图把你的头按在水下时，自己也在溺水。
摆脱工作的束缚
那些远远低于自己经济能力生活的人，享有的自由是那些忙于提升生活品质的人无法理解的。[11]
一旦你真正掌控了自己的命运，不论好坏，你就再也不会让别人告诉你该做什么。[11]
品尝过自由的滋味，会让你变得难以被雇用。
摆脱失控思绪的束缚
我正在努力培养的一个大习惯就是试着关闭我的“猴子心态”。小时候，我们就像一块白板，完全活在当下，基本上只是通过本能对环境做出反应。我们活在所谓的“真实世界”里。青春期则是欲望的开端——第一次真正地、强烈地想要某样东西，并开始进行长远计划。你开始大量思考，构建身份和自我，去得到你想要的东西。
如果你走在街上，街上有一千个人，那么那一千个人在任何时候都在自己的脑海里对话。他们不断地评判所见的一切，回放昨天发生的事情的画面，生活在对未来的幻想中。他们就这样被从基础现实中拉了出来。当你做长远规划时，这种状态可能是好的。当你解决问题时，它也可能是好的。这对我们作为生存和繁衍的机器是有益的。
但我认为这对幸福感非常不利。对我而言，思维应该是仆人和工具，而不是主人。我的“猴子心态”不应该24小时不间断地控制和驱动我。
我想打破失控思考的习惯，这很难。[4]
忙乱的心灵会加速主观时间的流逝。
自我意识和自我发现是没有终点的。这是一个终生的过程，希望你能不断地进步和改进。没有一个唯一有意义的答案，除非你是那些开悟的人之一，否则没人能完全解决这个问题。也许我们中的一些人能达到那个境界，但考虑到我在激烈的竞争中所投入的程度，我不太可能达到。最好的情况是，我是一个偶尔能抬头看看天空的老鼠。
我认为，意识到自己是一只在竞赛中的老鼠，可能已经是我们大多数人能走得最远的了。[8]
现代的斗争：
孤独的个体唤起超人的意志力，禁食、冥想、锻炼…
对抗的是成群的科学家和统计学家，他们将充足的食物、屏幕和药物武器化，变成垃圾食品、点击诱饵新闻、无穷无尽的游戏和成瘾性药物。