Perception

 Perception. As an individual, there is no greater tool in your arsenal than perception. The Stoics spoke about it - "Our life is what our thoughts make it". The spiritual masters in the east have created centuries worth of practices based off of perception: Yoga, meditation. These are beliefs, ideas, foundations, fundamentals formed in the B.C times of human existence. Throughout even the earliest parts of civilization, philosophy, and education there has been this understanding that our reality and our perception of reality are intertwined so tightly they are indistinguishable from one another. They are one and the same.

The things we find sexual or attractive, a direct result of culture and shared perception; beauty standards. The objects of desirability result from what you've been told is desirable and whether you've allowed that perception to attach to your own personal perception - making your desire towards this thing a reality.

CBT, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, the most extensively used and effective tool in psychology. This is a psychotherapeutic process that forces you to identify thought patterns, recognize them the negative ones as unwanted, and then dismantle and replace or overcome them. It uses exposure therapy, a form of rewriting trauma and impulse reactions through overloading them with positive or neutral perceptions on the same subject. A brute force reconfiguration of your perceptions that completely reshapes you reality. CBT calls upon you to look at that which hurts you and then reclaims its ability to do so. Its a tried and true formula. This is one of the most basic forms of psychotherpy but is undeniably one of its most effective.

A person who can achieve great things is one who believes that they can achieve great things. Self efficacy and your belief in how much you control and your propensity towards positive outcomes go hand in hand. The Locus of Control. A person who believes they are in control of their outcomes tends to also have high self esteem and self security. They are able to withstand negative life events with more resilience. All because of perception. The difference between "Things happen to me" and "I make things happen" is enough to make you a stronger person, measurably so.

This doesn't exactly mean you can just think your way into happiness and success. Concepts like that are also crafted in the mind and aren't even understood by those who spend their lifetime quantifying it. Contentment isn't a goal that is reached. Contentment doesn't result as a matter of simple accumulation. Contentment is a long never ending process of evaluation and reconstruction. Contentment is forever spontaneous and fleeting - you must always keep it in reconsideration. Unfortunately most people don't reshape their conception of contentment until those moments where they are at the end of their ropes.

Maybe there's a sense of shame that people feel in reaching towards contentment. The higher functions of our intellectual brain equate being fine with "good enough" as tantamount with just giving up on your passions and dreams. To be fine with what you have is to kowtow to a mediocre existence.

Stoicism and Buddhism answer this by asking you to "Just Exist". They get to that conclusion in very similar ways but their definitions of just existing are very different. Regardless there is this understanding that we are the masters of our own universe. That feeling and being are one. That experience is a matter of curation, not simple passive observation. But observation is the very thing that gets you to be able to curate your existence.

Communication

The greatest human skill is communication. We are such empathetic creatures that we can draw out of someone delightful joy or crushing sadness trough images alone. This ability to convey and connect is the most human aspect of the human being, To not engage in such is a waste. Whether that is through debate, literature, art, music, comedy, or sex - I believe to be fully human is to communicate as often and as effectively through your preferred means.

You don't have to have the gift of gab or be an excellent painter, but you must find your medium of communication - regardless. Some do it by thanklessly laboring for another - showing their care through physically exhausting themselves and devoting precious time for the benefit of another. That is a form of communication I find to be truly remarkable within the framework of my personal philosophy. But that is just one of many approaches available to the individual. Regardless of the approach you choose, make use
of it.

There's an enrichment that comes from communicating. There's a breaking of barriers and a hailstorm of love that crashes upon you when you are able to accurately and effectively show your emotions and intentions to another. But that us where the difficultly lies: showing your emotions. As a human being - to be fully human - is to be quite vulnerable and embarrassing. The most powerful of emotions are usually the ones we deem immature, adolescent, or primitive.

This may seem quite reductive, but a lot of feelings and lengthy diatribes on one's ethics can be boiled down to: Boo [This Thing] or Yay [This Thing]. You may try and add depth to it by extrapolating just how deeply it effects you or by adding flowery language, but ultimately a lot of feelings boil down to whether you like something. How it just kinda makes you feel when you get down to it.

In that way you might be able to argue that the person who can write eloquently, compose brilliantly, or paint vividly would have the upper hand in obfuscating the overall embarrassing aspects of these feelings, but they honestly do not. You see, in every medium of communication there is an immature or adolescent way of going about things.

Cringe, that's the word we use most nowadays to describe these portrayals of communication that fills us with embarrassment after being expressed. Every form of communication has aspects within it that can be identified as "cringe" when wielded in a certain way. So regardless of the form of communication and your proficiency in it there is always a worry of coming across as cringe, as embarrassing. This worry is destroying you, it is holding you back.

Communication is the greatest human skill, it is our most important skill, use it. Many - if not all - interpersonal problems are a result of a lack of communication or miscommunication. If you want to know someone's thoughts or intentions, ask them and then observe their actions (and how they reflect in respect to the spoken thoughts and intentions). So many people build a vile portrait of others in their brains. Not because of what that person has done or said but because of person hasn't done or hasn't said.

These "hasn't"s fester in the brain and within their mindscape morphs this human into a vindictive creature, a selfish creature; when in reality this person was just busy or such at communicating. Or they are afraid of expressing themselves. Afraid to express themselves because they the other person would find them gross or weird if they expressed all the things they want to express to this other person. And those nevers become a list of regrets that tether themselves to us. Weighing us down.

A lifetime of feelings never expressed. Thoughts never shared, another piece of you repressed. A part of you hidden away. More and more of yourself that you won't allow to live. It makes you blank, numb. All of what you feel, all that you experience. It is all interconnected. When you push one emotion down, you push them all down. Your body, your soul, it gets one message and it's not "don't feel this thing" it's "don't feel". When you choose to not express specific aspects of yourself around other you are not telling yourself "I don't want to express this part of myself" you are telling yourself "Stop expressing"

In order to be human you need to be embarrassing. You need to be vulnerable. You need to be cringe. To be cringe is to be free. When you allow yourself to feel the full spectrum of emotions then you get to experience life with the full spectrum of emotions. You get everything out of this life rather that what you've allowed yourself to get out of life.

 

Life Goes On.

Life goes on. It is inevitable, it is constant. There is only one absolute guarantee and that is: Time moves forward. With time many great things may happen, many tragic things may happen - regardless, you cannot change the fact that things will happen. Randomly. Chaotically. Sometimes as expected. Sometimes suddenly. No matter what, they will happen.

So it seems the best way to take it all as a healthy functioning human being is consistently and peacefully. Have your daily tasks, your to-dos, and fulfill them with passion and earnestness. Have your hobbies and let them enrich you, take time for the things that you smile and make you whole. Love those that love you back. Take the world as it comes, don't panic - just do what you need to do and take solace in the fact that you are making an effort.

All that can be asked is that you care and that you try. Regardless of whether you approach it with anxiety and dread or with tranquility and a steady hand - the results, materially, are often very similar. The primary thing that determines the quality of your work and your effort is a combination of knowledge and experience, something that comes with time.

So if the results may largely be the same materially, you have to take it from the perspective of yourself and your mental landscape. If the quality of work is not something you can conjure up spontaneously, then you are best inclined to not add that extra stress and worry.

I think a lot of our anxiety is a result of perception. We worry largely for reasons outside of ourselves. Maybe we worry about coming off as apathetic, or lacking urgency. You cannot force earnestness, especially not in bouts of panic. Because panic, anxiety, it doesn't stem from what's best, it stems from consequence. Imagined punishment. Why live under the tyranny of your brain's delusions?

Even when you do well under the pressure of anxiety you never feel content - you just feel relief. The task is done and all it did was bring you back to a place without fear. It's miserable. This is why you can't let your primary motivator be the avoidance of hurt, the avoidance of imagined consequence. Let your motivator be enrichment.

Intellectual enrichment, the enrichment of your relationships, personal enrichment. When you fail under those circumstances, you'll probably do better next time. When you fail while under a state of anxiety and fear you just become avoidant - the last thing you need is to be avoidant. This life is for living, not fearing. Do not create a life of fear. Create a life of acceptance and forward motion.

You can only apply what you know. You've only done what you have done. What you know, what you've tried, what you can do in the future, all come from living. So let yourself live.