Assume that all things are for the best. When people care most about how their lives look is when they’re most closed to how their lives feel. When they’re most closed to how their lives feel is when they don’t want to feel pain. Being truly at peace requires realizing that everything is for the best.
Everything in your life does one of three things: shows you to yourself,
heals a part of yourself, or lets you enjoy a part of yourself. If you adopt that perspective, there’s nothing left to fear.
Ask yourself: “If the whole world were blind, how many people would I impress?” Truly imagine a life in which you could not see things. In which all that exists is how you feel and how you make others feel. In this kind of world, what kind of person are you, and is it for those reasons that, perhaps, creating a life that looks good to earn other people’s love has supplemented having your own?
34
WHY YOU
shouldn’t
SEEK
COMFORT
01. Your brain can’t differentiate “good” from “bad”; it only knows
“comfortable” and “uncomfortable.” This is a pretty raw example, but it’s the reason why criminals never think their actions are
“wrong,” they think they’re justifiable. It’s why we do things we objectively know are bad for us and confuse them for “feeling good.”
02. You don’t want what you want; you want what you’ve known. We are literally incapable of predicting an outcome that is out of the realm of what we’ve known previously. So rather than trying to seek “better,” we seek “the best of what we’ve known,” even if “the best” is really just the solution to a problem we didn’t need to create again.
03. “Familiar discomfort” feels the same as “comfort.” Which is why so many people are stuck in “ruts” or absolutely do not want to change even though they know it’s what would be best for them.
04. There’s no such thing as true security. We seek comfort believing that it makes us safe, but we live in a world in which there is no such thing as true security. Our bodies were made to evolve, our physical items are temporary and can be lost and broken, etc. To combat this, we seek comfort rather than accepting the transitory nature of life.
05. The only way you grow is by stepping into the unknown. It’s why so many people have “breakdown before breakthrough” moments.
Often, their lives are leading them to better possibilities than they thought possible; they just didn’t know it was “good” at the time.
06. Most people don’t change until not changing is the less comfortable option. But there’s usually a long period of time of increasing discomfort before “not changing” is the worst-case scenario. The universe whispers until it screams, and happy people listen while the call is still quiet.
07. There are two mindsets people tend to have: explorer or settler. Our society has a “settler” mindset, our end goals are “finalizing”
(home, marriage, career, etc.) in a world that was made for evolution, in selves that do nothing but grow and expand and change. People with “explorer” mindsets are able to actually enjoy what they have and experience it fully because they are inherently unattached.
08. There’s no such thing as real comfort; there’s only the idea of what’s safe. This is a big one to swallow, but there’s really no such thing as “comfort,” which is why comfortable things don’t last, and why the best adjusted people are most “comfortable” in
“discomfort.” Comfortable is just an idea. You choose what you want to base yours on.
09. Life isn’t about being “certain,” it’s about trying anyway. Comfort is, essentially, certainty. You can either choose to be certain about what you’ve known or certain that you’ll make the best of whatever happens. (Guess who has a better time?) Because nobody is ever really certain. The people who have lives they love try anyway.
35
THE 6 PILLARS
OF SELF-ESTEEM:
why it is not
HOW YOU FEEL,
but what you think
YOU’RE CAPABLE OF
We tend to think of self-esteem as a static thing, a state in which your mind naturally fuels you with positive, supportive thoughts, never being too deeply influenced by any doubts or dislikes. This, however, is where the fine line between self-esteem and self-aggrandizement blurs.
In the words of Anna Deavere Smith, self-esteem is what really gives us a feeling of well-being. It’s the very inherent sense that everything’s going to be all right, because we are capable of making it all right. “[Self-esteem is knowing] that we can determine our own course and that we can travel that course. It’s not that we travel the course alone, but we need the feeling of agency—that if everything were to fall apart, we could find a way to put things back together again.”
Self-esteem is not how much confidence you have in how well people perceive you, but how much confidence you have in whether or not you can manage your life.
What’s interesting about having real self-esteem is that it eliminates the need to focus on how we’re superior to others. When we don’t feel we’re actually in control of our lives (or aren’t happy with how things are going so far) we often focus on “how much better things are than someone else”
to placate the feeling of failure.
Nathaniel Branden outlined what exactly it takes to build a healthy sense of self12. He notes, particularly, that people either take the “feel good”
approach (I am beautiful, I am rich, I am successful) which is merely a substitute for the real thing, or they build it in a genuine way.
He says that the two fundamental elements self-esteem boils down to are self-efficacy, which is “a sense of basic confidence in the face of life’s
challenges,” and self-respect, “a sense of being worthy of happiness.”
“[Self-esteem] is not an emotion which fluctuates from moment to moment, but a continuing disposition to experience a sense of efficacy and respect for oneself. Thus, it is something which is built over a long period of time, not just wished into existence. It is reality-based; undeserved praise, whether it comes from oneself or others, will not provide it.”