To live a fulfilling life…

I wonder what are we chasing?

A tiger only chases the prey when it’s hungry. Humans can easily have the basic necessities of life, but we are still driven to keep chasing, not only for materials but also validation and happiness.

What i learnt on the journey of seeking purposes in life

What is the different? why are we hunger for validation?

Nowadays, it’s easy to survive. People don’t have to be a hunter and gather around just to take down an elephant so the whole tribe could have food. You only need to work 3 hours a day to get 3 meals and water and that’s enough for us to survive. However, human are social creatures, we not only live for ourselves but also care for other people, we want them to admire us just to feel better.

Illusion of safety and control

I’ve seen people who want to quit their job and chase their dream but too afraid to give up everything. We afraid of the uncertainty, every time we have to make a decision to sacrifice what is not really OK but quite established at the moment to gain something better, we choose not to because we are scared of the situation in which we are homeless and starving. After all, we are just like other animals but functioning on a higher level of abstraction.

We suffer more in our imagination than reality

Being laid off or even just a slight thought of quitting your job and chase your dream just scares you out. Fear is primal instinct, but do we need it when it’s not happening and only exist in our mind?

We keep waiting for something to happen before we can do something else, like “i will do my exercise tomorrow”. We sometimes wait for X to happen before we could do Y. Why? X happening could add up some more certainty so we know that we could do it with more confident and less effort.

Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional

If we were to view “we do Y when X happens” from another perspective. Is it we are suffering (waiting for X to happens) and avoid the pain (the process that we do on our own and not waiting for X)? We just tricked our my mind and ignore the fact that there’s a possibility that X doesn’t happen because X sometimes is not in our control. If we keep waiting for X and it doesn’t happen. We will suffer, Y would never be delivered.

Stop Trying to Control Everything and Just Let Go. Let Go!

We expect X but it doesn’t happen as we wished and we are all upset. Are we suffering by our imagination then? Are we upset because of our expectation?

Then why don’t we stop controlling everything and just let go?

Know what we have, embrace ourselves

We are usually not in charge and it more common than you think. You cannot control the time the pizza is delivered, weather, newspaper, traffic, even your phone. It feels like we cannot control anything.

Except ourselves. We are animals that function on a higher level of abstractions, we create new word that encapsulate the hard concept, our mind must be very powerful then. We can keep training ours mind by keeping reminding ourselves daily that things are always out of control. By learning this, we can easily accept anything without any desired outcome.

We cannot control our phone but we can find a way to influence it. We cannot control the crowd but we can influence them, where all of that comes from? Our mind

A strong mind requires a strong physique

I’ve never seen a soldier that cannot run miles. Do you know David Goggins, he’s an example. Training your mind doesn’t requires strong physique beforehand. For example, you know what you want that is a software engineer and you want it so bad. How come a software engineer that sit all days has a strong physique? Come to think about it, if i want to be a software engineer i wouldn’t sit all days. I would train my body so it could withstand the workload, i push up everyday so my hand and my finger could tolerant the rate of typing, i pull up everyday so my spine would be able to tolerate me sitting most of time in the day for years. Even if you have a strong my but your body is weak, you mind would acknowledge that you cannot run miles and will give up before doing so.

We are impatient

We are hungry for validation, we are hungry for the result and not focusing on the progress. Wise man used to say “Look at the work you have left, not the work you have done”. 30s video on Tiktok and Instagram of a guy showing a 6 pack abs indicates that he work out everyday, on high workload and intensity for years. On the other hand, you have been into working out for 3 days and expecting to have a well defined abs. If you were to look at BillGate, Zuckerberg, blah blah… they are wealthy, but did they get wealthy in just a year? Things take time, my friend!

Closing thoughts

Happiness is not meant to be chased

The possibly best thing about human is our mind, i wonder if a dog can imagine something but back then when i was in school, i could just keep day-dreaming and ignore my teacher talking for more than an hour straight.

We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off

You have always been a good servant to the media

We don’t have to be a rock star to be happy. You are living a happy life till the media tell you that chasing cars and clothes is happiness, you have to do this and that and this that to be happy. You start chasing it because other people start chasing it.

School didn’t teach you well

Again and again, we are animals that function on a higher abstractions. The school didn’t teach you how to survive, it’s also not a “one size fits all” way to educate people. They taught you Math, Literature, Chemistry, physics. They teach you the higher abstractions and forget to teach us how to align our lives with reality. My opinion, I don’t care because i cannot control what they do. Plus, i will have a journey on exploring and experience life my way as well. Life is not meant to experience the same for everyone.

You are struggling with living so you have to work 12+ hours a day not to be starved?

If you are doing this, please stop for a while and take time just to think of it. Is it what you want? what do you want in life. If you were to die now, would you regret it?

Enjoy the present

I’ve seen people just keep focusing on the camera during the trip to a beautiful location and not enjoying the trip. Why? are you filming it so you could share it with someone later and seek validation? You keep working the hard way and keep dreaming of a better future by ignoring the fact that you are living in the moment. The is a possibility that the future you keep dreaming about won’t happen. Don’t wait for X to happens so you could truly enjoy life. Don’t live like life is granted, we could sleep and never open our eye again.

Please treasure it.