“It is not things that upset us, but our judgements about those things.” — Epictitus
Sasha Sloan – Dancing With Your Ghost
We have a unique obsession with the past. Don’t we all?
The ‘goneepisodes of life‘, both Good and Bad.
Surprisingly, The Bad Ones tend to stick with us for a longer period of time. And, in worst cases even leading us to chronic depression or nihilism, even suicides.
We also have list of vocabularies to describe these things of the past — we call them Events. Moments. Memories, or ‘Stories’ and ‘Snaps’ created over our beloved social media bubble.
But, most of all, we all have that persistent, whispering, irritating, excruciating and looping ‘Voice’ in our head which keeps on poking and scratching and tingling and pinching at the specific events of those bygone days.
Days we will never, ever re-live.
Moments, we can never go back to and redo shits.
Memories, we so deliberately choose to get stuck onto, loop over and over only to accept at the end — that it’s completely out of our hands.
Brain-vomits like:
I had the worst day of my life.
That boy cheated on me; broke my trust and left me alone to suffer — destroying my life altogether.
That last office I worked at was a total garbage and the acquaintances! — I don’t even want to talk about them. It was an utter waste of time.
My last boss really took a great deal of advantage out of my loyalty and honestly. What a piece of jerk!
Things like :- Oh! I should have done this. I should’ve not done that.
Wishful chatters like: I wish things had turned out this way or that way or easy way or my way!
Holy Fish!
You see, there’s just no limit to our wild imagination of carefully nitpicking our past craps or state of affairs — that we think didn’t go well or go as we expected.
Consequently, and unwillingly having ourselves dragged into a good, shitty, deep spiral road-trip down the rabbit hole of despair, of doubts, of restlessness, of utter pain and fucked questions! Eventually, turning us Pro at crying, whining, complaining, blaming and worst — an acting victim! With of course a collateral damage of having to carry an infested skull full of resentments and dissatisfaction.
Holy Fish!
Well, antidote?
Please, on’t beat yourself up for things beyond this moment, beyond your control and more importantly don’t be a caged bird! (I hope you get the metaphor)
Rather, acknowledge the devil — which are your own thoughts and decisively turn introspective by meditating over meaningful questions (metaphorically speaking) instead of subscribing to subjective, non-sensical, baseless, one-sided monkey chatter. (Trust me, I’m guilty of this myself.)
Yes — Simple, profound, weighty questions like
Could it have been worst?
What’s the lesson I could learn in the situation?
What’s the path forward from here?
Where do I see myself 72 hours from now …. 3 months from now, a year from now, 2 years from now?
Every night before going to sleep, we must ask ourselves: what weakness did I overcome today? What virtue did I acquire? ~ Seneca
Shawn Mendes – Youth ft. Khalid
I didn’t know until yesterday early morning (which was about 3AM), that there was this thing called ‘The Chicken Cage Syndrome’.
Tom Bilyeu’s podcast (Impact Theory) guest Martin Lindstrom (best selling author of Ministry of Common Sense) went to explain this psychological disease programmed in all of us.
He unpacks: (I just hope I don’t butcher his story line)
A chicken was put inside a beautiful cage for a period of roughly six months. Then, one fine day, an owner decided to bring the cage (with the chicken still inside; who’s been there for all its life) — out into this beautiful green grass court, on a clear blue sky. Sun shinning out bright. Birds singing and the freedom awaiting!
The cage was then set open. And now, what happened next was an important discovery.
So yes, as anticipated, she gets out of the cage. Slowly and carefully measuring her steps — centimeters away from the cage whenever she takes one.
Confused. Cocked!
Anxious. Alarmed!
Frozen. Frightened!
And later within just about 30 seconds, she rushes back into that same beautiful cage!
This is Chicken Cage Syndrome.
Gist.
We all love our cages. We all have one. Don’t we?
Our safety net.
Our comfortable bubble.
Our dear attachment.
However, Change must be expected.
Change must be accepted.
That, Change is inevitable.
That, Change is your friend.
And to sum it all up: Just make it easy for yourself by acknowledge the fact that Change, my friend is for the best!
Finally, as I self-reflect and self-associate myself on that genuinely intellectual podcast interview by Mr. Bilyeu (can’t thank him enough):
That, in my own personal life, I’ve been a victim of this one particular psychic challenge for so many fucking times.
Perhaps so have you.
So. Have. You!
But, a big BUT — from this point forward.
And, of course, take it as a food for your tasty brain, words from the wise.
Please Don’t Get caught up in the Chicken Cage yourself.
Have appetite for surprises. Matter of fact, produce ‘surprises’ once-in-a-while.
And, most certainly, don’t worship confinements. Comfort. Convenience. Ever!
p.s. To answer Seneca’s initial quote above.
Yesterday night, I concluded that Today, I overcame my weakness of being easily intimidated.
I acquired the virtues of truly listening, of keeping the cool-headedness despite chaos, of not giving too many fucks for things that doesn’t matter at all.
In all sincerity, I constantly think about my immortality reality followed by few deep filling breathes.
And, whenever this contemplation occurs — any shred of stress, anchors, and those crisp, piercing problems sublimates.
Eventually, slowly, gracefully evaporates!
Steve best put it
Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.
One hard look on the mirror:
These Aging eyes.
These Slipping time.
These Ephemeral moments.
These recipes of Intentional living in front of me.
“… sleep is profoundly intertwined with virtually every aspect of brain health. Lack of sleep over time can lead to an irreversible loss of brain cells—yet another debunking of the myth that sleep debt can be made up.” ― Arianna Huffington, The Sleep Revolution: Transforming Your Life, One Night at a Time
But as the science literature suggest ‘Sleep’ –is a real shit.
And so, I am committed to fix it.
That is to say that I’m giving my every best to get a full 8 hours of cumulative rest time.
Good news is :- for the last three days I average at around — at least 7 hours of sleep. On Sunday however, due to lack of sleep followed by a high intensity workout early in the morning, I almost blacked out.
