0 fun

0 Same old same old

_6.7.2021_ Success and failure are not unpredictable. The enemy is not new, it's as old as the human existence. The fight starts new every day yet very few can learn from their history, being defeated every single day by the same enemy on the same battle. They tell the same story, the story of failures. Being defeated too many times, they believe that to win is impossible. It's their fate to be the wrong side of history. All winners are all alike but all losers lose in their own way. It's the game of life. It's easy to know how to win but not easy to really do it. People refuse to suffer even if they know that it benefits them in the future. It's the fight against Siren's song. It's the battle no one can win except he makes a pack with his own future as Ulysses does in the story. You do not need a fortune teller to tell you that you will give up your journey in the middle of nowhere. How many people make a new year's resolution only to fail several months after that? On average, 80% of New Year's resolutions fail by the second week of February according to various studies. People often overestimate their ability to do something. How to avoid failure? In my opinion, do not avoid it, do it every day, more is better. The key is to keep pushing. Failures are often the only way to move forward. Just like playing a game, the best player is also the one who makes the most failures. Fail and fail again until it doesn't scary you anymore. It's normal to fail and you know that you do it to get ahead. It's necessary for success. One of the best TED Talk I ever watched is "What I learned from 100 days of rejections" by Jia Jiang. He was afraid of rejection and then he tries to get rejected for 100 days. Being rejected for so many times, he got used to it and it felt like game rather than threatened his ego. Surprisingly, people often consider the request that you assumed it would be definitely rejected. It's often that the one who rejects me is myself. I ask myself to eat less, exercise more, read more, and do meditation. Sometimes I say yes to the request, sometimes I say no. But if no request, the answer is always no. So always ask what you want to get, expect the rejection and be ok with that. I have time to ponder about this because I do not work for others. People who work for others they spend their most precious time and energy to do the work. I have no time for themselves. They will get home tired and defeated day in day out. I was working in a pipe factory about twenty years ago. I worked like a robot. Even animals do not work that hard and tedious for their master. I got nothing but small sum of money, barely enough for normal life. An accident happened causing me to get sick for three weeks. It was the best thing happen to me. I quit and continued my study in high school. Most people have to work and they do not know what to do. To be a worker is often the only seemingly best option and to quit from the job is out of question. I'm lucky enough to be able to go to a university. Now I speak English and Mandarin as well. I enjoy my life now compare to back then. I often ponder how to change to be better, not only 100% better but 500% better. I need to earn 500% more than my current income. I know that it's not a short time project. I think it should be achievable in ten years or so. One way is by writing every single day. I know that there are millions people who want to be a writer, only less than 1% of them will be successful in this career choice. I started a YouTube channel and I also know that it's just the same difficult as to be a writer. I started from zero, that's how people start their journey to success. I do not know what will happen in ten years but it's better than working for others. In ten years I will do the same every day. That is the impossible way to be successful and rich. Who knows that one day I can write popular book like Harry Potter? Life is full of surprise. To fail every day is to get better at failing and to fail less and less. I know I can change to be better, 500% better. It need deliberate practice and long process. I'm doing that now. Most people leave it to their fate whether to change or not, to be better or not. They are deceiving themselves. Subconsciously they know that nothing will be so much different in the future, same old same old. If you plant a tree and you take care of it every day, you can expect that it will grow big and tall in fifteen years. It's the law of nature. Nothing change drastically into something great, but sometimes thing can change drastically into something bad when disaster happened. Fifteen year old tree can be cut down in an hour. That is how easy to cancel out of hard work. Yet nothing you can do to grow 15 meter tall tree in an hour. It seems that the odds are against us. It's how it works, the law of nature. The only thing one can do is to understand it and act according to it. There is no shortcut to success, to 500% improvement in a short time. It needs toil, hard work, and persistence. There is no reason to be pessimistic. Life is beautiful. The game is fair for everyone. The game fails 99% of the players and it's good like that. If it's easy, it's boring. This is the challenge that one must overcome every day. The struggles make one stronger and better over time. Keep failing and keep pushing, never give up. Just make one step ahead and you will get there at the end of the journey. The true wealth is life itself. It's the struggle to the top that make success worth it and meaningful.

0 Resistance

_7.5.2021_ It's three o'clock in the morning. I start my day at his time. For most people, it's really too early. I don't think it's too early. I need more hours to finish more work. I'm not that diligent actually, I'm fighting my resistance. I was defeated yesterday. I felt tired all day long yesterday and didn't do much. I anticipated that such thing would happen and yet still I was defeated badly. Feeling is the drama queen in mind. In the morning I make the decision to do and not to do something during the day, but then the resistance attack and win. Yesterday I felt that I wouldn't be successful and life is somewhat pointless. My girlfriend asked me to do something that I dislike and it burdened my feeling the whole day. I didn't even answer her whatsapp message, but I felt tired after that. I was afraid to say no to her and I do not want to say yes to the request or demand. Then I watched about Bill Gates's divorce and I remembered so many divorce scenes in movies how good intentions can lead to misunderstanding and there is no way to fix it. My financial health is very unhealthy at this time and it makes me insecure. I watch motivational videos on YouTube how to be rich and I convinced myself that I too can do it and become rich in the next ten years. This is the first time I want to be rich because I'm getting married in a month. My spouse will look down on me if I am unsuccessful in career. I can read her character from her messages. I think it's the right time for me to move forward. I need to be anti-fragile. I know it's the first step for me to be successful. Now I'm still fragile. I dislike variability and problems especially in a relationship. I'm sensitive too harsh words and it can destroys my motivation in an instant. I can't learn this from books, I have to experience it myself, to fight the monster inside my mind. Resistance is one of the strongest monster inside me. I wonder how gentle feeling can stop me from doing anything I have planned before. It's like viruses that breaks the whole system down. I think most people are just like me, tired from fighting their own monsters than doing anything real in life. I do and accomplish very little in a day but still feel tired in the end of the day. I can't save the energy and time for the next day. It's gone without any trace visible. If my mind can be quiet and doesn't sabotage my plan, it would be great. However, it's the first battle I have to win. It's always the fight against myself, my monster. Sometimes it can be resistance, sometimes fear and so on. To be anti-fragile it means I can't wish less obstacles and easier life challenges. I choose the hard intentionally to be stronger. Reality is often different from imagination. But reality is part of our imagination too. My belief is part of reality. People quotes and take lesson from imaginative characters. Those characters have become reality. My emotions are often driven by pure fantasy and imagination. It's unnecessary to differentiate them and only live on one of them. I think whether one is economically successful or failure, there is no reason to be unhappy. At the worst condition, he can still eat, sleep at home, and have companions whether they are friends or family members. Diogenes had very little in life and yet he was free and happy. Buddha chose to leave pleasures for virtue. Today people focus on money more than on anything else, even so called religious people, their hidden agenda is to get rich or status. What people want is respect, love, freedom, power. Money is the representation of all of them in their imagination. I definitely want to be rich rather than be poor. Is it good to work hard? To work as a slave is not good, but to work hard for oneself is good. I know that people want pleasures and do not want to work. It may be not true. People want value more than pleasure. The real purpose is power. To have pleasure the whole day is suffering and painful as well. Imagine a drug addict, he is suffering in pleasure. People want meaningful life no matter hard it is. Marcel Proust said that his pleasure time was just a waste of time, but his suffering time was what made him himself. Imagine you only have fun during high school years, how will you memorize that in the future? Imagine another situation, you study very hard during your high school, say twenty hours a day, how will you memorize that later? I remember my hardest time in the past such as climbing mountains, cycling to another cities, and reading difficult books as the most pleasing memories now. Working hard feels bad for now but it will be a great memory in the future whether you are successful or not at the time. There is no way that I will regret my working hard in the future. I regret what I should do but I didn't do. I regret eating too much food and now I see my ugly belly. I never regret my exercise and hard work. I find out that true pleasure comes from overcoming difficulties and sufferings. Pleasure and pain have no absolute value. It is relative to each other. For example, eating ice cream has 100% value on the first cup, the third cup the value has dropped into 50%, the tenth cup the value dropped into 10% or even -10%. It's the same as any other physical pleasures. Therefore it's not wise to indulge to pleasure too much. It's better to combine pleasure with meaningful pain. I always want to try intermittent fasting but still fail until now. Food is the great temptation when I am hungry. I can't think about anything else when I'm hungry and food is available. I know that my ability to self-control and delay gratification is still weak. I'm working on it now. Little by little using atomic habit strategy. The sudden change will cause great resistance from inside and even if it's successful for now, it's destined to fail sooner or later. I can say it because it happened again and again before. Anytime I attempted drastic change in my life, it turned back to normal very soon. It's invisible force that I can't handle as easy as I talk. I can plan, and talk easily but the reality hit me hard. Now I don't believe in will power or plan anymore, I believe more in the habit. That's the best strategy I have that succeed until now; to establish an atomic habit strategy. Start with very little and improve gradually over time after the habit is rooted strongly in my daily activities.