Last week, we discussed why you should Embrace Your Mortality and how doing so can help end suffering in your life. If you haven’t had a chance to read it, I highly suggest checking it out. We will continue that discussion this week, albeit through a different lens. However, the idea behind embracing your mortality ultimately means, “Don’t Waste Your Life.”
Don’t Waste Your Life Pt. 1
Why does embracing your mortality help you avoid wasting your life? Let’s look at it this way: When I was in my early teens, I had big dreams for myself. I’m a dreamer, so I had many dreams, and they were all fantastic! Yet, as I got older, certain events and situations began to run me into the ground.
Have you ever experienced something similar? You’ve got big plans, things seem to be going well, you’re excited, and then all of a sudden, your feet get pulled out from underneath you, and the next thing you know, you’re lying face down in the mud, and it feels like life’s got its boot heel on the back of your head and won’t let up.
Regardless of what you try to do, you feel stuck. You feel trapped. It seems as if there’s no light at the end of the tunnel, and you don’t know how long you’ll be stuck there or if you’ll ever be able to get back up.
This can last for a few days, weeks, months, or years, depending on the situation and your mental acuity to understand that the way you feel is your choice, and it’s your choice to stay stuck in that place or not.
In my case, I couldn’t bounce back. I spent over 20 years cycling through anxiety and depression and was suicidal for 10 of those years. What I didn’t understand during all this was that it was my choice. My mindset, how I think and how I feel, determines whether I allow myself to stay face down in the mud or get up and clean myself off.
Many people don’t understand it’s their choice. In fact, all of us, including you, have moments where we forget we have the power to decide whether we will allow ourselves to feel a certain way or not. To accept the results you’re getting or not.
What makes this difficult is all the noise and chatter ‘out there’ that seems to tell you, “Well, this is just how life is.” “Life isn’t fair.” “You just need to do better, be better, act better…”
You see people all over social media who seem like they’ve got their lives together, but you feel like yours is in shambles for some reason. Sometimes, talking to friends makes you feel inferior because if they can be so excited and happy about life, what’s wrong with you?
The truth is, many of them aren’t all that happy. Some of them are, but probably not as many as you think.
Feeling this way can be a miserable experience. You may be able to bounce back quickly from some of these events, thoughts, and feelings; if so, bravo!
However, you may be struggling with something profound that feels insurmountable, and since you feel like you can’t overcome it, you’ve been struggling for much longer than you ever thought you would or could.
You may see this message: “Don’t waste your life. Don’t waste your life!” and think to yourself, I know that, but I don’t know any other way!
Sometimes, all you need is one essential truth to begin pulling you out of that darkness. That truth, that way or path, is already there; you just have to start walking it.
This right here is the way:
We design our lives through the power of choices.
– Richard Bach
The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light.
– Aristotle
People are just as happy as they make up their minds to be.
– Abraham Lincoln
Don’t Waste Your Life Pt. 2
Maybe you can’t relate to the down-and-out, extremely depressed, constantly miserable, and pathetic creature persona that I struggled with. You may be someone cruising through life thinking everything is fine, but you feel something is missing.
You’ve done everything possible to create the life society tells you you should have, but it hasn’t fulfilled you.
For some reason, with as much fun as you have, there is a lack of joy. Despite your lifestyle, there is a lack of peace. Maybe you have a great family, but it still feels like there is a lack of love. It’s almost as if you are wearing a bandaid to cover up a deeper wound.
You can see this play out by watching famous people. Many seem to have everything they could ever desire, yet many are miserable. They’ve achieved success, but they feel empty. The dream they are chasing has turned into ash in their mouth.
Ultimately, success is acquired in vain if you haven’t learned to cultivate peace, joy, and love from within.
Alex Hormozi has created a $100M company over the past few years, and one of my favorite quotes from him goes like this:
Money only solves money problems, then you are left with problems money can’t solve.
– Alex Hormozi
If you don’t learn how to cultivate the feelings you want to experience, money may only compound the feelings you’re trying to escape. This is why people turn to unhealthy lifestyles. They are trying to use external substances and situations to FEEL a momentary sense of pleasure because they don’t know how to create that from within.
The problem is that you’ve been indoctrinated to believe that success is climbing the corporate ladder, making X amount of dollars, driving a specific car, living in an expensive house, going on vacations, and posting pictures of your vacations so everyone can see how happy you are.
True success isn’t any of these things. Success is simply being alive and enjoying life no matter where you are or what you have. This idea is challenging for many people because, after all, who are you if you don’t have all those other things?
What is your sense of identity if you don’t live in the perfect house with the perfect car alongside the perfect family? Society might consider you a fool if you don’t acquire those things and live up to what it deems success to be.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying you should be broke and unable to care for your family. I’m not saying you shouldn’t have dreams or aspirations and desire to do great things in the world. To live life the way you want, whether in a simple way, enjoying your family and friends, and working a job you enjoy, not in the spotlight, or to live in the spotlight and try to accomplish more than you thought you could.
Neither of these ideals is right or wrong; they’re merely what suits you and your temperament. You should do all those things, but you must learn how to cultivate what’s missing from within before truly enjoying those external pleasures.
Look at it this way…
For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?…
– Jesus, Matthew 16:26
If you’re struggling to keep up with the Joneses, that struggle is done in vain. There will always be somebody out there who has what you don’t have either monetarily, spiritually, mentally, or physically. It’s like trying to tear out your soul to gain the adulation of your fellow man.
Don’t waste your life playing that game.
Instead, learn what the true treasures are.
If we can go back to Jesus again for a moment, he said,
Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasure in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
– Jesus, Matthew 6:19-21
In Luke 17:20-21, when asked when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied:
“The kingdom of God does not come with observation; nor will they say, ‘See here!’ or ‘See there!’ For indeed, the kingdom of God is within you.”
– Jesus, Luke 17:20-21
How and why did this suddenly turn into a study of Jesus’ words? For this reason:
You can chase all life’s external pleasures to seek fulfillment, but it will be done in vain. The Kingdom of Heaven is within you right now, and you can either store up your external treasures, hoping to find what you truly desire, or you can store up your internal treasures, which will trump any of the external by far.
What are your internal treasures? Peace. Joy. Love.
I wrote about this a couple of weeks ago in my newsletter: how to find what you truly desire: inner peace, joy, and love.
Everything you’re chasing is an attempt to lead you back to one of these three feelings: utmost peace, you’ve arrived and have everything you need; complete joy, you live without a care in the world; and a sense of being deeply loved; you matter, and you are worthy.
External pursuits can only take you so far down this road. So don’t waste your life chasing all the external pleasures to acquire what you desire internally.
Instead, learn how to cultivate those feelings from within.
Learn to Guard Your Mind
Cultivating these feelings from within is a simple mindset shift. You’re just changing your mind.
When I was struggling with depression, I didn’t understand that the way to overcome depression was to think different thoughts that were not in line with my depressive thinking.
Part of the problem was that I didn’t understand the thinking-feeling loop: thoughts lead to feelings, and feelings lead to thoughts.
However, I just listened to something the other day. They said studies now show that the feeling generally appears in the body a few seconds before the thought does. This means your subconscious mind is already propagating the thought before it’s presented consciously.
This leaves you with a conundrum. If thoughts lead to feelings and feelings, lead to thoughts, but your subconscious mind is already generating the feeling before the thought, how can you combat the thought before you understand the feeling?
That’s a great question!
The answer is you have to get good at guarding your mind.
You might be asking, what does that mean?
It means every time you begin to think a thought in line with something you don’t want to think. You kill that thought instantly.
As Dr. Joe Dispenza says,
You have to become conscious of your unconscious thoughts.
– Dr. Joe Dispenza
The only way to do that is by being aware of what you’re thinking at all times.
Sound difficult?
It’s not!
But it also is.
Think of it this way. You are a computer program that has been compiling data over the entire course of your life. Whether true or not, this data has come to the place where it governs your life simply because you’ve allowed it to do so.
Someone said something hurtful to you, and you took it to heart. As a result, you begin to believe what they said about you is true. Since it’s true, this must be “How I AM,” and since it’s “How I AM,” you should act in accordance with that belief.
You are not that way, realistically speaking. Looking at children, you will see who you are in them: carefree, loving without prejudice for anything or anyone, generous, joyful, hopeful, at peace with themselves and the world, and always living in the present moment.
That’s who you are!
As you grow and mature, you must take on social responsibilities and endure hardships you weren’t planning for. As you do so, you begin to create belief systems resulting from the circumstances you go through.
If you put enough people together, that group forms a society. Social revelations will begin to inform younger generations about what that particular society considers to be right or wrong, and if you don’t act within those boundaries, you risk being ostracized.
Being ostracized means being left out in the cold to defend yourself, and since that’s difficult, you decide conformity is the better option. However, conformity doesn’t always have your best interests in mind.
In many instances, it’s an excellent tool for holding society together. After all, there are moral obligations to fulfill if society is to continue moving forward progressively without reverting to a primeval lifestyle.
Even so, the internal problem you face is that while you were being taught the basics of morality, you were also being programmed to believe other things that aren’t necessarily true. The people teaching you feel as if they are accurate based on their experiences, but it’s simply because of how they reacted and adapted to the situation themselves.
Many people have experienced situations that are so similar that they are almost identical in every way. The location may differ, or the people involved may vary. Many possible details may shift or change, but the overall situation matches.
Despite this, each of those individuals handles the situation differently. As a result, their caution to the younger generation varies widely.
You, while young or going through an emotional experience as you got older, were subject to program manipulation by someone deemed to be older and wiser.
Unbeknownst to you, many programming changes were motivated by someone else’s fear, insecurity, lack of self-worth, etc.
As such, their beliefs began to imprint on your subconscious and, over time, became your beliefs.
This isn’t the only way you programmed your subconscious. You’ve also had life experiences and, from those moments, decided to approach life in a particular way to limit pain and amplify pleasure.
A child only has to touch a hot stove once to realize that the pain outweighs their curiosity about what’s on top.
Since you were programmed from the beautiful child you were to the adult you now are (I’m not saying you aren’t still beautiful), you now have subconscious beliefs that don’t necessarily serve you.
Those unconscious beliefs, gone unchecked, will continue to deliver the life you think you deserve on a silver platter for the rest of your life until you decide to play the game differently.
This is why you must learn to guard your mind.
Guarding your mind isn’t about rejecting life. It’s about directing your life.
Think of your mind like a ship, plane, or car. Someone must be in the driver’s seat to get you where you want to go.
By guarding your mind, you are controlling and managing your life.
It’s Time to Go Within
I remember listening to a guided meditation when I was just learning how to meditate, where the guide encouraged you to go deeper.
During the meditation, I struggled because I couldn’t figure out what that meant. It took me a while to figure it out because the more I attempted to go deeper, the more it seemed I emerged out of myself rather than submerged into myself.
Now, for me, going deeper means letting go. The more I let go, the deeper I go. But deeper into what? Peace, joy, and love. There isn’t a tangible “thing” to grasp that lets you know you’re going deeper. It’s a sensing or knowing that you are.
This is similar to telling you to go within, but what does that mean?
There isn’t something tangible to grasp, so how do you do it?
It’s simply taking control of your thoughts and feelings. It’s taking ownership of your life and beginning to understand that you have what it takes inside of you right now to change your life for the better.
You don’t have to wait for someone to come along and do it for you. There isn’t a magic pill or switch you can flip that will instantly resolve your issues.
The ultimate cure is to take charge of your life. It’s going within and understanding that you have everything you need.
Remember what Jesus said, “The Kingdom of God (Heaven) is within you.”
He didn’t say it’s out there, somewhere. He said it’s already inside of you. If that’s the case, stop looking for heaven outside of yourself and start to find the heaven within.
Here are a few ways to do that.
Develop a Growth Mindset
- Why: You can often find purpose through challenges and learning experiences. When you adopt a growth mindset, it will begin to open you up to new possibilities.
- How: Responsibility. You have to embrace setbacks as opportunities to learn to stop blaming anything and everything around you. Continue to develop and focus on self-improvement through things like reading these newsletters or books, listening to podcasts, reading quotes, taking courses on bettering yourself, etc.
Practice Mindfulness and Self-Awareness
- Why: When you learn to be present, truly in the moment, you experience life as it unfolds right before your eyes. When you can do this, a seemingly meaningless world begins to sprout with meaning. Mindfulness helps you connect with your thoughts and emotions by becoming aware of the thinking and feeling loop, which allows you to pull yourself out of what you don’t want to think and feel and place yourself into what you do want to think and feel.
- How: Meditation. Journaling.
Embrace Change and Uncertainty
- Why: Learning to flow with life, with change, can open the door to new opportunities. This isn’t limited to work-related opportunities, although that’s a part of it, but rather, you are open to things life may present that you weren’t previously open to.
- How: By shifting your mindset and seeing change as growth.
Take Intentional Action Every Day
- Why: Changing your life isn’t an instantaneous event. It happens through consistent and intentional effort. If you aren’t willing to put in the blood, sweat, and tears, then don’t expect any meaningful change to occur. You must be intentional about why you want to improve, whatever that means to you, and how you will achieve that result.
- How: Choose something you want to work on. Do little things every day to take you from where you are now to where you want to be. Track your progress as you do so, and when you reach certain milestones, celebrate! Congratulate yourself and tell yourself, “Thank you!”
Don’t waste your life! You don’t want to be on your deathbed just to look back and think, I wish…
I wish I had done more: acted differently, treated people differently, treated myself differently, loved more, experienced true peace and joy, and lived as an expression of my true self rather than the one society imposed upon me.
The good news is, it doesn’t matter at what stage in life you may find yourself. You can, at this moment, begin to change your life for the better. The only thing required is a desire to do so.
I hope you have a fantastic day. Until next time.
Josiah Thibodeau
