“In life, everything is personal; don’t be fooled.”
I have the flu.
And I’m so bad that it’s hard to type, my body hurts as if an elephant had passed over me, and I think I’m seeing the white light at the end of the tunnel…
The thing is that, besides having the flu, I’m more bored than a child at the opera, so I’ve started to reflect on life in general and mine in particular.
And I have realized that spirituality indeed rescued me from certain death at the hands of whiskey and cheap cigarettes.
But I also recognize that spirituality almost became another addiction for me. You know… We addicts change one addiction for another.
And I was taking things literally in the beginning. And that was dangerous.
For example, with the matter of the four agreements of the Toltec law.
1. Be impeccable with your words.
I am more obsessive-compulsive than Jack Nicholson in As Good as It Gets (What a coincidence that the main character of the movie was a writer 🙂
Because of that, I followed these four Agreements to the letter and tried for years to be impeccable with my words.
I only got two things.
- Heartburn. (If you suppress your words long enough, they turn into fire and burn you inside.)
- A shitty life. (How the f*ck are you going to succeed in life if you spend your life in mute mode.)
When I stopped repressing my words, I lost my job, my partner, and my friends. And you know what? I stopped having heartburn, and now I’m living the life of my dreams. I’m not kidding.
To repress my words was to suppress the real me. I don’t do it anymore; I don’t live in mute mode. Now, I say what I think (although I think what I say; I’m no fool).
2. Don’t take anything personal
In life, everything is personal; don’t be fooled.
Self-improvement, Self-awareness, Self-love, and Self-esteem all revolve around “Self”… yourself.
And the effects of other “selfs” in your life.
When I was super involved with the four agreements, I pretended my attitude was that of an old Zen master: unflappable.
Instead of learning spirituality, I was learning to pretend.
Pretending is the worst spiritual thing you can do. Spirituality is about finding the truth and your true essence.
And for that, you have to learn to listen to your emotions and to take things personally.
Some time ago, a guy wrote this to me on Twitter,
“I’ve been reading you for years. I’m going to stop reading you. Lately what you write is garbage, you are useless.”
“Don’t take it personally,” my head said. But my gut said, “WTF!”
And I got angry.
In doing so, I analyzed what was bothering me: that a reader, after years of reading my content for free without ever writing me a single positive message (or buying my books), paid me back with ingratitude and publicly insulted me. Not only to stop reading me but also to try to damage my image.
Remember, it is ALWAYS PERSONAL.
To analyze my emotions after that comment, changed my life completely.
I started to approach my work differently.
And I am doing better than ever.
3. Don’t make assumptions
Life is a casino.
If you don’t gamble, how the hell are you going to win?
Warren Buffett is called the Oracle of Omaha precisely because of his ability to make (accurate) assumptions about the future behavior of markets and people.
My grandfather, who was another great investor (although not Warren Buffett), always said, “If it smells like shit and looks like shit. Don’t eat it, it sure is shit.”
Moral: don’t make assumptions = repress your intuition.
And repressing your intuition disconnects you from the source/God/Universe/Reality. And if you don’t listen to your intuition sooner or later, you’ll end up eating shit.
What I don’t do is think for others. But I analyze every human interaction I have to know who I’m with at any moment.
Before, I didn’t, and by following this “agreement” to the letter, I’ve been cheated on, lost money, and betrayed by my friends.
So now I listen to my grandfather: “If it smells like trouble, it’s trouble. There’s no need to check it out. “
Make assumptions, and trust your instincts.
4. Always do your best.
I used to do that, and I was in terrible health (one cold after another) because I didn’t get enough rest.
And on top of that, everything I wrote “sucked” because my creativity was drier than desert sand.
To have new ideas, you have to live new experiences.
And to live new experiences, you have to spend long periods without effort.
In the shower is where epiphanies come to us. Why?
Because the warm water relaxes us, and the best ideas flow from our subconscious to our conscious brain.
Don’t get me wrong- you have to make an effort. Life is a battle without a quarter. But you also have to disconnect.
Being productive 24/7 is the most unproductive thing you can do.
To breathe, you need to breathe in and breathe out.
To live well, you need to work and rest.
This is a dual world, and the word “always” leads you to unbalance your reality.
So my unsolicited advice today is, “Don’t always push yourself to the max, or like bad athletes, you’ll end up hurt and miss the season.”
A virtual hug
AG