Fear, Frustration And Futility

This won’t be a zen post. If you came by for something zen today, you’d better walk away right now. I totally understand that many of my readers are looking to find here their daily dose of serenity, motivation or inspiration. And, most of the time, they do. But today is gonna be different. If only because life is not a sequence of zen moments and, every now and then, puts us in challenging situations.

A Romanian Story

The other day, a Romanian blogger, let’s call him A., mentioned me in one his tweets, with something like “somebody tell @dragosroua that he’s doing a shitty work by keeping his link on a paid WordPress theme”. Yep, exactly. That’s what I said too: “What?!”. What’s the link between shit and a… link? I couldn’t see any. And what theme?

I don’t usually engage, but this time something made me to (in the end, my hunch proved me right). So I answered back: “what theme?”. I don’t sell any theme, I’m only part of a WordPress framework where I sell subscriptions, not products. It’s a big difference. He replied: “sumo, do you sell others?”. So I said to myself, this is going to be a long afternoon, but let’s start it anyway. First, let’s see if we can have some common concepts: “do you understand the difference between a theme and a framework?”. He answered: “right. but it’s still shtity”.

At that point I realized that we were not about finding the truth about a situation, being it a tiny link on a product, but about saying: “what you do is shitty”. I call this trolling. When you always say “no”, no matter what the other person responds. Don’t get me wrong, trolling is a very profitable job, if you know how to do it. It attracts thousands of visitors each day. They silently admire how the troller manages to tell all kind of stupid, sometimes spectacular things, to a more and more helpless interlocutor. And that traffic sometimes even converts. In advertising, mostly. And it converts very poorly, but that’s another story.

So, knowing that we’re not going to advance, I answered: “so it’s trolling, IMHO”. Waiting to see if we do have the same opinion about trolling. There might have been a chance that the other guy was an honest individual, looking to find something about something. In that case, he would have come forward with something like: “yes, trolling is shitty, I’m not trolling, I just want to know x and y from you. Can we?”. But nothing happened. Nothing came back.

Until today, when the same blogger wrote a very nice piece of work about yours truly. On his blog, this time. Two and a half paragraphs. Half of one of them was a reference to another article in which another troll, now the biggest blogger in Romania, engaged in a similar conversation with me, five years ago. By the way, the same number one blogger in Romania still makes a decent amount of traffic by talking about my ex-wife and her own opinions about me. What can I say, I’m famous…

But back to this two paragraphs article. To make a long story short: if you didn’t know by now, I’m arrogant, I have a very bad image in Romania and everybody is running away from me because I will cheat them. Badly. And if at some point I will end in a hole, Christ Himself won’t be able to save me. Romanian are Orthodox and they take these things very seriously. And their most popular bloggers have a natural ability to mix shit and Christ in the same paragraph.

The Inflated Ego

After I finished the article I found his phone number (toldya I have a very bad image in Romania but apparently I’m still able to find a blogger’s phone number in less than 10 minutes, if need will be). I called him and started a calm and normal conversation. It took me a while until I finally got him to listen. Until then, he was very upset that I hurt his feelings by making him a troll. Anyway, after ten minutes we got to the following conclusions:

• I’m not selling a theme, I’m selling a subscription to a framework
• I have the right to keep whatever link I want in whatever parts of my products
• If he felt hurt, that wasn’t my intention

Of course, nothing about he hurting my image on his blog, about his assumptions that I’m an arrogant cheater and so on and so forth. But no request about these topics was made from my part either, to be honest. Because, in the end, I don’t really care about that. And now we finally came to the core of the article. What we read so far was only the setup.

The plot thickens.

Fear

Whenever you attack somebody else (without being attacked first), being it verbally or physically, you express fear. You’re in a “fight or flight” situation. Something is pushing you to such a point that you must find an outlet for this pressure. Most of the time, people who are going around arguing are scared. Even frightened.

They can’t express fear in a normal way. Most of the time, they even forgot what made them so fearful. It may have been that they didn’t have enough attention as kids. And now they will do everything to get your energy, even if it’s negative energy. They can’t stand the fact they’re going to be left alone. Solitude is triggering so many hurtful memories, that they will do anything to get rid of them.

Of course, most of this process is unconscious. If they will be able to take it to light, in their consciousness, allegedly, they will be able to process it and find a healthy way of expressing their needs. But they don’t bring it to the conscious level. Mostly because they already have the habit of the “fight or flight” situation and habits are very powerful. Not to mention that the psychological reward is fulfilled, even in a “fight or flight” situation. They get their thrill. So, they not only think this is the “right” way of going around, but also that this is the “only” way to do it.

Frustration

A very close relative to fear is frustration. But, as opposed to fear, which usually bursts in with short and powerful actions, frustrations builds up in time. Tiny things that aren’t the way you want, some small needs that are never really fulfilled, or even long time memories that are still making you blush, all these things are creating an invisible swamp around you.

And in that swamp you start to crawl. You get bitter and bitter, forgetting the fact that you created that swamp. It wasn’t there before. Your unfulfilled needs, your memories, your incongruences with reality made that swamp appear. But you don’t remember that. And you know that? Because you found a better creator for your situation: somebody else. And that somebody else has a fundamental quality: he’s guilty.

Frustration is making us irresponsible. We’re so bugged and pressured that we can’t stand for our own actions. We delegate our misery to somebody else. You’re guilty for me feeling like crap. You’re guilty for me not having enough money (and that’s only because you already have more than me). You’re guilty because I’m not a successful person (and you, of course, you already are).

Futility

When you build your day to day existence based on fear and frustration, what you experience is not life anymore. It’s futility. It’s lack of meaning. It’s an endless string of void actions with void results and a big void of emotions. You’re not experience anything outside the thrill of the“fight or flight” situation and you can’t imagine another place other than the swamp of your daily frustrations.

At the end of the day, when you go to sleep, all you can think of is: “Who am I going to fight with tomorrow? Who is going to give me back the energy and attention that I lack so badly?”. And nothing more, except that. Just a silent, endless emptiness.

The Stimulus And The Answer

So, why do I wrote about fear, frustration and futility? Instead of writing about zen stuff? Because I finally understood that there is an important part for this stuff in our lives. Whether we like it or not. And that we have to process fear, frustration and futility, not hide it under the carpet. Or, even worse, ignore it completely.

Yes, this entire post may look like it’s futile, just a waste of time. “Don’t engage in it: turn your face from it, and it will disappear. Listen to some zen music, read an enlightening blog post and it will pass.”

To be honest, I don’t think so. Not anymore. I think that everything that must be said, must be said. Even if the trigger was an unpleasant situation. The uncovered parts may be ugly, but they are still our parts and we gotta live with them. Yes, the assumptions of this blogger (who I never met in real life) were based on fear and frustration. Yes, I am not the person he depicts and his entire plot was built to create some more futility in his life. Yes, I could have turn my face and move on with my stuff.

But something made me not to. I chose to answer to this stimulus and put the whole story on this blog post. I’m not after a resolution with this. I don’t know if somebody is right or wrong. I don’t even remember from what we started in the first place. And I also don’t want to prove that I’m smarter or nicer than him. And, by all means, I don’t want him to praise me or, even worse, to become friends.

But I want to send a very clear signal that I’m here. And that I know about fear and frustration. And I know about futility too. I just chose to accept them as parts of my life, process them when need arise and then move on. Not stumbling around in a swamp, spitting bitterly at every person that may look like having enough energy to give me until tomorrow.

So, I’m arrogant and I do have a bad image in Romania (at least two people, high profile bloggers, hate my guts). Guys, get used to it.

This is who I am, and nothing will change about that.

Ok?

The Power And Price Of Illusions

Let me ask you something: do you live in an illusion right now? Your life, as you perceive it, is 100% true? There aren’t any hidden parts that you’re avoiding? Are you sure about that? Your personal relationship is exactly how you think it is? Or your career? Just take a close look at your life and try to see if there are any parts that are just masks, facades for another reality. A reality you’re not yet ready to accept, to be more precise. I agree this is not an easy thing to do, and you’ll see why.

I did a few informal tests with this a while ago. I asked a few friends that question and guess what: everybody answered they’re not living in an illusion. They live their life as they should live it. After a while, let’s say a few months after the first round of questions, I restarted the “test”. The answers were slightly different this time. Some of the respondents told me that parts of their personal relationships proved to be a little foggy. Some of them told me that their career started to feel void sometimes.

Fact is everybody agreed that, to a certain level, they actually lived in an illusion, if only for some parts of their lives. That informal test proved to me something I was feeling for a long time. That we live in, and sometimes we thrive for illusions almost all of our existence. Illusion is part of our life, either we want it or not.

And with that, we’re getting to the core of this article. What is he power of illusions and what is the price we’re paying for obeying them?

How Can You Tell You’re Living In An Illusion?

First of all, let’s see how can we define an illusion. There can be many answers to this but let’s try to keep it simple: an illusion is a facade to a much difficult to accept reality. A facade which covers parts that we don’t really want to accept or to expose to others. This facade acts like a replacement for this reality, like an embellisher or a camouflage net.

Now, the real question: how can you tell you’re living in an illusion? If that illusion is a replacement for reality, well, it can get really tricky. So, how do you really know you’re living in an illusion and not in the “real” world? How can you tell?

I tried many approaches to answer this question, and, to be honest, none of them really clicked. Every time I was sure I was close to defining an illusion, the whole scaffold crumbled and had to start over. Because, you know, one of the fundamental qualities of an illusion is its “reality” consistence. What makes an illusion an illusion is its capacity of camouflaging reality with something believable.

Well, after many trials and errors, I finally fond something that worked. Something that was able to define an illusion as opposed to reality. And that was fear. More precisely, fear of loss. If you are experiencing fear of loss in your current situation, then you’re in an illusion.

Let me explain.

Imagine you’re in a dream. You enjoy so much what you dreaming and yet, deep down, on a very remote level of consciousness, you know you’ll have to wake up. And you don’t want that. You want to stay there because the dream is much more enjoyable than the real world. You’re afraid to wake up. You’re afraid to step out from the illusion of the dream.

It’s the same thing with illusions. You feel so great living them but deep down you know they’ll have to end sooner or later. And you don’t want that. So, you’re afraid to wake up to your real life. Why? Because your real life may be different from what you’d want to experience. Maybe it’s boring or maybe you don’t have enough friends or emotional stability, or maybe you don’t have enough money.

Whatever the reason for your refuge in an illusion, it is always associated with the fear of loss. In real life, you have nothing to lose. You’re already complete. You can only enjoy your life every second.

Comfort And Fear

There is this thin line between an uncomfortable reality and a soothing land of illusions. Staying in the uncomfortable land will require a lot of effort. Will require willpower and endurance. Will make you feel sad, miserable or defeated. On the other side, in the land of illusion, all you’ll need is a leap of faith. You need to fake just a little bit, until you get in tune with your own illusion. That doesn’t require a lot of effort. It’s far more easier than facing reality upfront. So, you take the plunge, dive in, and give up to reality.

Living in an illusion will give you comfort. But it will also force you to live with the fear that you may lose what you already have. Because you know it’s not real. You know it will end, sooner or later.

The moment you get rid of the fear, the illusion will dissolve. Most of the time this would be a traumatic process. You became so attached to a certain lifestyle that loosing it all of a sudden will have major impact on your life. But sometimes the dissolution of the illusion will be actually enjoyable.

Regardless of the emotional vibration, losing an illusion is always healing. You will emerge as a more powerful and grounded individual.

The temptation will always be there though. Whenever life gets complicated, you will try to find an escape in some mental constructs, in some new territory that will seem more comfortable. Forget comfort. Comfort is the mother of all illusions.

Life is not comfortable. It’s beautiful.

Dieting For Illusions

Getting rid of illusions is very much like losing weight through dieting. Not only you will be confronted with a completely different way of doing things (eating, in this case) but your own body memory will fight this change: why are you taking me through this? Don’t you know I’m used to weight 100 kilos? Why are you trying to make me weigh 85 kilos?

Well, those 15 kilos difference are the weight of the illusion which is dragging you back. They are keeping you in an inexistent world. And yes, loosing them is difficult, but only in the beginning. The moment you can break through and make your body understand that its real weight was always 85 kilos, and that 100 kilos comes from an illusion of safety and control, things will dramatically change. You will gradually lose the illusion of a 100 kilos individual and get back in your 85 kilos real shape.

It’s the same thing with illusions.

For instance, if you’re in an illusory personal relationship, you may have an excess of emotional safety, tied up to a certain person. I guess the more popular term for this is co-dependance. Our internal memory will fight our intention to break free reminding us that we’ve “always” been comforted and soothed by that specific person. Which is, of course, completely false. We just thought we’ve been comforted, we perceived the whole context as comfortable. But our internal memory developed this sense of attachment and will fight back every time we’re trying to break the circle.

So, loosing that excess of attachment will make you not only look slimmer and fitter, but it will actually make you understand that comforting and soothing doesn’t have to be necessary tied up to a certain person. On the contrary, you’ll realize that comforting and soothing are not at all coming from the outside. But that’s another story.

Once you’ll get rid of that excess, you’ll realize that a fulfilling personal relationship will never keep you blocked by fear of loosing it. It will be the same in any circumstances. It will survive to contexts.

And it’s also the same thing with much simpler situations, like a job. If you really fear loosing your job, then you’re living the illusion of stability. You’ve grown an excess of “illusory stability fat”. You are tied up to a single context and you fear the loss of that context. The “stability fat” is keeping you tied up to that job. And when you actually lose the job, the fat will make you slow, clumsy and depressed.

You’re not designed to be slow, clumsy and depressed. That extra fat can be avoided if you just stop fearing loosing your job. This simple step of avoiding fear of loosing your job will actually stop the process of accumulating “stability fat”. Yes, you may lose the job. But you won’t lose your financial stability. Because you’re a valuable individual and you will always find other sources of income.

The Power Of Illusions

By now you should be comfortable with my description of illusions and with their associated problems. But there is something very important about illusion that we shouldn’t ignore: illusions are powerful. Extremely powerful. Sometimes, they can push us do things we couldn’t do in different circumstances.

As you can see, I’m trying to avoid a black and white definition of a life with or without illusions. I don’t think they’re bad or good. As I said, I think we’re sometimes thriving for illusions.

Fact is, every time you’re enjoying a motivating facade for some parts of your life, you may do incredible things in that area. Let me give you an example.

If you’re usually a shy guy, and that is your real nature (that’s nothing wrong with being shy, by the way) and you get into a personal relationship which will feed your self-esteem, you will accomplish a lot of stuff. Suppose the relationship is just an illusion, and your partner doesn’t really care about you. As long as the facade will be motivating, and you will be thinking that you’re cherished and valued for who you are, you will grow tremendously. Yes, you will still be in an illusion. At some point you will have to wake up from the dream. But while in the dream, your life advanced tremendously. In this case, the awakening process will be really traumatic. But there’s no need to abandon or ignore the things we did while you were in that dream. They’re still part of your personal history. They’re still part of your experience.

If we look at them this way, illusions can sometimes be extremely efficient triggers for evolution and growth.

The Price You Have To Pay For It

But there is a price for this. Back to reality, here comes gravity. You will always experience disappointment and frustration, once the dream is over. You will feel defeated, alone and cheated. Even more, you will experience shame and guilt. I wish I could say there is a way to avoid all that, but I’m afraid I can’t. An illusion will always bring a cold shower at its end and that cold shower will not feel good. The only good news is that, based on that specific experience, you may avoid a future similar illusion. Of course, that will not prevent you from entering other, not related, life illusions.

As I said, sometimes we need them.

But, if you can live your life without fearing that tomorrow will take away something from you, you’ll be safer. Loss is inevitable. Loss is more often than not the direct effect of growing, of evolving, of going up. You can’t climb if you stay at the same weight. You can’t evolve until you don’t get rid of some of your old ideas and beliefs. You have to lose them.

Your Turn

I’m really curious now about YOUR illusions. Are you living some of them right now? Do you have any experience with overcoming them, with recovering from them, with avoiding them? Share it, I’m listening

Positive Motivation Versus Negative Motivation

What makes you move forward? Which are the most powerful stimulus for you? Are you doing stuff only to avoid potential dangers, or are you just curious? In today’s post I’ll talk about negative motivation versus positive motivation.

You may ask now: motivation is just the power which moves you to do stuff, are there anything like “negative” or “positive” to it? Isn’t this something related to what you do, not to what motivates you? Well, in my opinion, your motivation is directly shaping you actions. If you’re positively motivated, your action will most likely have a positive outcome. If you’re negatively motivated, your action will have an undesirable outcome.

Negative is rooted on fear, while positive is rooted in service.

The Fear Root

Fear means you’re acting on the pressure of losing something, This is what fear is: the menace of losing something: your current context, your money, your life. Fear was for a long time a fantastic survival mechanism, and for that it was a good asset on our old life kit. It was fear which made the weaker one to run or to hide when a real threat was around. And fear made the weaker survive.

Our brain has a very deep connection with fear. Deep in our limbic brain (the oldest part of our brain, also called the “reptilian” brain) lies the centers of fear. On top of them other layers of our brain have grown. But the deeper core is still there and it can still be activated.

Fear can manifest in our life on various levels. Some of them are social norm, like “keeping up with the Joneses” (fear of losing prestige) or like blind competition (fear of losing market share). On a personal level, fear is manifested by the need to prove something (fear of being inadequate) or by revenge (fear of coping with a loss).

The Service Root

On the other side, service means giving to others. Offering support, knowledge, material or emotional assets. On the human evolution scale, service is a little bit younger than fear. It was only when the need for survival was met that individuals could gather in communities and start to experiment with sharing. Until then, fear was necessary in order to survive.

There is this inverse connection between fear and service: the lower the fear level, the higher the service level. If you’re not afraid you can easily go out and share, because, well, there’s nothing to be afraid of. If you’re afraid of something, you’re going to limit the contexts in which the danger could manifest, therefore, you’ll going to limit your sharing activities.

Another opposite to the fear is curiosity: if you’re eager to find out more, you’ll have to get rid of your fears. You can’t be curious if you’re afraid. If your fears will tell you that something bad will come out  of this action you’re so curious about, you’ll never do it.

The Black Power Of No

Wether we like it or not, we’re still conditioned to act on fear. Our limbic brain is still stimulated by a variety of factors. We translated our old fears related to survival to our modern indicators of success: we’re afraid of being taken for less than we are or we’re afraid that somebody talks bad about us. We’re afraid that we’re going to lose something if we’re not talking “immediate and aggressive” action towards the potential danger.

Negativity is powerful.  Every time you’re afraid, you’re giving your focus and power to the potential danger. All your energy must be there, because your reptilian brain is telling you’ll have to survive. Doesn’t matter for that reptilian brain if the fear was socially induced, if you scream “fear” it will be activated.

The more fear factors you have, the more energy you’ll have to allocate. And you’re going to pay attention to a lot of potential dangers. Sooner than you think, you’ll measure your success by the rate of your survival actions. And you’re becoming accountable to your fear sources. You’ll be actually driven by your fear sources. This is why a fearful person is so easy to manipulate.

The Difficult Honesty

If you’re not afraid of anything, you’ll have nobody to be accountable than yourself. All your energy is still inside you, there’s no threat you have to monitor. And so, you’ll have to assess your success by other metrics. The survival mode is off. There’s nobody to be afraid of. There’s only you. Honestly.

Honesty is difficult. Being accountable to ourselves is something we’re not used to. For millions of years it was so easy to feel good by only avoiding danger. Now it’s incredibly difficult to feel good by creating something. Avoiding dangers and creating stuff are mutually exclusive, of course. You can’t do both at the same time.

Motivation

Every time you’re going on a negative motivation, you’re giving away your energy, this is why the outcome will be most of the time undesirable. Except a few rare situations in which your fears are real, you’re only picking up socially conditioned fears. There’s no real danger there. You think you’ve done something appropriate in order to survive, but the danger was a fake. And you feel cheated. Frustrated. Ashamed.

If you’re braking the circle of fear, your motivations will be based on curiosity and service. Out of the fear circle, you can create and share. You can learn. You can experiment. You can enjoy.

Happiness and fear cannot live in the same individual. Because fear will always take historical precedence, there will be simply no energy left to feed the happiness. All the energy is going to the fear. You simply don’t have enough.

If you’re curious enough to investigate the root of your fears you’ll find out they are just shadows. Somebody else is projecting some twisted lights and your environment is all of a sudden filled with a lot of shadows. If the source of light is not twisted, the environment is clear and neat again, no shadows. All you have to do is to investigate who and why is projecting the light. If you don’t agree with what you see, nobody stops you to project your own light, and get rid of the shadows for good.

The difference between negative and positive motivation is the difference between surviving and living.

Wasted Power

The worst thing that can happen to you is to realize that you have unlimited power. That you can do anything. That you can create everything you want. That there is nothing outside you and everything is inside, waiting to blossom. The worst thing is to realize that you’re here to create your own life. Why?

Because you’ll face some terrible questions.

Life Purpose

First question: what should I do with my life?

It’s so much easier to live without a purpose, thinking that you have limited powers, that your destiny was engraved in stone and you can’t do anything to change it. Asking questions like “what should I do with my life, now that I DO have the power to change it?” it’s a difficult process. Not everyone is ready to ask that question, and even less are ready to give an honest answer. It’s so much easier to put your entire life on somebody else’s plate.

Put it on your parents, they didn’t love you when you were a kid. Put it on the system, it’s making you a 9 to 5 slave. Put it on your spouse, for being lazy or angry or unconsidered. Put on your kids are they are here to steal your precious time, a time that you would otherwise spend on meaningless tv shows or useless gossip.

It’s easier to put the guilt on somebody else, it will free your consciousness and ease your pain. Why live a life with a purpose when there are so many difficulties? Why do something if somebody (your parents, spouse, kids, boss, this out-of-nowhere man) will prevent you for doing it? Why searching for a higher purpose when you can think you’re just a limited individual with limited power and limited beliefs?

Living a life without purpose, without accessing your enormous power is always a safer bet. Admit it: this concept of unlimited power doesn’t fit with your current lifestyle. So, it must not exist at all. (more…)