How does our spiritual identity affect our actions and how we shape our world?
Modus Operandi
When I think of the “spirit” of something I think of its modus operandi; what is its “method of operating?” What makes it function? What drives it to work?
When I think of the spirit of a human being, I ask myself, “What does that being live for?” What makes him or her get up every morning? What makes his or her life worth living? What source of energy does that person draw upon to do what they do?
Unspoken Values
Evolution and biology can describe the reasons behind a lot of basic instincts and behavior, but they don’t answer a whole lot about the values we hold implicitly through our traditions, customs, culture, and art.
We all go through rituals that define our existence. It could be watching TV, going to church, reading books, meditating, playing sports, doing your job, eating, videogames, working out at the gym, writing, taking care of your kids… you get the point – if you do it periodically then it is a ritual – and these habits implicitly tell us what we value out of life.
But how often do you ask yourself, “Why do I do the things I do?”
It can seem like a stupid question because we take these things for granted. Maybe you do them because you have always done them and that is just who you are. I hear people give me that response a lot, but that is circular reasoning; saying those things only reinforces who we are, even if that modus operandi isn’t doing ourselves much justice.
Backbone = Identity
I wouldn’t say that our actions define ourselves (although that might be a behaviorist approach to identity), but I do think how we define ourselves plays a significant role in our actions.
Buddism and many Eastern philosophies put a strong emphasis on the “nature of self” as a spiritual guide. They also recognize that how we think of our self determines certain values we hold about our world. For example, many schools of Buddhism recognize a non-dualistic nature between self/other (that we are all interconnected and no one is separate), thus compassion and loving-kindness become logical moral values to hold in our relationships with friends, family, neighbors, coworkers other acquaintances, and nature itself.
Some of the big questions regarding anybody’s life are,
- “How do I fit into the world at large?”
- “What purpose do I serve in life?”
- “How can I improve conditions for myself and others?”
Only you can answer these questions with your own reason and experience, but let it be known that your answers have a profound impact on how you live your life. Thus, I would argue these questions are worth contemplating through daily introspection, meditation, or prayer.
Getting Off The Soapbox For A Moment
Before I conclude this post let me just clear up a few things that often get misunderstood when I write about spirituality. I do not intend to change anyone’s values or how they live their life. What I am suggesting is that we take the time to question why we live the way we do. It is a deep question, directed towards you, but not one that I can provide the answers for.
I think when we try to make a change or improvement in our lives we often take the most basic questions for granted. But often those fundamental questions are the catalysts for the biggest improvements one can make in their life.
I write in order to get people thinking and re-evaluating that world which we take for granted. I want to bring into light implicit assumptions and beliefs, and get individuals to think critically about these ideas they have grown up with all their life. Through doing this individuals can grow a stronger backbone, become more dedicated to what they actually love to do, and drop actions which have become “no good” habits of familiarity that we have wrongly identified to.
But – because we are all diverse individuals with separate interests and talents – it is up to each from their own individual perspective to decide what is right and wrong for them. There is no objective good for everyone; our traditions, culture, art, and tastes (our “pursuit of happiness”) should be particular to our personality. We should not take anything as given just because we have grown up with it or some higher authority has “bestowed” it upon us. Even the values I hold implicitly in my writings should be doubted and questioned.
A Healthy Backbone Builds New Elements, Gets Rid Of Old
A spiritual backbone gives you a center to stand on but it is not necessarily fixed in one place. Just like your spine is built of various bone elements, your spiritual spine too is mobile and multi-faceted. The only thing different is your spiritual spine never stops growing and evolving in new ways (whether you are conscious of it or not).
Your relationship with the world is never fixed, it is always changing; new aspects are constantly arising and fading into the ever-expanding shape of time. From a day-to-day basis things may seem to be moving slow, but when you reflect on months or years they can seem like eternities apart. The world is actually a really exciting and dynamic place if we keep our eyes open to it. Not many things remain the same over extended periods of time. Isn’t that what evolution is all about?
The only thing worse than not having a spiritual backbone at all is having a concrete one, which refuses to change in the face of new evidence and experience. Extreme fundamentalists from all religions share this illness, like when biblical literalism takes precedence over scientifically-gathered facts.
Man is not omniscient nor infallible, that is why God forgives and, most importantly, why we should forgive ourselves. All actions and creations of men, including the Bible, are not perfect. This is why spirituality in all of its form is a never-ending process and not a goal-seeking one.
Living In Congruence
When our unspoken values become spoken we are more conscious of the driving forces in our world. Now we know why we get up every morning and we are proud to live out our lives in congruences with those values.
This requires a higher level of consciousness. No longer is our modus operandi like a puppet on strings, but now we are the puppet masters. We understand the reason behind our rituals; we don’t just live them out obediently but with a sense of joy, flow, and engagement. There is purpose behind every action. We embody what we believe and we act in accordance. As Gandhi once said, we “Become the change we wish to see in the world.” Within that cycle, within every action, we are constantly being born and re-born into a different world.
So don’t stay static, never be afraid to re-align your spiritual backbone, and keep living the life you want to live (as you see fit). The world depends on your moral courage and aptitude.
Whether it is an advertisement in Time Square, the opinion of a TV personality, or the rhetoric of a politician, we should always be mindful not to confuse the face with the idea. Often we get too caught up in the appearance of an idea and neglect how it relates to our world in the realm of logic, reason, and metaphysics.
Some like to blame corporations and mass advertising for our consumer culture, but I also believe it is partly our fault for accepting the lies that are constantly fed to us. Society, as a whole, seems like a very gullible bunch. Like savaged wolves we still like to travel in packs, always voting Republican or Democrat, always turning on our favorite TV shows, and constantly investing our time and effort into the same old patterns of thought.
Especially in this age of information, our minds are always being filled – like a sponge – yet at the end of the day we rarely if ever take the time to reflect, contemplate, and introspect on what ideas we should keep and what ideas we should throw away. We have become programmed by a culture filled with deception. It is not about who holds the truth, but who is the best persuader.
Be A Healthy Skeptic
Looking through our list of cognitive biases, it is hard not to be alarmed at all the different ways one can be duped. A big part of critical thinking is to be aware of these biases, another part is to always be what I call a healthy skeptic. By this I mean we should always leave room for doubt and always have the flexibility to change our views in the face of new information.
No kind of dogma, whether through religious authority or political consensus, should be held blindly as a truth – unless it stands to our own reason. People can certainly suggest ideas to us, but it is only through each individual’s critical thinking (or lack of) which determines if we accept an idea or not.
But even our own faculty of reason can be faulty. No individual is perfect or has all the information in the world; as the philosopher and scientist Alfred Korzybski points out, the map is never the territory, if it were it would have to be the same as the ground it covers. Since we are beings that can acknowledge our own ignorance, we must also include a healthy dose of skepticism in whatever it is we choose to believe regarding life. If we choose not to, we will surely find ourselves in the same cycles of behaviors and outcomes, and therefore never progress.
The Function Of Beliefs
A belief is confidence in the truth or existence of something without proof. For example, one can believe that “everyone is a good person at heart despite their actions,” but that is not a claim that can be properly falsified or proven (and therefore it is not a matter of science according to the philosopher Karl Popper). A belief is true only so far as it permeates each individual’s perspective. It is high-chunked information based on our everyday experience.
So despite beliefs inherit non-truthfulness in the face of scientific rigor, the human perspective necessitates that we hold beliefs about our existence in order to function effectively in our world.
Knowing that we all hold beliefs, we can begin understand why being a healthy skeptic is so important. A belief is only as important as it is a positive influence to our actions. And even our belief in what is a “positive influence” is a subject we should always debate (both in our heads and amongst friends).
So while I preach a philosophy of consistent skepticism, I also want to acknowledge that having beliefs, opinions, and presuppositions are important and necessary. They are information about how we view the world. The key is to be flexible with those views (and always willing to change in the face of new experience and evidence).
Reflection And Introspection
One important aspect to critical thinking is to contemplate why we believe the things we do. Why? is always the big question, and the more we ask it and attempt to answer it, the more we are aware of our patterns of thinking and our false assumptions.
The deeper we dig into our inquiries the closer we come to answers of “I just don’t know.” Acknowledging this ignorance can become an amazing insight, because to know what you know and know what you don’t know – that is true knowledge.
Introspection is such a great tool because it allows us to re-track the steps of our experiences and take notice of things we may have took for granted the first time around.
As far as we know, humans have the greatest ability to reflect on their experiences, but they aren’t the only animals to exhibit these characteristics. Studies have shown that when lab rats are given a chance to experience downtime after going through a maze, they are likely to learn the maze quicker than other rats who are simply put through trial-after-trial.
Researchers theorize through brain scans (although they can’t know the mind of a rat for certain) that this downtime is spent replaying memories. They paid particular attention to the hippocampus, an important structure of the brain responsible for learning. Researchers think this act of replaying memories may be a general mechanism of learning, and perhaps it explains the memory-formation theories behind dreams (which too can be seen as another kind of introspection).
What This All Boils Down To
The message I want my readers to walk away with is that our minds are incredibly powerful tools, and it is important that we actively and consciously use it to our advantage. I believe that sometimes we take our ability to think for granted and in the process we forget how to separate a lot of bullshit from the truth.
No scientist, politician, relative, or movie star can use our brains for us. And when it comes down to how we think of our world we need to distinguish between what we are told from what we believe to be true through our own experience and reason.
This doesn’t mean the scientist, politician, relative – or even movie star – can’t offer us information or insight into a particular perspective; I am only saying we must remain forever vigilant not to accept these ideas on any kind of dogma. Instead, we must look through our own mind’s eye to make the best and most cohesive sense of our world.
I am going to keep this post simple. The past couple of days I have been writing intently on some ideas about mental well-being and human relationships. It is a short ebook – no more than 10 pages – but I think whoever reads it and tries to apply these ideas will find positive change in their lives.
In the future I may be selling ebooks like this for a very cheap price, but for now I want you guys to get a chance to enjoy some of this information for free.
- Richard Bandler
The only thing I ask of you before I give you the download link is to subscribe to my newsletter. Here is the subscription form along with a bit of information. Once you enter your address you will get an email to confirm. Upon clicking this link you will be sent to the download page.
If you experience any problems then please e-mail me. Thanks and enjoy.
Information on newsletter:
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The Emotion Machine Newsletter is published twice every month. It’s content is divided between a variety of things including personal growth, productivity, psychology, health, spirituality, social philosophy, and entrepreneurship. Content will be a mix between new posts and various goodies I find across the net. This is one of the best ways to keep up with my latest whereabouts and at the same time receive a diverse collection of reading material from all over the web.
Whether it is school or work we are all familiar with having to meet deadlines. Some of us may find them a helpful tool while others find them a damn nuisance.
Is that ticking clock in the background really helping us work harder and more efficiently? Or is it giving us incentives to rush in some situations, slack off in others, or even frustrate us to the point where we neglect our work altogether?
This article wishes to explore these situations and ask the questions:
- When are setting deadlines productive and useful?
- And when do they inhibit us from doing a good job or achieving a goal?
- Douglas Adams
Setting a deadline for disappointment
I want to destroy the notion that we must set deadlines for all of our goals. Some things just aren’t conducive to time-related constraints.
Take for example your health and fitness – is it really appropriate to take some arbitrary date and say, “I must lose 10lbs within the next month.”
What if you don’t meet your goal? What if you only lose a single pound? Are you going to feel frustrated and give-up? Albeit it’s a small step, but does not meeting your quota really take away from the achievement of losing one pound?
What if instead you said, “It would be nice if I lost 10lbs within the next month.” That is a much less restricting statement because you aren’t telling yourself what you absolutely have to do. You are still maintaining an empowering vision of the future without setting a constricting deadline (and setting yourself up for a potentially crippling disappointment).
Can’t rush inspiration
For some people their creativity is their main source of livelihood. Their job depends on them to come up with riveting ideas that capture people’s imaginations. This is true for people like musicians, filmmakers, and artists.
When I think about this in the context of deadlines I am reminded of a scene in the Spike Jonze movie Adaptation. The whole movie centers around Charlie Kaufman’s struggle to create a film based on this book called The Orchid Thief. For those who don’t know, Charlie Kaufman is a real writer and director…he has worked with such excellent films as Being John Malkovich, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and Synecdoche, New York.
In the movie Kaufman (who is played by Nicholas Cage) gets a call from his boss wanting to know how the screenwriting is coming along. He says he needs to see it on his desk in a couple weeks, and in turn Kaufman replies, “You can’t rush inspiration.”
Is this true? Can you put a deadline on creativity? I’m tempted to side with Kaufman on this one, especially since I consider him one of the most innovative writers of our time. Creativity can come at any moment. Imagine rushing a piece of art only to come up with an idea that is ten times better the day after it is due – that would be devastating.
“A deadline is negative inspiration. Still, it’s better than no inspiration at all.”
- Rita Mae Brown
Working best under pressure
In defense of deadlines, there are some people I know who claim to work best when they are under pressure. They thrive off of the thrill of channeling their stress into a state of flow – getting in the zone – and working their butts off until they have finally finished their project.
This could be true for some creative endeavors, but I imagine that this strategy is most effective with work that is more do-oriented and less thinking-oriented.
If you already have a clear picture in your head of what needs to get done, then setting a deadline is a great way to motivate yourself towards action.
One example I will borrow from my own life:
I have been wanting to write an ebook on well-being and happiness ever since I first got interested in mental health and personal development. I have had ideas floating around in my head for years. Finally earlier this year I wrote an outline on the types of lessons I wanted to include. Now that I have everything comprehensively planned out, it all boils down to getting it done.
Realizing this, I now know it is a good time to set a deadline for actually getting this thing out of my mind and into the world. That is why I am giving myself until the end of the month to finish writing it. This is one case where I am OK with setting deadlines – even though I am the kind of person who usually prefers spontaneity.
A beacon of light in the distance
Because most people are so bad at time management, we often see deadlines as something that is always right in front of us – forcing us to get to work and get things completed.
However, deadlines can also be something we place in the distant future. For example, when I first started this blog in June of 09 I gave myself two years to turn it into a profitable enterprise. I am not even a year into it yet but this deadline has guided me to stay focused on what my bigger goals are. It is a beacon of light – a vision for the future – that is in the background of everything that I do.
When deadlines are used in this way they can become a kind of symbol for success, something to aspire towards, and dedicate energy to gradually over time. Deadlines don’t always have to rush us to be effective; they can give us room and be inspiring.
You may have already set deadlines like this without even being aware of it. For example: when you were a young adult (or if you are one now like me), you may have said at one point, “I won’t get married until I am 30.” This is one example of setting benchmarks way in the future.
Beware, however, that when we place these distant deadlines for the future, if we don’t revisit those goals and aspirations from time to time, we may forget about them or run too far off track.
When do deadlines work best for you?
This is my rudimentary analysis of deadlines. I don’t wish to rid the world of them completely, but I do think it is important we put them into perspective. In some contexts they can do wonders, while in other contexts they can inhibit us severely.
Tell me – what are your experiences and thoughts on deadlines? When do they work best for you?
It’s 9AM. I am already starting my second cup of coffee, and I have just finished an hour and a half of reading other people’s articles while leaving thoughtful comments. This is what I have been doing for the past couple of weeks in hopes of driving more traffic to my site.
In the pursuit of any endeavor we can’t ignore the fundamentals. Knowledgeable, aspiring young bloggers know that you need to build relationships if you want to establish a loyal fanbase. This means visiting other blogs, replying to comments and e-mails, making your site look presentable, and providing consistency in content.
However, the fundamentals alone won’t get you the success you want, whether it is with blogging, starting a business, or with life in general.
Don’t get me wrong – the fundamentals are crucial – but you need that X factor if you want to take your work to the next level. In fact, with the competition, it is almost as if we need a Y and Z factor too.
So what do X, Y, and Z stand for? Well…that is for you to figure out. If I could tell you, then they would no longer be X, Y, and Z; they would just be any old information that any hack could get a hold of.
Risk-Taking
- Ray Bradbury
Pat Flynn at SmartPassiveIncome.com makes a healthy living off blogging. He says he is not a millionaire, but he does make enough to support his wife and new baby boy. As a successful businessman, he says if you want to up the ante then you need to take bold actions.
In business or in life you really only have two choices:
A. Do you want to blend into the background?
B. Or do you want to stand out from the rest?
When asked this question, many will jump to their feet and scream, “I want to stand out from the rest!” But it isn’t that easy.
Standing out can be painful. It requires us to step out of our comfort zone, take risks, experience failure, and then still have the conviction and will to get back up again. Many won’t be able to get back up on that horse after only their first time falling. It can be that hurtful and dispiriting.
Mindful Persistence
Some folks believe that as long as you are strong and persistent in spite of your failures, then you can make it through anything. I’ve written about this before and I certainly still believe that commitment is a strong value to have during any endeavor.
But what if your failure isn’t due to you or any lack of skills? Maybe you keep getting thrown off because there is something wrong with the horse? How do you know when a failure is due to your lack of commitment or if it is the pursuit in itself that fails?
That is why I propose mindfulness, a concept I discuss very frequently on this blog. Mindful persistence means knowing when to be persistent and knowing when to ditch an idea completely.
We need to know when to attribute a failure to our self and when to attribute a failure to uncontrollable circumstances. If the problem is something inside ourselves, then we need to stay persistent, do research, keep failing, and eventually learn the tools of the trade. If the problem is an uncontrollable circumstance then it is time to accept a change in strategy.
“Test fast, fail fast, adjust fast.”
- Tom Peters
What risks am I taking?
As a 21 year old, my biggest resource is not money or experience but how I spend my time. I graduated college a semester early so that I could get a jump-start on what I wanted to do. Even before I chose to major in psychology I knew I wanted to make a living being self-employed, without any concerns for bosses and strict deadlines.
My biggest risk thus far is my decision to remain unemployed and devote my full-time towards this site. I am now working on my first ebook, which is going to be my first bold step forward in monetizing my work.
Some may think I am naive or foolish, but I see things in my future that I cannot expect others to see for me. That is a big part of what makes a risk a risk. I am willing to step out on that limb.
Ask yourself, “What risks am I taking?” What things are you looking to put on the line and what do you think you can achieve in return?
Join me for the ride
This blog is as much about improving myself as it is about improving the world. That is one of the major themes throughout my writing. I provide a lot of free and useful content on this site and I want to encourage people who have a similar attitude to join my newsletter, where I share my latest posts along with articles and videos from all over the internet. If you click on that link you can also check out the latest issue of my newsletter and get a taste for the types of things to expect in the future.