Inner Game
When I get sad I stop being sad and be AWESOME instead. True story!
–Barney
Opener
He's not coming.
–Barney
Opener
Have you met Ted?
–Barney
suitjamas: be ready to game 24/7
beware of shit tests:
If I ask you to change too many things about yourself, you're not gonna be the man I fell in love with.
–Robin
- and just for fun:
I only have one rule: for every three tens you bang, throw a bone to a five.
– Barney, S08E23
The darkness. Solitude. The Angst. All things that the average idiot would rather die than face. Thus, he won't face them. Never, or not until way too late. Instead, he (or she, more often than not), shall surround himself with, and pretend to be involved in, fake family bonds, fake friends, fake girlfriend. Talking non-stop. Never being alone with his thoughts. Always being in the passive mode, reacting to what others say, or tossing some random remarks based on what they think others think. Filling his "spare time" (Jesus...) with whatever time-consuming activities he can: a wedding! An office party! Hiding the existential void of their wretched and lousy life. Being ecstatic one moment, then falling into tears the next.
You, by refusing their fake, valium-fueled pretense at happiness, have taken the hard road. The road of facing the fear, accepting it, and defeating it.
The only way to stop falling back into the hole and hurting yourself over and over is to stop trying to climb out. The only way to beat the hole is to accept it: “Here I am. I feel like life, the world, everything, has no meaning. I feel terrible about that conclusion. I feel depressed, and I feel afraid. I’m okay with that.”
Until you can face the abyss of meaninglessness, you will always be running from it, and it will always be chasing you, its edges yawning at your heels. Face it. Go into it. Stand at the bottom and accept that this is where you are. The fear that keeps you resisting is worse than what actually happens when you stop resisting. You can handle this. Let go.
Most people never will. Then, most people will never really be happy with their lives. They will cling onto their delusions, and their delusions will keep damaging them – that’s what delusions do. People are scared of thinking too far – I remember what it feels like. I remember when I started looking into the darkness inside, finding nothing and more nothing – I was worried that if I let my thoughts completely free, I might discover that the hole has no bottom and I might kill myself. I didn’t want to kill myself. In that feeling, the answer was already contained, but I didn’t realize it until I’d gone to the bottom and stood there looking up.
– Delusion Damage, "The Hardest Thing In The World"
Going out alone. Staying home alone. Face the darkness, cross the desert, and reach strength.
I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing....only I will remain"
– Frank Herbert, Dune
Action is always better than inaction.
Bullshit. Try cooking rice, or running a central bank: sometimes, you just have to wait, and any action you can take will not make things better but worse. Sometimes you have to leave an unsolved situation unsolved, and let it solve itself, or solve it later.
Every option you're offered is interesting.
In real life, just because someone comes knocking at your door with a proposition to join a secret society to save the world, doesn't mean you should accept it. Maybe ten guys like this will come, and you should pick only one. Or none at all. Not every piece of information is relevant. Not every drawn gun must be used before the end of the feature.
A healthy lifestyle is irrelevant.
In real life, if you drink, smoke and don't exercise like Mad Men characters, you won't be a super alpha, always in shape, etc. You'll be a confused wreck, weak, tired, unmotivated, dead.
Everything's black and white, simple and clear.
Bad guys and good guys, bad guys with a big bad guy label on the forehead, good guys with a big good guy label on the forehead. A simple binary option between one or the other. The difference between success and failure is huge. It's not-it's marginal. The difference is often in the details. Then there's a leverage effect.
Movies describe reality.
It's a movie. It's fiction. You can't derive any conclusions regarding reality from fiction. It can illustrate a point, but it cannot prove it or support it.
The psychology of the characters is that of real persons.
Just because a character has a given personality doesn't mean it's realistic or even possible, and that you can therefore learn anything relevant for the real world from the characters' psychology. Remember that movies come from the imagination of some writer, who has the freedom to write whatever he likes. He is under no obligation to follow basic psychological guidelines.
You can, and should, change people.
You cannot change most people. But there are lots of people in the world, not just a given character set from a movie. You don't have to impress your peer group-you can change your peer group. In a typical movie, you get what, 15 characters? So of course, if you were one of them and your universe were limited to the other 14, if you didn't like them, you could either change them, accept them or fight them as enemies. In real life, however (!), there are 7 and counting billion people (notice the difference!). Some of them are bound to like you, some to dislike you. Make your pick:
KAREN: Who is more important to you, her or me? I like you, she doesn't. Who are you gonna pick?
GEORGE: (he thinks a little about it... and as he puts his hand on his knee and gets up) I'm sorry Karen. I know I care for you, but I just can't stand when someone doesn't like me.
You must convince the bad guy that you're right and he's wrong.
One movie got that one right, through neither the good guy nor the bad guy, but the "ugly" guy, Tuco:
When you have to shoot, shoot. Don't talk.
In most other movies, the bad guy will have killed the good guy's family, raped his woman, exiled him into a life of suffering, and trampled his toys. What does the good guy do once he gets the upper hand over the bad guy? Make him a speech. Make. Him. A. Speech. That's right: actually try to convince the bad guy of something, try to change what's inside his head. Try to make the bad guy love him. "You slaughtered my family, but please, please, tell me I beat you, admire me, admit you were wrong, admit that I won, I still care so much about your opinion!" Don't be that guy. Don't try to change what's happening inside other people's heads if you have no interest whatsoever in doing so.
There is only one contextual hierarchy.
Surprisingly, there is more than one context, more than one value hierarchy, more than one frame. Again, one scene from one movie got that one right (by accident, incidentally): Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Just because your enemy wants to beat you in a sword fight, doesn't mean you have to wish to beat him in a sword fight. Just because your enemy does karate doesn't mean you have to beat him at karate. Maybe your best option is to beat him using kung fu instead-or ignore him completely and focus your energy on, e.g., learning a constructive skillset, acquiring wealth and knowledge, etc.
All lists must have nice rounded numbers.
Some things happen for a reason, and some do not. Some things are always true, and some only sometimes. Some things are binary, others are not. Some things are absolute, some things are relative. Some lists have nice rounded numbers, others do not.
The right frame: There are no "foreign" languages.
Whether you think you can, or you think you can't–you're right.
– Henry Ford
You don't, can't, and won't learn a "foreign" language. A foreign language is a language you don't speak. If you speak it, it's not foreign. Even though you don't speak it perfectly, that doesn't make it foreign: You could spend your whole life learning a language, even your mother tongue, without knowing all of its subtleties. It's a perpetual journey. If you don't enjoy it, don't embark on it. There is no foreign versus non-foreign language, there are only various languages, and a level of skill in each.
If you don't want to learn a language, don't learn it. If you want to learn it, then you want to learn it, and you're learning it. That means you love it and are motivated to learn it. That means you enjoy learning it.
Happiness is forgetting to be unhappy. Learning a language is forgetting you don't know it.
There are no "foreign" languages. There are only beautiful languages giving you access to fascinating cultures and means of communicating with great people. You are about to enjoy this great experience: of learning a new language and enjoying every minute of it. It's both a journey and a destination.
The right method: You don't learn by learning, you learn by wanting to learn.
If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.
The classical school system for learning languages is a farce. You don't learn words by learning words. You learn words by putting yourself in a situation where you're curious to learn words.
We're programmed for survival, not learning per se. Learning is a means to an end. If you're unclear about the end, get clear about the end first.
Don't learn tables of conjugation. Get yourself in a situation in which you're curious to know the conjugated verb form. Then, and only then, lookup the conjugation.
Don't learn grammar rules. You don't learn grammar rules by learning grammar rules - your brain will learn them by reconstructing them out of applied cases. In most languages, there are usually more rules, exceptions and special cases than there are actual application cases. You'll find out the proper way of saying things. Once you do, you might be curious about the rules to connect the dots. Check them out then - not before.
The right material: Cultural immersion
Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is.
– Isaac Asimov
It's quite simply when you think of it. Which language do you speak best? Your mother tongue. How did you learn it, through grammar books? No: through immersion and contextual deduction. It's a mystery to me how people assume you should learn all subsequent languages in any other ways.
You learn your first language by being immersed in a cultural context, surrounded by the language and people speaking it. Then, your brain uses contextual deduction to guess meanings of words you don't know yet from context and add them to your expanding inner words-concepts dictionary.
Cultural context is the people you talk to, the movies you watch, the games you play, the books you read, the music you listen to, the language you take notes in.
The first option is the real immersion, where you need the language to survive. That's how you learned your mother tongue.
The second is the linguistic immersion you get when moving to another country, whatever the length of time. The only challenge there (failed by most people) is to stick to this frame, and not revert to some other language whenever you can.
The third option is the cultural immersion you can achieve from home, through books, music, movies, and computer games. Watch a movie, read a book. Think of something you want to say in the language. Lookup phrases whenever you think of something to say and don't know it yet. You'll find out quickly that whole conjugation tables are usually irrelevant. Think of a few common sentences you'll likely to say, then checkout out only those. You'll find out what you really need is first and second person, of the most essential verbs: to be, to go, to want.
To get a kick start, a good method is audio programs. Many podcasts are available for free. This should help you get quickly to The Sweet Spot. This is the first practical phase of the learning.
Your first priority is to get into The Sweet Spot of the language learning curve. This is the spot where you know the language enough so that you can watch movies or play computer games in the language with subtitles in the same language. You're able to deduce most unknown words from context, and you can look up the few words you can't. Basically, you're learning effortlessly. This is the second practical phase of the learning. There is no third phase.
You should enjoy both of these practical steps. The first is the curiosity of sheer discovery. The second is the pride of not needing any learning-oriented material at all, and yet more discovery, combined with making sense of everything, filling the dots, and solidifying all that you already know. These two phases partially overlap and strengthen each other. If you get bored with phase one, phase two should get you motivated. If you get demotivated by phase two because you don't know enough yet to connect enough, phase one should get you in shape.
Enjoy the process, enjoy the journey.
Enjoy the world
The world is a spectacle given by reality for my enjoyment.
The world is a series of textures designed to caress me.
Enjoy the world as a spectacle. Watch other people's emotions and frames with amused mastery, as an outside observer above them. Their petty conflicts and troubles don't affect you. As far as society is concerned, you're an anthropologist on an alien planet. (see Delusion Damage, "Open Your Alien Eyes")
Be bold
Tomorrow, do you want to be the guy who opened, or the guy who didn't?
– John Ryder
What do you regret more, sets you opened or sets you didn't? Approach anxiety is irrational. What's the worst that could happen? You die. A bit sooner than planned. That's it. And that's a very unlikely outcome for a simple open. Most people are more scared of speaking in public than dying. Realize how stupid that is.
Start
The first one is expensive, the rest are free.
– John Ross
Even if opening the first set is hard, the rest will be easy. It can only get easier. Likewise beyond pick-up.
Get in a positive loop
When I get sad I stop being sad and be AWESOME instead. True story!
– Barney Stinson, How I Met Your Mother
Smiling is a reason to smile. Get in a positive loop, not a negative one. Happiness is a default state. Happiness is forgetting to be unhappy.
Desire is a contract you make with yourself not to let yourself feel happy unless a specific set of conditions prevail. If you recognize yourself here, maybe it’s time for a new contract: maybe it’s time to decide that you will let yourself be happy no matter what happens in the external world.
– Delusion Damage
Be confident
Do, or do not. There is no try.
– Yoda
You don't have to be right, you have to be sure. Don't think, do. Don't overthink. Be and do. Don't hesitate. Three second rule. People, especially women, will assess your ideas based on how confident you are in laying them out, not based on rational analysis of their scientific accuracy.
Do it
Faking it is making it.
Pretending to be confident is equivalent to being confident, and will make you confident. The map is the territory: your display of confidence is your confidence. What is real is what you want to be real. You choose your reality and your role in it.
Act the way you want to be and soon you’ll be the way you act.
– Les Brown
You have to start living the life of the person you want to be.
– Bobbie Barrett, Mad Men
Reframe
If you don't like what is being said, change the conversation.
– Don Draper
Don't let other people set the frame. Don't apologize or justify yourself based on their worldview. Even if you are the only person in the world defending an idea, you're right, thus, everyone else is wrong, weird, abnormal, dumb, and should be justifying themselves, not you. Never, ever, accept a frame you don't like as your reality. You set your own frame. Live within your frame. Open from within your frame.
Compromises seem necessary only because of inappropriate situations. If you’re involved with the right people, the word “sacrifice” shouldn’t even be in your vocabulary.
– Harry Browne, How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World
If you don't like your current frame, ask yourself the question, Is this peer group worth impressing? and change the group, change the frame.
Be rational
Do you think that's air you're breathing now?
– Morpheus, The Matrix
You're only affected by what you let affect you. Breathing heavily didn't help Neo, because he was in The Matrix, thus whatever he was feeling was due entirely to his brain making him feel it. In the same way, no one or nothing can make you directly sad, unhappy, angry, annoyed. It goes through your brain. Thus, you are in exactly the same situation as Neo. Don't let irrational emotions get you down. Think crying will help? Think being depressed will help anything? Think being sad will bring back anything? Regrets are for Captain Hindsight (South Park) and his Coulda, Shoulda, Woulda penguins. The past and the future don't exist, only the present is real. Regrets are merely a form of indulging in self-pity. Don't spend time discussing what you can't change, whether it's the past or the future beyond your control. There's no point in breathing unless it's oxygen. There's no point in thinking about something unless you'll get something out of it.
Live
If you had one more day to live, would you want to spend it being afraid or would you want to spend it enjoying yourself? How about if you had 27,884 days?
– Delusion Damage
This is the first day of the rest of your life.
I do not recognize anyone's right to one minute of my life.
– Ayn Rand
If your life is infinite, enjoy every moment of it. If your life is finite, enjoy every moment of it. You could have died last year, month, or day. Every second you get from there on is a bonus to enjoy. To spend exactly the way you want to spend it.
Go for it
Why would you deny yourself something you want?
– Joy, Mad Men
If you want something, just ask. Often, wanting something and asking for it is enough to get it. Everything else are just shit tests to test if you really want it enough, if you're really confident enough in your desires. You weren't born to be a beta. Everything society throws at you is a shit test. If you want something, go for it.
Life doesn’t give us what we deserve. Life gives us what we go claim.
– Stephen Pierce
You are what you think about
– Earl Nightingale.
Do yourself a favor and learn to take yes for an answer.
– Breaking Bad
If you want something, you'll get it. Be ready to get it, and don't reject it once you get it. You might not get it the way you wanted it. You might not get it for the reasons you wanted to get it. You might not get it for the price you wanted to get it for. You might not want it anymore once you do get it. But get it you will.
Be free
But I don't think of you.
– Howard Roark
Never have your happiness depend on other people's thoughts or actions.
It all comes down to what I want versus what's expected of me.
– Fay Miller, Mad Men
What's expected of you is irrelevant. You are the center of your own life. Act accordingly.