Here is today’s Game and what’s going on.
Here is what I discovered today in Chapter 3 of Stop Doing That Shit by Gary John Bishop. The title of this chapter is “The Question.”
Let’s dive into today’s highlights:
- Ponder a couple of questions for yourself:
- Why do you do what you do? Again, go beyond the usual answer you give yourself. Think.
- If you keep living this way, where is it all headed? I mean really headed? Not some wispy concept of your future but rather a down-in-the-dirt look at where your current actions are leading you. Well? You might find those questions tough to answer, but this is the kind of digging that will release you from your trap of sabotage.
- Self-sabotage isn’t always the big, extreme things we do to screw up our lives. It’s important to understand that there are millions of tiny ways we are sabotaging our lives every day. You have to see there’s a problem before you can do anything about it.
- It’s important to understand that self-sabotage can also lead to very destructive behaviors. It shatters marriages, fractures families, turns people to hard drugs, alcohol, gambling and sex addictions, infidelity, and all kinds of toxic behaviors that trash an otherwise decent life.
- When it comes down to it, no one can seriously fuck up your life quite as magnificently as you can. And you do.
- We are all building things only to burn them right back down. And we’re tired of it.
- Ponder this: What if the point of your life is to continually and subconsciously set up “the game” of your life, a relentless cycle of sabotage and recovery?
- Where our conscious thoughts and subconscious conflict, the subconscious wins. Always.
- Contrary to popular belief, it’s not the strongest nor the fittest nor the smartest who survive.
- Who, then, is it that survives? The predictors. Those who can most accurately predict change can adapt to change and therefore survive.
- The good news is, you are a prediction and survival machine. It’s the single reason why we as a species have stayed around as long as we have. Our ability to see things before they happen allows us to adjust and stay safe. We do that by remembering, by keeping score of what’s good, what’s bad, what’s right, what’s wrong, what works, what doesn’t work, and all via a massive trench of memories stored in the banks of our subconscious for reference and guidance.
- You have spent your entire life keeping track, looking for familiar keys to where things are headed, and following a life of the familiar. Your ability to predict gives you a greater shot at survival.
- You predict your relationships, your finances, the weather, politics, your health, your career, you name it. You have an opinion about how all of that (and more) is going to go.
- Humans are funny creatures, and we’re often not content to live a safe, predictable life. We want excitement! Adventure! Passion! And that’s the crossroads where human beings exist. Pulled to predict life and stay safe, yet at the same time thirsty for the new and its tempting allure of a better existence. Wanting and lusting after change while gripped by the anxiety of keeping life safe, certain, and survivable. Minimize the judgment, minimize the failure, crush the pain and the uncertainty and the chaos of real change. Safety eventually wins. Survival is the victor. That’s what we call a life. Wanting new; addicted to the familiar. Even when the familiar is as dull as dishwater. When it comes down to it, you’ll willingly trade in what you want for what you know. You’re doing it right now in your life!
- What makes it so hard to see is that you never fully witness the trap you are stuck in. You only get to live with the consequences of that trap. Your entire life to this point has been a series of actions subconsciously driven to trap you in the same bubble of life.
- Take a minute to allow yourself to take stock here. What has been the underlying experience of this life of yours? When it’s all said and done, when you look at the struggle and determination, the victories, the defeats, the sorrow, the drive to be happy and content, the seemingly never-ending hunger for something better—better job, better body, better partner, better family, better house, better society, better clothes, better social life, more passion, more purpose, more followers, more whatever, on and on and on—what are you left with?
Those gems lead us to today’s Dadly Daily Declaration:
Most of the great things you have done with your life included some level of discomfort, pain, or pressure. That’s just how it is. Whatever you are out to accomplish in this life, you’ll have to get more than a little okay with the experience of struggle or, hell, even overwhelm. In many ways, your all-out insistence that real-life change should be comfortable is what’s holding you down. Growth—real, seismic growth—hurts. Sometimes a lot.
Keep in mind, if you really are after some kind of new life, some new and unprecedented result, that will require risk on your part. That will require you to push through your predictable self-talk, your all-too-familiar emotional freeze-frame, and reach for the unknown. You can’t do new without risk. Period.
