Its 2007 I have just graduated high school and have no f***ing idea what I am doing with my life. Up until now the only thing I felt like I was born for was to play football and be funny. Football was my passion but through lack of knowledge about working out and lifting techniques it took a major toll on my body, messed up my knees, and a never-ending list of back issues. I had a simple formula curls , bench press , and box squat(a squat that doesn’t go all the way parallel, a teens trick to lifting more weight while seriously hurting yourself) a breakfast of brochampions. But functionally it was retarded, sure I could box squat 800 lbs and bench 400lbs but how much of that was usable. So because of my injuries I decided not to go and play junior college ball which was one of my dreams to play for a team with my family name sported on the back in front of thousands of people, as you could imagine it was a tough choice that threw me in to a whirlwind of confusion.
Being a lazy person in every area of my life except football I quickly was looking for an easy way out. Another example of my laziness was my lack of ambition to be good in school. I was the class clown and troublemaker a title which I took pride in achieving. Now it seems like one of the biggest regrets but understanding it was all preparation for where I am today it seems appropriate.
Math was probably one of my biggest fears. After slacking off early in life in math classes falling behind seemed to advance exponentially to the point I just stopped caring. This caused me to look for careers that did not require four year degrees and also had practically no math use. This is a very limited field. This is a very common problem with our school system which focuses more of memorizing facts than understanding how to learn.
Ultimately I settled for heating and air conditioning school it required hardly any math skills and you could graduate in 9 months and make 30k a year WOW WEEEE a slackers dream.
Partying Years
I would document the next 3 years but there was so much partying I cant remember. Jussssssst kidding but seriously one thing that always struck me as funny was living in a college city all my friends were going to four year universities and I was working but we all partied the same and I remember thinking wow I am so glad I am not wasting money on a education partying all the time. I saw what happens to a lot of kids and this causes the majority of them to graduate in 5+ years. This was the point of my life that I feel I truly did not make a whole lot of advancement besides the fact I was passive aggressively “finding myself”. The idea of self education has mo meaning in my life at this point but having fun means a whole lot.
The Event
In 2010 I started living by myself for the first time, the years before I had 3 roommates and very little privacy and no time to dedicate to just myself. This I believe was very important because it allowed me to have alone time and start to ask my self questions. There was a growing amount of thoughts and feelings of life being meaningless. I kept trying to find meaning in my life but everywhere I looked there was none.
This lead to many wikipedia inquiries because I started to search out the information to answer questions I had rather than be oblivious and say “just because so”. A key change in my behavior from ignorant to informed should be noted.
Around this same time I had my first lucid dream that I can remember since being a child. A lucid dream is when you become conscious in your dream and can manipulate it. This really started to make me question what the purpose of dreams were and ultimately how consciousness worked. A couple more books and I was starting to gain a passion for reading about the unexplainable phenomena that has a beneficial application for advancing your self mentally and physically. Also movies like The Secret, What the bleep do we know, Law of attraction were trending and covered ideas of positive energy attracting positive opportunities and visa versa with negative, but mostly this was was very superficial and contained no real actionable steps beyond visualization.
After reading Deepak Chopra’s The Seven Spiritual Laws To Success I started to realize the importance of meditation in a world of constant distraction and attention demanding tasks, up until this point I had known nothing of meditation or really spiritual practice beyond light prayer.
It was around this time that I had a very important personal experience that happened during a meditation that allowed me to see the questionable nature of what we call reality. This was “the event”. It was at this point the creation of intense confusion had come back again and stayed with me for another year and half. Even though I was confused I saw a glimpse of truth and meaning , a sign that helped me to know I was on the right track.
Illusions
Now this confusion is much much different than the early confusion in my life of which the latter was much less impactful. This new confusion could be likened to that of a child who his whole life has believed in some mythical belief(i.e santa clause, tooth fairy, Easter bunny) only to find out it is not real. Imagine your a child and you read books, hear stories, have trustworthy influential people tell you this is real and then you find out it was all an illusion to keep you happy.
The illusion in my own life was my ego and beliefs associated with the ego. This ego compartmentalizes and categorizes everything to make sense of our world. Yet when we have beliefs that are deeply entrenched and something comes along and contradicts that belief you ignore it or refuse to consider it. The ultimate ignorance. This is where my ego belief systems were stopping me from progressing beyond my current state.
I used to think the earth was created specifically for us humans and essentially everything revolves around us. But if you look into what we know about the universe you quickly realize that we are just a cog in a very very very very giant machine and everything relies on each other for the machine to work. This was a very big shock to my ego and initially denial set in but once I was able to go beyond my ego construct and acknowledge this information, meaning and truth flooded my life from every corner.
2011 Until Now
Having identified an important tool in recognizing decisions based out of ego logic I started to grow…..and grow fast.
I remember being very overwhelmed by how much I was reading and learning and for the first time THINKING , original that is. There would be days that I would be doing something and all of a sudden I would have an emotional roller coaster because of a revelation about some concepts that I was learning that fit with other ideas that were completely separate, it was beautiful and sometimes the awe would cause me to cry in happiness. Finally meaning was every where in my life. It was only once I stopped searching for it that it found me. How beautiful is that?! I can say now that I am truly happy which has allowed me to look at my past and see just how unhappy I really was.
I can go through dozens of examples of things that monumentally changed my perspective but the reoccurring theme that kept coming up again and again was the search for truth and meaning. A key point I would like to make is that it is truth and meaning to YOU and you specifically because what is true and meaningful to someone else may not be to you.
What Does All This Mean For You?
The thing that I think helped me progress the fastest was thrusting my self in to situations that went beyond my comfort zone(experiences that made me question my beliefs) and intellectual capacity(reading books that were very difficult at first). I think the famous quote “if success was easy everyone would be successful” applies here because this journey that I speak of can lead to the most amazing growth and success but it is very difficult and requires someone who is serious about changing their life.
My next post I will lay out actionable steps that I took and you can take to make drastic changes in your life.
To End With
Every person needs to understand that we live in a universe of infinite potential. To think that something is impossible is to make it impossible. To create change you must change your mind. But first it starts with a decision.
Which decision will you make ?
Fighting the Fatman 