Who Are You?
Imagine you are a fish and your daily life is the fish tank you reside within.
Your house, commute, job, family, friends — they all make up the ingredients of your aquarium.
Every day you swim within the confines of the life you’ve built for yourself and you’ve grown accustomed to your favorite spots — even when and where you’ll receive food.
But from within the tank, you can’t comprehend what it is you areswimming in. You can’t measure the dimensions. You can’t understand the source of the water keeping you alive.
If you wanted to do that, you’d have to be outside of the tank. Then you could accurately measure the dimensions, trace the source of the water, and gain a true understanding of what your fish tank really looks like and how it functions.
Drop the analogy and contemplate your day-to-day life. One of the most difficult challenges we face is the ability to objectively (or, at least from a bird’s eye view) perceive our lives. We are so caught-up within our tanks we not only forget there’s a whole other world out there but fail to grasp the authentic reality of our lives.
If you truly want to understand the mechanics of you, you must step outside of your daily life, peer back from an outside perspective, and then evaluate the mechanisms.How?
3 Ways to Gain Perspective on Your Life
1. Travel abroad
Leave the country, culture, and community you were raised in and inject yourself into an entirely new one. Not only will this provide you with ‘perspective’ about life in general, but also allow you to disrupt your daily routine.You’ll be able to reflect back on your life ‘at home’ and evaluate it from an outside perspective. Literally.
2. Consume mind-altering drugs
There are institutions that don’t want you to know this but the truth is, a HUGE number of intelligent animal species utilize different plants to alter their states of consciousness.
Why? It’s an evolutionary survival mechanism. Evolution has figured out it isn’t all that healthy to always be living within the confines of your fish tank. That’s why you have physiological urges to step outside of it and drink alcohol, eat chocolate, consume coffee, smoke weed… the list goes on.
3. Shift your consciousness
You don't have to consume drugs, of course, that's just a shortcut evolution has figured out.Music, exercise, meditation, and the state of flow (more on this soon) do it too – essentially anything that has the power to disrupt your regularly scheduled program.When you stop reacting to life and begin understanding the patterns which influence it from a different perspective, you’re able to approach life from a different angle. Then, you can understand why you do the things you do, figure out what you truly want, and then design your life.
5 Favorite books of 2017
These books significantly improved my life and I think they can do the same for you.
1. The Ascent of Humanity: the title is purposefully misleading and not what you think. This book walks you through the course of human history, where we lost our way, and how to navigate back to a better way of life. Warning: there are epiphanies on every other page so it can be heavy.
2. You’re It: get it on Audible and listen to Alan Watts blow your mind about existence. His voice will lure you into an alternate reality and then the content will take you beyond. I suggest listening in the evening before bed.
3. The Power of Myth: our society, culture, and world is based on myths. This book breaks down not only the power of them but how they've influenced us. It also inspired me to help forge a better myth to live by – we're ready for one.
4. Sapiens: if you want to know your Self, you need to understand your species. Sapiens walks you through the course of human history in an entertaining & fascinating way.
5. Stealing Fire: we now have the technology to take our species and experience to a whole new level by harnessing our biology and experience. This book shows you how.Next week, I'm answering one of your questions. Click here and ask me something you've been curious about – it takes 10 seconds.
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