A CONFESSION: I FORGOT TO continue writing this post! Many thanks to a big fan of this blog Bhawara for reminding me that I still owe her (and everyone of you) the last 6 rules. Well, but the fact that I also skipped Day 75 and wrote a new post as Day 76 might be a sign of the fact that I knew that I was about to skip Day 75.
Sigmund Freud would call this process of deliberate forgetting "parapraxis" -- known to most of us as "Freudian slip" (thanks to the latest episode of Malcolm Gladwell's Revisionist History podcast that gives me even deeper insight to what it means). It could be the case that I wasn't ready to write this post, which could be due to the very fact that I really did not have that many rules in life.
I must confess, again, that the idea of "12 rules" wasn't entirely mine and was that of Jordan B. Peterson whose bestseller 12 Rules For Life: An Antidote to Chaos had inspired me to think very differently about me, my life, and my own existence in the world. Dr Peterson is special to me in how he does not simply give in to the nonsense -- and stick to his rules in living a meaningful life. Think about it: What would life be without some, if not all, meaningfulness?
Is there more to the reason for breathing, eating and seeking temporary pleasure. I am not trying here to allude to religiosity (especially Buddhism which is my main moral compass and guiding system of belief; in fact, it this alluding were meant to direct somewhere, it would be more to the philosophy of Stoicism rather than Buddhism). So, to make up for my forgetfulness (please, please, please forgive me), I will reiterate and simplify the first 6 rules before going into the next 6 rules. Like Dr.
Peterson's, these rules are simply "antidotes to chaos." I had failed at all of these rules in the past and the results of such failure were wide ranging: from hurting myself to hurting others, from a small thing that could be fixed to a manmade disaster, and from a trivial human error to a PTSD-like kind of trauma with which I will forever have to live. Human beings evolve because we learn from mistakes of others, not by making those mistakes ourselves.
Can you imagine, if we should experience the biting of a snake before we can learn that which isn't good for us? Well, we would all be dead already. So, learn from my mistakes, please! I have not lived very long but I have seen, experienced, read and studied quite a few things. I will, in this list, try to tell these rules to you in a manner that combines both my limited personal experience with what I have learned from, mainly, other people.
To make this list a bit more useful, I will also add the "practical advise" to the end of each rule to make it easier for you to see how you may think about adopting, or rejecting, some of these rules in your life. Stay away from selfish people. There is a sea of scientific evidence from the field of social psychological to support this rule. The gist of it is that what psychologists call "social proof" is dangerous.
It's true that following others allows us to survive as a species. But that doesn't mean that what a lot of people do is right. Don't do something just because a lot of people do it. A practical advise for this rule: Don't hang out with people who are either selfish or have bad faith. Such selfishness often leads to justifications in engaging in many other things driven by bad faith.
You, too, will be doing awful thing before you even know it -- and worse, sometimes you wouldn't even know that which was bad). In the spirit of design thinking, there is even a saying that to be creative is to be able to think of something as if that something has never been there before. In other words, just because a lot of people use something doesn't mean that there's no better option to that something.
It just means that such option has not yet to be created; Be kind, not right. I myself had been in many situations that I would fight just to "be right" -- about a certain knowledge or moral principle -- just to, later on, lose a friend (or friends), or worse, realize that I was fighting for what I wasn't even sure of. It is the simply the fact that we do not always know everything that we should know about any particular thing or situation.
To make an absolutely true judgement on anything, we're risking making a bad decision. When Steven Jobs tells us to "stay hungry and stay foolish," he's asking us to accept the fact that we can might as well be wrong on just about everything we think we already know well based on whatever reasons we have created for ourselves to believe so.
So, based on that, a practical advise is always be kind to others and cut our own ignorance some big big slack; Live your own life, and not the life others want you to live. In other words, don't confuse "what you want" with "what other people want you to want." In our life, we have our own pace of moving forward.
Just because someone or some people seems to be getting ahead of you doesn't mean that you should always speed up, or worse, get off your own path to compete with that person on his/her path. A practical advise: It's important to define your own path based on what you want to be and what makes you feel content -- and, most importantly, stick to it.
I shall cite one of my favorite thinkers (although I do not always agree with his ideas) Immanuel Kant who writes (and I paraphrase because I am not that good at memorizing the exact quote) that "Freedom, alas, is the ability to set your own path and walk on it without allowing any forms of arousal to distract you from it"; Don't compete senselessly, but always be ready for challenges.
My mentor MIT Professor Jan Wampler once said to me that, for him, his success is a result of 99% of hardwork on his part, leaving just 1% for his intelligence. I want to revise this formula, success needs both determination (49%) and luck (51%) — by which I mean the kind of luck that puts you in the right place at the right time.
But you first need the determination (AKA will power) — simply because without it, you won't recognize luck when it appears (and you would just be blaming other things or people for your failure). So, a practical advise is: Follow your own path at your own pace, but don't be too complacent and always stay alert and curious for the opportunities, which you will only see them only if you are trained to; Do not tolerate a bad boss.
My father once said that a bad boss is the parasite and deeply troubled symptom of evolution as a whole. It's a disgrace to our humanities as a whole. They are the reason for our transgression. This rule goes hand-in-hand with the first rule, but with a larger impact. If work is what makes us content with life and gives meaning to what we do, you want your work to define who you are -- and you can only do that under a boss whom you respect.
If you continue to tolerate and work under them, they will use their power to make you a scapegoat. Histories have shown that which to always be the case. A practical advise is the same as the rule itself: Do not tolerate bad boss. Call them out. Cut them off, and move on. Period; Get older and wiser. The philosopher Cicero once remarked about the beauty of getting old, and we should all embrace the very same philosophy. Getting old naturally is great!
We become less a slave to our biological desire as we grow old -- please love that feeling! A practical advise is to try to be that old person that younger folks want to come and learn from your embedded and built wisdom, Don't become an old person who nobody wants to see being alive. Now, you are oldest than you have even been; Do not give a fuck about everything (but give a fuck about something that matters to you).
In The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by the today's most famous successful writer in the world Mark Manson, the author argues that we only have a limited amount of fuck to give in life, so if we give a fuck about everything that comes our way we won't have any of it left to give to what really matters. I first thought that he was apt to say something so true in such a witty way.
Then, I soon realized that what Manson means is based on something much more scientific: According to the principles of cognitive psychology, we have very limited cognitive capacity, so we can't let ourselves be dwelled by all socially-induced thoughts that come our way. You may have heard of how science has shown that we can only keep up with a certain number of people in life, we can only engage in so many multi-tasking responsibilities, and so on.
The same goes with this very key idea about not giving a fuck about what don't matter.
The truth is that we can be almost certain that most of the time we will fail to control what people think about you (what people think about you is in their heads -- not yours!); so the practical advise is to accept such fact that only try your best to engage in what you can control -- your own mind to not giving a fuck too much to too many things of which you are not in a position to be in control; You do not need to have an opinion on everything.
It's true that we tend to want to have an opinion on everything. Why is the desk you're working on your laptop right now not as clean as you want it to be? Why is the cup you're using not as nice as the one you used to hold? Why is the spoon you are using looks so strange?
Why is it that the cover of the book the person sitting across the row from your in orange and not in white (it would be much better if it were to be in white)? Why is the world not going the way you want? You get the point. There're so many things in life that you either 1) Do not have enough knowledge about to have an opinion?
-- what do you know about the ergonomic design; engineering and building construction; mining, molding, and melting process; and publishing industry and its complicated advertising campaign to know about the design of the desk, cup, spoon and book cover? Even if you happen to be a keen industrial designer who knows everything about a desk, cup, spoon and book cover, you must still be practical and flexible.
I like to live by the wisdom of the economist John Maynard Keynes: "When information changes, change your opinion." Again, not only do we not know everything in the world, but for many things that we think we know there can also be new data, research, information to disprove it; and when that happens those who can adjust will benefit. And, 2) There are so many things in life that do not matter to you at all whether you do or do not have any opinions about them.
Restrain yourself from wanting to show off how much you want other people to think you know by criticizing everything. A practical advise is to look at things the way they are, and appreciate them that way -- if you can; Don't be a victim to your own ability to think about something.
It's a blessing to have a brain to be able to think, but it's also a curse that we tend to focus too much on what we think about while we're thinking about it -- to the point that we often, if not always, miss the point. Confusing? That's intentional by the way. Let me try again.
My favorite thinker Professor Daniel Kahneman once said "Nothing in life is as important as you think it is, while you are thinking about it." What Dani means here is that we tend to fall into the trap of what he calls "focusing illusion." We tend to give too much weight to what we're thinking about -- especially while you are thinking about it. So, a practical advise is whenever you are writing an important email, don't send it after at least 24 hours.
It's backed by science that you are likely no longer wanting to send it after having read it again while you are not "obsessively thinking about it"; Be distrustful of gossips. People do gossip -- and many argue that it's our nature. That's actually not quite right according to what we know about the science of human's evolution. What's our nature, argued by the literary theorist Jonathan Gottschall, is not gossiping, but telling stories. We love stories.
Gottschall calls humans "storytelling animals." We also tend to like to create stories that are based on something that we are NOT certain about. The anthropologist Michael Herzfeld always tells his audiences that anthropology is the study of gossips, and he is spot on. Myths, ultimately, are forms of gossips speculating how the world was pieced together and how might we -- small people who weren't there when it happened -- deal with our own existence. It's this very ingredient that makes stories interesting, suspenseful, gripping and lovable by readers.
Gossips, in many ways, are "highly entertaining lies" put together with some grains of reality and that's why we love to justify hearing them. Why are gossips so entertaining? First, it's not about you, so it's like watching an intensely drama in the comfort of your own armchair. Second, it promises "exclusiveness," making you feel important to be chosen as the one to whom the intimate story is to be told.
Third, it speaks to what you feel lacking in your life -- in other words, gossips "fill some of the voids of your malignant desire," allowing you to tell yourself that the unsatisfied situation in which you are currently is because of someone else and not because of you. Gossips have so much power to shape our perception on or against someone or something. And many times because we believe gossips, we misjudge people, situation, and things. That's unfair to humanities. In fact, Pope Francis himself said something extremely similar.
He, in fact, compares gossips to "bombs," and people who gossip to "terrorists." What the Pope said encompasses all the three aforementioned points of why gossips are, in this sense, sinful: "Because gossip is like a bomb. One throws it, it causes destruction and you walk away tranquilly." Some even go as far as to say that, even though stories are fun to learn, we are most peaceful and content with life when we don't make up stories in our head.
Buddhism monks choose to chant lines from ancient scriptures that they are not fully understand so that they can stay away from making up stories. That's the only way to be calm. I personally stop people from telling me gossips. A practical advise here is simple: Resist the temptation to make up a story that you do not have any solid "court case" kind of evidence to back it up; and, even easier, stay away from listening to any of it.
There's a lot of scientific evidence in Steven Pinker's new book that the quality of your life once you have disengage yourself from the availability of an unevenly distributed but highly entertaining fabricated information.
Or if you don't trust Professor Pinker, you could perhaps trust the Pope when he said "No gossip -- and know that the best remedy against gossip is to bite your tongue" What's the point of being a terrorist who carries a bomb with you wherever you go?; Don't attach yourself to an image of anything -- even if that thing used to be what you most revere and respect. In my very own religion Buddhism, any forms of attachment is a source of suffering. Like people, things change.
When time changes, things also change with it. I used to get so upset over the fact that someone I once loved no longer loved me, to the point that I was almost driven to a complete self-destruction. It's until I realized that I was too attached -- not to this lover -- but the image of her that I wanted to stay permanently, disregarding the fact that she must grow, change, and become whoever she wanted to be in life.
So, this kind of attachment not only disrespects the nature of our universe (AKA the fact that time does exist) but also disregard the individual's right to change his/her self image. This also applies to your own self image. How do you think you could freeze that despite your becoming older daily as well as the circumstances surrounding such change? Come on, dude: don't be a jerk and be respectful. A practical advise?
Do thank the owner of the restaurant you have been going to for years for keeping the restaurant open even if the food is no longer as good as it was. If the owner asks you why you thank him/her, tell him/her that you have detached yourself from the curiously delicious image of the food that the restaurant once served. LOL and kidding. Just say thank you again; and, finally the last rule, Don't try to change the world -- try to change yourself.
A while ago I wrote a personal memoir in a form of a meme to myself that "I do not want to compete with anyone, and all I want is to be better than yesterday." In design thinking, we like to think that we can "prototype" our life simply by eliminating what we no longer want in our life (e.g., smoking, drinking) when we get up in the morning and trying the live that life for a week.
If it works out just fine, the prototype works and we can go on living our life based on it. If it doesn't, then we go back to see what can be fixed, tweaked or re-booted in order to achieve the goal. Dr Peterson provides something quite similar in one of his 12 rules: "Rule 6: Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world." Actually, I would go as far as to never try to criticize the world.
The world will change when you change the way you view it -- with a clearer mind of a constantly prototyping life. Up to this point, now I know why Dr. Peterson needs to write a book to discuss his 12 rules -- I couldn't easily do the same thing in fact. There're so much to talk about concerning the reason for each of these rules to exist. A practical advise: Life is only meaningful when you see, think, and experience it as fun.
So, try to get up in the morning knowing what you want to do on that very day and, don't be too greedy, try to live one day at a time.
On Design Thinking Part 1: The Gist