How to find success and happiness in life

UNCOMPLICATE MY LIFE

It’s so tempting just to grow lazy in the current cultural climate. Mentally lazy, spiritually lazy, physically lazy. It’s all just too easy. We can always blame our parents, the kids at school, the bullies in the neighborhood, society at large (“an un-understanding world,” as the film *Heathers* famously put it) for our frustrations and complications.

It’s easy to lose faith in ourselves. There are so many tempting distractions, and it’s so easy to feel depersonalized. The workplace is either too challenging or too boring. The Internet and the TV all bring us more information or stimulation than we can sort coherently. It seems like we’re always staring into some goddamn screen in order to get a grasp on reality.

No one understands us.

There’s always a new car or a new house to buy. Some new gadget that’s supposed to make our lives more streamlined or more pleasant, anything from an iPod to a vacuuming robot to a vibrating sex toy.

Yet how can we determine what’s really important to us and how we exist in a relatively natural state, unless we put down the toys and stop blaming others for our problems?

Find an affordable place to travel. Take long walks. Talk to the people who live there. If they don’t speak your language, learn a bit of theirs. If you’re American, see how long you can go without telling people where you’re from. Disassociate yourself from your usual group while you’re visiting. Wear something that doesn’t give you away. Try to listen more than you talk. Take a bus or train, or get into your car, and travel for a few hours without a map or destination. Try to end up someplace unfamiliar, where you can get yourself lost for a while. Don’t use a global positioning system to tell you where you are. (After all, it’s just another screen, right?)

You will become more alert, more aware of the sights, sounds, and other sensory aspects of your surroundings. You may have thoughts and feelings that surprise you. That is good, even if they seem frightening at first. Just sit with them, and let it all wash over you. Just be in the moment. Then, when you feel you’ve had some experience that you recognize as a defining moment of your adventure, find your way back.

Talk to people when you need help finding your way, or when you want something that catches your interest explained to you. Don’t let yourself grow too frustrated or bored with your surroundings, but recognize that a bit of disorientation and boredom is okay, wherever you are.

Once you’re back in your room, leave the TV off, and if possible, the Internet as well, for these things tend to distract you from your immediate surroundings and can suck up more of your time than you intend for them to. If you must use these devices, then set yourself a time budget for that and stick to it. The discipline will do you good.

Then, once you’re home from your trip, *keep acting as if* you’re still traveling. Budget your time for distraction, but don’t get tedious about it. Make time in your life, at least once a day, to visit some unfamiliar place. It can be a neighborhood, a park, a museum or library, a family-run restaurant – just make it anyplace that is not set up with the express purpose of *entertaining* you. Go for experiences that increase your activity, rather than encourage your passivity. Find situations that engage you, rather than pre-packaged “experiences” that remove you from your opportunity to make original choices.

Stop buying products and services that you don’t really need. Don’t borrow money to pay for things. Learn to pay your bills on time, even if it’s uncomfortable and even if you can’t afford to pay off the whole thing at once. Close up any loopholes that make it easier for banks or other companies to keep you hooked on their products and services.

You don’t have to buy everything you think you do. For instance, walk into a library and open up an account so you can borrow their books, CDs, tapes, and other media. If you eat prepackaged meals a lot, learn how to make something from cheaper “scratch ingredients” that’s easy and tasty. Go for a walk instead of paying for a movie.

Figure out what you care about, passionately, and strive to make it part of your life. Cultivate a personal style. Don’t wear what everyone else is wearing, and don’t say what everyone else is saying if you don’t believe in it. Do things on your own sometimes, without your family or friends, and pay attention to what moves you. Learn discernment – the capacity to make choices that reflect *your* true priorities and concerns, rather than those of others. There are many good books and tapes on assertiveness, time management, and other topics that help you manage your life and free yourself of family or societal pressure to conform. Read some reviews and get the information that seems like it might work for you.

Every time you say “yes” to a commitment, say “no” to another. If you need a reason to not commit, just say that you’ve got other priorities. Don’t feel compelled to explain yourself.

After you’ve done this for a while, up the ante. Every time you say “yes” to a commitment, say “no” to TWO others. And so on. The power to make choices that reflect your true priorities and concerns is perhaps the most amazing gift any human can possess.

Uncomplicate your life.

--Bill Brent

Sunday, November 13, 2005
started: 9:01 a.m.
stopped: 9:59 AM

P.S. When you see media that's about other media, typically they are pushing some kind of agenda. Usually it's an effort to get you to buy something you don't really need.

see also www.PutDownTheToys.com

see also my BLOG at www.AuthorsDen.com/BillBrent