You Are Asleep At The Wheel In Your Life If You Don’t Live By These 17 Rules
“Most of us spend our time seeking happiness and security without acknowledging the underlying purpose of our search. Each of us is looking for a path back to the present. We’re trying to find reasons good enough to be satisfied now. Acknowledging that this is the structure of the game we’re playing allows us to play it differently. How we pay attention to the present moment largely determines the character of our experience and therefore the quality of our lives.” — Sam Harris, Neuroscientist and Author of ‘Waking Up’.
You’re currently asleep at the wheel.
Your decisions are being made for you.
Your environment is shaping who you are.
Your beliefs have been programmed because you accept what you hear and see at face value.
The news.
The movies.
What the people around you tell you.
You’ve accepted life and the beliefs of others, the herd, your parents, your family and friends.
Does that sound like you? It’s most of us.
I’m able to speak with conviction because I believe I’m finally only beginning to wake up, and it’s taken me so much time, so much hard work and so much exploration.
It’s taken a crusade like commitment.
I was lucky (or unlucky) in that I chose the vocational path of full time, venture backed entrepreneurship, which forces a purging of fears, and turns out, forces a deep look into many of the areas of existing that require one to ‘wake up’.
It forces the understanding of:
· How humans decide.
· How making a product ‘people love’ means engineering to take advantage of their conditioning to get them addicted
· Complete self reliance
· Deep understanding of the nature of competition
· Existential questions that make you deeply ask why you’re doing what you’re doing.
· Deep understanding of how free markets work.
In that process, I’ve observed others who don’t make it to the point of of no return, the point where there’s no turning back and one is fully decided and committed.
Whether they haven’t found their reason to exist and thereby didn’t create the conditions or environment that forces them to begin, and/or remaining asleep at the wheel and finding bliss through ignorance ( I envy them ).
There are so many forces to contend with, and it’s hard to filter them all or go against their deeply engrained grain.
I know I struggle with it more than anyone.
The only difference is I made the commitment to never turn back, which is a commitment everyone can make.
As I sit here writing on a Sunday, mixing up my reading between six or seven books, I read a line quoting James Baldwin, one of the most awakened men of our time, and it made me seek to explore the differences in those who are awakened and those who aren’t.
It made me wonder why some make that deep commitment to wake up, and why others don’t or can’t tap into that place that drives commitment to seek, explore and self actualize.
That quote was from today’s issue of Maria Popova’s Brainpickings:
“It has always been much easier to give a name to the evil without than to locate the terror within. And yet, the terror within is far truer and far more powerful than any of our labels: the labels change, the terror is constant. And this terror has something to do with that irreducible gap between the self one invents — the self one takes oneself as being, which is, however, and by definition, a provisional self — and the undiscoverable self which always has the power to blow the provisional self to bits.”
Waking up is the ability to look further, think for yourself with conviction, understand the forces around you and understand the power you have in shaping your reality and world.
From my (limited) experience, here are traits I observe to be what humans who are ‘awakened’ exhibit:
1. Awakened Humans Believe It’s Impossible To Know Really Anything But Try to Know Everything With Voracious Knowledge Acquisition
They believe:
They don’t try to make sense of life, but try to exist in its frame as best as they can.
This leads to voracious and insatiable learning and exploration that is life-long, often leading to long passionate lives and vocational success.
2. Awakened Humans Understand That “Vocational Success” Is Just That, and Nothing More
They’re able to zoom out and ‘see’ vocational success as only one worldly piece of the equation that is life.
That is why there is capacity for a ‘homeless person’ to be more awakened than a billionaire.
People asleep at the wheel are only able to see it for their programmed face value which is (in first world America), ‘my work defines me, therefore I must succeed’.
This is an extremely limiting view and often leads to small and short sighted action that limits the very thing they’re striving for most.
3. Awakened Humans Are Deeply Passionate For It’s Own Sake
According to Albert Einstein himself, he was nothing more than curiously passionate which pushed him to explore questions that lead to giant breakthroughs.
J. Krishnmurti, the most accurate life teacher of all time says the key to living, loving and existing is ‘Passion without motive’.
To that I say, learn to be voraciously passionate for it’s own sake and accept the hard fact that it’s a choice to give your life deep meaning. Here’s another legend, Viktor Frankl, pioneering psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor on finding meaning:
4. Awakened Humans Are Explorers And Commit
They know that existing is scientifically meaningless and are driven by fearlessness and a willingness to commit.
They’re able to put away achievement for a higher purpose and calling.
This may not need to be something as grand as giving back, or spirituality, but they certainly aren’t driven by achievement milestones like money and fame.
Though they may end up achieving quite a lot, grander than they’d ever imagine, it’s their fearless commitment to doing something that makes them commit and explore so deeply that creates their ultimate recognition in the world.
5. Awakened Humans Explore Their Egos, and Try To Master Theirs
This is one I’m grappling with, and may be impossible to win, do I go with how my ‘small self’ ego reacts, or my ‘big Self’ that never does (or isn’t supposed to).
That is the question I’m exploring most at the moment. It’s a hard one because of so many variables.
Not only are you controlling for yourself, but you’re controlling for the others around you.
Is selfishness a virtue or is altruism? Are you being altruistic in your act of altruism?
6. Awakened Humans Seek To Rationally Understand ‘Altruism’
“Selfish genes explain altruistic individuals and to me that’s crystal clear.” Dr. Richard Dawkins
Is an act of altruism made to score points actually altruistic?
I know many who act altruistic but aren’t practicing altruism in the process.
Given we feel good and therefore benefit every time we make an act of kindness, whether it’s Karma or happy chemicals, or do it because it’s ethically or morally correct, are we capable of being 100% altruistic?
It’s something to consider.
7. Awakened Humans Enjoy Philosophizing In General
Philosophizing is exploring.
Exploring seeks understanding.
Understanding leads to intelligence.
8. Awakened Humans Know About The Darkness That Comes With Knowing So Much
Awakened humans know that to remain ignorant and entertained is to be blissful and choose the hard path anyway.
Yet they realize that there’s so much light in the world, and have the choice to see it, so they ultimately (most of the time) are able to get by and survive the darkness.
9. Awakened Humans Know That Everything Is a Result of The Choices They Make and Learn to ‘Program’ Themselves To Automatically Make the “Right” Choices
Awakened humans take control as much as they can, and know how the subconscious and conscious minds work.
They know 95% of our decisions are unconsciously made, so work hard to create the right action and take responsibility of their belief systems.
10. Awakened Humans Understand the Power of Belief Systems and Take Control of Theirs
Awakened humans know with great power (of their beliefs), comes great responsibility.
To choose to believe something is a big deal, so choose wisely.
Most of the time, they come around to choosing the disciplined way that is the higher path instead of what’s often perceived as ‘disciplined but unpopular’ or a ‘hard choice’.
11. Awakened Humans Understand the Power of Their Minds And Take Control of Theirs
Awakened humans know they have a survivalist brain that reacts without our control, yet know how to control their emotions.
Even if spiraling out of control at times, they know they can simply bounce back because a new day is a new life.
12. Awakened Humans Aren’t Scared Of Transience
“Don’t be sad that it’s over, be happy that it happened.” Dr. Suess
I was riding my bike down Polk st in San Francisco two years ago and remembered how I used to do that a lot with an ex-girlfriend. In the past I would have become sad. This time I caught myself smiling.
I was happy about that.
Awakened humans know that relationships are transient and everything comes to an end.
They choose to embrace the past experience as a part of their positive growth whether it was a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ one.
13. Awakened Humans Contemplate Big Questions That Affect All of Mankind
This is why they often commit themselves to taking on a big problem through entrepreneurship or art.
They contemplate questions like ‘what is happiness?’ or ‘is technology actually having a net gain affect?’
As a result, they have many perspectives at their disposal to consider problems and solutions.
14. Awakened Humans Have Confidence and Know That What One Man Can Achieve, Another Can Achieve
Though they understand their own strengths and weaknesses, they know that with cooperation of others and technology, one can do anything they set their minds to.
This is the biggest reason many get held back.
15. Awakened Humans Understand Why Humans Are The Dominant Species
As Yuval Harari says, you can’t promise chimpanzees endless bananas in banana heaven but you can promise humans the equivalent.
This is the gift and the curse of how our beliefs programs our actions and allows people to cooperate using stories.
Whether it’s through the invention of corporations (legal documents that only mean as much as we believe them to mean) or religious books, humans dominate because they can cooperate and control their fellow men.
16. Awakened Humans Understand the Power Stories Have For Better and Worse
Everyone loves stories, because they bring things to life.
However humans and our minds allow storytelling to get out of hand.
The sadness of the un lived life.
The imagining we do while sitting alone on the couch on Sunday afternoon.
17. Awakened Humans Know Who They Spend Their Time With Makes Them Who They Are
As well as accepting transience in relationships and experiences in general, they optimize their relationships for people who teach and empower them.
They understand the result is growth or decay and it’s physical.
Given cooperating with people is what makes or brakes them, they hold this rule as sacred.
My life mission is to awaken people to see the Earth for the awaken entity that it is, rather than the problem ridden ‘world’ that we see.
